Friday, November 28, 2008

Can't get my mind off Nariman/Chabad House in Mumbai - and Google Trends

I can't get going today.

I couldn't get anything done last night, either; I stayed up way too late trying to develop a derashah for Shabbos, and came up empty-handed. I keep going back to Mumbai.

Part of it is the fault of Twitter. I never really used it before, but now, by searching Twitter for Chabad - or, more successfully, for Nariman - I was able to get second-by-second reports, from India, on what was going on. Forget CNN and all the others; this was, literally, second-by-second.

So I got nothing done - nothing of substance, and nothing bloggy either. I had a few blog posts in mind during the last few days, but I didn't end up writing any of them; the funny ones felt inappropriate for my mood, and the serious ones felt less-than-relevant.

(It's too bad; I was drafting a good one on "Top Ten Reasons why Thanksgiving is not a Jewish Holiday." Items like, "No limitations on what you eat, and when," and "Stores give away holiday fixings for free, instead of raising the price astronomically." Maybe next year.)

All of which means that now it's mid-morning on Friday and I still don't have a derashah. I've been mulling a bunch of ideas:
*Yaakov's anxiety and HaShem's admonition to Yaakov to have no fear;
*Esav degrading the birthright by walking away and us degrading our birthright when we live outside of Israel;
*The parallels between the story of Esav and Yaakov and the food at the start of the parshah, and the story of the Jews wanting food from Esav's descendants, Edom, when they enter Israel;
*The three meals of the parshah - the lentils, the peace meal with Avimelech, and the meal for Yitzchak;
*The way Yitzchak is described, in close proximity and with the same terminology, as loving Esav and loving food.
Lots of interesting ideas - but no derashah.

And I just looked at Google Trends, to see how people are looking at what's going on in Mumbai - only to discover that Mumbai doesn't crack this morning's Top 10 searches. Here's the list, if you can believe it:

1. o.h.m.s.
2. blackfridayinfo.com
3. gina carano pics
4. synchronicity foundation
5. black friday online deals
6. rush propst
7. apple store
8. barry manilow
9. walmart.com
10. staples coupons

Surreal.

1 comment:

  1. synchronicity foundation is related to mumbai.

    ReplyDelete