Kids! Choose-My-Adventure!

FOR THE FIRST TIME ANYWHERE, we at Metaphorager.Net are offering the opportunity to influence the next Prosatio Silban Story (Gosh!) titled “Final Kindness,” potentially altering the course of the entire chapter (Golly!), if not the novel of which it’s a part (Wow!). Here’s how to play: Simply opine upon one of the follwing ledes (and [...]

Continued on page 804

Three Pasta Variations

ANN LIKES FETTUCINI, I LIKE angel hair. We compromise, but where she tosses hers with broccoli and cheese I prefer a more piquant accompanage. For the last two nights (and, at this writing and G?d willing, tonight), my preference has been/is to begin with a base of olive oil and garlic. (The secret is to [...]

Continued on page 800

Who is this Prosatio Silban, and What Does He Want?

THESE FABLES CONNECT A NEED to tell a particular story with a near-lifelong habit of worldbuilding. They are self-contained excerpts from a picaresque novel-in-progress titled Around the Rimless Sea: Mystic Fables for Religious Misfits, and though set as fantasies, the Prosatio Silban fables are intended for anyone seeking the Divine in a day job, so [...]

Continued on page 779

Wit Dealers

Fan Boy, Writing Comments (0)

TERSE WORDSMITHS, ATTEND: WEIRD TALES, that neo-venerable publication whose pages were graced by the first fruits of H.P. Lovecraft and Tennessee Williams, is currently accepting submissions for One Minute Weird Tales, which they describe as “sharp little micro-stories of 20 to 150 words, presented in a quick sequence of brief one-screen chunks.” (See more at http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/contact/submission-guidelines/; AC, RS and DH, ferstehen?)

Neal @ March 11, 2010

This Week In Torah: Vayak’hel/Pekudei

Mine Torah, Traditionings Comments (0)

VAYAK’HEL/PEKUDEI (Exodus 35:1-40:38; haftarot I Kings 7:51-8:21 and, because Nisan starts on Tuesday making this a special Rosh Chodesh Shabbat, Ezekiel 45:16-46:18) WRAPS UP THE BOOK of Exodus by building the Tabernacle: the traveling God-tent whose structure and contents are so lovingly detailed in the previous four portions. After making certain that all the parts are laid out and accounted for, Moses proceeds to assemble the people’s manifold contributions into a single coherent whole — after which “the kavod (honor, glory, gravitas) of Adonai filled the Tabernacle.”

At the beginning of Vayakhel, God asks Moses to assemble “the generous-hearted … the wise-hearted … all of the Israelite community” — the distinction being that the generous provide the materials and the wise shape them into meaning. Earlier commentators might see this “those who can, do — those who can’t, contribute” metaphor as a prooftext for community support of Torah scholars (or one’s synagogue!). But another meaning might be that building the sacred — especially sacred community — requires each member to provide the raw ingredients and wrestle them into place; to be and to become; bumping along together, shaping each other and being shaped into something that (we hope) looks a little more like God than it did before.

Shavua tov, gut woch and have a nice week,

Reb Neal (from our synagogue e-letter)

Neal @ March 8, 2010