Out of commission

My laptop is currently out of commission, and will be for the next two weeks or so.
Sadly, this means I will probably not be posting for the next two weeks or so. Hopefully, the problem will be solved by then.

Happy Victoria Day!

In honor (or honour, as they spell it around here) of my day off from school, here's a link to Mark Steyn's Victoria Day column.

On Diaries

I vaguely remember at some point during high school, on a trip to Israel, picking up a copy of Nahum Glazer's Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Work which was on the shelf in the apartment that my family was renting. The book contains, among other things, some selections from Rosenzweig's journals. After finishing the book, I resolved that I would keep a journal of my own, in order to keep track of and organize my thoughts. Needless to say, this did not happen. I'm not terribly good at keeping resolutions. Nevertheless, Rosenzweig's journal entries made a big impression on me.

I bring this up now because over the past few years during which I've been reading weblogs, and over the year (nearly) which I've been blogging myself, I've been grappling with the issue of what makes a journal worth reading. A good many blogs are, essentially, personal diaries. The entire livejournal phenomenon doesn't pretend to be anything else, and cruising blogspot you'll find a good number of personal diaries as well. Some of these, such as the now sadly defunct Madpony, are quite fantastic. Many others are far less interesting. The question is, what makes one superior to another? Why did I find Franz Rosenzweig's, or for that matter Kristin Madpony's, journals so interesting while I find many others dull and irrelevant?

Part of the equation is, of course, writing ability. A person who writes well can make anything interesting. This is the appeal of Madpony. And as worthwhile as it is, it's also fairly superficial. But sometimes journal entries actually say something. A good example of this in the blogosphere is James Lileks' Daily Bleat. Lileks is a man who daily writes a journal entry which he publishes on the web. Some days it's better than others, but he gets to the heart of the domestic in a way that most people can't. His little stories about the time spent with his daughter around the house, or at Chucky Cheese's somehow feel relevant. I'm dancing around the real question here, because I'm having a hard time articulating exactly what it is I that find important in Lileks' writing. Obviously, like Madpony, the simple craft of the writing is very good (after all, it's what he makes his living on), but there is more to it than that.

Rosensweig's diary is essentially an intellectual one. While he does write about his life, he uses it as a jumping off point for his ideas. This makes sense, as he is a philosopher. So it's easy to understand the hook in his journal. His ideas make it interesting. But what makes Lileks interesting....? I don't know. It's an idea to explore. Really, this whole post functions more as a short explanation for why I may take a seminar on autobiography next year than anything else.

The French get taunted

Not surprisingly, according to today's Telegraph, the French are loathed just as much as they loath everybody else. Money quote: "Interestingly, the Swedes consider them 'disobedient, immoral, disorganised, neo-colonialist and dirty.'"
(Hat tip to Andrew Stuttaford at the Corner)

Canada's government as a model... What!?

I love this story. Just as Canada is undergoing her very own constitutional crisis, Israelis come to learn from it. T

Because I love these retarded Quizzes....

You are a Revisionist Historian. You are the Clark
Kent of postmodernists. You probably want to
work in a library or in social services. No
one suspects you of being a postmodernist...
until they read your publications!


What kind of postmodernist are you!?
brought to you by Quizilla

(Hat tip Ralph Luker)

Fan-frickin'-tastic

As I write this, Trot Nixon just his his 8th career grand slam, to put the Red Sox 3 runs ahead of Seattle. Just wanted to share.

Recommended reading

Not a whole lot to say tonight, but I thought I'd point you all to an interesting series of posts that Dr. C has up on the Deuteronomistic History. I don't know much about the topic, and found them informative.

Yom Ha'atzmaut

Ben Chorin, as he often does, has put some of my thoughts down in a manner far more articulate than I am capable of. His post about Mayberry and Yom Ha'azmaut gets right down to one of the concerns of my very ambivalent Zionism. Obviously, he is not as ambivalent as I am, but I think that he very clearly states at least one of my issues. The money quote: "I think all the ideological arguments are post facto rationalizations for a decision that is made at the gut level about one fundamental question: are we prepared to be the goyim?" That question is one that we have to ask ourselves whenever we see footage of Israelis bulldozing houses in Yesha. I'm not questioning their justification, the state absolutely has a right to defend itself. But the fact that Jews have the power to do this represents a fundemental change in the dynamic between Jews and Goyim. The Israeli historical narrative still wants to see the Jews, and Israel as the Jewish state, as small and oppressed by the rest of the world, and this simply not true. In Israel, the Jews are to the Goyim as the Goyim were once to the Jews, in the power we have over them, if not in the way that we treat them (and both sides of that question can be argued). The point is, we could treat them as we were treated. That was never an option for the Jews, and it changes everything. It's something that we need to think long and hard about, and that I'm not so comfortable with. I have other concerns with the Zionist project, as well as an aesthetic distaste for Israeli culture, so I am hardly in Ben Chorin's camp on Zionism in general, but in this particular case, I think he's spot on.

Heh Heh

Count the Omer with Homer.
(Hat tip to Apt 3W)

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this one

During the lifetime of the Lubvitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of blessed memory, there was a faction which belived that he was the messiah. After his death in 1994, this faction did not disappear, and the Chabad movement is still dealing with the fallout. Many of them believe that he is the messiah despite his death, or believe that he did not really die. There are many ways in which the Chabad messianists understand his death, and it is not my intention to get into those here. The fact that they did not give up their belief with his death makes perfect sense, and fits into the history of past messianic movements in Judaism. However, Tzemach Atlas pointed me to a series of articles which I simply don't understand. I am tempted to think that they are a joke, but I'm just not sure. Below are links, with translations of the relevent portions.
The first says, "As for two weeks dollars were not given out, (because of the first and last days of Passover)today, after the morning prayers,the Rebbe, the messiah, may he have a long and prosperous life, gave out dollars, in order that they be given to charity..." It goes on to discuss whom the dollars were given to.
The second says, "At the end of the of the holy gathering of the Rebbe, the messiah, may he have a long and prosperous life, two youths merited to recieve bottles of vodka from the Rebbe, the messiah, may he have a long and prosperous life... They received the bottles from his holy hands after he had poured from his own cup into the bottles."
The third says, "After the last day of Passover... the Rebbe, the messiah, may he have a long and prosperous life, made the blessing signifying the end of the holiday over a cup of wine, and then distributed the wine from the blessed cup to those assembled."
The truly baffling thing about these posts to me is that they attribute actions to the Rebbe OBM which he simply could not perform, being dead. Not only that, but they post pictures of it. In the picture of the Rebbe giving dollars, the Rebbe is not there. In the picture of the Rebbe making havdalah, he isn't there either. I just don't understand what these people are thinking. When they said that he "poured from his cup into the bottles," did they see somebody do it? What kind of ritual took place? I am baffled and disturbed.

NOTE: This is not something that is bought into by the entire Chabad movement. I do not know how pervasive it is, but not all of them are crazy, and not all of the crazies are this crazy.

Just getting my feet wet

I'm not going to dive right back into blogging after such a long absence, but here's an link, to kick things off. I don't find it's actual topic so interesting, actually. Loss argues that the metaphors employed to describe the work of historians imperfectly capature the reality. This is the nature of all metaphors, and is self-evident, I think. However, his assessment of the actual difficulties of historical work is spot on, and worth reading.

Hiatus

My long blog hiatus is at an end. There was no real reason for it, at least for it's length. I stopped for a while because of schoolwork, and then just got out of the habit of posting. In any case, expect to see more from me soon, God willing.