The Rabbi's Study

Note to all those faithful readers who are seeing a trend in this blog toward all things theological: you're right. Like any sensualist (hopefully in a positive sense, as in:),

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=325730

I react to stimuli around me, until it becomes routine and I don't notice it anymore. But for the time being, since I'm pouring myself into this new grad school routine... it's definitely generating new stimuli. This, too, shall pass. :)

What hasn't passed is a long-standing romantic notion that I would love to be a Rabbi. Not in a pastoral sense - I don't have a shepherd's heart. Dumb sheep. Fend for yourselves. :) But I do have a teacher's heart. Give me eager faces, willing minds, and I'll gladly impart what I know (and even make up some stuff I don't know, right on the spot!)

The picture at the top is of one of the shelves in my study (read: 3rd bedroom that is not set aside for the kids when they come visit.) There's the replica of the Ark of the Covenant, the shofar which I blow at the holy days (and now and then to scare a small child), the books of Josephus, and Edersheim's classic treatise, plus a variety of devotional and topical books... just a small sampling of the haphazard mingling of content and clutter that is my space.

I have been so nervous about this grad school thing - am I over my head with all these scholars? But last night in class, I got my second "atta boy" from the prof. :) We were going through the text and commentaries, and I remembered an insight I picked up during study earlier this week about something in I Samuel 4 vis-a-vis a reference the professor made to ch. 3.

I cleared my throat and dove in, and the prof made me repeat myself - twice! I was nervous and thought he was going to criticize me for having such a dumb idea, but he said with a tone of wonder: "I've never seen that before! All the years of studying this book and it never occurred to me... how do you spell your last name again? You are getting credit in a footnote in the commentary I'm writing on this. Remarkable..." he said, shaking his head.

Woohoo! I felt so much better after that about fitting in to the class (and the program) here. Me, a footnote in a commentary after only my second class! Maybe he meant it was remarkable that an insight like that would come from such an uneducated rube as me. :)

Mmmm, I can hear it now: "Excuse me Rabbi, can you tell me... is there a proper blessing for the government?" And all of you who have seen "Fiddler On The Roof" know the answer to that one. :)