Taking advantage of the recent national holidays I gave a two-part shiur series at The Stanton St. Shul. Part 1 was given on December 25th (fourth day of Hanukah) on Rabbinic Responses to Greek Culture and Part 2 was delivered this morning on Rabbinic Responses to Christian Thought. (The initial plan was to combine both into one shiur, but that was unrealistic).
I’m not writing them up because to be perfectly honest most of what I did was done before, and much better than I could ever hope to do. In particular I borrowed heavily from Saul Lieberman’s Greek in Jewish Palestine / Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, Ephraim Urbach’s The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, and Haham Jose’ Faur’s new book The Horizontal Society which I hope to review shortly.
Still there are those who may be interested in the source sheets, which may be downloaded in PDF:
Rabbinic Reactions to Greek Culture
Rabbinic Responses to Christian Thought.
Also, I’m going to be posting future source sheets – and slowly migrating old ones – to a new section of YUTOPIA: https://joshyuter.com/shiurim/
Enjoy!

A few months ago I wrote a short article for the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals’ new journal Conversations. The purpose of this journal is to promote communal dialogue on various issues facing the Jewish community. Unlike the Edah/Meorot journals, the journal is supposed to be more accessible than academic and so I was given two editorial conditions:1. keep it short and 2. no footnotes.

As longtime blog readers know, that last condition was a tough one to overcome.

At any rate, I’m posting my article “A Fair And Balanced Approach To Jewish Social Justice” and I plan on revisiting the motivations for the article at some later point.

I’m still looking for a place to live on the Lower East Side. The rents have really gotten out of control with the economy and many others are trying to sell. To top it off, the co-ops have fees ranging from $1,000-$1,500 just for the right to rent in that building. In fact were it not for parsonage, I’d never be able to even consider living down there.
What’s parsonage you may ask? The term originally referred to a rectory or dwelling of the priest on the premises of a church. These days it’s more associated with a tax benefit given to clergy members where housing expenses are paid with pre-tax dollars (simplified definition). Quoth the IRS:

A minister who is furnished a parsonage may exclude from income the fair rental value of the parsonage, including utilities. However, the amount excluded cannot be more than the reasonable pay for the minister’s services.

The catch is that clergy are also considered “self-employed” which means we get nailed double when it comes to social security, paying both the employee and employer side of things. However, there is one interesting loophole:

The fair rental value of a parsonage or the housing allowance is excludable from income only for income tax purposes. No exclusion applies for self-employment tax purposes. For Social Security purposes, a duly ordained, licensed or commissioned minister is self-employed…However, you can request an exemption from self-employment tax, if you are conscientiously opposed to public insurance for religious reasons.

Even if a Rabbi were to go Milton Friedman in lomdus on the IRS, I’d have to guess that most Rabbis do in fact participate in social security.
Still I’d love to hear from any Rabbi who has in fact used this exemption – and the arguments they’ve used.

I’ve been getting some requests to respond to some comments made by my teacher, R. Moshe Tendler as reported in today’s NYPost. For this latest YU controversy, the Post reports that one of YU’s faculty members recently underwent a sex-change operation:

Over the past month, myself and several acquaintances of mine – all with ThinkPads have been infected with a similar trojan/spyware infection. This trojan constantly opens up windows telling the user that the machine has been compromised and opens up an IE window directing the user to order a particular virus scan program.
For the most part, the trojan is more of a nuisance than a critical problem – the computer will still function despite the annoying prompts. However my infection was severely worse in that the trojan disabled control panel, task manager, and even locked me out of editing the registry. This meant that I couldn’t remove the trojan either with an anti-virus program or manually.
When I was first infected with the trojan, I needed to pay someone to recover data and reinstall the machine. The second time – yes it happened twice – I was able to handle it myself, though the process was still time consuming. If you’re having trouble with your thinkpad, here are my suggestions for the homemade nuclear option:
1. Backup Data Files: Fortunately I recently purchased an external hard drive (I can officially recommend the Lacie Rugged line). As far as I can tell the trojan will not be transmitted through an external backup of data files.
1a. Backup Installation Files: If you have “must have” programs on your machine, it’s sometimes useful to save the installation files so that you don’t need to spend time redownloading everything. Furthermore, if you’re using a free anti-virus or spyware program, you’ll probably want the latest versions installed immediately as well. Even with the trojan, you should still be able to download the exe files and backup to your hard drive.
2. Reboot Computer, Press F11 While Rebooting: This will effectively wipe your machine to the system defaults from when you first got the computer. Yes, you will need to reinstall all programs but you’ll also find your computer will work faster.
Like I said, this solution time consuming and it’s technically not really a “fix” in that you’re wiping your machine and starting over. However, I can say that it works and you can do this without paying anyone.
As a final aside, I should hope that none of my Loyal Readers are gullible enough to shell out the $50 to purchase the advertised anti-virus program. The techie who fixed my computer said that there were people who did get the program, and surprise surprise, it didn’t help.

Now that I’ve moved to a more mature web space, I’ve decided to formalize some official commenting policies. Thankfully I’ve never had much of an issue in the past, but it’s probably useful to have something on the books.
I’d consider it a work in progress so any feedback or comments would be appreciated.
Within the new guidelines, that is.

It’s that time of year again for the annual birthday introspection. Last year I turned 30, which led to my completely fabricated “Big Round Number” theory. This year I turn 31, which as a friend pointed out to me, means that I’m “in my prime” in the mathematical sense.
As I hope everyone knows by now, a prime number is “a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself.” There’s something pure about a prime number, a number distinct such that it stands alone. It’s identity is not determined by other numbers, but rather a prime number exists only in relationship to itself and the core identity of 1.
I started ruminating about ideas of identity: what makes us who we are, and how we define ourselves etc. Ironically, today’s summer addition to Hulu.com was the 1993 classic Groundhog Day which deals with identity defined by knowledge and actions, such as the identities we form through sheer mindless repetition and predictability.
This past year for me was anything but predictable. It was only March when I was still working at a cushy stable job at JPMorgan Chase with a nice apartment and simple routine. Since then I got laid off, wrote three master’s theses before passing, found out I needed to move, and we’re not even close to being done with more big changes coming (details to follow shortly). In general, there does seem to be a sense for me this year of forcing myself to break some patterns, accepting new challenges, and being in a position where I’m forced to be more independent and proactive in determining how the next year will progress.
For now I will simply thank everyone for the multitude of warm birthday wishes¹ and I look forward to sharing what promises to be an exciting year with everyone.

1. Thank you Facebook