In case you were wondering, here is the link to Tractate Laundry .
Alas, I neither have the Star Trek Talmud parody on my computer nor can I find it online. I did come across some other bizarre Talmud parodies, but none of them seemed worth sharing. Feel free to Google all you like and let me know if you find it.
In the footsteps of such classic Talmud parodies as Masechet Laundry and Tractate Star Trek, here’s a lost Talmudic tractate that answers age-old rabbinic questions about the appropriate way for Jews to fully accomplish the obligations associated with eating Chinese food on December 24th/25th.
And since a good Talmud student always quotes her authorities, I thank Rabbi Rick Brody and Rabbi Rachael Kobrin.
With my previous novels, I have tried to be careful about my plotting with regard to time passing. In other words, no 12 month pregnancies, no traveling from Sura to Sepphoris in less than two weeks, no women giving birth before age 12 or after age 50, etc. One reader recently caught me on this type of error, although none of my editors did. But I’m not publicizing my mistake, merely admitting that I am not infallible. I have also used an online universal Jewish calendar to make sure that my characters observed Shabbat and the Jewish holidays at the appropriate time, despite my doubts that such a calendar is accurate for years so long ago.
But as I write my way through the first year of “Rav Hisda’s Daughter: Book 2,” I’ve had to go beyond my usual efforts in order to avoid potential conflicts. My heroine Hisdadukh is training as an enchantress, so she is precluded from writing amulets or incantation bowls on Shabbat, as well as on Third Day [Tuesday], which is ruled by Mars, or while she is menstruating. To deal with this, I prepared a Jewish calendar for the year 4060 and marked out the weeks when she would have been ritually impure. [Spoiler alert!] Of course this also impacts her relationship with hero Rava, especially in determining appropriate betrothal and wedding dates.
Rava has his own set of constraints, as he’s in court on Second and Fifth Day. In addition he must return to Machoza every third Shabbat to ‘visit’ his wife there, thus necessitating a three-day absence every three weeks. It’s well that I was good at math in college, because it has been far more complicated than I’d anticipated to choreograph my characters’ actions so that they get done what I need them to while not violating the rules above.
I understand. You’re thinking ‘OK, Maggie has been busy promoting Book 1 of RAV HISDA’S DAUGHTER, traveling all over the country, speaking to lots of Jewish groups, teaching Talmud and blogging about it. But is she doing any writing? What’s happening with Book 2?’
I am pleased, and relieved, to say that I am working on the first draft, and am currently in the midst of Chapter 8. This is actually a somewhat faster pace than Book 1, where I didn’t get to Chapter 9 until March 2011. I’m determined to be a more dedicated writer during these four weeks without speaking gigs, although I must admit that cross-country plane trips are an unparalleled opportunity to write for 5 hours without interruption.
As I’ve said before, my difficulty with writing at home is that for the first draft, as opposed to editing, I need a good 2-3 hour stretch of time to finish a scene. Unfortunately, there are so many disruptions and distractions during the day. These tend to disappear at night, but I’ve found that if I start writing then, I know I won’t be able to sleep until the scene is complete. I’ve learned from experience that if I go to bed in before then, I’ll just toss and turn thinking about what I’m going to write next. So I may as well stay up and get it over with, since most days I can sleep as late as necessary.
I thought I’d finished with this year’s teaching about Hanukah, but I just learned something I’d never heard before. Previously I blogged about how it was the Talmudic Rabbis who “invented” the story of the jar of pure oil that was only enough for one day’s worth of lighting the menorah in the rededicated Temple, yet a miracle happened and it lasted for eight nights. Well, apparently some of the Rabbis wanted a better precedent for eight nights of festival lights, and came up with the story [Bavli Avodah Zarah 8a] saying that Adam celebrated some proto-Hanukah festivals at the dawn of Creation, which were later adopted by idolaters as Saturnalia, eight days before the winter solstice, and Kalenda, eight days after the winter solstice.
Here’s the text: “Our rabbis taught: Adam saw that the days were getting shorter, and he said, “Oy! Perhaps because I sinned, the world is getting dark, and returning to chaos, and this is the death that was decreed upon me by heaven.” He stood and waited eight days in fasting [and prayer]. When he saw the Tevet [winter] solstice, and he saw that the days were growing longer, he said, “This is the way of the world.” He went and he made an eight day festival. The next year he made these [Kalenda] and these [Saturnalia] into holidays. He/Adam established them for the sake of Heaven and they/Romans established them for idolatry.
I can’t believe I’ve studied Talmud for 20 years and never learned this Baraita before, but then that’s why I’m still at it, because there’s always something new to discover there. Here’s more on why we celebrate Hanukah, from the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem.
I happen to be home for a few hours between speaking at the WLCJ [Women’s League of Conservative Judaism – aka Sisterhood] national convention in Las Vegas and heading off to Boston to speak at their JCC. For the WLCJ I did three programs about how I came to write “Rav Hisda’s Daughter” after being a clinical chemist for over 30 years and what I learned about Jewish women’s lives in 3rd-century Babylonia while researching it. I think they were quite successful, as I sold lots of books and met women from all over No. America who will hopefully invite me to speak at the synagogues. It’s an intense schedule, and I’m looking forward to relaxing at home the rest of the month.
On an unrelated subject, I cam across an interesting article about another aspect of Jewish life where women are excluded from opportunities that men enjoy – that of working as a ‘mashgiach'. For those unfamiliar with the Hebrew term, it refers to a Jew who supervises the kashrut status of a kosher establishment. According to Wikipedia both men and women may qualify, but oddly – considering that the kitchen has always been a woman’s domain - that is not the case in Israel.
I must admit that I am particularly interested in this topic because my son Ari works as a mashgiach at a kosher restaurant in Phoenix, a job he found within weeks of returning from a year’s yeshiva study in Jerusalem. It’s quite an interesting job, as you can see from the following article. It certainly qualified him to oversee my kitchen on Thanksgiving, enabling me to spend much of the day relaxing outside reading instead cooking.