iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

There is ONLY ONE TRUE etrog packing material, and society’s downfall can be traced to our having strayed from the ways of our ancestors:

Etrog packed on a flax bed in a decorative box

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Tom Lehrer cited this review from the Times for many years:

NY Times review of Tom Lehrer, featuring the line “Mr. Lehrer’s muse was not fettered by such inhibiting factors as taste”

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

But not always (Gen 4:18). “Fathered” or “begat” seems justifiable at first blush…

Genesis 4:18. The Hebrew word “yalad” clearly gets used to mean “farthered”.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

One of my favorite amenities at my company headquarters: a “wellness room” that doubles as a chapel. In the corner, a storage unit holds talleisim, gartels, prayer rugs, and attar spray. Coexistence and mutual respect are not hard.

Small wooden storage unit containing both Jewish and Muslim prayer accoutrements: tallit, attar spray, and prayer rugs.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I see your offering-vow confusion here, and raise you the epic fustercluck from Kinnim 3:6 (my favorite obscure tractate, with a modern mathematical commentary):

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Just finished the book & enjoyed mightily. The section on the Himba & their “dumbu/burou” color space has fascinating implications for a 2nd-century talmudic dispute on the earliest time for reciting morning prayers. If your publisher sees some bulk orders from rabbinic seminaries, you’ll know why:

Berachot 1:2 - “From when does one recite the morning shema prayer? From when (it is light enough) to distinguish blue and white (threads) from each other. Rabbi Eliezer says, (from when it is light enough to distinguish) between blue and leek-green…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Hey, guys? Guys? @korystamper.bsky.social ‘s new book, which I expected to be an absolute fucking delight? It’s an absolute fucking delight.

A copy of “True Color” by Kory Stamper, as held by yours truly, two steps outside of the Clason’s Point branch of the New York Public Library.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 13/04/2026

May have *slightly* scared the librarian with my Gollum-like growling…

Kory Stamper’s “True Color” in my hot little hand…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Not now, existential crises; I’ve got a brisket to prepare…

thinly sliced onion sweating down in a pan

Sauce (onions, tomatoes, and red wine) reducing in the pan

brisket, now in a ceramic roaster pan, covered in sauce, ready to be braised.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Just gonna leave this here: www.nytimes.com/2015/09/06/m...

Today’s foreign-policy thinkers must also test their idealistic notions of American possibility on a geopolitical landscape littered with the wreckage of ideals past. As Richard Fontaine explained to me: ‘‘In Iraq, we toppled the government and did an occupation and everything went to hell. In Libya, we toppled the government and didn’t do an occupation and everything went to hell. In Syria, we didn’t topple the government and didn’t do an occupation and everything went to hell. So, broadly, this is the Middle East. Things go to hell. And we’ve got to make our way through that fact to protect our national interests, on the back of a war-weary public that doesn’t want to invest our treasure in this.’’

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Yeah; probably not driving in to work tomorrow either…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

There’s also an honest-to-goodness “Horsefeathers!” thrown in there, which is just a friggin’ delight…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Chicken soup, lemon-seared salmon, lemon-thyme marinated chicken, spice rub chicken quarters, herbed golden potatoes, salads

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

For all your covenant needs, there’s “Eleh Divrei Habrit” by the fascinating Rabbi Chaim Hirschensohn, who lived at the turn of the last century? It’s a 3-volume analysis of every covenant mentioned in tanach. No translation yet, I’m afraid, but he does spend several pages on the ברית מלח

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

You missed the “and sex-deprived”

Perhaps noted feminist Naomi Wolf hit the mark with her theory that the lashing out stems from sexual frustration, that the aggression toward ICE officers is a physical release. Yes, it’s clear from their unhinged antics why most of those women wouldn’t be getting any action. Hunter Biden would turn down those women even if they were wearing parkas packed with cocaine.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

Getting engrossed in a niche, extremely well-researched and presented long piece of academia that appeals to you and maybe 10 other people in the world: 10/10 experience. Highly recommended.

The Jewish Reformation: Bible Translation and Middle Class German Judaism as Spiritual Enterprise by Micah Gottlieb

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

One of the most insightful and radical readings of R’ Hirsch concerns just this. From his commentary on Yaakov & Esav

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

א ליכטיג חנוכה!

Five Chanukkah menorahs, each with one branch lit

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

The 19th century R’ Yaakov Mecklenberg had a similar read: woman was to be man’s equal in “image and form,” but not fully equal in responsibility:

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

In the 12th century, Rav David Kimchi (Radak) decided that this was too nice a reading, and read the prefix כ as a diminutive: woman should be *almost*, but not quite, man’s equal…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Dick Codor’s haggadah:

Illustration of the Marx Brothers as the four sons of the haggadah, from Dick Codor’s “Joyous Haggadah.”

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

I remember that one! From days gone by….

Twitter/X post from efrex July 13, 2018:

Listened to a podcast (
@fiatlexpodcast
) episode exclusively focussed on how dictionaries break up syllables in their words.

For the second time.
In one day.
On my own volition.

Methinks I might be a bit of a word nerd...

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 01/08/2025

Took a picture of this machzor at a now-closed Heights shul several years ago. It wasn’t that long ago that Jews crossed the Washington bridge to and from the Bronx to attend services on each side…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Not sure where I first heard about this book, but it is one of the most essential and infuriating reads I have ever experienced. How the hell is this not a bipartisan social priority?

“Crazy: A Father’s Search Through America’s Mental Health Madness” by Peter Earley

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Going down the rabbit hole of the number of translations & emendations suggested for this one verse, and might never see air again:

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Even then, there were one-offs where Calvin acknowledged Hobbes toy-ness:

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Uh-oh, you’ve ticked off the LIBRARIANS?! That is NOT going to end well…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Quite possibly my most prized possession:

LP of the Original Broadway Cast Recording of “Company,” autographed by Pamela Myers and Donna McKechnie

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

It’s been many a year, but the only one that comes immediately to mind (and it’s not that critical a plot point) is “Blue Carbuncle.” Far more devastating (and accurate) a critique came from Sir Pterry:

Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Obligatory Discworld quote:

Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,’ said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added, ‘or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.’ ‘What about a potted plant?’ ‘That’s okay if it’s in an urn.’ ‘What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?’ said Nobby. ‘Have you one in mind, Nobby?’ said Colon suspiciously. ‘Yes, The Goddess Anoia* Arising from the Cutlery,’ said Nobby. ‘They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.’ ‘The number of i’s is important, Nobby,’ said Sergeant Colon gravely, ‘but in these situations you have to ask yourself: where’s the cherub? If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns everywhere.
Terry Pratchett, Thud! (Discworld, #34)

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 30/03/2025

The nicer version of that, which hit me right between the eyes when I first read it:

“It is worth living long enough to outlast any sense of grievance you may acquire. Another reason why you must be careful of your health.” Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 26/03/2025

Natan Slifkin quotes Israel Aharoni as making that suggestion in 1938. Dr. Hayyim Tawil argues that the word simply means “decorated leather”

Quote from “Sacred Monsters” by Natan Slifkin

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 20/03/2025

Just read the prologue. Stopped, turned back to page 1, and read it again. If the rest of this book is half as good, I’m in for an insane treat…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

עד ביאת הגואל I miss you, Ima…

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

Nothing like a little light reading…

Three books, all essay collections on contemporary Hasidic theory: “A New Hasidism: Roots,” “A New Hasidism: Branches,” and “Contemporary Uses and Forms of Hasidut

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 10/03/2025

One of so many brilliant and depressing passages from Terry Pratchett’s “Night Watch”…

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up. What would run through the streets soon enough wouldn't be a revolution or a riot. It'd be people who were frightened and panicking. It was what happened when the machinery of city life faltered, the wheels stopped turning and all the little rules broke down. And when that happened, humans were worse than sheep. Sheep just ran; they didn't try to bite the sheep next to them.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

Imagine feeling like this man in this picture:

81-year-old James Harrison, whose plasma contained a rare antibody that was used to treat over 2 million babies, giving his last blood donation, surrounded by mothers and babies whose lives he helped

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

I don’t even know how much I objectively thought it was good at the time, but gotta be

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

It’s weird to think that I last read these when I was roughly the same age as the protagonist, and am coming back to them at the same age as his father. #ShabbatReads

Chaim Potok’s books: “The Chosen” and “The Promise.”

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

www.newyorker.com/news/daily-c...

As for Thomas, he is physically transformed from his infamous confirmation hearings, in 1991—a great deal grayer and heavier today, at the age of sixty-five. He also projects a different kind of silence than he did earlier in his tenure. In his first years on the Court, Thomas would rock forward, whisper comments about the lawyers to his neighbors Breyer and Kennedy, and generally look like he was acknowledging where he was. These days, Thomas only reclines; his leather chair is pitched so that he can stare at the ceiling, which he does at length. He strokes his chin. His eyelids look heavy. Every schoolteacher knows this look. It’s called “not paying attention.”

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

1942. The Warsaw Ghetto. The Piacetzna Rebbe is able to somehow deliver this line (Esh Kodesh, parshtat Yitro). One of the most stunning pieces imaginable:

Selection from the work “Esh Kodesh,” explaining an aggadic passage that a Jew, no matter how low, has the ability to grab the divine throne and outrank the angels.

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Efrex @efrex.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Someone else out there was learning Eruvin and started singing “A tanna’s bolt has a knob on the end,” right? It wasn’t just me, right? *sigh*

Tamud Bavli Eruvin 102a - discussion of a bolt with a “gelustera” (knob) and it’s permissibility for use on Shabbat

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