Now that the evil preceptor is out of the way, I hope to have a thesis draft done by the end of the week. Although there’s much I’d like to write about now, expect blogging to be anywhere from “slow” to “non-existent” until the draft is completed.
My mother came back from x-rays on her knee and it seems as though the broken kneecap is fixed. This has several positive implications. Not only does she not have to wear the brace anymore, she can now bend her knee (though not completely yet) and even start putting pressure on it. This means she can also start doing weight-bearing exercises and start rehabbing the hip.
Yay Imma!
She also told me that Sunday night was Kushner’s fundraising concert featuring Neil Sedaka. This would explain why so many teenagers were unsupervised and open to mischief.
Actually it does give me an idea. As a nice middah k’negged middah punishment, how about forcing the students to go to another Sedaka concert?
Or would that constitute cruel and unusual punishment?
I didn’t expect this East Coast Swing to be a vacation, but I couldn’t have predicted it to be as eventful as it was. I figured I would be driving my mother around, considering she had broken her knee a few days before I arrived. Still I planned to try to get something productive done, either in terms of reading, thesising, or job hunting.1
It was a disaster on all counts.
First, the multiple trips to NY were more draining than usual. I was supposed to speak at the bridge shul for a seudah shelishit, but found out last minute that it was cancelled. Then, the broken kneecap became a broken hip, and of course that rightly required attention. This isn’t a complaint, just pointing that the whole experience had been somewhat exhausting.
And for the coup de grace, I had to spend the night in Newark Airport.
It’s not that I missed my flight as much as my flight missed me. I ordered my ticket from ATA a while ago and booked an 8:06 PM flight back to Chicago. Somewhere between then and now, ATA either removed the flight from its schedule or just moved it earlier. In either case, I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare only to find out that their last flight left at 6:12 PM. I hadn’t received any notification about the switch,2 and the representatives were less than helpful. The most that they could or would do was to put me on the 6:00 AM flight Friday morning. For that, it didn’t pay to go back home, or even to stay in a hotel. I called their customer service from the airport and the person said that they should have offered a hotel stay, but they weren’t the friendliest of people here. At any rate, the best she could do was to send me a $50 voucher for my next flight.
Actually, the food court is open all night long and isn’t such a bad place to be. I might even get some reading done. They have wireless here, but it’s about $7 for the night and not really worth it.
I’ll post this tomorrow, and maybe something more if I feel like writing tonight.
1. I’m not including dating here, because although I’m not pessimistic, I’ve also learned not to expect anything to go in a particular way.
2. One representative muttered something about faxing it over, which is odd considering that I don’t own a fax machine.
Just got word that my mother got out of surgery and everything went ok.
Thanks to everyone for your wishes, and I’ll post when I have more details.
Dear Loyal Readers,
Some of you may know that my mother broke her kneecap a short time before I came to visit NY. Although she had been managing surprsingly well, last night she had an accident, fell down two stairs, and fractured her hip.
She is scheduled for surgery tomorrow – definitely on the hip, possibly on the knee as well, depending on the x-ray. We don’t know what time of day it will be, nor how long it will take (which is understandable considering we’re not sure what exactly will be operated).
If you have a tehillim group or a misheberach list of some sort, please add the name, “Leah Bat Chava.”
Thank You.
UPDATE: Latest news is that the knee doesn’t need operation, and the surgery is scheduled for around 6:00 PM tomorrow.
Introduction
With the previous ramblings about rabbinical schools and the rabbinate, I feel it’s only fair that I explain my own rationale for not only becoming a rabbi, but why I chose to the path I did.
For anyone I’m in the NY/NJ area until Nov. 4th. I’m by YU today, and will be popping around Manhattan every now and again, in case anyone is interested and I’m planning on returning to Washington Heights next shabbat. So, if you’re in the area and would like to get together, drop me a line, and we’ll see what we can do.
There’s a new guy around YU who sells loads of sefarim out of a truck. Between the makeshift storefront and the inches of dust on each book, I felt just like being in Israel again. Best part about sefarim shopping is finding incredible deals for things about which people have no idea. Case in point: I picked up R. Meir Simcha Feldblums critical edition of Masechet Gittin for a whopping $6. Sweet!
Finally, the BangItOut link has attracted more people to the chords directory. With the moderately increased traffic, we also have a few more chords up including Yo Ya, and R. Twersky’s Im Eshkachech. And with plenty of time for Hannukah, we also have Maoz Tzur and Al HaNissim. If want Adam Sandler’s Hannukah Song, look elsewhere.
You might recall that last year was my first foray into hazanut when I did neilah. This year, I added mussaf to the repertoire. Not as good as I would have hoped, but not bad considering I have no formal training. Even knowing about this CD didn’t help because the library’s audio desk was closed for the month and isn’t opening until Monday.
The timing was a little better this year. We started at 8:30, mussaf was finished at around 2:00, minha was at 5:00, neilah at 6:15 and we were finished with some time left over. This might seem a little quick compared to your typical shul. The major difference is that we cut out most of the silly hazzanut – the superfluous ay nay nay’s. It also helped that we didn’t have to wait for an absurdly long time for a rabbi to finish davening.1 There was still plenty of singing, but almost no draying or wasted time. People davened with kavvanah, said every word,2 and we still had a lot of time for reflection. Actually, I’d like to see more shuls adopt a model like this and cut down on the silliness which can actually get in the way of a meaningful service.
1. One year at YU, during the waiting for hazarat hashatz and other down time on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur I started and finished Mishnayot Sanhedrin.
2. Minus of course, several hafsakot piyutim.
Et hata’ai ani mazkir hayom.
I stand before you embaressed at the lack of posting and the near extinction of this blog. The past summer has been a whirlwind in my personal and professional life, and it’s far from over. I’m going to try to write what I can when I can, but the real world must take precedence over the virtual one.
I did some searching of who else has a birthday on August 4th. I expected an eclectic group of people, but this is a bit much:
Of course, with only 366 possible days from which to chose, there’s bound to be some important people or events that happened on any given day which could give it more significance. I mean, it could be the day Congress authorized the first U.S. Government securities, or who knows what else may have happened.
Yes, even on this hallowed National Chocolate Chip Day.
1. I’ve been told that this is innaccurate. However, I can’t help but find ironic that his Chineese sign is “snake” and his Feng Shui element is Earth.