You learn the darndest things on the Web

From the soc.culture.jewish FAQ file (available here).

  Subject: Question 6.17: Must Jews use wine?

  Answer:

  Actually, grape juice can be used, even if it's just because
  you like it more.

  By the way, Rav Moshe Feinstein ruled that Catholics are
  allowed to use grape juice for the eucharist. To be more
  precise, R' Dr Aaron Twersky is both a rabbi (from a long
  line of Chassidic Rebbeim, but I mean "rabbi" in the sense
  of having a synagogue, not the head of a community) and a
  psychologist [sic] who works in a substance abuse center. One of
  his patients was a preist [sic] who was being cured of alcoholism.
  This means he can't drink even a drop of wine again; a
  problem for a priest who must take communion. His self-
  control just isn't reliable. So what is he supposed to do
  during Mass? He voiced this concern to Rabbi Twersky, who
  asked why he didn't just use grape juice. The priest asked
  his cardinal, and eventually the problem made it all the way
  to Rome. Can grape juice be used for communion? Well, the
  Vatican heard that we consider the grape juice a kind of
  wine, but they wanted to know more. So the question went
  back to the priest and Rabbi Twersky. R' Twersky sent back a
  citation of a responsum of R' Moshe Feinstein, allowing the
  use of grape juice for the seder. The Vatican concluded that
  if grape juice is okay for the seder, then it was usable for
  the Last Supper, and therefore when Jesus said at that meal
  "this is my blood" he meant grape juice too.

Twersky is a psychiatrist, by the way, not a psychologist.

Some background for that journal entry

Some of you who know me only through this blog (are there any of you out there?) might be confused by that journal entry I just posted. It doesn't connect too well if you don't know any of my history.

To that end, another link: an essay I wrote in 1991, called "AIDS: Everyone's Problem." This essay was a precursor to the senior thesis I wrote as a graduation requirement at New College of Florida (then a subsidiary of the University of South Florida), "Anything but Herpes I can Cure": a Hypertext Thanatography. The essay, and the thesis, are about watching my dad, Norman Silverman, M.D., A''H, sicken and die of AIDS. The quote in the title of the thesis, by the way, was my father: that was how a urologist taught his son about the birds and the bees. He said it to me in his office one day, dressed in his white coat, and as near as I can tell, he must have already been HIV-positive when he said it, unbeknownst to him.

A few words about this essay. First, it's very raw –– not unfinished, but like a freshly debrided burn. Second, I was much angrier (in general) when I wrote it. And third, it was written in 1991, and last revised (lightly) in 1994, 12 years ago –– when AIDS was a death sentence. I don't propose to change it now; it's a period piece, a relic of my past.

But it is a pretty good precursor to my thesis, and to the preceding blog post.

In general, this was not a situation –– that is, the iatrogenic follies – with which I was unfamiliar. To see my most recent take on this, see an essay I wrote to honor my thesis sponsor at New College, Mac Miller, "Mac Miller –– a Humo(u)rous Tribute." In it, I mention my father-in-law, José Katz Wons, M.D., A''H, and his struggle with pancreatic cancer. My father-in-law passed away November 20, 2004.

A journal entry from March 2006

The stage door of the Lincoln Center theaters (the Vivian Beaumont Theater and the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater), at 150 W. 65th Street, Manhattan.

Journal entry: 3/22/06

Becky and I had theater tickets for The Light in the Piazza, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. When we got there, there's an underpass on 65th Street, under Lincoln Center proper. When we walked close to it, I flashed back to the last time I saw something at Lincoln Center, which must have been 1994, when I was in New York for the CLAL retreat. I saw Spalding Gray. I remembered the stage door -- where I met him for the first and only time -- being under that overpass. I told Becky.

As we walked under it, I realized I was wrong -- that wasn't what the stage door looked like at all, so I told Becky I'd been wrong.

But when we turned off of 65th Street and walked to where the sign for the Beaumont pointed us, the memory returned even stronger -- and I saw the sign that said "Stage Door." I'd been right all along. I was sad, yet it was a happy memory. When I told Spalding Gray about my thesis (so it must have been 1994), he said "Keep writing!" Happy because I told someone whose work I liked that I liked it; sad, because I haven't followed his advice -- and because of what happened to him.

The Light in the Piazza was really good. [Spoiler warning!] It's about a girl who is, in her mother's words, "a special child," kicked in the head by a Shetland pony at her tenth birthday party (for which her mother blames herself) -- who finds happiness, or at least the chance of happiness -- with an Italian she meets in a Florentine piazza. In the opening song, I couldn't see where it was going and I was cold to it, but it rapidly won me over. Romantic without much sentimentality, and the girl -- Clara -- has her developmental disability painted pretty realistically (rather than being stereotypically "retarded," she tends to get overwhelmed, as someone with AS [Asperger Syndrome] or HFA [high-functioning autism] might.) Very moving.

Then, at the end of the applause, Aaron Lazar, who played Fabrizio, Clara's love interest, makes a little speech. We are again in New York during the fundraising period for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (which is how we got our Producers poster, autographed by the entire cast, including Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick), my favorite time of year on Broadway.

So we got some autographed Piazza schwag (an autographed Playbill, which will look great near the Producers poster and autographed Golda's Balcony Playbill).

As we were leaving the theater, it all got to me. I said something, or started to say something, to Becky about how I'm glad we came to New York at this time of year, but I was overcome. My eyes filmed over and I had to go lean against a wall. I started to cry a little bit. I really am glad we're here.

Later, when I asked her about what I said before I started crying, Becky said she felt so impotent because she couldn't console me, because I console her so well when she gets sad. I replied that she does just by being there. It's true that I've been through some bad times, and I miss my dad. But these last seven years have been the best of my life.

Does this surprise anyone?

I am nerdier than 93% of the population.

Excel Time logger VBScript

I spent most of a day and a half modifying a VBScript I got from the Lifehacker blog that now creates and formats a new Excel time log file every day and updates it every time it's run. The XLS this VBScript produces computes the duration of each entry, sums the total duration, and supplies the appropriate column headers and so forth.

I run it as a Windows scheduled task every 15 minutes and as a keyboard macro. The modified VBScript is available here. It's freely distributable, licensed under the GPL. The Lifehacker post that tells you how to make it run as a scheduled task and also how to make it run from your keyboard is here (it's also in the comments). Look at the VBScript to see what to change, though -- you need to change the filepath variable, not the filename.