Although Diane and I are no longer running the informal minyan at Shir Hadash, we’re still very involved. So today, she’s reading Torah and I’m leading the service and giving the D’var Torah (the discussion of the portion). And here it is.

D’var Torah: Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:27-34)

“I’m famished; let me gulp down some of that red stuff.”

“He ate, drank, got up, and left.”

Those sentences come from today’s portion, but they are also all too typical of our lifestyles today. How often do you just grab whatever’s convenient? How often do you gulp it down (maybe while you’re driving or working)?

I don’t know about you, but I have to plead guilty on both counts ”“ especially when it comes to having lunch. All too often, I find myself squeezing in lunch during a telephone call, hoping that the people on the other end can’t hear me chewing. And now that I have a wireless headset, I can even stay on the line while I get up and go (I do try to remember to use the mute button).

But was Esau just famished, or was there something deeper? An alternative translation is “exhausted” or, as in The Five Books of Moses, with introductions, notes, and commentary by Everett Fox (New York: Schocken, 1995, p. 117), “weary.”

In fact, Esau was so worn down that he didn’t even pause when Jacob told him that the price of the meal was his birthright ”“ he just wanted to eat, drink, and go on his way.

In today’s world, it’s very easy to get worn down by the press of events and the demands on our time ”“ even when one is relaxing by watching TV or reading a magazine, there are endless calls to buy, sell, or donate. And you’re likely to be multitasking anyway.

Today is Shabbat, a day when we’re supposed to slow down (stopping is probably impossible!), do no work, study, and reconnect, with God, and with ourselves. That’s our birthright ”“ but we have to be careful not to give it away for a shiny new toy or a glass of red stuff (even if it’s fine Pinot Noir!).

Shabbat Shalom.

“Work expands to fill the time available” — Parkinson’s First Law

I’ve had several demonstrations of Parkinson’s Law this week, and I am now a true believer. Again.

Last night, Jeff needed help using the Geometer’s Sketchpad to do some homework (due this morning at 8:30am, of course); he’d e-mailed his teacher, but no answer was forthcoming (probably because said teacher was on the train home and disconnected), and so he turned to me.

The problem seemed simple: construct a triangle with sides 15, 11, and 7, and measure one of the angles. But he couldn’t figure out how to construct the triangle.

Geometer’s Sketchpad is a very interesting program, and I wish I’d had it when I was a kid — but it isn’t particularly easy to use. It has a help system, but it’s not very helpful — and “triangle” doesn’t appear in the help system.

There isn’t even a simple way to draw a line of a specified length that you can freely move around the screen — instead, you have to construct a point, translate it by the length you want, use the two points to create a circle, then create another point on the circle, draw a line segment connecting that point to the center of the circle, and then hide the circle and the second point you constructed. After that, you have a line that you can rotate and move as you wish.

Jeff’s teacher had given them a reminder of how to do the problem — construct some circles and intersect them. But the reminder didn’t remind Jeff sufficiently, and it didn’t mean anything to me. So I told him to try looking on the web for hints — with no success.

And we kept trying to create circles of the appropriate size and position them so a triangle would magically appear — no dice.

Eventually, I suggested that he use the circle method to construct the three line segments he needed and then drag them to form a triangle. Then we un-hid the circles that he used, and voilà — we knew how to construct the triangle he needed, and do it properly.

(The trick, by the way, is to construct two concentric circles, one of radius 15 and one of radius 11. Then construct a circle of radius 7 and move it so that its center is on the circle of radius 15. The points you need are the center of the circle of radius 7, the center of the circle of radius 15, and the point where the circles of radius 7 and 11 cross.)

But by that point, it was 10:30pm, and we were all very tired, having been flailing away at the problem for hours. It would have been far easier to do it with paper and pencil, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. I guess.

Today, I arranged my own demonstration of Parkinson’s Law. I won’t go into the gory details, but suffice it to say that I was busy reading The World is Flat so that I could return it to the library and writing an evaluation of some proposals — all of which had to be accomplished by the end of the day today. I managed, but with less than 10 minutes to spare.

So I’m definitely ready for the weekend. Unfortunately, I don’t expect it to be very restful — tomorrow, we have Torah Study, services, San Jose Rep’s production of Pride and Prejudice, and then I have to pack for a week-long trip to the East Coast. I guess the flight should be restful; JetBlue doesn’t have DC power on their planes, so I can’t use my computer the whole way!