devarim

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Thirty days until the end of my first quarter-century. I can't tell whether that makes me feel old or young.

It seems I have a problem with dates. At first I thought it was just birthdays. I would remember a friend's birthday for about a month leading up to it...since most of my friends are not card people, and since I (as a general rule) don't do birthday gifts, this means that for thirty days or so, at least five times a day, I'll think to myself, "I have to remember to call so-and-so on whatever-date." I do that every day...except on the actually birthday. It will completely slip my mind, and then three days after the fact something will remind me of it and I'll mentally waver between calling the friend belatedly to apologize and just letting it go and hoping s/he doesn't notice. Usually I decide that the former is the proper course of action, but it takes me so long to decide (say, two weeks) that it's no longer relevant.

Anyway, I was really proud of myself when I remembered Heather's birthday on her actual birthday last week. What's more, I called her on said birthday and actually had a conversation of three minutes or so. Wonderful.

Then, on Shabbat morning, I realized that my grandpa's first yahrzeit must be coming up. I did some frantic mental calculations (mostly when I should have been doing other things, like davening) and determined that his yahrzeit is on 19 Kislev, which this year is the evening of December 1 and the daytime of December 2. Great, I remembered early enough to get us to go back to shul for mincha (something we are quite lax about in the winter) and have an El Molei said in his memory. The fact of the yahrzeit hung around in the back of my mind on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Today, I forgot all about it. That wouldn't be such a big deal, because Grandpa's yahrzeit started at night. I wasn't planning to go to shul to say Kaddish anyway--I could never make it for mincha and maariv today because of work, and I have enough trouble waking up in the morning with enough time to say birchot hashachar and still put on my makeup. No, I just needed to remember to light a yahrzeit candle. Which I forgot about until five minutes ago. When we discovered that we don't have any at home.

To his credit, I will say that Julian offered to run right out and buy one, but being the overly practical person that I am (seriously, I know none of you believe me, but when it comes to emotions battling with reason, I tend to overcompensate on the side of reason), I told him to stay home and finish cleaning the oven.

I've cleaned up the sidebar a little bit and finally added a link to Boston Common, the local metablog, in honor of my blog information finally being updated in the BC database. Thank you, Adam!

In honor of Grandpa's yahrzeit, I think everyone should read this again.

Today I found this site, about a guy who tried to get the lowest possible score on the SAT by answering every question wrong. He did, in fact, get a 400 combined score (lowest possible), but he inadvertently answered two math questions correctly. (Check your work before handing int he test, y'all!) Anyway, the part that amused me the most was this (I highlighted portions for your amusement):

The SAT requires sitting at a desk for exactly three hours of actual problem solving, filling in up to approximately 165 bubbles with a #2 pencil. When one adds in the time spent writing down personal information, filling in other bubbles, and listening to instructions, the whole experience lasts about 3.5 hours. Something about the need to not screw up over a prolonged period like this is really fatiguing.

I've been hit by a lot of spam over the past few months. I installed a Bayesian filter a little while ago, and have spent the past couple of months training it. It's pretty accurate now, so I finally added the screen-out tags to my templates. This is mostly good news, since I can let the spammy comments sit for a while and no one (including webcrawlers) will see them. The bad news is that the filter is imperfect, so there's a chance that every now and then a legit comment may get screened out. I promise I will review the comments marked as spam before deleting them, and if your addition is legitimate, it will appear eventually.

Aviel Barclay is becoming the first soferet (feminine form of sofer, or ritual scribe) to write a sefer Torah. Kol hakavod to you.

And, in the meantime, could somebody explain to me what, if any halachic issue prevented this in the past. Besides inertia, I mean.

I've been blog-diving recently, and found a few additions for my sidebar (as some of you may have noticed). Two new additions (to my world, not the blogosphere in general) are AidelMaidel and Persephone's in the barren season.

AidelMaidel is a Chasidic ba'alat teshuva living somewhere in New York, and just has a wonderful, down-to-earth attitude about nearly everything. I'd love to sit and chat with her sometime, but I wonder if the sight of the tips of my hair or the jug of non-chalav-yisrael milk in my fridge would make her run screaming.

Persephone is a frum woman struggling with infertility. She has a disclaimer up on her site that she discusses certain issues quite frankly, and if certain readers find it untzniusdik, they are free to leave. Yeah, Persephone, you know those friend-crushes that you say you get for other people? I think I'm falling hard for you.

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, here's some more information on Aviel Barclay and the Women's Torah Project. From the WTP website:

Maimonides (RaMBaM), the great 12th-century authority on Jewish Law, argues that the purpose of writing a Torah is to study from it; and he pardons women from the obligation of regular Torah study.

This has generally been construed by later authorities to constitute a prohibition against women writing Sifrey Torah (Torah scrolls). But there is also a view held by many, within and outside Orthodoxy and the Rabbinate, that women in our time have a heightened role in the study of Torah. Indeed most Jewish women, even in the Orthodox community, are today encouraged and expected to study Torah. This could affect the import of RaMBaM's ruling.

Furthermore, some of the great authorities after RaMBaM wrote that the question of women's obligation to write is independent of their obligation to study Torah -- these mitzvot (Commandments) being given separately in the Torah itself.

From an older entry in Netivat Sofrut (Aviel's blog):

Living in Israel is like a daily encounter with a stunningly beautiful woman who is intensely passionate & at the same time intensely angry.

There are a bunch of firetrucks and police cars parked on the street behind the field behind our building (did you follow that?)...they've been there for at least 45 minutes, maybe longer, and I'm not entirely sure why. We smelled something burning on our way back into the building around 12:30 (after pizza and candlepin bowling--fun!) but nothing too strong, and I saw neither flames nor smoke once we got upstairs. I hope it's nothing too serious.

Mazal tov to the entire Out of Step Family on Out of Step Daughter's bat mitzvah, which they celebrated this past Shabbat with a women's tefillah in their home. I anxiously await OOSJ's "thoughts on women, girls and religion" (as promised).

We're coming up on the end of the U.S. tax year: a good time to make sure you've given an appropriate amount of tzedaka (charity) this year. Actually, from the Jewish perspective, I think a good time would be right after Rosh Hashana, so that you can make sure you've given an adequate amount (by your own standards, whatever the may be) and make up for any shortfall before Yom Kippur. We're calculating income from R"H to R"H, and next year (bli neder - without taking a vow) we hope to make up the shortfall before Yom Kippur. Well, we also hope to have less of a shortfall, now that we have a good target number in mind.

Julian found this site, which we used to refamiliarize ourselves with the concepts behind ma'aaser k'sofim (the monetary tithe--that is, a tzedaka amount calculated based on your income). The site has lots of great resources, including a more detailed explanation of what you should and shouldn't count as "ma'aser-able income" (thank you, Julian). Now that we know how far behind we've fallen, we're taking the next few days to finalize our list of tzedaka recipients. Maybe I'll post it here after we've given, and I hope we can do better during this year.

On several occasions, I have wished that I chose to make this blog anonymous, so that I could rail against people who piss me off or rant about lousy situations I've gotten myself into with friends and relatives. Then I stop to thank God for allowing me to develop my views on anonymity (I don't like it), because it prevents me from committing a hell of a lot of lashon hara (gossip/evil speech).

Thanks is due again.

I just reread my three most recent entries. I sound so damn frum!

So, each of the law clerks in my program is assigned a mentor-judge. My mentor called over today to suggest that he and two other judges take us and the other judges' mentees (nine people in total) out for dinner on Thursday, after our holiday party. Not wanting to make trouble, I told the clerk who was talking to the judge that I was OK with going anywhere, and I'd just have a drink. Yes, I realize that there are a few local kosher restaurants, one of which (a Chinese place) is actually large enough to handle a group of this size, but generally speaking I'm embarrassed to take even family there, let alone work colleagues. (Yes, Julian, you may point and laugh and chant, "I told you so!" now.) So, it's water for me. Wheeeeeeeeeee!

Yay! I finally decided to investigate the "module" concept on Movable Type. I know the pages look the same to y'all, but I promise you: the templates are different. My (blogging) life will be much easier now.

Matisyahu is playing at Harper's Ferry tonight. I can't go, but you should.

Wednesday:

Well, I don't have quite that many hats (yet), but I definitely have my fair share, and certainly enough simple cotton berets to keep people at work asking just how many colors they come in. Tomorrow is the first day since I started covering my hair at this job that I expect to sit in a courtroom (as an observer). I'm still not 100% sure whether the hat will stay on or come off...

Thursday:

The hat stayed on.

I feel like I owe my readers (all three of you, is it?) a bit of an explanation behind my covered/uncovered reasoning. Way back when Julian and I first started dating, we had a conversation about married (Jewish) women covering their hair. I knew very little about the mitzvah of kisui rosh (with regard to women) back then, but I knew my mother and most of the other women in the shul where I was raised mainly wore rounds of lace on their heads, often folded in half or quarters and secured by a bobby pin, and only during services. Occasionally some women (my mother included) would wear hats instead of these lace doilies, or would put on a larger, flatter, and more elaborate lace covering that actually took up most of the top of one's head, but these alternative hair "covering" decisions were made out of a sense of fashion rather than adherence to halacha. It was a token covering, an acknowledgment that there was some tradition involving married women, synagogues, and things on the women's heads, but there never seemed to be any recognition that the point was to actually cover one's hair (rather than to have a reminder of God's being above us, which is the most common reason given for men wearing kippot [yarmulkes]).

My mother (who passed away over ten years ago) also wore a lace kerchief when lighting candles Friday night, and I recall her leaving it on during Shabbat dinner. This only served to reinforce the idea that for women, wearing something on your head was a thing you did only when formally talking to God.

Savta (my father's mother), who was from Persia (what's this "Iran" business?) and now lives in Israel (has since the 1960s, I believe), does not generally cover her hair, though when in a religious/ceremonial setting (organized services, lighting candles, etc.) she will put on a headscarf that tends to cover all of her hair. Of course, that could be because she has short hair, and pretty much anything she would wear on her head (besides a lace doily) would cover all of her hair. I have no idea what she did in her "past life" (that is, any time before I was about five years old), or her real "past life" (when she was living in Persia/Iran, though there are pictures of her with husband, children, and uncovered hair. To her credit, I will say that every Persian Jew I know (um, that would be most of that side of my family) thinks that all women who are bat mitzvah (twelve years old or older) should have something on their heads when saying or hearing a bracha. My uncles will still scrounge around to toss something onto my (female) cousins' heads just before Shabbat kiddush, and my aunts, if they are not already wearing scarves, will place napkins (or their hands) on their heads for the duration. So maybe there's another mitzvah at play here altogether (although there is no reason to believe that Mizrachim [Jews of Persiian descent] are less obligated in the mitzvah of kisui rosh).

Grandma (my mother's mother, who passed away almost a year and a half ago), used to wear a sheitel (wig). This is actually quite common among women of Ashkenazic (Eastern European) descent who observe the mitzvah or kisui rosh; any of Grandma's sisters-in-law, nieces, and grandnieces who cover their hair (and that's a lot of them) wear sheitels as a matter of course. Anyway, Grandma wore a sheitel, at least to certain events, as late as my parents' wedding in 1974. Some time between then and when I showed up in Israel for the first time (1980), she stopped. In all my memories, she either went bare-headed or wore a hat (sometimes a turban-like deal that fit like a hat). The hair coverings were mostly reserved for going to shul and (sometimes) generally "going out": for lunch, for shopping, for a walk. I think the latter use of hats was more because she lived in fashionable New York from the mid 1930s through the mid 1970s...of course women of her generation wore hats!

It might be useful in the course of this discussion to mention the reasoning behind the mitzvah of kisui rosh (or even, y'know, explain what it is). In short, tzniut (modesty, in this situation modesty of dress) is required of both men and women.* For women, the areas of the body that must be covered are: the upper legs (to below the knee); the upper arms (to below the elbow); the back (not sure how high); and the front from the collarbone down. Obviously those areas within these boundaries (you know, the belly button and such) are included as well. The areas that must be covered are referred to as ervah (nakedness). Upon her marriage, a woman's hair also becomes ervah and may be seen only by her husband. I started writing a whole explanation here abotu the reasoning behind this, but instead I'll link to this (and this), which together explain it better than I ever could.

OK, end tangent. Over the course of my relationship with Julian (though not necessarily because of the relationship), I became more strictly observant of various mitzvot. Along with this, I gave new consideration to mitzvot that would not be incumbent upon me until I was married; namely, taharat hamishpacha and kisui rosh. Since this is already getting long enough, and I have sufficient thoughts about T"H alone to fill an entire blog, we'll set the former aside for now. My first "movement" on hair covering was that I agreed that the doily solution was inappropriate, particularly given the shul environments where we planned to daven regularly. Somewhere along the line--I'm not sure entirely where--I came to think of it as a particularly beautiful women's mitzvah. Long before I gave up tank tops and shorts (though I'll still wear knee-length shorts in some situations), I decided that I liked the idea of making a distinction between my unmarried self and my married self, a distinction that was unique to my religious identity.** I did not feel compelled to cover every last strand of hair, so hats would be an option. However, I also liked scarves, both for their beauty and their stronger identity as a religious (rather than fashion) symbol.

Somewhere along the line I began trying to reconcile hair-covering issues with professionalism in the workplace. I had many discussions with Julian (we may or may not have been engaged by then; I can't remember), who probably wants me to mention at this point that he expressed no preference whatsoever as to whether or wwith what I covered my hair, with two exceptions: first, that I cover my hair in shul, and with something other than "a doily"; and second, that I not become "one of those women" who wears a sheitel all the time and completely neglects the hair underneath. After all, what's the point of reserving your hair for your husband, if said hair gets ugly through the reserving process? As it turns out, I agreed with him on those two points, so we were in good shape.

I liked the idea of covering my hair even outside of religious settings (to do otherwise would, to me, feel like the equivalent of being a High Holidays Jew...no judgment made on those who do consider themselves such, but it's just not my thing). Julian and I discussed the "reason" behind women's kisui rosh; he maintained that it was to let other people know that you were married, and I responded that, as with many other mitzvot, there are many layers of reasoning, somoe of which we can't understand. According to his argument, a wedding ring serves the same purpose in secular environments as a hat or scarf would in Jewish settings. Well, yes, if you cover your hair only to let people know that you are married, which is not why you cover your hair, so...no.

There are good arguments to be made for covering only in public places but not in private, but there was no way I could construe work as "private." On the other hand, there are certain prejudices (try as we might to deny that they exist) against Jews, and observant Jews in particular, and I saw no reason to attract the inevitable discrimination and unwanted attention that would come with being "different." Such (perceived or actual) discrimination would have an even greater effect during interviews, when I otherwise would have no intention of announcing to prospective employers that I'd be leaving early on Fridays in the winter, refusing to work on Saturdays under any circumstances, and taking off up to thirteen weekdays each year for religious holidays. The entire issue was complicated by the fact that I planned to participate in my law school's early interview process, which began only four days after our wedding. There wouldn't even be enough time for me to decide what I thought about the mitzvah after practicing it for a little while.

The obvious solution for many of my classmates (and every other female Jewish lawyer I know who observes this mitzvah) was to wear a wig. Now, I realize that we should obey the letter of the law even when it violates the spirit of the law, and debates have been raging for years (with no signs of stopping) about the propriety of wearing a wig for this purpose, particularly when the wig looks nicer than one's actual hair, or when it's iimpossible for even one's closest relatives to tell that it is a wig. My readers should feel free to continue this discussion in the comments, but I'm not going to rehash both sides myself. Suffice it to say that I cannot wrap my mind around the concept of wearing a wig, either halachicly or with respect to my own comfort. It just wasn't an option--it would be a hat, a scarf, or nothing at all.

In the pseudo-end (because it's never really the end, and we all know this wasn't it for sure), Julian's argument won out, and I decided that professional appearance and keeping certain things to myself would win out over covering my hair to let others know that I was married. I did all of my second-year interviews bare-headed. I clipped back my hair, making it different from the loose hair of a sotah, but I doubt that this met even the minimum requirement of the mitzvah. Although I went entirely without a hat on the first day of interviews, my friend Akiva managed to convince me that I should at least have a hat stuffed into my bag, to put on when I had a longer break...so by the second day, I did that.

That summer, I ended up working in a pseudo-academic environment where we had no court appearances and no contact with clients. Hair covering was not an issue; hell, I could have worn jeans and a T-shirt to work every day if I wanted to (though I didn't). Come third-year interviews, though, I was back to my bare-headed ways.*** The following summer (that would be this year), while studying for the bar, I made a renewed commitment to covering my hair. When bar exam materials came telling me that hats were not permitted, I called to make sure I could cover my hair during the exam. Yet when I began my job in September, I went back to being uncovered. I even got a new, jazzier haircut--one more well-suited to being seen alone than to peeking out under a hatbrim. Professionalism won out again, particularly given that I would be interacting with judges and sitting in courtrooms on a semi-regular basis.

Over the first twelve weeks or so of my job, I started feeling more and more uncomfortable about hair-uncovering. I began wearing my beret during my commute. Then I began putting it on if I left the building for lunch. Next I was wearing it until I got to my desk instead of taking it off when arriving at the front door. On more than one occasion, I forgot (or maybe I "forgot") to take off my hat until 20 or 30 minutes into the workday. As the weather got colder and I found myself putting on my coat to go talk to judges in the other courthouse around the block, I decided that any time I could comfortable left my coat on, I could leave my hat on as well. And then, finally, I just left it on altogether.

I can't really say why or how that progression happened. Since I started, I have spoken with judges on several occasions (without an outdoor coat on) and sat in a courtroom during proceedings once (this morning). So far, no judges (or even registers or court officers) have asked about the berets, although I clearly was not wearing them a few weeks ago. I am fully prepared to explain myself and defend my position if asked, and I may even go back to not covering my hair if pressured enough, but until someone makes a fuss over it, I'm going to keep on doing what I'm doing.

I just hope no one thinks I do it because my hair's dirty.

* Insert here the general disclaimer that different groups of different rules, that not everyone thinks that s/he is bound by all rules or that all rules are applicable today, and that, generally speaking, I have no authority on this matter whatsoever and everything I say should be taken with a generous helping of Lot's wife.

*** Well, except for the one time I accidentally left my beret on after arriving at an interview a minute late and rather flustered. That was unintentional, and I took it off after ten minutes, so it doesn't count.

PS: Let it be known that, despite the timestamp, I did not write the bulk of this entry during work hours.

It seems we have a dishwasher.

Several years ago, Julian heard from a friend who had asked our shul's rabbi about kashering a dishwasher that it was not permitted to do so, even with new racks. We had also heard, from alternate sources, that it was permissible to use a formerly treif dishwasher, but that the kashering process involved getting new racks...a nearly impossible feat for the old-model, under-the-sink machine that came with our apartment. Furthermore, since we want as many people as possible to feel comfortable eating in our home, we decided it would be best to follow the rulings of our community's rabbi (so that we had a single, locally-recognized authority to whom we could point and say, "We do what he says").

Note that we never actually asked him ourselves what to do.

Over lunch this past Shabbat, another couple from the community mentioned how excited they were that they could finally start using their dishwasher. It turns out they had asked our shul's rabbi, who said it was permissible to kasher the machine by the following method: do not use for one year; clean out (checking the trap as well); run once with detergent; run twice without detergent. We decided that it would be worthwhile to at least ask the rabbi ourselves, so I posed the question to him after Shabbat. What do you know--he repeated the same answer to us! (I shouldn't be surprised about that, I guess.) Well, first he asked whether the dishwasher had been used in the past year. When I responded that it hadn't been used in five years, he wanted to know how we knew. Um...we've been living there? I wonder if he thinks we're idiots for not asking about this sooner (I know I think we are).

Anyway, I reiterated that we had only the old racks, and he said it was OK. So, after some scrubbing, trap disassembly and reassembly (with a flashlight game in the middle), and three wash cycles (one with detergent and two without), I loaded my first set of dishes (well, pots) into our dishwasher this morning. This first run was pareve, but from this evening forward the machine will be dairy. Yay.

Disclaimer: Kids, don't try this at home. Community kashrut standards can vary and, as always, you should Consult Your Local Rabbi.

I realized over the weekend that I neglected to mention an important hair-covering consideration in my recent post about covering my hair at work. My swearing-in to the Massachusetts Bar is tomorrow morning. Because I felt so strongly about covering my hair during the bar exam, it seemed only appropriate to wear a hat for the swearing-in as well. However, the only question asked of me when I requested hair-covering permission for the exam was, "Do you cover your hair at all other times?" At that time, I could honestly answer, "Yes."* Furthermore, in order to wear a hair covering in my passport photo, I must submit "a signed statement...verifying the item is worn daily for religious purposes...." Granted, my current passport is valid until 2009, but I would prefer that my next passport photo accurately reflect my usual traveling appearance (hair covered) and I'd rather not commit perjury in order to effect that.

So, one of the other factors that went into my recent hair-covering decision was a preference for consistency and legal accuracy. I now feel no qualms about attesting that my hats and/or scarves are part of my religiously-mandated daily attire, and tomorrow I will accept my bar admission certificate with pride...and a beret.

* I think it was acceptable for me to assume they meant "in public" or "outside of your home." I do not cover my hair at home, even when there are men present besides my husband and/or my father. I also do not cover my hair in private settings where there are only other women and/or young children around. However, neither the bar exam, my workplace, nor the swearing-in ceremony fit these criteria, so I feel my answer was appropriate.

We decided last week (after, quite literally, years of discussion) to make our repaired six-quart slow-cooker meat. It has been very convenient to use for soups (and for hot water when we had no urn), but pareve cholent offers limited satisfaction to non-vegetarians on cold winter Shabbat afternoons. Yesterday I went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond to buy a second slow-cooker, because (1) I can't imagine living without a pareve one for the times when we have dairy Shabbat meals, and (2) this way we can serve soup and cholent on the same Shabbat (which we actually need to do this week).

Anyway, I went to BB&B, found the slow-cookers section, and after browsing for a few moments asked the nearest employee whether they sold the non-programmable type. You see, those computer scheduling pads on the new slow-cookers are nifty and all, but they're a problem if your power goes off in the middle of cooking and you aren't around to turn the pot back on when the electricity comes back (or are halachicly forbidden from doing so). A manual turn-dial controller will just start back up when the electricity comes back on (not sure about the implications of that happening on Shabbat, but it's a good thing if the power flickers on Friday morning) or whenever you set your plug-in timer to tell it to. No plug-in timer for these computer thingies; no help for you if your power goes away for a few minutes. Not to mention that a programmable voltage-controller is just another part that can break.

So I asked the BB&B guy for help (isn't this the third time I'm trying to tell this part of the story?) and he responded by showing me the two nifty programmable slow-cookers that they carry, along with a $99 monstrosity with more dials than an airplane cockpit. Not helpful. I asked, "Do you have any of the simpler, more inexpensive models?" He stared at me with unmistakable scorn before spitting back, "This is all that the up-to-date retailers are carrying. You might find one of those in a store whose stock doesn't turn over so quickly."

Well, fine then. And, no, I do not have any Grey Poupon.

On the way home (I had two friends in the car with me), we discussed where I could what I wanted. Someone was kind enough to remind me that there is a Sears right near where I work, so I decided to swing by today. Lo and behold: a simple slow-cooker! Not just any slow-cooker, but a Rival crock pot. Yay. It's a tad bigger than we wanted (we would have preferred 4 or 4.5 quart capacity) and I'm not sure what to do with the bonus "Little Dipper" pot that came with it, but it's shiny and the price magically changed from $34.99 to $29.99 when it rang up (I hadn't seen the website yet and the tag in the store didn't reflect the sale price).

Er, yeah...I should mention that this 4-quart model was also available. It's not as shiny, so I skipped it. I'm terrible.

That's what my father-in-law called me last night. It was cute.

Yesterday I was sworn into the Massachusetts Bar. The ceremony was nice, and if I find the time I'll blog more about it later, but I just have to share with everyone the card that accompanied the congratulatory flowers delivered to my workplace today:

Dear Counselor,

The road to the Supreme Court is open. Good luck.

Love,
Daddy and Yael

One of my closest friends from college and her husband are going to be in town this weekend...they are considering moving to our area and want to check out the local Jewish community. We're having them over for dessert on Friday night (maybe) and Shabbat afternoon for lunch. Yay!!!

In honor of the occasion, we are making a meat-based cholent in our first slow-cooker. The new one (which should remain pareve) will be used for soup on Friday night. Four guests for dinner and eight for lunch...I have a busy night of cooking ahead of me!

=====

PS: I should mention that I am experiencing considerable wine-pairing angst at the moment.

PPS: Thanks to N, the wine crisis has been resolved. It involves opening three bottles tomorrow night, though, so I'm sure Julian is going to be thrilled.

(trans. "she gets up while it is still night" Proverbs 31:15)

Somehow, I get the feeling that when Kiing Solomon wrote those words, he didn't mean "...so that she could catch the T to get to work on time." Granted, today is Friday and so my early-morning activities included putting up the soup and cholent for Shabbat, but I still find it distasteful to take my shower before sunrise every single weekday. I love winter. I love cold weather and snow and buddling up and the crisp, cool air, but couldn't we have all that with just a wee bit more sunlight?

Shabbat really was delightful (and, for the record, we went through two whole bottles of wine plus three-quarters of the dessert wine on Friday night), but my throat started bothering me on Saturday, and by yesterday afternoon, I was full-blown sick. I'm blaming it on Alisha. Even though I'm feeling a little bit better today (after spending most of yesterday afternoon and evening watching TV and eating chicken soup in bed), I'm still stuffy-headed and cranky enough that I decided to stay home. It's my first-ever sick day! There are so many things I should try to do today...phone calls to make for the wine and cheese tasting I'm running in a few weeks, silverware and crystal from Shabbat to be washed (the dishes are already done), computer housekeeping to manage, random cleaning-up around the apartment... It just isn't fair! When I was a kid, staying home sick meant curling up on the couch with books and movies and having someone bring me tea and soup and toast and an occasional dose of Tylenol. I feel like such a grown-up.

There are no movies here to watch (and with this weather it would be inadvisable for a sick person to take a walk tot he video store), I don't want to deal with any of my books (and there are hundreds, you'd think I'd find something), and I can't get myself into the right mental space to negotiate wine prices just yet. Oh well...maybe I can curl up in bed with my new boyfriend, Mr. Tissue Box, and catch a little snooze between sniffles.

My head is going to explode.

Please, people, for the love of all that is good and right in the world, stop abusing this poor word. "Literally" means just that: by the word, by its strict definition, without any implied metaphor. When you say, "My heart was literally broken," (as I read in a New York Times article today) or, "I literally died laughing," you sound like an uneducated moron. Unless, of course, someone ripped your chest open and tore your heart to pieces, or you went into convulsions while giggling and passed away right there on the floor. Mmmmm? Yeah, didn't think so.

If I bite my nails, am I breaking my fast?

In an effort to reconnect with my Mizrachi (Persian) roots (you never could tell by looking at me, could you?), I decided that I wanted to make a slow-cooked chicken for Shabbat lunch this week, stuffed with dried fruit, surrounded by chickpeas, sweet potatoes and garlic, and resting on a bed of basmati rice. The chickpeas, sweet potatoes, and garlic cloves are probably less than authentic, but I wanted to get a little creative. The difficulty is that the only times we can have our slow-cooker turn on during the day Friday are around 9:00 AM and right before Shabbat. (I could theoretically set the timer to turn on around noon or something, but I do not feel comfortable leaving raw meat out at room temperature all morning.)

Now, generally speaking, food that you leave on/in a heat source from before Shabbat, to be eating during Shabbat, must be at least half-cooked (minimally edible) before Shabbat starts. The basic reasoning is that if it is not at least that far cooked, you may be tempted to stoke the coals (or mess with the temperature dials) on Shabbat in order to make the food ready for dinner. No matter how good the seal, a chicken roasting and steaming itself for upwards of twenty-seven hours is just not going to taste good at the end. However, I vaguely remembered a halacha about puttiing up raw food (specifically, meat) immediately before Shabbat if it was for lunch on Shabbat day rather than dinner that evening. I decided to ask our shul's rabbi (hereinafter "Rabbi G") about it after our Gemara (Talmud) class last night.

...which, coincidentally, is the third perek (chapter) of Masechet (Tractate) Shabbat, dealing in part with leaving food on/on/near an oven before Shabbat to continue cooking or stay warm.

I didn't expect us to get to this exact topic during class, but while learning a related passage from the Shulchan Aruch and the corresponding Mishnah Berurah, it came up. (I can't seem to find these passages online, but in the Shulchan Aruch it's siman resh-nun-gimmel (section 253), sif aleph (paragraph 1).) The relevant part states that it is permitted to place food before Shabbat to continue cooking on Shabbat if it contains a piece of raw meat (meaningi completely uncooked, not sort of cooked) that is wanted for Shabbat lunch, since there is no way it could possible be ready in time for dinner (so you won't want to stoke the coals to make it cook faster, since it would do no good) but it will surely be ready in time for lunch.

The catch is that the Mishana Berurah specifies that the food in question must be/contain raw meat, and that vegetables don't count because they cook too quickly...but it doesn't say a word about chicken. Since it came up anyway, I piped up with my question about my desired Shabbat lunch for this week. Rabbi G scowled for a moment, then leaned back and muttered, "No one's ever asked me about chicken before." Thus commenced a short but lively discussion about turkey and chicken being placed into cholent, followed by a discussion of exactly what I plan to make this week (it's not cholent!), followed in turn by requests for the recipe (uh....I'm making this up as I go along), and subsequently followed by an explanation of how long the slow-cooker recipe book says it should take to cook a whole chicken on the "low" setting. Rabbi G's interim solution for me was that I should buy a little meat and put a piece of raw meat into the pot along with everything else, and this would allow us to put the whole shebang up to cook right before Shabbat. Then he muttered again about chicken.

Hee! I stumped the rabbi! I mean, I hope I didn't embarrass him, becuase that completely wasn't my goal, but I'm still a little amazed in a never-thought-I-would-do-something-like-that sort of way.

I should add that Rabbi G emailed me around 10:30 last night to say that the chicken was fine on its own and the meat purchase was unnecessary. As always, don't rely on me for halachic guidance; always consult your local rabbi.

(Alisha, you should feel free to pipe up here with your questions so we can continue last night's discussion this topic. Anyone else go ahead and join in...N, I'm looking at you.)

My Birthday Phase has begun. This year's Birthday Phase started about half an hour ago and runs through 11:59:59 PM on December 31, 2004. Woo!

No, I don't celebrate Christmas (and I'll save my "Happy Holidays" rant for next year), but this Straight Dope answer manages to warm my heart every December.

Shmuel, Miriam, Josh, Michelle, and anyone else whose comments have recently been tagged as spam (and therefore not posted until I manually approved them): I'm sorry. The spam filter isn't perfect. It seems to train well, though, so as long as y'all keep on commenting, it will keep on learning.

Weekend update later (for real this time, I promise), but for now please enjoy Anonymous Lawyer, which I found through this New York Times article.

Saw this New York Times article about Seder Olam, which provides all sorts of information for the kosher/observant Jewish traveler. Let's hope it's more up to date than Shamash's restaurant database.