Sounds
I know a very very small amount of Hebrew. My vocabulary is miniscule, and I have only the vaguest sense of the rules. So when I’m following the reading from the Torah, I have the choice between following the sounds…
Parshah Vayigash
This week’s parshah (Vayigash, Gen 44:18-47:27) starts with Judah pleading with Joseph (still in disguise) for Benjamin’s freedom. The scene leads up to Joseph revealing his identity and forgiving his brothers’ actions, for it was the Lord’s will, not their…
Letter from Synagogue
There was no discussion during last week’s service, as we were celebrating the bar mitzvah of one of our congregation. He’s a good kid, and he reminds me a lot of myself at that age (poor sap), and I felt…
Book Report: Coming of Age
One of the nice things about a Studs Terkel books is that it comes in nice bite-size chunks, which make it nice to have around and read just two or three pages at a time. Maybe read about Jessie de…
Ranting
I do not like to use this Tohu Bohu as a griping zone just to call attention to those things in the world that I think are wrongheaded, but an article by Sharon Waxman called Onscreen, It’s the Season of…
Book Report: The Great American Novel
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It was probably a mistake to pull The Great American Novel off the shelf for another read-through, but I more or less enjoyed it anyway. Philip Roth must be amused by the idea that if you search Google for “the…
Book Report: Green Arrow 16-21 (The Archer’s Quest)
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I believe I have mentioned before that our local library has quite a good shelf of graphic novels (as discussed in this morning’s NY Times Magazine article “Not Funnies”by Charles McGrath. I went over and browsed it, eventually discarding both…
A good blog
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Your Humble Blogger keeps intending to write a post inspired by one or another of Mark Shmitt’s posts at his magnificent blog, the Decembrist. I suppose it’s a flaw in his wonderful essays that they don’t leave me feeling I…
Purity
Over at the Position of Ignorance, Dan calls me on the use of ‘pure’ as a general positive. No, it’s not actually All About Your Humble Blogger, but since the word shows up five times in my last post, I’ll…
Parshah Mikeitz
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This is the tenth week of the cycle, so we’re reading Parshah Mikeitz (Gen 41:1-44:17), which is mostly Joseph and his brothers in Egypt. Pharoah dreams, and his butler finally remembers about Joseph, who interprets the dream as foretelling an…