I have some books that I'd like to find new homes for... Let me know if you are interested in any of these books. I'm giving them away for free if you can pick them up at my house in West Mt. Airy, Philly.

Leave a comment letting me (and other readers) know which one(s) you want and I'll set it aside for you. It'll be on my front porch with your name on it. But let me know about when you think you can pick it up.

Shai

I previously translated a part of the hymm "Anim Zemirot." I've now finished it. A shout-out to Donald Menzi who encouraged me to finish it. I would like to footnote it with comments about translation decisions I made. But I don't have the time right now.

There were some small changes I made to the part I had already done.

I've put brackets where i put words or information that weren't in the original. Given that pronouns can be fairly fluid in Hebrew, I've sometimes changed the pronoun to "I" to communicate the personal nature of this poem.

The Talmud sees the word "adorns" (pe-er) as a euphemism for wearing teffilen. The Talmud talks about how men wear teffilen with God's deeds inscribed in them and God wears teffilen with human deeds inscribed in them. I stayed more literal with the text in that section. I think the poetry works with or without thinking of "adornment" as wearing teffilen. "Adorn" communicates a kind of dressing up out of love which is something the poet images as being a mutual activity that we do with God.

I've numbered the verses so that people could more easily comment on them and offer different translations.

"Zvi tifarah" which occurs many times, I've translated simply as "desire" (except for the first time where I use "magnificent desire").

Please comment. And do feel free to offer alternative to any of it.

I hope to write a more personal reflection on what it was like to translate this and what it means to me.

My response to some tweet questions from Yaakov Menken required more what I could do in Twitter. So here goes. Yaakov and others, please use the comments to respond.

The context: @nights_heart wrote in response to something the Republican Jewish Coalition wrote:

@RJCHQ Making pro-Israel advocacy a partisan issue weakens the pro-Israel lobby and weakens Israel

To which Yaakov Menken (@ymenken) responded:

Can't be worse for "Pro-Israel" than defining expansion of a Hamas terrorist base as "Pro-Israel"

To which I (@rabbishai) responded:

Where did you get the idea that J Street wants "expansion of a Hamas terrorist base?"

To which Yaakov made a coherent five tweet response which gracefully ended with "QED," which means something like, "thus signals the completion of the proof." (I had to look it up). My responses are interspersed between his tweets.

This Wednesday, August 19, I'll be taking part in a daytime water fast organized by an ad hoc group I'm involved with, Ta'anit Tzedek, Jewish Fast for Gaza.

I'm fasting because I believe Israel's blockade against Gaza is unjust. I'm fasting to bring more attention to this issue in order to help influence Israel's government to lift the blockade.

The blockade began in June, 2007, soon after the May, 2007 victory of Hamas in the Palestinian Authority elections. Here is a concise description of the blockade from a UN report just released:

• The closure of Karni, the largest and best equipped commercial crossing.

From a photo shoot this morning.

iVOTE by Zizox

Go to Zizox's Flickr page and tell her how much you support her and encourage her to keep taking photos and expressing her art at this momentous time.

Here you can watch: #IranElection at search.twitter.com.

If you have a Twitter account, you can "Retweet" messages that you think are of particular value. You can turn your profile pic green. You can spread the word to others that you know.

Even if you don't feel comfortable participating, it's really worth watching first hand to see how Twitter can be used for this kind of thing... even if you are just trying to figure it all out.

Another place to "watch" and send people to is Flickr... Just search on Iran Election.

In solidarity with the people of Iran.

Note (11-22-09): I finished the translation. Or... I completed a first attempt. See the full translation of Anim Zemirot/Shir Hakavod.

Browsing my Twitter feed tonight I saw Rabbi Oren Hayon's plea, "Searching fruitlessly for a good online translation of "An'im Z'mirot". Anyone have one you can point me toward?"

I couldn't find ANY translation. So, with chutzpadic humility, I've decided to begin taking a crack at it.

I remember a wonderful shi-ur (class) that Art Green gave on Anim Zmirot at Adina, Norman, and Noga Newberg's house in the early 90's. I think it was a tikkun leyl Shavuot (a Shavuot night study intensive).

Ever since that class at the Newbergs, I'm always moved by Anim Zmirot. The poem is attributed to Judah the Hasid of Regensburg (1150 - 1217 C.E.). Joel Rosenberg writes in the introduction to his translation in the Reconstructionist Kol Haneshama Shabbat Ve'Hagim prayer book (p. 453)

Shir Hakavod is simultaneously our tradition's most unabashedly anthropomorphic depiction of God and its most eloquent refutation of a purely anthropomorphic conception of divinity.

Liel Leibovitz' March 18, 2009 critique of microblogging, called "Communication Breakdown" is inaccurate often, but always clueless. Here is my retelling of his article in the form of a recipe:

• Take 10 pounds of: the new-media-will-lead-to-the-end-of-culture doomsday analysis,
• Add a dash of anti-Semitism,
• Sprinkle in a bit of: maybe-the-People-of-the-Book-can-save-us-all triumphalist nostalgia,
• Finally throw in just a dash of venom against the computer "dorks" who got us into this mess.

The result is a disaster of an article. But I must say I've had lot of fun ranting against it. Thanks Liel!

I've recently started writing short (133 character) Torah commentaries using the Twitter platform. It's been fun. Yesterday I blogged about it at the JPS Interactive (aka Yavnet) site:#Torah: Using Twitter to Comment on Torah.

In trying to convince my Reconstructionist colleagues to jump on board and write their own Torah Tweets, one asked why on earth one would want to limit oneself to 140 words when writing about Torah. She had actually misread my explanation that one is limited to 140 characters. She asks a great question,

Aren't there more meaningful ways of using email/computers, etc. to engage in divrei Torah with people who have intelligent things to say on a topic we all care about?

My first response is that the idea of writing microblog posts using the Twitter platform and then categorizing them with #Torah is in no way meant to discredit any other form of writing about Torah.

Here are six answers I came up with. If you have more answers, do comment, or also any reasons why you think it is a bad idea.