10/30/16
My Dell Computer was really good
On 1/3/2008 I bought a Dell XPS 420 quad core PC. I believe it came with Windows Vista installed.
Last week, after eight years and nine months, it started crashing to the dreaded blue screens of death. I worked for many hours to rescue the machine from whatever it was that caused the crashes: corrupted device drivers or malware or hardware malfunction. I reverted updates, scrubbed registries, removed many old programs, ran defragmenters and virus defender software.
OK. I got the unit working now smooth and fast, It has not crashed for a day. I maybe even fixed it. But meanwhile I ordered a new Dell XPS 8900 i7 computer. I got a good deal direct from Dell with discounts and a good service plan included.
Nearly nine years is enough. All computers die eventually. Even the good ones.
10/29/16
Once a year - Women should dance with Torah scrolls -- The JPost
Behold the utterly unselfconscious Orthodox writer: Let the girls and women dance with the torah once a year - the rest of the year, watch their Divine joy dissipate and their spiritual elevation vanish.
10/14/16
My Collaboration co-authored books with Jack Neusner: How the Halakhah Unfolds: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Parts One and Two: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli
My collaboration co-authored books with Jack Neusner...How the Halakhah Unfolds: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Parts One and Two: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli
10/10/16
Hard to believe but Kol Nidre is a sensitive meditation of compassion
Kol Nidre is a prayer of compassion encased in a legal idiom of vow nullification.
On its surface, Kol Nidre looks like a legal boilerplate to cancel and release a person from spoken vows.
But if it looks like a prayer, and sounds like a prayer, then it is a prayer. The Kol Nidre meditation comes from our hearts and souls fully clothed in the cultural garb of our community. It is expressed in the way that the meditative masters of our faith think, and the way they talk.
And so the deep emotional utterance of Kol Nidre comes forth out of our mouths in a legal idiom, the way the rabbinic masters chose to express their meditation, acting in the archetypal mode of the scribe archetype that is so familiar to them.
As part of their jobs, our archetypal scribes keep track of vows. Like good accountants, they keep their “spreadsheets” of which vows are in effect and which have been nullified. And they know the means to move a vow from one column to the other.
10/2/16
Jewish Books for 5777 at Halakhah.com and Amazon
Happy New Year from Halakhah,com and from Talmud blog.
Download your Free Talmud and get other fine books.
L'shanah tovah,
Tzvee
