Michael J. Radwin's blog

Time It Right™: home automation based on the Jewish Calendar

Time It Right™: home automation based on the Jewish Calendar looks pretty slick:

Never set another Shabbos clock! Introducing Time It Right™- the ultimate in home automation. Time It Right™ is the only home automation system with a built in Jewish calendar. Time It Right™ is custom scheduled around YOUR Zemanim and lifestyle, controlling your home according to your specific needs . Unlike other home automation systems, Time It Right™ adjusts your schedule for Shabbos and Yom Tov week by week, with no action from you, making it the ideal system for the Jewish home, Shul, or institution.

I wonder if they use Danny's hebcal for Unix app in their implementation.

Purim 5766: Two Hawaiians and a Lobster

Michael, Noam and Ariella at Purim last night. Noam is wearing a lobster costume that he borrowed from Madison Kirkland.

It's beginning to look a lot like Pesach

Photo taken at Mollie Stone's Market this morning.

Geek Guide to Kosher Machines

Wired 12.11: The Geek Guide to Kosher Machines. "Meet the hacker who makes your home appliances right with God."

[via Derek]

Chag Sukkot Sameach!

Sukkot starts tonight at sundown -- just 15 minutes from now! Hannah (who is visiting from LA) and Ariella decorated our sukkah today.

Chag Sameach!

Shana Tova!

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown.

Here's a cute 18-second video from Israel. (If you don't speak Hebrew, here's the gist: two worms are singing with joy because the apples are soaked in honey.)

Here's wishing you a sweet new year!

Westminster Leningrad Codex Tanach

I was reading YudelLine today and was intrigued by a pointer to The Internet Sacred Text Archive, and started following some links until I stumbled across the The Westminster Leningrad Codex (WLC) Tanach. It's an incredibly well-annotated copy of the Hebrew Bible, and this online copy is easy to navigate.

From a technological standpoint I've long been skeptical of XSLT and DHTML. They promise a lot of functionality but bring with them a ton of complexity, and I've never been convinced that the tradeoff was worth it. This is one of the first applications I've seen that's clearly more powerful than the good ol' 1994 Web (all of the logic on the server-side) but isn't too complex to understand. I need to stare at the code a bit to learn what they're doing, but on first glance it looks like really simple XML with a sprinkling of XSL and the sarissa Javascript library to control the display of parts of document at runtime.

Funny what you end up learning when you follow a few random links...

Real Food Daily goes kosher

Real Food Daily's restaurant in Beverly Hills is now certified kosher. Ariella and I went there for dinner last night and saw a statement of rabinnic supervision in the window.

Since they serve only 100% vegan food, RFD has always been "kosher by ingredient" in my personal opinion. Many people in the observant Jewish community will only eat in restaurants that have rabinnic supervision, so the fact that RFD is now certified kosher should open their cuisine to a wider audience.

Apparently they're also going to be opening a 4th store in Studio City, and are considering expanding to Northern California as well. Closest thing I can think of to compare it to is Herbivore in San Francisco.

Matzah time

Pesach starts in about 2.5 hours. I had a veggie tamale for lunch as my last bit of chametz/kitniyot. It was goooood.

Chag kasher v'sameach!

SBL Hebrew Font

The Society of Biblical Literature has made available a beta version of their SBL Hebrew Font. It's a very clean, versatile Unicode font:

It's distributed in OpenType TTF format, designed primarily for Win2000 and later, but you can also use it on MacOS X. However, since MacOS X (even version 10.3) does not yet support complex script (i.e. Hebrew) rendering as well as Windows does, your mileage may vary.

Chanukah in Santa Monica

I just received a rather amusing MP3 in my email today:

(I'm Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica (1.7 MB)

Turns out it's a Tom Lehrer song from 1990. Check out the lyrics. The Yom Kippah rhyme is a bit of a stretch, but I guess that's what they call poetic license. :-)

Related: check out today's Ask Yahoo! column: Why is the holiday Hanukkah spelled two different ways?

Joining the Sisterhood

A new anthology entitled Joining the Sisterhood: Young Jewish Women Write Their Lives went on sale this week.

One of the co-editors, Julie Pelc, is a friend of ours. She has been working on this book for several years. It's great news that it's finally available for sale!

Looks like it's initially availabe in hardcover, and will eventually be available in paperback.

Shana Tova u'Metuka!

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown.

I wish you and your family a year filled with sweetness, joy, success and good health. And make sure you eat lots of apples and honey!

Mazel Tov, Gabriel & Rachel!

Mazel Tov! The wedding was amazing.

The bubble tea was quite good, too!

Mesader Kiddushin

Tomorrow morning we're heading off to Minneapolis for the wedding of my dear friends Gabriel and Rachel.

I have been given the great kavod (honor) of being the mesader kiddushin, the person who performs the wedding ceremony. I've never done this before, but I've been reading up on it quite a bit the past couple of months. Words can't begin to describe how excited I am about being involved in such an important day in my friends' lives.

It's going to be a pretty traditional service, but with a couple of twists. I'm tempted to call Nicholas up to the chuppah in the middle of the ceremony and ask him to read some love poetry. :-)

The Baal Shem Tov said, "From every human being there rises a light that reaches straight to heaven. And when two souls that are destined to be together find each other, their streams of light flow together, and a single brighter light goes forth from their united being."

Hashivenu

Today is Tisha B'Av, a Jewish holy day. I choose to call it a "holy day" and not a "holiday" because it's a rather somber one.

Last night at shul we read from the book of Eicha (known in English as Lamentations) by candelight. Both the words and the melody are melancholy and sad.

The penultimate verse of the book is repeated, to end on a positive note.

השיבנו יהוה אליך ונשוב חדש ימינו כקדם
Bring us back to you God, and we shall return, renew our days as of old

In other words, "if we could go back to the way things were before this calamity struck, life would all be so much better." Right?

I'm not so sure. I think I'm stronger now than I was back then.

Maybe the times that we struggle aren't just a rough spot on the road to tranquility. Would we be who we are today without that struggle?

US Airways drops Kosher meals

US Airways has stopped serving Kosher meals in-flight. No veggie meals, either.

Instead of alienating the Jewish community (hey, we're probably a full 2% of their customer base!) maybe they should go with the Southwest model and stop serving in-flight meals altogether.

[via the yada, yada, yada blog]

LA Times 7-Day Protest

Seven Day Vacation Protesting the Los Angeles Times: July 7 - July 14.

Please join the boycott by calling the LA Times at 1-800-252-9141. Tell them that you are participating in a protest and would like to cancel your subscription for 7 days.

[via valley luach]

On Kitniyot and Passover

With only 52 hours left in this year's Passover holiday, I just got an email referencing Rabbi Golinkin's teshuvah about Eating Kitniyot (Legumes) on Pesach.

It was written almost 15 years ago, yet people here in the Diaspora (outside of Israel) continue to discuss it year after year as if it's breaking news.

Unfortunately for us, the teshuvah applies only to Jews living in Israel.

Back in the connected world

After two days of chag and a day of Shabbos, I'm back online again. That three day respite was great, even if it meant that I had 200 new messages in my Inbox.

We hosted a wonderful seder on the first night, enjoyed a relaxing first day of chag (and an impromptu lunch with a few friends), followed by a delicious (for the body and brain) second seder at Andrea and Aryeh's that went until 2:30 in the morning. We slept in on Friday, had lunch with Rob & Lamelle, took a nap, and went to dinner at Cheryl's house. Saturday felt like a normal Shabbos, except that Kiddush consisted of matzah and vegetables instead of the usual cookies, crackers and chummus.

It's hard to believe, but Pesach is almost halfway over already!

Burn, baby, burn!

On the morning of Erev Pesach, we burned all of the chametz that we discovered the night before.

Pesach Kashering

On the day before Erev Pesach, we kashered the kitchen and searched the house for chametz. Hannah came over to help clean the kitchen and cover the countertops with contact paper:

Here we are "discovering" some challah and setting it aside for the next morning:

The Counting of the Homer

This year, count the Omer with Homer!

The Homer Calendar is an interactive guide to counting the omer, with Homer Simpson. The site has printable calendars for each of the seven weeks of the omer, along with a 1-page calendar showing all 49 days of the count. The site also features background on the omer ritual, a slide show on Jewish life in the Simpsons' hometown of Springfield, links to other Jewish Simpsons sites and more.

(From a spam message that I actually found useful)

Mmmm... Quinoa

Jeff at work bumped into me in the hallway and asked if cous cous could be eaten on Pesach. He was bummed to find out that it's made from semolina, so it's a no-go.

I tipped him off to quinoa, which he had never heard of. It's yummy, similar in size to cous cous, and it's kosher l'Pesach, too!

Pesach is right around the corner. We're going to be busy kashering the house on Sunday.

Purim photos from last night

Photos from last night's Purim 5763 celebration at the Shtibl Minyan are now available online.

As promised, it was a rockin' good time.

Purim 5763 Tonight!

Tonight's Purim Spiel at the Shtibl Minyan is gonna be a rockin' good time. We've written 11 sketches.

Rosh Chodesh Adar II

Today is Rosh Chodesh Adar II, the beginning of the happiest month of the Jewish year.

משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה
Mishe-nichnas Adar, marbim b'simcha
When Adar enters, our joy increases (Ta'anit 29a).

Purim falls on March 17th this year. That's right, same as St. Patrick's day. I'm looking forward to some cross-cultural drunken debauchery.

The Shtibl Minyan Purim celebration is sure to be huge again this year.

Shekhina on the mind this week

Leonard Nimoy

I made my way to Sinai Temple this past Sunday to hear Leonard Nimoy speak about his new book Shekhina, a "photographic essay" of the feminine side of God. Nimoy spoke eloquently, told some great stories about growing up Jewish in Boston, and spoke about photography, his hobby/passion since the 1970's. During the talk, he displayed a couple dozen photographs from his book, narrating a spiritual journey as his relationship with God developed and deepened. After speaking for about 40 minutes, answered some questions from Rabbi Wolpe and the audience. It turns out that the model on cover of the book wearing tefillin isn't Jewish.

It turns out that Nimoy is full of yiddishkeit; he's not some Kabbalah faker like Madonna or Rosie. Yasher Koach to Steve Silverman from the Sinai Mens' Club for organizing the event and introducing us to a real mentsch. The Seattle Jewish Federation made a big mistake in asking him not to speak. Despite the controversy surrounding his book, they missed out on an opportunity to learn that this man is much, much more than Mr. Spock.

Niggunim with Reb Mimi

Last night, a dozen folks from the Shtibl Minyan spent an hour and a half with Reb Mimi learning melodies for Shacharit and Musaf. Since every time Jews get together is an opportunity for learning, she started with a brief shiur. We read a commentary on Parashat Kedoshim that said that when a community comes together l'shem shemayim (in the name of Heaven), the Shekhina is present, and that it is our responsibility to create a kli (vessel) for that presence. What an awesome responsibility. Can you imagine? The mere gathering of ten people creates the presence of God. I've always taken davening pretty seriously, but this makes the endeavor all the more important.

Many of the melodies we learned came from Reb Shlomo Carlebach z"l; others were Hassidic tunes from Yakar in Jerusalem. Some were haunting and melancholy. All were beautiful.

A couple of people brought tape recorders, and Chaim is planning to burn some CDs so we can learn the melodies well enough to sing them in shul.

I'll be leading the minyan in Shacharit this Saturday. Even if I don't get to include some of the new melodies I learned, my kavannah will be greatly enhanced knowing that Shekhina is there.

Leonard Nimoy, photographer extraordinare

Saw this ad in the Jewish Journal today:

LEONARD NIMOY goes where no man has gone before. Join him on a voyage towards SHEKHINA

Live at Sinai Temple on Feb. 23, 2003 Leonard Nimoy will present his new book and dialogue with Rabbi David Wolpe.

At least he's Jewish. There are a few Hollywood celebs who study at the Kabbalah Centre just a few blocks from my home, and I'm not even sure if they're Jewish. Heck, they probably aren't even 40.

Plant a tree in memory of Ilan Ramon

A couple of weeks ago, before the Space Shuttle launch, Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon had a televised conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. He said,

"I call upon every Jew in the world to plant a tree in the land of Israel during the coming year. I would like to see at least 13 or 14 million new trees planted in Israel exactly one year from now, on the anniversary of the [Columbia] launching. Here in space we are keeping busy and I would like to thank everyone."

Posted on the Jewish National Fund website this week:

It is with much sorrow and a deep sense of commitment to the legacy of Israeli Astronaut Ilan Ramon and his fellow Columbia crew members that we send you this email today. It seems unbelievable that only one week ago we emailed you with Mr. Ramon's request to have "13 or 14 million new trees planted in Israel exactly one year from now, on the anniversary of the [Columbia] launching." To fulfill this dream and the requests from many of our supporters worldwide, JNF is coordinating a global effort to plant trees throughout Israel, including on Airforce Bases.

It's a mitzvah opportunity. And as my friend Chaim says, it's "a fitting tribute to a man who has personally seen more trees in one glance than most people on earth will see in their lives."

Mishe-nichnas Adar...

Today is Rosh Chodesh Adar I. Since Purim is right around the corner, this is supposed to be a very happy time, but something seems terribly off in the universe. Part of me really just wants to block out the rest of the world and just sing the song of the season:

משנכנס אדר מרבים בשמחה
Mishe-nichnas Adar, marbim b'simcha
When Adar enters, our joy increases (Ta'anit 29a).

But it's tinged with all sorts of sadness. Yesterday's space shuttle tragedy stands out foremost in my mind, but I'm also reminded of the matzav in Israel. Every time I hear that song, I'm reminded of the wonderful time we had at ulpan in the spring of 2000, when peace seemed imminent. (Six months later everything went to hell.)

We visited our friend Julie in the hospital today. She's recovering from some really serious surgery. Thank God she's alive. But she's got several months (if not years) of physical theraphy ahead of her as she learns how to use her body again. Can you imagine learning to walk again in your mid-twenties?

I'm also bouncing back and forth between apathy and anxiety over the inevitable war with Iraq. Part of me thinks it's a pointless political move, part of me really wants vengeance, and most of me is downright scared about the possibility of soliders coming home in body bags. Our friends in Israel have their gas masks and drinking water ready.

As my friend Rachel said yesterday, Rosh Chodesh -- the New Moon -- is always the darkest time of the month. But as the moon returns, night by night, the brightness increases. God willing, the coming month will bring more brightness than darkness.

70% considered low voter turnout?

Israeli polls opened about half an hour ago (they're voting for Prime Minister). There's little doubt that incumbent Ariel Sharon will beat Amram Mitzna in the election. The cover of last week's Los Angeles Jewish Journal put it bluntly: Sure, He'll Win the Election. But Can He Make Peace?

Skimming Ha'aretz for some news on the matter, I saw this:

An unprecedented number of undecided voters in Monday's final public opinion polls indicate a possible turnout as low as 70 percent. [Ha'aretz]

Seventy percent is low? In the USA, we'd consider that superb. I guess when your very survival is at stake, people really get out the vote.

Hebcal blog

I have started keeping a separate blog for my Hebcal Interactive Jewish Calendar Tools website.

Hebcal by Phone beta

Well, it turns out it wasn't that hard. After just a couple of hours of playing around with VoiceXML, I managed to create a Tellme extension that works.

1. Call Tellme at 1-800-555-TELL


2. Say extensions


3. Dial 00613


4. Dial or say your 5-digit zipcode


5. Listen to the candle-lighting times for your area

If you want to see my VoiceXML code, check out shabbat.vxml (the main voice menu) and see the CGI-generated results for 90210.

Next thing to do would be to write a Tellme extension that reads my email for me. Actually, looks like the guy who invented Bugzilla has already done that.

VoiceXML for Hebcal

I just thought of a new project for my Jewish Calendar website. I want to create a Tellme extension so people can call an 800 number to get candle-lighting times.

Over the past 4 years, I have used my hebcal.com site as an experimental test-bed for various web technologies. It all started when I wanted to learn Perl CGI.pm, so I created a web interface to the hebcal for Unix command-line app. Then I decided to add hebrew text, so I had to study up on Unicode and UTF-8. I even decided to learn PHP by adding an email subscription feature (might've been a little easier if I had written it in Perl like the rest of the website, but I wanted to learn a new language).

One particularly useful part of the website is the Shabbat Candle Lighting Times section (which tells you when the Jewish Sabbath begins each week). In addition to the regular HTML output, I have created JavaScript, WML, and even RSS versions of the same content.

The next obvious format to support would be VoiceXML. It looks pretty easy to hook into Tellme Studio so people could get candle-lighting times by telephone when they're travelling. Instructions could be as simple as:

1. Call Tellme at 1-800-555-TELL


2. Say extensions


3. Dial 00613


4. Dial or say your 5-digit zipcode


5. Listen to the candle-lighting times for your area

No fancy WAP-enabled cellphone needed. No clumsy embedded browser interface. Just a normal 12-button telephone and your voice.

Just gotta find the time to code the thing. It'll probably get done before other ten hebcal feature requests that are in the queue.

Chanukah joke

A woman went to the post office to buy stamps for her Chanukah cards. She said to the clerk, "May I please have 50 Chanukah stamps?"

The clerk asked, "What denomination?"

The woman replied, "O my G-d, has it come to this? O.K. - give me 1 Haredi, 2 Hasidim, 8 Orthodox, 12 Conservative, 16 Reform, 7 Reconstructionist and 4 Humanistic."

Thanksgiving and Chanukah back-to-back

I'm quoted in today's issue of Newsday in an article entitled Twice As Much Stuffing: Hearty appetites will be thankful for back-to-back holiday feasts.

The story, written by Erica Marcus, is entertaining and well-researched. She even spoke to my favorite Jewish Holidays expert: Rabbi Michael Strassfeld (author of The Jewish Holidays: A Guide & Commentary).

My quotation is at the very bottom of the article:

Michael Radwin disputed the contention that "Hanukkah is early this year." "Hanukkah always begins on the 25th of Kislev," he said. "It's November that's late."

I actually need to credit Ariella with that line. It's more clever than anything I could come up with.

Cool beans. I wonder if Danny and I will get any more PayPal donations as a result of the article.

Israelis love "West Wing"

We have many friends living in Israel this year. Last year we used to have a regular gathering on Wednesday evenings to watch The West Wing on our projection TV.

Now they've gotta wait months for someone to send 'em a tape from the States. They recently got together to watch a couple of hours and sent us this digital photo.

We'll send 'em another tape soon. In the meantime, I can hardly wait for this week's episode:

"Swiss Diplomacy" The Iranian leader makes a secret request of Bartlet to allow his son to be flown to the United States for life-saving surgery.

I sure miss my friends.

Torahthon: the Zealotry of Pinchas

The second session I attended at Temple Beth Am's Torahthon was Dr. Ron Reisberg's class on "The Zealotry of Pinchas". He advertised the title of his session as "Good Tefila, Bad Tefila", but acknowledged at the beginning of his teaching that he decided to change the subject. Instead, much to my pleasant surprise, we did a little bit of Talmud study.

We read the story of Pinchas from Numbers 25 in English translation and made sure everyone in the group understood the story. We then moved on to the Gemara and read the Rabbis' interpolation of the story to understand whether Pinchas was justified in his actions and whether we could extrapolate any halachic lessons from the story.

Reisberg made the argument that the Rabbis were trying to limit the applicability of the story to the narrowest case so as to discourage religious zealotry. I was reminded of this other discussion in the Gemara about the rebellious son who is supposed to be put to death for disobeying his parents. In short, the Rabbis found this story from the Torah objectionable, but they did not dismiss it. Instead of contradicting the text, they simply applied it as narrowly as possible, claiming that a child could be put to death under only the very specific conditions mentioned in the Torah. After much discussion, the punch line goes something like "There has never been such a son, and there will never be such a son." In other words, the Rabbis couldn't admit that the Torah was wrong, but since they felt that capital punishment was inappropriate for a disobedient son (no matter how extreme) they had to neuter the story so that it simply couldn't apply in any real case.

In understanding the story of Pinchas, Rabbis similarly try to limit the situations in which religious zealotry is allowed. They can't dismiss it outright, because the Torah explains that God is pleased with Pinchas and makes him a member of the priesthood. But the Rabbis explain that the murder of Zimri and Cozbi is justified because it was the manifestation of God's jealousy. Had the killings taken place after Zimri had slept with Cozbi it would have been an unjustified act of revenge; the fact that Pinchas killed them during the act is what makes Pinchas righteous and not a murderer.

I know there are the makings of a good drash here, but I can't quite get into it. In my book, zealotry is just plain wrong. Unlike the Rabbis of the Gemara I have the luxury of being able to say that Hashem made a mistake. Pinchas should not have been praised because murder, even if for the "right" reasons, is always wrong.

Torahthon: Shema for Beginners

Ariella and I went to an evening of learning called "Torahthon" tonight at Temple Beth Am. Rabbi Mitch Malkus from the Pressman Academy lined up about 20 great minds from the greater Los Angeles Jewish Community (mostly Conservative rabbis and professors) to teach some short classes to the community.

The two sessions I attended were amazing. I went to Rabbi Avi Havivi's "Shema for Beginners" section first, where we explored what the 3 (or 4, depending on how you look at it) parts of the Shema are trying to convey. We probably spent a full 10 minutes talking about what we weren't going to talk about (the blessing before and after the Shema, the meaning of the paragraphs when looked at in context from where they were taken from the Torah, the ritual choreography involved in reciting the Shema). I learned more than I expected. It will be a huge boost to my kavanah when I recite the Shema next (which ought to be tonight when I go to bed, but we'll see about that).

One of the most interesting things we talked about was the "Adonai Echad" component of the first sentence. Sure, there is the usual perspective of monotheism vs. polytheism which probably made a lot of sense during biblical times and maybe even when the liturgy was being canonized. But the most interesting suggestion that Rabbi Havivi made was that the Echad was referring to God's uniqueness. To paraphrase, God is unique, a singleton, in a category all by God's self, and the One-ness of God cannot be compared to any human experience we might try to understand.

In storytelling, we use metaphors to understand God, but we're aware that these are merely tools to help us humans understand the Divine. We recall that God led the Israelites out of Egypt "with a mighty outstretched arm" but of course we know that God doesn't actually have an arm. Similarly, at various points in Tanach we conceive of God as having love, anger, or jealousy, but God doesn't actually have any of these emotions, at least not the way we understand them as humans experience them. Similarly, God's uniqueness cannot be compared to the way we think of individuals being unique. God is the one any only member of a set.

As a computer scientist, I could say that this all appeals to me so naturally and intuitively, with set theory and discrete mathematics and all. But it works for me on a spiritual level as well.

hebcal.com wins an award

My hebcal.com website was selected as one of the Top 10 Sites for 2002 by the Jewish Agency for Israel.

It was kinda fun. They sent me an email saying that I had one the award, and sure enough, I went to their site to read the review. I was tickled pink. Saying that hebcal.com is graphics-sparse is a real compliment.