Some Random Thoughts and a Poem

8:46 PM - Motzai Shabbos Kodesh

At the start of Chamishi of Tzav (Vayikra 8:15) the vayichatei is used to mean to clean.  The Sapirstein Edition of the Cumash (better known as the Artscroll Rashi) notes here in a footnote via Be'er Yitzchak that a word sometimes is used to mean the opposite of what it normally means. This pointed out by Rashi on Shmot 27:3). I was learning this with someone who was surprised by this word being used here. I said that sometimes a word is used to mean the opposite of it's usual meaning. Baruch shekivanti.

The senior grade was addressed this week by Laizy Schapiro, one of the creators of Srugim. Colleagues and friends are into the three year old show so it was interesting to finally see an episode and hear him talk about it.

One of his main points in making the show, he said, was to say that frum singles in their thirties or above are human, though their community may not think so. He told a story about being at a hotel in Tzefat for his nephew's Bar Mitzvah when he was in his thirties, and being put in a room with three thirteen year olds.

9:38 PM - Just ate my Melave Malka.

Thinking about anger and the four types that Chazal list.  The implication of their four categories (easy to anger and hard to calm down, hard to anger and easy to calm down,  hard to anger and hard to calm down,       easy to anger and easy to calm down) is that everyone is angry sometimes and calm at other times.  No-one is never angry. And no-one is always angry.  Rabbi Abraham Twerski points out that whenever the rabbis make judgement calls about people's anger they are referring to the expression of rather than the feeling of anger.

An old colleague and friend just called from Arizona.  So nice.

10:18 PM - Selected Shorts is on, now presenting a fictional interview by Will Eno. It's just the answers. And it seems like maybe the interviewer isn't asking anything, but the interviewee just keeps talking. There's a piece now about how the past feels cinematic. I'm not loving it. Though it's having its moments.  He just said he likes curtain calls: Julius Caesar comes back to life to wave to his agent. Now, I'm guessing it's toward the end of it - he's starting to ask the interviewer questions including, "Why don't you ask me anything?" Eh.

I once wrote here about Prairie Home Companion.  A student of mine was attending a performance of it with her parents and googled it and this blog came up. I thought of that because it's usually on - I think - around now.

11:59 and Beyond -

"Being young grows old." - Allegra Goodman, The Cookbook Collector

Broken Umbrella

Today I passed a broken umbrella

and wondered what could be sadder

than seeing what we rely on for protection

being exposed as so vulnerable

Maybe what's saddest is expecting
that anything or anyone can save us

from drops of water falling from the sky

which we realize, after all, can't harm us