Hatam Soferet

That was one cultured week, my goodness.

On Monday, I went to a concert at Carnegie Hall - "Jack Gibbons Plays Chopin." Jack Gibbons gave a sort of expanded program-notes on each piece as part of his performance, sharing a bit about the music and about his relationship to it before also sharing his interpretation and performance of it. That was very interesting and splendid. He also played some of his own compositions by way of encore, and I liked them very much too.

I went to this concert with my Mum, incidentally. She came over from England for it. Ain't that something?

On Tuesday, I taught my scribes. This isn't exactly The Arts, but it's Proto-Arts, so it counts as culture.

On Wednesday, I took Mum to the Three Faiths exhibition at the New York Public Library, so that she could kvell over her daughter's sixteen seconds of video fame in the scriptorium exhibit.

On Thursday, I went to see some Yiddish theatre. Folksbiene were doing A Celebration Of I.L.Peretz - interpretations of two of his pieces using dance, music, video, and theatre. It was surprisingly satisfactory.

On Friday, there was, as there always is, the male-voice choir at Breuer's. That's just background culture, but it totally counts. Not many shuls have a choir like that - it's like a little free concert every week just for going to shul.

On Saturday, I went to a chamber music concert at my old shul, Adath Israel of Riverdale. One of its members is one of those world-class violinists who happen to live in New York City, and she's arranged a series of chamber music concerts at the shul two years in a row now. Kind of like the Carnegie Hall concert, only I knew half the audience by name and it was just at shul.

And on Sunday, I was sitting in the park when some people turned up and started taking portfolio photos of a dancer, all pretty in the afternoon sun against the trees.

So that was nice.

TO REPRODUCE COMPUTER BEHAVIOUR HOLD SHIFT KEY DOWN

SWAPPING OUT KEYBOARD AND UNINSTALLING INTEGRAL KEYBOARD NOT HELPING

YOU TRY DOING ADMIN OR ONLINE SHOPPING WITH NO WORKING NUMBER KEYS

I TELL YOU IT^S LIKE LIVING IN A CAVE OR SOMETHING

OKAY I COULD POST THIS FROM THE OTHER COMPUTER BUT THAT WOULD BE FAR LESS HUMOROUS

AND ANYWAY I CANNOT USE THE OTHER COMPUTER EXCLUSIVELY BECAUSE IT IS TOO SMALL FOR GRAPHICS WORK AND STUFF AND MUMBLES WHEN YOU ASK IT TO DO HEBREW

MUMBLES: THAT IS TO SAY: IT GOES *ERR* *ERR*

In Southampton, all in one piece, all well, lovely weather, wish you were here, writing a lot of Torah and ketubot (offically I wasn't doing any ketubot this summer but I'm too much of a softy so when people get all cute I give in).

Further letter to landlord: dog plz. Landlord responds: this is a no-dogs building. Facts on the ground: loads of people in the building have dogs. Am I being dense? Is the custom just to get a dog and keep quiet about it? I suppose I shall check in with one or two long-time dog owners in the building and see. Can't do that till I'm back in transpondia though, so feedback from teh magik internets welcome in the interim.

* Anyone make chuppahs? Anyone know anyone who makes chuppahs? I mean the kind with lots of sewing, not the kind where you tie a tallis to poles. This is a practical question, as in, I've met someone who needs it done and I don't have any recommendations.

* You know when your neighbour is cleaning, because all their roaches come running into your apartment.

* I am so happy that I have a hand-held suckything that sucks up roaches, and then you slap a lid on them so they can't get out.

* Angela at Rumors Hair Salon in Riverdale is made of cookies.

* There was the most glorious rain on Friday; the whole surface of the road was swimming with the sort of flow you usually see in the gutter, but not running down the gutter, running down the camber. So much that the raindrops were throwing up lots of water on landing, as they would when falling onto a river. Very pretty to watch - at least if you were standing a sensible distance from the gutters, which were full enough that zooming cabs sent water six feet onto the pavement.

* Writing on Nice Klaf is so very different from writing on Nasty Klaf.

* Reading Etz Hayim on Tazria - on the bit about new mothers. Etz Hayim confidently asserts that the related impurities and required sacrifices are all theoretical, and that childbirth is not meant to be negative or any kind of punishment. One wonders if the author had read, oh, you know, the bit where God says that childbirth is going to suck because of Eve having screwed up? They possibly should have expressed their point with a little more care.

* Have never noticed before that Adam does not name Eve until *after* all the unfortunate business with the serpent. God says "I'm going to kick you out of the garden and you are going to have to work hard and it's going to suck and serve you right," and *then* Adam names the woman Eve, or Hava, which is a Life kind of word. Now perhaps that was because God invented childbirth on the spur of the moment and before that, calling her Lifey would have been silly, but still. He could have named her Holey or Faithless or Thanks A Lot, so calling her Lifey was quite a good deal really. And further, at that point Adam is actually still only generic, he is HaAdam and doesn't really have a name at all. This is sort of interesting.

* I probably ought to post that post about how I've started writing a new Torah :) You might have guessed from me talking about klaf and the early Genesis stories...

Me, 6.40am: *lurches into kitchen to put kettle on*

Night: *waves* Still here!

Beautiful tiny weeny crescent moon: *shine shine*

Me: Ooh, pretty!

Me, 1/2 second later: Oh hell, tiny moon, Rosh Chodesh, I'm not supposed to be leyning that this morning am I?

Calendar: Chill, not until tomorrow Wednesday.

Tea: *waves*

Throat: Ahem, hi, I'm going to be annoying and coughy

Cough syrup: *tastes vile, but works a treat*

Monday: *looms* You cannot avoid me by playing on the internets all morning. Get thee to minyan, o lazy ass.

Sunrise: *is pretty*

Two new sections at HaSoferet.com, both mostly Hatam Soferet posts which I think deserve to be fished out of blog archive obscurity.

Divrei Torah, or at any rate Torah-themed thoughts, and,

Craft projects, including the memorable Chocolate Omer Counter.

Oh, my. I bought a mini-kettle, so as to be able to boil water for tea whilst at Drisha. Hitherto I've been boiling water in the microwave; they have a hot-water machine, but it's not hot. And the microwave somehow imparts a funny tinny taste to the tea.

And the kettle? Makes tea. And the tea?

Is.

Amazing.

Drisha asked me to teach a class in some way related to What I Do next semester! What an honour.

Today: Sofrut III started. We did some quill work, and then some halakha. We did the first chapter of the Keset ha-Sofer, where the message, more or less, is: This is serious stuff. Don't mess with it. Lay tefillin. Those who couldn't make it: I will (iy"H) send you the sources and summarise by email.

Next week, the laws of How to Write the Letters.

On the way home, realised with horror that I'd left my keys in the city. Went to neighbour to request couch space; incredibly, she had a spare set of my keys, left there by W ages ago. Such relief, goodness. Literally weak at the knees. People: deposit keys with your neighbours, because being locked out is really horrid.