A quick note to DrTamar, as we move into Shabbat HaGadol and, hence, Pesah (I don't have my phone set up for Hebrew/English switch backs.)
I finally (last evening) took out a year's subscription to your work online. I did not realize until after the fact that you and your family are packing right now to make aliyah. I'm surprised by my response and want to tell you that I'm bursting with pride and thanksgiving for your fate-full decision, especially in this year of immense turmoil and collective suffering in 'EretsYisra'el. No longer is it before-and-after September 11th. For your generation especially, it's now before-and-after the Simchat-Torah-that-wasn't last October 7th. Your making aliyah is putting me in a place of sweet remembering when taking a Columbia PhD (1990, Bancroft Award winner) and my studies the first three years at JTS, with Ed Greenstein (Edward L.) and Moshe Held, z"l, and at a nodding distance informally with David Weiss Halivni, z"l, and some others in Midrashim. I make mention to you especially about Greenstein, because he made aliyah in the early 1980s, and Weiss Halivni in the mid-1990s. Giants. All of them. As a scholar and lover of HaTorah, you ennoble your scholarly antecedents such as these of the first order, in my opinion. Thank you for carefully tending your great gifts, even as you extend them freely to those of like heart and mind through technologies of access I did not imagine at the time of my doctoral work in the 1980s. My sincere congratulations and personal appreciation for you and your family's faith-full, courageous decision in this American-&-Israeli season of trials we've not witnessed prior to this time. I write in a year when I shall turn 70, entering my 8th decade. My work is now as much as a watcher, a shomer, as it is a scholar of Bible and related fields of fruitful intellectual labors. By writing this note, DrT, my desire is to thank you and ENCOURAGE you in your chosen-and-called path of your lifetime, with many more years---G-d willing---to come. Wishing you and all of your family Hag Pesach Sameach. ~dvm
A quick note to DrTamar, as we move into Shabbat HaGadol and, hence, Pesah (I don't have my phone set up for Hebrew/English switch backs.)
I finally (last evening) took out a year's subscription to your work online. I did not realize until after the fact that you and your family are packing right now to make aliyah. I'm surprised by my response and want to tell you that I'm bursting with pride and thanksgiving for your fate-full decision, especially in this year of immense turmoil and collective suffering in 'EretsYisra'el. No longer is it before-and-after September 11th. For your generation especially, it's now before-and-after the Simchat-Torah-that-wasn't last October 7th. Your making aliyah is putting me in a place of sweet remembering when taking a Columbia PhD (1990, Bancroft Award winner) and my studies the first three years at JTS, with Ed Greenstein (Edward L.) and Moshe Held, z"l, and at a nodding distance informally with David Weiss Halivni, z"l, and some others in Midrashim. I make mention to you especially about Greenstein, because he made aliyah in the early 1980s, and Weiss Halivni in the mid-1990s. Giants. All of them. As a scholar and lover of HaTorah, you ennoble your scholarly antecedents such as these of the first order, in my opinion. Thank you for carefully tending your great gifts, even as you extend them freely to those of like heart and mind through technologies of access I did not imagine at the time of my doctoral work in the 1980s. My sincere congratulations and personal appreciation for you and your family's faith-full, courageous decision in this American-&-Israeli season of trials we've not witnessed prior to this time. I write in a year when I shall turn 70, entering my 8th decade. My work is now as much as a watcher, a shomer, as it is a scholar of Bible and related fields of fruitful intellectual labors. By writing this note, DrT, my desire is to thank you and ENCOURAGE you in your chosen-and-called path of your lifetime, with many more years---G-d willing---to come. Wishing you and all of your family Hag Pesach Sameach. ~dvm