September 16, 2010 – 13:40
I’ve not posted much on the Big and Little Letters in Torah, have I? And now I’m posting on the Little Letters in Eicha – well, I’m between Torahs at the moment, and indulging in a spate of megillot, Eicha amongst them, which has something to do with it. 1:12 (Sofer Boyfriend wrote this one.) […]
September 15, 2010 – 20:11
Tisha b’Av seems a long time ago, now that Yom Kippur is on us, but I am finally posting those pictures of Megillat Eicha I promised you all those weeks ago. First – Eicha scroll, bodaciously swathed in black. Next – reading from the scroll, mostly backlit by candlelight. The candles were very atmospheric, but […]
September 14, 2010 – 10:37
It’s the time of year again when we use a LOT of yahrzeit candles. What to do with the pots afterwards? This is a post about how to jazz up yahrzeit candle jars using glass paints, wrapping paper, and ingenuity. Save up your yahrzeit candles. After yom tov, boil a kettle of water, and pour […]
September 13, 2010 – 16:52
While I’m waiting for the kettle to boil, a quick post about how much I love pens. Really. When the Soferet is miserable or grouchy, a trip to the art store is almost always a good plan. Pens are little tubes of potential, and they don’t cost much, so they’re good happy-making things. Then you […]
September 6, 2010 – 11:41
A Livejournal friend mused: During the Ten Days of Repentance, we change the wording “Oseh shalom bimromav” (The One who creates peace on high) to “Oseh HA-shalom bimromav” (The One who creates THE peace on high) in two places — at the end of Amidah and at the end of Kaddish. But apparently we don’t […]
I’ve mentioned, from time to time, my student Julie. Julie came to meet me one day in Manhattan a couple years ago, looking oh-so-very timid. I recognise the look; it’s the one I wear when I’m in the presence of a Great Brain, where I cannot quite believe my own temerity in bothering the August […]
The New York Public Library is having an exhibition this winter, about Three Faiths And Manuscripts, or some such. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, and their various adventures with calligraphy. I’d link you to the relevant Library page, but the exhibition is not on the website yet, not even under “Upcoming.” Anyway, part of the exhibition […]
Downstairs neighbour has spent the afternoon in the garden in a deckchair. I come in through the garden carrying a sefer Torah. You see I left the sifrei Torah in the old apartment. First and foremost because I didn’t want to put the sifrei Torah in the moving truck, in boxes as if they were […]
Well, that was fun. An afternoon at Hadar working with one of my accomplices apprentices on Elementary Proofreading. No, I don’t really have apprentices. Just the occasional afternoon teaching here and there; the sort of thing that I would do more of if I had apprentices. Anyway, we were doing some sheets of a sefer […]
We have just emerged from the doom and gloom of the Ninth of Av. In the various Ashkenazic Rites, as well as in the Italian and the old Byzantine (“Romanioti”) rites, the largest and most central piece of the morning service of this day is the Qinoth (poems of lamentation) by the great poet Eleazar […]
