what makes jews unique?

if you are hayyim nahman bialik and yehoshua ravnitzky, it's aggadah, often translated as "legend." it was their desire to make this non-legal aspect of rabbinic literature accessible to a new generation that made them go swimming through the rabbinic texts from the first eight hundred years or so of the first century to find their favorites and organize them in a way that moderns could fathom.
i first studied their amazing compilation, sefer ha-aggadah, in a small group at brandeis university hillel led by rabbi al axelrad. the future rabbi amy eilberg was in that class, as well, as we read the hebrew aloud and haltingly translated it into english and tried to understand what the rabbis were trying to say.
thirty years later, i'm approaching the text again. i've been motivated by a group i tripped across on the web (was it serendipity or was there a greater power leading me there?) which is committed to working its way through the text over the course of two years. i've only done daily study once before and that was to work my through the mishnah in memory of my father. i think i'm ready to do it again. the fact that i can do it with an english translation in hand makes it less daunting.
watch this space to see how i'm doing and what i'm thinking about. if you want to join me in this project, checkout bloggadah.blogspot.com. maybe we'll can organize a discussion group at bob and bob. let me know if you're interested.

is eat, sleep, read enough?

we hung a poster in the window at bob and bob yesterday. i was excited about it at first. but now i have mixed feelings.
i am a member of the american booksellers association. and because of the specialized nature of bob and bob, i often am unable to participate in some of their initiatives to support independent bookstores. but they have a new one i'm really enthused about. it's called indiebound and the idea is to support independent locally-owned businesses of all sorts and to help consumers understand how they personally benefit from the presence of these businesses in their community. i received a box and a tube of promotional materials from indiebound. included was a giant red poster that says, eat sleep read.
"cool," i thought. "that's me. and that's a lot of my customers." i asked my mom to arrange to have it hung in the front window because i can't hang something straight to save my life.
it looks great in the window and it blocks some of the sun.
but something is missing.
can a jew really be satisfied with eat sleep read?
but what would i add?
eat sleep read pray? sounds right, but isn't me.
eat sleep read save the world? closer, but pretentious.
eat sleep read love? sounds christian, even though love is all over the siddur.
eat sleep read pursue justice? getting warmer
when i figure it out, i may just have to adjust the sign. and once again feel like i don't quite fit in the american booksellers association.