Old Roller Skates: Thanks,Debo Orlofsky, for reminding Abq Jew - yet again - of just how old he is. Debo (the celebrated accordionist of The Rebbe's Orkestra, famed percussionist of Saudade, and renowned Empowerment Through Music Coordinator of the New Mexico Jazz Workshop) recently posted this picture on Facebook:
Just how old is Abq Jew? He's so old that he knows exactly what this is. Not to give it away ... well, yes, to give it away - the picture above goes with the drawing below:
Some of you may still be having trouble with this. So let Abq Jew explain: this is one of a pair of roller skates. One used to put roller skates on over one's regular shoes (one skate per shoe); the skates were then tightened (so they didn't fall off) through use of a skate key, which is the object portrayed in Debo's photo.
All of this took place in the years just before photography was invented.
Debo, working with the Archaeological Society of New Mexico (Abq Jew just made that up) was able to recover that old skate key and photograph it. No old roller skates have ever been recovered, however, which is why Abq Jew had to use the above drawing (artist's conception).
In case you need reminding, here is what roller skates look like now:
One can see the resemblance in form and function to the roller skates of the ancients, although accurate information about when pink was introduced is missing from the historical record.
And speaking of historical records - Abq Jew is on a roll now! - here is Brand New Key, the famous song by Melanie, of whom, Abq Jew suspects, many of you have never heard.
Caution: This song was considered highly risque in its time!
Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk (born February 3, 1947) ... an American singer-songwriter. Known professionally as simply Melanie, she is best known for her hits Brand New Key, Ruby Tuesday, What Have They Done To My Song Ma , and Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).
Melanie was born and grew up in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York City, New York. Melanie made her first public singing appearance at age four on the radio show Live Like A Millionaire, performing the song Gimme a Little Kiss. She attended Red Bank High School in Red Bank, New Jersey, graduating in 1966. After school, her parents insisted she go to college, so she studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she began singing in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village and signed her first recording contract.
Astoria? Red Bank High School? Parents insisted she go to college? Do we need further proof? OK, how about this: Melanie Safka is listed on the Bellevue Holiday Rentals List of Famous Jews, right between Mel Brooks (who we all know) and Mike D'Abo, former lead singer of Manfred Mann who sang on their hit The Mighty Quinn.
Welcome to Scott Tyson's Universe: Scott Tyson has written a book. That book, The Unobservable Universe, states on its cover that it provides a "paradox-free framework for understanding the universe."
Abq Jew does not understand the universe. Except for the answer 42 to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, the universe rarely crosses what remains, after all these years, of Abq Jew's mind.
Scott Tyson, Abq Jew believes, does understand the universe. After all, Scott spent years thinking about it and 27 exhausting, non-stop days writing about it. The Unobservable Universe was completed on November 25, 2010 - just in time for Scott to celebrate Thanksgiving with his
family.
While a scientific exegesis of Scott's work is beyond Abq Jew's ken (and certainly beyond his barbie), let's just say that Scott has considered and answered questions relating to two or three interesting scientific observations.
1. The Double-Slit Experiment
Around the turn of the 20th century an experiment produced a result
that could not be explained by the particle theory. This experiment is
shown below, where a the light from a light bulb is shown
passing through two slits and then striking a screen.
If light consists
of particles, the expected result was that two images of the slits
would appear on the screen--the particles would pass through the slits
and strike the screen and cause two bands of light.
In fact, the
experiment showed that around the two bands of light there were less
intense bands that appear to be images of the "original" bands. This
result was explained by the suggestion that light actually was a wave,
or, at least, has some of the properties of a wave.
This illustration shows that some waves will be "in phase" and will add to
produce a larger wave; others will be exactly "out of phase" and crests
will cancel troughs to produce no wave at all.
These are analogous to
the bright spots on the screen of the double-slit experiment and, thus,
the experiment has been explained by constructive and destructive
interference of the waves.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, when you run a single photon through the apparatus - you get an interference pattern. What is that one photon interfering with? He's the only one in the room!
It all comes back to quantum mechanics - and the laws of probability. And (to put it colloquially) - the more we try to measure, the less we see.
The double-slit experiment (and its variations), conducted with individual particles, has become a classic thought experiment for its clarity in expressing the central puzzles of quantum mechanics. Because it demonstrates the fundamental limitation of the observer to predict experimental results, Richard Feynman called it "a phenomenon which is impossible ... to explain in any classical way, and which has in it the heart of quantum mechanics. In reality, it contains the only mystery [of quantum mechanics].", and was fond of saying that all of quantum mechanics can be gleaned from carefully thinking through the implications of this single experiment.
Quantum entanglement occurs when particles such as photons, electrons,
molecules as large as buckyballs, and even small diamonds interact
physically and then become separated; the type of interaction is such
that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same
quantum mechanical description (state), which is indefinite in terms of
important factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.
According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, their shared state is indefinite until measured.
Quantum entanglement is a form of quantum superposition. When a measurement is made and it causes one member of such a pair to take on a definite value (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair will at any subsequent time be found to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin).
Thus, there is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may have been separated by arbitrarily large distances.
So - when two or more particles are entangled, they behave as if they were
one and the same, and any change to one instantaneously and identically
changes those entangled with it even if they’re a universe apart.
What's wrong with this picture? Well, it's not like the two particles (or whatever) are actually talking to each other. One changes; so does the other. At exactly the same time. How can this possibly be?
When you're done explaining that one - here's another, that the Rabbis of the Mishna asked a couple of millenia ago.
עשרה דברים נבראו בין השמשות--פי הארץ, פי הבאר, פי האתון, והקשת, והמן,
והמטה, והשמיר, והכתב, והמכתב, והלוחות. ויש אומרין אף המזיקין, וקבורתו
של משה, ואילו של אברהם. ויש אומרין אף צבת בצבת עשויה
Now, even though the text may seem plain enough (some say: because the text seems plain enough), Abq Jew must fall back (ouch!) on his technical writing roots to make it into numbered lists:
Ten things were created on the Sabbath eve at twilight. They are:
The
mouth of the earth [which swallowed Korach and his co-conspirators]
The mouth of the well [which accompanied Israel in the
desert]
The mouth of the donkey [which rebuked Balaam]
The rainbow [that God left as a sign for Noah and his family]
The Manna
The staff [of Moses]
The shamir worm [which could eat the hardest stone to build the Temple]
The
script [of the Ten Commandments and the Torah]
The inscription [on the Tablets of the Ten
Commandments]
The Tablets themselves [which could miraculously be read from either side]
Some say: also
Destructive spirits
The
burial place of Moses
The ram of our father Abraham [which he
slaughtered in place of Isaac]
[T]ongs deserve an honorable mention - if nothing else because they make
an interesting diversion. :-) I don't know if they too represent a
merging of physical and spiritual realities, but they address one of
those logical dilemmas which has plagued man throughout the centuries.
It takes a pair of tongs to shape a second pair over the fire. Who made
the first one? Did the first blacksmith torture himself for the benefit
of the future of mankind?
It too could have only been an act of G-d -
not during the Six Days in which He created the natural world, but as a
special gift to allow man to get on with the task of living and
prospering in the world we know.
In other words: the Rabbis postulated that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, gave us all we need to live in the world. The world - in terms of matter, of material, physical things - is complete.
Scott Tyson also believes this, although he comes to it from an entirely different direction. Scott's book, The Unobservable Universe, is really a great read - Scott is a very entertaining writer. But more than that - The Unobservable Universe is a very Jewish way of looking at the universe and its mysteries.
Workshop & Dance Party:Congregation Nahalat Shalom (the wonderful folks who bring us KlezmerQuerque every year) are excited to announce a 2-day KlezmerQuickie Workshop and Dance Party with klezmer flute virtuoso Adrianne Greenbaum,
Adrianne
Greenbaum is a nationally acclaimed klezmer and classical flutist. As a
klezmer she is the founder and leader of "FleytMuzik," an ensemble with
flute, violin, cimbalom and bass, and of "The Klezical Tradition"
klezmer band where she performs on both flute and keyboard and leads
Yiddish dance.
Adrianne has been on the faculties of Living Traditions’
KlezKamp, KlezKanada, and Boxwood, was a premier participant with
FleytMuzik at the KlezMore Festival in Vienna, and presents master
classes in the art of klezmer performance to classical flutists.
===========================================
Klezmer Workshop
Wednesday June 27 @ 7:00 pm
Learn
a klezmer tune or 2 from klezmer flute virtuoso Adrianne Greenbaum.
Tune will be taught "by ear" and sheet music will be handed out at end
of workshop. Recording devices are welcome. Open to all instruments.
$20 General. $15 Seniors / Students.
===========================================
Klezmer Dance Party
Thursday June 28 @ 7:30 pm
Featuring
guest artist Adrianne Greenbaum playing with The Rebbe's Orkestra and
The Nahalat Shalom Community Klezmer Band. Plus: Dancing led &
quick-taught by the Yiddish dance troupe Rikud.
Founder of Prozdor & Camp Ramah: The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reports that renowned Jewish educator Sylvia Cutler Ettenberg died June 21 at age 95:
Sylvia Cuttler Ettenberg, a veteran Jewish educator and a founder of Camp Ramah, has died.
Ettenberg, the first female senior administrator at the Jewish Theological Seminary, died June 21 at age 95. She was recognized as a dean emerita at JTS.
The Brooklyn native was at the forefront of many Conservative Jewish educational initiatives, including the Prozdor Hebrew High School program and the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education at JTS.
Ettenberg was perhaps best recognized as a founder of Camp Ramah and for incorporating the institution into JTS, a move that helped it grow from a single camp in Wisconsin into a network of a dozen camps and several informal education programs in the United States and Israel.
Abq Jew remembers Sylvia Ettenberg from his time at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1975, Sylvia Ettenberg made it possible for Abq Jew, a guy from California with an engineering degree and very little formal Jewish learning, to study at the Seminary with the great leaders of Conservative Judaism.
U.S. Jewish
educator, particularly within the Conservative movement. Born in
Brooklyn, she received a B.A. from Brooklyn College and a Bachelor of
Pedagogy from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS). In 1940 she married Moshe Ettenberg, an engineering professor; the couple had two children.
Although her career was spent almost exclusively at
the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, her influence was felt in a
wide range of institutions and settings. Ettenberg, the first female
senior administrator at JTS, played a leading role in
some of the most important and innovative projects of Conservative
Jewish education.
She was directly involved in the founding of the
Seminary's supplementary high school (the Prozdor) in 1951, the creation
of the Melton Research Center in 1959, and the eventual establishment
of the William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education in 1996. She
worked on the creation of a joint undergraduate degree program between JTS
and Columbia University and helped supervise the Department of Jewish
Education at the Seminary as it developed its M.A. and doctoral
programs.
Arguably, her most notable achievement was Camp
Ramah, a summer educational camping program that grew into an
international network of camps. Ramah was first launched in Wisconsin in
1947 by a group of community leaders from Chicago.
But it was Ettenberg
and Moshe Davis who brought Ramah inside the world of JTS
itself, creating an infrastructure for the camping system that
developed over time and nurtured the powerful educational vision
embodied in the camps. The Ramah camps had a profound impact on Jewish
education and provided a large percentage of the future academic, lay,
and professional leadership of Conservative Judaism.
Ettenberg received an honorary doctorate from JTS,
the Behrman House Books – Jewish Educators Assembly lifetime
achievement award, and the Samuel Rothberg Prize in Jewish education
from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
When the Teachers Institute celebrated its 100 Year Anniversary in 2010. JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen honored Sylvia Ettenberg at a luncheon.
