Sunday, July 26, 2020

I like reading things where people share honestly of their struggles. I like to do the same. And yet part of me holds back. Why? Maybe because of many reasons, including my fears, and including some disproving feedback I get about sharing.

Aviva Zornberg asks why Moshe tells the JP that he didn't get to go into Israel because of them. Why does he tell them this? On the one hand, traditionally, it is taken to be a case of him expressing anger at them. But in context and given who Moshe was this may be unsatisfactory. Zornberg suggests that Moshe is in a new phase of being the teacher of the JP. He was always half in heaven, didn't want to come down from the mountain. Now he knows his time as leader is limited and that he's not going into Israel. So he makes himself vulnerable. He shares something personal. Because to be a good teacher/leader it has to be a two way street. I remember in March 2020 when Andrew Cuomo started sharing his briefings, what people talked about was the way he spoke of himself and gave examples from his own life about his mother, daughter, brother. I'm thinking about this now as I sit on a Sunday morning, during Covid, alone, swearing to you and me that te most important thing in my life to me is to be close to G-d. And yet I have twenty minutes left till the deadline of Shacharit time and I'm, for some reason, resisting.

I davened (no outdoor minyanim in my neighborhood) by sof zeman tefilah,

Several years ago I attended the Herzong week of Tanach shiurim in Israel and loved the experience. This year, due to Covid, they're doing it online. I thought it would be live, but it's not. And it seems that they're all being put up on Youtube, so you can watch whenever you want. The one I tuned to at 9:30 was given by someone who comes across as arrogant. I went to a class of his live, and managed to lock in and learn. But when given the option to pause the computer that demeanor was a literal turn off for me. I'm now going to try the 10:30 presenter. I am reminded of a time that I saw R Noach Weinberg walk out of the BM after giving a shiur. A woman complimented him on his presentation. His response was, "It's some Torah we have, isn't it!?"

I just listened to the start of Erica Brown's presentation on Sefer Yonah. Perhaps I'll return to it some time. Here's my notes on the very beginning of it:

Yonah was called by Thomas Payne, in Common Sense, “a fit story for ridicule.” Gustav Dore, artist, 1880s, Bible scene depictor, did one of a prophet preaching, that is supposed to be Yonah but makes him seem typical. He was not typical. In Bickerman’s Four Strange Books of the Bible he says it’s different than any other prophecy, not similes or mystical terms, but a cut and dry statement without embellishments. In John Gardener's Self Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society,he writes of how people tend to want to run away from themselves in one way or another, not wanting to know themselves,depend on themselves, live with themselves.”By middle life, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.” Yonah went through anguish, being a fugitive from himself, and as it were from G-d.

It's almost 12, in a few minutes I have training on line. It may be overpriced, but works for me, for now.

Maybe I'll write here again soon.  Maybe someone will read it.  maybe someone will let me know he or she read it.

Maybe I'll write here again soon, maybe I won't.

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