Thread by @JoshuaCypess

23.01/ Week 23, Jan 19-25 begins here. (Why does it start on Saturday? Because it's Sat. night, which in halakha is Sunday - Yom Rishon - the first day of the week. Thanks for coming to my Todros Talk)

Last week's thread here:

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1337903218718814213?s=20

23.02/ Halakhically a lie is ethical if it's for compassionate ends: "white lies" (eg "nice hat") I'd like to add a distinction for lies in the pursuit of justice: "red lies"

eg lying to the murderer is a Red Lie (& resolves a classic Kantian dilemma) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categoric…

23.03/ Some good news:

https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1340764155977093127?s=20

23.04/ Scorigami! My son was tracking this all afternoon, and every action in the game we were cheering or booing only as it related to this possibility. That's nerd sports.

And thank you to the safety :)

https://twitter.com/NFL_Scorigami/status/1340764921315942404?s=20

23.05/ Very hard to see the Jets winning - even suggesting it could result in the Wile E. Coyote Effect, where upon realizing they ARE the Jets, they will lose. But also because it would ruin their utterly obvious tank

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1340797291251298304?s=20

23.06/ Jets won. I think my brain broke. They were 0-13, on the road, against the NFC-West leading Rams with a great defense & the best player in the NFL (Aaron Donald).

Dumbstruck

https://twitter.com/CBSSports/status/1340809739568111623?s=20

23.07/ Thread on the travesty of 'trickle down economics' & how unethical intellectuals are well paid to provide excuses for every terrible behavior

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1341053519395250176?s=20

23.08/ Tolstoy turns out to be more of an Every Man than I knew, as in the type of man who says "Not Every Man"

https://twitter.com/AgnesCallard/status/1340154998609637378?s=20

23.09/ A thread about learning Midrash, the way I teach my kids, the way I recommend Torah is taught, Hillel/Shammai, and all that. I hope to expand on this later.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1341119041113567239

23.10/ OMG, Bingo! I have Bingo on my Fascism By Numbers bingo card. I was waiting until the depraved abuser-in-chief went after "bad art"

BTW, winning this Bingo card is a terrible feeling in real life.

https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1341061088729845765

23.11/ It's not as bad as Vayelekh (see below) which can appear 2 times in a Hebrew year, but Vayigash can appear twice in a secular year (e.g. 2010 & 2017). Just makes my task of parsha-archiving harder (see eparsha.com)

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1302682110851985410?s=20

23.12/ When people say about a real life problem "try unplugging it and plug it back in" that's meant to be a joke, not taken literally. And yet, here we are, Israel unplugging for a fourth time in 2 years.

Maybe now they'll get the non-Bibi patch upgrade

https://twitter.com/TimesofIsrael/status/1341505176637591553?s=20

23.13/ OK, first of all I had no idea so many people were "living" in Antarctica. I guess it makes sense they're Chilean, given how close they are

Second: it's demoralizing to see these outbreaks after 9 months of knowing the rules about the disease

https://twitter.com/AntarcticReport/status/1341322201849425921?s=20

23.14/ In the spirit of #PirkeiAvot ch.5, there are 4 temperaments about power:

1) those with power who want to deny it to others
2) those with power who want to share it with all
3) those without power who want to join group 1
4) those without power who want to join group 2

23.15/ About yesterday's Trump (ym'sh) outrages (the pardons): I was a TA for a college class in the Shoah & it was clear that all acts of resistance, saving 1 or 2 lives at a time, paled in impact to ending the war one day sooner: GOP refusing to impeach is the contemp. analogy

23.16/ Just quickly popping in to say that, as a Biblical scholar, the names for units of volume for champagne are random and bonkers.

Then again, how non-Jews understand Biblical characters is often strange to me (cf. Herman Melville)
champagne.fr/en/tasting-and…

23.17/ It's parshat #Vayigash, which means it's Serach bat Asher week in the Cypess house

As a frum feminist married to a musicologist, I'm a fan (stan?) of Serach, the (literally) immortal musician of the mesora en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serah

Nice source sheet
sefaria.org/sheets/132068?…

23.18/ Attached is one of my favorite jokes and illustrates a level I have been able to attain only occasionally, but when I get it right, there's no greater thrill.

From the Encyclopedia of Jewish Humor, p.21 &
OCR pdf version here:
drive.google.com/file/d/1eerfov…

23.19/ I propose that when Trump (ym'sh) is finally out of power, that we relegate the phrases "Make __ Great Again" and "fake news" to the same taboo as putting Final and Solution next to each other. They are phrases formed by a hate group death cult

23.20/ Wow! Rav Hershel Schachter & Rav Mordechai Willig of Yeshiva University broadcast their receiving the COVID19 vaccine on video, leading the way, teaching by example.

The bracha afterwards is "HaTov VeHaMeitiv"

I'm getting emotional about it, whoa.

https://twitter.com/GilStudent/status/1342307148315942914?s=20

23.21/ Thread about the #TenthOfTevet and the meaning for today (Today and davka today, Dec 25 2020).

Note, in the midst of writing it, I paid 2 shiva calls. Rachmana L'atzlan.

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1342498509094850560?s=20

23.22/ OK, Eruv is up, we're all set. I'd write more but I'm delirious with sleep-deprivation and food/drink-deprivation... while cooking

https://twitter.com/hp_eruv/status/1342557260996890628?s=20

23 end/ @threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.