Happy New Year

This morning I took the bigger kids (ages 4 and almost 3) to school. Then I put the baby in her stroller and walked over to the makolet (מכולת) - general store, to buy bread and wine. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, temperatures in the high 70s, I would say, atypical, though not particularly unusual for this time of year. People were going about their business.

After a while I remembered that it's New Year's Eve. New Year's, like Christmas, passes unremarked in Israel. A lot of people who aren't surprised that this is true of Christmas are surprised that it is of New Year's - usually considered a thoroughly secular holiday in the US. In Israel, however, it is not the case. Israelis call it Sylvester (New Year having been taken by Rosh Hashana), which I think is its name in Eastern Europe or Russia. (I don't have time today to research it on the Internet.) Though the calendar which begins January 1st is usually euphemistically referred to as haluah ha'ezrahi (הלוח האזרחי) - the civil calendar, it is well known that its origin is Christian, having been established by the Pope for the celebration of Christian holidays. (Yes, I know, it's based on the Julian calendar, which goes back to pre-Christian times.) This general feeling has not been diminished by the adoption of New Year's as a siba l'm'siba (סיבה למסיבה) - a reason for a party, among certain sectors of the population.

The first New Year's I spent in Israel (January 1st, 1985), I made a point of staying up till midnight to listen to the news. In those days, the government had a monopoly on all broadcast media, and all radio stations carried Qol Yisra'el (קול ישראל) - the Voice of Israel, every hour on the hour, for about 5 minutes of news. The newsreader gave the usual summary of the news that was going on at the time. Finally, at the end of the broadcast, he said: "Hayom Rosh Hashana shel hanosrim" (היום ראש השנה של הנוצרים) - "Today is the New Year of the Christians". And that was it.

Happy New Year!

UPDATE: For more on Sylvester, see here and here.

UPDATE: For another perspective, see here.

Trackback from Willow Tree, Oh and By the Way:

David of Rishon Rishon has something to say about what I completely forgot. I didn't realize the day had passed till I looked at my calendar on the computer. I'm pretty happy about not realizing it; I guess that makes...

Girl of Your Dreams?

A while back, Dan Dare brought an amazing video to my attention, and asked what it shows. This was my response:

It shows,

1. A picture's worth 1,000 words.

2. It was not about beauty (as was said in the video), it was the same girl in each picture!!! It was about what she communicated through body language, clothes, etc.

3. What it is telling us is that guys want to go out with the "girl next door" (at least when she's beautiful), i.e. they like family values! (I do too.)

4. Alternatively, it shows marginal rather than absolute demand, i.e. that sexpots are common, and family-oriented women are not. I don't think this is true, but it could reflect men's perception of the truth.

Security Well

It comes as a surprise to many people, but Israel is a pretty safe place to live. It certainly compares favorably to any city in the US, though oddly, to an American, Israeli cities aren't more dangerous than small towns. Unlike the US, danger doesn't come in the form of crime, but in the form of terror. In many ways this makes it easier to deal with. Security can be effective, because we know what needs to be secured: places were large numbers of people congregate.

A few months ago we were walking though a park with some friends from overseas, when one of them suddenly exclaimed, "What's that!" I turned around, an saw that he was pointing to this sign. The sign says: bor bitahon (בור ביטחון) - security well. To be more precise, 'bor' can mean well, hole, pit, and bitahon is from the root b-t-h along with words such as: batah - trust in, betah - sure. When talking about wells, a bor is the kind of well where you walk down to the water, in contrast to a b'er, which is a well where you draw up the water.

Anyway, a bor bitahon is a specially constructed hole, that's designed to direct the force of an explosion straight up. Back in the days before suicide bombers, it was relatively common for our enemies to try to plant bombs in public areas. A bor bitahon is where you put one of these bombs, if you find it in time.

60 Links to Post

According to NZ Bear's Ecosystem, there are currently 60 links to this post. See them in the extended entry.

Continue reading "60 Links to Post"

Bilingual Blog

Alisa in Wonderland is going bilingual! I say qadima (קדימה) - go for it (literally: forward)!

Christmas where it happened

The Jerusalem Post has a nice feature which describes Christmas in Israel:

This is also the only country in the western world that is absolutely devoid of crass Christmas commercialism, notes Rev. Heldt, and as a result "you are brought back to the reality of what Christmas is all about. That's why I love being here for Christmas. It is so simple, and so beautiful."

It's a little bit odd to hear Israel being described as being "in the western world". After all, we are in the Middle East...

How many of you knew that there are four Christmases in Israel? From the International Christian Embassy (dated last January):

Israel's Christian community, albeit a diminutive 3 percent of the population, is a microcosm of the world's gentile religions, displaying an array of festivals and holidays celebrated in a compact country. Christmas is one major – and slightly confusing – example.

While the majority of the western world celebrated Christmas on December 25, and then Orthodox religions celebrated on January 7, one Christmas has yet to be observed: the Armenian Christmas.

Now, lest we think we have a handle on the situation, let's add some confusion to the mix: It is only the 2,500 Armenians in Israel who use an old calendar and celebrate Christmas almost a month later than the majority of the world - on January 19. Armenians in Armenia use the new calendar and celebrate on January 7.

But even within Israel's Armenian community, not all consider the same day the main celebration. Armenian Catholics observe December 25; others, who hail from an Orthodox background or are not 100 percent Armenian observe January 7; and traditionalists observe January 19, perhaps the most popular day for the majority of Armenians.

This page explains:

There are actually only 2 dates for the observance of Jesus' birth and not 4. They are December 25th and January 6th. The confusion of the other 2 dates, January 7th and 18th are due to the use of 2 calendars, the Gregorian and the Julian. While most of the known world, such as Canada, is on the Gregorian calendar (named after Pope Gregory of Rome), some Orthodox Christians maintain their liturgical calendars according to the ancient Julian calendar. Thus, the January 7th date actually corresponds with December 25th on the "old" Julian Calendar while January 19th corresponds to January 6th on the Gregorian calendar. Those who observe January 7th which is actually December 25th on the Julian calendar are referred to as "old calendarists." Despite the calendar usage, all these churches observe the Epiphany or the Baptism of Jesus 12 days following the Nativity.

Merry Christmas

When I lived in the US I never much liked the Christmas season - not because I had any objection to Christians celebrating Christmas, on the contrary! It just seemed like everyone was going to a party except me, and I felt left out. The fact that I didn't want to go was beside the point.

Now that I live in Israel, the day can pass without it ever occurring to me that it's Christmas. There are no signs anywhere to remind me, and nobody around me who celebrates it. In fact, if I hadn't surfed the web today, I would have forgotten.

On the other hand, I now have no qualms of wishing, to whom it may concern: Merry Christmas!

Christmas in Hebrew is: Hag hamolad (חג המולד) - Holiday of the birth.

Living Life

Jinnderella links to my Maladapted post. Among other things, she says:

My friends that are observant Jews seem very happy, and have an exceptionally high "goodness coefficient".

My very unscientific observation agrees with Jinnderella's first, that observant Jews tend to be happier than average. I'm not so sure about the "goodness coefficient" though. It seems to me that there are a lot of good people out there, I have seldom met someone whom I consider "not good". In fact, I agree with something a secular Jew once told me, he said: "I don't think we should need God to be good." At the time I answered: "Judaism is not just about being good, it's about how to live life."

I once overheard a conversation between an observant Jew (OJ) and a non-observant Jew (NJ) that went like this:

NJ: Do you think that you are better than me because you are observant?

OJ: No, but I think I am better than I would be if I weren't.

I think everyone should feel this way about where they're at. If they don't, they should do something about it.

On further thought, though, it occurs to me that it's much easier to be good, when you're also happy.

Evolution and the Contagion of Reason

It is often said that the ancient Greeks were the first Europeans. Indeed, their culture feels remarkably modern. Usually this is put down to the Greek spirit of inquiry, its dedication to reason, or perhaps cosmopolitanism. But there is another characteristic of ancient Greece which unites it with the present, and distinguishes it from the past. It is a characteristic that is almost universally overlooked, despite its importance, because its presence is so much a part of contemporary consciousness that its nature is exceedingly hard to convey: ancient Greece, like modern times, was a non-traditional culture.

Though I, myself, am often haphazard in my use of the word 'traditional' (for example, I often use the terms: 'traditional values' or 'traditional religion'), at least for the purpose of this post I will endeavor to use the word more precisely: A traditional culture is one that has explicit cultural institutions for transmitting tradition. The emphasis is on the word explicit - clearly, people in all cultures learn from their elders, and thus tend to propagate traditions. But in tribal cultures there is strong, if not universal, tendency to maintain cultural institutions whose purpose is to preserve and transmit the wisdom of the tribe. In other words: maintaining tradition is an explicit value - not just as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. The identity of the tribe is symbiotically bound to its memetic wisdom, and each strives to preserve the other.

Traditional culture is often thought of as a kind of super-stodginess: elders frowning and saying, "this is the way it's always been done". However, I have found (and I don't know how generally applicable this is) that in a certain way quite the opposite occurs. The maintenance of explicit institutions for transmitting tradition provides a forum, and a language, for examining it. We see it operate in the one area of life that, at least in Anglo-Saxon countries, still operates on traditional principles: Law. The legal profession, in common-law countries, maintains institutions for transmitting not just the law itself, but also how the law is understood. And when the law is applied, it is necessary to consider not just the law itself, but the whole weight of legal tradition - this tradition being considered, in fact, inseparable from it.

It is perhaps inevitable that tribal cultures would tend to be traditional. Clearly, those tribes which best succeed in transmitting their accumulated wisdom to the next generation are most likely to succeed, so maintaining explicit institutions for this purpose would tend to further this goal. But there is a better reason: traditional cultures create the infrastructure for memetic evolution.

Many systems, not just genetic systems, are evolutionary. To be evolutionary, a system need only:

1. Consist of units which propagate traits over time

2. Propagate units with advantageous traits better than units with disadvantageous traits

3. Have some kind of mechanism for mutation of traits

Thus, many systems, for example economic systems, can be thought of as evolutionary. But notice that (1) and (3) are contradictory: it is essential that the tendency to mutate be extremely low in comparison to the tendency to conserve and propagate traits. If the mutation rate is too high, it will overwhelm the ability to propagate advantageous traits, and the system will be defined not by evolution, but by the quirks of the mutation mechanism.

The ancient Greeks, in adopting reason as the standard for judging truth, implicitly rejected tradition. It is this, to my mind, that is most responsible for the modern feel of Greek culture. But in doing so, they rejected an evolutionary system in favor of a viral one. Reason is a mechanism for the rapid mutation of memes: Come up with a good reason, and you will change your mind, and others'. The fitness of a meme is determined not so much by the constraints of the environment, as by its attractiveness to the fallible mind.

Clearly, reason has brought us far. But with populations on the precipice of decline in every modern society, it might be relevant to ask: Will it win out in the end? Perhaps tradition will make a comeback? Or perhaps there is some synthesis of reason and tradition that is better than either of the two?

(Cross-posted at Gene Expression)

PS: I think this whole issue should be thought of as meta-memetic evolution: Memes which determine the evolutionary environment of memes. It is parallel to genes which determine the mechanism of reproduction.

Instapundit Thanks Steven Den Beste

Glenn Reynolds thanks Steven Den Beste, and links to my post with the same message. The result: 13241 views of that post alone, and 82 comments in less than 3 hours. It's very moving to see how many people want to thank Steven, as I do.

UPDATE: More links from Little Green Footballs, INDC Journal, Betsy's Page, Liberalismo, The Smallest Minority. Of course, the first link was from Amritas.

The Herd of Independent Minds

This was too good for me to pass up:

Last spring, I was surprised by a call from a reporter at the Harvard Crimson asking me to comment on my contribution to the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. His inquiry was prompted by the disparity he'd discovered in donations by Harvard faculty of about $150,000 for Kerry to about $8,000 for Bush. (The figures have since changed but not the percentages.) I could have filled the whole issue of his paper with reasons for supporting Bush over Kerry, but as we both knew, the real story was the "herd of independent minds"--the image is Harold Rosenberg's--charging through the American academy.

The Federal Election Commission could not have foreseen that when it required employment information on political donations of over $200, it would expose scandalous uniformity in a university community that advertises its diversity. The Sacramento Bee reported that the University of California system gave more to the Kerry campaign than any other single employee group, and that Harvard was second, with only 15,000 employees to UC's 160,000. A blogger computed the percentages of Kerry contributions over Bush: Cornell 93%, Dartmouth 97%, Yale 93%, Brown 89%.

The Hyperbole of the Left

John Ray wonders why "Leftist blogs seem to have far more hits and far more commenters than conservative blogs do":

Kos, for instance, gets around 400,000 hits per day compared to Instapundit's 200,000. I think the main reason is an obvious one: Leftist beliefs need a lot more propping up than do conservative ones. A conservative finds his views -- such as the belief that you have to be careful whom you will trust -- confirmed all around him every day, whereas a Leftist finds that his views -- such as the belief that no-one (except "Rednecks") is really evil -- constantly contradicted by events. So the Leftist needs all the help he can get to generate a distorted and selective view of reality that will keep him going. So he is far more active in seeking out supportive sites than conservatives generally are. And Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore have made a bundle out of catering to that need for confirmation of Leftist beliefs too, of course. The fragility of Leftist beliefs is also attested to by how abusive they become when questioned and the Stalinist way they do their best to keep all conservative thinking out of their university enclaves. Reality has to be kept at a distance by hook or by crook.

I suspect a different explanation. The distribution of blog readership is a Power Law Distribution. The most popular blogs get a disproportionate amount of traffic, not linearly but hyperbolically. This makes intuitive sense. There are about 5 million blogs out there, according to Technorati. Let's say that the average person checks 10 blogs a day. Now let's say that he checks 2 blogs from the top 100, and 8 from the next 4,999,900. The average for the top 100 is 1/50, while the average for the rest is about 1/500,000 - meaning that the top 100 get 1,000 times the traffic as the bottom 4,999,900. This kind of relationship holds whether you take the top 10, top 100, top 1000, etc. (I suspect that my numbers underestimate the concentration at the top, in any case, they are meant only to illustrate why the Power Law Distribution makes sense. I don't know the real statistics.)

What John's statistics say to me is that the distribution of readership among leftist blogs is even more hyperbolic than among conservative blogs. This too makes intuitive sense. Leftists are more likely to follow the leader, rather than think for themselves. Conservatives are more individualistic and thus diverse in their tastes. As John says, reality is everywhere, constantly poking holes in leftist beliefs. But that doesn't mean that reality is easy to understand. One who seeks the truth will naturally range far and wide.

Trackback from Iowa Geek, Today's opinion roundup:

Today's opinion roundup

Two Tragic Things

I think the two most tragic things in this world are: One who doesn't meet his human needs because he is unaware of them, and one who rejects his fate because he doesn't value it.

By tragic I mean tragic in the classic sense: the stuff of legends, drama - the ever-present truth, to greater or lesser degree, of all of our lives. (Mere horror does not make tragedy - I know there are worse ways to suffer.) If I were to choose one thing that I most value about Judaism, it would likely be this: At least in comparison to the alternatives that I am aware of, Judaism teaches a way of life, and a paradigm of our nature, which informs us of our human needs, while doing a better job of directing us to embrace our fates.

I have spoken often on this blog of the first tragedy: of our tribal needs, of our needs for identity, meaning, connection, communication, etc. Most Americans are only vaguely aware of them, if at all, and seem to have little notion as to how to meet them. Ironically, it seems to me that the ones who suffer most from this tragedy are those apparently most capable of avoiding it: the rational, and the intellectual. In the rational category, I put a large number of highly intelligent people who, I would think, would use their prodigious reasoning abilities to analyze their needs in order to meet them. But instead, they have a strong tendency to dismiss their needs as illogical, and ignore them. In the intellectual category, I put an even larger number of highly-intelligent people who dismiss our human needs as primitive, animalistic, or wrong, and instead of leveraging them for good purpose, make every effort to deny them.

The second tragedy is one I see often, but which I, at least, have a harder time educating myself to avoid in the general sense. (I think I've done a fairly good job in my own life, thankfully.) I see it all around me: people who are cut out for one thing, but pursue another because they don't value what they were made to do. This category doesn't include people who are forced, due to economics, to pursue second, third, or fourth choices of careers - but people who ignore their most valuable assets because their society doesn't recognize them, or undervalues them, or tells them that some secondary asset is really most important. A person should do what they love. Sometimes, because of the laws of supply and demand, they can't. But when they can, and don't - that's tragic.

Thank You, Steven Den Beste

Nelson Ascher says it, and so do I:

You’ve proved to be a reliable compass. You helped us to apply reason and method to a chaotic situation. It would be unfair to ask more of you, but it is in the nature of things to do so. I’m grateful for your work. Thank you.

I consider myself lucky to have discovered him a few short months before his retirement (and to have received three denbestelanches). I wouldn't be blogging today if it weren't for Steven Den Beste. I distinctly remember the feeling, on first encountering him, that I had discovered a kindred intellectual spirit. It was through perusing his archives that I met Amritas, who both inspired and encouraged me to blog, and then introduced me to Pixy Misa, my gracious host. Then Steven's early links brought me a lot of my first readers.

Steven has visited Nelson's blog, and left a trail of some of the most heart-wrenching comments I have ever read. I have preserved them in the extended entry (as a backup) for posterity.

Continue reading "Thank You, Steven Den Beste"

Trackback from trying to grok, HE IS JOHN GALT:

I had a thought the other night that would probably make Den Beste cringe, but I realized that I'm glad that he shrugged. He started writing because it made him happy. He got noticed, and more and more people tried...

Trackback from Yippee-Ki-Yay!, The 2004 Yippee-Ki-Yay Award:

With most blogs (this one, for instance), it's the reader who suffers for the blogger's art. There are exceptions. When Steven den Beste decided he couldn't continue blogging, a huge void was opened in the blogosphere. The fact he per...

Trackback from TechnoChitlins, Stephen den Beste:

For those of you who, like me, read and loved the writings of Stephen den Beste, go here and find...

Trackback from porphyrogenitus.net, Tribute to USS Clueless:

Well, I kept hoping Steven Den Beste might change his mind and blog at USS Clueless again, but he explains why that won't happen in comments collected here from Nelson Ascher's Blog. During its heyday, this blog owed a lot

Trackback from Bryan's Basement, Thank You, Steven Den Beste:

The blogosphere lost an eloquent voice when Steven DenBeste retired from political blogging (he still blogs about anime on his blog Chizumatic.) After his sudden departure there were occasional rumors that he was going to return to the field. Unfortuna...

Trackback from Freedom Lives, Thanks Steven:

A lot of us in Blogdom, myself included, were inspired and owe a debt of gratitude we can never repay to Steven Den Beste. He has retired from blogging likely to never return. The reasons can be found here ....

Trackback from Croooow Blog, Thank you:

To Den Beste, who got me blogging......

Trackback from The Glittering Eye, Catching my eye: morning A through Z (UPDATED):

Running a little late today what with Christmas preparations, work intruding, Carnival of the Liberated, etc. Here's what's caught my eye today: A great series on the ethics of physicians making decisions for patients who have no one else continues...

Trackback from Chapomatic, What If Lou Gehrig Was A Curmudgeon?:

I miss the grumpy but clear and illuminating thinking of Steven den Beste. Apparently so do a lot of other people.

Trackback from Carnivorous Conservative, Steven Den Beste:

You can forget it. It's not going to happen. I've been suffering for years from a genetically-caused degenerative disease. For the last year or so, the only way I was able to continue posting was by taking increasing doses of

Trackback from Catastrophic Success, Thank you Mr. Den Beste:

While I was off-line last week, Nelson at Europundit speculated about Stephen Den Beste coming back to the blogosphere. I must say that I harbored the same hope. SDB had explained his writing process as something that burst forth from him after perco...

Trackback from Winds of Change.NET, They Also Serve... Thank You Steven Den Beste:

Many people missed U.S.S. Clueless' Steven Den Beste when he stopped blogging. Today, I learned why. All I can say is "Thank you, Steven."

Trackback from Bene Diction Blogs On, USS Clueless:

The USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) was one of the "A" listers. His blog was huge, and had about 10 thousand hits a day when blogging was fairly new to the web. Then suddenly Steven signed off. Rishon Rishon was inspired to blog because of the USS Clue...

Trackback from La Shawn Barber's Corner, Annoucements And Links:

I'd planned to do an annoucement post at least twice a month, but I kept forgetting. Here a few happenings and interesting posts around the blogosphere. Leave a comment or e-mail me if you have an announcement or link you'd like to share. This post w...

Trackback from too much truth to swallow, The USS Clueless departs the Grey Havens and sails:

Well that reset my understanding of what was going on with Steve. There’s literally nothing left to say except: All the best Steve. Continue taking care of your self, you will be in my thoughts.

Trackback from The Laughing Wolf, Thank You, Mr. Den Beste!:

I found this post yesterday through this at Instapundit. I have written a short comment at the story, but want to take the time to say it here. Thank you, Steven Den Beste. You see, no one has done more...

Trackback from The Tears of Things, So Long, Steven Den Beste:

by Jerome du Bois Steven Den Beste, the long-essay genius who piloted USS Clueless for three years, has retired from blogging. David from Rishon-Rishon called my attention to comments Den Beste made on David's blog, responding to a post by...

Trackback from Fresh Bilge, Thanks, SDB:

During the current redesign, I've deleted several inactive sites from...

Trackback from Pejmanesque, THANK YOU STEVEN DEN BESTE:

Those of us who started out blogging around 2001-2002 and who from time to time delve into the essay format for our posts, naturally looked and look to Steven Den Beste for inspiration and a benchmark of quality for our...

Trackback from IndustrialBlog, Hats off:

As almost everyone knows by now, Steven Den Beste explains why he has stopped blogging here.

Francis P. has an outstanding tribute to SDB's to...

Trackback from Physics Geek, So long, Steven den Beste:

You will be missed. So I finally started catching up on the backlog of blogs I read when I discovered this post over at Rishon's place. The comments she displayed from this Europundits's post explains a lot. I won't do...

Trackback from No Treason, Trapped In A Blogosphere He Never Made:

Or: Never Can Say Goodbye The Captain of the Clueless is still trapped in a blogosphere of ankle biters.

Trackback from Critical Section, Sunday, December 26, 2004 11:40 AM:

Thank you, Steven Den Beste. One of the really great long-form bloggers, he's apparently suffering from a degenerative disease. Too bad, for him, and for us. I haven't removed the old U.S.S.Clueless from my aggregator yet, hope springs eternal....

Trackback from triticale - the wheat / rye guy, Bold As Love:

Steven Den Beste has retired as an essayist, but fortunately his analytical skills are still being brought to bear, as in a comment here....

Trackback from Asymmetrical Information, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

Thank you indeed. I was extremely flattered to be called a 'kindred soul' by Steven Den Beste once. He was...

Trackback from Limbicnutrition Weblog, A giant falls: Steve Den Beste:

Is it all over? USS Clueless is barely updated. Steve is terminally ill. End of a fine era....

Indian Summer in December

I wrote my Cholent post on Thursday night (after midnight). Little did I know that the next day would be not windy or stormy, but clear, sunny, and very cold. Back in Boston we got weather like that around October and we called it Indian Summer.

In Israel you don't get rain at all from April to September. That, combined with the fact that we are surrounded by thousands of miles of deserts, means that the air is usually pretty dusty. Not enough to notice, most of the time, though we do get an occasional sandstorm. (Much of our topsoil is imported this way from Saudi Arabia.) However, since I live on the side of a mountain, with panoramic views in three directions, it has a big impact on the views around here.

In the winter the rain washes the dust out of the air, but since the weather is often rainy, and usually cloudy, you still don't get such good views. But clear sunny days are not uncommon. Friday was one of them, and I thought I would try to take some pictures. It's not easy to capture the effect of panoramic views, but I tried.

Here's the view of Tel Aviv from above my house.

Here's the main street of my little village, with the panorama in the background.

The band of slightly darker blue just below the horizon, and above the land, is the Mediterranean Sea.

Tweaking Templates

You've probably noticed that I've been tweaking my templates lately. Since I can only test them in IE 6 and Firefox for Windows, I'd appreciate it if you'd let me know of any problems.

Suggestions and other comments are welcome too.

Winter + Shabat = Cholent

It's winter now. The rains fall. The wind blows. The fire burns in the stove. And in my household, it means that it's time to eat cholent on Shabat. Cholent is not so much a type of food as a type of cooking. It can be anything, as long as its cooked for at least, say, 12 hours. Every Jewish community has some kind of cholent tradition, because Jews aren't allowed to cook on Shabbat, but something that is already cooked can be left on the stove, or in the oven.

The word 'cholent' is itself interesting, though it's Yiddish, it's origins are in Vulgar Latin:

The word cholent itself derives from the Vulgar Latin calente, which in turn gives us the Spanish caliente as well as the Catalan calent, and French chaud from the Old French chauld. They all mean "warm". Allowing the meal to cook over the Sabbath comes from a phrase in the Commentaries. In preparation for the Sabbath there is the phrase tamen et hachamin, "hide, or bury the hot things". It has come to mean "cover the hot food." In every language used, Yiddish, Hebrew, Jewish/Arabic or the Arabic spoken in Calcutta, Baghdad or Ethiopia the two basic words of the phrase, refer not to the food, but to the method of cooking. The word for hot in Hebrew is chamin, and it has become the name of this Sabbath food itself. Amongst Jews in Calcutta it shows up as hameen. The other word "hidden", is found all over the Middle East in different forms of the same word; tfina, adafina, dfina, adefina. They all mean covered or buried. This concept of unattended cooking on the Sabbath produced a popular Spanish dish: cocido madrileno, a boiled dinner with chick peas. It is known to Spanish Jews as adafina. No doubt emigres must have spread this dish. We find a similar dish in the Jewish populations of Cuba and in Egypt, both groups calling it dfina. When Jewish pied noirs came to France after Algerian independence, they brought adafina with them. French speaking Jews have shortened it to daf. In Morocco the same dish is called sefrina or schina, which means hot.

The Hebrew and Sefardi word for cholent is hamin (חמין) from the word ham (חם) - hot. More here (including recipes).

UPDATE: Amritas links and (among other things) gives these English cognates to cholent: cauldron, chowder, scald.

Read-Through Archives

A few crazy people have told me that they want to read through my entire archives. Since this is the sort of craziness that I want to encourage, and since for a long time I have wanted an easy way to back up (not that I don't trust Pixy Misa, but you can never have too many backups) or print out my blog, I've added a new set of read-through archives. The links are on the left.

The read-through archives:

1. Have posts in chronological order (instead of reverse-chronological order) so you don't have to read backwards.

2. Include extended entries.

3. Include comments.

In other words, my entire blog can now be found on just eight monthly pages, which can easily be saved to disk, or printed out. For what it's worth.

Carnival of the Vanities #117

Don't miss the 117th edition of the Carnival of the Vanities, hosted by The Pryhills. Rishon Rishon makes a brief appearance among the cornucopia (can you find it?).

Yet another party

I have to agree with Alice in Texas about this sentiment:

Christmukkah. Jewsweek writes about it here and the fourth rabbi here.

I cannot stand religious pick n' mix, mix n' match, free sampling and easy dealing. If you believe in something, then act like it. Don't hand it over for another one similar that seems just as good. That's called not believing in anything. Don't reduce religious ideas to the secular level: if you think festivals are just collections of bells and ribbons, then have the decency to admit it. Otherwise, why stop at two, why not join in Diwali and Ramadan and the Druid solstice as well? It's just some cheerful fun that doesn't mean anything, right?

Okay, for most Americans, Christmas and Hanuka ARE just reasons to party, but still, it seems disrespectful to both to combine them. I can just hear pseudo-tolerant fake-diversity lovers saying, "Combine Diwali and Ramadan and the Druid solstice as well? Great Idea! We just love all this spiritual stuff!" I think of it as the 'Imagine' syndrome. It really annoys me that those who most loudly proclaim their love of diversity seem to feel that diversity, like beauty, is only skin-deep.

UPDATE: None of the above keeps me from laughing at this (via Amritas):

What is the true meaning of Christmahanukwanzaka? Getting stuff like... phones as low as $39.99, 20% off our new Camera Phone, free Friday & Saturday night calling, plus fast, free shipping and a free gift bag!

Ellipsis in original.

Last Night of Hanuka

It's the last night of Hanuka. Here's a picture of our hanukiyot (pl. of hanukiya).

The Spice of Life

Diversity is the spice of life, I really feel that way - I enjoy diversity. But it's also useful. Diversity is the enabler of creativity, and creativity is the long-term insurance policy not just for our progress, but even for our continued existence as a species. Without diversity, eventually some circumstance will arise that will wipe us out entirely. With enough diversity, at least some will always survive.

Whenever I think of the benefits of diversity, I always think of the revolutionary discovery that 90% of stomach ulcers are NOT caused by stress, but by infection:

In 1983, Marshall presented his hypothesis to an international meeting of distinguished specialists in infectious disease. Many of the scientists and physicians attending the meeting were shocked by the notion that bacteria cause gastritis and stomach ulcers. Marshall's ideas seemed to be the reckless notions of a scientific upstart. Attributing gastritis or ulcers to a bacterial infection seemed outlandish. Martin Blaser of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee–a leading American researcher in infectious disease–called Marshall's ideas "preposterous."

The result - Marshall was ostracized, and driven to extreme action:

The reluctance of his colleagues to accept the idea that H. pylori causes ulcers provoked Marshall to act. Intent on proving his point, he made himself the guinea pig. Marshall prepared a broth of active H. pylori and drank it.

"Those were frustrating times for me," Marshall recalled in a recent interview. "Most of the experts believed that the presence of H.pylori in those who turned up with ulcer problems was just a coincidence. I planned to give myself an ulcer, then treat myself, to prove that H. pylori can be a pathogen in normal people. I thought about it for a few weeks, then decided to just do it. Luckily, I only developed a temporary infection."

That "temporary infection" gave Marshall stomach pain, nausea, and vomiting–classic symptoms of gastritis or the early signs of an ulcer. While he was ill, he underwent an endoscopy, a procedure in which a doctor uses a flexible fiber-optic tube with a tiny video camera on the end to examine the inside of the digestive tract.

Within a week after ingesting the H. pylori, Marshall's stomach showed marked inflammation, with crowds of the distinctive spiral bacteria hovering around the areas of inflammation.

And what if Marshall had been wrong? Does that mean that we shouldn't have funded his projects?

Amritas has been poking fun lately at some wacky educational institutions. While I don't disagree with his opinions of them, I take a somewhat more benevolent point of view: If this is the price of diversity, I'm for it. Of course, the problem is that educational institutions are NOT diverse. What we see is what happens when the government, or any small clique, gets to decide what kinds of diversity are legitimate. It reminds me of this disgusting work of "art" - courtesy of a Swedish government-funded art museum.

What the article linked above doesn't say is that Sweden has an anti-hate-speech law! So what is hate speech? Evidently glorifying Jew-killers, smiling while floating in a pool of blood, is not. In 1986 Sweden's prime minister was assassinated. I wonder what Swedes would think if an Israeli museum exhibited a similar work of "art" - but with Olof Palme's killer floating in the middle of a pool of blood? The fact that Sweden has anti-hate-speech laws effectively puts Sweden's stamp of approval on speech that it doesn't outlaw.

Not that I have any easy solutions to the problem, in the case of academia. (I have one for hate-speech laws: get rid of them.) Of course, a libertarian would advocate ending public funding of education and research altogether. But in addition to equity issues, I think these things have positive externalities, meaning that they benefit the general public in a way which doesn't automatically result (in a totally free economy) in rewards to the participants. I wonder what would happen if there were a voucher-system for university funding, and anyone could open a new university with a minimum of bureaucratic red-tape? In such a case students themselves would decide who gets funded by voting with their feet. Certainly there would be a lot more institutions of the kind that Amritas ridicules, but probably there would be a lot more quality institutions too. If so, I think it's worth it.

And sometimes, wacky ideas turn out to be right.

Two Narrow Lands

Amritas links to my previous post, and tells me something I didn't know (I love when that happens!):

The ancient Egyptian name for Egypt was t-'-w-y (vowels unknown), literally 'two lands'. t-' was 'land' (masculine) and -w-y was the masculine dual ending.

The Hebrew word for Egypt, misrayim (מצרים) also has the the dual ending: -ayim. I imagine that this is a reference to the fact that Egypt as a whole is a union of two distinct regions, each with its own history, known to us as Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt. This reminds me of the Hebrew name for Mesopotamia: Naharayim (נהרים), which means "two rivers" - referring to that land's major features: the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The only other place name with a dual ending, that I can think of, is the Hebrew name of Jerusalem - Y'rushalayim (ירושלים), whose meaning is obscure, but whose dual ending inspires the notion that there are two Jerusalems: one Earthly, the other Heavenly. (These words, like all geographical features in Hebrew, are grammatically feminine-singular, despite the dual ending.)

There is a folk-etymology for misrayim which derives it from the word sar (צר) - narrow. There could be something to it, for Egypt is a narrow land, hugging the banks of the Nile, surrounded by desert. The m- at the beginning would be part of the pattern, not the root, cf. misparayim (מספרים) - scissors. This begs the question: Is there any relationship between Egyptian t-' and Hebrew s-r? It is not inconceivable. Both languages belong to the Afro-Asiatic language group (of which Semitic is a sub-group). Looking at the consonant correspondences in this table, I could hypothesize that an original th > s in Hebrew while th > t in Egyptian. The r > ' is also not inconceivable. Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Afro-Asiatic languages to know. I've looked for information on the web about the family, and turned up surprisingly little, considering that it's one of the world's oldest, largest and most important. Here's what wikipedia says:

The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout North Africa, East Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia. Other names sometimes given to this family include "Afrasian", "Hamito-Semitic" (deprecated), "Lisramic" (Hodge 1972), "Erythraean" (Tucker 1966.)

The following language subfamilies are included:

• Berber languages
• Chadic languages
• Egyptian languages
• Semitic languages
• Cushitic languages
• Beja language (subclassification controversial; wi