Kesher Talk

Christmas in Jewish NYC. While Howard is at the Gefilte Fish Ball, I will be at Oy to the World, a downtown party sponsored by a Jewish theater group and inspired by many different mythologies. (I could also be here or here.)

Tomorrow a group from one of my minyans is going to see LOTR in Tribeca (our leader who lives in the neighborhood assures us this theater will not be overcrowded) and then on to Dim Sum.

I spent yesterday and today studying at Drisha's Winter Week of Learning, which continues tomorrow while I am at the movies. I could go see LOTR any time, but seeing it with a group and then out to dinner is too convivial to pass up. Drisha was great - very complex multi-level interpretations, engaging teachers and hevruta study, I was just about able to keep up but some things went over my head, and good mix of English instruction with both Hebrew text and English translations, which is a great mix for me.

In the blogosphere I run across simplistic negative comments on "religion" and "God," basically knocking down straw men with a great deal of self-satisfaction by the knockers at their own sophistication. I wish I could plonk all those folks down in the middle of these classes. They would get more philosophically ambiguous existential life-or-death issues, thorny metaphor-crammed referential pun-filled texts to chew on, and razor-sharp knowledgeable discussion (in two languages!) from religiously observant people than they would know what to do with.

posted by Judith @ 12/24/2002 07:27:06 PM