College – Rabbi Jon 's Website and Blog

November 2, 2025

College: Tocqueville Continued, John Stuart Mill

I really liked Tocqueville’s The Old Regime and the French Revolution. He argues that the French Revolution itself was not transformative, but that even with the conservative political reaction came social transformations that had been set in motion beginning in the 1600s and that those explain France in the 1800s better than the ideology of the… Continue reading

College, History, Inclusion, Social Theory

November 2, 2025

College Update: Stats and Economics

Not so much to say about the statistics course that is earth-shattering. I continue to be grateful to have encountered various warnings about how not to present data in misleading ways. Pie charts and badly depicted axes can make small effects look big (which happens every day in the paper when the stock index changes… Continue reading

College, Economics

October 31, 2025

One More Course This Term

My last “first” college entry of this semester – Science A-22: Chance, Necessity, and Order. This was a philosophy of science class as well as a conceptual introduction to 20th century physics. So not the typical “Physics for Poets” class, with non- or low-math versions of basic topics in physics. In that sense, different from… Continue reading

College, Education, Science, Young Jewish Adult, Youth

October 17, 2025

College: Beginning Economics

I thought I had lost my Ec 10 notebook (introduction to economics) but I found it! I would never in a million years have taken the course, but it was one of the only standard required courses in my Social Studies concentration. I checked the current department requirements, and it remains that way, even though… Continue reading

Adam Smith, College, Current Affairs, Economics, Young Jewish Adult

October 12, 2025

Second Year: Research Methods in Sociology

Another post about the start of my sophomore year. We had to take a statistics course for the Social Studies concentration and had our pick of a math course or a basic research methods course in any of the social science departments. I picked the Sociology version because it was going to be the easiest… Continue reading

College, Young Jewish Adult

October 9, 2025

I’m a Sophomore!

There is much momentous happening today, and I’m sure I’ll be back here or in some other way with thoughts on that. But for now I’m posting about another project. A couple weeks ago I started the second year of re-reading my college notes again, on (more or less) the calendar date when I wrote… Continue reading

Adam Smith, Books, College, Ethics, Freedom, Middot, Psychology, Social Theory, Tocqueville, USA, Young Jewish Adult

September 8, 2025

Finally Finishing Freshman Year!

My final post on the courses of my first spring in college are on Professor Bartal's class on the emergence of the State of Israel. These aren't particularly organized by significance, just maybe by new thoughts I'm having now. As I read the notes on the period from 1904-1949, I am most struck for some… Continue reading

College, Current Affairs, History, Israel, Young Jewish Adult

September 8, 2025

Finishing My First Year of College (Part 2)

I'm about to start year 2 of my project of rereading my college notes, but I didn't finish up putting down some last notes on year 1. The part of Gov 1170 that really struck me in my final read had to do with political parties and their role in enabling social conflicts to be… Continue reading

College, Current Affairs, History, Inclusion, Terrorism, Young Jewish Adult

July 13, 2025

Finishing My First Year of College (Part 1)

I did finish looking at my class notes for the second semester of my first year of college a while ago, but haven’t written about it yet. Here’s a bit on one of the courses – Empire and Art. The last few weeks were not as distinctive as the earlier part of the class. The… Continue reading

Art, College, History, Young Jewish Adult, Youth

March 20, 2025

More From College

Most of the new things the past few days are from the history of Zionism course. Some things that struck me… Given the gap in experience between Herzl and Eastern European Jews, I continue to be surprised how many showed up for the First Zionist Congress. Granted it was 1897, so the Chovevei Tzion groups… Continue reading

Art, College, History, Israel, Power

March 6, 2025

More College

I am noting that in the Lit and Arts course, what seems to be easiest for me to understand (and was back then too?) is architecture. I'm not spatial, generally, and geometry was my weakest part of math. But the layout of churches seems to be intelligible to me. Charlemagne's church architecture has a logic… Continue reading

Antisemitism, Art, College, History, Israel, Young Jewish Adult, Youth

March 5, 2025

Back to College Update

It has always been hard for me to find a way to interact with art that isn’t verbal. I want to think and talk about the concepts that are artistically represented, to interpret them. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it seems incomplete. As I go over Lit and Arts, I’m thinking about this but… Continue reading

Antisemitism, Art, College, History, Israel, Young Jewish Adult, Youth