A week in New York

[liv]

Wow. Coming to New York directly from Sweden is killer culture shock. Plus this is almost the first moment I've had to do anything other than vitally urgent admin since I got here a week ago. I've been planning to record my immediate impressions for ages, even though they're perhaps not so immediate after a week.

The flight over contained air hostesses doing that uniquely American kind of intense customer service. And the airport contained surly people, but I noted that although they have made the immigration process a lot more evil since I last visited the US, it's also a lot more efficient, and I was through the airport in half an hour. There were also TVs everywhere, which usually I can block out, but the rolling news about the death of Michael Jackson caught my attention a bit. So for once I didn't find out from reading journal posts about a major news event!

Then I had to take the subway all the way to the other side of the city. New York is crowded and smelly (some of the smells are good smells, but they are all pungent) and hot and muggy, apart from the trains which blast you with air conditioning. I think the most shocking thing about coming here direct from Sweden is being able to tell at a glance who's rich and who's poor. Also, it's not at all surprising but very noticeable how incredibly ethnically diverse it is. It's not that everybody in Sweden looks stereotypically Scandinavian, not at all, but the ones who aren't look like obvious immigrants, with distinct dress and foreign accents. I keep thinking that as many people as the entire population of Sweden live in just this metropolitan area, and obviously I can't see them all at once but it's pretty mind-boggling.

Other than that, well, Stockholm is beautiful but New York has personality! I am self-consciously pretending to be a New Yorker when my morning routine consists of sitting on the subway preparing Talmud for the day's classes, and stopping by one of the millions of cafés to get a cream cheese bagel and cup of coffee for breakfast... (I am far too obsessed with bagels!) Plus, just about the first thing I did when I got here was head directly for The Strand to buy almost more books than I can carry for $20!

I spectated the Pride parade on Sunday; many thanks to daharyn for all the excellent advice about how to get the most out of it. It was lots of people, and it was hot and loud, and I really don't know what's going on politically; I mean, it's clear that gay rights are still an undecided question here, but equally Pride is an official municipal event and it's not a political statement simply being visibly gay. I loved some of the Latino groups who were dressed as butterflies (I believe that's some kind of Spanish pun, right?)

And tomorrow is the 4^th July, even though it's not actually the fourth of July. I think Pride is probably more my speed, and I might just take advantage of a day off from yeshiva to catch up on admin and the internet and revising some of the material I've learnt this week, and perhaps watch fireworks from the window. But if you have any recommendations about fun things to see or do then do speak up!

The learning so far is really wonderful, especially the Talmud class, which is just at my level. It's a very steep learning curve, and I'm finding that at the end of each morning I can do things that I couldn't have imagined being able to do at the beginning, which is the most incredibly satisfying feeling. The teacher is really superlative, plus hatam_soferet has been helping me prepare and revise the material. Just amazing. The other classes are a bit more mixed but I'm learning interesting and novel stuff, so it's living up to my expectations.

My schedule is a bit unreasonable, though. We're leaving the house at 6 to make sure that hatam_soferet's local community have a quorum for morning prayers, then an hour's commute into the city, learning either from 9 to 5 or 9 to 7:30, and in the evenings trying to snatch time to hang out with Jen and revise the material and do any essential chores and admin and prepare food and still somehow get to bed in time not to be incredibly sleep deprived. If anyone's in the city and wants to meet up, I have lunch break from 12 to 1 and I'm free Monday and Thursday in the early evening.

In theory my American mobile number is 646 709 5546, but I am not certain this new system is actually going to work!

Comments

hey!

[daharyn]

If you can figure out where to get a good view of Saturday's fireworks, and are willing to let me tag along, I will crown you New Yorker For Life. I simply cannot figure out where to get a decent view (aside from my own roof, but after the Fire Department got called once we're, *cough*, no longer allowed up there, and the door's been locked down).

This is assuming that there will be fireworks, and not, *sigh*, more rain.

Ay, given the crazy schedule, let me know on what day I can treat you to lunch and I'll whisk you away for an hour. I'm booked Monday but am otherwise available next week. Or this weekend...! (I think I'm the only person I know without holiday weekend plans! If you're not wicked exhausted, drop me an e-mail.)

Re: hey!

[hatam_soferet]

We have a view of quite a lot of sky; it's Bronx sky, which maybe doesn't have so much fireworking as Manhattan sky, but on the other hand one can sit by the window with tea going "oo, pretty" more or less as long as one wants, and they're pretty enough. Maybe we should have a Saturday evening firework-viewing party?

[jack]

Squeee! *hugs*

[simont]

I'm curious about your characterisation of the effect of the Talmud class as teaching you to do things that you previously couldn't have imagined being able to do. From what little I know about the subject matter, I would have expected that to read something more like "understand things I couldn't have imagined being able to understand at the beginning". Does your choice of wording reflect an actual difference between what you're doing and what I'd have guessed you were doing?

(It's also giving me a strange mental image of Talmudic study as a martial art, in which deep knowledge and understanding of law and history naturally confers correct posture, efficient use of power, and the ability to anticipate one's opponent...)

[403]

(It's also giving me a strange mental image of Talmudic study as a martial art, in which deep knowledge and understanding of law and history naturally confers correct posture, efficient use of power, and the ability to anticipate one's opponent...)

If I ever actually get around to writing the D20 Past adventure that some of my friends want me to (Rabbinic class of 600CE: Rabbis vs. Von Neumann Golems), this is going in there.

[liv]

That's a pretty good question! Clearly what I'm learning how to do is purely cerebral, but still, why do I call it doing rather than just understanding? What I have learnt this week is something like this: I know how to take a text with only consonants and figure out from internal clues how to add vowels and punctuation so that I can actually read it. And how to determine which bits are quotes and how to look up the sources being referenced. And how to use navigational phrases to fit the argument together (Talmud often doesn't bother saying "X said... Y replied", so you have to work out who's talking). A little bit of how to use the traditional commentaries to clarify what's going on if Talmud decides to leave out so many words that it no longer makes sense (some of it reads like Perl golf!) And how to as it were zoom between levels, understanding how an individual line of argument works as well as how they build up to an overall structure. And finally, how to see the underlying meta point behind the apparent conclusion of the argument.

If you look at my conversion of Talmudic argument into a blog discussion, which I know is very long, you may get a clearer idea of what I've been doing this week. Imagine if that whole long post were written out, not only without threading or icons, but with all the text smushed together without sentences, paragraphs, or who's speaking when explicitly marked. And half of it written in a bizarre shorthand (several of those "comments" are expanded from 3-word allusions). Oh, and in two languages I don't speak, switching back and forth either mid-sentence or occasionally mid-word. That's what a Talmudic argument looks like printed on the page. So yes, what I'm doing is ultimately coming to understand it, but it takes about as much work as solving a hard cryptic crossword puzzle, I'd say.

[simont]

*nods* Yes, I saw your blog-formatted thing, and it did partly answer my question, in that I hadn't realised there was a language problem involved – I had unconsciously assumed you'd be studying Talmud in a language you already spoke. So you mentioning having become able to translate stuff certainly made me think "aha, there's something that would very plausibly be described as 'doing'". But this answer is much more detailed and answers the rest of my question, thank you :-)

I'm now wondering, on the other hand, where I would actually draw the line. When I wrote my question, I had the vague idea that "doing" related to physical stuff. (Hence my silly mental image of a martial art, that being – at least in its fictional depictions – a field in which the acquisition of wisdom stereotypically has a direct effect on one's ability to do impressive physical things.)

But thinking about it half an hour later I realised that there certainly are fields of purely mental learning in which I wouldn't have found the wording the least bit odd. Such as, for instance, my own fields – I would absolutely expect that after learning something new about maths or computing I would describe myself as now being able to do something new, whether it was solving a certain class of problem or writing programs in some particular way or with some particular effect. Then language-learning confers the ability to translate, which my subconscious also classes as "doing", as I realised when I read your second post; and what you've described here seems to be very much in the spirit of puzzle- or problem-solving, which certainly counts.

I suppose it's specifically history that gave me the confusion, because I think my mental image of the use of history is that it doesn't enable you to do anything specifically new (with the self-referential exception of teaching history, I suppose). I see it more as enabling you to do things you were already going to do, but do them better. (E.g. making certain classes of decision, or giving advice to people who are.)

[(Anonymous)]

fluffymark here - I have no idea how to get OpenId working.

Gosh, failed to realise you'd also be in New York at the same time as me. Would have loved to have some company to watch the fireworks with. In the end I got there early and found a good spot, and they were awesome. :)