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?

Now there are two sides to my family – the German side, and the sephardi side. The difference between the two is like night and day. On the German side I have specific dates for nearly every birth, death, and marriage since the mid-1800s. Both my grandparents, then in their 80s, could give me exact birthdays for every one of their parents, siblings, aunt’s, and uncles, most of whom had long since perished. On the sephardi side (Spanish descent hailing from Kastoria if you were curious), I had 3 living relatives who don’t even know their own birthdays. It’s not due to age related issue either – my grandfather essentially made up his birthday at Ellis island. My great-grandmother and her twin brother always argued about when they were born. (His response was that she was vain and lying about her age. Her response was that he came out first, so of course he was older). My grandmother appears to have different birthdates on her driver’s license and passport, and she claims to have been born on a third date.

Now of course is time for the other shoe to drop – they’re not expecting it to be out till 2012. Arrrggghhh.

I was digging through some old family photos when I came across this. It’s the program for an American Army run Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur sevice in Passau German in 1945, which was attended by my grandfather.

My method of making the cable runs has been to use the existing phone lines (which for some strange reason are run on RJ21 cable) as guides by tieing my Ethernet cables to them, and then pulling. This of course means that when I’m done there would be no more phone lines in the house, but I figured I’d just run two ethernet cables to each room and wire the second one to a standard phone jack. (Using cat 5 cable for interior phone wiring is apparently standard these days anyway). While we do not currently have a landline phone, it is possible that we will eventually, and I figured at the least I want it to still be there if/when we ever sell the house because future owners might consider copper wiring to be a necessity. However I’m starting to rethink that. When Aliza is old enough to demand a phone will we get a landline phone or just go for a VoIP phone for the house or a cheap cell phone for her? If we sell the house in 5-10 years will anyone care about the phone wiring or will everyone be on VoIP phones for houses by then? Add to this the fact that AT&T has apparently told the FCC that it’s time to set a deadline for eliminating all land-line phones. One fifth of US homes have no land line phone, and that number is only growing. So is it worth the effort to rewire the house for traditional phone lines or is it just a waste of time?

The real reason I bought a house was so I would finally have something to wire up into the ultimate nerd-home. I’ve been slowly assembling the home theater. The TV has been in place since the beginning of football season. I got a blu-ray player on sale after thanksgiving, and recently set up a Home Theater PC to watch internet video on. The best part? I can now watch my entire star trek collection on the big screen TV. My entire collection of divx discs will play on the blu-ray player, and CBS Video has the original series online for free. (Which ties nicely into Windows Media Center). Now, every night can be a star trek night.