Spring is here!

I am sorry for being so out of touch and out of the blogosphere. I have simply been resting and working on other projects that needed my complete attention. But, since I returned to school yesterday, I think I should also reinitiate my blogging routine. So, first, some updates.

Thank you to all that participated in the poll. After a lot of thought, I opted to use the "sh" despite the arguments for the phonetic symbol. After all, this siddur is intended for learners and I do not want to confuse them. As for the iterations, I decided to keep the sh and place a period between the iterated shins, like so: ish.she.

The second update. About three weeks ago we went hiking in the lower Galilee, close to the coast, in the Carmel Mountain ridge. Here are some pictures of how spring is lived in this beautiful part of the world.

Poppies of the Galil

Carmel ridge with the Mediterranean in the background ("Será porque mi niñez sigue jugando en tu playa, escondido tras las cañas duerme mi primer amor, llevo tu luz y tu olor por dónde quiera que vaya....)

De profundis clamavi ad Te Domine (Ps 130)
ממעמקים קראתיך ד

Encuesta (para legos y para expertos)

Hola a todos y a todas.

Algunos de ustedes saben que estoy escribiendo un siddur (un libro de oraciones judío) con traducción y trasliteración al español. Ahora la mayoría de las letras hebreas tienen un equivalente en español que puede ser expresado por una sola letra. Hay, no obstante, dos excepciones. Una de ellas es la que me está quitando el sueño. Esta es la letra shin

ש

Esta letra pronunciada como la sh inglesa (show, shop, shampoo) puede ser transliterada como una sh (lo cual tiene la ventaja de ser más reconocible aunque tiene un toque anglicista que no me gusta para nada) o a través del signo fonético š (el cual es menos conocido pero tiene la ventaja de ser una sola letra la cual puede ser explicada en una tabla de pronunciación que el siddur va a tener en su introducción).
Ahora, para ustedes, lectores de habla hispana (judíos y no judíos), ¿qué es más fácil leer (no necesariamente más familiar)?:

(opción uno) shabbat o (opción dos) šabbat

Consideren que en muchos casos la shin (o šin) viene duplicada:

(opción uno) ishshé o (opción dos) iššé

Su voto me interesa. Por favor tómese un minuto para votar en la sección de comentarios (así sea anónimamente).

Cuba, qué linda es Cuba....

This wonderful picture (which I had to remove because of fear of being sued, but which can still be seen if you follow the link) appeared in the New York Times today together with an article about the Jews of Cuba and their struggle for cultural survival. My wife´s grandfather was one of the last rabbis to serve in Cuba and her family remembers the island fondly. If we could secure a living there, I would love to help this community. Walking down the Malecón with a white fedora, smoking a cigar, debating a particularly relaxed suggya in the Talmud...ah, tropical fantasies.

Y luego no se pregunten por qué

Aquellos que dudan de la utilidad del estudio de las religiones y de la necesidad, incluso en un país predominantemente monoreligioso como es Colombia, de establecer departamentos de religiones comparadas necesitan leer la siguiente pieza del Pasquín y pensar por cinco segundos si en cinco años vamos a poder entender (sin totearnos la cabeza) el sancocho religioso que se está volviendo nuestro país. (O la muy interesante relgión que se cuece en nuestra hermana república que mezcla un evangelismo bolivariano con pelígrosísimos tintes fascistas).

Sin academia no hay paraíso, sin académicos no hay policy. Déjenos trabajar.

One of the Most Enlightening Pieces I have Read on the Subject

When I was born, almost thirty years ago, my country was almost 99.9% Catholic. Since then there has been an explosive development of Evangelical Christianity among both the popular classes and some of the comercial elite and the emerging upper middle class. I think that around 80% of the urban population of Colombia is now Catholic, whilst the rest is some shade of Protestant. My friends in the intelligentsia, all of them raised as upper middle class Catholics, have gone in more exotic directions: everything ranging from Mahayana Buddhism to "bright" agnosticism to American Indian naturalist-paganism, and, of course, Judaism. This just shows the incredible disatisfaction with traditional religion in even a relatively conservative country like Colombia and the great mobility of ideas that bring people to new ideological and spiritual landscapes. Very much like our physical realities are becoming increasingly mobile and more and more people are moving away from the places of their birth, more and more people are moving away from the religion of their parents. We are at the dawn of a new age of conversions. Quite like the Roman Empire in its transit from a Republic to the Caesarate, people are greatly disappointed with their lives and are looking for meaning in a society were many cultures and religions come together in the great Market of Ideas. It was in the early Roman empire where centurions born in Italy worshipped the Aryan deity Mithras, where Turkish matrons converted to Judaism, and the philosophers of the age were fascinated with the arcane knowledge of the Egyptian sages. Against the backdrop of this world could a Jewish cult like Christianity prosper and conquer Europe. Today, in the new Rome, there are Chinese Jews, Anglosaxon Muslims, Black Buddhists, Latino Mormons, etc., etc., etc. Here is a wonderful article to understand this Brave New world which such people in it.

"Religion in a Globalizing World" by Peter Berger

[M]y major thesis this morning is that what is happening with the globalization of religion is a globalization of pluralism. Pluralism, which was a much more geographically, much more limited phenomenon 150 or 200 years ago, has become a global phenomenon, and that has enormous implications.