I'm typing right now on a Mac that Apple generously donated to the Jewlicious convention in Long Beach, CA. The event has been amazing so far, and I will have an awful lot to write about once I get time. For now, I'll leave you with a quick thought from one of the writers of a short documentary, "The Tribe," which I heartily recommend. He said that the two core aspects of the Jewish identity, shared by Jews anywhere on the religious spectrum, were a sense of being on the outside, and being unusually comfortable with abstraction.
This goes all the way back, of course. Our forefathers were called "Ivri," Hebrew, meaning "those on the other side." And we were unique in the world in that we worshipped a deity without any sort of physical representation. God exists, as a concept, only in our minds and our books (which themselves are only someone's mind captured for eternity). More than that, our tradition says that God is not simply a being, but at the same time a principle. This affinity for abstract principles has served us in good stead throughout the centuries; I suspect that it could be the root of the famed Jewish skill with managing money.
More to come in a few days. In the meanwhile, some additions to the blogroll are going up in just a bit.
P.s.: Matisyahu's baby is really, really cute.
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