Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Daf Yomi, Melbourne

As indicated here, it was my intention to continue with Daf Yomi as if I'd never left Jerusalem, simply moving from one shul to the next. Which is more or less what happened: this past week I've been going to the Daf Yomi shiur at the Chabad Yeshiva, 6am, and just as you'd have thought, they're on the same page the folks back in Jerusalem are on. Or rather, they keep on changing it every day, but that's alright. The single most significant difference in style is that while the shiur in Jerusalem tends to be in two languages, Hebrew and Aramaic, the one down here is in four: Hebrew, Aramaic, English, and Yiddish.

At the end of the shiur, say, 6:40, you can choose which service you want to go to. I've been going to the "Budapest Express" minyan, so named because it was set up some decades ago by some survivors from Hungary, and they race through the service faster than I'd have believed possible. By seven they're out of there, including everything, including a section specially added by the Chabadniks.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

FROM CAROL HERMAN

My father, too, owned the art of racing "through the script." My mother's homemade foods, at Passover, came to the table HOT.

While (as a kid), I was allowed to drink the wine. And, was usually asleep, under the table, after the "fore-schpice."

That world's gone, now.

Like land based telephones. And, their long, long cords; today's world has cell phones ringing in your pants.

Do you wonder "if we'll still be by the book," in 200 years.

Thomas Jefferson, writing for the Virginia Congress, put in stone that politics should be separated from religion.

And, in America you still have lots of religion. But it's fragmented. And, the democrats don't have any.

While the GOP still runs its contests through their country clubs.

And, you wonder when you and me will see "better politicians" arriving on the scene. So far, the winners are the Founding Fathers of the American Nation. (And, yes, they argued with each other!)

Seems you reach a higher plane, when there's room for arguments.