It's Friday morning -- I'd have said, "Yom Shishi" in Israel. Here in L.A., it's usually a big study day, a rapid ride towards sunset, when the homework stops for 25 hours.

Today my to-do list is very long, intimidatingly so. I am glad that I can look back over my shoulder and remember the days of mothering a toddler and an infant -- that was real work. I think about those days a lot when I'm studying something that makes me feel like my head is going to explode. I got myself and the kid through colic, and what is a tough Rashi passage compared to three weeks of that?

Israel is much on my mind these days. I haven't written about it a lot, primarily because I am not sure what I have to say that is genuinely useful. Best thing I have seen in the media lately is "Mideast Miseries," a piece in Salon.com by Gary Kamiya. It's not perfect, but it's darn good.