Devil in the Details

Is a fantastic book. Click here for the front page on amazon (US) and if you do the right thing you can read a bit of it.

It's not one I'm reading for my conversion book group, it's a book I picked up at Reno airport on the way home from skiing last week. It's absolutely fascinating. Jennifer Traig writes about her childhood and adolescence in an inter-faith family (Jewish father, Catholic mother). Hard enough. Then you add in some more interesting character traits (undiagnosed OCD and scruples) and you get a young girl who tries to apply her imperfect knowledge of Judaism and its tenets (principally Kashrut and Shabbat observance) with some incredibly interesting results.

I have a tendency to obsess, sweat the small stuff and over-analyse to the nth degree. This girl beat me hands down. Reading Jennifer Traig's account of how the laws on keeping dairy and meat separate inspired her to use a different toilet for meat and dairy and to not eat dairy whilst wearing leather was eye-opening in the extreme.

Hilarious in parts, most parts actually, and poignant in others, please read it. I was crying with laughter half way across the Atlantic and believe me, I don't usually enjoy commercial 'plane rides that much. Private 'plane trips though, on little tiny 4 -seater Cessnas over Lake Tahoe, are a different kettle of fish.

Ten Minutes of Torah - more like two days

A rabbi who attends our synagogue has started a great Torah-study programme. It's called ten minutes of Torah. It started recently and is based on the teachings (and ten minutes of Torah programme) of Prof. Nachama Leibowitz with whom he studied Torah. He participated in her programme when for years she posted (proper post, not e-mail) a set of weekly questions around the world, and responded to each individual's responses. The rabbi did his when in the Israeli army! I signed up as soon as I realised it had started, I've been receiving it for about six weeks now. The first four weeks I'd receive it, read it quickly, have some vague ideas about the answers and not write them down. Then all of a sudden it would be the next week and I wouldn't have submitted my thoughts.

This week before I received the questions I decided to dedicate no more than twenty minutes to reading and preparing answers - if the rabbi could do this when he was in the army and had to handwrite his responses, it's a bit lame if I can't do it myself with the aid of a computer, internet resources, and the ability to e-mail.

It's no good for me to just think about something; I find I need to write thoughts down and review them so I can see (a) what I'm thinking and (b) if what I've written accurately conveys my thoughts. I've had a problem with that before - at university one of my tutors said that reading my first essay was a bit like listening to someone wearing a walkman. He explained that what I needed to do was to re-read what I had written and check to see if I'd actually written down what I thought I had. Sound advice (if a little sad that I needed it at 18!). I still have a problem in that if I'm explaining something I will usually leave out something crucial, whether a basic step or not, because I'm too eager to get to the interesting parts.

So anyway, this week's ten minutes of Torah (which can be found here, folks) arrived by e-mail and I dutifully read it; composed a set of responses; re-read the questions; amended a couple of answers; then... well, I had to send it off. I am quite anxious to see how I do, truth be told, but I'm more interested in the fact that I've read a bit of Isiah and some Lamentations and exercised my brain. If I've got a few responses in vaguely the right field I'll be content.

Another small step forward on the track to finding out more about Judaism.