Filling my bookcase
It's amazing how I go to a book sale, and I want to buy ten times more than I can afford...
There's something really addictive about books and buying books. Especially Jewish ones. There's something really special about owning some of these books.
Plus, I just got a new (well, gently used) bookcase from mbarr a few weeks ago, and it needed some books to make it happy.
Where was I, you ask, that I was tempted to feed the addiction? I went with mysticengineer to the Yeshiva University seforim (Jewish book) sale.
They have so much stuff there... the more traditional "seforim" (I, personally, am more inclined to spell it as s'farim, but I will use their spelling, as it is their book sale) such as Torah and Tanach sets, Shas sets, and various classic commentators. But they also had more modern books - contemporary commentators, haggadot (well, the original text is far from modern, but there are always all sorts of new takes on it), novels, children's books, philosophy books, etc, etc.
Thankfully, I had a goal going in. I knew I wanted a Mikraot Gedolot set - that would be Torah with a bunch of classic commentators - and the biggest question I faced was, which size should I buy? (The medium size was worth the extra $5 to be readable more than a few inches from my face) It ended up running me $46 - that's less than $10 a volume, if you think about it. And by volume, I mean hardcover book.
I was also looking for more modern commentators, and since the one I really wanted was out of my price range, I bought a book of divrei Torah from Bar Ilan University professors for $12.50. It's a big, thick book. The kind that looks like it would be over $20 even in paperback. So that felt like a true bargain. I also explored the haggadah table for my father - bought three - and got a book on the teaching style of Nechama Leibowitz - the one whose actual books were out of my price range.
And then there was all the stuff I didn't buy...
I was so tempted to buy a full set of shas... not the Artscroll set (with the English translation) - that one would have been about $1700 - but the Steinsaltz one, with the translation into modern Hebrew on the side. I don't do so well with the Aramaic, but the modern Hebrew solves the problem nicely for me - especially because if I don't know a word, I can refer to a standard Hebrew-English dictionary. That set was only ("only") $350. They had a normal set (the kind without any modern translation) that was under $100, actually, but it was also fairly microscopic. Still, I was impressed by the price.
Anyway, I overcame the temptation. Maybe in a future year, I will be willing to spend $350 - but not this year.
And then we found dinner - an adventure in itself, but not a terribly interesting one - and ate it on the subway home (the floor of the subway car had some dinner too, in fact), then I got to watch the figure skating that wasn't live to begin with on an even further time delay because I took full advantage of mbarr's DVR/Tivo. Thankfully, wildblueyonder2 managed to restrain himself and only came close to giving away the ending, but somehow did not actually do so.
Anyway, books are heavy. And they cost money. But now they are on my shelf.
They look like they need company.
That will be expensive...
It's amazing how I see Jewish books, and I want to buy so many of them.
PS. in case I totally lost any of you with my discussion of Jewish books, here's a mini glossary:
sefer - the Hebrew word for book. In America, often used to refer specifically to books that are religious texts such as a prayer book or the text of the Torah.
seforim/s'farim - the plural of sefer
Tanach - the entire Jewish Bible. From the acronym: TNK (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketubim - the three segments of the Bible) - the acronym, when spelled in English, does not look at all like an acronym - remember, in Hebrew, vowels are marks in, on and under the letters.
Shas - another word for Gemarra, a Jewish oral law text that has many, many volumes. If you learn a (two-sided) page every day, which some people do, it takes over seven years to get through all of it.
Haggadah (plural: haggadot) - the book we use at the Passover Sedder that, among other things, tells the story of Passover. It has a standard text, but different editions have different commentators or other extras - especially the ones that are more lighthearted about it and have things like cute songs or comic strips
d'var Torah - literally, word or thing of Torah. It is generally a lesson taught based on the weekly Torah portion. (and by lesson, I mean that it should be a practical lesson - from this week's Torah portion, we can learn this thing that we can apply to our lives today sort of lesson)
There's something really addictive about books and buying books. Especially Jewish ones. There's something really special about owning some of these books.
Plus, I just got a new (well, gently used) bookcase from mbarr a few weeks ago, and it needed some books to make it happy.
Where was I, you ask, that I was tempted to feed the addiction? I went with mysticengineer to the Yeshiva University seforim (Jewish book) sale.
They have so much stuff there... the more traditional "seforim" (I, personally, am more inclined to spell it as s'farim, but I will use their spelling, as it is their book sale) such as Torah and Tanach sets, Shas sets, and various classic commentators. But they also had more modern books - contemporary commentators, haggadot (well, the original text is far from modern, but there are always all sorts of new takes on it), novels, children's books, philosophy books, etc, etc.
Thankfully, I had a goal going in. I knew I wanted a Mikraot Gedolot set - that would be Torah with a bunch of classic commentators - and the biggest question I faced was, which size should I buy? (The medium size was worth the extra $5 to be readable more than a few inches from my face) It ended up running me $46 - that's less than $10 a volume, if you think about it. And by volume, I mean hardcover book.
I was also looking for more modern commentators, and since the one I really wanted was out of my price range, I bought a book of divrei Torah from Bar Ilan University professors for $12.50. It's a big, thick book. The kind that looks like it would be over $20 even in paperback. So that felt like a true bargain. I also explored the haggadah table for my father - bought three - and got a book on the teaching style of Nechama Leibowitz - the one whose actual books were out of my price range.
And then there was all the stuff I didn't buy...
I was so tempted to buy a full set of shas... not the Artscroll set (with the English translation) - that one would have been about $1700 - but the Steinsaltz one, with the translation into modern Hebrew on the side. I don't do so well with the Aramaic, but the modern Hebrew solves the problem nicely for me - especially because if I don't know a word, I can refer to a standard Hebrew-English dictionary. That set was only ("only") $350. They had a normal set (the kind without any modern translation) that was under $100, actually, but it was also fairly microscopic. Still, I was impressed by the price.
Anyway, I overcame the temptation. Maybe in a future year, I will be willing to spend $350 - but not this year.
And then we found dinner - an adventure in itself, but not a terribly interesting one - and ate it on the subway home (the floor of the subway car had some dinner too, in fact), then I got to watch the figure skating that wasn't live to begin with on an even further time delay because I took full advantage of mbarr's DVR/Tivo. Thankfully, wildblueyonder2 managed to restrain himself and only came close to giving away the ending, but somehow did not actually do so.
Anyway, books are heavy. And they cost money. But now they are on my shelf.
They look like they need company.
That will be expensive...
It's amazing how I see Jewish books, and I want to buy so many of them.
PS. in case I totally lost any of you with my discussion of Jewish books, here's a mini glossary:
sefer - the Hebrew word for book. In America, often used to refer specifically to books that are religious texts such as a prayer book or the text of the Torah.
seforim/s'farim - the plural of sefer
Tanach - the entire Jewish Bible. From the acronym: TNK (Torah, Nevi'im, Ketubim - the three segments of the Bible) - the acronym, when spelled in English, does not look at all like an acronym - remember, in Hebrew, vowels are marks in, on and under the letters.
Shas - another word for Gemarra, a Jewish oral law text that has many, many volumes. If you learn a (two-sided) page every day, which some people do, it takes over seven years to get through all of it.
Haggadah (plural: haggadot) - the book we use at the Passover Sedder that, among other things, tells the story of Passover. It has a standard text, but different editions have different commentators or other extras - especially the ones that are more lighthearted about it and have things like cute songs or comic strips
d'var Torah - literally, word or thing of Torah. It is generally a lesson taught based on the weekly Torah portion. (and by lesson, I mean that it should be a practical lesson - from this week's Torah portion, we can learn this thing that we can apply to our lives today sort of lesson)