Crit

5 Thoughts: Re-re-RE-Viewings

0. THERE ARE FILMS THAT YOU see once and say, “Meh.” Then there are others which grab hold of and mold your psyche in unexpected ways; movies that cry out “Watch me!” and require repeated viewings to grok in fullness — films that, while deep enough on their own, reveal new depths as the viewer grows with life-experience. Here are five to which I return every couple of years to measure myself.

1. Casablanca. Perhaps the greatest movie ever made, it has everything — romance, intrigue, honor, superb acting / writing / directing, Humphrey Bogart. Who doesn’t want to watch Bogie go from cynic to idealist and wind up fighting Nazis with someone he barely trusts?

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Crit

Words to Bring Back: “Chary”

– Definition: adj. cautiously or suspiciously reluctant to do something.

– Used in a sentence: Due to long experience, my cat is no longer chary of taking his arthritis medicine.

– Why: I suppose you could always use the synonymic rhyme “wary,” but to me “chary” sounds similar to “charity” — and it’s sometimes prudent to be so when offered something for nothing.

Crit, Torah

Literal Myths

DOES IT MATTER WHETHER OR not our sacred writings are historically accurate?

This question comes up every year at our synagogue Torah study, as people go to great lengths to try and explain the fantastical events of the text, especially the Book of Exodus, by relating them to natural events. Somebody is bound to mention that the Nile’s fish were killed by a blood-red tide, that locust swarms were a common (and in the Torah’s case, well-timed) occurrence, that Mount Sinai was a volcano, etc., etc., etc.

I feel that these good-natured and well-intentioned attempts at explanations may be unnecessarily missing the point. My own point of view is that what matters is the story.

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Crit

First Graf(s): The New Hacker’s Dictionary

THE DEFINITION OF “HACKER” HEREIN is “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary.” In 2019, we have all sorts of hackers — computer hackers, life hackers, biohackers, mindhackers — all trying to understand, implement, and twiddle with hidden qualities and little-known or -understood features of whatever it is they’re hacking.

The New Hacker’s Dictionary, adapted from and AKA “The Jargon File,” got its start in 1975 as a text file (accessible by what your Grandpa used to call “FTP“) shared over networks by the original (computer) hackers.

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Torah

Minute Mitzvah: Put It Back

Today: Return lost items.

Explanation: The Talmud tells us that an item is only and truly “lost” when its owner despairs of its return. Your job is to not let that happen. Granted, this is one of those mitzvot which depends for its fulfillment on specific circumstances — but to a certain degree, don’t they all?

Exercise: If you find someone’s missing property, and there’s no identifying name or address, place it conspicuously near where you found it; the person it’s attached to may come looking for it. If this is not feasible, take it to your local police station.

Torah

365 Names of God: “The Light of Eternal Mind”

THE LIGHT OF ETERNAL MIND is how Moses (Charlton Heston) described G?d to Zipporah (Yvonne DeCarlo) and Joshua (John Derek) after seeing the Burning Bush in Cecil B. DeMille’s at-times unintentionally amusing but classic The Ten Commandments. It’s a potent descriptor not taught in Sunday School (my childhood one, anyway) but perhaps ought to have been — G?d as endless, boundaryless consciousness: omniscient, non-dual, mystical, essential. The screenwriters could have taken a more anthropomorphic route and had Moses say “All-Father,” “King of Kings,” “Eternal Our God” or the like. But instead, they went for the genderless, formless Mystery. Well played, C. B. Well played.

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