A big y’yasher kochech to Fresh Samantha on completing the NYC Marathon in her first attempt!
Her overall time of 8:24:51 earned her a close 34,649 place overall, 11,701 for women, and 2,906 for her age group.
8.5 hours of running – I’m getting tired just thinking about it. If you have a spare moment, pop on over to her site and share the love.
Congrats Samantha!
It’s been an unusally busy blogging week for me, which usually means I’ve either been hyper, annoyed, or both. Let’s end the week on a positive note, shall we?
Here it is “Arky, Arky” or “Rise and Shine”
Click here to sing along!
Guitar choirs: C F C DM7
(Chorus) Rise and shine and give God the glory-glory (x3)
Children of our God.
God said to Noah, “There’s gonna be a floody, floody” (x2)
Get those children out of the muddy, muddy, Children of our God.
Noah, he built him, he built him an arky, arky (2X)
Made it out of gopher barky, bary. Children of our God.
All of the animals, they came in by two-zies, two-zies (x2)
Elephant and kangaroozies, roozies. Children of our God.
Rained and poured for fortyday-zies, dayzies (x2)
Nearly drove those animals crazies, crazies. Children of our God.
Dove went out to take a peeky, peeky (x2)
Dove came back with twig in her beaky, beaky. Children of our God.
This is the end of, the end of our story, story (x2)
Everything is hunky-dory, dory. Children of our God.
(Lyrics from a comment here)
Shabbat Shalom
For added shabbat fun, try using this tune for D’ror Yikra and perhaps benching. Extra points if you don’t accidentally start singing Carlebach’s “Shomrim”
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As you can imagine, things are busier at U of C since I have to catch up on readings ignored because of the hagim. I spent most of my “blogging time” this week finalizing the move and rewriting the FAQ which is why I haven’t had any new postings in a while.
This Friday I will be on a panel at Hillel discussing “Egalitarian Liturgy: An Ethical Imperative?” (I wonder if I’ll have to start rating my performances based on the number of chairs thrown at me). Will b’n get a post on this one.
I’ve also been working on a post about the recent secular college brouhaha. Due to the sensitive nature of these topics, I’m trying to be thougtful, coherent, and at the same time not offend anyone. Ambitious, if not impossible.
Stay Tuned…
Updated on August 29th, 2006
First, let me welcome you to YUTOPIA – The Sometimes Updated Blog of Rabbi Josh Yuter. If you’re reading this entry, you’re probably looking for some more information about who I am and what I’m doing here.
As you might have guessed, my name is Joshua Yuter, and among other things, an ordained rabbi from Yeshiva University. After bouncing around for years, I’m currently landed in Washington Heights New York and employed as a computer programmer.
I started blogging primarily to improve my writing skills with minimal accountability. Meaning, I felt I needed a non-threatening public forum where I could speak my mind and not get villified. (yet). The short answer to my general hashkafa is is ashkenazi guf, non-kabbalistic sepharadi neshama. Long answer is…well, you’ll just have to come back here more often to figure that out, but in terms of halakha check out this series for starters. Of course you should read everything in the archives – not that it’s all gold, but some interesting things in there…somewhere.
The significance of the name YUTOPIA is often misattributed to my connections with Yeshiva University (YU). This is a reasonable guess considering I spent 7 years there, but I’ve moved on some time ago. Really, YUTOPIA is based off of my last name. The name first came to me way back when I was tinkering with RedHat Linux and needed a domain name. As with most things in college, it seemed clever at the time.
Initially, YUTOPIA was running on Blogger, but thanks to Shaya Potter’s uprgading of YUCS it was time to move on. At the time of the move, YUTOPIA had over 4,000 hits – mostly thanks to Protocols R.I.P.) – and a few other very odd poogle links. On October 20, 2003, YUTOPIA moved to YUCS where it has remained since. Since that time we’ve gone through a few redesigns and some other improvements.
YUTOPIA is a small sample of the many thoughts which run through my head on any given day. I may get intellectual, personal, or shticky. My general attitude has been that there is a lot of stupidity on the internet and I don’t really need to add to that. However, I usually bring a unique perspective on things which some people find interesting. I realize not everyone will agree with everything on here, if they leave here thinking a little more than they did previously, I’m happy.
So that’s the scoop. Take a look around, stay as long as you like, and feel free to comment – we’ve had some great flame-free discussions in the past, e-mail or IM anytime.
Enjoy!
Potter sent me a link to purchase the sheep in wolf’s clothing. This reminded me that I’ve been wanting to get the holy hand-grenade, but it’s a bit out of my price range. On the other hand, at U of C, I’m sure I can find plenty of arguments.
Update: For those of you wondering, the holy hand-grenade is not recommended (see the bottom of the page).
The previous two posts were technically before my smikha days. My first year in smikha was also one of the more auspicious years in YU’s PR history. It started when YU removed stacks of the Commentator from Belfer Hall right before the annual open house. An embarrassed YU eventually compensated the Commie for the papers, but the fun didn’t stop there.
The story hit the mainstream press with YU being the evil supressor of free speach. The New York Times reported the story, and coincidentally was itself removed from campus. R. Lamm was even disqualified from US News’ ignominious Sheldon Award because “administrators are supposed to look the other way, not conduct the thefts themselves.” Of course, YU couldn’t do much about US News since they rely on them too much for their annual college rankings.
Censorship extented to Judaic Studies as well. Some of YU’s Roshei Yeshiva criticized the new Bible journal Nachalah and several copies also turned up “missing” after the SOY Sefarim Sale (it turned out that the Nachalah staff was to blame – since no one came to pick up the unsold issues, facilities management removed them.) Finally, the integrity of SOY’s prized publication “Beis Yitzhack” was compromised when two students dared to not only quote R. Saul Lieberman, but they actually treated him with respect.
With all this happening, we couldn’t just let this go by. I never attempted a fake gemara before, but this was too good to pass up. Ben came by my aparment and we created Masechet Bava Commie. While many fake gemaras just tell a story as it might appear in the Talmud, we quoted and paraphrased actual gemaras, rashis, and tosafot, weaving the shtick with actual sources to the point where we should have included mekorot with the Purim issue.
This next one came almost by accident. I was fooling around with an image editing program and I noticed one of the filters – I think it was called “charcoal” – created a similar effect as the Les Misérables poster.
That year most of the CS majors were not fans of the MIS department. This was probably due to MIS’ incompetence and stupidity.
After some more crude graphic work, I came up with:
The original plan was to have a completle musical, but we ran out of time and talent. So we just listed song titles, some of which made sense (Empty Chairs and Broken Cables), others private jokes (no more 501), and others were supposed to be changed before we went to print (Lovely Ladies).
It turned out that we didn’t need to write lyrics because people were making up words on their own. Go figure.
One of the perks of doing the web page for The Commentator was that I had more input than I should have had with the Purim issues. For example, my first year I got the purim issue titled The Ordinary Potato (the common tater). The second year the purim issue was called Commie Sutra. This was also my doing, the result of an offhanded comment to Yishai Fleisher on the subway.
Around this time, I was also co-Editor-In-Chief of Hamevaser. This didn’t last terribly long. But, as I’ve done on other occasion, when I get too frustrated with something, I write a song parody. As you can imagine, the result is often strange or disturbing (and since I’ve learned to play guitar I can even do live performances). The following was one of my many collaborations with Ben Sandler and originally published in the Commie Sutra.
Hamevaser
In Tribute to Dennis Leary (Sorry – no midi link available)
I’m just a regular Joe, an above average Jew
I spent two years at Gush, then I came toYU
I like Buber, and Plato, and books about Kant
I say “existential” whenever I want
My logic is flawless, my intellect pure
I’m a philosophy major, in Rav Rosenswieg’s shiur
But sometimes that just ain’t enough
To keep a man like me interested
oh no
no way
uh uh
So I’ve gotta go out
and get a mag with an elitist pretense
yea yea,
yea yea,
yea yea
yea yea yea yea yea
They hang out with guys named J, E, P, D
They talk about gout with Rabbi Carmy.
HAMEVASER…
After one issue they fired Josh Yuter
Got Yehudit – ’cause Aton thinks she’s cuter
HAMEVASER…
We try to find spouses in top Revel classes
I hear that the ladies go for guys in thick glasses
HAMEVASER…
What if Tradition won’t publish this song?
What if I’ve strayed from the Rav’s Weltanschauung?
Maybe they’re right when they say that I’m wrong…
Naaaaaaa
The Rant:
You know what I’m gonna do?
I’m gonna go back to that Hesder Yeshiva on a hill
and get myself a big M-16… with no safety
and I’m gonna get a huge kippa sruga
and a Breuer Tanach and big black beard and
a big, smelly, cigarette and a degree from the Machon.
And then I’m gonna come back here and teach intro to Bible
and tell everyone who just came back from Yeshiva in Israel
that the Torah was written by monks in twelfth century Germany
and everything they know is wrong and that the Gemara is really an
allegory for wine and love poetry.
And there isn’t a G-d damn thing anyone can do about it.
You know why? Because we’ve got the Rav. OK?
Harav HaGaon Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
And I was in his shiur for twenty years and I was his closest talmid
and I used to cook him breakfast and clip his coupons.
And the Agudas Yisrael and the Edah Chareidis and Neturei Karta
can have all the Gedolim they want and put me in cherem as many times
as they want, because We’ve got the Rav, OK?
The Rav isn’t dead, he’s just sleeping. And as soon as Dr. Brill
figures out how to revive him, he’s coming back, and he’s gonna be
pretty fed up with all you apikorsim. Imagine sleeping through minyan,
and mutiply that by fifteen million. He’s gonna come back and smash Rav Kahn
back to Mongolia and make YU co-ed just like Maimonides, OK, and…
Hey! You really are elitist!
Yeah, well why don’t you just SHUT UP and sing this song, OK???
HAMEVASER…
HAMEVASER…
H-A-M-E-V-A-S-E-R!
EVERYBODY!
H-A-M-E-V-A-S-E-R!
Since I have my own personal blog now, I guess I can start moving some various nonesense over here. The following was written sometime in 2002. I was in Gruss in Israel and working with Russel on setting up an ADSL network in the computer room.
This song has been performed by me only once – that Purim in Dr. Jackson’s apt – and will probably never be performed (by me at least) again.
Trust me – this is a good thing.