I'm on deadline. My computer is down and I'm working in the library, which closes at 12:30. Then my computer communications will be iffy for a little while - who knows how long - which makes me sigh.

Here's a little thought on Vayeishev: Aviva Zorenberg writes of how Yaakov's life is a turbulent process. Eisav's was a smoother but less meaningful life. This is why Eisav's progeny is listed so quickly with no elaboration. The road to a meaningful life is covered with bumps. She suggests that Yaakov was hoping that somehow (despite the fuzzy math) the years of suffering that were foretold to Avraham had ended with all the intense personal suffering Yaakov had gone through. He was told that it was actually just about to begin full throttle with Yosef and that that was the way it had to be.

Rabbi Yitzchak Twersky points out that a ketonet appears by Adam and Chavah and the Kohein as well as by Yosef. This fits with the idea that Yosef was helping the brother's acheive teshuva. The common thread in these three contexts is teshuva.

On another note, he says that the brothers at first believed that just like their father was entitled to trickery that wasn't really trickery in order to keep the birthright in the correct hands, so too they had a right to protect themselves from Yosef.

For more of my VaYeshev thoughts see here (to learn what this parsha has to do with the arbah kosot) and here (to read about the parsha through the lens of the family systems approach to therapy).

My YouTube performance has been viwed 93 times in the few days it's been up. It's only part of the act. The full tape only exists in one place that I have been infromed of at the moment; my parent's (TSLABW) home. The tape, as was pointed out to me was made by my mother (SSLABW) not by both my parents in tandem as I had previously implied in my acknowledgement. I emailed Rabbi Perl of the telethon and he wrote me that the CD should be in the mail soon.

If you had only ten minutes to blog, what would you do? (Take that as a meme, if you'd like). I'd realize that time was short in general and do something else.

Blessing everyone to stay warm in both senses of the word. Shabbat Shalom.