37.03/ While I'm grateful that Coca-Cola has gone through the trouble to make their products kosher for #Passover, I cannot understand drinking Diet Coke willingly. Honestly, if unlabeled, I'd assume it was some drug-store's generic cola.
37.05/ Two things, so far, that I hope are permanent changes after the pandemic ends:
1. Total disability accommodations in work, school, and entertainment. In 2022, we should be able to zoom into everything we virtually accessed in 2020-21
37.06a/ #ReshetKeshet. I'm tired of the gaslighting, here's the truth: #Passover is difficult. It's meant to be. Your feelings & emotions are valid & true.
The cleaning is arduous & the demand for simcha is a recognized sacrifice.
37.06b/ I call it 'gaslighting' because the mechanism of all mysticism is destabilizing propaganda that tells us we can't trust our senses.
The mystics malign chametz as 'satan' & say asceticism is optimal. We rationalists cry foul at this bunk.
37.07/ Amazon has decided to embrace evil. It's an Internet-era process I'll call 'Facebookization': once a company that does important & useful things becomes a monopoly, their lust for nihilistic greed squeezes every penny from its employees while gouging & hurting customers.
37.08/ Spellcheck... I love you, but I will never, ever use the word 'fir.' I mean 'for' 100% of the time.
I promise I will actively avoid that word even if I were suddenly interested in pine trees.
37.09/ #ReshetKeshet. Speaking of gaslighting (see 37.06), I need to find a filter for google (see 37.07) that allows me to search Torah subjects and not get flooded with messianic links & other supersessionist insanity.
Turn the other cheek & get the heck out of my religion.
37.10/ Ah, for the Venn diagram of periodic table punsters, see the original post & some top replies:
37.12/ Been saying this for years but I'm glad this guy gets the guff first. Metric system has many things going for it... except Celsius. Should've made boiling 1000 not 100?
37.17/ This is profound and true: the mass vaccination effort is the pinnacle of human civilization: mutual aid combined with the highest level of medical & communication technology and conducted by a functioning, caring government.
37.18/ Exactly. This is why we need to excoriate enablers along with the predators/perpetrators. Banning Trump (ym'sh) neutered him. De-platforming WORKS
37.19/ My daughter said her class had an argument over whether an image was of pink vs. purple. I immediately suggested "fuchsia" & showed it to her & she agreed.
Another triumph for my youthful love of the box of 64 Crayola crayons!
37.21/ Filed under "the world can be weird," when I was trying to nail down the size of a 'pras' (see 37.20) I looked up 'egg olive pras size' and discovered a type of egg called an 'olive egger' and I can see the future page of gemara based on this
37.22/ #ReshetKeshet HOLY GUACAMOLE! Hebrewbooks has just uploaded every volume of "אספקלריא" Aspaklaria, the self-described "compendium of Jewish thought." This is an amazing series that both expensive & huge. Now it's free & searchable!
37.23/ This is good advice: 8 oz. of water for each piece of matzah. I've known people who had significant deleterious health effects from too much matzah. No joke. It's almost literally like eating glue, if you're not careful.
37.24/ As an orthodox rabbi, it's odd to see a controversy involving race insensitivity to NOT be about something orthodox did. As a sociologist, I'll say this type of appropriation seems sadly inevitable for a type of reflexive, unthinking syncretism.
37.26/ Did not know this. Not surprised that the indifference was basically misogyny.
I'll look further into it b/c the Genovese murder has taken on mythic value and it'd be valuable to turn it into a model of the culture for enabling abuse
37.28/ I'm running out of time before #Shabbat, but this Aesop fable reminds of the dvar Torah I gave about the 'rasha' of the four children. #Passover
37.30/ I hope the analysis in this short thread is correct, that the GOP prefers to legislate through their stolen courts because doing so in Congress exposes their terrible policies & is nearly always a failure
37.33/ Exactly. I mean, I was reluctant to jump on the criticize Birx Bandwagon because of the inherent structural and cultural misogyny against women in power... but boy howdy she was terrible
217.02/ Due to a combination of having a maddening schedule over the past few weeks and having Twitter owned and run horribly by the Divorced Incel King, it's been very hard to write anything.
217.03/ #ChochmatNashim for #KiTetze 5783 (last year)
@ChochmatNashim.
Downloadable PDF with Divrei Torah from Orthodox women scholars on the weekly parsha and other topics of the day. 15 Pages. No time to do a new one this year before Shabbas. drive.google.com/file/d/1NucT9p…
212.02/ #ChochmatNashim for #Devarim and #TishaBeAv 5783 (LAST YEAR). @ChochmatNashim
Downloadable pdf with working links of Divrei Torah by Orthodox women scholars on the parsha and other topics of the week. 22 pages. drive.google.com/file/d/1TH6ApN…
212.03/ This is an excellent, spot-on, thread. I've said a lot of this stuff for years.
[I'm a life-long Democrat born in Pittsburgh & raised in small towns (Binghamton), rural areas (Ithaca), and the South (Memphis). Walz is a familiar archetype to me.]
211.02/ It would behoove this law prof. to learn about the Jewish law concept of "chazakah" - the legal presumption for what a person means/intends. So, um, Trump (ym'sh) fomented an armed insurrection. He wants to end Democracy.
210.03/ I had too many sleepless nights over the last three weeks because of the drumbeat against Biden b/c there was too much smoke for there not to be fire. What kept me steady was my trust of his judgement. So if he thinks this is wise, then I logically have to support it.
209.02/ Following the assassination attempt on TFG yesterday - an act I condemn; ballots not bullets - the reaction by news agencies has been unhinged. But I'm singling out The Daily Beast and Politico who are lionizing TFG using very disturbing rhetoric. I've had to unfollow.
209.03/ I'm furious that so many in Congress are playing this dangerous game but I'm reminding myself that (1) the MSM has been fabricating stories & amplifying mythological pro-GOP nonsense for a while now & (2) I trust Biden's abilities to handle this like he did NATO.