Blog/November 2009/Nov 6th

Oct 30th (See this week's devar torah)
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Hi again!

It is raining right now! B"H!!

The other day, as I was walking to my office, I encountered the building's janitor, Ahmed. As is my usual practice, I exchanged the common pleasantries with him. Then I said, "where's the rain?". He suddenly became animated, and said to me, "We have to pray for rain! The reason there's no rain is because we are not good!". This hit me like a ton of bricks! Not only had we (e.g. Israeli Jews) only started requesting rain in our daily prayers just last week, but I had also just reviewed with someone the halachot about fasting because of the lack of rain, and how we need to "search our deeds" and repent, in order to be worthy of rain. To have a presumably non-Torah aware Gentile reinforce this to me was very impressive. Only in Israel!

Last week I spoke a bit about evolution, and what I said led some to believe I am anti evolution. I just want to clarify that I am not against evolution per se, but I am quite certain that as it is currently presented, the theory of evolution is not statistically possible. Interesting article again, in Scientific American about circularly-polarized eyes in certain shrimp. I'm thinking that's another difficult piece of the puzzle. More, B"H, next week. I have a lot of material to read through still...

In another Israeli moment: my cel-phone company called me to "give me a deal". The lady told me that I could pay another 20 shekels a month and be able to send 50 SMS messages. I told her that I never send SMS messages. She said, "but now you will". So I told her that I was not at all interested in SMSing anyone. So she said, "OK, I have another deal for you that can save you money". Alright, I'm interested in saving money. She tells me, "You are spending 40 NIS on average on your phone bill, but you have only 50 minutes of airtime. For 50 NIS, you will get 120 minutes". I told her that I don't even use 50 minutes, why would I want to pay more for something I wouldn't even use? She said, "you can talk more!". I said, "but I don't want to talk more than I already do". She said, "don't you want to talk to your friends?". To which I said, "not really". She finally conceded there was little they could do for an anti-socialite such as myself...

I finished another complete learning-cycle of the Rambam's Mishneh Torah this week (yesterday, actually). So I'm feeling energized and excited to widen the scope of my learning. Anyone with suggestions (especially if you are here in Maaleh Adummim), please feel free to email me.

Because the weekly Torah reading has to do with Avram leaving home and moving to Israel, our synagogue hosts an "olim (immigrants) shabbat". We are one of the families who will be having "olim" as guests for tomorrow's meal. On the menu:

• quinoa stuffed vegetables
• cauliflower
• shnitzel
• gingerbread cookies
• banana muffins
• gefilte fish
• fried eggplant
• green teHina, Hilbe, Hummus
• vegetable soup
• potato kugel

(and other salads -- I don't remember everything being made). You're welcome to join in...

Until next week,
Shabbat shalom!

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