Hello again, friends.
The new quarter has just begun, and thus far my coursework seems like it will be interesting, if less focused on Judaism than I was initially hoping for. However, I am sure that I will learn a ton, and come out of it changed in ways I cannot even imagine now. Below, you will see a gallery full of PDFs and word documents that are all from my course: Religion, Society & Change. I’ll be posting a modified version of the syllabus in the next few days so you can see what we are actually doing in this course over the next year. It is my hope by including these, whether the articles, the slides, or just the other pieces like field observation guidelines, will give you something to chew on, as I find myself doing. If you see something in there that grabs your interest, comment on it here, if you so feel to!
I will be writing a ton as soon as I get errands, and my homework done. I am so excited about the illuminated manuscript work! Rebecca’s already given me the green light to go ahead and continue work on my Shir Hashirim piece I began over the summer in another course: The Medieval Book. (I am working on Book or Chapter 6, the section holding “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li” or “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”) Maybe this time I can rework the first pages, or redo it, and do it better! I will post pictures of what I’ve been working on soon. I am so unbelievably over the moon.
Finding myself as the only “out” Jewish person (possibly one of two, as someone mentioned something about Hebrew) is interesting. Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I am not a cradle-Jew. I am going through the conversion process. (I can’t remember if I said this in an earlier post.) However, I am one of the more observant people I know of this faith and people I have come to love dearly. There are times I am wondering how to speak up in class when either another student asks the faculty about Judaism or Jews… (specifically regarding Christ), and they don’t know the answer, but I do. Another question I have is this: if a faculty-member is getting something wrong (or at least, wrong as I know it), how do I address this, especially when what they are presenting is to a class of at minimum 50 people? “Nicely,” isn’t exactly an answer that I find satisfactory as of course it must be nice and civil, but it also must address the issue(s) at hand.
We are reading: A History of G-d, No god but G-d, Christianity: A Very Short Introduction, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, as well as a bunch of other readings getting posted to Moodle or given as handouts.
This is a class I will continue to use the Marginalia techniques learned in Dr. Richard Benton’s program: “Orthodoxies & Apostasies: Judaism, Christianity and Islam.”
In other news, I found out that any medications that affect your liver share something interesting to look up… If you ever wind up with bruising or bleeding beyond the normal, check in with your pharmacist or doctor to see if your medications (pharma or otherwise) affect cytochrome P450.
Also, fascia! Fascia is this whole other theory of looking at the body. No tendons. No ligaments. Just fascia! It’s in all animals, land or water-dwelling. You can see fascia most easily in meat. Look into fascia, it changes your entire world, and everything I learned in biology class.
El Shalem: Toward Wholeness 