Blog/April 2013/Apr 26th
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| Apr 26th (See this week's devar torah) | Comments or questions? Click here! |
Hi, again!
From cold and wet to hot and dry, this week had it all! The weather over shabbat was very cold for the season (12C/54F), and drippy in places. That continued on Sunday and Monday, but then began heating up until today. The forecast for this shabbat is hot for the season (33C/91F) and dry, and the hot spell is supposed to last the entire upcoming week. I guess that's why spring here in the Land is called "the season of transition".
We also entered last shabbat with the startling news of the Boston Marathon bombing, and exited shabbat finding out the culprits were dead or in custody. As the week progressed, we found out that the perpetrators were beautiful, beautiful boys, and that maybe it was the boxing which caused the elder's brain injury (which caused him to embark on his hate-filled crime wave). Or perhaps it was having watched too many Ben Affleck movies; but in any case, certainly the reason for their rampage had nothing at all to do with them being Muslims; no, nothing whatsoever.
Borrowing from Dante, I do declare there is a special level of Hell reserved for those who refuse to acknowledge what their eyes see. Indeed, it is true that there are non-Muslims who go on murder sprees; however, one might be forgiven for arguing there is a pernicious connection between Islam and violence of a most brutal nature. In fact, I will be so bold as to state that Islam is not a religion any more than Nazism is; it is, rather, a deadly socio-political system which has at its root the devaluation of the other, and which is quite effective at destruction yet ineffective at producing sane societies. You in The West, you Guardians of Civilization -- take heed of what befell the Roman Empire once they lost the will to fight the Vandals and other assorted "freedom fighters" of the day. Not that the Vandals and Visigoths and so on made any pretense of "freedom fighting", but the analogy is still an apt one. If you cannot even bring yourself to name your enemy, you have no hope of victory whatsoever.
Our week was relatively pleasant and normal: Esther's mother and her husband continued their tour of the Land, and finished it by ending up at our place, where they will be until next Friday. I am deeply embroiled in the optimization of our software, and the work is really quite fascinating -- but I'll spare you the details this week. Suffice it to say that all of us are learning a great deal and progress is being made.
Speaking of progress, the long-suffering zemanim project is closing in on 5,000 Android users (via the Google Play store). The rewrite is making good progress, you can see a version of it right here. That version has been checked out in Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari, and mostly works. However, you may want to press the refresh button, and/or "options, reset to like new" in order to check it out more fully. I would like your feedback on it in terms of the overall design; I already know about the "loose ends" (Hebrew pages are incomplete, a number of screens are not completely functional). But the main screen works well, I think. I hope to complete this new version by shavuʿot and release on Android, Windows and Linux (and Mac and iOS thereafter once I have a Mac of some kind to work on).
Just after shabbat is over the bonfires will start up, supposedly in memory of Rabbi Shimʿon bar-Yoḥai. The "holiday" of Lag Baʿomer commences then, so we'll get a several dozen lungfuls of smoke from the surrounding area. And we'll see people start trimming their hair again. We've already heard the local Rabbinate informing people not to start their bonfires before dark, so as not to transgress the holiness of shabbat. If I were them I would inform the public to not light bonfires at all, so as to not transgress the prohibitions against "Gentile ways". But who listens to me, besides me?
Guests this week include my mother-in-law and her husband, and Sarah's friend Dinah. We'll give them:
matsah ball soup,
brisket,
roasted chicken,
sticky wings,
rice pilaf,
zucchini kugel,
beet salad,
black bean salad,
carrot salad,
eggplant,
and date-pecan bread.
Until next week,
shabbat shalom!
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