Celtic Odyssey

It’s been over a year since I wrote about shaving. And some people might be thinking, “Yea!” But, I find it very calming. Especially since I use a double edge (or DE) safety razor. My shaves have been very smooth—no irritation, bumps, or cuts (well, a couple of nicks but nothing serious). As with most things one picks up, one starts to seek out other techniques or supplies. And wet shaving (as it’s sometimes called) is no different. I’ve tried various blades and soaps and I even purchased a couple of inexpensive razors at flea markets—one’s even a nice twist-to-open (TTO) or “butterfly” razor .  But one thing that I wanted to try was an “open comb” razor. A lot of DE safety razors have a bar that runs the entire length of the under side of the blade. This leads to less exposed blade, thus making it much safer than a straight razor, especially in inexperienced hands. But an open comb razor has notches or openings in the safety bar, giving it the look of a comb. While this is...

For a long time now, I’ve been writing the word God as G-d. I explained that there are two reasons for this, one being that some people find the name of God so holy, that one shouldn’t take a chance of defacing it or deleting it. So, they substitute the “o” with a hyphen or underscore. And so, not wanting to offend such people, I hyphenated the word God. But I was enlightened to something yesterday. While we were listening to Matisyahu on the way home from a long day of traveling, I realized that I have been guilty of dualism. For those of you who don’t know Matis , he’s a musician who mixes Orthodox Jewish themes into reggae, rap, beatbox, and hip-hop, though some of his latest music embraces different musical styles. A few times in Matis’ music, he uses variois Hebrew words for God. Sometimes he uses Adonai , a Hebrew word meaning, “My Lord” and sometimes he’ll use HaShem , a Hebrew word meaning, “The Name”. Both of these words have replaced the Hebrew word YHWH ( יהוה ) , ...