I Think, therefore I...

Hello! Well, after promising in November last year to blog more, I of course haven't. I took a hiatus when my stepfather (z"l) sadly died, untimely at the age of not quite 61, not long after writing that post - a hiatus which simply got longer... and longer... and longer.... So I apologise for the delay. But today I hope to resurrect this blog for the long term.

This isn't a technology blog, but I wanted to mention that I'm writing this on an IBM (yes, IBM) ThinkPad which I bought, reconditioned, last week. (As some of you may know, Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo took ownership of the ThinkPad brand from IBM shortly after this laptop was released, and markets its laptops as ThinkPads to this day.) It's from about 2005 and came reconditioned with 1.5GB of RAM and a 40GB hard drive; it has a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive, 14.1" screen and the customary trackpad and "TrackPoint", a pointing device embedded between keys on the keyboard which bears a (vague) resemblance to, and is therefore often nicknamed, a nipple. Although I have installed Manjaro Linux, a derivative of Arch Linux, on it, it came preinstalled with Windows 7, and though I'm not the biggest fan of Windows, I have to say that the speed of the Microsoft operating system on this box is pretty impressive given that it was released four years after the hardware. Since there's no Windows recovery partition to use if I want to reinstall Windows 7, I opted to shrink the partition to half its size and install Linux in the empty space, so that I could dual-boot the two OSes - although since installing Manjaro I haven't bothered rebooting into Windows other than to check it still loads up. I have always wanted a ThinkPad for their sturdy construction, excellent keyboard (not guaranteed on a laptop) and good Linux compatibility, and it doesn't disappoint in any of those areas. Fans of technobling, however, will probably hate (or either love or hate, á la Marmite) its black, boxy, unsexy looks.

Although it's a bit laggy playing Youtube videos, and might not be able to keep up playing modern games (a use I'm not likely to inflict on it anyway since I have an iMac and a Playstation too), I'm pretty impressed with the speed of this laptop, and with the progress that's been made with Linux stability and ease of use - the latter of which is in large part due to the Manjaro team. I've always been a fan of Arch and although I love Macs and OS X, in a lot of ways using this laptop is a lot like coming home since I used to have a Dell desktop which came (miracle of miracles!) preinstalled with an Ubuntu LTS release. I don't by any means intend to ditch my iMac but I'm sure this ThinkPad will see lots of use - not least since with its 27" screen the iMac is not exactly portable! It's rather amazing that in the supposedly fast-moving technology industry, a laptop that's nearly ten years old still works so well and so quickly. The only bad thing about it is that the battery only lasts half an hour (!) so I went straight to Amazon and ordered myself a new one. But overall I'm very pleased with it! In particular, I've always been sceptical about TrackPoint but (although I love my iMac trackpad and those on MacBooks), the TrackPoint, surprisingly, is not only more usable but also, in my opinion, preferable to the ThinkPad's trackpad; however, this could well be due to the size of the pad, which is absolutely tiny compared to the trackpads you get with Macs. On the other hand, so far it's more usable than the one on my MSI netbook, which is about the same size as the IBM's.

In the next post, I will be returning to the subject which this blog was created to explore. Shavua tov!

Another Year Over

Well, I can't quite believe that Hanukkah 5774 is nearly upon us and I haven't posted since just before Hanukkah 5773. I intend to post on a weekly or twice-weekly basis from now on. But for now it's late, so erev tov (good night) and shavua tov (have a good week)!

Happy Hanukkah!

I had enough holiday free to take the afternoons off from work during Hanukkah, (barring Monday, which I had to rearrange for reasons I won't trouble you with) so I've been mostly enjoying a nice rest  and feeling like a part-timer. I always feel odd this time of year, when we're about a quarter of the way through the Jewish year and then, suddenly, there's the Gregorian New Year to deal with. My family and I have never been big on New Year (unlike myself until recently, and my father who I recently got back in touch with, my mother, step-father and half-sister have never been big drinkers generally), but obviously, the world around us counts the years differently, and for many of those who do indulge in alcohol, New Year can be an excuse for a big bash. Indeed, even in Israel, in order to keep up with the rest of the world, the Gregorian calendar is used in daily life, with the Hebrew calendar being restricted to fixing the times and dates for prayer, festivals and yahrzeits (the ceremony with which a person marks, each year, the anniversary of the death of a relative), and events such as Gregorian New Year are increasingly popular. I recently blogged about the yahrtzeit of Yitzhak Rabin, and many Israelis now commemorate his death not on the official date, fixed according to the Hebrew calendar, but on November 4, the date of his death on the Gregorian calendar.

And then, of course, there is the so-called December dilemma, also known as Christmas. I find it ironic and sad that Jews feel so much pressure, in western countries, to celebrate Christmas even when, unlike in my case, there is no family connection to deal with. I can well understand the custom  of giving children presents at Chanukah (indeed the giving of Chanukah gelt, or money, was a Jewish tradition long before we started communing with our Christian compatriots) - though I'd question whether we should allow it to be affected as much by consumerism as Christmas is - but is it really necessary for Jewish parents to allow their children to attend carol services or sit on Santa's knee? Again, it is ironic that Chanukah, which is supposed to be a celebration of a Jewish victory against outside forces who wanted us to assimilate (though the rabbis would have you believe it's all about a miracle) occurs either, as this year, before Christmas, or sometimes coinciding with Christmas (Day) itself.

And then, of course, as I have already alluded to, there is the problem of what to do if part of your family (most commonly the parents of a convert, or the in-laws of someone who married a convert) celebrate Christmas not because they are assimilationist, but because they are at least nominally Christian. I have also heard that immigrants of non-Jewish and non-Christian background, and their descendants, are increasingly celebrating a secular Christmas, though suspect that at least for some, even celebrating it religiously does not pose the same dilemma as it does for Jews. In my case, my parents, neither of whom are Jewish, are divorced and live far apart, so I am forced to spend one or other of Christmas and New Year with first one, then the other. This year I will be spending Christmas Day and hopefully, the weekend leading up to it with my mother and step-father, and new Year with my father. Next year, it will probably be the reverse, though I hope at some point to spend 25 and 26 December at Limmud, the annual Jewish educational conference. 

One thing's for sure though, December will never be boring! Whatever festival you're celebrating this month, have a happy festive season!

Eight days before the Eight Days [of Hanukkah]

I had meant to post during the latest round of violence in Israel/Palestine, but didn't get the chance. (It is a measure of the massive media bias against Israel that I almost wrote "assault on Gaza" in that last sentence). The total death toll, thanks to the Iron Dome defence system, was 5 Israelis and (according to Al Jazeera) 162 Gazans. How Hamas can continue to countenance such a huge death toll on the part of Palestinians (not to mention claiming victory), only they can answer. But since 9pm local time (7pm GMT), there has been a truce between Israel and Hamas. It's important to emphasize that the strikes by the Israeli Defence Force (Tzahal - Tzvi HaHagana LeYisrael) only took place in response to months of rocket attacks on Israel by Hamas - a point conveniently forgotten by the Hamas spokesman who announced the victory, er ceasefire. This conflict saw the following worrying developments:

• The new Egyptian President, Mohamed Morsi, who was recently caught on camera praying to Allah to "deal with the Jews", immediately visited Gaza to lend moral support to Hamas.
• It took UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon *6* days to saunter over to the Middle East to suggest that, you know, the parties might want to stop fighting. It took the Pope one more day.
• Egypt threatened to abrogate the peace treaty with Israel. This would leave Israel at peace with only one of 21 Arab states (usually defined as the members of the Arab League, and not including Palestine, which has representation at the League but is not yet a state), namely Jordan.
• The Prime Minister of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist in a traditionally moderate Muslim state and ally of Israel, accused Israel of "terrorism".

We don't yet know how the future of Israel will pan out given the new, even more hostile environment Israel now finds itself in. We can only hope that it doesn't get any worse.

Taking the plunge

I finally did it. My day job has a relaxed dress code, and all but two of the male managers follow it, with those who don't wearing suits except on "dress-down Friday". (Lots of the women seem to dress smartly anyway.) This year, on Rosh Hashana, for the first time in about two years I wore a suit to shul; this catapulted me into also wearing them at work. I was apprehensive about wearing them there at first, but so far any comments I have gotten have been positive (I haven't yet inspired anyone else to do so, but then that's not the idea). I'm also finding it fits in with my increasing level of observance (I seem to have independently invented the term "Reformodox"). I now wear a suit to work every day of the week, and a better one on Shabbos, though as I still have plenty of casual clothing in good condition, some of which is only recently bought, I tend to wear casual on Sundays and am thinking of adopting dress-down Fridays.

Ironically - and yes I'm using the word in the Alanis Morissette sense - I will be wearing a suit this Sunday as I'm working (and more importantly, wish to have somewhere - i.e. a hole in my blazer lapel stitched in for the purpose, at least, it seems, in suits sold in Britain - to wear a poppy for Remembrance Day), and so Friday will be the first day I wear casual clothes this week. Anyway, semi-independently of that I've also started wearing the tallit katan, an undershirt worn by observant, usually Orthodox, Jews, with the tzitziyot tucked in to avoid looking ridiculous in public. This is a Sephardi, or Southern European Jewish, custom, many of which, incidentally, (such as eating rice on Passover), I have adopted, as they seem to lessen the "burden" of observing traditional Judaism in comparison with Ashkenazi customs (those of Central and Eastern European Jews and their descendants, in the UK, US, Israel and elsewhere). After all, our shul has already adopted the Sephardi/Israeli mode of pronouncing Hebrew, with all but a few members (who are quite welcome to do things their way) doing likewise.

However, the real point of this post is that, again by coincidence, after seeing them in a department store and seeing a couple of people wearing them, I've been wanting to buy a fedora for a while. It took quite a few trips to different clothes shops to get one - including trying out a one-size (and therefore, for a 5'6" midget like me, oversized) one from Primark and being offered one with a white bow on it which reminded me for all the world of 1920's Chicago gangsters (which I've really only seen, appropriately perhaps, in that episode of Star Trek).

I'm a little bit worried that this all makes me look, to an outsider, like a Hasidic Jew, (or, as I joked with my friend Allie today, Amish) and there is certainly a rule in Orthodoxy that one shouldn't mislead other Jews by, for example, walking into a non-kosher restaurant wearing a kippah, as that might give Jewish passers-by the impression that the establishment is kosher. To that I counter that I'm not trying to deceive anyone, and that for example if I were to dress in casual clothes and lose the kippah, I would equally well be giving the impression that I'm not Jewish - and furthermore, that the fact that I "look Jewish" anyway is something I can't really change - nor, frankly, would I want to. I'm frankly much more worried by attitudes like this one. There are Jews who are (natural) blond(e)s - as William Shatner was in his youth - and those who dye their hair - but what Jew in his or her right mind would do it to look "Aryan"? Never mind the fact that the term "Aryan" properly describes the Indo-Iranian (Aryan -> Iran) peoples, who (at least in the main), are definitely not flaxen-haired.

To round off this (rather rambling) post, I probably will keep the look. Jews (and Chicago gangsters) certainly aren't the only people who wear fedoras these days. One regular at our shul wears one, somehow without managing to look Hasidic. I really must study how he does it - maybe it's the lack of beard? Where does that leave the guy who looks Jewish, has a beard but isn't Orthodox? Although I tend to wear the traditional white or blue shirt on the Sabbath, I have all manner of colourful shirts and ties - including red, which is apparently a definite no-no in the Orthodox community - so that should hopefully ward off any unsuspecting Haredim who see me doing anything the Orthodox shouldn't do. To anyone who asks, I will be quite honest and clear - I'm not Orthodox. Ultimately, though, there's no reason to suspect that seeing me going into a non-kosher restaurant (to use my earlier example) would lead the Orthodox to go into that one, any more than seeing them would lead me to being (the Orthodox definition of) shomer Shabbos. What do you think about it?

If Romney wins tomorrow...

...will the last person to leave the Galaxy please turn out the lights?

A note on tefillin

"Phylacteries" is a singularly unhelpful translation of the word tefillin. That is all.