18 Tishrei/6 October, 2009

I spent too much staring at the computer without a break and then watching way too much TV (to be fair we were on the last disk of “Battlestar Galactica” Season 2 and just had to see how that ended. The end result, however, was lightheadedness when I stood up and possibly a blood pressure spike. I went to sleep early swearing that from now on I won’t skip on my walk outside and would take breaks from the computer every couple of hours.

Great time wasting website, especially if you love storytelling: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

Exodus WTF moment of the day: chapters 21 to 25 are all about law the God imparts on the people through Moses. Most of the law makes sense: how to deal with personal conflicts and what to do if someone hurts your work animals, intentionally or not. And some law can only be understood in context of the time and would obviously not apply in the present day, for example, selling your daughter into slavery. (All the fundamentalists conveniently forget that law when they use other biblical laws to justify their social agenda.) I also love how the New International Version (English) of the Bible is about selling your daughter “as a servant,” while the Russian version clearly says “slavery.” I wonder what the original says. It is also interesting the conditions of sale of the daughter. The guy who buys her can’t just resell her to a foreigner if he is displeased, but if he marries another woman he can’t deny to the girl “food, clothing and marital rights” which is a really polite way to explain what happens to the daughter when her father sell her.

19 Tishrei/7 October, 2009

Still have a heavy head from yesterday. So I took it a bit easy today mainly because I couldn’t concentrate. Hopefully, with more sleep I can focus tomorrow. I did take a rather nice nap today and I rediscovered the nap’s wonderful powers. Naps have to be timed correctly, like Goldilocks, not too short and not too long. If they are longer than 15 minutes one can wake up groggy.

“SYTYCD” are finally up to Vegas auditions – it is nice to get better dancers. They cut Ryan, though which was a bit tough to watch. Still a much better episode than regular auditions. Top 20 will be even better. Still this show works better as a summer dancing show.

Happy b-day to Marianna!

Exodus WTF moment of the day: chapters 26 to 30 are all about what the Tabernacle should look like and how to build it in exact measurements and all about what priests should wear and how they should get anointed. It is all pretty straightforward. My favorite bit was that when one consecrates a priest one has to kill a bunch of specific animals and, for the last animal, smear some blood on the priest’s ears, right thumb and right big toe. The ears seem random, and so is the right toe. All of the descriptions are very specific in terms of type of cloth, jewel and spices for oil one should use. Until the Romans destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jewish lives were much more ritualistic, with twice daily sacrifices, and did not resemble the ideas of Judaism today. After the Temple destruction only the Jews who placed less emphasis on the Temple survived since they substitutes prayer for literal sacrifices (the beginning of rabbis). I actually find that period of Jewish history very interesting because there were so many competing sects. As for the Tabernacle, because I’m not an architect and not an artist, I couldn’t really picture it all from the descriptions and measurements so I went online and found some pictures. There are actually a couple of reconstructions in Israel based on the Bible measurements, although they don’t use real gold, I think. It is very cool to actually see what all the descriptions are supposed to look like.

Tabernacle website: http://www.bibleplaces.com/tabernacle.htm