One of the things I like least in life is dealing with cars. They have, frankly, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. First there’s the title, the inspections, and the insurance, all of which involve ridiculous legalese, byzantine rules and regulations, and signing piles of papers that only serve to support paper loving bureaucrats. The emissions and safety inspections of course must be done in person at incredibly inconvenient times. Then there’s the DMV which as far as I can tell exists only to teach people to be patient. Add on the gas, maintenance, and incomprehensible error codes and you have a recipe for what can only be describes as a hate-hate relationship. The worst thing about cars though is buying them. Arggghhhh. There’s a thousand makes, models, and variations. All the dealers haggle, the price structure is non-static, and you have to be an expert (or hire an expert) to know what condition the car is actually in. Each brand has a “reputation”, which is correlated to quality, which is supposed to be correlated to how much more life the car will give you. The problem is that none of those correlations are very strong, and even if they were, as an avowed car-hater I don’t know their reputations in the first place.

The reason for this rant is of course because I now have to buy a new car. Last Monday night while coming home from seeing Star Trek VI a teenage driver on the other side of the road swerved across the double yellow and hit us head on. Although the damage was minimal (I was driving slow because of the pouring rain, and hit the brakes pretty quickly), the insurance company is claiming the car is totaled, so now I have to buy a new car. Grrrrrr. The worst part is that while there are new features I’d like (bluetooth, audio in, and mp3 enabled), none of these are standard yet in mid size family sedan category, so I wasn’t planning on buying a new car for a couple more years. (And if you think I’m buying a car without those features now with a plan to trade it in for one with more features in a few years, you clearly don’t know my “drive it till it dies” philosophy of avoiding car buying).

Now of course comes the part where I ask for help. Here are the only things I actually care about for a car:

• 4 wheels and an engine.
• 4 door sedan (getting kids in and out of a 2 door is a pain)
• <80,000 miles
• Will turn on every time I turn the key and not give me problems. It must continue to do this for at least the next 8 years.
• the latch system.
• an audio in port so I can hook up my ipod, smart phone, kindle, or whatever future devices may one day exist.

Suggestions welcome. Especially with the last two features – since they’re not something that’s frequently mentioned in car ads, I don’t even know how to figure out what to look for.

Fast day fail

Originally uploaded by bachrach44

Wishing you a meaningful tisha b’av.

So far in 2010, DC has had:

1. Record snowfall
2. Record heat
3. An earthquake.

Just keep in mind that if god were to try and destroy a modern day city for sinfulness, DC would probably be high on the list.

Since I moved about a year ago I’ve met a lot of new people, which invariably involves having a lot of the same conversations many times. (What’s your name? Where did you move from? Where do you live? Buy or rent?, etc, etc). Since Rebecca often works on weekends, and I often meet new people in synagogue on shabbat, I’ve also had the following conversation about a dozen times:

Stranger: <something innocuous about the location of my wife, assuming, since I have a small child, that am in fact married and not a kidnapper>
Me: She’s working today.
Stranger: Where does she work?
Me: Children’s National Medical Center.
Stranger: Oh, is she a nurse?
Me: No, Doctor.

So far I don’t think I’ve met a single person who has concluded that my wife is a doctor, and at least a dozen who have concluded that she’s a nurse. I don’t think I have to tell you that if it was my wife explaining that I worked in a hospital, this number would almost certainly be reversed.

I’m a big fan of Jon Stewart because I feel that while the rest of the media in this country have abandoned journalism in favor of reporting (and in the case of Fox, partisan hackery), he actually does journalistic-like work. The fact that he adds in humor doesn’t hurt. Last night was one of the times he really hits the nail on the head. While the left has been agitating for Obama to give a Kennedy-esque speech challenging America to end our oil dependence like Kennedy challenged America to go to the moon, no one has bothered to point out that previous presidents have already given that speech. It’s very good – check it out below.

The garden

Originally uploaded by bachrach44

It’s clear from looking at the outside of our house that a previous owner had planted flowers and trees and done some landscaping. It was also clear that that particular owner hadn’t lived in the house in at least 5 years. Since we only moved in late last summer I pretty much just ignored the outside of the house, with the exception of removing a few trees that had been growing in the hedges. This spring I’ve turned my focus outside.

I spent a full Sunday pulling weeds, which convinced me that using a landscape mat was the way to go. Another Sunday to install the matt, followed by the edging during the week. The Sunday after that my mom came down to visit, so I took her with me to home depot to select flowers. My mom is a gardening expert. As soon as we entered the garden area she started pointing to plants and telling me about them (early or late bloomers, how fast they grow, height, etc.), without even needing to check the labels on the pots. While we were there no less than 3 people mistook her for an employee. (And although she wasn’t, she helped them all). After planting, laying down mulch (I happen to like the color of the red stuff), and watering my new flowers, the garden is finally done.

In What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis talks about the new pricing model many internet companies have adopted – instead of charging the most that the market will bear, they charge the least that they can bear. While they may not make as much money as they can in the short run, by charging as little as they can they ensure that no one can undercut them on price, ultimately increasing their market share. As their volume goes up, economies of scale in many cases dictate that they can charge even less (unless they were already charging nothing). This is the strategy that ebay used to become king of the auction world (believe it or not, there used to be hundreds of internet auction sites), and how sites like craigslist and Google have taken off.

Right now I really wish Gary Bettman (NHL commissioner) was reading Jarvis’ book. The NHL playoffs started last night, and like many casual fans I tried to watch it on TV. Believe it or not, I couldn’t find the Flyers-Devils playoff game anywhere. I have more TV channels than I can count, including ESPN, ESPN2, versus, CSN, MASN, and all the major networks. However Bettman made the fateful decision several years ago to follow the short term money and move the NHL to obscure cable channels instead of widely available broadcast channels. I’m willing to watch games on the web, but not for $79. This isn’t the first time I’ve been in this situation too, and I’m sure I’m not alone. While the NHL is on TSN and TSN2 in Canada, it’s relegated to only a small number of games on a second tier cable channel here. The NHL is trying to gain popularity in the US, and it’s been steadily falling since the mid-90s. Pursuing short term money at the expense of creating a larger market was a bad move for the NHL, and now they’ve lost the opportunity to reach countless sports fans. Charge less money (perhaps make the online viewing cheap/free-with-ads), and the NHL will reach more people. Reach more people, make more fans. Make more fans, survive long term.

If you look long enough at haggadah illustrations, you will notice that when it comes to the four sons, the wicked son has spent several centuries being depicted as a warrior. (The weapons and the uniform change in time and place, but the essence is the same). This shows of course Judaism’s commendable opposition to violence as a solution to the world’s problems. Interestingly enough there appears to have been a shift away from this trend in the 20th century. Perhaps a warrior is no longer as negative since warfare has changed in both purpose and method. Perhaps other things have begin to preoccupy us as “evil” with the decline in warfare the late 20th century has brought about. Or perhaps there’s another reason entirely. In the Szyk haggadah, a beautifully illustrated haggadah done by Marvin Szyk in 1930s Poland, he depicted the wicked son as German, complete with Hitler mustache. Szyk’s original haggadah was very anti-Nazi in many ways (most of which were actually censored by the publisher), and it seems clear that he did not view the warrior-Jew as wicked. Perhaps this is the paradigm change that changed the standard illustration of the wicked son in the haggadah.

This is a brief followup on an older post about my troubles finding a haggadah. What I realized is that there are two main types of haggadah commentary – one is where the author presents new commentaries and thoughts based on the text. The second is where the author quotes previous sources (mishnah, talmud, rishonim, etc.). Due to the nature of the haggadah as a historical work, I have a strong preference for the second – I want the commentary to quote the mishnah, gemarah, tosefta, and occasional rishon to put the haggadah in it’s proper context. When we recite “avadim hayinu” it would be nice if the haggadah explained the talmudic dispute between rav and shmuel on how we should address “disgrace” in the haggadah – is it by talking about slavery (physical disgrace) or how our ancestors were idolaters (spiritual disgrace)? (The answer of course is that we can’t decide so we do both).

I did eventually find a haggadah I liked – the Schocken haggadah. It’s dense enough to be usable at the seder, the English translation is good and readable, and the layout is easy to follow. The pictures are almost entirely artwork taken from classic middle ages haggadahs. (I recognize many of them from Haggadah and History by Yosef Haim Yerushalmi). The commentary is classic, consisting almost entirely of sources from the torah, mishnah, talmud, and the occasional rishon. Where historical context helps explain a passage, Glatzer (the author) does not hesitate to do so. Although it has also been out of print for some time, its use as a textbook by many universities has left enough used copies available on the web that I could quickly order 15 of them from a variety of sources. Interestingly enough, due to both the limited supply and the fact that many used book marketplaces mirror content (for example, people that sell on amazon marketplace also list their books on ebay, alibris, and abebooks), I have singlehandedly created enough demand for the book to triple its current asking price.

In the torah matzah is called לֶחֶם עֹנִי – usually rendered in English as poor man’s bread or bread of affliction. In the gemarah (pesachim 115b) shmuel comes up with a creative interpretation of this – he says that it is called lehem oni because we say (עונין) things on it. A baraita is then related that supports shmuel’s position. The second interpretation, that of oni meaning “poor” is then taught anonymously explaining that just as a poor man does not get a whole loaf of bread, so too we do not get a whole loaf of bread (referring, I assume, to the broken middle matzah).

I heard a lecture by rabbi Wieder entitled “halakhic responses to textual variants”.(It was a very good lecture – here’s his source sheet if you’re curious). At the end he touched upon the origins of the baraita of the four sons found in the haggadah which is something I talked about in my pesach talk last year.

First some quick background for those of you who don’t want to bother reading through the links above. The baraita of the four sons has two origins – the talmud yerushalmi, or the mekhilta. You can see them in their entirety in the source sheet, but for now I just want to focus on the wise son’s question.

Both the yerushalmi and the mekhilta have the same question for the wise son:

בן חכם מהו אומר (דברים ו) מה העדות והחקים והמשפטים אשר צוה ה’ אלהינו אותנו

The wise son – what does he say? “What is this work, the laws, and customs that our god has commanded us“.

The problem of course is that the son’s questions all come from the torah, and our text is a little different:

מָה הָעֵדֹת, וְהַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים, אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ, אֶתְכֶם.

What mean the testimonies, and the statutes, and the ordinances, which the lord our God hath commanded you?

Our haggadahs all modify the original baraita to use the word “you” for the wise son. This of course erases the key distinction between the wise son and the wicked son who is heavily chastised for using the word “you” and excluding himself from the community. Rb. Wieder thought that this showed that the rabbis of the talmud and midrash were using a textual variant. (Which, if you look at his notes, is one of many such examples).

The only explanation I’d heard for the discrepancy before was the explanation advanced by David Tzvi Hoffman and quoted by Menachem Mendel Kasher in haggadah sheleimah (the greatest compendium of haggadah commentary ever). Hoffman points out that in devarim Moshe is speaking to the people, so it makes complete sense for Moshe to say “you”, and he is not excluding himself from the community, it’s just that Moshe is speaking to the people and his whole speech is in the second person.

This will be our first year hosting a Pesach seder. One of the things I realized I needed was hagaddahs. While I actually have an impressive hagaddah collection, most are scholarly works or rabbinic commentaries on the seder, usually featuring no English and one sentence of actual hagaddah text per page. Needless to say most won’t be great for actually using at a seder, especially by the assembled guests, some of whom may not read Hebrew. I set out to the local Jewish bookstore today to find a hagaddah that:

1. Had the traditional Hebrew text with an accurate English translation.
2. Was cheap enough to allow me to buy a dozen of them without breaking the bank.
3. Was something a little more than just the printed text. I realize I could get the plain boring yellow and brown ones we used in elementary school for about a dollar each, but they have no pictures, no commentary, and nothing to spark discussion. Passover discussions are amongst my favorite things in the Jewish calendar, and I’ve found that using a boring hagaddah is not inspiring.
4. Was still focused mainly on the text so a person could reasonably use it during the seder without having to turn the page every four words.

When I got there I could not find a single hagaddah that matched my criteria. When I asked the guy who worked there for some assistance he pointed me to the artscoll hagaddahs. Ugh. I explained that I wanted a translation that would be “accurate” and a commentary that would reflect “the truth” and he chuckled and sighed. There were some great hagaddahs there, including recent publications by Rb. Lamm and Rb. Soloveitchick, but none of those are really useable at a seder – they’re references for another time. I eventually found a hagaddah I liked – it was the Sinai Hagadah (their spelling, not mine), and it was published by Feldheim. The translation was accurate, the commentary was good and even used historical sources to make lucid points (shhh – don’t tell Artscroll). Unfortunately, it has been out of print for 20 years, and they only had 2 copies in stock. I’ve been searching the web and only managed to come up with five more copies available on my favorite used and Jewish book websites. The currently seder crowd is going to be between 9 and 15 so that won’t cut it.

The most infuriating part is that it just seems we’ve completely gone completely over to the artscroll side. The only people who read non-artscroll books are the minority who have a real passion and a desire to aquire a high level of Jewish education on the side. Mean while all our baseline MO Jewish practices – prayer in shul, participating in a seder, etc., have all been given over to artscroll. Grrrrrr.

Anyone have any ideas?