Nate Beeler Washington Examiner Apr 4, 2010 |
For the moment, I can't see what possible use I would have for an iPad -- but of course, that could change...
ANTIGONOS' BRAIN
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ANTIGONOS' FAVORITE NEWS AND COMMENTARY SITES
- Brookings Institute
- Commentary Magazine
- David Calling
- Editorial Cartoons
- Hirhurim -- Torah Musings
- Hudson NY
- Jewish Ideas Daily
- Jewish Review of Books
- Middle East Forum
- New York Review of Books
- New York Times
- Salon.com
- Slate
- Tablet Magazine
- The Atlantic Magazine
- The Jewish Daily Forward
- The National Review
- The New Republic
- The Skeptical OB
- The Washington Post
Antigonos has lived for slightly more than 40 years in Jerusalem, and is by profession a Certified Nurse Midwife for 50 years, [just retired in the spring of 2012] in three countries, with an interest in history, Judaism, embroidery and other handcrafts, cooking, and suffers from intense curiosity about the world in general, a generalized cynicism and, occasionally a certain ennui, if not depression, about the way things are turning out.
Milon (Glossary)
OLEH: an immigrant to Israel. The root of the word comes from the verb "to ascend". The plural is "olim". A female is an "olah", and a bunch of female immigrants is "olot".
YORED: an emigrant from Israel. The word means "to descend". Plural is "yordim".
MA'ABARA: pl. "ma'abarot". Tent cities which were built as transit camps in the years immediately following Israel's independence, as nearly two million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries arrived, often only with the clothes they wore.
MEDURA: pl. "medurot". Campfire.
TZENA: austerity, the name given to the period between Israel's independence and the mid 1950s, when times were very tough.
SHEMITTA: every seventh year, the land in The Land is supposed to lie fallow. Since this would lead to starvation, the ancient Sages developed a whole body of law that permitted cultivation using certain methods and/or the legal fiction that the fields in question were "sold" to a non-Jew for the year. Not all the ultra-Orthodox (virtually none of whom are farmers, and who lived for centuries in non-Jewish communities in the Diaspora where this wasn't a problem) will accept these ways around the commandment, and will only eat either imported produce or produce grown at vast expense in trays of soil raised OFF the ground (therefore not technically being grown "in" the Holy Land. Only a Jew would think of this)
CHAMETZ: literally, "leaven". It means all food which it is prohibited to have "in one's possession" during Passover. Different Jewish ethnic groups interpret this in different ways. Obviously yeast and fermented items are forbidden, but some communities will eat legumes and others will not; some will not eat anything made with matzah or matzah meal which has been in contact with water (gebrochts) like matzah balls. Some communities will eat rice, others will not.
TZITZIT: ritual fringes that males wear, often on the edges of a scapular worn under a shirt, or on the prayer shawl worn in the synagogue. There is a precise way to tie them, so that the knots and twists will add up to 613, the number of the commandments in the Torah.
SHAKSHOUKA: Eggs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. See http://www.recipezaar.com/148450 for a recipe.
TESHUVA: Penitence.
LITVAK: An very Orthodox Jew from Lithuania. The foremost sage in that community, in the 19th century, was the Vilna Gaon, who excommunicated the hassidim as schismatics because of their mystic belief in their "wonder-working" rabbis. The Hassidim promptly returned the favor. "Litvaks" are noted for their minute, but rationalist, dissection of Jewish texts, and have a distinctive accent in Hebrew. The two communities both wear the black long coats (capotes), have long beards and sidelocks, and are often confused by outsiders as being the same.
YORED: an emigrant from Israel. The word means "to descend". Plural is "yordim".
MA'ABARA: pl. "ma'abarot". Tent cities which were built as transit camps in the years immediately following Israel's independence, as nearly two million Holocaust survivors and Jews from Arab countries arrived, often only with the clothes they wore.
MEDURA: pl. "medurot". Campfire.
TZENA: austerity, the name given to the period between Israel's independence and the mid 1950s, when times were very tough.
SHEMITTA: every seventh year, the land in The Land is supposed to lie fallow. Since this would lead to starvation, the ancient Sages developed a whole body of law that permitted cultivation using certain methods and/or the legal fiction that the fields in question were "sold" to a non-Jew for the year. Not all the ultra-Orthodox (virtually none of whom are farmers, and who lived for centuries in non-Jewish communities in the Diaspora where this wasn't a problem) will accept these ways around the commandment, and will only eat either imported produce or produce grown at vast expense in trays of soil raised OFF the ground (therefore not technically being grown "in" the Holy Land. Only a Jew would think of this)
CHAMETZ: literally, "leaven". It means all food which it is prohibited to have "in one's possession" during Passover. Different Jewish ethnic groups interpret this in different ways. Obviously yeast and fermented items are forbidden, but some communities will eat legumes and others will not; some will not eat anything made with matzah or matzah meal which has been in contact with water (gebrochts) like matzah balls. Some communities will eat rice, others will not.
TZITZIT: ritual fringes that males wear, often on the edges of a scapular worn under a shirt, or on the prayer shawl worn in the synagogue. There is a precise way to tie them, so that the knots and twists will add up to 613, the number of the commandments in the Torah.
SHAKSHOUKA: Eggs cooked in a spicy tomato sauce. See http://www.recipezaar.com/148450 for a recipe.
TESHUVA: Penitence.
LITVAK: An very Orthodox Jew from Lithuania. The foremost sage in that community, in the 19th century, was the Vilna Gaon, who excommunicated the hassidim as schismatics because of their mystic belief in their "wonder-working" rabbis. The Hassidim promptly returned the favor. "Litvaks" are noted for their minute, but rationalist, dissection of Jewish texts, and have a distinctive accent in Hebrew. The two communities both wear the black long coats (capotes), have long beards and sidelocks, and are often confused by outsiders as being the same.
2 comments:
If you already use an ebook reader, this one has a bigger screen and in colour as well. So useful for downloaded books (of which there are zillions free). Also decent sized PDFs for health education? Will have 3G capability, so a rudimentary online computer to look at with the feet up. Ability to use iPhone apps, which are often silly but often useful too. regards from edella in the UK
I've got a Kindle, which I love. The iPad is heavier, the number of books available is about 60,000 compared to Amazon's more than 400,000.[The "zillions free" is meaningless if there's nothing on the list I want to read. I can access Project Gutenberg on my Kindle and I've yet to find a single book that interests me]. Its potential as a computer is disputed. Battery life is about 10 hours, compared with a once in 2 weeks charge for my Kindle. Backlit screen tires my eyes. The ability to be on the internet, etc. may not mean much where I live. [The rumors are that Amazon will debut a third generation Kindle, in color, this year, btw]
The reviews I've read so far describe it as a large iPod Touch. It doesn't have the memory [160 GB] that my classic iPod does.
The number and variety of apps remains to be seen.
It's possible that I might want an iPad in a couple of years' time, I don't know. Right now I've got a Lenovo "netbook" that is only slightly bigger than an iPad and does a lot more.
What amused me about the cartoon is that Apple hails it as a "new" breakthrough; most of the reviews I've read say that for the same money, one can buy a good laptop which will do a lot more.
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