Thread by @JoshuaCypess

24.01/ Week twenty-four, Dec. 26, 2020 to Jan 1, 2021 starts here. Last week's thread below

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1340702945210494977?s=20

24.02/ Just heard a radio ad where the phrase "Santa is coming with our holiday goods" and, look, can we work harder at keeping the fiction that Holidays is Happy Holidays isn't a one-to-one word for "Xmas"? OK my dudes?

24.03a/ Yesterday there were 3 NFL games and 2 Scorigamis!

https://twitter.com/NFL_Scorigami/status/1342633446091460608?s=20

&

https://twitter.com/NFL_Scorigami/status/1343050323728990210?s=20

24.03b/ One of my favorite details of the second Scorigami is that at the end of the 3rd quarter, the score was 13-16 & the bot evaluated that "This game has a 0.57% chance of ending in Scorigami." Which tells me all I need to know about those evaluations

https://twitter.com/NFL_Scorigami/status/1343036664596357121?s=20

24.04/ "Top Secret" by the Airplane! guys has some incredible scenes like the one below which I referenced the other day when explaining to my kids that high school, in opposition to it's lionization in Archie comics & other media, is a pretty hard few years for many

24.05/ Just thinking how much of the conservative ideological enterprise boils down to yelling "Do you know who my father is?!"

24.06a/ Quick note before it gets lost, I have a LONG disquisition on how to understand tumah/taharah from the lessons of COVID19. A key is that a corpse was presumed to transmit disease & so to be tamei is to be infectious while tahara is to return to a state free from infection

24.06b/ This is why tahara procedures are (1) seclusion (2) hygiene (especially with 'living water' as opposed to stagnant) & (3) time

Why then are cohanim to be tahor to work in the Temple? Because it was meat-processing!

(& in close-quarters then distributed across country)

24.07a/ A simple litmus test I'll propose for the question "Is [movie] an Xmas movie?" is whether or not I personally can make it through the first 20 min.

Real Xmas movies are so filled with Christian images & content, and require appreciating a lived experience of the holiday

24.07b/ What repels me from a real Xmas message - including the offensive fact that the holiday is an inescapable national experience despite the country's stated secular ethos & mandated separation of Church & State - lies at the heart of the argument.

24.07c/ eg. a movie plot that revolves around 'saving the Xmas Spirit' or restoring faith in humanity b/c of the message/purpose of Xmas is difficult for me to watch. It's Christian Holiday supremacy, in a way, & I feel it

[Psak: Die Hard isn't an Xmas movie. I've seen it often]

24.08/ #Parsha thought, Vayechi:

What word, or meme, is best to depict the emotion Yosef HaTzadik must have felt when his father, galaxy-brain like, insisted: "you know what you should do, Joe? Favor the younger son over the older. That worked out great for you, right?"

24.09/ Looking back through my Amazon 2020 order history. I see my Purim purchases... then a slow descent into crisis, madness, desperation, stasis, subsistence. Oh man, what a year. #HappyNewYear #Bye2020

24.09b/ And one year ago's purchases: December held my son's bar mitzvah, the earliest in his class and one of the only ones able to be actually celebrated. Then I took him to the Steelers-Jets game (we lost, but a great time had by many). One year but a different world ago.

24.10/ Thanks @year_progress for helping me get through 2020. Here we go again! #HappyNewYear2021

24.11/ Excellent comment & rejoinder. Good riddance 2020.

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1344871010823270400?s=20

https://twitter.com/Girlsurgeon/status/1344880458278920194?s=20

24.12/ My wife threw a party for our nuclear family so we could at least send off this year with some style. I've learned a nice fact: my kids will be good & jolly party people, I plumb reckon. We had sparkling grape juice, Fresca, hot-dogs in blankets, Israeli doritos, the woiks

24.13/ 2020 ended with me watching a wedding in Israel of my teacher's daughter, hearing two more friends have their kids get engaged (not to each other, though that would be funny) and 2 different zoom shiva calls. The year just cramming it in.

24.14/ Dr. Wulf is 100% right.

When asked why I pursued a doctorate, usu. phrased as "what can you do with that, teach?!" I explain I want to expand the boundaries of knowledge.

Truth matters & is valuable no matter what society currently thinks.

https://twitter.com/kawulf/status/1344278159018094593?s=20

24.15/ 2020 hate aside, as @acypess points out it's been 5781 for a few months & that's when the tide turned.

After RH, Trump's (ym'sh) taxes were exposed, he imploded in the debate & he got COVID. So... I hope 5781 goes from strength to strength!

https://twitter.com/JoshuaCypess/status/1312047203616256000?s=20

24.16a/ My work on the parsha each week (I'm trying to save a PDF copy of all the Torah I want to preserve; the internet is dying in pieces) is prompting me to worry that 2 people I like reading have gone silent. Things are rough all over and frankly, I'm worried.

24.16b/ First, for 25 years I've collected Rabbi Leibie Sternberg's Kehilas Prozdor sheets. It's a unique collection of classically yeshivish pilpul with great sources (even if I disagree often with the conclusions except when he quotes the Brisker Rav)
eflip2.com/prozdor/

24.16c/ Second is Prof. Eliezer Segal from the Univ. of Calgary who writes incredible short essays of academic Jewish Studies infused divrei Torah. Also unique and to me irreplaceable. Not only hasn't it been updated, the website is dead! I pray he's OK.
people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/Shoke…

24.17/ #ShabbatShalom everyone. If you're reading this, thank God you made it to 2021 alive. I feel for everyone and everything we've lost. Praying that this year will be better.

@threadreaderapp please unroll.

@threader_app please compile.