Christmas - Limmud - New Year
Jan. 2nd, 2011 10:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livHappy New Year, d-roll! I've been enjoying catching up on everybody's holiday doings, so here's mine.
I worked more or less right up to Christmas, mainly interviewing potential students. That was a fascinating experience though I probably shouldn't talk about it in public until we've finished making offers at least. There was a work Christmas lunch, where the food was mediocre but the atmosphere was a pleasant conversation with likeable colleagues, rather than a lot of enforced jollity and drunkenness. I caught a bad cold and was slightly afraid it would turn into tonsilitis again. My GP was very nice and reassuring and not at all cross with me for turning up with just a cold. But he was a bit cross with me for being a bad asthmatic and not having the flu jab as well as self-medicating with aspirin. Anyway I'm very pleased with my local GP surgery on the whole.
jack arrived on Thursday evening; I was a little worried he wouldn't get through the snow but in fact the journey was merely slow, not impossible. We had time to wrap all the Christmas presents and sort out the house a bit before retiring. Friday he drove me up to Lancashire to stay with his Grandfather; this is becoming something of a tradition for both of us, being the third year in a row we've spent Christmas with those relatives.
We made a huuuuuuge stack of Christmas presents. I intended to do the excited kid thing of getting up early to open them but ended up sleeping until midmorning from sheer exhaustion after a long term. Anyway,jack gave me a pretty scarf and a promise of a complete Sandman collection which however hasn't arrived yet. His mother gave us both jointly a pile of several boardgames, which contributed greatly to said huge stack. We had carefully brought the original Dominion with us so that we would be able to play our new expansions, Alchemy and Prosperity. Also Smallworld, which is delightful and so far I've turned out to be reasonably good at the two-player version, and Ad Astra, which is sort of like a Puerto Rico version of Settlers in space. We haven't played that yet because it needs three players. jack's Grandfather gave me a couple of books of walks, one local one for the Midlands south of where I live, and one national, which includes a lot of Peak District and other bits a fairly short trip to the north of me. jack's extended family gave me some pretty wine glasses, some wine to put in them, and a lot of chocolate. I gave jack a Sony PRS-600 e-reader, and a warm fuzzy dressing gown, which made me feel simultaneously high-tech and boringly middle-aged, but hey, they were both things he wanted. I also gave books to his mother and grandfather (Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces and GB Edwards' The book of Ebenezer le Page, which seemed to go down well.)
Christmas dinner was lovely as usual, this year including a very cute 8-month old baby among the guests. I really likejack's family Christmases; his family seem to like eachother and don't get competitive or argumentative, so it's nothing like the stereotypical drama-ridden Christmas I've often read about. Boxing Day involved trifle, and in between we ate a lot of nice cheese and snacked on chocolate. When not eating we went for a couple of walks, one in the local village and one in Glasson Dock a few miles up the road. This time last year it was just too icy to walk anywhere; this year the ice was starting to thaw so it was muddy, but perfectly fine to walk on paved roads and paths. And the pretty landscapes were extra pretty in the snow. Glasson Dock has lapwings and oystercatchers (the latter with their long legs were very confused by the frozen waterways!) and all kinds of interesting birds. Also walking was a chance to have a long, undisturbed conversation during which we decided that the reasons in favour of getting married outweigh the possible objections.
So on my birthday, 27th, we announced our engagement to close family, planning to make a more public announcement on NYE. Jack's mother was very pleased and excited, and Grandfather blew me a kiss and said "granddaughter!" Both our fathers congratulated us over the phone. My sister asked about a ring, my younger brother asked about the details of the wedding, and my older brother (older than the first brother, but still younger than me) asked if I were pregnant. But I forgave him because he also deigned to use an exclamation mark for the occasion, and because he congratulated me in really rather impressive Swedish. After a combined birthday / engagement lunch, we headed south for Limmud. The journey was somewhat awful, mostly heavy traffic rather than terrible weather, so we didn't reach the conference until 8 pm. But that was just in time to check in, convince the organizers to acceptjack as a partial substitute for hatam_soferet, and get something to eat.
Limmud felt a little frenetic this year, partly I think because of arriving halfway through, but also partly because it was over-programmed and didn't leave enough space for informal as opposed to officially organized socializing. Still, there were some very good sessions and some people I was really pleased to see. I managed a long chat to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lethargic_man, albeit in a noisy bar, and several meals with hobbitz. Tamra Wright on Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas was particularly notable. There was also a talk by a Pardes teacher, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, on the halachic issues involved in the current debate in Israel about whether Jews are permitted to sell or rent houses to Arabs. That was more political than I thought I was letting myself in for, but a really informative session. I also went to a couple of discussion sessions, one on the LGBT community and one on non-Jewish family members; Limmud panels can be frustrating, but these were both starting from the assumption that Queer people and mixed couples are a valued part of the Jewish community and wanted to tackle practical issues, so there was no tiresome debate about whether I have a right to exist or not. I made it to talks by a couple of friends, hobbitz about her work for the ORT educational charity, and an old friend of my Dad's, John Grabinar, on Jewish scientists.
I did slightly misjudge how useful interfaith sessions were going to be; I think it's really important to have Christian and Muslim speakers at Limmud, but honestly the fact that it's a Jewish conference makes too many people too comfortable derailing all the discussions with incredibly basic / offensive questions like "why are Muslims so violent and misogynist?" There's a thing called Scriptural Reasoning which sounded exciting, but it turned out that it's really little more than small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims discussing texts from their respective scriptures. I have nothing against that idea but it hardly seemed as a radical as the hype suggested, they don't really even have any particular method for text work in a multi-faith context. There was a Jewish-Christian text discussion thing which again felt like reinventing the wheel, though the twist here was the Christians involved were Evangelicals rather than the more liberal sorts, and there was a lot of focus on the Biblical prophecies about the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, and an attempt to grapple with Israeli politics in the light of this. However Halima Krausen was wonderful as ever, teaching the Qur'an version of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son. But basically I think I need to make more effort to attend established interfaith study groups, rather than trying to get my fix of such discussion at Limmud.
Being in such a crowded, rushed situation for several days left me a little drained. Tea withatreic and emperor was an excellent way to recover from this! jack drove me back to parents', and we had a very nice family meal mostly debating philosophy with Screwy (now back from Sweden). I spent the 31st quietly at home, drinking tea and catching up on DW and LJ and chatting to parents. darcydodo called to wish me a belated happy birthday, and I told her the exciting news. Then I headed into Cambridge for Relativity New Year's Eve, which was exactly my ideal of how such parties should be. There was gingerbread Settlers, interesting alcoholic drinks as well as teeeeeeea, geeky conversations and plenty of lovely people, new and old. And the planned announcement just after midnight went very well.
Anyway, I'm back in Stoke late on Tuesday evening, and starting work on Wednesday. It's been a really good break, and even if there's been a lot going on, it's enough different from work to be relaxing.
I worked more or less right up to Christmas, mainly interviewing potential students. That was a fascinating experience though I probably shouldn't talk about it in public until we've finished making offers at least. There was a work Christmas lunch, where the food was mediocre but the atmosphere was a pleasant conversation with likeable colleagues, rather than a lot of enforced jollity and drunkenness. I caught a bad cold and was slightly afraid it would turn into tonsilitis again. My GP was very nice and reassuring and not at all cross with me for turning up with just a cold. But he was a bit cross with me for being a bad asthmatic and not having the flu jab as well as self-medicating with aspirin. Anyway I'm very pleased with my local GP surgery on the whole.
jack arrived on Thursday evening; I was a little worried he wouldn't get through the snow but in fact the journey was merely slow, not impossible. We had time to wrap all the Christmas presents and sort out the house a bit before retiring. Friday he drove me up to Lancashire to stay with his Grandfather; this is becoming something of a tradition for both of us, being the third year in a row we've spent Christmas with those relatives. We made a huuuuuuge stack of Christmas presents. I intended to do the excited kid thing of getting up early to open them but ended up sleeping until midmorning from sheer exhaustion after a long term. Anyway,
jack gave me a pretty scarf and a promise of a complete Sandman collection which however hasn't arrived yet. His mother gave us both jointly a pile of several boardgames, which contributed greatly to said huge stack. We had carefully brought the original Dominion with us so that we would be able to play our new expansions, Alchemy and Prosperity. Also Smallworld, which is delightful and so far I've turned out to be reasonably good at the two-player version, and Ad Astra, which is sort of like a Puerto Rico version of Settlers in space. We haven't played that yet because it needs three players. jack's Grandfather gave me a couple of books of walks, one local one for the Midlands south of where I live, and one national, which includes a lot of Peak District and other bits a fairly short trip to the north of me. jack's extended family gave me some pretty wine glasses, some wine to put in them, and a lot of chocolate. I gave jack a Sony PRS-600 e-reader, and a warm fuzzy dressing gown, which made me feel simultaneously high-tech and boringly middle-aged, but hey, they were both things he wanted. I also gave books to his mother and grandfather (Anne Michaels' Fugitive Pieces and GB Edwards' The book of Ebenezer le Page, which seemed to go down well.) Christmas dinner was lovely as usual, this year including a very cute 8-month old baby among the guests. I really like
jack's family Christmases; his family seem to like eachother and don't get competitive or argumentative, so it's nothing like the stereotypical drama-ridden Christmas I've often read about. Boxing Day involved trifle, and in between we ate a lot of nice cheese and snacked on chocolate. When not eating we went for a couple of walks, one in the local village and one in Glasson Dock a few miles up the road. This time last year it was just too icy to walk anywhere; this year the ice was starting to thaw so it was muddy, but perfectly fine to walk on paved roads and paths. And the pretty landscapes were extra pretty in the snow. Glasson Dock has lapwings and oystercatchers (the latter with their long legs were very confused by the frozen waterways!) and all kinds of interesting birds. Also walking was a chance to have a long, undisturbed conversation during which we decided that the reasons in favour of getting married outweigh the possible objections. So on my birthday, 27th, we announced our engagement to close family, planning to make a more public announcement on NYE. Jack's mother was very pleased and excited, and Grandfather blew me a kiss and said "granddaughter!" Both our fathers congratulated us over the phone. My sister asked about a ring, my younger brother asked about the details of the wedding, and my older brother (older than the first brother, but still younger than me) asked if I were pregnant. But I forgave him because he also deigned to use an exclamation mark for the occasion, and because he congratulated me in really rather impressive Swedish. After a combined birthday / engagement lunch, we headed south for Limmud. The journey was somewhat awful, mostly heavy traffic rather than terrible weather, so we didn't reach the conference until 8 pm. But that was just in time to check in, convince the organizers to accept
jack as a partial substitute for hatam_soferet, and get something to eat. Limmud felt a little frenetic this year, partly I think because of arriving halfway through, but also partly because it was over-programmed and didn't leave enough space for informal as opposed to officially organized socializing. Still, there were some very good sessions and some people I was really pleased to see. I managed a long chat to
lethargic_man, albeit in a noisy bar, and several meals with hobbitz. Tamra Wright on Rosenzweig, Buber and Levinas was particularly notable. There was also a talk by a Pardes teacher, Meesh Hammer-Kossoy, on the halachic issues involved in the current debate in Israel about whether Jews are permitted to sell or rent houses to Arabs. That was more political than I thought I was letting myself in for, but a really informative session. I also went to a couple of discussion sessions, one on the LGBT community and one on non-Jewish family members; Limmud panels can be frustrating, but these were both starting from the assumption that Queer people and mixed couples are a valued part of the Jewish community and wanted to tackle practical issues, so there was no tiresome debate about whether I have a right to exist or not. I made it to talks by a couple of friends, hobbitz about her work for the ORT educational charity, and an old friend of my Dad's, John Grabinar, on Jewish scientists. I did slightly misjudge how useful interfaith sessions were going to be; I think it's really important to have Christian and Muslim speakers at Limmud, but honestly the fact that it's a Jewish conference makes too many people too comfortable derailing all the discussions with incredibly basic / offensive questions like "why are Muslims so violent and misogynist?" There's a thing called Scriptural Reasoning which sounded exciting, but it turned out that it's really little more than small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims discussing texts from their respective scriptures. I have nothing against that idea but it hardly seemed as a radical as the hype suggested, they don't really even have any particular method for text work in a multi-faith context. There was a Jewish-Christian text discussion thing which again felt like reinventing the wheel, though the twist here was the Christians involved were Evangelicals rather than the more liberal sorts, and there was a lot of focus on the Biblical prophecies about the return of the Jews to the Promised Land, and an attempt to grapple with Israeli politics in the light of this. However Halima Krausen was wonderful as ever, teaching the Qur'an version of the story of Abraham sacrificing his son. But basically I think I need to make more effort to attend established interfaith study groups, rather than trying to get my fix of such discussion at Limmud.
Being in such a crowded, rushed situation for several days left me a little drained. Tea with
atreic and emperor was an excellent way to recover from this! jack drove me back to parents', and we had a very nice family meal mostly debating philosophy with Screwy (now back from Sweden). I spent the 31st quietly at home, drinking tea and catching up on DW and LJ and chatting to parents. darcydodo called to wish me a belated happy birthday, and I told her the exciting news. Then I headed into Cambridge for Relativity New Year's Eve, which was exactly my ideal of how such parties should be. There was gingerbread Settlers, interesting alcoholic drinks as well as teeeeeeea, geeky conversations and plenty of lovely people, new and old. And the planned announcement just after midnight went very well.Anyway, I'm back in Stoke late on Tuesday evening, and starting work on Wednesday. It's been a really good break, and even if there's been a lot going on, it's enough different from work to be relaxing.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 01:23 pm (UTC)Happy New Year and looking forward to seeing you soon.
xx
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 05:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 05:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 05:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 08:18 pm (UTC)I have to say I don't recall coming across this at any of the talks by Muslims or about Islam-related things at any of the Limmuds you've been to. Possibly you were just unlucky. (Or possibly I have a selecting memory.)
There's a thing called Scriptural Reasoning which sounded exciting, but it turned out that it's really little more than small groups of Jews, Christians and Muslims discussing texts from their respective scriptures.
If you haven't encountered this set of notes of mine by a speaker from Scriptural Reasoning, I would venture to suggest you might find reading them (including the linked presentations) exciting.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-01-02 09:06 pm (UTC)The question about why all Muslims are violent misogynists was a few years ago; I admit that this year there was nothing quite that bad, but people were asking questions like "Is Mohammed an incarnation of God?" and "Is the Qur'an supposed to be the exact word of God?" Some of the speakers did handle this by asking people to ask questions about the specific texts at hand, not about Islam in general, but obviously there's some overlap.