YUTOPIA

Well it looks like the MT4 experiment was a complete disaster.

Let us never speak of this again.

Posted by Josh at 8:26 PM | Permalink

While we were otherwise preoccupied, Jewish Blog Awards winners were announced, and not surprisingly we got trounced in all categories for which we were nominated. Given that the JIBs are an open nomination/open voting award, I find them indistinguishable from a "people's choice" award, which will naturally favor those blogs with greater readership.

Still, no cause at all for bitterness. In fact we're happy to see friends Curious Jew and Abacaxi Mamao win something and the JIBs introduced us to Rabbi Without a Cause (another winner) who had a similar take on the conversion. Also many thanks to Seraphic Secret for your kinds words.

As we've said before, we never got into this thing for awards and this changes nothing. We'll still keep up our sporadic and often delayed schedule of blogging, while hopefully maintaining the quality you've come to expect.¹

1. Editors welcome, apply within.

Posted by Josh at 3:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

It looks like we made the finals for the Jewish Blog Awards in all the categories for which we were nominated:

• Best Small Blog
• Best Anti-Establishment Blog
• Best Jewish Religious Post (for the Response to the Conservative Teshuva on Homosexuality post)
• Best Series (For the complete coverage of the Conservative Teshuva)

While it would be a nice ego boost to win in any category (i.e. go vote!), I realize that it's a popularity contest and we're up against stiff competition in all categories. When YUTOPIA started nearly four years ago there was no expectations of readership let alone awards - and the same goes for the individual posts. Personally I am proud of the posts on the Conservative Teshuvot as an honest Orthodox response to a watershed moment in American Judaism and regardless of the voting outcome the contents are still there people to find and read.

Thanks to everyone who voted in Round 1 and feel free to continue voting the the Finals (and pass it on). Either way we'll keep blogging sporadically as you all expect.

Posted by Josh at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've also been informed that we've been nominated for "Best Small Blog." You'd think I'd hear of these things in advance. Regardless, vote if you'd like while Round 1 is still going on.

I'm also mildly amused that someone thought to hack the system. Anyone remember when blogging was lishma?

*sigh*

Posted by Josh at 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

We've been nominated for the Jewish Blog Award for "Best Anti-Establishment Blog as well as for our coverage of the Conservative teshuvot on homosexuality. It seems to be an open voting (read: popularity) contest which given the open nomination process needs to be conducted in rounds.

Anyway, if you'd like to vote for YUTOPIA and give me the opportunity to add another snazzy graphic to the sidebar, you can start with the best in class voting (the best post and series voting is not open yet).

I'll post updates as needed.

Posted by Josh at 2:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a move sure to placate literally tens of people, I have removed the TypeKey requirement for commenting on the blog. As an alternative, all you need to do is enter the name of this blog (case insensitive) in the supplied field and your comment will be posted automatically. Otherwise you will not see an error, but your comment will be labeled as "junk" and will likely been discarded with the blog-spam. If you were one of the few who registered, your TypeKey account will still work and will let you bypass the filter.

Hopefully people will find this mechanism to be less intrusive than having to register with TypeKey.

Thanks again go out to Shaya for the plugin installation.

Posted by Josh at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Dear Loyal Readers,
I am very pleased to announce that we have just won our first J-Blog award! YUTOPIA is a Silver Winner in the "Best Jewish Culture Blog" category because apparently if there's anything I know it's Jewish culture.

In all honestly I have no idea how these things work especially since I'm not sure I'd put 2006 as one of my best blogging years (a 5 year retrospective will be forthcoming around May). In the meantime I must thank the newly redesigned Town Crier for the initial nomination and now I get to add this snappy little graphic to the sidebar:

Posted by Josh at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Much to my dismay I recently discovered that this blog has been plagiarized. Specifically, my post The Mind Of A Matchmaker has been reproduced here1, links intact, indicating that the "Admin" actually copied and posted the HTML source code. That's it.

No link back, no byline. Zip.

I feel like Metallica (and not in the good way).

Folks, this blog is published under a very reasonable license which really isn't that difficult to follow. The basic gist is that anyone is free to reproduce this blog provided:

1. There is proper attribution
2. The reproduction is for a non-commercial purposes
3. You don't make derivative works from it

I haven't had a problem with this until now since whenever this blog has been used I've been quoted and people have asked permission (which I've granted every time I can remember). When I found the post in question I immediately e-mailed the following to the Admin.

Dear Admin, My name is R. Josh Yuter and run the blog YUTOPIA. recently came across your post here: http://bitachon.com/forums/jewish-dating/164-the-mind-of-matchmaker.html

Which was copied unattributed from one of my earlier blog posts here:
http://yutopia.yucs.org/archives/2004/07/the_mind_of_a_m.html

I publish my blog under creative commons license which allows for reproduction of content, provided attribution is given:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/

That said I will not request removal of your post, but would ask for the proper attribution and link back to the original post.

Thanks and Shana Tova
Josh

Thus far, no reply.

I have a shiur I need to write up on copyright law in halakha, but regardless of any potential issurim it's just so simple to comply with the license that violations are very frustrating.

1. I know by linking there I am directing traffic to them, but the example is well worth it.

Posted by Josh at 1:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I noticed recently that after the site update that one of the RSS feeds is no longer updated. If you're into this sort of thing, please update your RSS bookmarks to either http://yutopia.yucs.org/index.xml or http://yutopia.yucs.org/atom.xml.

Posted by Josh at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've gotten several comments about the new image which adorns the entry headings. The image is called a "Fleur-de-lis" which translates to "lily flower."1 Over the centuries it has adopted several meanings, many of which are related Christianity. However, there are other non-religious uses as well, some more applicable than others. From the Wiki article (which is a fun read):

• Whatever its origin, it is an ancient design which has been found in various cultures, usually as an emblem associated with royalty.
• By the 13th and 14th centuries, the three petals of the lily of France were being described by writers as symbols of faith, wisdom and chivalry.
• The fleur-de-lis is the major element in the logo of most Scouting organizations. In that usage, it is considered to represent the outdoors, which is a major theme in Scouting.
• The Fleur-de-lys is used in (on top of) the compass rose in combination with flights and boats as a maneuver/measure symbol pointing up to the north.

Honestly, it's only there because it was part of the template and I thought it looked nice. If you've got a better icon, I'm willing to reconsider.

1. Which I suppose would make it's function here a "lilly pad."

Posted by Josh at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Welcome back to the new and improved YUTOPIA!

I finally have most of the site in working order, including the Jewish Guitar Chords Archive. Search is currently down, but I'll have to talk to Shaya about that. If you're wondering, I'm using a heavily modified version of Lilia Ahner's Stevenson style. The new layout and templates should help page loads. The code is certainly cleaner, with valid XHTML and valid CSS.

I'll probably be making some smaller cosmetic changes as I notice all the new quirks. If you happen to find any problems or would like to offer helpful suggestions, please let me know.

Posted by Josh at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dear Loyal Readers,
Sometime over the weekend, I'm going to be making some major updates to the back-end of the site. Although we moved to a newer version of MovableType some time ago I didn't have the time to reset templates to take full advantage of all the features. Also, this will likely entail a change in the design, which in my opinion is long overdue. Hopefully I won't mess things up too badly, but don't be surprised if things appear a little messy at some point. Also I hope to get to writing some more including my thoughts on Edah's demise and a few other things about which I have been thinking.

Posted by Josh at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Because I've been getting swamped with with spam posts, I've tried setting up MoveableType's spam filtering. Of course, one such attempt resulted in my deleting all past comments, but those were thankfully recovered.

The setup now is that in order for comments to be posted, I need to approve them (yes I know the post-comment-submit page is horrid, I'll get to that eventually). The thing is that many loyal readers were somehow flagged as "banned" commenters such that I didn't even get an e-mail alerting me that these comments needed my approval. This meant that many legitimate and even insightful comments submitted over the past few weeks never got published. This has now been corrected.

I hope things will go a little more smoothly now, and many apologies for the delay.

Posted by Josh at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I'm not sure what's more surpsing: that according to quacktrack I'm #4 in the Ultra-Orthodox / Haredi section or that DovBear is #2.

Posted by Josh at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

To all remaining loyal readers:
In my attempts at despamming the blog it appears I have deleted all previous comments. This of course, really stinks. Unlike many blogs out there I took pride in having the fewest nonsensical flame wars (the Edah post was a notable exception) and having one of the most articular and/or humerous commenters in the J-Blog world or otherwise.

I have the static pages backed up and I can start putting comments back slowly but believe it or not there were about 860ish in total so it'll take some time. I could just put back the comments with the more serious discussions or if anyone out there wants to write a script and help me out, that would be great.

At any rate, please don't be offended since this was completely unintentional.

Josh

Posted by Josh at 9:36 PM | Permalink

As a public service for those who complain that I'm too difficult to shop for, I'm hereby publicizing my Amazon Wish List and linking to it on the sidebar. Yeah, you could probably get stuff cheaper at Walmart or elsewhere, but people seem to like Amazon.

So if you've been pondering what to get your favorite socio-religious, guitar-playing, inconsistently blogging Rabbi, you now know where to go.¹

1. If you're not into the whole gift-giving thing, I'll just pull out Proverbs 15:27 (sonei matanot yichyeh). I win either way.

Posted by Josh at 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Today is a special day on YUTOPIA. According to SiteMeter today will be the day we will have received our 100,000th hit. Granted, it took some time to get here, but considering my frequent and often extended absences from writing that's to be expected. In a way it's fitting to reach this milestone on Hoshanna Rabba. The meaning and significance of both the holiday and web hits have been greatly exaggerated over time, but both still mean something I suppose.

Sometime after the hag I'll do a little retrospective and contemplate where this blog will go from here. Despite my inconsistent postings and a general malaise afflicting some fellow bloggers (including my self), I'm not ready to close up shop just yet. The truth is I do miss the writing and there are some topics I've been meaning to address. I'm looking for ways to continue in my new schedule while maintaining some semblance of quality. Two new features to look for are weekly parasha related derahsot and book reviews, and we'll see what else comes up along the way.

In the meantime, to all loyal and accidental readers thanks for reading.

Moadim Lesimha / Hag Sameach
Josh

Posted by Josh at 1:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

To allay the fears of the loyal readers, everything is fine but really busy. I'm trying to finish off the albatross of the thesis before I start working on Monday, spending time and schepping nachas with the niblings (pics forthcoming), and practicing my "act" for the talent show.

On the plus side, there is much going on worth writing about once the required stuff gets out of the way so stay tuned.

Posted by Josh at 3:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It looks like the upgrade went off easier than expected. Of the improvements, you should notice faster load times and we now have an atom feed if you're into that sort of thing.

The downside is that all the links in the archive are changed. I caught most of them and set up a redirect, but it's likely I missed one or two. If you find any bad links out there or any other bugs, please drop me a line.

Posted by Josh at 12:58 PM | Permalink

Dear Loyal Readers,
There may be some blog downtime this weekend since we're going to try the proposed upgrade to MovableType 3. Shaya filled me in on most of the details, known problems, and (hopefully) good ideas for solutions.

You may also notice a design change. I figure that if we're doing the overhaul on the backend, it may be a good opportunity to update the design as well. I found some interesting templates online with which I can tinker, and we'll see what I can manage. (I'm open to suggetsions, especially if someone wants to do the redesign). Then again, I may just leave things

At any rate, we'll see how things go.

Shabbat Shalom,
Josh

Posted by Josh at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lots of stuff going on in the greater YUTOPIA-land area in the next few weeks. Some of the highlights:

• Shaya will probably be moving us to MovableType 3 and there may be some glitches as a result.
• Thesis is finally looking decent.
• There's a good chance I'll actually be employed soon.
• I'm coming along on some posts I've been thinking about, including (partially) explaining my prolonged absences.
• I'm also planning on toning down the intensity dial a bit from the recent manifestos - looking for a better ballance like in the "old days."
• Personal milestone coming up on Thursday.
• And of course, the niblings and family invading homestead.

Life is...well, busy. Stay tuned for details.

Posted by Josh at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

One last interlude before I get to the next post in my hashkafa. For all you Firefox users out there, I wrote a mycroft search plugin for the chord directory.

We'll pick up with the hashkafa soon - maybe 2-3 more posts for now, and then perhaps back to more normal blogging.

Posted by Josh at 10:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sorry about the outage for the past two days. Shaya says it was a hard drive problem, which has obviously been fixed. There is no evidence that my last post caused this in any way.

One more thing. If you're going to be in Washington Heights for shavuot, I'm going to be speaking in Mt. Sinai on "Does Matan Torah Really Matter?" at approximately 12:45 at night. It should be a fun shiur and I'll probably blog it when it's done.

Posted by Josh at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dear Any Readers left,
Not that you'd notice it from the blog, but it's been a crazy couple of months for me. At some point I may write about everything, just not right now. The short version is I'm back. Back in NJ and back on the web and looking forward to have fun with this again.

Hope you do as well,
Josh

P.S. If you sent me your website for a link, please resend it. I've been way behind in way too much to remember.

Posted by Josh at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

It looks like you tried accessing a page which doesn't exist. It's possible it got changed in the upgrade to MovableType 3, and I missed the page for a redirect.

If you're looking for a guitar chord it is likely that the file is still there, but the link may have been changed. Try checking the complete list or search the archive.

If you're looking for a blog entry, try using this search engine:

Thanks for coming and enjoy your stay.

Posted by Josh at 12:49 PM | Permalink

Thesis is coming along, slower than I'd like, but progress is progress. Meantime, I'm getting into Shabbat mode which means I can ignore things for at least one day It's a shame I'm too behind to weigh in on the Rubashkin's scandal, but I'm sure other people are taking care of it. If you're interested, you can listen to an interview with new OU President Stephen Savitsky and Rabbi Weinreb.

'Roid Rage
Next up is the whole Barry Bonds taking steroids ("unknowingly" of course). Yeah, everyone seems to be talking about it as well, and not surprisingly, everyone is missing the real point.

Why is it so important if Bonds - or anyone else - took steroids? The simple answer is steriods violate "the integrity of the game." The logic is that when players take these illegal steroids, they give themselves an unfair advantage over the other players. This of course shatters the romantic illusion of legitimate athletic competition. In addition to the player's tainting their own acheivements, the entire institution of sport is now called into question.

This spirit of competitiveness cannot simply be dismissed. Sports can unify communities, but only through the drama of succeeding against all odds. We like replaying the myths of the weak beating the strong because it reminds us that we can suceed against adversities if we try hard enough.¹

The problem is that this message can be found almost anywhere in society. For some trite examples from Bruce Almighty, "a single mom who works two full-time jobs, and still finds the time to pick up her kid at soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager that says "no" to drugs and "yes" to an education, that's a miracle."

However, unlike the mother or teenager whose struggles produce something, sports cannot claim any instrinsic value. What does it really give back to society? Does it give kids something to shoot for? Unquestionably. Does it help pull people off of the streets? Yes. But so can other things as well. Sports offers the millions of contracts and the attitude that if you're rich you can get away anything including murder.

Once the myth of competition is tarnished, there really isn't anything left.

It's also why people are so up in arms about Barry Bonds, arguably the "best" player of his generation. Suddenly, he has nothing left. All his accomplishments are fraudulant. He might have donated some of his millions, but who really cares about that? He's known for his stats, not for being a hummanitarian. Like most athletes, his only lasting legacy was on the field.

Without his numbers, Bond's legacy might as well be buried undreneath it.

1. Or have divine assistance.

Posted by Josh at 1:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now that the evil preceptor is out of the way, I hope to have a thesis draft done by the end of the week. Although there's much I'd like to write about now, expect blogging to be anywhere from "slow" to "non-existent" until the draft is completed.

Posted by Josh at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few months ago, I switched from Mozilla to Firefox as my primary browser. You might have seen some news coverage about its latest release, and could contemplate the switch. Aside from being secure and stable, there are several useful plugins to make browsing easier. Some of my favorites:

• Googlebar - Mimics Google's own equivalent
• Adblock - Removes image and flash advertisements from web pages - customizable based on URI
• Sage - A Firefox based RSS Reader
• Prefbar - Easy Access to preferences
• IE View - Handy tool to open up IE exclusive pages and links in an IE window.
• Spellbound - Works like IE Spell - checks spelling in web forms.

And there are loads more from which to chose. Now that I can do blog spell checking¹ from Firefox, I officially have no more use for Internet Explorer other than to handle MS's own websites.

Vive la revolucion revolution!

1. Yes, I do that occasionally.

Posted by Josh at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Blogging may be a little slow for a while - certainly don't expect the longer postings to continue.

My mother came home from rehab on Sunday. Rehab will continue at home, but it's unclear how long it will take. Normally, rehab for hip surgery requires more support from the other hip/leg side. In my mother's case, the other side is still hampered by a broken kneecap. Therefore, she can't do the weight-bearing excersizes just yet so rehab may take longer than usual.

On the plus side, she is able to work at home - her boss installed a cable modem in the house. If you'd like to send wishes, you can e-mail Rabbiyuter at aol dot com. I'm sure she'd love to hear from random strangers.

I've gotten conned into regiving my shiurim at the Hillel here. The research is done, and I could use the hazara. Also, it gives me the opportunity to write out the shiurim instead of just putting up sources.

Finally, Izzy Kramer has been on fire in sending me loads of chords, and it's been hard to keep up posting them.¹ If I have any spare time, I'll be working on automating some things using PHP.² If there are any interested volunteers, please let me know.

1. Also transposing. Izzy uses a lot of barre chords - as well he should - but many players including myself have difficulty barre-ing acoustics.
2. At the risk of a flame war, I think PHP is cooler and faster than Perl - that and I forgot most of Perl and I've been wanting to learn PHP for a while. ASP.net isn't really an option since YUCS isn't running Mono - and there just isn't a need for it. From looking through the documentation and speaking to friends, PHP can best do what I need/want it to, even without MySQL

Posted by Josh at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For anyone I'm in the NY/NJ area until Nov. 4th. I'm by YU today, and will be popping around Manhattan every now and again, in case anyone is interested and I'm planning on returning to Washington Heights next shabbat. So, if you're in the area and would like to get together, drop me a line, and we'll see what we can do.

There's a new guy around YU who sells loads of sefarim out of a truck. Between the makeshift storefront and the inches of dust on each book, I felt just like being in Israel again. Best part about sefarim shopping is finding incredible deals for things about which people have no idea. Case in point: I picked up R. Meir Simcha Feldblums critical edition of Masechet Gittin for a whopping $6. Sweet!

Finally, the BangItOut link has attracted more people to the chords directory. With the moderately increased traffic, we also have a few more chords up including Yo Ya, and R. Twersky's Im Eshkachech. And with plenty of time for Hannukah, we also have Maoz Tzur and Al HaNissim. If want Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, look elsewhere.

Posted by Josh at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was wondering why the hit count jumped recently. It turns out that we've been linked from BangItOut.com - specifically the chords archive.¹

Rabbi Week will continue shortly...

1. Although they complain about the lack of Karduner chords, I've been trying to correct this problem for some time and hopefully it won't be an issue.

Posted by Josh at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A little while ago, Rabbi Josh Joseph of the Orthodox Caucus contacted me about a publication they were putting out about dating. Someone tipped him off to this website,¹ and they decided to publish the post called Mixed Blessings about the phrase "Im Yirtzeh Hashem By You." I had no idea it was going to be distributed in this past week's edition of the Jewish Week.

I haven't had time to look at all of the articles just yet, but some of them seem worth checking out. In addition to the website, you can download the PDF version.

It's an interesting development considering I never expected this blog to have any such effect and I'm curious to see how this might develop. Of course, I suppose I'll have to get more consistent about posting....

1. Apparently, I've written a few times about my take on dating.

Posted by Josh at 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Et hata'ai ani mazkir hayom.

I stand before you embaressed at the lack of posting and the near extinction of this blog. The past summer has been a whirlwind in my personal and professional life, and it's far from over. I'm going to try to write what I can when I can, but the real world must take precedence over the virtual one.

Posted by Josh at 12:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm getting bored with the color scheme/layout of this blog. Any volunteers to help out?

Also, freqent commenter Danny just started his own blog at http://www.bneiakiva.org/blog/main.asp?bID=77

Posted by Josh at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yes, today is my birthday. I'm now 27, and over the hill. But, it's a good time to start looking over at the year in retrospective. Most normal people do this around New Years for their respective calenders, but considering I'm still on an academic schedule, I get to go in the summer.¹

It's a little easier this year thanks to this blog. I've never kept a diary or a journal, but now I can actually look back at what I wrote and sometimes see a different person. Also, it's been roughly a year since I started blogging. The very first posting on the old site was on May 15 2003, but things didn't really take off until I moved to YUCS on October 20th. So as it turns out, August 4th is close enough to splitting the difference.

Right now, I'm not in the mood for anything shticky² like top 10 lists or major meta-analysis, but I have been thinking about what this past year has meant to me, and the blog is a nice reminder of things. In the FAQ I explained "I started blogging primarily to improve my writing skills with minimal accountability. Meaning, I felt I needed a non-threatening public forum where I could speak my mind and not get vilified. (yet)."

I think this has happened to some extent. I've been getting better at writing out my thoughts, and perhaps as a consequence, I haven't been lynched (again, I stress, yet). But in my creation of a personal forum something really strange happened:

People started reading the damn thing.

I'm not just talking about friends from the heights or YU, but completely random people. Even stranger is that these people actually like reading this blog, to the extent where on more than one occasion I've had IM's pop up from people I didn't know asking me when I was going to post something new. What has happened is that I've been able to not only maintain a semblance of contact with older Friends of mine, but I've some wonderful people through this. As sappy as it sounds, all the people who have commented or IMmed me to shmooze have had a profound impact on me this year³.

For one example, here's a beautiful e-mail I got a while back from a fan of the chord collection:

Greetings from Brooklyn, NY. I would just like to thank you for posting the guitar chords and transliterations of various Jewish songs on your website. I am a Catholic-raised gentile currently working for the Heritage for the Blind; my employers and many of my coworkers are Jewish. Since coming on board here a year and a half ago, I have begun a love affair with Jewish music. There is something about the music that speaks to me, despite the fact that I don’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and I don’t "understand" 99% of what I’m hearing. But...my soul gets uplifted at the sound of many of these songs. As a musician, I know that music can often bypass language comprehension, and speak directly to hearts. Five Towns Radio (www.fivetownsradio.com) has replaced Lite FM as the choice of listening music on my computer.

I play piano, guitar, and sing. I’m often frustrated by my desire to play and sing various Jewish songs -- because I don’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and I don’t want to mispronounce everything, I refrain from singing. I thought it would be easy to find a website or two that would translate/transliterate the lyrics to these songs into English. (A lyrics page in Hebrew won’t do me much good.) I spent some time looking for pages that transliterated the lyrics into English, and luckily I found your blog through Google.com. It is, as far as I know, one of the only sites online that provides guitar chords and transliterated Hebrew music. I’d like to thank you for posting the guitar chords and transliterations to songs such as Ana Hashem and Shiru Lamelech. I can strum away on my guitar, and sing, and feel that I’m not butchering the Hebrew words to death. Please continue to post chords and lyrics. Your hard work is deeply appreciated. Have a Kosher and Happy Pesach.

This entire year has been extremely important in my personal and intellectual development. I left a two-block ghetto in New York, and took several risks in moving out to Chicago. As a result, I've expanded my mind, met so many new people, forged countless positive relationships while reinforcing existing ones. I've been thinking in ways I haven't thought before and I done things I'd never would have tried before and I'd like to think it's had a positive effect on me.

Overall, this has really been a wonderful year for me, While hardly perfect, I will never regret my decision to come here. For those of you who follow my intellectual and emotional exploits, I thank you for your interest, feedback, and in many cases, friendship. All readers, be it fans or critics, have been of invaluable for helping me refine and articulate my ideas and feelings.

As far as what you can expect for next year, I have no idea⁴, but I'm certain it's going to be interesting. For the growing collection of loyal readers, I will try to continue doing whatever it is that I've been doing up until now. From simple musings to academic discourses, this is a and will always be a window to my increasingly strange and ever changing world, my personal YUTOPIA.⁵

1. And Rosh Hashana is coming up....
2. Must be getting grumpy in the old age.
3. Some positive, some not yet positive.
4. Seriously, I really don't. Job leads are better than no leads, but leads alone don't pay rent.
5. With footnotes where applicable, and sometimes where they're not.

Posted by Josh at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

*sigh*

Yeah, I'm taking liberties with "somtimes" updated to the point where I've been spending more time writing about why I'm not writing then actually writing. Keep in mind that I'm taking two classes this quarter which require weekly writing assignments and I'm changing thesis topics.

Short story is that I'm doing well, really busy, and really tired. In other words, your typical U of C student. Sederaim were typically fun in the Yuter household; it's a shame we can't record them. Of particular note, the Rabbis Yuter had a nice tag-team proving why the commandment of retelling the story of the Exodus is not in fact related to the generic "Learning Torah."

Anyway, the point is that if there are any loyal readers still there, sit tight for hopefully another week or so while I straighten out some things, and recover from Pesach. If all goes well, it should be worth it.

In the meantime, I figured out (I think) the chords to Blue Fringe's song Flippin' Out and I added the chords to Carlebach's Im Eshkachech which, ironically, I had forgotten to post.

Come to think of it, maybe that's why I haven't been able to blog...

Posted by Josh at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just some random postings today as I continue "enjoying" spring break:

• I added some Carlebach songs to the Chord Directory, so you might want to get the latest zip, or just download Simcha Le'artzecha and Asher Boro.


• The comments have been working well for the chords. I've been responding to most people via e-mail. I'd love to add more songs, so suggestions are appreciated (but actual chords would be most helpful).


• I'm in the process of tweaking the color scheme a bit. I've noticed that it looks much better on my laptop than it does on other monitors. As always, I'm open to all suggestions (especially if you're Ephraim Shapiro).


• For all those who kept saying, "oh but Chicago is so cold!" I'd like to point out that yesterday was a beautiful 65. And yes, I did manage to spend some time outside and enjoy a lesuirley walk to the Point.


• Thursday, I'm going to see Guys and Dolls. It's a professional troupe, but the theater is located on campus. Tickets are regularly $35 but $8 for UC students - not a bad deal.

That's all for now. Evil Paper coming soon....

Posted by Josh at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Officially, it's "spring break" here, but I'm catching up on some things. Expect blogging to resume at some point in the near future.

Besides, did you really think I'd come back on National Goof-Off Day?

Posted by Josh at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've just about finished with the weekly pilgrimages to the cRc, which has been taking much of my time recently. They have all been incredibly helpful, especially Executive Director Rabbi Joseph Ozarowski. I'm not planning on publishing the paper, but if you're reading this, know that they do much more than Kashrut., including (but not limited to) a new rehab program.(Free reg reqd)

I am officially plugging The Queen of Persia from Shazak Publications. Highly recommended for all ages.

Also on the Purim front, I'm working on some shticks, and typing up my shiur from last year on the real halakhot of drinking on Purim. Rav Gedalia Schwartz, the Av Beit Din of the cRc, recently gave a shiur on Purim drinking which confirmed my initial analysis of the sources.

In other news: I'm going to an AIPAC conference for university students on Sunday. I've never been to one of these things before, but I have a feeling I'll have fun one way or another. I'll try to write up some highlights from that. Also, I'm working on my take of Evil in the Talmud and a brief introduction to Jewish Law. Oh yeah, and a thesis of some sort.

I've realized I really missed sitting down in the library and just writing. It's always unfortunate when school gets in the way of education. At any rate, if and when things calm down, I can get back to the good 'ol days of semi-regular pseudo-intellectual blogging.

Posted by Josh at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In an ironic Kuro5hin article, James AC Joyce writes "Why your Movable Type blog must die."

One complaint is, "You are all sheep:"

Whenever you discuss a subject about which you all fake your knowledge, such as "metablogging", the lot of you tend to throw out random and completely false opinions and then temperately argue each other down to a single, unified viewpoint. Which is completely wrong.

Aside from the inherent hypocricy in posting this to a blogging type site, he does raise some interesting issues. It's bad enough we have a new forum for idiots to easily and anonymously run off their mouths, but the blogs mess up search engines. Let's say you're a history major looking for something about Archduke Ferdinand. My shiur, while interesting, doesn't exactly help you all that much.

If it's any consolation, I've been slacking recently, and if things go well I might slack even more in the future.

But if the search engine thing still bothers you, you're free to write a better one, because of course, you can never have enough search engines.

Posted by Josh at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

YUTOPIA has broken the 10,000 hit barrier since its launch in July and notched over 17,000 page views.

Unreal.

Many thanks to the Loyal Readers, and everyone who came here by accident while searching for dating questions, The Alphabet of Ben Sira, Frumster, secular colleges, most recently jewish guitar chords, and my favorite: apikorsim definition (to the old site).

I know the content has been slow as of late. I've been working on a detailed response to R. Stein's Beis Yitzhack articles which is taking much longer than I would have liked and I do have other work to do in grad school. I should be done with it within the next couple of days.

Oh - and a shout out to Avraham Bronstein on his new solo project.

The title is a reference to the movie Rounders which you should see if you haven't yet. John Malkovich as Teddy KGB must be seen and heard to be fully appreciated.

Posted by Josh at 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been slightly over a month since YUTOPIA moved from blogspot and we finally are the first website returned for "YUTOPIA."

We've also returned the top link on Yahoo's England search for "meaning of mendy in muslim religion."

I am truly flattered.

Posted by Josh at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As you can imagine, things are busier at U of C since I have to catch up on readings ignored because of the hagim. I spent most of my "blogging time" this week finalizing the move and rewriting the FAQ which is why I haven't had any new postings in a while.

This Friday I will be on a panel at Hillel discussing "Egalitarian Liturgy: An Ethical Imperative?" (I wonder if I'll have to start rating my performances based on the number of chairs thrown at me). Will b'n get a post on this one.

I've also been working on a post about the recent secular college brouhaha. Due to the sensitive nature of these topics, I'm trying to be thougtful, coherent, and at the same time not offend anyone. Ambitious, if not impossible.

Stay Tuned...

Posted by Josh at 8:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Updated on August 29th, 2006

First, let me welcome you to YUTOPIA - The Sometimes Updated Blog of Rabbi Josh Yuter. If you're reading this entry, you're probably looking for some more information about who I am and what I'm doing here.

As you might have guessed, my name is Joshua Yuter, and among other things, an ordained rabbi from Yeshiva University. After bouncing around for years, I'm currently landed in Washington Heights New York and employed as a computer programmer.

I started blogging primarily to improve my writing skills with minimal accountability. Meaning, I felt I needed a non-threatening public forum where I could speak my mind and not get villified. (yet). The short answer to my general hashkafa is is ashkenazi guf, non-kabbalistic sepharadi neshama. Long answer is...well, you'll just have to come back here more often to figure that out, but in terms of halakha check out this series for starters. Of course you should read everything in the archives - not that it's all gold, but some interesting things in there...somewhere.

The significance of the name YUTOPIA is often misattributed to my connections with Yeshiva University (YU). This is a reasonable guess considering I spent 7 years there, but I've moved on some time ago. Really, YUTOPIA is based off of my last name. The name first came to me way back when I was tinkering with RedHat Linux and needed a domain name. As with most things in college, it seemed clever at the time.

Initially, YUTOPIA was running on Blogger, but thanks to Shaya Potter's upgading of YUCS it was time to move on. At the time of the move, YUTOPIA had over 4,000 hits - mostly thanks to Protocols (a href="http://yutopia.yucs.org/archives/2004/12/requiem_for_a_j.html">R.I.P.) - and a few other very odd google links. On October 20, 2003, YUTOPIA moved to YUCS where it has remained since. Since that time we've gone through a few redesigns and some other improvements.

YUTOPIA is a small sample of the many thoughts which run through my head on any given day. I may get intellectual, personal, or shticky. My general attitude has been that there is a lot of stupidity on the internet and I don't really need to add to that. However, I usually bring a unique perspective on things which some people find interesting. I realize not everyone will agree with everything on here, if they leave here thinking a little more than they did previously, I'm happy.

So that's the scoop. Take a look around, stay as long as you like, and feel free to comment - we've had some great flame-free discussions in the past, e-mail or IM anytime.

Enjoy!

Posted by Josh at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (21)