Mar. 6th, 2011

Okay, had a class on Talmud Thursday. The Rabbi who was teaching it was EXCELLENT. He managed the class well, even when disruptive people tried to interject (which is just human nature once a group gets big enough). He used analogies that any modern person could understand. One such good one was speeding 39 on a 35 MPH street. American "oral law" says it's ok to speed a little over the speed limit, but it's not written down. He expounded on many "oral laws" that we have in American society, and also handled one person's objections to the analogies really well.

He's a Conservative Rabbi who isn't running a shul - he runs a camp that moved to Denver awhile back. Pretty cool.

We also discussed the assignment a little bit - to write ourselves into Jewish history somewhere. Since it's a little light on requirements, I chose to write a version of myself into 1948 in Israel. Looked up all sorts of info: cars available in Israel at the time, immigration patterns, google maps of Tel Aviv area, etc. I just finished the first draft of it, actually. Now I'll let it stew a little.

We didn't do much of a Shabbat this weekend, maybe next weekend.