by aaron on December 26, 2010
Sometimes it’s funny how things work out. I was all ready to write a blog post about e-book readers and Shabbos based on an article (special thanks to Marci who pointed this article out) from The Atlantic’s web site. Then over Shabbos I was having a discussion about ebook readers and the big question was “What do you do about reading on Shabbos?”. Finally, this morning I found this article in my google reader about how Artscroll, the 800 pound gorilla of the Jewish publishing world, is now starting to get their content ready for digital publication.
I agree with Artscroll that the printed book isn’t going anywhere because of Shabbos and the fact that you can’t use an ebook reader on the day of rest. The interesting suggestion around that is the suggestion of having a special “Shabbos ebook reader” which will turn on at specific times and turn the pages at specific intervals. I’m not sure if I’d go for a product like that since my mind tends to wander while I’m reading and there would be no way for me to go back and see what pages passed me by.
On a completely different topic, I think that it’s awesome that there will shortly be digital editions of the Talmud for sale. That will make my studying a lot easier. It will be interesting to see exactly how Artscroll will go about doing this? Will it just be the English translation side of things or will it also be the “original” page of the Talmud. My bet is on the just the translation but time will tell.
by aaron on December 8, 2010
I had mentioned on twitter a little over a week ago that I was attending the Matisyahu concert. It was the first show of his “Festival of Lights” tour for 2010. The show was right before Chanukah thus the “Festival of Lights” name for the tour. This was the first concert that I can remember attending since I was dragged to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert by my mother.
The concert was at the Brooklyn Bowl which is a bowling alley in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. It was converted from an old factory and they have so much space there that they were able to have a place for concerts that holds 600 people. When you hear about it the places seems to be a little odd to have a concert, but it works quite well. The sad thing is that the food there wasn’t Kosher so I had to eat before hand.
The concert was good and entertaining althoguh the opening act, Dub Trio, didn’t seem to go well with music that Matisyahu plays. I guess since they were his back up band and local it made sense for them to open. Matisyahu was typical Matisyahu he did seem to a lot of energy performing almost non stop for over two hours. In fact, the only time he took a break to talk to the crowd was to introduce his new song “Miracle” which is about Chanukah (you can see the video here).
It was a very interesting mix of people in the crowd. You had your Observant Jews and you had your hipsters. You even had Observant Jews that were hipsters. Seeing the crowd got me thinking about why the hipsters like Matisyahu as a performer? His songs are mostly, if not all, of a religious bend and they don’t seem to be the type of people to link that kind of thing. I don’t have an answer to that question, but it’s an interesting question to ponder.
I really did enjoy the concert and had a good time there. If you are able to see him perform live it’s a lot of fun. He has a lot of energy on stage.