judaism
sastyk | April 2, 2012Your blogiste will be getting ready for Passover, spring planting and travelling to visit family. So don't expect too much from me. I'll be back to normal mid-week next week, by about the point that I never, ever want to see another piece of matzah again.
Back to Passover cleaning. Hope all of your houses are tidier than mine (which would not be difficult ;-)).
Sharon
sastyk | September 28, 2011Headed offline for Rosh Hashana, but leaving you with hopes for a happy, healthy, bright New Year.
Happy New Year to all!
Sharon
sastyk | February 18, 2011Somehow this week has turned into a lovely, but incredibly overscheduled period. Besides the usual sabbath (which I can use this week), and the fact that it has finally melted off enough to clean the buck pen, move the bucks up the hill and move the chicks out of the bathtub (adorable as they are i somewhat prefer poultry not in my house), and the seed starting (going apace), well, there's more.
Monday is devoted entirely to running a talk and workshop by Rabbi Shalom Kantor (the US's only Conservative Schochet) on ethical kashruth and slaughter. The talk will outline the religious and…
sastyk | December 1, 2010The great thing about most Jewish holidays is that they go on forever (well, 8 days, mostly), so lazy writers have a chance to get their act together late in the holiday and make it look like they planned it. Meanwhile, I have write about 73 things before tonight and then we're leaving tomorrow for four days with family, this will have to do.
The real problem isn't my failure to write anything appropriate to Chanukah, it is Orrin Hatch's failure. You see, last year you may remember, Hatch gave the worst Chanukah song ever as a gift to the Jewish people, and it gave quick and easy content to…
sastyk | March 29, 2010Passover is a holiday deeply concerned with inclusion - at one point during each seder night, we open our doors and leave them open wide, and call out "let all who are hungry come and eat." One year, teaching Hebrew School to 10 year olds, I asked them what would happen if they called out and a stranger came in and sat down. My students, largely from affluent and middle families in a leafy suburb where most strangers are likely to be much like them, were to a one deeply uncomfortable with the notion. They expressed fear at the thought of the stranger coming to their table, even surrounded…
sastyk | February 22, 2010Note: It is customary at the Jewish holiday of Purim to give money to charity, and also to give out Mishloach Manot, or gifts of food to friends and family. This week, besides being just a bit more than a month before my book deadline, is the grand baking festival of hamantaschen. Hamantaschen are filled cookies, shaped like the legendary three cornered hat of the bad dude, Haman. We're making about 200 of these, plus unbelievable amounts of spiced almonds and gingerbread, so posting may be light. Also, it is traditional at Purim to get drunk - Purim is a holiday of wild exuberance,…
sastyk | February 4, 2010I've now been at scienceblogs for a couple of months, and it is fascinating to me - I went from a stand-alone blog to one with a whole lot of other people, and getting to know the local culture is a really interesting exercise. Overwhelmingly, it has been really wonderful and fascinating. Still, I have learned some new-to-me things about this culture. I thought I would do a series, seeing if I could sum up the lessons learned here as I adapt to this strange new world. So here is the first one.
#1 - The phrase "American Conservative Evangelical Protestantism" is spelled "R-E-L-I-G-I-O-N. In…
sastyk | January 22, 2010I serve on a committee at my synagogue that brings in speakers every year for a series of talks and special meals. It is a small comittee, and before I joined, the average age of the participants was probably close to 70. The former chair is a formidable and funny woman in her early 90s, who has been a member of our shul since the 40s and who remembers everything. There are two older couples in their 60s, a woman in her 60s, myself at 37 and a friend of mine in his early 40s who just joined, pressed into it by desperate pleas for help and by the fact that it is impossible to deny Sadie,…
sastyk | December 17, 2009The second night of Chanukah, my sons got clothes from their great aunt, which they received politely but unenthusiastically. As we were heading to bed that night, after a late night at our synagogue's annual Chanukah party, six year old Isaiah asked me "Mommy, will tomorrow night be another clothes present night?" When I told him I suspected not, since the next night's gift would come from Grandma, who likes to give toys, he sighed and said "It is ok if there's clothes, but I just needed to be ready for them." It can be tough to have good manners when you are little. We expect the kids…
sastyk | December 16, 2009Note: Tonight is the sixth night of Chanukah, the night we remember Judith hacking off Holofernes' head by eating cheese (yes, there is a reasoning behind that strange statement), and I really had planned to write a post about that. But it is also Isaiah's sixth birthday and deep in the grading nightmare for the husband and the night before we get up at 4am to butcher the turkeys (and if anyone is looking for a free-range, heritage turkey for the holidays in the greater Albany/Schenectady area, email me at jewishfarmer@gmail.com) and I'm just not feeling innovative. So here's an old piece…
grrlscientist | August 25, 2009tags: cultural observations, Sam Harris, atheism, human behavior, humor, funny, streaming video
This video is an interesting interview with Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation.
grrlscientist | July 19, 2009tags: religion, fundamentalism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, terrorism, Marcus Brigstocke, streaming video
In this video, Marcus Brigstocke rants about religion. Not for the faint-hearted! And I agree with everything he says, too. So there. [Audio from 'The Now Show', Radio 4, Saturday 21 July 2007. Pictures compiled, animated and sequenced by Alien8ted] [7:21]
grrlscientist | June 24, 2009tags: book review, Unholy Business, religious antiquities, biblical antiquities, fraud, Christianity, Judaism, Nina Burleigh
There are two different types
of people in the world,
those who want to know,
and those who want to believe.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
In November 2002, an ancient carved limestone burial box designed to hold the disarticulated skeleton of a dead person was put on public display in Canada's Royal Ontario Museum. Although common throughout Israel, this particular box, known as an ossuary, was unusual because it was inscribed. Even more remarkable, its ancient Aramaic…