Sunday, October 23, 2005

Wilma and Formative Judaism



In the anticipation of Wilma, my wife convinced me that for the benefit of the children, and for herself, that we should move further north. It helped that my parents booked a room for us up in Tampa. To my delight and surprise our hotel was right across the street from the University of South Florida. The reason for my delight is that USF was once the scholarly residence for one of my favorite scholars, arguable the most published scholar in religion, Jacob Neusner. USF has published a substantial amount of Neusner's work and as a result holds most of it in their library.

So needless to say I have been spending most of my time working at the library, where I have found books that I have been meaning to look at for over three years, but couldn't be bothered to fill out the inter-library loan forms.

There is a certain beauty about the filled stacks of a research library that invigorate me to finish my dissertation.

Still Waiting for Wilma,

3 comments:

Rafael said...

Sad to hear about your proximity to Wilma; hope you and the family (and the rest of FL's population) make it relatively unscathed. I envy your time at USF, and I was pleased to see you finding some extra motivation for finishing that thesis. Good luck!

Alan Bandy said...

Neusner is one of the finest Jewish scholars I've read and we are all greatly indedted to his research. I hope your home is still intact when you return.

metalepsis said...

Raf and Alan,

Still in Tampa, contemplating the return, but can't find out what the situation is back in Naples. This is where news organizations could really use a lesson from blogers! Until then I'll be hanging out with Neusner (his books anyway)!

Cheers