πάσχειν γάρ τι τὸ μανθάνειν ἀτεχνῶς ἐστι

Last night, I heard Hisda start to fuss, and so I picked him up from the crib (which is right beside me) and began to nurse him. Then suddenly I heard crying -- from the crib. I woke up and realised that my entire reaction had been a dream.

I dreamt that an ex-boyfriend, who in reality is extremely anti-religious, had a change of heart and called me to help him prepare festive meal for the tree holiday. I went over to help him cook and saw underdone eggs sitting in a pot. I turned on the burner. A few minutes later, the pot was foaming and spitting up scum. He came and shouted, "Now I lost all those eggs!" I said, "Calm down, I'll buy you a new carton." "It took my five hours to boil those eggs!" I said, "If it took you five hours, you were doing something very wrong anyway." He continued to be furious. As he shouted, I looked around his kitchen and saw it hadn't been kashered properly anyway, so I left.

Later in the dream I ran into a woman with no basis in reality, who told me that the Sanhedrin coerced confessions from people in order to put them to death. I told her that this was impossible, since confessions are never admissable evidence under Jewish law, even in the best circumstances (true). She thought this was interesting and took me to show me something in a second-hand bookstore. "It's in here," she said, opening a little iron door, which looked a little like a wood oven door. I woke up.

***

Today I wrote a mezuzah requested by someone who wanted to give it (along with an appropriate box) as a wedding present. In order to fit the box, I wrote it on smaller parchment than I am used to:



Now that I look at it, it isn't very small at all, but it felt like it at the time. I have to get used to writing well at smaller and smaller sizes if I am going to write good tefilin (which I very much would like to do). A big picture of the mezuzah scaled on Torah writing instead of my hand is here. Some disappointments include lack of neatness in a few lines and a crunched lamedh, but the writing is still better than many mezuzoth I have seen (unfortunately).

Slang warning on the Avenyn (major street near where I live). "Slang" means hose or pipe (it had been placed over the sidewalk as part of some construction work) and is seemingly related to shlong.



Sign in an elevator. I thought Israel had the most gruesome warning signs, but no.



First few lines of Shir HaShirim written on גויל.

Life continues to degrade in ways predictable and unexpected.

I studied the work of a particular Darda'i sofer, Moshe Tsarum, and picked up parts of his writing which I liked. This is from the fourth correct mezuzah I wrote since I've been here (and the final one required for the flat).



( Another illustration for the book of Daniel )

We forgot our mezuzoth in the disorganisation of getting here, so now I'm writing them, the only problem being not enough materials to write on or with. Consequently I'm having to cut up bits of gewil that were clearly not intended for text of this size. Here's one that failed due to a missing letter (some letters which look mashed-up or weirdly-shaped here are actually fine if you see them closer, as smudges blend in to the hide colour... this was not the cleanest piece of gewil in the world).



So that's a few hours of my life wasted. At least a couple of days ago I did manage to finish one that works, although I started with what turned out to be completely the wrong size of writing and everything seems so bubbly: