Thursday/Friday – Day 6
October 3, 2012
These two days marked the low point of my health on the trip so far. With a racking cough and rain outside to complement, I painfully worked my way through these two days. Highlights included a mixer with Penn Dance at the Glouse (Glee Club House). The Glouse is the residence of a few senior members of the Glee Club who have devoted it to worshiping the history of the club and its traditions. The Annenberg Center for Performing Arts, where all students groups perform their shows has a policy that each group gets one full performance and one shared performance free of charge in the space, due to demand and costs, per year. Thus, traditionally the Glee Club shares its fall show with Penn Dance, a group that is what it sounds to be. Aside from shared rehearsals, there are a limited number of social events that take place in order to try to integrate the two different student groups. This one was a house party like any other, only Glee Club members were banned from singing in the fear that we might intimidate the girls. Forrest, one of the other Newmen consumed his fair share of drinks that evening and was trying to convince me to adventure and ‘find the Penn Dance girls’ who at that point had left. I responded with ‘run Forrest, run’ at which point he bolted out the front door.
Other than that, college has settled into something of a routine, with my twenty hours of rehearsal and more of study a week, adding up to give me very little free time!
Chassidic Philosophers
September 30, 2012
I have decided to use this space not only to post updates on what I’ve been doing but also to post the odd article or two. In this case, an article on Chassidic Jews rebelling against their communities to study philosophy in secret: Spinoza in Shtreimels
To use the provided blurb:
This past Sunday, philosophy professor Carlos Fraenkel wrote in the New York Times that “the cultural relativism that often underlies Western multicultural agendas [is] a much greater obstacle to a culture of debate than religion.” Today, in an exclusive preview from the Fall issue of the Jewish Review of Books, Fraenkel relates how his theory fared among a group of Hasidim, who gathered secretly to study secular philosophy—an activity their community views as “much worse than having an extramarital affair or going to a prostitute.”
Yom Kippur – Day 62
September 28, 2012
Today I woke up feeling a little worse for the wear, and made it to shul (synagogue) at roughly 10AM, well after the 8:30 start. As could be expected, the majority of the day was spent in prayer, and much to my disappointment most of the tunes were different from those that I had previously heard, forcing me to learn new ones quickly.
In the afternoon I had a brief meeting with Joel Wittwer, the USA Exchange Adviser from the University of Melbourne, who was visiting for a few hours, in order to a) plan my future studies at Penn and b) help encourage Penn students to attend the University of Melbourne on exchange. Aviva Kolosky came with me, and by the time the session finished, we were both so tired that we decided to go for a short walk before returning to mincha/neilah.
Breaking the fast after shule was so so, with the food at the Hillel for once not being so excellent. Thus, afterwards, I made a little sandwich in my room and worked for a few hours before falling exhausted to sleep again.