Milo and the Calf

Category: Navel Gazing

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    First Rosh Hoshannah Reflections

    I went to my first Rosh Hashanah services this weekend with E. As my previous post mentions, we choose the services at Georgetown which were, I guess, conservative in nature (Mixed seating, mostly in Hebrew, no acoustic guitars). The place was packed with students and families. A couple of observations on the holiday and services:…

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    First Rosh Hoshannah

    Rosh Hoshannah starts tonight, and E and I will be celebrating it in our home. Tomorrow, we’ll be going to services at the Jewish Center at Georgetown. Much discussion went into where we’d be going for these services. In years past, E has gone to a more orthodox congregation, one that has a mehitzah. This…

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    Introducing the Ger

    As our story begins your narrator, me, the Ger, is a thirty four year old man raised in a reasonably observant Irish Catholic home. The Ger was confirmed in the Catholic Church and then basically never went to church again. For years he wasn’t very religious at all. At times, he was downright hostile to…

  • Ben Ezra, Old Cairo, Geniza Documents

    So I am done with work here in Cairo, and just hanging out for the week until my flight for London on Saturday. Originally, I was planning on going to Dahab (a beach resort spot) for a couple of days this week. But really, going to a beach resort spot by yourself can be kind…

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    Impressions of Muslim Brotherhood

    I wrote this originally in 2007 and, again, it seems terribly naive and dated, but I’m keeping it as is.   The Muslim Brotherhood (lets call it MB from here on out) is a massive organization, the biggest opposition group by far in Egypt, and everyone I have asked here had an opinion about it.…

  • Alexandria

    I drove up to Alexandria this weekend with a group of women on their way to a wedding. One of them said along the way “the problem with Egypt is we have too much of a past and not enough of a future”. This is a pretty melodramatic thing to say, and reflects the severe…

  • Pyramids

    Look Mom, I made it to the pyramids! Some impressions: 1. They are very large. Bigger than I thought they’d be. I was expecting the size of them to be a bit of a let down after a lifetime of hearing about them, but nope, they’re huge. 2. They’re basically right in Cairo (or the…

  • Gender in Cairo

    I wrote this post in the summer of 2007 when I was living in Cairo. Much changed soon after and my “resistance is weak” line seems horribly naive. Much was building, even then, but I was too out of touch to see it. Still, I’m leaving this as it was written at the time.  …

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    The Collection; Or Me, Navigating a Bureaucracy In a Language I Do Not Understand

    This post and many more around here, was originally posted on livejournal in 2007. Reposted here largely for my own amusement. Yesterday, I had to renew my visa. Holy shit was it a mess. There is really no way I am going to be able to explain how nuts the whole experience was, how confused I was, how…

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    The Zamalek Boardwalk

    Another post originally written for livejournal during my stay in Cairo. This is the boardwalk a couple of blocks from my house on the island of Zamalek. On one end stands the Iraqi embassy, on the other, the hip nightclub Sequoia. It’s a small little site – only about two blocks long. On weekend nights,…