Back at the beginning of January, I started Daf Yomi, a 7.5-year process of reading the Talmud. I’ve been posting about it on my private Facebook page, but decided to also add things here.

This post was originally written on 13 January 2020.

It’s been a long day, but stray thoughts from today’s Daf Yomi:

My rabbi lent me a copy of A Traveling Homeland yesterday, which seems fascinating (I’ve read eight pages so far, while I waited for my child to finish b’nei mitzvah class). I have some thoughts – I feel like somewhere in diaspora studies may be actual interesting answers to some of the airless conversations that would happen in political philosophy about nations/states and communities. Plus, Boyarin cites CLR James, so that makes me happy.

“Even if a sharp sword is resting upon a person’s neck, he should not prevent himself from praying for mercy.”

In the commentary on my edition, citing Etz Yosef, they say that you understand G!d through the world just as you understand the soul through the body (cf Wittgenstein).