Even before New Year’s a year past, this blog had begun a mostly uninterrupted slumber beginning in 2009, what with most of my activity focused on directing the Open Siddur Project (2009-present), studying at Yeshivat Hadar (2009-2010), teaching with the Teva Learning Alliance (2010-2011), studying Hebrew and pedagogy in the Experiential Education program in the Davidson School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (2011-present), and currently, studying the complexity of modern Israel along with more Hebrew in the Kesher Ḥadash program of the Davidson School.

Most of these activities were documented publicly semi-privately via my twitter, Facebook,‎ and Google+ accounts, with all the caveats that proprietary social networks provide for archiving and redistributing creativity. Over the next few months, I hope to look back over the last few years and share publicly whatever output I’ve produced privately that might be worthwhile to share.

Through this effort I hope to document and construct a somewhat coherent narrative of my work since I left post-hurricane Louisiana after working there as an urban/environmental/GIS planner 2006-2008. Privately, I tell variations of this story to friends without the benefit of illustrations, but with the benefit of long walks and digressions. I think it’s time I explain myself, in the manner of Italo Calvino’s Marco Polo in Invisible Cities — with pantomime, gesticulation, unexplicated esotericism, and a translation that relies entirely on your patience and interest. Before my Kublai Khan, I have to present endless yarns spun from ever accumulating navel lint, an assemblage of obtuse details the connection of one to the other might otherwise seem ponderous, but I hope not pretentious. So bare with me, please.

I still hope to work and contribute as an urban/environmental planner, public historian and educator. I still harbor sage-like aspirations. I’m still hopelessly entangled in a great vein of string spun by others to document their own progress through the vast labyrinth of psychedelic and gnostic insight. Freedom, compassion, creativity, and awareness remain the touchstones of my intention, the grounding for my empathy and the foundation of my commitment in my work. Twelve years ago I learned some wonderful things while bicycling along the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and the consequence of this gnosis is that I now can’t help but see prisons and cages everywhere. Facilitating creative activities, constructing open spaces, helping to recover lost wisdom — these express my intentions. And I’m still searching for that loose alliance of friends who share these objectives in bringing more people into the next age.

When late last year my friend Dr. Allan Tulchin asked for my help preparing two maps for a book on the history of the Protestant Church in medieval France, I was so happy to oblige. I love maps and I love historical research. Preparing these maps would exercise my mapping skills using GIS software and provide some professionally oriented extracurricular work during my intense program in Rabbinic midrash at Yeshivat Hadar. Six months later and Allan showed me proofs of his book, That Men Would Praise the Lord: The Triumph of Protestantism in Nîmes, 1530-1570 now available from Oxford University Press. I found the maps I prepared in his concluding chapter.

The two maps indicate the distribution of Protestant churches in Medieval France. Allan provided tables in MS Access indicating the location of churches and population groups, and hand drawings indicating the historical boundaries of French territorial expansion. Geolocating the data from the tables was not difficult thanks to ArcGIS. There were a few challenges in making the maps: 1) being limited to black and white illustration, 2) determining suitable icons, and 3) converting images of French territorial boundaries to centerline shapefiles in ArcGIS.

The main challenge was converting Allan’s scanned images of French territorial boundaries to an ArcGIS layer. That way all the layers could be manipulated and rendered within one application. For example, note the shading of the different territories–it would have been much more convenient to have each territory identified in a shapefile and then coded them according to metadata. Unfortunately, converting the raster image to a drawing proved difficult without AutoCAD (which was prohibitively expensive). Ultimately, the process required preparing the maps in ArcGIS without the boundary layer, then exporting graphics  from ArcGIS into Photoshop, where the territory layer could be shaded. Given these limitations, I think the results look very nice in black and white.

If you are preparing a historical map for your research, I’d love to help and my prices are quite reasonable. Contact me.

This is something of a guest post by proxy. My father, Dr. David Varady, is on his sabbatical and working at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. My mother, meanwhile, is working on visiting in person all the Dutch art she scanned from books during her tenure as the visual arts librarian at the University of Cincinnati’s Design School (DAAP) library.

My father began preparing slideshows of his travels around the Netherlands, with a prominent urban planning perspective. He prepares these by using Microsoft PowerPoint and then exporting the presentation as a PDF. The presentations are too large to share as attachments to emails so he asked if I would kindly host them here at Aharon’s Omphalos. So here they are:

• Poptahof (5mb)
• Middleburg (23.5mb)
• Kinderdijk (6mb)
• Schilderswijk and Transvaal in Den Haag (6mb)
• Shopping and Fun in Delft (1mb)
• Oude Delft (5mb)
• Den Bosch (10mb)
• Amsterdam Docklands (25mb)
• Almere (15mb)
• Bjlmermeer in Amsterdam (30mb)

More will be added as they are received.

I’m here for a few reasons, the first of which is to have a dedicated space and time to invest serious energy and intention in religious practice in general, and Judaism in particular. I want to be able to think about, research, and write about Jewish folklore and cosmology. It’s been impossible for me to feel passionate about this without entertaining how to sustain this interest past the present year, and so naturally I’m thinking of rabbinical school or a graduate program in Judaic Studies, or even a general program in religious or folkloric studies where I can find a specialization. Hopefully by the end of this year I’ll have significantly improved my capability with available sources in Hebrew and Aramaic. If I do this, then I think I’ll have the confidence to continue further and also be a more attractive candidate for a graduate or rabbinic program.

The latter still attracts my imagination since I’m interested in bridging the distance between academic and applied Judaic Studies. If my passion can endure even half a year of this work and lifestyle, then I think I’ll be able to pursue rabbinical school applications with a more clear and grounded intention.

In addition, like PresenTense was, Yeshivat Hadar will be something of a nest for the nascent Open Siddur Project, that is still hard at work developing a web application. Hadar is providing a modest if substantial living stipend for fellows, and besides helping me live within public transit distance of the yeshiva, I’m using this stipend to fund my work on the Open Siddur. (Hadar also provides a $2000 grant specifically for funding a community project, like the Open Siddur.)

By Providence, comrade in code, realazthat, lives only three blocks away from me in Brooklyn. Also nearby is my colleague from PresenTense, Russel Neiss (see MediaMidrash), who along with the Open Siddur, shares my passion for book ripping and scanning (public domain material only). We hope to build a working book scanner by the end of the year!

After a year away from Louisiana and urban planning, this may very well be the turning point in a career shift for me. Or not. Considering the investment in a career in planning it seems almost insane to me to give this up. But there is a freedom that comes from being unsettled, from being suspended rather than grounded. I cannot be sustained too long off of the ground, but I cannot remain either where I’ve been standing. And so this will become my sabbatical year.

I would be remiss if I didn’t finish by plugging a party that everyone who cares about egalitarianism in traditional Judaism might want to turn out for. It’s Wednesday night on October 21, 2009. Hope to see you there. Details below.

“Any Torah study without work will ultimate be lost and lead to sin.” (Pirkei Avot 2:2)

“I am abandoning all practical training for my children and I will only teach my children Torah.” (Mishnah Kiddushin 4:14)

Is life about Torah, or is Torah about life? And what’s at stake in the question, anyway?

Please join me in celebrating the opening of Yeshivat Hadar’s full-year program, come join us as we explore the relationship between our commitment to Torah and our work in the world.

Yeshivat Hadar’s Full-Year Celebration:
Wednesday, October 21
7:30 pm — 9:30 pm
The Schafler Forum at Congregation Rodeph Sholom
7 West 83rd Street
New York, NY 10024

RSVP by email: frank@mechonhadar.org or by phone 212.284.6549

Mechon Hadar is an institute that empowers young Jews to build vibrant Jewish communities through:

• Yeshivat Hadar: the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America
• The Minyan Project: resources, networking, and consulting for more than 50 independent minyanim nationwide

Mechon Hadar is grateful to multiple individual supporters and national foundations. For a complete list of foundation supporters, visit www.mechonhadar.org supporters

To learn more about Mechon Hadar visit our website: www.mechonhadar.org