Neabsco Creek Boardwalk

Last Monday, Veteran's Day, the temps got up to nearly 80° F. Fortunately, we were able to spend the afternoon outside, enjoying the perfect weather.

We hit up Neabsco Creek Boardwalk with our friend's 2-year-old. It turned out to be the perfect mini-hike.

We saw tadpoles and turtles, and two screaming bald eagles in the distance. We took in amazing scenery and soaked up the sun.

Much of the boardwalk is enclosed by railings. That meant L could explore to her heart's content, and we didn't fear we were going to have to fish her out of the water.

The hike was an out-and-back, but even that worked for us. L (mostly) toddled her way to the southern point of the trail, and then we strolled her back to the car. All told, we did a little over 2 miles of hiking. Our nearly 1-mile-an-hour pace was proof of just how fun the trail was.

Near the car, there was a playground where L could use her last bit of energy. By the time we dropped her off, she and I were fully spent. What an amazing day!

Review: The Scrolls From The Dead Sea

When I picked up the thin volume, The Scrolls from the Dead Sea by Edmund Wilson, I was certain I knew what I was getting into. While I was hazy about the details of the Dead Sea Scrolls, I thought surely they were a treasured discovery met with universal acclaim.

I imagined that finding the Dead Sea Scrolls would be like finding a cache of letters from your grandparents. At first the discovery would be met with disbelief: Surely these aren't what I think these are?! Once confirmed, you would pore over the letters, savoring even the most minor detail.

Wilson, however, paints a far more nuanced picture than this naive scene.

The book starts off light enough: the author describes the discovery of the scrolls.

At some point rather early in the spring of 1947, a Bedouin boy called Muhammed the Wolf was minding some goats near a cliff on the western shore of the Dead Sea. Climbing up after one that had strayed, he noticed a cave that he had not seen before, and he idly threw a stone into it. There was an unfamiliar sound of breakage. The boy was frightened and ran away. But he later came back with another boy, and together they explored the cave.

I love that this once-in-a-lifetime discovery came down to kids being kids. I can still picture my nieces and nephews standing on the shore of Deer Island joyfully chucking rocks into the water, as though this was the world's greatest pastime. Let's hear it for the magic of play.

From the discovery, however, the book only gets more complex. Take the Essenes. The text explains that the cache of scrolls was most likely the library of this ancient sect of Jews. Great, I thought, I'll get to learn about my people. One classic description of the Essenes comes from Flavius Josephus in his book The Wars of the Jews, written around 75 AD. Here's what he says:

[119] For there are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of which are the Pharisees; of the second, the Sadducees; and the third sect, which pretends to a severer discipline, are called Essens. These last are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects have. These Essens reject pleasures as an evil, but esteem continence, and the conquest over our passions, to be virtue. They neglect wedlock, but choose out other persons children, while they are pliable, and fit for learning, and esteem them to be of their kindred, and form them according to their own manners. They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage, and the succession of mankind thereby continued; but they guard against the lascivious behavior of women, and are persuaded that none of them preserve their fidelity to one man.

So the Essenes were basically a cult. Great. So much for finding my people.

Wilson then delves into the details of a handful of discoveries, working his way to a number of conclusions. This is trickier to do than one might imagine, as at the time the book was published, much of the text of the scrolls had yet to be analyzed. Heck, the complete set of fragments hadn't even been collected.

Wilson ultimately arrives at two conclusions: one that resonated and one that fell flat.

His first conclusion was that the discovery, while invaluable to historians, was slow to be appreciated by the faithful. Jews, he suggests, feared "impairing the authority of the Masoretic text." In hindsight, I can appreciate his point. As Jews, we've ascribed meaning to every word, letter, and whitespace in our source text; I could see how adding new source text could be a disruption.

The same could be said of that hypothetical cache of letters: reading them may reveal some truth best left in the past. What if Grandma was a jerk? What if Grandpa had an affair? What if the stories you built your life around simply aren't true?

It's Wilson's second conclusion, however, where he lost me. He suggests that the scrolls could demonstrate that Christianity grew organically out of Judaism:

[the scrolls show] that the morality and mysticism of the Gospels may perfectly well be explained as the creation of several generations of Jews working by and for themselves, in their own religious tradition, and that one need not assume the miracle of a special magnanimous act of God to allow the salvation of the human race.

That certainly seems plausible. However, he takes this a step further by suggesting that reasoning out these Christian beliefs is a sort of universal humanistic accomplishment. In that light, because Jews don't accept Christianity they are "left with a discipline of difficult observances, an anxious devotion to the letter of Scripture, which in time did perhaps as much as the malignity of Christian prejudice to keep [them] locked in [their] special compartment." In other words, because Jews haven't accepted Christianity, they are stuck in a smothering past.

He doesn't let Christians off the hook, either. He wishes they would embrace the scrolls' evidence that Christianity was a human development and not a supernatural phenomenon.

Wilson's view that Jews are somehow stunted isn't just insulting or a gross misreading of Judaism, it fails to acknowledge his own insight. The slow crawl of ideas that the Essenes used to get from one tradition to another is very much alive today. It's what allows me to attend a shul that sees no contradiction in mining the same texts that my Essene ancestors scrutinized for inspiration, all while under the guidance of a gay, female Rabbi.

One advantage I have over Wilson is time. It's now been over 75 years since the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Everyone from NASA to DNA experts has analyzed the find. So we can reasonably ask, has the discovery revealed any great flaws in our source text?

Consider the Great Isaiah Scroll:

The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) is one of the original seven Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1947. It is the largest (734 cm) and best preserved of all the biblical scrolls, and the only one that is almost complete. The 54 columns contain all 66 chapters of the Hebrew version of the biblical Book of Isaiah. Dating from ca. 125 BCE, it is also one of the oldest of the Dead Sea Scrolls, some one thousand years older than the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible known to us before the scrolls' discovery.

According to the Israel Museum Dead Sea Scrolls Project, the Great Isaiah Scroll contains nearly 2,600 differences from the Masoretic text that Jews use today. Aha! you might be thinking, this proves how unreliable the Masoretic text. Not so fast. The project explains:

The version of the text is generally in agreement with the Masoretic or traditional version codified in medieval codices, such as the Aleppo Codex, but it contains many variant readings, alternative spellings, scribal errors, and corrections.

Ultimately, all 66 chapters of Isaiah are accounted for. Rather than the Dead Sea Scrolls version showing our modern version as a fraud, it overwhelmingly supports it. This is especially remarkable when you consider that the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Masoretic Text were composed 1,000 years apart. The fact that there was a game of telephone going on for 1,000 years and the textual differences are so small only underscores the miraculous nature of this text. How did humans manage to accomplish this incredible feat of textual fidelity? But don't take my word for this, go read the side-by-side translations and see for yourself.

Perhaps Jews don't live in fear of what the Dead Sea Scrolls may reveal because many of our source texts already contain contradictions. We've been wrestling with and learning from messy sources for millennia. From verses in the Masoretic text that appear to contradict each other (I'm looking at you: Deuteronomy 15:4, 15:7 and 15:11) to verses written one way but read aloud another, to dissenting opinions captured in the Talmud. Judaism has never been about textual purity. So bring on the Dead Sea Scrolls; that just gives us new material to study and learn from.

Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 9

[Composed August 6th, 2024]

Our adventure, which started a little over two weeks ago with C's arrival in DC, is officially over. All children are safely back at their permanent addresses, and Shira and I can finally exhale.

Today, our final travel day, was delightfully uneventful. We checked off a number of standard end-of-trip traditions, including: enjoying breakfast with J that involves copious amounts of peanut butter and taking back-to-back photos to show J's height compared to ours. I fear that this may be one of my last trips where I'm still taller than J. That boy is gaining on me fast!

There was rain in the area due to Hurricane Debby, but once we climbed above the cloud deck, it was clear and sunny all the way to DC.

Shira and I are exhausted. But we're we did it! exhausted. We watched C rise to the challenge of being a camp counselor, G fearlessly take on ziplining, T creatively bring her coconut family to life, D savor his parrot photo shoot and J lead an epic game of pickup basketball. We ate breadfruit, drank Skittles flavored water and dodged a hurricane. What an adventure!

I can't imagine how we're going to top this next year, but we're going to try!

Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 8

[Composed August 5th, 2024]

Today was our travel day back to the US mainland. We had a special breakfast to celebrate J's birthday. If there's a better way to start the day than with Ben & Jerry's, I've yet to find it. After ice cream and waffles, we finished packing, crammed kids and suitcases into the rental car (sorry J's lap and G's legs) and headed to the airport for our flight.

The flight itself was uneventful, but we were dumbfounded when we caught sight of the arrival boards in baggage claim when we landed in Tampa:

Out of the 45 flights scheduled to arrive, only 6 were on time. This was thanks to hurricane Debby, which had made landfall north of Tampa just hours earlier. Debbie had doused us with rain in Puerto Rico and Tampa, and yet, we somehow managed to execute our trip as planned. Man, we were lucky!

We hugged it out as Dad picked up the Tampa kids at the airport. Before we knew it, Shira, J and I were in a hotel in Gainesville enjoying our last night of vacation before we dropped J in Jacksonville.

In a last act of souvenir buying, J and I did some shopping in the Puerto Rico airport. J opted to buy a set of travel dominoes; inspired, I did the same.

As we chill in our hotel room, J's been showing Shira and I how to play the domino game All Fives (or are we playing Muggins?), and it's awesome. In the past, "playing dominoes" meant playing a simple kids version where the goal was to chain together tiles. This is fun for little ones, but hardly a riveting experience.

All-Fives, however, introduces scoring. And with scoring comes strategy and decision making. The result is a game that's easy to learn, but includes decision making to keep the players engaged. No wonder playing dominoes is so popular, it's a ton of fun!

Thanks J for opening our eyes!

Puerto Rico Adventure - Day 7

[Composed August 4th, 2024]

This morning, as we prepared to leave the house for our last day of adventure in Puerto Rico, I explained our goal: optimize for serendipity. Of course, serendipity is by definition random. But we could play our part by heading some place new with few expectations.

We charted a circuit that would take us South-East until we hit Punta Santiago Humacao Nature Reserve. From there, we planned to follow the coast North and then East to our Airbnb. While we had plans to tour the Nature Reserve, the rest of the day was left open.

Our hike at the Humacao Nature reserve started with sighting this guy:

I know what you're thinking: that's a chicken; hardly an exotic species. In fact, that is a red junglefowl, which are considered to be among the wild ancestors to domesticated chickens.

D identified that we were dealing with junglefowl thanks to Cornell's Merlin app. The app bases bird identification not on visual means, but by song.

Junglefowl, the origins of which Charles Darwin puzzled over, are generally smaller and more brightly colored than their domestic cousins. I get the smaller part: a natural diet and lack of human meddling explains that. But why brighter? Wouldn't the bright feathers and prominent comb make them easier to spot, and therefore be eaten? Apparently, the colors and comb help attract mates. So, like most males I know, when given the choice they'll gladly choose sex over safety.

Our hike at Humacao reserve started in hot, humid, green tunnel conditions. At one point, T found a fine looking coconut and asked if she could bring it home. Flippantly, I responded that if she was willing to carry it, it was all hers.

The hike took a delightful twist when we rounded a corner and found ourselves face to face with the Caribbean Sea. The water was too rough to swim in, but the beach was fun to explore.

Inspired by our breadfruit experience, one of the kids suggested we try harvesting some of the coconuts on the beach. We searched around until we found a couple that gave a sloshing sound, suggesting there was delicious juice inside. We then spent a good 15 minutes trying every means possible to open up either of the fruit. We had no luck. If we had been shipwrecked, we'd have starved long before we got the meat of those coconuts. Undeterred, I tossed them in my backpack with the hope that I'd get them open when were home and had a kitchen full of utensils to throw at the problem.

We made our way to one last spot in Humacao: a WWII pillbox situated on a cliff overlooking the sea. While it's not likely that this particular bunker saw much action during the war, German U-Boats absolutely operated in the area. Here's a map of ships hit by U-Boats during the war.

Heck, U-539 sunk the Pillory a mere 4 miles off the coast of Puerto Rico.

From Humacao, we made our way along the coast back towards our Airbnb. I kept hoping we'd drive by some hidden gem, but it wasn't until we hit the famous Luquillo Kiosks, that we had a proper stop.

We started exploring the kiosks by doing some souvenir shopping. D picked up a wine stopper which had a colorful parrot perched on it. At first I was like D, what are you going to do with a wine stopper? But then I realized the souvenir was a genius pick: not only would the parrot be a reminder of his photo shoot from earlier in the week, but the wine stopper could vary well be part of a a future shabbas table. Not to mention, it made us both think of Uncle Ron, who's on a mission to get the entire family to enjoy a nice merlot.

After shopping we made our way to one of the food kiosks, and enjoyed some fried coconut fritters and virgin piña coladas. Kicking back in the outdoor seating, drinking, noshing and reminiscing, it was truly a perfect moment.

From Luquillo, we made our way back to our Airbnb, but not without one more stop at the supermarket. While in the supermarket, I picked up a flat head screwdriver to help assist us in getting into the coconuts we'd collected.

Once home, I did manage to get one of the coconuts open. I poured the liquid into a glass and carefully took a sip. Yuck. I spat it out. I'm not sure why the coconut was such a dud, but it was clear that we weren't feasting on foraged coconuts tonight.

T, for her part, had a better plan. She borrowed as sharpie and went full Wilson on the coconuts, giving them real personality. She asked if she could bring them home, but a quick glance at the TSA website suggested, no:

Passengers flying from Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or the U.S. Virgin Islands to the U.S. mainland cannot take most fresh fruits and vegetables due to the risk of spreading invasive plant pests.

But what does 'most' mean? Digging deeper, we found this USDA list, which had coconuts on the allowed list.

Coconut (with or without husk)

This was good enough for Shira and Myself. T had our blessings to bring her new coconut family home. Well played T!

So, did we get the moment of serendipity I was so seeking today? In fact, we did. When we pulled into our Airbnb, two local boys were playing basketball across the street and J and D went over to join them. It was delightful to watch the four kids, whose only common language was play, have a fun time playing basketball. I love that this beautiful moment didn't happen in some distant part of the island, but occurred across the street from our Airbnb. Oh serendipity, you sure do like to mess with me.