Israel

Happy Lag beOmer to all. Amsterdam was fun, probably because I missed all the fun stuff. Israel is cooler though. Dragging 70 pounds through the streets of Jerusalem is uncool. But the shul at 127 Agrippas is really cool.

P.S. I'm writing this at about 2pm Or Etzion time.

Amsterdam

On my flight to Israel this May 25, I have a 7-hour layover in Amsterdam. My plans are to take a boat tour (the whole downtown area is criscrossed by canals) and visit the Anne Frank house. If there's extra time, there are a couple art galleries and a Portugese Synagogue worth visiting. My plans largely come from this site.

Over the past 4 years I've made a point of visiting cities such as Baltimore and Chicago in conjunction with traveling to and from college. Now that I'll be studying in Israel, it will be nice to be able to do the same in Europe. Perhaps my next trip will be on British Airways, or Air France.

Crashing

The relative frequency of crashing of various programs on my computer:

• Microsoft Word: Every 5 seconds. Which is why I don't use it any more. See next entry.
  
• OpenOffice: Never crashed yet. Recent versions are roughly as capable as Word, so I don't feel that I'm missing anything by using it.
  
• Excel and Powerpoint: Don't use them too much, but can't remember either of them crashing.
  
• Internet Explorer: I rarely use it, but when I do it seems to crash at a reasonable clip
  
• EditPlus: My preferred text and web site editor; never crashed.
  
• Photoshop: Seems pretty stable
  
• Gaim: Crashes very rarely
  
• Mozilla Firefox: My main web browser. Known to crash, but infrequently, and it has a nice auto recover feature which remembers which sites you were at when anything happens. BUT, it doesn't remember the text you're entering on those sites. Hence my loss.

My next post will presumably be written in EditPlus.

AARRGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is where a 500 word post would have gone, if it hadn't been wiped out by a browser crash. No, "recover post" doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe I'll rewrite it later.

Minor update

Due to extensive work - I've had to give presentations each of the last 3 days, not to mention the papers and problem sets and stuff - I haven't been able to post recently. For now, I'll just post a single link. My goal for the next 48 hours is to use both of the made-up words from that site, "Operation Chomblitz" and "Chumropoly", in conversation.

Achat Kibalti Me'Et Hashem...

...shivti b'veit hashem... for at least one year.

It's (almost) official. This summer and next year, I'll be at Gush.

Google Maps

As everyone probably knows by now, Google Maps is the coolest mapping program in existence. Even better, the management has just introduced satellite imaging, which isn't that useful but makes it easy to waste hours on end. Finally, the site is written using a publicly accessible XML interface, which some people have used to add extremely useful and interesting features of their own.

Now, if only they could add a scale feature, and perhaps symbols for landmarks such as hospitals and subway stops... but even now, it's a revolutionary improvement over its competitors.

Our Lord of the World

Every Shabbat morning, after mussaf, we sing the piyyut Adom Olam. This song is not an integral part of the service. I do not remember it ever being being sung in Israel or in the more fundamentalist communities (Lakewood, Ner Yisrael) that I have visited. In many siddurim, it also appears at the beginning of Shacharit and as part of the bedtime Shema prayers.

Its authorship is unknown. Several non-authoritative sources I found online suggested that it was composed in 10th-century Babylonia, or by Ibn Gabirol in 11th-century Spain. The more respectable sources I found generally did not suggest any attribution. It seems to have been added to the prayer services around the 16th century.

The first three stanzas are theological; the last two describe the believer's relationship to God. The last stanza begins with the words, "בידו אפקיד רוחי", "In his hand I entrust my spirit".

These words are a direct quotation from the New Testament.

I noticed this a few days ago in a news report about the Pope's death. I don't know how to take it. I can't be the only one who finds it strange that a supposedly Jewish prayer includes a line from the Christian Bible.

This brings us back to the question of authorship. The following possibilities suggest themselves to me.

• The resemblance is coincidental.
  
• The poem was written by a Jew who had read the Christian Bible and felt comfortable reusing its language in a Jewish context.
  
• The poem was written by a Christian, or perhaps a "Jewish Christian" who considered himself a traditional Jew but believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
  
• Part of the poem - the last stanza or two - was written by an author who drew on the Christian Bible, while the rest was written by one of the previously suggested authors. This would account for the presence of the line "והוא אחד ואין שני להמשיל לו להחבירה", "And he is one, and there is no second, to be compared to him, to be joined with him". While this line is not necessary a direct refutation of Christianity (Christians presumably think that they are in fact monotheists, believing in three aspects of one God), it does sound to me like anti-Christian polemic. However you read it, it's strange to see this and a Christian Bible quote located just four lines apart from each other. Perhaps this indicates that Adon Olam is an accretion of several authors' contributions, although the uniformity of the poem's meter (it's strict iambic pentameter all the way through) might indicate otherwise.

It should be noted that we don't know who put Adon Olam in the prayer service (though it certainly wasn't Chazal), and that we don't know who wrote it either. I suggest that the poem in its current form was discovered by Jews who were unaware of its authorship, and incorporated into prayers because it seemed like a nice poem. Which it is. But that doesn't make me any more comfortable about reading what is apparently Christian scripture in synagogue.

Homosexuality

The only convincing argument I've ever heard that Judaism and homosexual desires are compatible is available here.

UPDATE: A complementary site. Good; less original but perhaps more realistic than the first site.

Thank you anonymous for the second link.

All Your What? II

The exact phrase "All your beis" has been spotted online. Here.

Rav Gigi

The current roshei yeshiva of Gush have passed their collective 150th birthday, and in preparation for their retirement, the yeshiva has already chosen several successors.

Like most of us who haven't (yet) studied at Gush, I'm less familiar with R' Gigi and R' Medan than with the current roshei yeshiva. Thus, I was happy to see an interview with R' Gigi in the religious Zionist De'ot journal.

My take:
He was very diplomatic and didn't say anything revolutionary. But it seemed to me that he was a bit more liberal than the current consensus at Gush. Which is eminently reasonable, seeing that R' Medan apparently leans to the conservative side. (Admittedly, those are gross generalizations.)

A partial translation is available here. (This is also where I found out about the interview.)

4T

Apparently, in Windows XP, when the number 4 on your keyboard is depressed, it is impossible to simultaneously enter the letter "T". When I inserted my completed absentee ballot (for local school board) into the slot above my keyboard, it accidentally depressed the 4 key. Later I happened to remove it, and the T worked fine again. Clearly, this is a feature, not a bug.

French Crap

But that's redundant...

Ouch

My roommate and I just got in a fight over brachot. This is not a good situation. Maybe I should just start making brachot again.

Hashem Oz leAmo Yiten, [v'az] Hashem Yivarech et Amo baShalom

"King David was not allowed to build God's temple because he was a man of war. It was left for his son Solomon, who would enjoy peace. Ariel Sharon's tragic miscalculation is to confuse the two roles. While one's enemies are still armed with evil intent, one must forever remain a David. Of the two men, it is the legacy of the father that is greater than the son. The Messiah is called the son of David rather than Solomon, not because war is greater than peace, but because a just war that defeats evil leads to the sprouting of peace."

(From today's Jerusalem Post.)

Jews don't make brachot

I have come to the conclusion that you are pretty much never supposed to make a bracha achrona. I don't assert that this conclusion is correct. In fact, it is so crazy that I plan on asking my posek about it ASAP. But in the meantime, it makes perfect sense to me, and here is my logic. None of what follows should be treated as halacha, because it probably isn't, even if it seems to me to be correct.

First, and most importantly, we have the principle of "safek brachot lehakel". Which is to say, when you are uncertain whether to make a bracha, you don't make it. Quite possibly, this rule does not apply when the bracha is d'oraita (birkot hatorah and sometimes birkat hamazon), but these situations normally don't concern us here. Furthermore, "safek brachot lehakel" is so strong that it seems to override other fundamental rules about brachot. For example, what if you want to eat something but aren't sure if you made a bracha on it? You have to decide between the principles of "safek brachot lehakel" and "assur lo leadam sheyihaneh min haolam belo bracha". In this case, most authorities hold that it's preferable to eat without a bracha than to potentially make an unnecessary bracha.

Second, a bracha achrona should only be made after eating a k'zayit of food within a time period known as k'dei achilat pras. The latter is generally held to be 3 minutes (others say 4 minutes). There is much disagreement as to how much a kzayit is, but the opinions seem to be from 15 to 50 cubic centimeters. According to the principle of "safek brachot lehakel", I think we should only make a bracha achrona when these two measurements are satisfied according to all possible opinions. In practice, that means you only make a bracha after eating 50 cm³ of a given food within 3 minutes.

Some of you might not be aware how much 50 cm³ is. According to a quick Google calculation, it equals a cube nearly an inch and a half on a side. This is a lot. Try eating this much of a given food while watching the clock. Eating nonstop, I think you will find that it takes a large part of those 3 minutes to eat a single k'zayit. In normal social situations, or when eating candy or other such foods, your pace will undoubtedly be slower. Furthermore, it is difficult to measure exact volumes of food and (sometimes) time, and due to "safek brachot lehakel", you only make the bracha if you're entirely sure the conditions are satisfied, which rules out substantial boundary regions as well.

In some cases, there's even less chance to make a bracha achrona. I believe you do not make a bracha on the food unless you ate an entire k'zayit of the "ikkar" of a food combination, not including the amount of "tafel". Thus, if you made the mezonot bracha over pie, you would never ever say "al hamichya" afterwards, because it's not humanly possible to eat 50 cm³ of pie crust and the accompanying filling in 3 minutes. This would also apply, to a greater or lesser extent, to all other foods which are combinations of mezonot and other stuff, like hamantashen, lasagna, and so on.

Thus, I've come to the conclusion that there are very few situations when you actually make a bracha achrona. It's just very unusual that one eats 50 cm³ (or sometimes, a much larger quantity) of food within 3 minutes. Of course, this opinion conflicts with the whole world seems to do, and everyone who's heard my explanation thinks I'm crazy (without providing logic for or against me). In addition, on a behavioral level, it seems to conflict with the statement I remember from R' Bodner's Kzayis book, that a normal person eats about 6 kzaitim (sp?) per 3 minutes. These discrepancies could be resolved by pointing out a fundamental logical flaw of mine, which I haven't found, or else by defining the k'zayit to be less than the value of 50 cm³ I made use of.

While my conclusions may in fact turn out to be wrong, I do think that my thought process was reasonable. Everyone agonizes over whether they have eaten the correct amount of matzah on the night of Pesach, but the other 364 days of the year we seem to ignore the laws of k'zayit. Why the difference in attention? It's not so hard to get halachot such as this correct. I see no reason not to think critically and clarify them to the fullest extent possible.

Da letter between S and U

My computer is not allowing me to type the capitalized letter "t". My roommate assures me this is normal Windows behavior and that it will go away in a few hours. All I know is that searching for capital "t"'s in random web pages in order to copy and paste them into files is very tedious. You may find it interesting to see the verbal convolutions I use in subsequent posts to avoid beginning a sentence with this letter.

Bracketology

Let it never be said that sports coverage these days is shallow. Here is one-sixteenth of the article I just linked to (which you can't read without an ESPN subscription):

Three Seeds

• While 84 percent of No. 3 seeds win their first-round games (67-13), they're three times more prone to upsets than second seeds. Consider this: The odds are better that a No. 1 seed will win two games than that a No. 3 seed will win one. How can you tell a first-round victor from an upset victim? The two most significant characteristics of No. 3 seed-upset victims are team inexperience and a lack of scoring punch. If you're rooting for a No. 3 seed that hasn't been to the tournament more than two years running and that scores fewer than 80 points a game, watch out. They're 2½ times as likely to be upset as No. 3 seeds without those characteristics (7-20 vs. 6-47 for a 26 percent losing rate compared with 11 percent).
  
  
• Amazingly, only 38 of the 80 No. 3 seeds win their first two games. To put this in perspective, 34 of 80 top seeds win their first four games. The drop-off in winning percentage from the first round to the second is dramatic (84 percent to 57 percent). Of their two potential opponents in round two, No. 3 seeds have more trouble with No. 6 than No. 11 seeds. They nearly split their games against sixth-seeded teams (24-22), while they're 14-7 against No. 11 seeds.
  
  
• Third-seeded teams are just 18-20 in Sweet 16 games. Not surprisingly, their biggest nemesis is No. 2 seeds. They're just 8-15 against second-seeded teams, 10-5 against other seeds.
  
  
• As poorly as No. 3 seeds do in rounds two and three, they make a startling turnaround in Elite Eight games. Their 11-7 record is better than the record of No. 2 seeds (18-19). And they're the only seed that is able to give top seeds a run for their money, posting a winning 6-5 record against them.
  
  
• Third-seeded teams have the best record (7-4) in Final Four games of any seed with more than two wins. What's more impressive is that they're 4-1 against top seeds in semifinal games.
  
  
• Third-seeded teams have won two of the championships since the tourney expanded to 64 games in 1985. Syracuse did the trick in 2003, and Michigan did it in 1989. The Wolverines' opponent? Another No. 3 seed, Seton Hall.
  

Why the blog?

(Warning: this is very self-referential)

When I was young (in the first grade, maybe?), my parents - one a physics professor at the local research university, and one who was working towards a physics PhD - figured out that my elementary school's math curriculum was worthless and had me do all sorts of math workbooks and stuff which quickly brought me to several years ahead in the curriculum. Based on my knowledge at the time, many people figured that I was on the way to becoming a Nobel-prize-winning physics genius. Or, at the very least, a Stephen Sachs type who, after graduating from Clayton High School, would go to Harvard and then become a Rhodes Scholar.

Of course, things couldn't have turned out that way. After several years I graduated to middle-school math textbooks, and then to high school math and science classes - now maintaining but not extending my head-start. After high school I entered a reasonably good college (not Harvard), and earned reasonable grades (but no noteworthy honors). This later history, I think, is in line with the extent of my natural abilities.

Why, then, were the initial assessments of my abilities so inflated?

I suspect that years of filling out math workbooks did little to affect my current mathematical knowledge. But for a few years I was more constantly immersed in mathematical thinking than any of my peers. I had no more ability, but much more of a constant familiarity with numbers than they did. And so, for a time, I did extremely well.

Being physicists, my parents immediately saw the deficiencies in the elementary school math program. It took them a little longer to realize that the English curriculum wasn't perfect either. They then tried to get me to do a series of "essays", one a week, on whatever topic I wanted. But I was now too old and too stubborn, and "essays" never caught on, since my parents didn't have the stamina to fight me about it every week. Thus, I never ended up spending any substantial amount of time writing "essays". And my writing skills never ramped up the way my math skills had.

Among other things, this blog is an attempt to revive the "essays" which I never took seriously while growing up. As an engineering student, my verbal skills are not in great demand. I'll have even less opportunity to practice them once I leave college and stop taking the occasional liberal arts course. Regularly writing down something coherent should, I hope, let me sharpen my writing skills over time - a transitory effect, perhaps, but one that I think will be useful and even personally necessary.

Of course, this blog has to be fun for me, or I won't have the motivation to update. But now, at least, my professional and self-actualizational motives for blogging should be clear to you.

Reloading

I just caught myself checking my own blog, to see if new entries had been posted. I guess that's a sign I should be posting more often. Note to self: when you read this, you should post something substantive.