theyellowhobbit

( since people complained about messing up their friends page )

(For real this time.)

Anyone who wants to read it, let me know, and you'll get a shiny PDF.

I handed something in. batshua is the most amazing person ever, for making me finish it and reading the thing.

If anyone wants to see Seth (my thesis) in his current form, let me know and give me an e-mail address to send it to (my comments are e-mailed to me so if you want to comment and delete, that's fine.)

I saw Ben on my way back, but he couldn't stop to talk. Which makes sense given that he's defending tomorrow.

I'm currently mashing. When I get out I could either celebrate or sleep. Anyone want to celebrate? I have wine and/or Godiva liquor...

And tomorrow I get to play the fun game of catch-up. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Edit: Take 2
What is purity? Anthropologists have only started to investigate this question within the past century. Most work on this subject comes in the form of ethnographical studies of living cultures. But what about purity in the past? Can we study this from an archaeological perspective? Thus far, this is something that has rarely been attempted by archaeologists, although it certsainly is possible. This thesis addresses the problem of the lack of attention paid by archaeologists to purity, and attempts to rectify the situation by creating an archaeology of purity that can be used universally.

Beyond that, this thesis uses Judaism as a case study for the archaeology of purity. It addresses the question: what were purity beliefs and rituals in early Judaism, and how can we study this from an archaeological perspective? A look at the historical and archaeological evidence can provide us with a balanced picture. The historical evidence includes Jewish law, as well as extra-legal sources. The archaeological evidence is three miqva’ot (ritual baths) from ancient Palestine. After examining the evidence, we conclude that there is, in fact, heterodoxy in bathing practices in early Judaism.


How does that sound? It's 187 words, and the guidelines say the abstract should be 100-200 words. So this fits.

I didn't have everything done by 8pm Thursday, and I was too stressed out to do any more work between then and my meeting with Ben. However, I did make him cookies.

It turns out he was very impressed with what I had, told me I was in good shape. I just have to format everything (mostly done), edit my intro (barely started), write an abstract based on that intro (haven't even contemplated that, write my chapter 5, the discussion of my evidence (I've thought long and hard about that, and it will be long and hard to write), write a 300 word abstract of chapter 3, the history and texts, based on the outline I have (Ben is a just and merciful thesis advisor), and leave space for a conclusion, but I can leave it blank (I'm actually putting in the subheadings, because I think I should tell people where I'm going.)

And then he sent me an e-mail saying how pleased he was with my progress. :)

So I'm almost done, though even after I submit this for competition, I'll have to write chapter 3 and 6. Everyone is under the mistaken impression that I'm done because cynara_linnaea is done with hers. But no, history and anthropology have different deadlines, because anthro gives us the weekend.

And then I get to catch up on my multitudes of other work, including my Monge exam and GIS assignments.

And I should at least contemplate eating and sleeping. I think it's time to pack off and head to the panini bar and then do work in HRN.

I finished a draft of the methodology tonight!

I sent it off to Ben, who can read it now before our meeting tomorrow morning.

And in honor of arigi's 21st birthday the OCP seniors are going drinking (which includes me apparently).

Me: I always keep my thesis with me on my flash drive.
cynara_linnaea: That's a big flash drive.
Me: *takes off the cover* Look! I'm flashing you!
*cynara_linnaea also opens her flash drive*
Me: We're flashing eachother in public! In Hillel! In front of everyone!

This exchange took place a few days before I left for break. The quote might not be word for word, but there was definitely all that public "flashing."

I finished the Hasmonean palaces!!!!

(It was really long since the miqvah went through 4 different phases of building.)

Jerusalem is half-done, since I have stuff from my 10 page paper

And Tzippori needs writing. Maybe I should read the article first.

Meeting for Torah Lishmah w/RK
Write progress report and send it to Dr. Erickson [Well, I tried to e-mail it. SAS is being sassy again, and generally uncooperative.]
ANTH322 studying
Write Materials section:
-Jerusalem
-Sepphoris (or Tzippori, as it's actually called everywhere except academia)
-Hasmonean palaces
Book review
edits for batshua
Harvard Div personal statement
Hebrew U personal statement
Jewish Studies Thesis

So I still have a lot to do. And I feel too dizzy to continue. Maybe I can make myself do the book review, but then again, it's 3-6 pages.

Besides Monday afternoon, I did not do any work on my thesis this past week. None. At all. A few things came up and I ended up spending a lot of time in conversations with people (both online and real life) and whatever work I did do was either my Historical Archaeology homework, random errands, or learning mincha.

Luckily, Dr. Schuyler only assigned HW to the 3 grad students in our class [of 5]. Every week we have a reading, split up into sections for each person to cover and tell the class about (thus making us not have to read the other sectcions though ideally we should.) And mincha is over. And most of my random errands are done, and the rest I can use as procrastinatory tools. But this means I have to make up for my severe lack of thesisizing.

So if I can manage it (yeah, right) I'm going to try to stay off of IM until I've done a significant amount of work. Maybe I won't sign on until tonight. I'll still check e-mail, and I'll try to avoid LJ after I finish this post. But this is all without a vow, since I just spent a holiday repenting for all the vows that I've broken, and have anulled all the old ones (though many still exist, such as my vow to finish the kippah by a certain date). So it would be pretty silly of me to take on new vows at the very beginning of a new year.

(Oh, and I forgot to put in the YK post that OCP nuisach is slightly different from CJC nuisach. But similar enough to be confusing if I'm practicing mincha in my head along with the current davening when it overlaps. Totally not cool. But I was fine since I knew the first part really well, and then it was just continuing with the same tune. I like the CJC one better for the most part. It involves a lot of ending on the 1 of the scale in between phrases. And there's the little part that sounds like part of "on my own." (it would be the notes for the words "beside me") The Les Mis trop is what I called it. (There's also the verses of Baruch kEl Elyon that start with another Les Mis tune- the 3rd to last and second to last tunes. And there's a lecha dodi where the first line of every verse has the notes from a "Phantom of the Opera" song.)OCP had a lot more things in minor, and less embelishments. It probably was also a lot easier to learn/fake. Oh well. As long as I have the shiny Kaddish Shalem ending, I'm happy.)

Ok. That's it. Goodbye online world! (Hello, thesis!)

I met with Ben today for what ended up being slightly over 2 hours. First we talked about grad schools and then we talked about the thesis.

In regards to grad schools, I'm only applying to 5- Bar Ilan, Hebrew U (Rothberg), Harvard Divinity, and then something in NY (either NYU or Columbia) and something in the DC metro area (either GWU, American, or UMD college park.) I'm looking more towards anthropology degrees and focusing on archaeology within that, since I believe that archaeology should be done from an anthropological perspective, with the goal to be to learn as much as we can about the culture that has left these items behind. It makes so much more sense to have it there as opposed to Near Eastern studies or Art History or regular history.

The thesis is...thesisy. We talked a lot about Neusner, and when I gave him all my printed stuff that I've worked on in the past 2 weeks, he thought that it was a lot, even though I didn't agree. I'm only about halfway done with Neusner, but that's ok.

And all of these ideas came out. Like the fact that neither Neusner nor Douglas pay much attention to the material culture, while Ronny Reich barely looks at the culture. A friend of Ben's is writing a dissertation on the subject, but she's looking at it through a perspective of Roman/Greek influence. I'm looking at the halacha. But if she finishes her dissertation in December I can read it and use it as a source. And Ronny Reich's dissertation is supposed to come out in English soon.

I'm only now finding all these flaws in Neusner's argument. For example, he talks about how it was important for the Pharisees to eat their meals in purity, as though the table was the Temple. But this can't be practical at all if they were really required to keep that same status of cultic Temple purity. What if someone touches a dead body? They'll be impure for a week. Do they just not eat? Or a woman who has just given birth to a baby girl and is impure for 80 days. Or a menstruating woman-should she starve during her period? (Oh the irony of today being a fast day...) Surely there must have been a distinction between this purity and Temple purity, but beyond the logic of practicality I'm not sure how to prove it.

And I want to look at Pharisaic material culture, but I'm not sure if it has been excavated and published. (I want to talk about class differences, and the contrasting ideas of purity in the different sects, and the struggle between them all for legitimacy.) maric23 do you know anything about this? Do you want to be my bestest friend in the world and get me some material sources on Pharisaic purity? Can you go dig up a Pharisaic house in Jerusalem? Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease*? I'll give you a lot of fresh chocolate chip cookies and a big thank you in the acknowledgements section of my thesis...

If it will be helpful, I would love to go to Israel during winter break in order to do further research. But I can't just pull out a trowel and patiche and start digging. OMG they finally have the patiches back in stock!!! Which size should I get, maric23 and yadfothgildloc (yadfothgildloc - what size was Rebecca's)? (I think they're totally worth the 33$ investment, and I can totally spare that much money after all the mashing I've been doing. It's basically the 25$ head mash bonus plus a bit of extra money....) I totally need to get one so I don't have to use the ginormous hand-picks that they have at Safi. And it would just be shiny to carry around. I could hit people excavate with it.

Anyways, back to the thesis: people usually ask the question of the cultural logic behind purity laws. I think that this is a problematic question. Sure, rabbis have been trying to find the taamei mitzvot (reasons behind the laws, specifically the ones that don't make sense) for centuries, but to rely on that as the sole meaning could put you in a quandary as soon as that meaning is removed. For example: once upon a time, kosher slaughtering was the quickest, most painless way to kill an animal. But now non-kosher meat uses techniques that might be more humane. So does that mean we should abandon kosher slaughter and use electrical shocks or whatever they use to kill cows? No! Of course not! Why do we eat kosher meat? Because we believe that God told us to. So too with the purity laws. There's no objective reason why immersing dishes in the Schukyll would purify them while soaking them in a bathtub of boiling water wouldn't. It's the Schukyll!!!! There are 3-headed fish there! But that's the way the law works, and we recognize that it doesn't make sense. And yet we do it anyways.

So that's where my thesis is going right now. I want to argue against all the experts and the methodologies they use. This isn't so crazily obscure as cynara_linnaea and honkyredvan's Chinese theses, but it is quite an undertaking. But at least I have an arguement, however vague and unfocused it might be. And I got away with not finishing the work I said I would do.

And Ben has a carrel which he's letting me use. I don't think I can sign books out to it, but he can. And the space itself is nice, with an outlet and a light and a window.


*Looking at it written out a billion times, "please" is a funny word to write.