Clubhouse Cafe

I went with my wife last night to the Clubhouse Cafe for one of her friend's birthday dinner. It was my first time being there and it was a good place to eat. The ambiance was nice, mostly darkly lit. The prices were decent. The waiters, as the birthday girl's husband remarked, were nicely built, which was a first in my kosher dining experiences. Although my wife, from her previous two visits, had found the service to be slow, I thought it was just fine (our waiter did a good job, I thought).
We started off with a bottle of white sangria, which was fine (my first ever - I've had red sangria before made by friends, so this was a new taste for me, albeit not as sweet as red sangria). Then, my wife and I ordered buffalo wings (which came with a white dipping sauce), which were tasty (my wife found them too spicy for her, although, to me, they were barely such), along with some club soda. My wife and I then got their house punch, which was a fruity drink, with an amount of alcohol that did not dominate the drink's taste.
For our main dishes, my wife got a roasted chicken sandwich with avocado, which tasted nice. I got their spicy beef chili, which actually was spicy - neither underwhelmingly so (like I had expected), nor too spicy - and tasty, as well. Although there were some beans and even some vegetables, the beef was tasty and filling.
I was, by that point, too full to eat any dessert, but I had a bite to eat of their chocolate soufflé, but I got a part of it that was burnt.
All in all, I enjoyed the dining experience and will probably return.
(Yes, I think this posting is my first one about a dining experience (maybe it is a by-product of all of the watching that my wife does of the Food Network).)

Monday 7 July

(Another honeymoon posting)
We started off the day relaxing around the pool at the hotel, Rachel reading her book and me learning Talmud, when it began raining, so we went to a table beneath the canopy. That is, until the wind took the rain more horizontally, so we then went inside and sat on couches in the empty hotel restaurant, with the rain falling around us.
After learning, I then went back to the hotel room and set out to get an electric adapter. After walking about a half hour, I arrived at the hardware store, but it wouldn't reopen [from lunch break] until an hour later. It wouldn't make sense to go back to the hotel and back, so I continued walking into town, looking for a place that would sell adapters. Although I found no such place, I did get to see how small Ste. Anne, the nearby town, was. I then returned to the hardware store, getting an adapter and a file to get it to properly receive cords. I then walked back to the hotel and we relaxed and read in the afternoon.
In the evening, we showered up and headed back to Bas-du-Fort to go to the kosher restaurant for dinner. We took a taxi and went to the gate of Fort Fleur de l'Éépe, finding that it had closed one hour prior. Not that it mattered, though, since we weren't there for that, anyways, and we probably only missed out on a great view.
Up until this point, this day was the most relaxing day of our trip.
We then headed down the road to hopefully find the kosher restaurant beneath the synagogue. We didn't see a restaurant, so I went up to the synagogue (Or Sameah). When I arrived, I found them about to pray minhah, so I joined them. Between minhah and ma'ariv (the evening prayer service) (or 'arvit), I inquired of someone regarding food. It turns out that there is a restaurant open for lunch, but not for dinner. But, after talking to this person, I was able to talk to the pizza maker. So, we returned for 'arvit. At 'arvit, not only were there many more men, but there were also a lot of women who showed up (and there were none for minhah). Afterwards, the rabbi, Rabbi Benisty spoke and I thought we would then get pizza. Nope. Another guy got up to speak for 5-10 minutes. And then another, at which point I left, mainly because I didn't know what was going on and to check on Rachel, but also because I was too hungry to try and concentrate on the words I could understand. After departing, we asked what was going on. Apparently, a community member had died eight days prior and this was a special evening for him. Had we only known. Then the pizza maker lady informed us that she had to set up food to follow the speaking.
Finally, at 8:20, we went with the pizza maker lady, her husband, and three small kids into their car for a brief car ride to their apartment. She told us that they had had a dairy/pizza restaurant up until four months ago, but there were not enough people interested in keeping kosher for dairy, but they are interested in making sure that the meat they eat is kosher (although there are people like that in America who do that, I realized that halav stam is in America, but not Guadeloupe, France, etc., so kosher cheese and milk are neither common, nor inexpensive), so she didn't have enough business to keep her pizza store going. When we arrived at their apartment, we saw that they still had all of the equipment from the restaurant at their house, including the refrigerator for drinks (a "souvenir", said the pizza maker's husband). We chatted mostly with the pizza maker's husband while she made the pizza, speaking in Hebrew, French and, when necessary, English. At almost nine o'clock, the pizza was ready, although, for the two medium-sized plain pizzas (or, as Rachel called them, personal pizzas), it cost 26€ (although, I figured, the cheese had to be what was particularly costly about it, having to be halav Yisrael, coming from, perhaps, France). On our way out, the pizza maker's husband told us that the blessing on the pizza was mezonot.
We then got a taxi to take us back to the hotel.
Upon our return, we ate our pizzas (three and a half hours after we had planned to eat dinner), which were actually tasty.
We were kind of tired and Rachel fell asleep, whilst I watched a movie I would never have otherwise watched or of which I have heard - Raw Deal, a 1980s Schwarzenegger movie (which made me appreciate his acting in 1990s movies).

Tuesday 8 July

(For now, I am posting what I have and will be working on filling in the gaps in my postings about our honeymoon, so the posts may very well be out of order.)
Today was definitely a chill day throughout. After waking up again to rain, we made it inside to the hotel's restaurant's couches and Rachel read whilst I learned Talmud. After a while, Rachel returned to the room to nap. Later on, I joined her to read in the air conditioned room.
Eventually, we decided to go into town to see if we could watch anything of the first day of the 21st annual Gwo Ka festival. Well, although we didn't see any of the festival, we meandered around Ste. Anne and we got some bread, some ice cream, drinks, and wrote some postcards (but got to the post office after it closed). Rachel also got some cute jewelry and I stopped at an Internet Cafe to check e-mail and Facebook (even though there was some wi-fi at certain places at the hotel, it was easier to type at a computer).
Upon our return to our hotel, we tried going swimming, but there were bugs all across the surface of the water, so we quickly decided to return to our hotel room.
After I showered, Rachel pointed out that there were plenty of bugs in our room (after all, the windows were not glass, but rather kind of like shutters, leaving small openings when they were "closed"). After killing a dozen or two dozen bugs, I figured out that since we had turned off our patio light, bugs were attracted to the lights inside our room, the patio light should be turned on, as it had been the previous two nights - indeed, it worked. After showering up, we saw The Bounty and went to sleep.

Back from Our Honeymoon

My wife and I are back from our honeymoon and I hope to be posting about our trip (fortunately, I was keeping track of our goings-on on our iPod (iTouch) and will be able to get a lot of stuff up soon.

Disney World

Now that we are heading off tomorrow for our honeymoon, I figured now would be a good time to post about our quasi-honeymoon trip to Disney World a half year ago. We were there from Sunday 23 December through the morning of Friday 28 December.
We stayed off Disney property for our stay there, which I think was a mistake, as we took a bus each way that dropped people off at various Orlando hotels. We stayed at the Wyndham, which was fine, although we had asked if there was transportation between them and Disney World, they said yes, but did not tell us that it cost $20 and it took an hour. Also, it would have been nice if they had a mini-fridge in the room for us to keep food there. Also, it would have been nice that, in addition to a shuttle between there and Disney World, but also between them and the airport. The bus, itself, was fine: it was operated by Town & Country Transportation and we had a really informative and fun Italian bus driver. Next time, however, instead of spending two hours both ways in transit, we will spend on Disney property.
Random bits:
Because it was the last week of December, there were a lot of Christmas/holiday/wintry music playing about. Also, there were a bunch of special performances, but we didn't go to any of them. Something I noticed which was slightly peculiar to me was that almost every gift shop was selling DVDs of the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie - it was ridiculous how many different places were selling them.
We got to MGM Studios and EPCOT at the opening of each, which was great, as we had such little wait for the Great Movie Ride and Spaceship Earth, respectively.
I was surprised that in the instructional video for the Star Tours ride that they had Teek from one of the three Endor films.
Of the college paraphenalia, I saw a lot of people wearing Ohio State hats and shirts, although I also saw a fair number of people wearing LSU and Florida wear. However, on Thursday, I started seeing some MSU and BC gear being worn, as fans of each time were now around for the game the next night.
Kosher Food at Disney World: We didn’t know this ahead of time, but in each of the four theme parks at Walt Disney World, there is one dining place with some kosher entrees. All of these entrees are provided by Webermans Traditional Foods under the supervision of the Circle K. The first day we were there, we happened to notice at Pizzafari in Animal Kingdom by accident as we were walking by and saw the line at the bottom of their menu that said kosher food. They have pizza, hot dog, and chicken - all double-wrapped. Anyways, the other places are the ABC Commisary in MGM Studios (in the Commissary Lane section), which has hot dog, hamburger, and corned beef. Also, for desert, there is chocolate chip cookie/cake. In EPCOT, there are kosher hot dogs and hamburgers at Liberty Inn in the America section of the World Showcase section. Lastly, in Magic Kingdom, Cosmic Ray's the kosher options are hamburger, chicken strips, and corned beef. Additionally, there were lots of stands with SuperPretzels, which are, I've heard, kosher.
Since it's been a half year since we went, I probably have a lot of other things about which I could've blogged already, but this will have to do for now.

More on Boethusians: Why a Debate about the Date of Shavuot?

After having received a communication regarding the Boethusians from my previous posts (I & II), I wanted to go back and quote some more from Raymond Harari's PhD dissertation on the Boethusians. This posting is specifically on the instance that gets the most mention in Jewish discussions throughout the year - that of the dating of the holiday of Shavuot. The Boethusians disputed with the Pharisees regarding the dating of the holiday, but no reason is given for this dispute in rabbinic literature. The crux of the argument one can easily hear nowadays is that the Boethusians denied the Oral Law, however, "at no point are the Baytusim characterized as a group which denied the overall authority of the Oral Law."¹
He continues by saying that

Even if the arguments of the Baytusim were based on the biblical verse (as the Scholion presents it), we are not told that their interpretation was part of a general tendency towards literalistic understandings of the Bible or motivated by a {208} rejection of the sages' authority to interpret the Bible.²

(For a continuation of the text, see below.)
After a lengthy discussion, Harari concludes, saying that

It seems more likely, therefore, that the Baytusim are not depicted as having questioned or rejected the entire calendar determination employed by the Court. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case; having accepted the way in which the months were consecrated, the Baytusim wanted to prevail upon the sages or Perushim with respect to the determination of the holiday of Shavuot. What social or {225} political motivations underlies the view of the Baytusim is never made clear. In fact, only the Scholion provides us with the scriptural base of their argument. Nonetheless, their argument appears to have been viewed as one over a particular detail of rabbinic law and not over the determination of the calendar as a whole or the general authority of the Oral Law.³ (emphasis added by Drew)

(For the immediately preceding section, see below.)
Okay, I realize that Shavuot has passed for this year (2008/5768), but, for next year, it's up. So it may not be that the Boethusians fundamentally rejected the Oral Torah.
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Here is the continuation from above:

This contrasts with the approach taken by some scholars such as J.M. Grintz and M.D. Herr.
This view of the Baytusim has been explained by scholars as having been motivated by a variety of factors. As we have seen above with respect to the reaping of the 'omer, A. Geiger argues that the biblical reading of the Perushim is actually older and presumably more in keeping with the plain meaning of the verse. The Baytusim rejected the Perushi interpretation out of resentment to the Perushim for having arrogated the power of the court. A. Guttman, while seeing both the Baytusi and Perushi interpretations as within the peshat (plain meaning) of the biblical verse, argues that the Baytusi reading must have been older, given the general leaning to literal interpretation on the part of the Seduqim. S. Zeitlin argues that the Jewish calendar was originally solar, with Shavuot always falling on Sunday. (Zeitlin apparently understood this calendar to consist of 364 days, divisible by seven.) With the change to a lunar-solar calendar, the Seduqim interpreted the verse literally, thereby {209} maintaining the celebration of Shavuot on Sunday.

L. Finkelstein characteristically sees this controversy as social in nature. The dispute between the Pharisees and the Sadducees (--for Finkelstein, the views of the Seduqim and Baytusim were identical) represent yet another example of the influence of each group's social standing and place of residence. The Pharisees, who were urban plebians unconnected to the soil, attempted to find meaning in the fixing of the date of Pentecost. For them, the revelation at Mount Sinai, commemorated on the sixth of Sivan, was paramount. Consequently, they reinterpreted the biblical verse so that Pentecost would fall on that same date every year. The Sadducees (actually the Baytusim), on the other hand, who were rural farmers, saw no need for such a tradition.

A fuller understanding of the view of the Baytusim regarding the dating of Shavuot and the reaping of 'omer is possible only by an understanding of sectarian calendars present during late Second Temple times. Relevant sectarian calendars are recorded, or alluded to, in the Pseudipigraphical books of Jubilees and 1 Enoch and in {210} several scrolls and fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. After a brief survey of the calendars employed in these works, we will be able to better determine when exactly the Baytusim are viewed to have placed the 'omer ceremony and the holiday of Shavuot and whether this dating was perceived as apart of an overall departure from the calendar employed by the sages and rabbis.⁴

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Here is the section immediately preceding the conclusion from this section:

Nothing in rabbinic sources can conclusively decide this issue. Complicating the task is the fact that the stipulation that "the reaping of the 'omer is not [done] at the conclusion of the festival" is so vague that it can only be assumed to imply that the ceremony had to take place on Sunday. In other words, it can only be assumed {223} that rabbinic views of the Baytusim regarding the 'omer and Shavuot may be harmonized. Nevertheless, indications seem to be that the rabbis viewed the Baytusim as having chosen the Sunday of Passover and did not perceive the Baytusim as having adopted the Qumran-Jubilees calendar, or for that matter, any other non-rabbinic calendar. Several factors account for this:

First, had there been a more fundamental dispute between the sages and the Baytusim regarding the method of calendation, one would have expected some mention of it in one of the sources under study in this chapter. Instead, these sources limit the controversy with the Baytusim to the dating of the 'omer and Shavuot. Moreover, there is absolutely no allusion to any other calendar dispute between the two groups elsewhere in rabbinic literature. As we have seen, on many occasions, the rabbis freely criticized the Baytusim for erroneous halakhic and theological opinions. It would appear that a sweeping criticism such as this would not have been missed.

Secondly, parts a-c and f of the Scholion to Megillat Ta'anit introduce rabbinic criticism of the position of the {224} Baytusim, specifically targeted at their dating of Shavuot. These parts may admittedly represent a later layer. Nevertheless, the present location of these parts indicates that their aim was to refute the claims of the Baytusim regarding Shavuot. This specific focus conveys, therefore, at least one rabbinic perception that the challenge of the Baytusim related specifically to the determination of the date of shavuot. Thirdly, part c, which reads "And if so [i.e. if it is on Sunday], it will be found that sometimes it will be fifty-one, sometimes fifty-two until fifty-six" would not be understandable if the Baytusi calendar were equivalent with Jubilees-Qumran calendar. That calendar always had the same number of days betweren Passover and Shavuot.⁵

-------------
Notes:

1 Raymond Harari, "Rabbinic Perceptions of the Boethusians" (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1995), 207.
2 Harari, "Rabbinic Perceptions of the Boethusians," 207-208.
3 Harari, "Rabbinic Perceptions of the Boethusians," 224-225.
4 Harari, "Rabbinic Perceptions of the Boethusians," 208-210.
5 Harari, "Rabbinic Perceptions of the Boethusians," 222-224.

What Is Drew Doing For This Summer?

As this is my last summer in rabbinical school (yes, I know there will be next summer, but it may not be quite as much of a break, as the school year is shifting from starting before Labor Day and concluding in early to mid June to, this upcoming year, starting after Labor Day (the first time ever for me, since elementary school, middle school, high school, college, and the first four years at YCT all started prior to Labor Day) and going until the end of June), it will be kind of low key, as next summer will be shorter and I will presumably be busy with finishing up with school stuff and getting ready for my new job. So, the highlight of this summer is our honeymoon [to the Caribbean]. Even though we got married ten months ago, we had not yet gone on it. Additionally, I have some things upon which to work for school. As far as working, I am doing some editing work. For learning, I am doing a page a day of Talmud (Berakhos) as well as reading through Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed. Of course, I should not forget to mention that I am going to the gym everyday using the elliptical machine and lifting weights several times a week. Also, coming up next week is YCT's Yemei Iyun in Tanakh and Jewish Thought which I will be attending.

Not Sleeping on Shavuos

This past Shavuos, a friend of mine had spoken about various reasons why there is a custom to remain awake through the [first] night of Shavuos. Afterwards, when I mentioned to him the availability of coffee and that there was an article written on the topic, he was a bit surprised. The article is Elliot Horowitz, "Coffee, Coffeehouses, and the Nocturnal Rituals of Early Modern Jewry," AJS Review 14, no. 1 (Spring 1989): 17-46, which I'd previously mentioned (and which had been mentioned two years ago on the Seforim blog).

For our purposes, I wanted to focus on, specifically, the staying awake for Shavuos. Horowitz writes "The vigils of Shavuot and Hoshana Rabbah, previously limited in their appeal and relatively brief duration, came to be widely observed as all-night affairs. This was due more to the availability of coffee than to the habit of frequenting coffeehouses..." (44). In regards to the development of the custom in the 16th century, it had "spread, by the century's end, among the adherents of kabbalistic piety in Safed and elsewhere in the land of Israel" (36).

As to its origin, apparently, Rabbi Yosef Karo "together with his brother-in-law, R. Solomon Alkabetz, introduced the custom of observing an all-night study vigil on the festival of Shavuot" (24).

I suppose a good follow-up post to this one would be texts which demonstrate this (although in note 21 Horowitz makes a reference,^* this reference is to the account and not necessarily to texts about the custom's development or place in halakhah).

----------------

As an introductory remark to his article, Horowitz makes an observation in regards to sleep and the nighttime that

Where coffee spread it extended the range of possibilities for making use of the night hours, whether for purposes pious or profane (and, as we shall see, these were not mutually exclusive). Where it did not, the night remained considerably less malleable and less susceptible to human initiative. (18)

*Horowitz' note 21: "For an annotated English translation of Alkabetz's account, see Louis Jacobs, Jewish Mystical Testimonies (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 99-104. For the sources in which it originally appeared, see ibid., pp. 99, 118, and R.J.Z. Werblowsky, Joseph Karo: Lawyer and Mystic (Oxford, 1962), pp. 2, 19-22."

Taz on Yoreh Deah

(Meta comment: I know I haven't blogged in a while and this is a random post, but hopefully it will get my blogging back on.)
--
Today, whilst being in the Bishop Library at the Kraft Center, a book entitled "Taz": Rabbi David HaLevi caught my eye. In any event, I figured since we studied a lot of Yoreh Deah this year, I would quote what the author wrote regarding Rabbi HaLevi's work on Yoreh Deah:

The Turei Zahab to Shulhan Arukh, Yoreh Deah was the first of Rabbi David's works to be published and his most influential and authoritative literary achievement. It appeared in print for the first time in 1646 in Lublin. A second edition appeared in the margin of the Shulhan Arukh, along with the commentary (also published for the first time in 1646) of Shabbetai b. Meir HaKohen. This edition, entitled Ashlei ha-Ravrevei, was printed in Wilhelmsdorf in 1677, with the approval and support of the Vaad Arba Arazot. TaZ wrote a one-page addendum to the first edition which was entitled Daf Ahron or Kuntres Ahron. It consists of his critiques against the Siftei Kohen of Shabbetai HaKohen. This addendum appeared in print only once and is apparently no longer in existence. However, at the time its publication led to a rebuttal volume by Rabbi Shabbetai entitled Nekudot HaKesef, and a heated dispute ensued between the two scholars. Rabbi David also wrote a volume of corrections and additions to his commentary on entitled Yoreh DeahSefer Haggahot veHiddushim, first published in 1710 in Halle.
In his introduction to the commentary, Rabbi David describes his students urging him to publish his work. He explains the choice of title Turei Zahab ("Rows of Gold") as being due to his hope that the Turim would now be clarified and elucidated by one whose name, David, is the numerical equivalent of the word zahab ("gold", i.e., "fourteen"). TaZ confesses that he had long desired to publish this commentary but had been unable to do so; furthermore, the loss of several of his notebooks necessitated his reviewing anew all his materials. He concludes the introduction with the hope that he will soon be able to publish his commentary to Hoshen Mishpat, a commentary which he apparently completed before TaZ, Yoreh Deah, or simultaneously with it. However, this hope was not realized. Of TaZ's four commentaries, only the volume on Yoreh Deah was printed in its author's lifetime.

-Elijah J. Schochet, "Taz": Rabbi David Halevi (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1979), 27-28.

Happy Lag b'Omer

Happy ל"ג בעומר!