Schools

[magid]

They've added a category to the userinfo page, schools. I'm not sure I'll bother to put mine in my userinfo, but it was interesting to browse what they've already got listed. My high school, college, and grad school are there; my elementary school and yeshiva* are not. In fact, it looks like Israel currently has no schools whatsoever, nor any cities.


* Institutions of Jewish learning for adults in Israel tend to split along gender lines not only in student bodies, but in how they're referred to. Yeshiva is for men, seminary is for women. Except that for me, anyway, sem refers to yet-another-future-working-mommy factory, not designed for in-depth learning lishma (for it's own sake), but to educate women enough to run their homes and raise their children while their husbands either work and learn or learn full time. Maybe there's another word I'm blanking on, but given the horns of this naming dilemma, Nishmat feels more like a yeshiva.

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A completely unrelated note: as I came out of the T tonight, I saw a man wearing a green T-shirt that said "I am a Keeper". The first thing I thought was that there must be some kind of live-action Fluxx game going on...

Comments

[ruthling.livejournal.com]

some kind of live-action Fluxx game going on...

Bwahahahaha!

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

And I would have been picturing him perched invisibly on someone's shoulder (Babylon 5 reference, FYI).

Until I started to envisage him as that other Keeper (http://www.keeper.com)

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

*snicker* Your 2nd thought was my first one.

[magid.livejournal.com]

What's a Babylon 5 keeper do/for?

("perched invisibly on someone's shoulder" makes me think of the travel maven Goldberg, a homunculus from the Tzaddik of the Seven Wonders, one of the few Jewish SF novels I've found.)

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

http://www.infinicorp.com/VEX/aliens/keeper.htm

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ew. Invisible brainy octopi that can take over my body unless I go on a bender? Creepy.

Sounds like the Puppet Masters (Heinlein, I think, and I read it so long ago that I'm not sure it's right).

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Well, they don't so much take over the body as cause debilitating pain if you take actions they don't want you to take.

And Keepers are themselves, to a large degree, the puppets of the Shadows.

[magid.livejournal.com]

This really sounds like I should try to catch the show.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

I'm confident all 5 seasons are available from Netflix.

The Keepers don't show up until, I think, season 4.

[treacle-well.livejournal.com]

Keepers don't actually "perch" but it was the closest thing I could think of that a not-actually-Keeper being might do to superficially resemble one.

[ckd]

If you shouted "Keeper Limit 0" at him, would he have disappeared?

[magid.livejournal.com]

*giggle*

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

My cousin went to Nishmat.

I tried adding Hebrew U twice already (once today, and once a couple months ago when they started collecting information.

I didn't bother adding my cheder and yeshiva. I'm probably the only one online from there. They don't believe in Internet.

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

Hmm, maybe Nishmat can be a Beit Midrash?

[magid.livejournal.com]

That might work. Though beit midrash sounds to me more like chevruta study with an occasional shiur rather than a full load of shiurim supported by beit midrash chevruta time. Thoughts?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I was probably before your cousin's time; I was there the first two years, long before most of their many programs had been developed (the first year, there was only one shlav for shiurim, even). Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to learn there now (and whether their Zionistic indoctrination has become less overt).

Weird that they wouldn't take Hebrew U; it's a well-known university.

I've already found one person online who's apparently in a very black, anti-Internet sort of community, so stranger things have happened, but I suspect it's easier to ignore the Internet in Israel. (But that's based on nothing but gut feeling, really.)

[tapuz.livejournal.com]

My reaction to the shirt was Fluxx as well (though not live action -- I love that idea!), followed by Quidditch, which made ABSOLUTELY no sense!

What are you translating seminary from? Midrashah?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Live action, uni-plane Quidditch, maybe? More boring, but we're limited...

I wasn't translating; I heard people call it "sem," not "midrashah". I mean, I knew about Midreshet Lindenbaum, but I thought of it more as part of a name than an actual noun in smichut, since I never ran into it elsewhere.

[jarel.livejournal.com]

The "schools" (we use that word differently, so it doesn't feel right to me) database seems to be a complete mess as far as the UK is concerned. I think I'll sit it out for a bit, and see how it settles down :)

[magid.livejournal.com]

How do you use 'school', then?

And yeah, it seems to rely on people 'registering' a school, which is then vetted by someone-at-LJ; Fetteredwolf had no luck with getting Hebrew University in.

[jarel.livejournal.com]

"School" here wouldn't include higher education, it stops at eighteen - or even sixteen, since some people go to a separate "college" of further education for 16-18.

I know it's based on user submissions, but the state/province categorisation for the entries it has so far for the UK is a complete mess; no consistency at all about it :/

[magid.livejournal.com]

Ah. "School" here is more flexible, though sometimes it means lower education only (no one seems to call it lower, though :-). Context is all... Is there a word for the category of institutions of learning?

I hope they figure out how to deal with non-US countries reasonably soon (they should've waited until they'd figured out other countries' hierarchichal geographical systems before starting it as a feature, really).

[jarel.livejournal.com]

I don't know of a word for it, but I'm sure there ought to be one :)

It gets worse; now we have UK -> Ox -> Oxford -> Oxford University as well as UK -> Ox -> Oxford -> University of Oxford. Bah!

[magid.livejournal.com]

Obviously, the kinks have not been worked out of the system...