On Isru Chag

I just heard a story on 1010 WINS about China cracking down on drunk driving. They ended the story saying that one man was even sentenced to death, and that that was later decreased to life. I think the piece could have been written more carefully, unless they were going for some kind of irony.

I just finished reading the wonderful All Other Nights. When I get close to the end of a book I enjoyed I start to dilly dally with my reading. I usually attribute this to not wanting to be done with that world and those characters. I wonder if there's also some control issue as the reading relationship between me and the book comes to a close. Am I saying, "Even at the exciting ending here, you don't rule over me?"

I am in the middle of a post about the meaning of Shmini Atzeret - one of those posts that a lot goes into and then I push blogger's publish button and then I wonder. So many things happened over the holiday that ignited my "I should blog about that" fuse, but now I don't remember.

I heard a nice offbeat talk by Rabbi Dani Rapp about the idea of living to one hundred and twenty. It was a Simchat Torah topic because the sources for the concept come from the start and end of the Torah. G-d decrees at the end of Breishi that man will live only one hundred and twenty years. Moshe dies at one hundred and twenty. There are hole in these pesukim being paradigms for this being the magic number that we all hope to live. It's possible that after the flood there was a specific decree for that generation. Also, Aharon lived longer than Moshe, and we need not assume that Moshe's age is the limit for all of us.

Rabbi Rapp cited a recent news story about two scientists who bet about whether or not any of their progeny will live to one hundred and fifty. They put money in an account and one day with interest accrued one of these scientists' descendants will inherit a significant sum of money. (Rabbi Rapp noted to me afterwards that he noticed as he spoke that this story elicited a smile from Rabbi Herschel Schachter.)

Among the many interesting ideas he cited (including a theory of Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan that there were many beings living before man for many years that were not named man. This theory affects a discussion of man's lifespan because, as described in sefer Breishit, these beings started to intermingle with and marry man) was the parallel between the age of the world and the age of man. The Ramban marshals the kabalistic idea that mashiach will come by the year two thousand. He explains that there are six thousand years correspond to the six days of the week which are followed by Shabbos. Similarly six thousand years will be topped off by the era of Mashiach. (The first two thousand years are the time of tohu vavohu, the next two thousand are the era of Torah - starting with Avraham, and the final era is the period of redemption). Rabbi Rapp explained that six thousand years is one hundred and twenty yovel cycles and that some suggest that this is based on the idea that the world as we know it, like man, has an expiration date of one hundred and twenty. When he completed his presentation right before hakafot on the night of Simchat Torah Rabbi Yosef Blau wished aloud for Rabbi Rapp to live ad me'ah ve'esrim.