Hi, everyone, Notice I was gone? I wasn't really, just a bit overwhelmed with other stuff. But I took a good chunk of this week off, so I'm almost rested up enough to pay attention to the world again.
I did still manage to more or less keep up with the daf yomi, so obviously I wasn't quite mashed flat.
My most recent interest: an attempt to actually read real books again: this week's The Nation was the reading issue, and my eye was caught by two of the reviews, so I'm actually going to read the books so reviewed. I took the plunge and bought them (I know, haven't I heard of something called a library card??!! Yes, but all things considered, I'd be stacking up fines more than the actual cost of the books before I finished them with my schedule being what it is). Of course, last week's New York review of books also had some books I'd like to get to eventually (It made Gilead sound really interesting!)
Then, my chevruta for Reisheit Chochmah (Toward the bottom of the link page)(a kabbalistic work by a disciple of Moshe Cordovero) discovered that I was interested in Sufi women saints and turned me on to two works by Abraham Maimonides (the son of that Maimonides) whose Judaism was apparently quite influenced by Sufism. NOw of course I have to read them, since he went to the trouble of actually finding sources I could read in side-by-side translation, thus saving me hours of work with a dictionary (yes, I know I'm supposed to be able to do it all in the original with no trouble and not even a second thught, but seriously, how much untranslated work am I really going to do in my copious spare time?).
Am I going to tell you what they are? No, not until I've started reading them and discover whether or not the translations are any good. Far be it from me to send someone to a crappy translation.
