Open Source Judaism

Yue Yue - Never Again!

2011-10-25T13:34:00.000-07:00

It is a central and universal teaching in Judaism that Torah can, should, and must be ignored to save a life. Bystanders have a "religious, ethical and legal" duty to help those in danger (even if they're non-Jews!). So while I didn't hear about this story when it first broke last week, only learning of it from Geek in Heels today, I am sure it will surprise no one that I join the ranks of those horrified by this event. Originally I was going to say "shocked and horrified", but the more I thought about it, the less shocked I was. From Jenny's blog post:

But when discussing the story over dinner last week, my in-laws told me a couple of things that set things in perspective:
Due to the underdeveloped legal infrastructure in China, there have been many cases in the past where a good samaritan would step in to a stranger’s aid, only to be blamed and charged with the crime they had never committed.
Additionally, local laws dictate that if a person is found guilty of devastatingly injuring another person(s), they are responsible for all of the medical bills and expenses for the rest of the victim’s life. This, coupled with the fact that the majority of the Chinese population — especially in poorer regions like Foshan where Yue Yue lived — would not be able to afford to financially provide medical care, leads people to leave victims for dead rather than help. That is, they would rather go to jail for manslaughter than be in debt (and become a burden and embarrassment to their families) for the rest of their lives.
This isn’t to say that I — or even my in-laws — believe what the 18 passerbys did was right. Neither am I justifying their actions (or lack thereof, in this case).
But now that I have been informed these cultural factors, I can better understand what had happened.

While some blame China's pursuit of economic growth and educational system, most stories confirm Jenny's; Good Samaritans in China help others at their own risk. It even seems some good may come of this; at least one university has pledged legal defense support to Good Samaritans (and started a new meme in the process), and international attention has ignited a new debate about China's ethical future.

So horrified? Yes. Hopefully this will catalyze positive change? Yes. But surprised? No; not at all. This is, after all, the Capitalist ideal.

My high school government teacher used to refer to "capital-C Communism" versus "small-C communism" to differentiate Marx's political theory from the real-world governments of the same name - say what you will about its validity, Marx's theory never killed anyone; that was the government that co-opted it. It is in that spirit I refer to Capitalism; not the economic theory, but the way we see it practiced in America today, where people are financially incented to let their neighbor's house burn down. Where we take as given that we're willing to let children starve to death and freeze on the street, and only debate how much we're willing to let it occur.

Look, what happened to Yue Yue should never be allowed to happen anywhere ever again. Good Samaritan protections should be universal and powerful; no one should hesitate to help those in danger because they fear financial or legal retribution. But let's stop kidding ourselves that this obligation to help others only applies on the individual level, and only to emergencies that happen right in front of us. Starving a child kills them just as surly as hitting them with a car - it just takes longer.

None of us are obligated to save the world entire; what is expected of us is what we are able to provide and no more. It's the "and no less" part that gets forgotten. Some see this as encouraging individual action, with each of us giving as best we are able (hey; that sounds like small-C communism!). In truth, though, what we as a nation are capable of is so much greater than what we as individuals can do that it is unconscionable to me to settle for anything less.

This is the origin of my political "liberalism". Not a desire to coddle everyone or contribute to a culture of entitlement, but a deeply held conviction that when the power of the world's mightiest nation is applied problems like hunger, poverty, and sickness cannot stand.

Do I honestly believe we can feed, clothe, educate, house, and treat every soul in the world? No; not even every in our own country. But I do believe we can save many. And I, for one, want to be sure the next time a child dies that I was not an inactive bystander.

'Tis a dark and stormy knight

2011-10-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

It started with thunder booming so loud that all our cats - even the non-cowardly ones - ran and hid under the bed. Rain is pounding against my window hard enough I can see the glass vibrate, and at a speed and rhythm most speed metal drummers would envy. It's not yet 7pm and the night is so dark I can't see the house across the street, and even if I could it would seem too far to walk, having to fight the wind the whole way.

All in all, it's oddly appropriate. Happy Sukkot everybody! Chag sameach!

Marriage with a sunset clause?

2011-10-03T07:55:00.000-07:00

This is...actually a very interesting idea. Like the wizard, it is great and terrible. But interesting. Short summary: new law in Mexico City allows couples to sign a marriage contract with an expiration date (minimum of two years), after which time the couple can choose to extend the marriage or simply let it expire.

My first reaction is amusement, because it seems like an idea got pulled from a speculative fiction short story and turned into an actual policy/social experiment. The stated goal of the policy is to reduce the divorce rate - it will almost certainly be successful at this, even if it does not increase the number of marriages that last to three years or longer - and the contract requires the couple to make many long-term decisions upfront (what to do with any potential kids, etc.), a step which would probably benefit many "traditional" marriages.

Let me get this out of the way: Yes, I just completed one year of marriage. No, I'm not looking to get out, or wishing I had this kind of deal. Just intrigued by the potential social impact the policy could have, especially if it's successful.

To oversimplify, there are three ways this could go:

1. Nothing changes except for the terminology. Marriages still fail at the same rate, with the same amount of fallout, baggage, and legal drama.

2. The Nightmare Scenario. Mexico City replaces Vegas as the hotspot destination for quickie, ill-advised weddings. People enter marriage lightly (because that's not already happening) without taking seriously the long-range implications. Families are devastated, childrens' lives ruined, and we move further down the slippery slope to legally endorsing bestiality, necrophilia, pedophilia, and all the other scary things "pro-family groups" are going to trot out to demonstrate this is an irreversible step towards the Apocalypse.

3. The Best-Case Scenario. I can see an argument for this actually making marriages stronger. I think the big problem with many marriages (and long-term commitments in general) is people don't actually understand what they're getting into. They think it's always going to be the fun, sexy, easy relationship it was at the beginning, and freak out when it becomes work, the "spark" is gone, and they realize they're trapped in the relationship for the rest of their lives. Or, you fall in love, marry someone, then see what they're really keeping behind their mask - whether it's an inability to properly clean the bathroom, a tendency to sleep around, or severe psychopathic tendencies - and realize you need to get out quickly. This starter kit approach to marriage allows people to learn what being married really means and who their partner is in a much more forgiving environment. Taking off this pressure might mean that when the problems come, people feel comfortable working together to resolve them instead of freaking out and running away.

I honestly think in the short-term the first scenario is the most likely, especially since there will likely be so much stigma against a marriage with an expiration date. It will be great or terrible for couples in equal numbers, based on what they bring into the relationship. What I really want to see is what happens if the policy survives long enough for a generation to grow up thinking it's "normal"; then we'll really see something interesting.

Completing the cycle of forgiveness

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

There comes a moment, in the process of repentance, after you have wronged someone but before they are aware of it. Many times, in this moment, we have already come aware of our transgression and have begun feeling the guilt, pain, and remorse that signifies genuine t'shuva, but we also feel fear: the fear of having to admit our action and endure the other person's anger and pain.

In this moment the temptation is often to conceal our actions. We already feel remorse, after all. We have acknowledged our wrongdoing, and may genuinely have learned from our actions, changed our ways, and vowed - truthfully! - to never do it again.

This temptation is, however, the Yetzer Ra - the wicked inclination. To deny the other person knowledge of your transgression is itself transgression. There is a teaching in Jewish law that one can only forgive sins committed against themselves; I cannot forgive you for what you did to my neighbor. Likewise, I cannot forgive myself for what I did to you.

The pain of telling the other person is the pain of healing coming it. It may not feel like it at the time. As with many medical procedures, it may cause great harm in the process of healing a greater wound. But without it you are not forgiven. At best, you have merely gotten away with it. Covered it up, buried it, and hid the evidence like a criminal escaping the police. To escape justice is not the same as to reclaim innocence.

L'shana tovah; may you have an easy fast.

Happy New Year, One And All!

2011-09-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I spent a lot of time this week in pursuit of tickets for the Holy Days, but I've been thinking about the upcoming new year in terms of an amusement park ride. It's the cyclical nature of the year, with the same peaks and valleys every time, like a roller coaster or a Disney-esque storybook ride.

At least, that's how it goes on paper.

In reality, we all enter and exit at different points. There's no preset boarding area; we don't get time to securely fasten our seat restraints before the train starts moving. In some ways the better comparison is the lazy river; lots of entry points, and it's up to you to jump into the flow of things. Once you get in, though, it's the same path for everyone, every time you go 'round.

I don't like calling the year "lazy", though. Plus, moving slowly up a big hill before a sudden drop sounds a lot like how most years begin. What is needed is some ride that's halfway between the two. Or maybe one that changes back and forth, because some years the path is smooth and gentle, and others it is rushed and a little bit frightening.

I hope that your year combines a little bit of each of those - smooth gentleness when you need it, with enough fast drops and big loops to keep things interesting.

L'shana Tovah, everybody! May your year be sweet as honey, filled from end to end with living and joy.

The Last Ten Years

2011-09-11T16:13:00.000-07:00

A few years back my sister introduced me to a musical called The Last Five Years. It tells the story of a relationship from first date to break-up. What makes it memorable is that the woman's story is told in reverse chronological order while the man's is told chronologically, so we see her broken heart overlying his excitement about meeting her, and his eventual good bye matches up with her anticipation of seeing him "tomorrow". This juxtaposition makes the pain of their break-up especially poignant. (It's possible I've mentioned this musical in an earlier post; like I said, it stuck with me.)

I had somewhat the same feeling this weekend watching the 9/11 memorial programming, Especially when they showed people's reactions at the time, contrasted with their feelings today. I remember one reporter talking about the "effects of this day staying with us for weeks and months to come", and feeling slightly mournful for his optimism. Another time a clip showed one of the survivors rejoicing to be alive a week after the attack, and I couldn't help but notice she was conspicuously absent from the interviews with her saviors today.

We didn't know how much worse it would get.

We didn't know that it would eventually get better.

Such is always the way, right? As we sit here, nearing the top of the cycle of the Jewish year, we are reminded of both how similar and how different this coming year will be from the last. Some who are with us today will not be; some new people will take their place. Are the 9/11 attacks different? Were our dually misplace optimism and pessimism something unique, or just...bigger?

It's hard to say. Leon writes about seeing the day as an outsider, an ex-pat at the time. I had in many ways a similar experience. Safe in central Illinois, I never worried that I might be next. I forgot my uncle actually worked in the building until after I'd heard he was ok, leaving nothing to fear but what might have been. Other than that, all it was to me was something happening on tv.

No; that wasn't all it was.

I remember the day. I had the day free, so I was sleeping in and taking a lazy morning of it. After showering I turned on the radio and heard, "The president will be making a special address momentarily regarding this morning's acts of terrorism."

My first thought was, "What did that moron do this time?" I jumped straight to a conspiracy theory smokescreen to distract us from what a bad job Bush was doing as president. So I went to the living room and turned on the tv.

Just in time to see the second plane hit.

In moments of extremity, I tend to go emotionally cold. I have dispassionately cleaned and bandaged my own lacerated arm while simultaneously reassuring those around me and organizing them into helpful tasks. Useful as survival instincts go, but it also means I tend to ask questions like "How are you feeling?" only when I come to them on my checklist. That includes asking the question of myself. By the time I checked with my own emotional response the dust (literal and figurative) had somewhat cleared. I knew I had seen not only the deaths of thousands of people, but also of a chapter in American history. It was obvious we would be going to war, and quickly; the only question was how soon we'd be able to get out of it.

Ten years later, we are still asking that question.

We have been a nation in mourning for the past decade. Every conversation about our country, no matter the topic, eventually is about that day. Watching the coverage this weekend, I think it's possible we as a nation have post-traumatic stress disorder; to paraphrase the West Wing, we need to be able to remember that day without reliving it.

It is my hope that today will mark the end of this decade-long shiva. Remember, always remember, but hopefully now the healing can truly begin.

Siyyum

2011-09-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Siyyum represents one of my favorite concepts in Judiasm, one of the things that, I think, really sets us apart and reminds me why I am still Jewish as opposed to, say, another religion more in keeping with some of my other...interests.

According to JewishEncyclopedia.com, siyyum is:

The formal ceremonial act of completing the writing of a scroll of the Law, or the formal conclusion of the study of a division ("massekta") of the Mishnah or Talmud. In the former case the ceremony is called siyyum ha-Sefer; in the latter, siyyum massekta.

Either way, it's the celebration of the completion of a book. What a marvelous concept, especially for a people that highly value education and language, and claim to be of the book!

Now obviously not just any book is grounds for celebration; stopping for a party every time I finished a comic book on a Sunday afternoon would get exhausting, and some books I have celebrated completing only because it meant I didn't have to read them anymore (I'm looking at you, Wide Sargasso Sea!). The concept originates in the Talmud and clearly carries the implication that one has been reading sacred books (and really, what else would one want to read?). I believe, however, it is allowable and proper to expand the concept to include any well-loved book or rigorous course of intellectual development. I would not look askance (much) at a friend that had a siyyum upon completing the Harry Potter series, especially, at this point, if the point of the celebration was finally catching up on the past 15 years. Likewise, a friend that had just finished working through a MCAT prep book would be well justified in throwing a siyyum.

A more interesting question would seem to be, in our increasingly multimedia age, does it have to be a literal book or will any similarly challenging academic pursuit qualify? If one has a siyyum for the Potter books, what about for the Potter movie? For completing a difficult post-graduate course? I am torn on this. On the one hand, the siyyum is celebrating learning, which would suggest the medium is unimportant; on the other - and this might be because I am a sentimentalist - it seems to lose much when divorced from the concept of a book. I therefore have somewhat of a compromise position: I would personally only hold a siyyum for a book, but would not begrudge a friend that wanted to celebrate something else.

I also see value in embracing the siyyum as a national practice, regardless of religion. The siyyum could make reading cool again. I referred to the Potter books because when they first came out many people were thrilled that they were getting kids to read again. Rather than wait for the next mega-popular book series to come along, the siyyum heightens the concept of reading itself, regardless of what one reads. I can see teachers using this in school; would students be more willing and eager to read the classics if there was a class party waiting at the end?

The modern book club could be seen as a form of siyyum. In theory, most book clubs select works of some academic or social importance (it's debatable which of these Oprah's imprimatur would be). The group then comes back together to celebrate and discuss; that seems to be exactly what the sages were describing.

John Shore responds to a reader

2011-08-22T09:34:00.000-07:00

I very much enjoyed John's response to this letter; it's a good example of why I like his stuff.

One line in the writer's letter spoke to me: "Remember, we are the clay; God is the potter. HE made us." Well first of all, the potter makes the pots, not the clay. So if we are the clay, then God just found us lying around on Earth and tried to make us into something prettier. Interesting metaphor for religion, but not, I suspect, what the writer intended.

Also, I don't have a lot of experience with potting, but the more I learn about every form of art (including fencing, science, and the "practical arts"), the more it's apparent that, at some point, the artist can only achieve what the medium will allow him to achieve. To use an image from my direct experience, every time I pick up a new sword, it tells me how it should be moved and what strategy it wants to use; I can choose to do as the sword wants, or spend my time fighting it instead of my opponent.

The same is true of cooking; I can use the food as it wants to be used, or fight it and wind up with flavorless mush (also known as the Fast Food technique). Same in music; I can only make the notes that the instrument is willing to make. So if we're going with the "potter and the clay" image, then God can only shape us into who we are meant to be and what we are willing to accept. But the potter is not the one in charge.

Old Bachelors in Metropolis

2011-08-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

There has been a wave of big name super heroes having long-term pairings break up the past few years. This is going to come back around to Judaism soon, I promise. Couples established and strong enough that they have entered into the mainstream: Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson, Cyclops and Phoenix (ok, this one might be less well known), and now Superman and Lois Lane. Moviebob has a good explanation why he thinks this is a good idea; his argument makes sense, but whether getting married was a good character idea or not, I have a problem with the way these super break-ups are happening. Or rather, not happening.

Spider-Man's wife made a deal with the Devil to erase their marriage from existence. Yes, literally. Granted, for a noble cause, but still. Cyclops and Phoenix's relationship ended when Jean Grey (Phoenix) died; Scott (Cyclops) had basically moved on to another woman, but they were still legally married at the time. And Superman and Lois are collateral damage of DC's continuity reboot. Their marriage, possibly their entire relationship, just...never happened.

Stick with me; this will be about religion soon.

There are probably other examples, because the major publishers are going through a bit of a Silver Age nostalgia right now, and striving to return their beloved characters to the form they grew up reading; usually this means single. But in all these cases what bothers me is not the change in the character so much as the efforts to write the marriage out of existence.

Character development, in my mind, should always move forward. That doesn't mean a character can never backslide, but that they should only move one way down their path even if that path loops back on itself. What that means here is if you really want the characters to be single again, have them get divorced. It's not like modern readers would have trouble identifying with that.

It can provide great dramatic tension: imagine two team members' divorce tearing their group apart as sides are taken. Or, if you just want to put it behind and move on, make it an amicable, no-fault divorce. Those do happen, I've been told. Instead, the writers just snapped their fingers and, poof!, no marriage.

What about Cyclops and Phoenix? Didn't she die? Yes, and granted dying seems to be Jean Grey's other super power, but that's still a way of getting out of the relationship without having to deal with marriage. As Dan Savage ironically says, a successful relationship means you stay together until one person dies. Plus, as I mentioned, Scott had already pair up with someone new; there was barely any mourning period, they just moved straight on with him and the new, edgier girlfriend instead of the stable, boring wife.

This got me wondering about the writers; what's going on with these people that they seem to hate marriage so much? Then I realized; most of the (primarily male) writers are right about the age that many marriages are breaking up. Superheroes have always been about escapist fantasy fulfillment, maybe that's what this is; acting out of their desire to "reboot" their own lives as young, single people, not stuck in bitter marriages or going through messy divorces.

Say what you will about these character decisions, but the writers are the ones making the choices. Everyone gets their own interpretation of the character, but the writer's is the one that becomes official.

This is where it becomes about religion.

One of the problems with retaining so much dogmatic history is we keep the laws independent of the context in which they were created. Many bizarre-seeming religious practices have very reasonable explanations in the period in which they originated. For example, there is a burial tradition of placing an egg inside the burial shroud. In the Middle Ages, it was illegal for Jews to bury non-Jews in their graveyards; if strangers showed up with an already prepared corpse, you needed an easy, subtle way to check its legitimacy. Pressing on the corpse's chest and feeling the egg crack provided such a test. Very clever, but does it still make sense now?

One of my former rabbis used to joke that Ashkenazic laws were harsher because they were written by rabbis that had nothing to do all winter but sit around, be miserable, and make new laws. Funny, but it really resonates; it would explain so well the drab, joyless approach to religion that tradition can take.

Still, it may have made sense at the time. But that begs the question: how much do laws that made sense to people living a certain lifestyle still apply to us today?

Harry Potter and the Chosen People

2011-08-08T07:34:00.000-07:00

Much ink has been spilt over possible Jewish connections and stereotypes in the Potter-verse (personally I saw neither when I read, but I was mainly reading for the characters and narrative). One aspect I have not seen, though, is Rowling's perspective on what it means that Harry is "chosen".

There is debate about whether Jews should continue referring to ourselves as "the chosen people", both within and without the Jewish community. Some feel there is an implication of racism or superiority in the name, as we were chosen because we are somehow better or have special privileges because of that choice. Others see the name as a historical artifact, like calling Japan the "land of the rising sun", that has little meaning today. But what would Harry say?

One of the reoccurring themes of the later books and movies (spoiler alert!) is that Harry only became the "chosen one" when Voldemort chose him. Harry's classmate Neville is presented as another candidate that fills the prophesy as well as Harry (and to many would have made a better savior as well), but because Voldemort pursued the Potter family, Harry became chosen. It was the act of attacking, in fact, that created the situation that gave the "chosen one" his "powers".

This is supported by the arc of the books. Harry is never the smartest or strongest or best student. He barely has any defining heroic characteristics at all, except maybe for courage and leadership. And even those arguably are a result of his choosing, not something innate, and anyone that survived (by luck and support of his mentor) the same type of early adventures he did would develop those traits.

So what does that say about the Jews? This week's Edible Torah includes a discussion question about a verse that reminds us we were not the largest nation, but the smallest. The implication, reinforced by other midrash, is that we were the nation willing to accept what God offered and required. One could even argue that we needed the protection, so signing up seemed like a good deal. If there were any traits the Jews possessed they were faith and loyalty, and who's to say any nation that had received so much from God would not have developed the same traits to the same degree?

We became chosen because God chose us. Nothing more, nothing less.

Security: A modest proposal

2011-07-26T11:07:00.000-07:00

Why is the federal government responsible for airplane safety? Seriously; why is it a federal concern? Why does each airline, from small regional to transcontinental, have the same standards and practices?

Here's my thought: make safety the airlines' concern.

Sure, maybe there can be some slight minimum standards that apply to all, but in general let the air lines get their own equipment and make their own policy.

I think this would actually make a better experience for the customer, by balancing security procedures against market forces. If one airline let their standards dip too far, and their safety rating started to fall, they would have incentive to ratchet security back up. Of course, if they relax security protocols and, as I suspect would be the case, nothing happens, then travelers would have a less annoying, less invasive option. One airline could still be the "strip search and MRI for everyone!" airline, so those looking for a more "secure" experience would be satisfied.

It would give airlines something to compete on besides just price and who has the best peanut-alternative in-flight snack.

It would also provide benefits by allowing individual airlines to act as a lab, of sorts, to test new policies. I'm sure there are measures the federal government has not attempted because they are too expensive/impractical to roll out country wide. Smaller and more adaptable, individual airlines could innovate new security measures. The ones that work become part of the "minimum standards".

Speaking out

2011-07-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last Friday ginandtacos asked, at what point should you speak up when you see a stranger is in trouble?

Being a generally nosy and outspoken person, it's rare that I see her without wondering If I Should Say Something. Of course I never do. The excuses for avoiding it are so numerous. It's none of my business. She wouldn't care what a stranger says anyway.... Her friends and family are probably already intervening. I'm being paternalistic and sexist. And so on.

Like Ed, I am a generally nosy and outspoken person, so this is an issue I struggle with as well. Even in smaller, less life-threatening ways, like when I see people committing a faux pas because, apparently, they're new to the area and don't know the culture. Does my attempt to help them fit in override the rudeness of pointing out their mistake? What about confronting people who are themselves being rude? Like asking the guy sitting on the metro to give up his seat to an obviously pregnant woman; am I the hero for helping out - and helping this guy be polite, which he probably wanted to do - or a jerk for embarrassing him?

But those are trivialities. The more frightening examples are the ones Ed points to. Do I speak out when a friend seems to have a problem? What about a co-worker? A complete stranger? Especially if I'm acting only on my amateur analysis of the situation.

Sometimes, I've learned, people don't want - or aren't ready - to be helped. With my friends I've learned to be present and supportive without trying to change them. It's not easy. In the past I have had to essentially cut some of my friends out of my life - temporarily - because they were not ready to change and I could no longer be part of their self-destruction. At some point it's what they need from me in order to get better; at some point it's what I have to do to keep myself from going down with them.

But again, strangers are harder. Ironically, this is a place where "nice people" have more trouble precisely because they are nice. They - we, I hope - care about the other person's feelings, even if the other is acting a manner not deserving such compassion. Our desire to help runs into our desire to avoid embarrassing or upsetting them. I think that's why characters like House have so much appeal; here's someone that won't let hurting patients' feelings get in the way of helping them. We envy that...freedom. That ability to speak, to act, without reservation when we know it is right, regardless of the harm it may cause, secure in the belief the greater good will be served.

Because without it, all to often, we just watch. In silence.

There is a prayer in Judaism which asks God to open our mouths that we may pray properly. Several, actually. I have come to love this prayer. It addresses directly the issue Ed and I face. It asks God - whatever that means to you - to help us find our voice.

To give us the strength to speak.

With all my heart

2011-07-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I got very excited by the idea that the name for our historical priests ("Levi") was very similar to "Lah-vi", which means "my heart". Further research dispelled this notion; there are two letters that make the "v" sound, and the similarity of the two is merely coincidental, not indicative of a linguistic link. Still, the idea intrigued me enough that I wanted to spend some time playing with it.

Following the link in one direction, the priests become the heart of the community. The vital organ that keeps blood and life flowing through our communal body. While the modern rabbi is very different in many ways from historical priests, this part remains the same. More than leading prayers, more than teaching the youth, the rabbi's job is to keep the vital energy flowing through the congregation, spreading prayer, education, and administration where they are needed like nutrients through the bloodstream.

Moving in the other direction, I love the image that each of us has our own personal priest residing in our chest. We do not need external clergy to regulate our connection with the divine; we can create prayers, interpret the law, and talk or listen to god all on our own. This is the voice inside us that reminds us what is right and what is wrong. Beyond the written Torah and the oral Torah we have this inner Torah; we study the others just to remind ourselves of what our hearts already know.

It's probably because of my love of puns, but I am less willing to believe in pure coincidence than most scholars when it comes to words sounding alike. Granted, every language has words they assimilated from other cultures, which greatly heightens the evidence for "coincidence", but one of these terms is a name. That means at some point someone said, "I like the way this word sounds! I want to be called that for the rest of my life." Someone else, knowing the meaning of the name, chose it for their child. Interestingly, the name "Levi" is translated as "joining"; some sources attribute this to Leah's desire for Jacob to join with her. Even if it is a coincidence, there is a very pleasing resonance between "joining" and "my heart".

He no go to Meatland!

2011-07-06T15:14:00.000-07:00

This pretty well sums up organized religion. Follow my set of arbitrary rules for a theoretical reward that may or may not exist, and anyone that questions it gets kicked out.

Sometime it's necessary to kick out the questioner, as they seek not knowledge and understanding but chaos and disruption of the community. Usually, though, kicking out the questioner is the issue single most responsible for everything that goes wrong with religion.

Ask questions; there will still be meat.

Jewish kids are volunteering, just not for Judaism

2011-07-01T13:22:00.000-07:00

And is anyone surprised?

From the article:

Of those polled, a whopping 80 percent [of Jewish youth] reported having volunteered during the previous twelve months. This puts Jewish youth far ahead of the general American population, among whom, in the past year, even the most educated showed only a 42-percent rate of volunteerism.

But in one critical area, Jews are not only failing to hold their own but are markedly underperforming. When it comes to volunteering for religious groups, a venue that commands the primary attention of about one-third of Americans in general, the comparable figure for young Jews is only 22 percent. The remaining 78 percent report indifference to the distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish venues, with 18 percent of these actually expressing a preference for the latter.

Interestingly, the surveyed students were primarily Birthright participants. Which means that, in theory, they should be the most involved Jewish youth, or at least so fresh off this "life-changing experience" that they're looking for ways to help out. It makes the lack of religious volunteering even more notable.

Thinking back to my own experiences with Birthright, I'm not very surprised to hear they got these results from polling the participants. While I did have very intense personal and spiritual moments on the tour, one of the major take-home themes was that Israel is as modern a nation as the US. Tel Aviv might as well have been next to Miami instead of Jaffa, and the locals we met were "Jewish" in the same way most Americans are "Christian". I wonder if this message is backfiring by showing youth they don't need to do Jewish things to be Jewish.

Furthermore, generational research suggests the current crop of high school & college students are very resume minded. They are genuine in their desire to help others, but are very aware that it also looks good on college applications and the like. Given that, is there a concern that "limiting" themselves to Jewish organizations pigeonholes them too much? Are teens volunteering at Jewish agencies also applying to Jewish schools, and working in the Jewish community? Is it too defining, too limiting of the public perception of your personal identity?

A question arises: how is the study defining "religious groups"? Is it enough that a food pantry is funded primarily by Jewish charities, or are we looking specifically at teens helping out around the temple, joining youth group, etc? I assume they mean the former, which makes it a direct apples-to-apples comparison where the primary variable is Jewish affiliation. So we're teaching our kids to help others, and they're helping causes that relate to Jewish values, but they're not identifying as "Jewish" in the process.

And why should they? What are we offering them that enriches the experience? In a way I see this as the over-success of integrating "Jewish" and "American" identities; if the two are combined, why should I self-segregate by volunteering at specifically Jewish agencies? Modern Judaism is at a crossroads, and right now has stopped to consult the map, look both ways, and ask for directions. Meanwhile teens see a religion that's moving away from a stuffy, melancholy past, but not yet moving towards anything new and meaningful.

Dead Jews found down a well

2011-06-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

BBC reports that 17 bodies found at the bottom of a medieval well are likely Jewish victims of persecution.

The most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide, according to scientists who used a combination of DNA analysis, carbon dating and bone chemical studies in their investigation.

The skeletons date back to the 12th or 13th Centuries at a time when Jewish people were facing persecution throughout Europe.

The article describes the source of anti-Jewish sentiment well:

Jewish people had been invited to England by the King to lend money because at the time, the Christian interpretation of the bible did not allow Christians to lend money and charge interest. It was regarded as a sin.

So cash finance for big projects came from the Jewish community and some became very wealthy - which in turn, caused friction.

Interesting article, especially for someone with interest in both Jewish and medieval history, but I am amused that their evidence for these being Jewish corpses seems to be, "Of course they're Jewish! I mean, who else would you stuff down a well?"

To my son

2011-06-08T20:26:00.000-07:00

I heard your heart beat yesterday.

It's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard.

I want to record it and make it my ringtone,
or lay out speed bumps on our street so when I drive at the right speed
it makes the same rhythm.

Convert it to a data stream and send it into space,
or bounce it from end to end across the internet,
an infinite loop of data. Noise. Life.

I already love you, and I don't even know your name.

Magneto and the Holocaust

2011-06-04T00:30:00.000-07:00

Just saw "X-Men: First Class" with my brother and sister-in-law. Pretty good; I enjoyed! One thing really bothered me, though.

It's always the small details with fans, right? With all that changed in the remade Star Trek, my wife gets most upset about Kirk having the wrong eye color. In X-Men, they decided to make Magneto Jewish.

This seems like a small enough change; in the comics, Magneto was (gently) retconed as a Holocaust survivor, informing his separatist vision, making him more sympathetic anti-hero than over-the-top villain, and ratcheting up the irony of his whole "genetically superior race" thing. He was in the camps, though, for being a Gypsy, not Jewish.

Small change; don't really care, on the surface. Glad to have another overachiever in the ranks, right? Except the movie uses this as an excuse to ratchet up the Holocaust imagery to a degree not seen in any summer blockbuster since "Schindler's List". At the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) Magneto declares that he has suffered enough at the hands of those "just following orders" - a badass line! - then dramatically stage-whispers "Never Again!" before doing something naughty.

That was the step too far. Sure, it's another movie where the only identifiably ethnic characters are all villains, but mutants have always been Marvel's metaphor for race, so I'll allow some room for that (small room, though; not happy about it). But summing up Magneto's creed by using modern Holocaust imagery doesn't fit, and turns this complex character into a comic book Jewish Defense League ("A .22 for every Mu....tant"?).

It also reinforces the message that the Holocaust is the central issue of modern Judaism, a philosophy that drives me batty. I get it; he's motivated by revenge. Of course, if he was a nice WASP like Batman he'd be a hero, but no; the Holocaust is so important that it turns Jews violent. Just look at Israel, right?

Sigh.

I don't think that's what the writers were trying to do. I suspect that, like most modern Holocaust literature, one of the writers is the grandchild of a survivor, and wanted to honor his grandparent's struggle, or reinforce how important it was to them, or something. They probably included the "Never Again" line as an inside reference they thought Jewish viewers would appreciate. "Oh," we're supposed to say, "I totally get his motivation now!"

We get it. Fine. But that was the line too far. Based on this subtlety I expect the sequel will be about Magneto's attempts to broker a "Two-State Solution" based on the '67 borders.

Short timer's club

2011-05-31T00:23:00.000-07:00

There's a path near my house,
I walk it every day.
Once going out...
...and once coming back.
I realized yesterday there are a finite number of times left
that I will walk those steps.

I say goodbye to my friends,
just for the night,
not knowing if I will ever see them again.
Did I tell them that I love them?
Do they know?
Did we spend our time together well enough,
if this is the last bit we get?

Seeing the seconds slip away,
so many of them, but
going so fast.
An eternity to wait, with no time to act.

Today I walked that path for the very last time.
Unless, someday, I chance to walk those steps once more,
and say to myself,
I never thought to pass this way again.

It's always the little moments that break my heart.

Is circumcision mutilation?

2011-05-29T23:05:00.000-07:00

So this is interesting.

A San Francisco group looking to outlaw the practice of circumcision in the Bay Area is one step closer to getting its way...
If the measure passes, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail. There would be no religious exemptions.

And it seems Santa Monica is considering a similar measure. The Santa Monica article contains a number of gems from the head (no pun intended) of the group backing the measure, such as comparing the "mental scaring of circumcision" to what rape victims endure, stating that adult males that get circumcised feel "a sense of loss", and this:

"If you raise your child to be smart and practice safe sex," circumcision is unnecessary..."If you're raising a dumb kid who won't use a condom, then go ahead and cut off two-thirds of his nerve endings and one-half of his penile skin."

It's interesting this is starting in San Francisco; a place so liberal they now want to protect us from our constitutional protections. How can a city with "Pro-Choice" practically printed on the official letterhead get away with restricting parents' right to chose?

My wife thinks this is a thinly veiled attack on Jews - or at least on non-Christians. I don't see antisemitism at the core of this, but I am sure many bigots will eventually sign on. Unless they decide it would be better to see us suffer diminished sex lives; could go either way, really. I think the debate started as a side-effect of increased public awareness, and opposition to, female genital mutilation. That's horrible, but, unfortunately, usually happens in far away places where our protests do no good. So, deciding that all cutting of children's genitals is equal, people started looking at male circumcision.

The two practices are NOT comparable. The difference is like trimming your nails, or having them ripped out. Like removing a mole from your arm, or amputating your hand. Granted, there's risks with any medical procedure, but I have never met, or even heard stories from, anyone who had a modern circumcision go awry.

Historical circumcision was a horrible thing. But all "medicine" was pretty barbaric in the days before antiseptic practices and sterilized instruments. Many rabbis would use their mouths to draw blood away after cutting, which is both disgusting and an excellent way to spread infection (especially if you're living in a time before flossing). I am strongly on-board with the idea that anyone practicing "traditional" circumcision in this manner should serve some jail time.

But for modern circumcision, performed by trained professionals with sterile implements? I'm less concerned.

I never really bought the "it reduces sexual enjoyment" argument; generations of Jewish men have complained about their sex lives, but typically that was because they lost sensitivity, but because they were married to Jewish women. On the other hand, I don't buy the "it reduces vulnerability to STDs" argument either. The "30% reduction!" is pretty exciting, but less so when you consider that reduced a 10% infection rate to 7%; neither of those are population-shifting numbers. Looking more closely, most of those studies measured the impact of circumcisions performed on grown men. I'm willing to bet the reduced infection rate roughly corresponds with the reduction in their total sex life during the recovery period. Not to mention that any adult male religious enough to get circumcised is probably also religious enough to avoid a lot of sexual contact.

So where does that leave us?

Technically, circumcision is genital mutilation. But only in the same sense that ear piercings are auricle mutilation. How does that weigh against being part of a tradition stretching back thousands of generations? I don't think it's fair to say "Let the child decide when he's old enough!" Elective cosmetic surgery on a sensitive body part right as you're entering college? Not likely. And not even a very reasonable request. The penis changes a lot during puberty; I don't know if nerve sensitivity increases during that period, but I was much more aware of it afterwards.

In the end, I'm still left with doubts. Would I want my own son circumcised? I'm not sure. Would I condemn someone else for circumcising their son? Not likely. Is this law a good idea? Absolutely not. But for reasons larger than antisemitism. It attempts to curtail the debate through legislation, rather than persuasion.

As a response on GetReligion.org puts it:

However, the crucial legal question is whether the medical opinions and evidence can trump the religious liberty of Jewish parents to make this decision to follow the tenets of their faith. Does the state, in effect, have the right to change the doctrinal content of the Jewish faith by moving this rite from the first week of life to the, well, first week of adult life?

Where do we draw the line? At what point do we permit a discomforting practice to occur on religious grounds, and when does public health and safety trump even constitutional rights?

Liberal Judiasm's two foundational problems

2011-05-11T09:44:00.000-07:00

This post by Bruce on Three Jews, Four Opinions is the type of thing I aspire to achieve with my own blog.

This is the scylla and charybdis of liberal Judaism: inauthenticity and irrelevancy. And these two manifests themselves in much of liberal Judaism. I attend a Conservative synagogue, and I certainly see both of them. Many Jews my age (mid 40s) simply opt out of many traditional Jewish practices. They do not keep kosher, attend synagogue, celebrate many holidays, daven, wear tefillin, etc. The attitude of many of my friends is simply that it seems irrelevant, sort of silly, and a little strange to do these things. After all, God did not literally said to do these things, and there just does not seem to be a good reason to do so. And when they do do these things (for whatever reason), it lacks authenticity. So someone might to go synagogue (say, for a bar-mitzvah), but will not feel elevated by the davening, does not know what the Torah parsha says, and does not expect these things. They feel a little like a religious tourist, watching and even going through the motions without really participating.

It gets straight to the core of the issue, presenting it clearly and insightfully. I can't wait to see the rest of the series!.

Myths We Want To Believe

2011-05-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

Cracked.com has a post "4 Reoccurring Myths We Apparently Really Want To Believe" that examines some of the more persistent internet rumors and the reasons they have endured. The author is mostly speculating (but probably fairly accurate) about what type of socially unacceptable needs get met by, for example, watching videos of rich people behaving badly.

Amusing, possibly accurate. My favorite part, though, is the ending:

If you ever run into a news story that gets you physically excited, make sure to take a step back and ask why you want it to be true so bad, and see if it's clouding your judgment.

People are frequently reluctant to ask the question, "Why do I believe this?" I'm not talking about major, big-B "Belief", such as belief in God or reincarnation, but the smaller, day-to-day beliefs that we cling to even in the face of other evidence.

"Crime may pay in the short run, but it'll lead to a bad end."

"Study hard in school and you'll get a good job after college."

"Michael Bay is capable of making a great movie."

Big-B Belief tends to be made of many smaller beliefs. in many ways, that makes it worse. It's easy to deal with one potentially non-rational choice, but having to assess and assimilate hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller individual beliefs is daunting. It's easy to believe in big Beliefs like "The government shall not obstruct free speech," or "Thou shall not kill." It gets more difficult when looking at specific cases.

When it gets to the level of these details, it is important to determine not only what you believe but why you believe it. Did you examine the evidence and decide this is the most rational stance, or is it because of a bad experience you had in college? I won't argue that one is better grounds than the other, but it is important to understand for yourself. You may find some of your tightly held beliefs don't actually match your values, if you look closely enough.

My trip to the doctor's office

2011-05-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

My hand has been hurting pretty badly for about a month now. Last Tuesday I decided it wasn't going to get better on its own so I looked up a local sports doctor and scheduled an appointment. The earliest they had was Friday morning. I had a day-long driving trip scheduled for Thursday, so this sounded like a terrible idea. Sadly, there were few other options, so I booked the appointment.

Friday morning I arrived early, figuring there would be paperwork. It was a good thing I did.

"We have no record of your appointment," said the receptionist. "Who did you schedule with?"

I did not know who I spoke to. Fortunately, they were still able to get me in. Turns out the doctor had an opening in his schedule at the same time my appointment was supposed to be. So that was convenient.

Then came the paperwork.

I walked in wearing a splint on my left hand, complaining about severe wrist pain. Then signed the check-in sheet - with my left hand, slowly and painfully - while the nurse watched. Then she asked me to complete 12 pages of forms by hand. Now, I would expect many doctor offices to have a system in place to help people that might have difficulty writing, but I understand that a sports medicine clinic might not see those kinds of injuries very often. So that was ok. I was amused comparing the quality of my handwriting on the first page (pretty good) to the last page (loosely recognizable as English), and contrasting that to the volume and frequency of my screams.

This was followed, of course, by the waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Finally, I got to go to the exam room where a very helpful nurse filled out more forms, asking me for all the same information as on the earlier forms. So it's a good thing I wrote it all out.

Waiting

Then it was time for the X-rays. The tech was very helpful, and promptly tried to X-ray my knees. I mentioned that probably was not the right strategy, as it was my wrist that was hurting, and, in fact, still had the large splint on it. He consulted his notes for a moment, then stepped into the hallway for a consult. He then returned, and I, reassured by his diligent attention to detail, moved to a new position to have my wrist X-rayed.

Bones properly scanned, he helpfully said, "You're done here," and left. I then ventured forth and attempted to find my original exam room again.

Eventually I did, and was rewarded for my efforts with more waiting.

Doctor finally showed up. Strong jawed, well groomed, looking more like a heroic leading man than a medical professional. I'm fairly certain he maintains the borderline incompetent staff to make him look even grander by comparison.

He was actually fairly helpful. Although the stereotypical surgeon who doesn't really listen to what I'm saying, or let it deter him from his pre-programed script. Eventually I realized we were having two nearly parallel conversations that would, given time, eventually intersect somewhere around my bill.

"Ok, so what you have is a condition with
a funny name called..."

"De Quervain's tendonitis?"

"...De Quervain's tendonitis. It's an inflamation of the
tendons by the thumb that..."

"Yeah, I figured; I had it a couple years ago."

"...can come up without warning.
After the first case it can reoccur..."

"Yeah, I know. I had it a few years ago. They gave me
one of those funny splints to immobilize my thumb."

"...anywhere from months to years later."

"Yeah. So I'd prefer not to have surgery
at this point, but figure a cortisone..."

"Treatment can involve surgery, but usually we just use
a cortisone shot and a special splint called a 'spica' splint
that immobilizes your thumb."

"....I'm not actually needed for this part of the process, am I?"

"I don't think you'll need surgery; we'll do a quick
ultrasound to make sure, and I'll have someone bring
you a splint. Do you need us to show you how to put
it on? It can be confusing the first time."

"...That would be very helpful, thank you."

So they did the ultrasound - no tendon damage, yay! - then pulled out Satan's own hypodermic and gave me the cortisone injection. I hate needles, so I turned away while he did it. Which meant I got to watch the process on the ultrasound monitor. It's possible that was more disturbing.

Hand's feeling better now. The shot was full of painkillers to tide me over until the cortisone kicked in, which made the rest of the day fun, and the brace did help a lot. The doctor was, overall, very friendly and helpful, so on balance it was a good experience. He even invited me to come back next week if my knees are still hurting.

My reactions to the news

2011-05-01T23:22:00.000-07:00

This is not the first thing I wrote about today's news. Nor even the second. It is a hard thing to discuss without becoming preachy for one point of view or another, and that is not what's needed on this day.

So let me say just this:

It's a good thing he's dead; he was a bastard and I'm glad he's gone. I will not be joining the dancing in the street, but also will not judge those that do.

This is not the end, though.

Osama's death means very little while our troops are still in harm's way. Celebrations tonight mean little if tomorrow is the funeral for another soldier. Already the news tells us the State Department is putting out travel advisories; killing Osama may have made air travel more dangerous. This, in turn, means the lines at the airport will take more time, not less. Already our sights are turning towards Pakistan; what they knew, why they concealed it, and why they did not help us.

To honor those who have died, both on September 11 and in the wars since then, to make Osama's death mean something, make this a step back towards peace and freedom. To the relative sanity our nation enjoyed before the attacks.

Congratulations to our military, who demonstrated once again their devotion and training. Congratulations to President Obama, who probably just secured re-election. Congratulations to all those still hurting from the attacks, who got the vengeance they deserved.

Osama is now a part of yesterday; make tomorrow about us. They've told us how he died; now let's show them how we live.

Listen to this episode of This American Life!

2011-04-26T22:32:00.000-07:00

In Episode 430: Very Tough Love Ira Glass takes a close look at a Drug Court judge that seems to operate way beyond the guidelines usually employed by Drug Courts.

Hell, she seems to go past guidelines set forth by the US Constitution, basic morality, and the Geneva Conventions.

This is the cost of our "War on Drugs".

This is the cost of removing regulators and checks & balances.

This is the cost of giving too much power to the people sworn to protect us.

Listening to the podcast, I honestly believe Judge Williams has good intentions. She wants to help fix these drug addicts, to divert them from a life of crime, and to prevent future drug use. I also believe she was traumatized by her personal contact with addiction, and cannot respond to these cases in a fair, unbiased manner.

But there is a problem with giving too much power, especially unrestrained, to one person, no matter how pure their intentions. We see that time and time again.

Please listen to this story, and share it with a friend. This is a judge that either needs to be removed from her position, or made to understand the effect of her actions clearly enough to change her ways.

Exodus Rhapsody

2011-04-21T19:24:00.000-07:00

Our second night seder was painfully dull, and occasionally just painful. On the plus side, I was able to use the time to write this:

Exodus Rhapsody
To the tune of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Me: Is this the real life
Is this just fantasy
Caught at the Seder
But no food is in front of me

Out of Mitzra'im, but I'm just tryin' to eat...
Read my Hagadah, cheered when they crossed the sea
Because I was a slave, now I know,
Moses said we must go

So we cooked the matzah, doesn't even have time to rise,
To rise.

Slaves: Yaweh, just killed a lamb,
Put its blood upon my door
(This is worse than Yom Kippur)

Moses, once he had to run
But we knew that he'd come back again some day.

God: Moses, oo oo oo, go and see that Pharaoh guy,
This burning bush thing can’t go on forever
Hurry up, hurry up, but first you must cut off your foreskin.

Me: Empty plate, no food has come
And I’ve drunk two cups of wine, head is spinning but I’m fine.
Goodbye, ev’rybody, I’ve got to go,
Gotta find some eggs or maybe chicken soup.
Matzah, oo oo oo, the afikomen we did hide
I really wish we could have eaten it…

Moses: I see a little burning bush around my lamb

Slaves: "Moses go, Moses go, will you go talk to pharaoh?"

Moses: Hello mister pharaoh will you set my people free?

Slaves: Mr. Pharaoh, Mr. Pharaoh, Mr. Pharaoh, Mr. Pharaoh
Mr. Pharaoh let us go!

Pharaoh: You shall not go!

God: I’ll send some frogs, blood, hail, lice, and wild beasts
Darkness and boils, locusts and anarchy
But harden your heart so you won’t set them free!

Moses: Plagues have come, God’s strength show, will you let us go?

God: (Harden heart!)

Pharaoh: No, I will not let you go!

Slaves: Let us go!

God: (Harden heart!)

Pharaoh: No, we will not let you go!

Slaves: Let us go!

God: (Harden heart!)

Pharaoh: No, we will not let you go!

Slaves: Let us go!

Pharaoh: Will not let you go!

Slaves: Let us go!

Pharaoh: Will not let you go!

Slaves: Let us go!

Pharaoh: Um.. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!

Moses: Oh mighty pharaoh, mighty pharaoh, mighty pharaoh let us go.
‘Cause Adonai has a worse plague set aside, you’ll see!
You’ll see!
You’ll see!!!!!

[Instrumental break by frogs]

Moses: So you thought you could break us but now you’ll see your first born die!

Pharaoh: Now I know why I shouldn’t upset Adonai!

Moses: Oh, Pharaoh; set my people free Pharaoh!

Pharaoh: Go on and get out, go on and get right out of here…

Me: Pescah really matters
It’s how we were freed...

Pesach really matters,
But I still am waiting
To eat…

Slaves: Have a Happy Pesach!

Can the nation protect Roe v. Wade from the states?

2011-04-20T20:15:00.000-07:00

A common theme of debate between me and my wife is laws that we agree with in spirit and based on outcomes, but may be a step farther than the government is justified in taking. For example, public smoking; I enjoy smoke-free environments, and therefore support anti-smoking laws, but I'm not sure how the government can justify passing them; it starts a slippery slope where other public activities, some of which I may enjoy, get banned because others find it offensive or harmful.

Which is why I was very conflicted when I read this article on Jezebel.

In summary, many states (about 50, at last count) are considering legislature that erodes Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court case mainly impacts federal behavior, so there is no protection against these new measures until one is taken to the Supreme Court and overturned (which seems unlikely on several levels).

Putting aside my personal opinion on abortion, though, isn't that how the system is supposed to work? The States may not make a more permissive law than the Federal (which is why California and Colorado are having so much trouble legalizing medical marijuana), but they may be more restrictive. It can suck if you're stuck in one of those more restrictive states, but that's one of the reasons people move. At fencing practice a couple of the guys were discussing friends that would never move to California because they would have to give up some of their guns; agree with their position or not, that's the way it works.

I know there's an exception for civil rights, but I don't understand how it works. A state cannot overrule the permissive Federal definition of who qualifies as a citizen by ruling that, for instance, Jews can't vote. Is there some way that abortion fits into this category, or do we just accept that, like public smoking and gun control, laws will vary from state to state, and move accordingly?

If Moses Had The Internet

2011-04-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

Happy Passover!

My favorite part is the background music. If they had only posted that, it would have been enough.

:)

Religious map of America

2011-04-15T06:48:00.000-07:00

Saw this about 2 weeks ago, loved it, and wanted to write a whole post about it:

Now, been sitting on it too long, don't remember what I originally wanted to say.

It's probably important to note that this seems to measure plurality, not majority, so even in the heart of Georgia it's possible that most people are not Southern Baptist, they're just too divided among other groups to swing the needle.

It also doesn't indicate how many people are religious in an area; there's no measure of intensity. That means you could have areas where every religious person in that county belongs to X, and yet they are still only 1% of the population. In other words, we're not a predominantly Catolic nation, as this map appears; they just have the most consistent geographic distribution. Compare to this map, showing density of religious adherants, across all religions:

The color scheme probably helps, but I was also reminded of the electoral maps from recent presidential elections. Compare to this one showing shift in voting patterns from 2004 to 2008:

Raises some questions: are Catholics more liberal than we thought? Are they attracted to liberal areas? Does a concentration of Baptists increase conservative tendencies? Combining this with the earlier observation, is the reason some Catholics feel persecuted that they are the largest religious group in ares of the country where not many people are religious?

I also find it interesting that all the non-Christian religions get grouped under "Other". That suggests none of them had more than the LDS's 81 counties (not surprising), and I'm sure some of those "Others" are also Christian varietals, but still.

Talk about being made the outsider; they literally labeled all Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and every other Asian religion as The Other, a term usually applied to groups to explain why they are hated and/or feared. Heck, looking at this map you'd think there are no non-Christians in the country! That disturbs me more than a little.

Of Petroleum Bondage

2011-04-07T17:27:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of BP ~~treating the ocean like an unconscious drunken Freshman girl at a frat house~~ ruining the Gulf ecology for decades to come. This year is also the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War, an event with no small thematic relation to tonight's seder. As I was listening to the Backstory podcast on "Why They Fought", the three events started coming together in my mind.

One of the must surprising points the American History Guys made in the podcast was that many, if not most, of the Southern solders were not slaveholders. So why did they fight to protect the institution? For some it was aspirational; they hoped to one day be wealthy slaveholders. For others it was because their livelihood, and the entire Southern economy for that matter, was dependent on cotton. And cotton depended on slaves. Ending slavery, therefore, was seen as enough of a threat to their financial well-being that they were willing to fight and die to maintain it.

When put that way, it started to make sense to me. I still could not condone it, but, I imagined, what if a law was passed tomorrow banning the use of all petrochemicals starting immediately? Heck, go smaller; just outlaw it as a fuel source. Don't even worry about all the manufactured products that contain petrol. How much chaos would it cause? How much would people fight; would it be enough to get them up in arms?

I think it might.

On a recent episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition, the team built a net-zero house. All the energy would come from wind and sun; a small up-front investment would result in long-term savings for the family and the environment. It made me really upset - not that they built the house but that this type of construction is encountering so much resistance to adoption! It seems like it should be a no-brainer. Annual home energy cost in LA is about $1,500; given a 20 year life on a home, as long as the net-zero additions add less than $30,000 it's a net savings! And even if the end cost is slightly higher, the environmental benefit makes it worthwhile.

So why all the resistance? Because too much of our economy depends on oil. That has made the oil companies rich enough to buy into other sectors of the economy - and government - meaning change is unlikely to come from those directions either. The institution of slavery was economically "successful" enough that it, ironically, made the beneficiaries of the system prisoners to it, as did the Egyptians in biblical times; they had to give their lives to prevent its destruction. Likewise, we have become prisoners to oil.

As with the Southern soldiers, I understand but do not condone. Massive societal level change is frightening and difficult; incremental change is either too minor to notice, or small enough to be quashed. Finding the balance between "actually getting stuff done" and "societal disruption" is difficult. But it needs to happen.

Passover reminds us that we are, each and every one of us, slaves and descendants of slaves. That teaches us to look past any temporal "economic benefit" to see the human suffering behind it and demand release. Our endless need and quest for oil holds the Earth hostage; our economic gain comes at the cost of tremendous suffering by our planet and the living things upon it. We must see past that and demand freedom!

I make this bold statement, and then I will go downstairs, get in my car, and burn two gallons of oil to get to my seder. Because I too am a prisoner.

Happy Pesach

Headline Issues

2011-03-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

Tonight's episode of 60 Minutes included a feature on Archbishop Dolan, the Archbishop of New York that many people say is the best candidate for an American Pope in the near future. It was an interesting interview; he's a very gregarious guy, and it's not hard to see why he has risen so high in the church.

Much of the interview dealt with his "very conservative" views on the major politically controversial views held by the Church (homosexual marriage, female clergy, abortion, etc.). His reply was: "Instead of being hung up on these headline issues, let's get back to where the church is at her best."

Interesting response; I would be curious to hear his views on where the church is best. More than that, though, is it's a very good point. The Catholic Church, and religion in general, does so much more than usually gets discussed; we get hung up on specific policies and all the "Thou Shalt Not" language, and forget about helping people grow spiritually and emotionally.

But it's also a response that cuts both ways. He's essentially saying, "forget about this issue so we can focus on the important stuff". Well, fine, but in the face of pervasive and radical social change, why is it the congregation that must forget about it rather than the church?

These issues have become distractions. They steal focus and resources from the things we should be focusing on. It says something about the Church that they point to the debate around these issues as a distraction, but continue funding it.

Work Ethic

2011-03-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

A short one:

The Protestant work ethic is frequently held up as the core of America's productivity. Work hard, don't complain, never ask for or expect anything for yourself, and feel bad if you fall short of expectations, whether internally or externally applied.

This is what makes a good Protestant. It is also what makes a good worker.

It is also what makes a good slave.

Was this Protestant ethic the beginning of our modern version of feudal society? If we're not there already, we're quickly moving towards that point. Strong inequalities between the "upper" and "lower" classes, educational and cultural divides, and financial systems that keep the less-well-to-do indebted to their corporate masters.

If so, is this a case of a system turning on itself, with hypocritical or oblivious Protestants profiting from their fellows, or a case of religious exploitation where another group came in and took advantage of the Protestants' hard-working nature?

Oboist? Really?

2011-03-13T20:00:00.000-07:00

Check out these fun charts on Three Jews, Four Opinions:

The online comic strip xkcd sometimes includes funny charts and graphs showing the number of google hits for variations of a phrase or sentence. For example, "x bottles of beer on the wall" shows a spike at x=100. I figured I would try a few Jewish themed ones just for fun.

Are we equals?

2011-03-13T03:03:00.000-07:00

I'm never quite sure what to make of things like this:

I support the cause of women's equality, and agree that the problems enumerated by narrator Dame Judi Dench are serious ones, but I feel like the type of equality she's asking for can never quite be reached, in the same way that we can never completely eliminate crime, homelessness, and violence. It's an asymptotic thing; we can get close to, but never actually reach, zero.

So at what point do we say enough is enough?

Her closing remark answers that question: "Until the answer is yes, we must never stop asking." Her statement is a reminder that, though we may never complete the work, we are not exempt from it. That perspective recasts this entire video for me and redirected my opinion on it. There will always be that last bit of equality to strive for, and as things stand today that "last bit" is pretty large.

That said, as I watched this video I was reminded of the epidemiologist that observed AIDS patients are now living long enough to die of other things. The video points out that two women a week are killed by domestic violence in England; that's tragic, but in 2008 (the most recent year I could find numbers for) murder rates for male victims were 225% higher than for female. So if we want to talk about violence as an indicator of inequality, let's consider the full picture.

The gender salary gap in America is still a problem, but during the recession unemployment is significantly higher for men (pdf). Furthermore, college admissions are skewing strongly female (57% since 2000), and young boys are more likely than girls to be illiterate, drop out of school, and go to jail. All factors likely to lead to lower lifetime earnings.

Remind me again which way that "inequality" arrow is assumed to be pointing?

My goal is not to play a game of "Who has it worse?"; that's a game you only lose by winning. The answer, of course, is to work on improving the environment for everyone. But that's part of why I have trouble with messages like that in this video, whatever the oppressed group in question. Archaic assholes aside, and I think we all can agree that is a demographic that needs to be quietly and quickly shuffled to the side, most members of the "privileged" group tend to honestly believe these "equality" problems were already settled. So seeing a video like this causes...confusion.

"I thought this was taken care of", the internal monologe goes. "What, exactly, still needs to be done? Am I supposed to apologize? Write my Senator? Donate money?" Compassion, and confusion, have been generated, but without a clear channel for these energies the mind deals with the stress by converting the emotions into something easier to deal with.

Like anger, or resentment.

I appreciate a good piece of messaging; I liked the video for the narration, even if I didn't understand what they hoped to achieve with Daniel Craig. For most of it, though, my primary emotional reaction was defensiveness. "Those poor women," I thought, "how they are suffering! What wicked, shameful group is oppressing them so?

Men?

...like me?"

I thought one of the goals of equality was to prevent media messages from making people feel bad about themselves because of gender, race, or equality; how does it help the cause to turn the tables on the "oppressor"?

Harry Chapin set a good example (in an interview that I now cannot find, dang it!). He talked about coming back to school the day after Thanksgiving break, and having the principal address the class, saying, "We did a great job with our food drive, collected a lot of food for a lot of families! Now let's talk about what they're going to eat tomorrow..."

Ironically, this is also the tactic used on Biggest Loser; let's acknowledge our successes, celebrate them, and talk about how we continue moving forward. This is a format most people respond well to; it acknowledges both the work done and that still remaining, and provides a gentle, irresistible pressure to continue. Leave the stark, bleak, frightening messages for actual life-and-death scenarios, and politicians trying to raise money.

Appendix

2011-03-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

[I wrote this back in August 2009, and it got lost in my Drafts folder after that. I still think it's interesting, and decided to post without heavy updating or editing.]

Science news from last week is that the appendix does, in fact, have a purpose. Unsurprisingly, religious bloggers have jumped on this as "proof" of science's fallibility and therefore, by extension, religion's truth. Many suggest, as did Rabbi Yonason Goldson, that "... knowledge and understanding have caught up with yet another aspect of Creation ...", asserting the position that eventually science will learn enough to see religion was right all along (the writer somehow connects this to mixing wool and cotton; not sure I follow that particular leap).

I disagree with Rabbi Goldson, largely because he tries to strengthen the artificial divide between science and religion. The part of his article I do agree with is this:

"But jumping to the conclusion that anything we cannot explain must have no purpose or rationale demonstrates one of the most common forms of human arrogance. How often have science and medicine had to rethink their positions after new research has turned long-held truths upside down and inside out?

Even the greatest among us are prone to this kind of error. King David questioned the purpose of spiders and of insanity. (Personally, this author has a problem with mosquitoes.) The Almighty did not explain Himself to David."

This arrogance, as he terms it, exists on both "sides" of the debate. Just yesterday, while discussing the topic of belief, a friend determined the question unanswerable, the existence of God therefore irrelevant, and belief therefore foolish. But this is the same mistake biologists made for years; everyone "knew" the appendix had no purpose because we had been unable to find that proof. How, then, does lack of evidence disprove religion?

We cannot dismiss any idea or concept, whether the value of the appendix or the existence of God, because of lack of evidence. All an unanswered question proves is that the question has not been answered.

Of course, that works both ways. Assuming there is a God, and the Torah/Bible/Koran contains his literal words is also incorrect, because it too is unproven. There exists a tension between the two positions, and it is within that tension that belief can exist.

Jews vs. NPR? It's a trap!

2011-03-09T00:48:00.000-08:00

I read this today:

The oldest and one of the largest pro-Israel groups in the country is urging American Jews to call their congressmen and demand they de-fund NPR following the release of an undercover video showing two National Public Radio (NPR) executives agreeing as men pretending to be members of a Muslim Brotherhood front group lament “Zionist” control of U.S. media.

My first thought? Bullshit.

My second thought? Someone's trying to start a fight.

Several commentators have noted that parts of the conservative (political, not religious) movement of the last few decades has slowly but steadily worked to drive wedges between various segments of middle (as in class) America, slowly eroding most of the protections put in place to limit what Big Business can do to us. Unions? Check. Teachers? Check. Safety regulators? Check.

That's what this feels like. First of all, it sounds like the ACORN and Planned Parenthood "sting" operations; people pretending to be Muslim Brotherhood members? Seriously? And they just happened to be recording the meeting? Shocking. It's amazing how often these things happen by accident.

Oh wait; these things don't happen by accident. Sure, meetings get recorded that shouldn't, and those recordings get leaked, but people don't "accidentally" impersonate Muslim extremists and badmouth Israel in front of network executives.

My thought? The Republican Party has been after NPR for years. They have been opposed by Democrats and patrons of the arts, both groups in which Jews are over-represented. So if you can stir up some false controversy to move Jews away from NPR, then you can politically kill it.

Don't fall for it. NPR is important; it brings us a TON of amazing programing (Sesame Street? This American Life?). It puts the Arts on TV in a way that no other basic cable channel, and few premium ones, do. That is important to us as Americans, and as Jews. Art and education, especially education, are vital parts of Jewish culture. Look at how often the two are combined: we use operatic-level cantoral music to teach children prayers and Torah. Our religion began when God gave us a book and told us to study it, and shortly thereafter told us to decorate it prettily.

If you really are upset by this "gotcha journalism", you still should support NPR. Insist on the removal of those executives if you must, but keep network.

Pakastani leader murdered for opposing blasphemy laws

2011-03-04T10:10:00.000-08:00

This is why rule by theocracy should never be permitted.

Christians say their community, and other minorities, no longer feel secure in Pakistan. Few believe government promises the killers will be brought to justice."They have neither the ability nor the will," one Khushpur mourner, Nasreen Gill, told AP.

In January, an MP from the governing Pakistan People's Party (PPP), Sherry Rehman, dropped a bill to reform the law, because her party leaders would not back it.

She has all but disappeared from view amid concerns for her security.

And it's legal, see? Because it was made into law.

The blasphemy laws, the policies being protested, make it a capitol offense to insult Islam. Apparently it's now "insulting" to request that the law be removed. Next, I can only imagine, it will become an insult to Islam to oppose the Prime Minister's new export plan. Or object to an increase in taxes (except for Muslims, who receive a 100% "no insult intended" deduction).

Anyone want to guess how long until they decide it's an insult to belong to any faith besides Islam? And, of course, no one will be able to fight back or defend themselves, because violence is against the law.

This is what obesity looks like

2011-03-03T20:14:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting to write about this for a while, and a report on BBC.com today finally provided the impetus. According to the report, "only" a quarter of Canadians are obese, an approximately 5% lower obesity rate than the US. It seems a strange thing to celebrate, along the lines of promoting that your bottled water now has "5% less arsenic!", but that's not my problem. I object to the BMI chart used to categorize obesity; according to those charts over a third of American adults are obese.

And I am one of them.

According to the chart, at 6'5" and 270 pounds my BMI is 32 (30 and above is obese). If I lost 20 pounds, I would still be categorized as overweight (BMI 29.6). In fact, I would have to lose 60 pounds to reach a BMI of 24.9 ("normal weight") at 210 lbs. That's 20 pounds lower than I've ever been in my adult life, even when I went on a successful diet program and lost so much weight I had to replace every piece of clothing I owned because everything was too big.

For reference, I look like this:

No, wait; sorry, wrong picture. I look like this:

Yes, I have some weight around my gut I could afford to lose. Yes, my waist size is 42, which is 4" above my all-time adult low and recommended Waist-to-Height ratio. I will accept "overweight" as a label, ignoring for the minute the societal commentary inherent in the idea.

But obese? That doesn't seem right.

Now the chart does admit that "athletes" might have skewed results due to higher muscle mass, and I am off the bottom of the standard chart based on my height, so I might just be in the point where things break down. But while I do have a couple "athletic" hobbies, I've never considered myself an "athlete". Especially since most weeks those hobbies only occupy two nights total. And there's a big difference between "slightly skewed results" and "need to lose 25% of your current weight".

It makes me wonder, though, when I hear these big national numbers. I'm hardly the most "athletic" person out there; if the statistics are (wrongly) labeling me obese, how many other people are falsely propping up these numbers? Should they actually read, "30% of all American adults, minus all professional athletes and people over 6"4"? How inaccurate are they at lower levels? For that matter, if these are based solely on height vs. weight but ignoring the source of that weight (ie, muscle vs. fat) so that an Olympic athlete and a couch potato can show up at the same BMI, how is this a valid predictor of health?

If this were purely a matter of scientific labeling it would be no big deal. But obesity has, over the past decade or so, become both a major political and social issue. And being the "fat kid" has been a major social stigma for much longer than that.

There is serious debate about charging obese people more for certain things, such as airplane tickets and health insurance. This is partially practical (obese people generate higher fuel and medical expanses), but mostly stems from the American Puritanical philosophy of "personal responsibility". Meaning we should punish these people for their sloth and gluttony.

Much better writers than I have pointed out that "fat" is one of the last acceptable forms of public discrimination. Magazines can call out people for their weight in ways they would never be allowed to based on race, religion, gender, or sexuality.

Being labeled overweight, let alone obese, can be emotionally and socially damaging for adults and even more so for kids. I agree that obesity is a major social health problem, and parents that allow (or cause) their children to be obese are performing them a disservice that borders on neglect, if not abuse. But we are throwing around this stigma and labeling and punishment based on a measurement that is flat-out broken.

Regardless of whether charts and measurements are the way to approach this issue at all, making such important measurements using a broken tool is beyond irresponsible.

Pope finds Jews "Not Guilty"

2011-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

I'm so glad Pope Sidious has finally decided that I did not, in fact, help commit a murder that occurred 2000 years before I was born. That's nice of him. Really.

Do people still really believe this? Of course they do; silly question, really. Heck, I've had people - friends even! - tell me they fear for my soul because of it.

Will they magically stop believing it now that the same guy telling them not to have sex (usually) or use condoms (ever) has told them it's not true?

I hope so. But somehow I doubt it.

Wikileaks, Excessive Punishment, and Reasonable Discourse

2011-03-03T00:10:00.000-08:00

The latest in the anti-Wikileaks jihad is the piling-on of 22 new charges to Private Bradley Manning, the alleged leak, including "aiding the enemy," a capital offense.

That's right; they now want to kill the guy.

Regardless of your feelings on Wikileaks in general, I hope we can all agree this is excessive. It is the definition of excessive punishment.

Which is why I liked this post on ReadWriteWeb.

Curt Hopkins, author of the piece, does something very rare in American public discourse; he looks past his personal opinions and focuses on what is right, rather than simply on what he wants.

For the first half of the post or so I disagreed with much of what he wrote. I found it...you know what? My opinions on it are irrelevant. Suffice to say I disagreed strongly with both content and tone. But then he shifts:

Adding 22 additional counts, including a capital charge, is the kind of disproportionate and deadly political theatre I have come to expect from a country like Burma or Iran. American exceptionalism aside, this action flies in the face of every ideal the U.S. claims for itself and promulgates abroad - ideals which I claim as my own.

On this we are in perfect agreement.

And that is what I liked so much about his post; it's become sadly rare to see two people in public discourse come from wildly opposing viewpoints and end up in agreement. The political, social, religious, and other divides have become team sports, where making sure your team wins is the ~~most important~~ only goal.

Thank you Curt, for being a reasonable voice in what has become a very heated and unreasonable debate. Keep on writing!

Yasher koach to Anheuser-Busch!

2011-02-27T22:05:00.000-08:00

I love this story.

To prepare for potential emergency situations, Anheuser-Busch is building an inventory of water for donation to communities that could be affected by flooding later this winter and into the spring, and any other natural disasters that would require fresh water for affected residents.

Credit where credit is due; A-B is doing a great thing. This is a type of corporate responsibility we need more of. In thanks, I'm going to buy a case (or equivalent) of some A-B product this coming month.

(Yasher koach means literally, "may you have strength!" It's a common way of congratulating someone, especially since it's not "dignified" to hoot and cheer after a Torah reading.)

In case you needed an economic insentive to help others

2011-02-27T22:00:00.000-08:00

Reading about the recent earthquake in New Zealand, I was struck by how much better the community was recovering than Haiti did. Haiti's quake was larger (7.0 to 6.3, I believe) but Christchurch was still recovering from another major quake back in September.

Estimated clean-up in New Zealand, cumulative, is $15 billion (converted to US dollars). No one's sure what clean-up in Haiti will cost. It sounds like numbers of comparable scale are being thrown around, but given how much more infrastructure New Zealand has to repair, versus Haiti where most of that money is being spent on food, medicine, and shelter, those numbers should not be in the same ballpark.

Then you compare the deaths. Current count in New Zealand is approaching 200. The death toll in Haiti is more than 1,000 times that.

Visitors to Haiti say it still looks as if the quake happened yesterday. Christchurch was featured on the news, focusing on the happy, upbeat spirit people are maintaining.

I can't help but wonder, what would $15 billion in Haiti have done before the quake? Could it have improved infrastructure enough to reduce the body count? What if there were a few more hospitals, better roads, or emergency response teams? Heck, we're not even looking at the benefit of something as "frivolous" as education.

Or maybe you're not motivated by the damage to the country. What about the economic cost of those deaths? Those are people that, with better support from the US, could have been buying Nikes and iPods and Big Macs; how much have we lost because we allowed such a large consumer demographic to get killed?

Cynical, maybe. But I'm sure there are people doing those types of calculations somewhere in our government. At least, I hope there are. There should be. We look at the cost of things now, like schools and hospitals and scientific research, and decide not to pay for them without considering the future losses incurred by not having them. Maybe that would make a more convincing sound byte: "It's not $100,000 spent on schools; it's an investment in GM's future stock!"

As another reference point, Katrina cost the US an estimated $110 billion, and had death toll of nearly 2,000. That's a lot more than it would have cost to repair a couple levees.

Response to Glen Beck on Reform Judaism

2011-02-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

*sigh*

Short version: Beck took some time on Tuesday's show to, as Haaretz puts it, "slam" Reform Judaism by comparing it to "Radical Islam", on the basis that both are political, not spiritual, movements. "Allegedly", this was a response to a group of 400 rabbis that called him out for insensitively and inappropriately overusing references to the Holocaust.

Highlight of Beck's comments:

When you talk about rabbis, understand that most people who are not Jewish don't understand that there are the Orthodox rabbis and then there are the Reformed (sic) rabbis. Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It's almost like Islam - radicalized Islam - in a way to where radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics.

I'm not saying that they're the same on - and they're going to take it at that, but -- stand in line. It's not about terror or anything else, it's about politics, and so it becomes more about politics than it does about faith. Orthodox rabbis -- that is about faith. There's not a single orthodox rabbi on this list. This is all reformed rabbis that were -- that made this list.

Summary of the response:

“These comments are deeply offensive, completely absurd”, Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism told Haaretz. “Reform Judaism it’s the largest segment of the U.S. Jewish community, and it’s the fastest growing denomination in the U.S. in any faith group – it has much to do with the spiritual needs of a large number of American Jews and to reduce it to [its] social justice agenda is just incorrect."

Thoughts:

I'm amused Beck considers Reform Judaism to be closer to radical Islam than Orthodox. Neither is very close - the better comparison would be the Jewish fundamentalist wack-jobs that hang out by the Kotel throwing rocks at people - but the fact he would try to draw the spectrum that way shows his complete lack of understanding on the issue.
I'm also amused that Rabbi Saperstein associates "Political" with "Social Justice Agenda". That's either a nice piece of spin, or an interesting insight into the man's mind. Either way, I recommend employing "social justice" as a new euphemism. As in, "I didn't like that Temple; the congregation's too focused on social justice."
In all the "outrage" over Beck's comments (I use ironic quotation marks because, honestly, what did you expect from the man? It's like being surprised when your puppy pees on the carpet.), no one seems bothered by the implications he's making about Islam.

Allow me to be so bothered.

This reminds me of the 2008 presidential campaign, when one of the big attacks on Obama were "allegations" he was a "secret Muslim". It took Colin Powell to put these rumors in their place, by reminding the public that there's a long distance between "Islamic" and "terrorist", and using the two synonymously, or attempting to use "Islamic" as a slur, is grossly inappropriate.

Beck's using "radical Islam" as an, I assume, ironic stand-in for his usual bogeyman comparisons to Nazis. The "punchline" being that he's comparing Reform Jews to the people trying to destroy Israel and Judaism! Hah! What funny! (My co-worker points out that, in this, some Israeli Orthodox rabbis might agree with him) But again, there is a massive inappropriateness in describing, as a movement, any branch of Islam as terrorists.

If you do have some need to point out the terrorist's connection to Islam (and I have no idea why you would; it seems more useful to say "Saudi Arabian terrorists" or "repressive social conservatives" rather than reference their religion), then "Islamic" should only be used as an adjective. In the same way you'd describe them as "tall terrorists" or "well-dressed terrorists".

Pointing fingers at "Radical" religion is misleading, and damaging. Because "Radical" means they support change or extreme ideas without offering any judgment about those ideas. MLK, for example, would count as a "Radical Christian" leader because he wanted significant and rapid change. A "Radical Islamic" movement might be one that believes women can serve as Imams (which is a nice bilingual Hebrew pun, if you think about it).

Implying that anyone wanting change is some sort of terrorist or promoter of violence is just plain wrong. It brings down the level of public discourse, and, ironically, reinforces the very same repressive understanding of religion that it purports to oppose.

Epi-curious

2011-02-20T23:55:00.000-08:00

Saw this:

~~Like~~ Love the Epicurus quotation; not so fond of the Demotivational addition.

Don't know much about Epicurus, but from what I've gathered he doesn't actually qualify as an atheist. He didn't deny the existence of the gods, he merely claimed that the gods don't actually have much to do with human affairs; they don't punish the wicked or reward the just, and the soul does not persist after death. It was only in comparison to medieval Christian theology that he appeared atheist. Besides, this doesn't disprove God. At best it shows that our understanding and definition of God is flawed, and anyone claiming they have a perfect understanding of God has something they're trying to sell you.

This dilemma has fascinated me for years, ever since I heard about it. I first encountered it as the "bad things happen to good people" argument. I think it's interesting, but I don't really have any problem with it. Yes, it's true that those three things - mercy, omnipotence, and allowing evil - cannot be true of God simultaneously. I would put forth, though, that they could be true alternately.

We always discuss God, and most of religion for that matter, in terms of absolutes. Murder is always bad. Except, it's not. There are times when God commanded killing (very recently, if you believe some people), and there are times when killing is the proper action because it prevents a greater harm. God is always just, but then there are times God shows favoritism to one group or individual over another.

When we speak of humans (and yes, I'm aware of the theological problems with comparing mortals to the divine; get over it), we call someone "good" if they are merely bad only 49% of the time. A "charitable" man does not give all his money away, or even give to everyone that asks. On the other side of the coin, someone is regarded a "criminal" after only a single act, regardless of how they lived the rest of their life.

Following this logic, then, why do we assume God must have 100% compassion up-time in order to qualify as "loving and merciful"? Every holy book there is tells us God is a wrathful and vengeful being; if you are to be such, you must set aside compassion at least temporarily.

Why do we require God to be OMNI-potent, as if it were not enough to merely be "incredibly powerful; moreso, in fact, than you can possibly comprehend"? Someone capable of creating the Earth ex nihilo is powerful enough to get my respect without worrying about how heavy a rock he could lift.

I do not believe God to be omnipotent. For that matter, I'm not sure God actually ever tells us that he is; I think that was a later addition by humans attempting to ingratiate themselves to the divine. I do believe God is omni-clement (all-forgiving) and omni-diligere (all-loving). I also believe God is capable of error, or at least of irreversible behavior that causes regret after the fact.

So I would respond to Epicurus that I believe in a loving, merciful God that allows bad things to happen to good people; sometimes because of his choices, sometimes because of his limitations.

The Middle East and Media Fatigue

2011-02-18T18:17:00.000-08:00

There's only so long we can remain focused on and excited about any single news story. That's not a condemnation or critique of the system; that's just how people are. It's why so many news stations are always digging for some new angle or update, or try to find the "human interest" story by interviewing the one fisherman with the most local accent. Point is, we can only care about most things for so long, especially with 24-7 coverage that inevitably enters a suicide loop of presenting the same information over and over because real life doesn't always advance the plot quickly and consistently like a movie would.

Cue Egypt. Most of us, myself included, got very excited in the first few days. By the next week, it was more of "that's still going on, remember?" By the time it actually resolved, many of us (again, myself included) had changed our tunes nearly 180 degrees.

I'd like to think this was less about media fatigue and more a dawning realization that the situation was not, in fact, resolved. What started as a shared revolutionary fervor calmed into realization that we had no idea what Egypt would become next. It could be better, it could be worse. It could stay exactly the same, with a few new faces and names. I agree with Dan Carlin (his most recent Common Sense episode was brilliant on the topic) that what's important is that the people get to decide. But did they just trade a corrupt dictatorship for a fascist military state? If so, their ability to decide might not last long. And the impact on the region could be...bad.

Hopefully, that will not be the case. And either way, the people had some say. They had some impact on their government. Which we, as Americans, find nearly holy.

Good for them!

But there's that media fatigue again. And today we see news stories that similar protests in Bahrain and Lybia are turning nasty. As bad, and worse, as everyone feared Egypt could get, these already are.

With the Egypt protests, I was sure the situation could not devolve too far into state-run violence and chaos because the whole world was watching. You can't get away with slaughtering and beating thousands when CNN is running the footage in a continual loop; the public outcry would be loud enough to reach the ears of people that can send the type of "help" you really don't want.

But with Bahrain and Libya, people have already changed the channel. We saw the "end" to that Egypt story, and switched to see what's New On Fox this season.

I'm afraid that the responsible members of the press and government will stand high on the hills, shouting through megaphones that we need to pay attention to these new protests, and we won't be able - or, more cynically, willing - to hear them.

Gone.

2011-02-13T02:59:00.000-08:00

(This is a response to the Girls Read Comics Too list of Most Memorable Moments of Marvel Women)

My introduction to the X-Men was a trade of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Not a bad place to get started, all things considered. It permanently colored my perception of what the X-Men specifically, super heroes more broadly, and comic books in general were all about: what type of stories could be told, the scope, power, and visceral impact they could have; story told both in the illustrations and the text; how to take a story from grand scale to small to big again; and how to find personal moments in scenes of mass chaos.

In the middle of all this was tucked a new character; a young, Jewish girl from the Chicago suburbs, one Kitty Pryde. As a young, Jewish boy from the Chicago suburbs, she had a great impact on me. I was probably a bit younger than her character was supposed to be at the time, but it was still close enough that I saw a lot of that and many future stories through her eyes. She was permanently set as one of my favorite characters, and I would often judge the writing of a new series or storyline by how they handled her character. If they got her right, the creative team probably knew what they were doing; if not, it probably wasn't worth my $1.25 to read the next issue.

She and Colossus were my Lois and Clark; the couple that was meant to be together, that just fit, that represented romance and hope. Granted, mostly because she wanted him, and what my girl wanted my girl got! Still, they are quite the matched pair. She the short Jewish girl who becomes insubstantial and walks through walls, and he the tall Russian boy who becomes solid and knocks walls down. (The Russian/Jewish dichotomy was also a big point both because I am descended from Russian Jews and because in the 80's when I discovered the book Russian antisemitism was a major topic in the Jewish community.)

Then, time passed; characters grew apart. Kitty and Pitor parted ways. She went to England to join Excalibur, which became my new favorite book. He stayed with the X-Men and...died. Unexpected and sad, but I could cope. Especially since by that point bad writers and storylines had ruined the character, keeping the steel shell while hollowing out the man within.

Kitty moved on, and so did I.

Then Joss Whedon took his turn with the X-Men.

If you haven't already read his run on Astonishing X-Men, it's highly worth it. The worst criticism I ever heard of the series was, "The second story arc wasn't as good as the first." Which is roughly equivalent to, "The silver medalist ran slightly slower than the gold medalist."

But back to Kitty.

The big surprise in the first story arc, after months of teasing about the re-resurrection of Jean Grey, was the reveal that Colossus was back. It had seemed he was to be that rarest of rare things - a comic book character that actually stayed dead! - so this was a truly shocking reveal. Kitty phased through a mile of alien metal to find him in a small cell. The reunion scene was...touching. I'm a big, tough man who spends his free time punching inanimate objects and hitting my friends with sticks, so obviously I didn't cry when I read it. But I could see whereas someone slightly less tough than me might have.

What followed was a beautiful depiction of a renewed and growing relationship. They fought. They reconciled. They had sex. They fought more, and had sex while still fighting. In other words, they acted like two people who love each other but are working on some complex relationship issues.

Flash forward to the last storyline, "Unstoppable".

I love authors that can set up plot lines early and subtly, throwing a ball in the air and letting it hang, only to have it drop down years later into the bucket it seemed they put on the floor at random. And sure enough, here was Kitty, phasing through a mile of alien metal to become trapped in a small cell. Only this cell was a 10-mile long bullet headed straight towards Earth!

It was ok; the team would save her. Plus on Earth all the mightiest heroes had gathered to form a plan.

And then...no. Her friends couldn't reach her in time. No one in Marvel's stable of power players could stop the bullet or get her out. Emma Frost, reaching out to Kitty telepathically, offers to make her last moments "comfortable".

"Nah," Kitty tells her, "I'm gonna see this through."

And then, where heroes, demigods, and Wolverine had failed, Kitty whispers a prayer for strength and phases the bullet through the entire earth.

Imagine that scenario for a second. The defining test of a hero is often held to be the moment when they face death - not in the abstract, but in the heart-stopping, last-breath, gun-to-the-head kind of way - and offer themselves as sacrifice to save the day. I don't know how the "my life vs. the entire planet" dynamic changes things, but to face your final moment and see your duty through without flinching is heroic no matter the case.

But Kitty didn't face death. Not directly, not immediately. She rode in an inert chunk of metal - no radiation, chemicals, or electrical malfunctions to end her suffering - with no food or water and limited air, that was moving at high speed through the vacuum of space.

Kitty's smart; definately a brains-over-brawn character, if not at Iron Man/Mr. Fantastic levels, and she'd studied. There was nothing to slow the bullet down, not until it hit something big. And given the size of space, it was likely she would starve or suffocate well before that happened.

Death. Alone. In the cold. Slow and unpleasant. Likely her body would never be found.

But that wasn't her most heroic moment.

That came a few pages earlier when her team couldn't find a way to reach and stop the bullet, and she chose to phase into it to find a way.

She chose to ride that bullet, determined to find a way to beat it, and she didn't stop until she did.

If you'll excuse me now, I have to go re-read the Dark Phoenix Saga, and meet again this young woman who would one day ride a bullet to the stars.

This is a good cause, I think: Stuff for the Poor

2011-02-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

Our Temple is doing a used shoe drive for Stuff for the Poor. I approve of their noble (if poorly written) mission, but their model seems, well, strange.

As I understand it, they collect used shoes and other items, and sell these items to resellers for a profit. They use the money to provide education and other services for the poor in Tanzania, and the reseller has a supply of inexpensive shoes to sell at low-cost to those same poor people, many of whom have no shoes.

Sound plan, right? Helps 'em coming and going. So why does it seem so strange? It feels like I'm missing some subtle insidious plot hidden in what sounds like a helpful charitable organization.

Obligatory Post about Egypt

2011-02-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

The news is in; history has happened.

On the one hand, I am happy for the people of Egypt, that they were able to effect change on their country.

On the other, while this achievement was "great", it remains to be seen if it will be "good".

Handing control of a country to the military is always a bit frightening. Of course, it sounds like Egypt was basically run by the military already. At least, the parts of it that worked.

My most fervent prayer is that the people of Egypt are guided by wisdom during this transition. Their country seems very malleable right now, and it is up to them whether they are reforged into a tool for building, or a weapon for destruction.

The Reasonable Response

2011-02-11T10:20:00.000-08:00

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
- George Bernard Shaw

The E-Kvetcher at Search for Emes has this in his profile. (I found his blog through a link to this post about Karaite architecture; I'm doing some research on the Karaites, so it caught my attention.)

I enjoy Shaw's quotation, and agreed with it for the first 2/3. Then I read the kicker.

Strangely, I think I would agree with both sentences individually. Progress depends on the unreasonable man? Check; many times the path forwards seems entirely unreasonable, and only dogged persistence in the face of massive resistance can enact change (Egypt parallels not intended, but timely). It is reasonable to adapt the self to the world, rather than expect the world to change for you? Check; it's the difference between pushing on the mountain until it gets out of your way, and finding a path to walk around it.

Combine the two, though, and I must part ways with Shaw and the Kvetcher. The problem is defining the person that seeks progress as one who expects the world to change, rather than to adapt.

This is a personal point of differentiation, and I could easily argue either way. Science, after all, is creating change, and every major civil rights leader seeks to "change the world". Except that is not quite how it works. Science does not change the world, it uncovers information about how the world already works, and adapts existing technology to take advantage of this new knowledge. Social justice does not seek to change the world, but to remove artificial barriers created by society such as racial inequality, heterosexual-only marriage, and class boundaries.

I also approached this quotation from the position of the individual, not the society. Expecting the world to change to meet an individual's needs gives rise to the delusional and the dangerous. We cannot control the world; we can only control our reaction to it. Focus strongly enough on changing yourself and that change will spread into the world around you. (I'll see your Shaw, and raise you a Gandhi!)

I also view adaptation as a larger issue. It involves changing plans and tactics to meet changing conditions, and experimentation to find a way that works. It's not conforming, resigning, and accepting the world the way it is. But it also means not continually charging ahead with the same tactic, either because it used to work or because it might if you just keep trying.

Furthermore, putting this quotation in the context of religion worries me because, in my experience and perception, the only way for religion to survive and be an enduring benefit to its adherents is to adapt to meet changing times. Shaw's "unreasonable man" evokes for me images of the Ultra-Orthodox that say everything from after 1800 is unnecessary and evil, and who seek to create isolated enclaves where the modern world no longer exists.

Anyway.

This post is now much longer than I originally expected, and rambles horribly from point to point. But that's the nice thing about not doing a blog professionally; I don't need to worry about "quality". I can just share things I find interesting, and pontificate as I see fit. In fact, I don't even need proper

Things we need a word for

2011-02-10T11:41:00.000-08:00

What do you say when, while trying to be lighthearted and friendly, someone asks a question that hits on a very tender personal tragedy? How do you politely let them know that, while I know you meant it kindly, that's an incredibly sore subject for me, and I'm not looking for sympathy and I don't need to talk about it, but please don't ask me that again?

Our culture doesn't do that well. I'm not sure any does. Especially when it's an issue you don't feel comfortable discussing, or an environment where you don't want to have the conversation.

Moses bringing the Tablets down from Sinai

2011-02-09T09:34:00.000-08:00

The Old Testament fire & brimstone is nothing compared to Steve Job's EULA.

[h/t Cracked]

Standing In the Middle

2011-02-08T23:34:00.000-08:00

Leon posted this gem last month; I highly recommend reading it. Short, sweet, and insightful, about what happens when Information Technology theory meets rabbinic thought.

The Shoah; Just Google It!

2011-02-08T23:32:00.000-08:00

@cayswann asks: Will you be blogging your thoughts re: Google project with Yad Vashem?

I was going to, then I didn't want to, mainly because I wasn't sure I had anything new to say about it.

My feelings on the Holocaust are, as for many Jews, complex. But the eventual path that complexity led me to is somewhat different than the standard narrative of Modern American Judaism And The Holocaust.

In short: I'm quite sick of it.

As a rabbi I used to work with said, "I can tell you in 30 seconds how Jews die; let's talk about how they live." Holocaust education and message is squeezing out everything else, it sometimes seems. I remember last year's Yom HaShoah celebration where the head of the local Holocaust ~~Museum~~ Eternal Remembrance Center led the crowd in booing the JCC for reducing their funding. Because they wanted to spend their limited budget on other, silly, less important things. Like educating children or feeding and caring for those still alive, instead of memorializing the dead.

And that seems to be the reoccurring answer. But you can't protest it, because it was such a big and horrible thing, and speaking against it is disrespectful to the pain of my parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents, as the case may be. Never Forget has become Never Move On.

So I tend to start with a somewhat negative response to any story about Holocaust research.

Now, with that out of the way, this is not a unique move by Google. In their continuing efforts to index the entire world, they've already digitized the Dead Sea Scrolls. From that perspective, this is just another addition of human history to the internet, and in that I support it.

The question remains, though, of how this will be used. I can see potential, in the next year or so, for rabbinic sermons and writings to have a renewed Holocaust focus, as the improved access makes their research easier. I pity the high school teachers who will have to deal with a sudden influx of disturbingly detailed papers on concentration camps and oppressive laws. And I'm sure the number of new "Remember the Holocaust" websites will be dwarfed by the number of new "Holocaust Was A Hoax" sites.

Of course it's also possible that this will be just another bucket of information tossed into the digital sea. It will be absorbed with barely a splash, and cause no change in temperature. If that is the case, I am glad there is a new, globally accessible, and backed-up source of education on the Holocaust. And now that it's been thouroughly indexed, crawled, cross-linked, and wiki'ed, maybe we can put the Holocaust with the other tragedies of our past, use it as a source of future inspiration and strength, and focus on life.

A Jewish Qwiki

2011-02-08T15:55:00.000-08:00

From the new Qwiki search engine/storytelling encyclopeida/ high-tech toy:

Sinners, all

2011-02-03T00:52:00.000-08:00

The principle that all Commandments are weighted equally has, as do many core religious principles, a light and dark side.On the one hand, it (theoretically) prevents someone from ignoring one of the important commandments just because they personally disagree with it or find it trivial ("Thou shalt not kill? Clearly that's more of a guideline than an actual rule!"). On the other, it leads to a certain degree of insanity, when "Put fringes on the corners of your garments" carries equal weight as "Do not rape". Imagine how ludicrous it would be if comparing the record of two people: "Well, the guy on the right is a murderer, but the guy on the left has unfringed garments and left the table without saying the proper blessing! No question which one we want as our Sunday School teacher!"

In practice, all Commandments are not weighed equally. We know this because the punishments do not all match. The punishment for masturbation is, essentially, having to take a shower. Killing someone's ox requires you to pay its full value. Practicing witchcraft gets you put to death. These all may be equal in terms of which ones we have to take seriously, but economic theory alone would quickly develop some rankings. I definitely won't practice witchcraft, and I can't afford to kill my neighbor's ox until after payday, but I was planning to take a shower tonight anyway, so...

Just saying.

And this is a good thing, because most of us walk around every day carrying at least some load of minor sins on our backs. In fact, there's a rather popular story featuring Jesus on this particular theme. Religion sets a basically inhuman, unachievable level as the ideal, which is ok because it's a goal to aspire to, not an achievement to be reached.

But if religion knows that we can't be perfect, and that we will, most of us, commit at least a few small sins per day (and if you think you're better than that, you just committed the sin of Pride; so there!), then maybe the goal of religion is not, in fact, for us to avoid all sin but rather to show us ways to reduce our wicked ways, and make amends when we do stray. In fact, at least three of the major Judeo-Christian religions have this worked into the core of their fabric, and offer fairly regular opportunities for repentance and forgiveness.

It occurred to me today while I was reading a post about religious tolerance for homosexuality (gasp!) that most people assume religion has this all-or-nothing approach to sin. Why else would people get so worried for their gay friends? Are we assuming that if the gayness did go away they would suddenly be free of all other vices as well? Or that homosexuality is the only thing they're doing that God would disapprove of?

Of course not; both those ideas are ridiculous. But this idea still persists that religion exists in some Judge Dredd-style universe, where littering, jaywalking, playing music too loudly, and speeding all carry the same potentially lethal punishment.

(This also reminds me of Father Guido Sarducci's bit "Life is a job". According to him, after death you get paid your wages based on how long you live; after that you have to pay God back for your sins. Murder, he figures, is a major crime worth at least $1,000; masturbation is only a quarter since it's a cheep thrill. Still, he keeps having dreams where he's a recently-deceased old man trying to get into heaven, and is just 25 cents short. As if a loving God would deny someone paradise for such a trivial reason.)

We are sinners all. We are meant to sin, to fail, and to be forgiven, purified, and renewed. It's built into the system, probably into our very DNA. You wouldn't have to tell people not to do these things if there wasn't some naturally occurring urge to do them.

So let people sin. Tell your friends you're concerned for them if you think they go too far, and remember that, as with any freedom, your right to sin ends at the beginning of my personal space.

Does that make it right? No. But it puts our focus where it needs to be; not on avoiding all sin to remain innocent and pure, but to learn, to understand, why these acts are considered sins. To internalize that message so that, gradually, we want to and are able to live a better life. And to recognize when we have done wrong and make amends.

This word upsets me

2011-02-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

It's not often I get upset about a word. I mean, just about the fact of a word. Use of a word? Sure. But getting mad at a word just for existing? Not often.

Then I found this word:

ambisinister (\ am-bi-SIN-uh-ster \ , adjective)
1. Clumsy or unskillful with both hands.

Yes, the opposite of "ambidextrous", meaning "skilled with both hands". But literally, "both right-handed".

By contrast, "ambisinister" is "both left-handed".

As someone who is skilled with his left hand, I take offense. Especially since, ironically, I am an ambidextrous fencer that is better with the left hand and strives to bring the right hand up to that standard.

Am I seriously mad about this? Not really. It's always bothered me that "left handed" became a synonym for evil. The French gauche comes from "left" and means "awkward or lacking social grace". And given how many people have been tortured throughout the ages into being right handed, and the developmental issues that followed, this is obviously more than a semantic issue.

It's also an interesting reminder of how fundamentally some of our prejudices are worked into our language. Many of these words have lost their original sting now, many generations later, when the original slur is forgotten and the word has taken on new and independent life, but it is still an interesting inheritance. Grade school teachers no longer force students to use their right hands in penmanship classes, but students that do well with either hand are still said to write with their left as if it were their right.

So what do we do now when we find these words? Remove them? Change them? Shrug and move on? It's a linguistic version of the issue many countries face: our land was taken from these indigenous people by force, decades or centuries ago, but now there is a new nation built upon that spot with history and culture of its own. Do we uproot and destroy it to right the wrong done by our ancestors to yours? Or just accept that our country was built on blood, and strive to do better in the future?

Pamphleteering

2011-01-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

The news from Egypt has hit the circular point, where the 24-hour news channels have run out of all the actual new news for the day and are repeating the same stories on an approximately 10-minute cycle. One of the major themes that keeps coming up, of course, is the role of Twitter and Facebook in starting the uprising.

Should we be surprised by this? I mean, really? It's a significant story in that, and only in that, it is further evidence social media has reached some point of maturity in the global culture, or at least emancipated minorhood. But this cycle happens with every communication technology at some point early in its career.

One of the pieces of the American and French revolutions that always stood out to me was the constant use of pamphlets as a means of social protest. When I was in high school, that did not always make sense to me; I understood the use of provocative and disruptive literature, but I grew up in a time when print media had already lost a lot of its bite. The newspaper and magazines did not continue the trend of great muckraking journalism; the major investigative reports were coming from television news. And books could certainly be persuasive, but it takes so long, it seemed to me, to write, edit, publish, and distribute a hardcover that it seemed impractical for the speed at which revolutions move.

I did not understand the reality of what these pamphlets were. As Dan Carlin said in a recent podcast, one was a member of the Press because one owned a press. What I should have been thinking of were people going home, writing an angry treatise on their computer, and printing a few hundred copies on their desktop printer to hand out the next day. In our culture this is usually associated with crackpots and church newsletters (no parallel intended), but in the Revolutionary War era people were taking these pamphlets seriously. It really is a direct ancestor of the modern social media superstar; one person posting to their Facebook page, an activity usually used by high school students to complain about gym class, in this charged climate becomes important, interesting news. People listen.

The same happened with radio and television. A major part of American opposition to the Vietnam war is attributable to the images people saw on TV, and it was Edward R. Murrow's reporting that finally brought down McCarthy. It was a little harder with these technologies, though, because the means of broadcast were not broadly available. Only a few people were able to put their message out there, but those people had power.

So now it is social media's turn. And the means of distribution are literally in everyone's hands. Anyone with a cell phone suddenly becomes a broadcasting station able to reach millions. Every Tweet becomes a Tweet heard 'round the world, even as the volume makes it difficult to listen to any one. So why are people surprised this is become a powerful tool for protest and revolution?

The shock about so noble a usage comes because so many people had dismissed social media as a base medium. Twitter, Facebook, and the rest were dismissed as childish tools good for no more than gossip and games. The people that feel this way, though, forget that the power of a tool lies not within itself, but the applications people turn it to. And a tool that can tell millions of people around the world what I ate for lunch can also tell them to meet me at the Capitol and bring their pitchforks.

Is Freedom coming to the Land of Bondage?

2011-01-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

My wife and I are spending Shabbat evening watching Anderson Cooper's coverage of the events in Egypt. Purple prose aside, these are obviously significant events we see unfolding.

It occurred to me, this could make for an interesting Passover this year. How does it change the Seder's narrative of Us, the enslaved Israelites, versus Them, the monolithic enemy nation and especially their tyrannical leader, when "Them" is currently tearing itself apart in protest of said tyrant, and no one is sure what their future will be?

Hopefully the situation will be successfully and peacefully resolved before Passover arrives this year (April 19), but it will still make for an interesting commentary and subtext for the holiday.

Consider:

One of the major mysteries and unanswered questions of the Seder - a ritual based on answering questions! - is why God was so...careful, almost, to keep Pharoah in power. With all the death and destruction going on, wouldn't it have been easier just to kill him and take the Israelites out during the ensuing chaos? Depending on the version of the story, Pharoah doesn't even die at the Red Sea; he survives to go back to his ruined kingdom.

So how would it change the story if, after a few plagues had ruined Egypt's economy, job market, and food supply (a pretty close parallel to the current situation), the population had taken to the streets demanding regime change and new social policies?

Of course, the big question now seems to be that we're not sure who is coming into power afterward. Will there, in fact, be a new government, or just new faces under the same leader and structure? Will there be a democratic age of freedom, reason, and enlightenment, or a Islamic theocracy defined by fundamentalism, repression, and isolation?

I can see it strengthening the impact of the holiday by helping us identify more with our ancestors on the ground. The confusion and uncertainty we all feel about the country today, and what it means for the future of everyone in the region, mimics what they felt, huddled in their houses praying for freedom as the Angel of Death strode through the streets.

The Giving Tree: Morality Play or Good Literature?

2011-01-28T18:22:00.000-08:00

I posted a comment on Geek in Heels's blog post about The Giving Tree a while back, and it wound up being such a long comment that I decided to repost it here (actually, I meant to post it when I wrote it, back in July, but the "save" and "publish" buttons are so close together...). I like what she wrote about the book, so giving her some link-love doesn't hurt either:

Wow.

One of the marks of good literature is how many different strong emotions and how much discussion about it's underlying "meaning" it can generate. Based on this thread, and others like it, I would almost require my kids to read this, because I want them to be exposed to good literature. And I would encourage them to think about it, understand it, and decide what the message is for themselves.

I don't like this string in our consciousness that the "message" of all media must be revealed and understood before we allow our children to encounter it. Few things stand up well, especially in a post-modern, deconstructionist society. Disney films? The Bible? Grimm Fairy Tales? No. None of these things are "appropriate" for children when you look at the message they really contain. And more importantly, when you look at the social control they were originally developed to implement. Especially from the "abusive relationship" perspective. Job? Abraham? Snow White? Toy Story? Not role models for kids.

But they're good stories, good literature, and part of being a "well-read" child. Would you want your kid to be the only one amongst their childhood friends that never read this book? Do you want to set up that embarrassment for them?

Moviebob had a similar post today about the "message" of the Twilight movies. He makes the point, and I agree, that his dislike of the series's message is completely separate from his critique of the series as a work of art. I kept thinking, as I read this, of Narnia and Lord of the Rings, both of which have also been decried for their thinly veiled religious message and societal views, but are still beloved because they are good books. I would protest "The Giving Tree" if it was poorly written, but it's not. It moved me to tears as a kid, and even then I recognized how rare and important that is in children literature.

Two other thematic thoughts come to mind. First, I wonder how much the perceived message changed as our cultural views on environmentalism shifted. When this book was written, trees were there to give wood to build houses and fruit to eat. This boy didn't seem a monster, because that was the correct relationship between people and trees. I wonder now if there's an underlying environmentalism that makes it seem more monstrous: he destroys a living thing for his own selfish needs? What a villain!

Second, the important discussion about the book seems to be, from both a relationship/generosity and environmental perspective, at what point did the giving become "too much"? Fruit? Fine. Climbing? Fine. Some branches? Fine. But giving too much was problematic if for no other reason than it hurt the tree's ability to give in the future. The idea that you can sheer a sheep many times, but only fleece it once. Take some apples and some branches, then leave and come back next year to take more. Give yourself, and the tree, time to recover and grow in the meantime. Furthermore, what does it mean that this tree only gives to its friends and not strangers that are in need?

It wasn't until I came back as an adult and reread it that I started to think about the "themes" and "abusive relationships". The message I got as a child was that giving did not truly diminish the giver. It made the relationship stronger, the tree did not "die", and even at the end when the tree though it had given everything, it still was able to give and help a friend. That's not "abusive unconditional love"; that's generosity. That's giving what you have and do not need to a friend or loved one that does need it.

Response I'm imagining to that: "But the tree needs its leaves! It needs its branches! Those are vital parts of its anatomy!"

Response to my imagined responders: Are you a registered organ donor? If not, why not? More specific analogy: would you donate a kidney or part of your liver to someone that needed it? To a stranger? To a friend? To a relative?

But like I said at the beginning, the moral underpinnings are not why I like this book; I liked it because it's a good book, well written, that I could read and enjoy as a child and still remember as an adult. There are plenty of things I read as a child that I couldn't remember now if my life depended on it, but this book stuck. Because it is a good book. The morality is part of what made it good, but because it added depth, not because of the "lesson".

You're Never Fully Dressed Without...

2011-01-10T17:59:00.000-08:00

Shira at Al Tzitzit is right; it's been a grim weekend. In hopes of brightening things up, I present this:

I noticed, a while back, that I was ignoring people as I walked around town. I think most of us do this; it's been somewhat socialized into us, that we're supposed to keep to ourselves, don't talk to strangers, and don't be rude by staring. This is especially a problem for me in two areas: walking around "tough" parts of town (ie, those without a Starbucks) where I feel the need to project a badass attitude for safety reasons; and when I catch myself looking at a cute woman, and have to snap my gaze to the floor and ignore her so I don't get "caught" staring at her.

It's interesting that we've gotten to the point that we're taught to ignore people in order to avoid being rude to them.

I also started to think about how bad I felt when people just ignored me, like I wasn't even there. The Mr. Cellophane effect, if you will. It's absolutely crushing to be on the receiving end, and slowly I realized that maybe, just maybe, these other people were also, you know, people, and might have emotions of their own. And maybe they would like to be acknowledged as such, instead of ignored.

After catching myself doing this one too many times, I resolved to do a better job of, at the least, acknowledging people as I walked past them. Sometimes it's a nod, or a glance; sometimes I even go so far as to speak to them. A simple, "Hey," or, if I'm feeling very vocal, "Hello"!

Sometimes it's a smile.

I got a good reminder today of the power of the simple smile. Walking home from work, I passed a woman walking home with her grade school aged son. The kid looked like he was enjoying the day, but his mother just looked tired and worn out. Beyond a lack of smile; she was actively frowning.

I smiled at her, a quick, purely reflexive thing, and made eye contact for the barest fraction of a second.

As I was passing her, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big smile break across her face.

Maybe she was laughing at me - it happens often enough. Maybe her son did something funny at that moment. Either way, it looked like a genuine smile, and I felt like I helped put it there.

That made me feel good.

We forget sometimes how much impact the smallest of gestures can make. We get discouraged from giving to charity because we can't give million dollar donations. Or discouraged from volunteering because we can't spend the entire summer rebuilding homes in New Orleans. But those small efforts add up!

Working at the Scouts, I funded camp scholarships for hundreds of boys, twenty dollars at a time. At our Temple's Mitzvah Day last year, we assembled boxed lunches for a local food bank; hundreds of sandwiches were made, boxed, and delivered, and most of the attendees only put in two hours, three at the most.

Even smaller than that, I believe the little ways we interact with people in our daily lives has a big impact on the world around us. Call it the Good Omens philosophy; each individual act is just a drop of water, but enough of them create new rivers and bring down mountains.

Can women be Torah scribes? This one is.

2011-01-07T21:27:00.000-08:00

BBC has an interview with a woman who appears to be the first female Torah scribe in centuries. The story is interesting, more for the questions it raises than the actual writing.

I find it very significant that this woman is a convert to Judaism. First because it underscores again the importance of converts and "outsider influences" to the development and advancement of our tradition (although I suppose those that disapprove of her endeavors would see it as proof that "outsider influence" is toxic).

More importantly, I suspect that very few women that were raised Jewish would be able or willing to take this step. If for no other reason, there's frequently a disconnect between the type of young Jewish women that want to redefine gender roles and push boundaries, and the type of young Jewish women that want to live observant, Orthodox lives.

Not to say there are no female Orthodox radicals; but in the same way a woman marries a man and accepts his obvious faults without trying to change them (love you honey!), most women (and men too, for that matter) that choose to live an Orthodox lifestyle will be more willing to accept the faults and inequalities than take such radical steps to change them. Or will want to see change, but by working through the proper channels to get acceptance of rabbis and Halacha.

Oh, and by the way, whether you were born to an Orthodox family and chose to stay, or found it later in life and chose to join, you only can live an Orthodox life by choice.

The usual justification I hear for discrimination against women in tradition Judaism is: it's not that women are forbidden from participating in these ways, it's that they're exempted from performing the mitzvah in question because women are more closely connected to God and the divine; men, by contrast, are required to perform it, so a woman performing the mitzvah removes an opportunity for a man who needs to do it.

Flimsy, but at least understandable (if not agreeable). I feel like this does not fit into that rationale, though. There is not a requirement for men to work as professional Torah scribes; the only instance I know of where someone is required to scribe a Torah is if they want to become King of Israel. For everyone else, it's an option. Or a profession. So...why can't a woman do it?

If the concern is that women are, on a monthly basis, "unclean", that's easily enough dealt with. Only scribe 3 weeks out of the month. Sure, it might slow down production, but that's an efficiency issue, not a reason to forbid.

I can't see any valid reason a woman shouldn't be a Torah scribe. I wish Avielah Barclay well in her endeavors, and if I am ever in the position to purchase or recommend purchase of a scroll, I will be sure her work is one of the options considered.

Misheberach for Debbie Friedman

2011-01-07T12:50:00.000-08:00

For those that have not heard, Debbie Friedman is very ill with pneumonia, not responding to medication against whatever infection she is struggling with. Her condition seems to be worsening. She is in an induced coma and family members are asking our prayers, for Debbie and for them.

Debbie Friedman is pretty much the voice of modern Reform Jewish music; before she did a version of the Misheberach (prayer for healing & renewal) most Reform Jews didn't even know what the prayer was; now it's a weekly staple in most congregations. I learned the Shema, V'ahavta, Mi Chamocah, Oseh Shalom, Shalom Rav, and many other prayers by singing her songs, and they're still among my favorite pieces to sing, in and out of prayer.

My prayers go to her and her family; she has had a permanent and positive impact on my life.

Leading Prayer vs. Praying For

2011-01-05T19:25:00.000-08:00

At a recent service I was reminded of how thin the line is between leading prayers for the congregation, and praying on behalf of them. It doesn't help that the line is very changeable based on the individual and their mood that day. Still, I believe that a proper understanding of the difference is one of the keys to a successful congregation.

I've often had the feeling, especially in congregations with a strong cantor, that I was being prayed for. This is not to fault the cantor; most professional cantors are quite good at what they do; they're so good, in fact, and pray so well on my behalf that I'm not sure I even need to be there.

Just to illustrate that fine line I mentioned, I like my services full of music and song, so clearly getting rid of the cantors would not be the answer. And it's not only cantors that cause this feeling; they are just the most common, and most noticeable, cause.

The music hold another issue; if the melody is not singable, it is very difficult for me to get involved. Some people find some melodies so inspirational that they meet their spiritual needs by sitting and reflecting while they listen to it; I am a much more active prayer. If I can't sing along (and I have a lot more singing experience than most congregants, so you have to really work at this one), I lose interest. This does tend to be a problem of, and for, the cantors. Understandably so; they encounter so much incredibly beautiful sacred music, and want to share it with the congregation. That's laudable, but can also change it from a prayer service to a concert.

I also believe the prayer book plays a large role in it. Despite being a staunch non-traditionalist, I love the traditional prayers, and traditional melodies. I feel they have gained a certain power and familiarity over the generations of their use (even though some of them have been around for many fewer generations than we'd expect); take those away, and you're left with some random piece of poetry or music that I will like or dislike. If I dislike it, or even like it but find it lacking in "meaning", the service becomes a lot less intimate, a lot less personal. If all we're doing is reading poetry from some book, well, you can do that just as well without me.

Prayer leading, by contrast, works a lot like song leading does at camp. You, the song/prayer leader, are not the star; the congregation is. No one came to hear you pray/sing; they came so they could do it. Your job, as leader, is to set the key (one that most people can hit), hold the tempo, and use a loud, clear voice so anyone that forgets the words can pick it up from you.

The best song/prayer leaders add another level of excitement, energy, and connection. I used to see this at camp; both song leaders knew the lyrics and melody, and were technically as proficient. But one always seemed to get the group dancing harder, singing louder, and smiling more than the other. Sadly, this is the hardest part to teach. As Miyamoto Musashi would say, "Practice this diligently."

End of Year Two

2011-01-05T17:26:00.000-08:00

[Note: this was originally supposed to go out on 12/31; it did not.]

It took me about 13 months to hit 100 posts, and in the past year I've done less than half that number. I have an equal number of posts in my "Drafts" folder, many of them title-only stubs waiting for time and attention.

That speaks interestingly to both my free time/stress level this year, and the path my Jewish journey's taking. One of the drafts gets into where that path is taking me, but it's been a really hard one to look at. Suffice to say, given the events of this year I'm not so much mad at God (although he threw me a couple curve-balls) as I am mad at Reform Judaism. And if RJ doesn't fit me anymore, where's my home?

I also know the past month's worth of posts have had a fairly negative energy to them. It is my hope, in the coming year, to brighten that up. This will involve brightening me up too, so it's a win-win.

I also have a dream of staring a podcast; there are a shortage of non-Orthodox/Chabad podcasts about Judaism, and I feel I could be a voice in that space. I'm really worried about trying to even start a production schedule when I'm having trouble just posting regularly. Still, it's a direction I would like to go. If anyone has some podcast suggestions, drop me a line.

Ok, that's it. Hope you had a happy Boxing Day, watch out for holiday drivers, and have a safe & happy goyishe New Year!

The bonds not formed at summer camp

2011-01-05T00:06:00.000-08:00

One of the most commonly cited reasons for sending your kids to summer camp is the lifelong friendships they will make. I'm starting to wonder, though, if that is really the case.

Granted, I have an unusual experience with camp. The longest I ever went to a single camp was two summers in a row, and my 20 years experience as a camp counselor is spread across camps all over the company. So maybe I just never stayed in one place long enough to form those really deep bonds.

Still. Sophomore year in high school I went to camp for the full summer. The program was really intense, and we were really close by the end of the summer. There were promises of staying in touch, exchanging letters, and getting together as often as possible...

It happened once, that I was aware of.

Like I said, I didn't return to that camp; most of the rest of the group had been there for years, and would continue to come, as campers and staff, for several more. So I'm sure there were opportunities aplenty for them. But my contact with the group was rare.

Granted, this was in the days before the internet. Keeping a group of 60-or-so teenagers connected pre-email was difficult as best. Have things changed in the era of Facebook? Not really. Again, I'm sure many of my fellow campers were in touch with each other, but none of them were on my friend list.

Then, this summer, one of my camp friends died. As is frequently the case, this tragedy brought the group back together. It started as support for our friend's family, and mutual grieving and remembrance. From there, it grew into a full Facebook group. We caught up on each others' lives and renewed friendships. Plans were made for meetups in Chicago and on the East Coast.

As of today, there has not been a new post in the group since early September.

I'm not casting aspersions. We were part of each others' lives for one summer almost two decades ago; we've moved on since then and made new friends. These people were someone else's friends, a younger version of me who was someone different.

Still and all, it makes me wonder. Is this the typical experience people have with their camp friends, or are they really forming lifelong bonds?

Islamic Wisdom From....Cracked?

2011-01-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Check out 5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam.

I love that this is on Cracked, of all pages. Another great example of comics being the most willing to speak truth and wisdom. I'm proud to say I knew 4 of 5 of these, but each of them exposed a misconception I held, and I am glad they did so.

Read the article for the full details; I'm just going to quote enough to talk about the things I learned.

5. If You're a Muslim Woman, You Have to Wear the Veil: This is the one I got wrong, more on a national level than individual; I honestly believed every nation Islamic enough to be identified as such required women to wear veils. Partially this is an issue of visibility; it's not that we don't see non-veiled Muslim women, it's just we can't easily identify them as such. I loved the parallels to Christian sects, and the numbers that reset my sense of perspective and scale.

4. Our Founding Fathers Would Never Have Tolerated This Muslim Nonsense: Knew the Founders got on well with Muslims, didn't know that the early White House hosted Islamic celebrations. Cool!

3. "Muslim" Equals "Arab": More great statistics! Plus a good reminder of the difference between religion and nation, and how the two can intersect.

2. Western Cultures Are Far More Humane Than the Bloodthirsty Muslims: Again, not very surprising. But hey, did you know that core Islam had such humane laws of warfare? Maybe our military could take some lessons.

1. Islam Is Stuck in the Dark Ages: Again, not so much a surprise as a revelation of my own preconceptions. I assumed American Muslims would have as many of the intellectually blind as American Christians do; I was wrong.

This is such a simple list that it amazes me how many times I found myself saying, "I knew that. Of course I did...right?"

Law of the Jungle

2011-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

This is the best thing I've seen from ginandtacos, and one of the best things I've read all year.

To quote the crux of the piece:

Social Darwinism and the "life is like the jungle" attitude that are so pervasive in our society have a single purpose: to convince you that you are an antelope. The only thing you can do is run away. You'll be OK so long as there are other people around who are even more vulnerable. You could try to stop them, but why? Every time they eat the poor, the geezers, and the kids who are defenseless, you live another day. Don't try holding your ground against the big, strong predator. Don't stick together or they'll eat all of you.

Just imagine how much different our politics and society would be if we were less eager to say "As long as they're eating someone else, I don't care" and more apt to get in a big group and ask the lion if it feels lucky.

It's a very deep, very complex idea, put very simply. What struck me most was how... very nearly unthinkable the idea was. It seemed so obvious and profoundly revelatory, which only underlined how wrong our current system is.

It's the dark side of American individualism (subject of another great ginandtacos post); each of us is free to achieve on our own, but we're also on our own. I've always admired the ability of certain parts of our society to get citizens to vote against their own self-interest. The Unions are designed to protect workers' rights, but collective bargaining is Communist and un-American; what's a working stiff to do?

In other words, the lions no longer need to work to isolate members of the herd; we isolate ourselves, making it easier on them.

It's an interesting psychological trick; in a nation that believes in the power of the masses, we worship the individual. We love team sports but make it all about the All Stars; baseball is about the pitcher, football about the quarterback, and basketball advertises "Kobe and the Lakers".

It's such a fundamental paradigm shift, but I believe it's a crucial one. Our ability to face and overcome the political, social, and environmental issues that confront us depends on making it.

The advancements in human history that have brought us here have improved knowledge and quality of life immensely, but too often, sadly, at the cost of our sense of community and cooperation. Not that our ancestors were saints; cooperation was just the only tool they had.

But it's a powerful tool.

Religion is supposed to build this mindset. It teaches us to act as a community, to protect our weakest members and improve the whole community, even if that's not what's best for us as individuals.

If you can call it that...

2010-12-27T02:05:00.000-08:00

I heard this phrase tonight on a podcast. It was a Dan Savage podcast, so you know the guests are going to be...interesting. Today's guest runs a program that helps men get in touch with their sexual energy by giving and receiving erotic massage, to/from other men.

The guy clearly represents a fringe position; he wants hetero men to share erotic massages with other men to improve their health, happiness, and sexual performance with their wives/girlfriends. True or not, this is a position outside the mainstream, yet when describing the program he says the massages "start with 'safe body parts', if you can call them that..."

That bothered me. Not the description of the program - if I was disturbed by people expressing non-standard sexual views I wouldn't listen to the Lovecast to begin with - but his inability to accept that someone might disagree with his position. Either that or he handwaved past a major component of his argument.

Sadly, both are behaviors frequently seen in people that hold fringe beliefs. They often have the unfortunate side-effect of making the outlandish belief seem more acceptable, because they hide the major flaw or faulty premise with a quick act of legerdemain.

Put differently, this is the tactic used by many tele-pundits in the Wikileaks coverage: "Assuming for the moment that Assange is found guilty; in that case, shouldn't we seek the death penalty?" Debating hypotheticals is one thing, but this behavior is problematic; in this country we're supposed to start by assuming innocence, until proven guilty, yet this premature discussion is jumping straight to sentencing! Now the airwaves are full of the hypothetical debate, instead of the actual one, and Assange's defenders are wasting time fighting the hypothetical instead of focusing on the actual issue. It's crappy argumentation, and they get away with it because no one calls them on it.

Of course, religious people are all too familiar with the behavior. Or, at least, they start to be if they take time to look around. I listen to, and occasionally enjoy, Ari Goldwag's Parsha of the week podcast; he has a bad habit of saying, essentially: "Given that Abraham had great mystical powers, it clearly follows that..."

Wait a second; back up the bus here. He has what now? How did we get there? You've made a huge cognitive leap that the rest of the home audience may not be able to replicate. It somewhat begs the question; we can't debate the mystic purpose of Abraham's sojourns until we establish he was, in fact, a mystic!

Unless you're using this to screen for like-minded people. Maybe it's a screen for education; he's assuming, or requiring, a certain amount of study or familiarity so he can just say, "As Rashi proved...", without explicating Rashi's proof. Maybe he is only interested in similarly mystical, scholarly adherents, in which case he's preaching to the choir. But an argument that only holds up within the group putting it forth is a bad argument.

I don't really want to pick on Ari here; his podcast is well researched and insightful, even when I don't agree with those insights. Once or twice per episode I have to turn off the iPod until I calm down enough to listen more, but I like that he challenges me and I have gotten several good ideas from him. I'm just pointing to him as an example of the type.

I feel I have lost the track of this train of thought, so I should bring it to a close. I was just stunned by my visceral reaction to someone that was more amusing than offensive, and examining my response I realized this was why. The casual way he dismissed his detractors; "...if you can call them that..."...

Have enough perspective to understand that those who disagree with you might, at least, have reasonable grounds to do so. Have enough perspective to recognize that, no matter how much sense it makes to you, your belief may be pretty "out there" for most people.

Wikileaks

2010-12-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

I probably could make some clever statement relating Wikileaks to Hannukah, but that's not the point. The point is that what's happening to this company is really horrible, and regardless of what Wikileaks did or did not do, we should be more outraged by the treatment they are receiving.

I read today that PayPal has joined the list of companies abandoning and distancing themselves from Wikileaks. At the end of the post is this comment:

Although these companies have said that their terms of service forbid the support or facilitation of illegal activity, such pronouncements about Wikileaks are debatable. While it is a crime to leak classified information, receiving and publishing it is not.

I acknowledge that there is room for debate about the legality of Wikileaks actionis, and I join with those calling them foolish for doing what they did regardless of the legality, but all of this punishment is happening in the social and business sphere, pre-trial.

Let me say that again. As far as I've heard, Wikileaks has not gone to trial. They have not had charges brought, and have definitely not been found guilty. Yet the US government is swinging their weight around in what amounts to an attempt to put the company out of business.

And what's happening? Company after company is caving, running as far away from these "villains" as they possibly can. Amazon and PayPal now get to define "criminal" activity? I should be very careful about what I use their services to buy, then, lest I trip some invisible "US Government Doesn't Approve" alert.

There's also more than a little bit suspicious about the "criminal charges" now being pressed against Wikileaks's founder. Admittedly, I haven't been following the case closely, but it sounds like a case that should have been thrown out before it had time to even look around the courtroom.

Why's this bother me? For one, our government doesn't have a very good record when it comes to government-sponsored witch hunts. Yes, I'm looking at you, Joe McCarthy. And this harassment of Wikileaks sets an uncomfortable standard.

What if they determine that the New York Times, in reporting on the Wikileaks case, aided in the dissemination of top secret information? What if Google, by returning search results about it, is culpable? Especially since most of the information that came out is, frankly, very stupid. Like Junior High note-passing stupid. "Sarkozy thinks Putin has a big nose and smells funny!" "Gaddafi's new girlfriend is a complete slut, and have you seen what he's wearing?"

Please.

Hey, Congress, if you really think Wikileaks did something damaging, arrest them. What, are you worried because you know it was completely legal, and you don't want the further embarrassment? Either put up or shut the hell up.

And Amazon and PayPal and all you other craven corporations? Stop shrinking away to hide just because the government looked at you all mean. That's not how it works. Stand up to them now, or lose the ability to ever do so.

Comments Fixed (Hopefully)!

2010-12-05T22:55:00.000-08:00

Several people have told me comments weren't working on blog posts. I think I fixed it, finally. All I had to do was get rid of the template I'd spent so much time customizing. Guess it's good that happened during Hannukah; fits with the whole "rededication" theme.

Gaming and Ethical Questions

2010-12-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

One of the things I love about tabletop RPGs is they provide an excellent laboratory for interpersonal interaction and ethical dilemmas. Most of the time people keep the game at a very surface level, but every once in a while it goes deeper, or prompts an interesting question.

For example:

I'm in a Pathfinder game that just started a few weeks ago. We've only had a few sessions, so I'm still developing my character and finding my role in the party. One of the things I knew for certain is I did not want to be the party's voice/smooth talker; it's a role I've played many times, especially as a GM, and I wanted to try something different. Accordingly, I deliberately built my character without the social skills and traits I would need to be good at that role mechanically; one of my favorite parts of RPGs is how game mechanics interpret and reinforce the story, so leaving Diplomacy off my sheet is an important reminder that I'm not supposed to be the diplomat.

It's also important to me not to be the social character because there's another player who is running a social character - a Bard. I don't want to step on her toes, especially since she's never played this type of character before. I know how easy it is to get discouraged from trying to play a Bard well; you worry so much about being clever or a smooth talker that you over think it, and sound more like a bad theater or English major than a silver-tongued scoundrel of legend. So mechanically and behaviorally I have incentive to let other people take the lead in social-based encounters.

Our most recent session was a lot of fun, but there were several moments that I felt I was overstepping my character's bounds, letting my personal "sneaky-bastardness" substitute for my characters. It worked - and more importantly was a lot of fun! - but afterwards I felt...guilty? That's the closest I can describe it. And it got me thinking: is it more important for me to act in the group's best interest, even if it means overstepping my bounds, or to let designated group member do their job and risk failure?

The question extends beyond gaming. I saw this type of situation develop time and time again working with volunteer groups. In almost every one of those situations the "helpful" volunteer was severely overstepping their bounds, and their action was detrimental to the group in the long run because they taught the newbie to depend on them rather than do it independently, or weren't able to focus enough on their other tasks, or ruined other plans they were unaware of in their narrow view of the situation.

It's easy to write off people those volunteers as "more interested in their own status than the good of the group"; frequently that's true, but there are also people that legitimately have the group's best interest at heart, and just don't understand the full consequence of their actions.

On the other hand, there are moments when timely action on your part can save a project from the incompetence or inexperience of the person that should be doing it. Inaction at those moments is as bad or worse a crime as whatever it is you should have prevented; you can't, for an extreme example, allow your company to send out toxic cat food just because quality control isn't your job.

The trick is in determining which type of situation you're in; that's often an easy call as an armchair quarterback or after the fact, but can be very difficult while you're in the moment. It's easier said than done, but I find that if you can honestly focus on the good of the group you will usually make the right choice.

So did I make the right choice? I think so, because it contributed to the enjoyment of the entire party and I didn't overshadow any of the other players, deliberately or otherwise. Ultimately this instance is not terribly important - this is only a game, after all - but the question it prompts is.

Holiday Frustrations

2010-12-03T18:32:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know this post from Cake Wrecks is written in jest; my frustration, as I've walked through the stores this season, is that many retailers really do seem to think this level of stuff qualifies as Hannukah-themed.

When the heck did blue & white come to mean Hannukah? I know, I know; 1948, when "Israel" became synonymous with "Jewish". Ironically, I got really upset when I saw blue & white "Merry Christmas!" wrapping paper; what, are they trying to trick Jews into buying it?

"Honey, I wrapped all the Hannukah presents and...wait, the paper says "Christmas"? Well I guess we have to be Christians now!"

A Happy Assimilated Hannukah Everyone!

2010-12-02T22:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Hannukah to all; may your dreidles spin mightily and your candles burn brightly!

Last year I celebrated by making latkes that caused heartburn for eight days, even though I only used enough oil for one. Not repeating that.

Thought for the week: last year our temple had a guest speaker most notable for the fact that every time he visits us, he pisses off at least me and usually one of my friends. Not in a "Sir, I disagree with your conclusion!" kind of way; more a "Why did you tell my Catholic friend that all Christians are guilty of massacring Jews at Easter?" way.

Anyway. Last year he gave a very patriotic/jingoistic "Yay for Hannukah!" speech, celebrating one of the central story of the holiday: the victory of traditional Judaism over the Hellenistic Jews. A triumph of preserving our religion, he said!

Problem is, he said this in a room where every Jew was carrying a cell phone on Friday night.

The Hellenistic Jews were the assimilated modern Jews of their day. Nowadays the closest parallel to the Maccabbe/Hellenist conflict is probably the Ultra-Orthodox/Reform rift. Given that, how do we understand Hannukah so that it's a celebration of maintaining and preserving our tradition, without including the self-hating, anti-modernist aspect?

Thoughts?

Thankfulness and Tragedy

2010-11-28T18:30:00.000-08:00

The one theological idea that has had the greatest impact on me over the past few years is that one is not supposed to pray to God “from whom all good things flow” because it implies that there is another God from whom bad things flow. The idea itself is simple enough, but the extensions and implications stagger me: God sends not only good things, but also bad. The same God that gives you life and joy also gives you loss and pain.

Of course, right? Isn’t that the whole deal with monotheism, that “alpha and omega” idea? Granted, but this idea (and I wish I could find the rabbi that taught this, or remember which book I read it in) takes it a step farther. If we want to thank God for the good things in our lives, in this season of giving thanks, we have to thank God for the bad things as well.

That’s not a simple idea; are you able to be grateful for the bad things in your life? And I don’t mean in that “there’s a lesson or hidden upside to it” way, as if there was a pre-emptive karmic cost for the good things in life, or God were a sadistic gym teacher that believes the only way you can truly grow into an adult is if he makes you cry. I mean being truly grateful for the bad parts of life, in and of themselves. I try, but I’m not always sure I’m strong enough.

It’s a slippery slope, to be sure. If you’re not careful, you start sounding like the most out-there of far-out fundamentalists, either abdicating all responsibility for the events in your life to some divine power or becoming a sacred masochist, thanking God for this opportunity to suffer further because you deserve it. So what, then, is the proper middle ground?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. I’ve been having a lot of Back to the Future/Groundhog Day style fantasies, imagining what I would do differently if I could relive my life with the knowledge I have now. Or what advice I would give to a younger me. The question quickly encounters a frightening time traveler’s dilemma: I’m pretty happy with my life right now, and wouldn’t want to make any major changes. What could safely be changed that would end with me still here, in my current situation, with just some fairly superficial improvements?

Should I have gone to an Ivy League school? My career would definitely have taken a different direction if I had, especially if I retained knowledge of future events. But a different career path means I wouldn’t have wound up at my current job. Without this job I wouldn’t have moved to LA, which means I never meet my wife! How much would I be willing to change my past knowing it would almost certainly mean losing her?

Not much, and when seen from this perspective it becomes easier to be grateful for all the steps in my journey that brought me here, both good and bad. I didn’t enjoy breaking my arm in 4th grade, but that was one of the steps that brought me here. It’s not an experience I would repeat, but it’s one of the things that brought me here. Looking at it that way, I’m glad I broke my arm!

But then you get to the major traumas, the big pains. I look back at some of those and ask myself, would I be willing to endure that again to get to her? That’s where it gets hard, because I honestly don’t know what the answer would be. Would I do the things that led to years of pain and therapy again knowing that She waited on the other side, or would I avoid those moments and risk losing the good things I’ve got?

I don’t know. I wish I did, but it’s not a question I can answer. All I know is I’m grateful I’m here now!

…

In the time between writing this and posting this, I had another of those moments. One of the soul-wrenching, life-changing, “am I strong enough to deal with this?” moments. Even as it was happening I was wondering, what future joy could possibly be worth this? Will I ever be able to look back and be thankful for any path that included this? On the other hand, it’s only because of skills learned to cope with previous heartbreak that I’m getting through this one relatively intact.

Each pain preparing you for the next, bigger one; is this what it takes to learn gratitude?

2010-11-19T21:21:00.000-08:00

Read Matt Taibbi's article in Rolling Stone. This is so disgusting. The problem in our country is now, more clearly than ever, not Republican v. Democrat or Black v. White or Straight v. Gay, it's Rich v. Poor. No not even that; it's Rich v. Not-Rich. They're more than happy to bleed anyone "lower" than they are, not just the lowest of the low. And increasingly it's becoming a Predator/Prey relationship, or at least a scavenger.

It's interesting, though, to hear who complains about "class warfare" - the ultra-rich and those who think they can become or want to toady to the ultra rich. We plebes don't look at it as class warfare, we look at it as "I'd like to keep my house, please", or "I'm trying to pay off my debts, but it's too hard to stay even, let alone pull ahead."

I know I'm not the first to have this idea, but we've really recreated the aristocracy in this country, based on wealth instead of blood. But still, the best predictor of future wealth seems to be how much your parents had, so it's not strayed far from blood. I can't believe people put up with it! I guess it's the same problem as every other time in our history; we the not-downtrodden-but-merely-lower-in-resources feel powerless to truly change the system in a meaningful way, and those people we select - elect - to defend our interest pay lip service to us and tax cuts to our "rulers".

I'm angry. I'm angry and I don't know what to do about it. Send a polite letter to my Senator, or even, heavens forbid, an impolite one? Yes, surly this is the act upon which nations turn. Go protest on a street corner for the amusement of passing traffic and the benefit of the news stations? There was a time in our country when that worked, but then that generation took power of our country and defanged the tool that helped put them there.

Words of revolution would seem appropriate, but those get you put on special lists if they're even understood.

It gives me a lot of sympathy - no, understanding - of those who use violence to enact change. Not the revolutionary or the terrorist, but the ones that actually got in trouble for it. It's not that they're violent people, it's not that they want to cause pain, it's that they can find no other effective means for getting heard.

I want a new political party, one that grows out of the same sentiment the Daily Show tapped into and the growing disgust with both sides of our current political "spectrum". One that cooperates in more arenas than just the political. If the problem's in Washington DC, fine we'll go there; if the problem's with a particular bank or corporation, we'll focus our efforts that way.

Anyone know how to start one?

Perspective

2010-11-13T14:59:00.000-08:00

I'm reading Karen Armstrong's A History of God and it's got me thinking about perspective. More specifically, about how the meaning of a story changes depending on whether you're at the beginning, watching its writing, or at the end, listening to it being told and retold.

My answer to the question of Free Will vs Predetermination used to be, "When are you asking me?" I irritated a couple of teachers by trying to explain my theory that when I woke up this morning I had complete freedom of will to wear whichever shirt I wanted to, but now that choice is set and immutable. Perspective. This morning I had free will, now it is a fixed decision. It sidesteps the question of whether I always was going to choose this shirt, but from a practical standpoint, from the perspective of the one making the choice, the difference between actual freedom and the illusion of freedom is minuscule.

This led me to miracles. The word "miracle" gets pretty abused, from all sides. We identify as "miraculous" things that are really fairly commonplace and easy to explain, and discount as "trivial" things that, even as we learn more about how they work, are truly amazing. That's what I love about biology; life isn't miraculous because it's inexplicable, it's miraculous because it works at all. And the more we learn about the hows and whys of it, the more awestruck I am by the complexity and simplicity of it all.

So perspective. A lot of the debate around miracles focuses on whether God (or other supernatural force of your choice) could commit some action which violates or supersedes the laws of nature. For me, though, this is a matter of our perspective, looking at things from the end of the story. If nature is God's creation, then the natural laws are also of God's making. The question of whether God could break these laws, then, is moot because these are God's laws, either self-imposed or the working conditions under which God created the universe. It's less like asking the umpire to cheat on your behalf, in other words, and more like asking the inventor of baseball why it's 3 strikes instead of 7. The game could have been designed that way, but it wasn't; the game we're playing only gives you 3 strikes per plate appearance, gravity is (mostly) a constant, and living things age in one direction only.

From our perspective as characters in the story, looking backwards, these natural laws seem fixed and ordinary. If we could have seen creation over God's metaphorical shoulder, we would see their miraculousness.

There's a parable that certain key objects were formed at the time of creation, and held waiting for the moments they would be needed. Jonah's giant fish and the ram Abraham sacrifices in Issac's place, for example. I like this "Bill & Ted" -esque explanation of miracles. It's the same trick good writers do in an extended series (in any medium): toss a ball in an apparently arbitrary direction early on, ignore it for several chapters, then turn and catch it, seemingly out of nowhere, right when it's needed most.

In real life, though, we can't tell, from our perspective, whether the ball was thrown deliberately by someone trying to help us, or if we were just fortunate that it was there when we needed it. The difference, as with free will, is minuscule - from our perspective. The miracle is not that the thing occurred - we can explain that easily enough - it's that it happened at all, and at just the right time.

The only reasonable response, then, is gratitude. Not necessarily to anyone or anything, but simply gratitude that it happened at all. There is a continually growing body of research showing many emotional benefits to expressing gratitude: our ability to empathize improves, dependence on material items decreases, negative emotions effect us less severely, and, most of all, positive emotions are experienced more strongly. The decision is ours, whether or not to be grateful or just write things off as the vagaries of fortune.

It's all a matter of perspective.

Dead Sea Scrolls Coming Online!

2010-10-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

Google and the Israeli Antiquities Agency are working to make a free, online, searchable version of the Dead Sea Scrolls!

My comment on the article:

As an amateur scholar of Jewish theology and history, I think this is incredible!

Yes, there is potential for misinterpretation; that's hardly a condition new to any modern religion. More importantly, there's an opportunity for education.

Most people don't realize how many variations exist between the various versions of our holy books. I love how Bart Ehrman describes it in Misquoting Jesus, saying, with my apologies for misquoting Ehrman, "There are more variations between versions of the New Testament than there are words in the New Testament".

When you look at the Old Testament things are a little more difficult, because I can go to Borders and see 20 different Bibles, each with minor differences, on the shelves, but the Torahs will be virtually identical. In Hebrew, at least. Having access to these scrolls will give us something to compare the modern Torah to, and learn more about where it comes from, what it means, and what it was "supposed" to be.

Burning Houses

2010-10-07T01:32:00.000-07:00

Sigh. Just...sigh.

I was so angry about this earlier, and now when I sit down to write about it, all is quiet. Not that I'm less angry; my fiery passion on the matter has just burned down to warm ashes.

Firefighters in rural Tennessee let a home burn to the ground last week because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee.
Gene Cranick of Obion County and his family lost all of their possessions in the Sept. 29 fire, along with three dogs and a cat.

The only thing worse than the story itself is the debate that has sprung up surrounding it. Not even the content of the debate so much as the fact people feel a need to discuss whether it was correct to let this family's house burn to the ground. Seriously. What. The. Fuck. "House on fire" is literally the example used in conversation to denote a situation so immediate and dangerous that you help right away no matter your beliefs or the cost.

I have to wonder how much of this is a deliberate political shot at FDR's famous speech justifying the Lend Lease Act. As the Great Satan of the Teabag movement, and Neocons in general, how wonderful it must be to have this example of people literally haggling over the price of a hose. There's at least a certain political integrity to it; we're opposed to helping those lazy, poor freeloaders when it comes to jobs, housing, feeding their children, providing medical care, or educating them, and we're damn sure going to be opposed to helping them when their house is burning down on top of them!

The family's four pets were killed - slain really. Yeah, sure; they're just animals, right? No reason to risk human lives to save animals. But they were someone's pets! As a pet owner, who has lost a pet within the past year, I know pets are really part of the family. There's a limit to the heroic efforts that should be undertaken to save a pet, absolutely! But that limit is surly higher than $75.

Every one of the firefighters in this department are guilty of criminal negligence, and probably much worse, as far as I'm concerned. They showed up to the neighbor's property to fight the fire there:

""They put water out on the fence line out here. They never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood out here and watched it burn," Cranick said.

A bunch of trained firemen with equipment stood and watched a house burn down; how is that not criminal? Ok, the law was on their side; they were not legally required, according to county laws, to put out the fire immediately in front of them. Fuck that; legal or not, it was an immoral act and - and this is something I think I've never said before in my life - they will be judged for it by a higher power.

Starting with their own consciences, I hope.

One particular Teabagger talk show host - who I will not dignify by naming and improving his SEO - kept harping on the economics of the issue; "If you put out fires for people that don't pay, then no one will pay!" Well, that's certainly very telling about you, sir, that you are willing to freeload off the government even when you can afford to pay. I don't believe it's universally true, even if it's "economically true". I would pay, and so would most of the people I've discussed this with. Why? Because we want quality service in the area.

And when our neighbor "sponges" off our payment by getting his house extinguished for free, what then?

Then I will feel happy my $75 was able to help him, and contribute more to help with repairs.

Oh, and you're no longer to identify as Christian. Or any other religion, for that matter. There is no holy book in the world, except possibly Atlas Shrugged, that would support this behavior. In fact, they're rather vocally against it. The Koran even teaches, "Do not sit down to dinner while your neighbor's house is on fire." Oddly applicable. That means, Mr. Teabagger, that you now lack the moral center of an Islamic terrorist. Congratulations.

Damn it. This blog was supposed to be about the joy of learning more about religion! I can't believe we have to discuss the morality on the level that any Kindergartner would easily get right.

Happy Book Day!

2010-09-30T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've said it before, I'll say it again; Simchat Torah is my hands-down favorite holiday. I mean, it's a drinking holiday to celebrate finishing a book! And starting a new one! As someone who used to pack spare books for the bus ride to school, this is a concept near and dear to my heart.

Given some of the depressing news about religion and reading lately, like the poll I mentioned yesterday or certain attention-seeking idiots in Florida, it's nice to hear something positive on the subject.

In case you're wondering, the "something positive" in question is "Pass the Schnapps!"

Jumping on the Pew bandwagon

2010-09-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

As a blogger who focuses on religion (I hesitate to name myself a religion blogger), I believe I am obligated to link to the new Pew survey that found most Americans are about as well educated on religion as they are on mitochondrial RNA.

"On average, Americans correctly answer 16 of the 32 religious knowledge questions on the survey. Atheists and agnostics average 20.9 correct answers. Jews and Mormons do about as well, averaging 20.5 and 20.3 correct answers, respectively. Protestants as a whole average 16 correct answers; Catholics as a whole, 14.7. Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons perform better than other groups on the survey even after controlling for different levels of education"

Sadly, not surprising. I have often suspected that for people to hold the religious beliefs they do, follow certain religious leaders, etc. they can't really know much about what their religion really teaches. The most disturbing finding to me was that most Christians (ie, the majority of Americans) are woefully ignorant "on questions about the role of religion in public life, including what the U.S. Constitution says about religion." Again, not a surprise, sadly, given the number of times I've had to explain why having the Ten Commandments on the wall behind a federal judge might be a problem.

I suspect it's not a coincidence that the two most knowledgable religious groups in the survey are two of the most ostracized in this country (I didn't see where Muslims fit in). It's easy to be ignorant of your religion when you've never had to fight for it, defend your practices to bosses that want to refuse time off, teach your first grade teacher what Hannukah is about, explain to her why you don't want to say a prayer to Jesus after reciting the pledge of allegiance, or call a bunch of parents to explain that the field trip has been canceled because a bunch of skinheads vandalized the temple's bus. It's easy to let religion into your politics when you're just going to hide in the majority anyway.

Innovative Modern Sukkot

2010-09-24T18:18:00.000-07:00

My dad once commented that I talk about many of my past jobs on this blog (Boy Scouts, Hillel, summer camp), but never my current one working with him. I told him as soon as I found a place where building product marketing consulting intersected with modern Jewish studies I'd work it in. So here you go dad; happy new year!

NY Times Magazine recently posted the 12 finalists in their modern sukkah design contest. While there were many beautiful entries, I especially like #8, "Sukkah of the Signs" by Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello of Oakland, California (check out the article for a larger shot). From the description of the project:

"It is traditional to eat and sleep in the sukkah for one week each fall, as a way of practicing a kind of ceremonial homelessness and empathizing with those who don’t have a roof over their heads. As a political statement, and as a way of transferring the prize money to those in need, Sukkah of the Signs is clad with cardboard signs purchased from destitute individuals across the country."

This wasn't my favorite from an aesthetic point of view, but I love the story and message of it. As with all Jewish holidays, there exist a huge variety of explanations of the "meaning" of the festival, starting at the surface level as a harvest holiday and moving on to such ideas as reclaiming our history as a nomadic people, reflecting on the impermanence of all things, being reminded of the fragility of our physical world, being grateful for the houses we do have, and reconnecting with nature. (Sidenote: interesting how many of those ideas started with "re-" verbs. Appropriate as we're just past the beginning of the yearly holiday cycle!) Somewhere in many interpretations of the holiday, however, is the implication that, but for the grace of God, we would be homeless too. Whether metaphorically as a people, lost wandering in the desert, or literally as a family with no roof to sleep beneath.

This reflects in several of the festival traditions, most notably living and dining in such a public space where any homeless people could see us and join us. Some temples also use it as an opportunity for a food drive, if they didn't just do one at Yom Kippur; one temple I belonged to collected fresh apples which were donated to a local food bank. I volunteered to transport them one year, and my car smelled like my favorite parts of fall for months afterward.

To me, a good modern Jewish observance combines a deep spiritual experience with an equally fervent effort to change our world for the better. I like this design for the highlighter it puts on homelessness. It puts the issue front and center; makes it unavoidable. There is a wonderful irony in sleeping in a home made of relics from the homeless; I would expect it to be a transformative experience for anyone that got the chance. If we slept here, we would spend the night considering the blessings that fill our lives, and return the next day to our homes filled with gratitude for all we have received. After that it would not be nearly so easy to turn a blind eye to the homeless people we pass on the street. Especially the ones holding the signs we ourselves might be sleeping under a year from now.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

2010-09-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

Badass #1: Exodus 2:11-12

2010-09-05T21:23:00.000-07:00

¹¹ One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. ¹² Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. [source]

I actually wrote about this passage in one of my rabbinic school essays. To quote myself:

Furthermore, Moses himself is a murderer! In fact, Rashi suggests the “Egyptian man” Moses killed [Exodus 2:12] is the same “Egyptian man” as the blasphemer’s father. And this very parsha [Emor] tells us “One law shall be exacted for you, convert and resident alike” [Leviticus 24:22]. So why is this man [who blasphemed] put to death when Moses is allowed to live?

In the movies this is the big heroic moment for Moses. It's his personal Rubicon, his burning of the bridge (which directly lead to that whole sea-parting thing).

But...badass? Not really. Especially since the next two events are Moses getting dissed by a couple street rats as an unfit leader, and Moses fleeing to the desert to hide from Pharaoh.

In my eyes, Moses is a murderer, plain and simple. Debate extenuating circumstances if you wish, but it doesn't change the facts on the face.

I wonder how the crime happened? Did Moses walk up to him and challenge him to a duel, Kung Fu movie style? Did he ninja up behind the guy and shank him from behind? Or, given that this guy was the former prince of the land, did he walk straight up to the guard, say, "Hey, I'm the prince; kneel before me," and crack him over the head with a walking staff?

Was the guard beating a defenseless elderly Hebrew to death, or was he punching a young, healthy slave in the mouth after catching him in bed with his wife?

How much "hiding in the sand" was done? Like a shallow grave? Or body parts dismembered and separated? In other words, exactly how hard did Moses try to hide his crime? How aware of and wracked by his guilt was he?

I have an idea for a show, maybe a YouTube series: a bunch of biblical stories retold as crime dramas, Law & Order style. It doesn't hurt that most of my knowledge and understanding of the criminal justice system comes from that series.

I'm imagining the prosecution working to assemble the case against Moses; what was his motive, how far in advance did he plan? Did he have help? Should we implicate this "Yaweh" person as a co-conspirator? Can't wait to see Moses take the stand in his own defense; "But I did it because God told me to!"

The funny part? He didn't. There's no evidence God told him to murder this guard, or even to save this slave. God acts throughout as if he's willing to sacrifice individual Hebrews to save the greater number of the people, "hardening Pharaoh's heart" after each plague to increase the totality of the eventual freedom, but losing more people under the increasingly harsh reactions that had to follow each plague.

Even after Egypt, "the word of God" as interpreted by the people that wrote the Torah is much more concerned with the community than the individual. Look how many crimes carry capital penalties, killing individuals that the greater society might live. So the idea that God would want Moses to endanger himself, expose himself, and make himself known to Pharaoh by killing one guard to save one Hebrew - an action that actually weakens Moses's position as leader - is ludicrous. Moses acts by himself, for himself. We never even see him check on this slave afterward, making this a form of "White Guilt"; we'll save you from cruel overseers, but don't really care what happens next.

What really bothers me about this particular story, though, is that through inclusion in the Torah it is law. It is part of God's word, which is inherently perfect, and therefore this story, and the actions of its characters, must also be perfect and divinely ordained.

What follows from this idea is books of commentary based on the idea, "Given that we know Moses would never do anything wrong, here's how we explain this story as a good and noble act on Moses's part."

This philosophy bothers me, for many, many reasons. For now, though, I'll limit it to this: people are not perfect. If the Torah is perfect, it makes it that much harder for us, as imperfect vessels, to understand it. A Torah we can relate to is one that has more meaning, value, and utility for us in our everyday lives (ie, the parts of life outside of Sunday School).

Imagine a Moses that we allowed to be a flawed leader. Imagine getting to talk to that Moses. "You think you've screwed up," he'd say, "Let me tell you what happened my first day back from the desert. And don't even get me started on the kinky shit my wife is into. I'm all for women acting in the "Egyptian fashion", but I haven't got a clue which magazines she got these ideas from!"

That's a spiritual leader I'd want to "study some Torah" with!

Badass Bible Verses

2010-08-30T22:56:00.000-07:00

Been trying to get myself back into the blogging habit. The upcoming Holy Days were providing much inspiration, but clearly no where near as much as this:

The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses

I particularly love their commentary on Deuteronomy 25:11-12.

I'm inspired to ~~respond~~ comment on each of these verses individually; we'll see if I can fit it in around Rosh Hashana choir practice and being a newlywed.

A Very Special Wedding Present

2010-08-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

So I'm getting married tomorrow, and amidst all the cards and congratulations that came in, I got this note from one of my favorite volunteers from my days working with the Scouts.

A number of years ago you sent a memo to area scoutmasters asking if anyone would like to have a scout visit their troop in the family's search for a new troop. The scout had a medical condition that had him hooked to an oxygen tank 24/7. You said the dad was involved in scouting and would probably be involved here too.

Well, he joined my troop. In February of 2009 he got a double lung transplant. A few months after his surgery he completed his Eagle project. Along the way he found out he had cancer. He has faced these challenges bravely.

Saturday is his Eagle Court of Honor. Today he found out he is now cancer-free. He weighs 101 pounds. The first time he has been over 100 in his life. He swam for the first time in his life this last week.

And he is going to Notre Dame in the fall with a rather large scholarship.

His dad is our advancement chair and his little brother is now in the troop. He and his family have been a blessing to everyone in the troop (and the school community).

As scary as the memo you sent was, things worked out for the best.

This is why I loved being involved with the Scouts; it's not that this couldn't have happened without me, but I did this. I made this kind of difference in someone's life.

What a wonderful wedding present!

Hearing and Learning to Play Shofar

2010-08-05T14:42:00.001-07:00

My dad was on the radio, teaching about shofar. Check it out!

Buber: The Original Blogger

2010-07-13T10:24:00.000-07:00

In a recent comment about our company's blog, someone said:

I did indeed take a look at the blog and, as I thought I would, liked it. It had the right feel of authority mixed with an I-thou reach to the audience. (Martin Buber was the original blogger, don't you think?)

Liked that so much I had to share. It's an important insight to blogging, too. Traditional media is very unidirectional, which makes it more I-It, or it's self-gratifying which makes it I-I. The successful blogs create the personal I-Thou dyadic.

Can you imagine if Buber had written a blog though? Each post would be 2,000 words, and would take you three months to read. And a few years to understand.

This is me being a communications geek

2010-06-29T23:18:00.000-07:00

I’m Sure The Laughter Eases The Sting: "

Submitted by: S. VonDoom via Submission Page"

As you may or may not know, I studied interpersonal communication in grad school, with a strong focus on communication technologies. At the intersection of interpersonal & technology, I've been fascinated to watch the emergence of emoticons as a new non-verbal written language. As far as I know, this is the first example in history! (It's possible there's something in one of the hieroglyphic languages, but that's not a field I'm familiar with) While not a true emoticon, LOL and all its derivatives fall into this category in my mind, as they are text-based indicators of emotional state and non-verbal information (laughter being non-verbal).

What really fascinates me is when people use LOL incorrectly. Granted, there's the argument that all communication is defined by usage, so if theory doesn't match field observation then theory is wrong. Ignoring that for now (for reasons I'll explain later upon request), I saw a lot in chatrooms LOL being used to take the sting out of insults. Or possibly indicate laughing at the target of the barb.

Assuming the more generous possibility for now, the idea seemed to be that LOL next to a phrase such as, "You suck!" indicated it was a joke. I'm laughingly, playfully telling one of my friends they suck. If this is true, it's an example of assumed over-familiarity, because this behavior often occurred between complete strangers. Saying IRL, "You suck, haha!" makes the insult worse. So this is an intriguing evolution, and somewhat contrary. Fine, and a natural growth of the phoneme (what's a nonverbal phoneme? A noneme?), but it stuck out in my mind because LOL is supposed to be an indication that I am physically laughing at the time I type this. Typing LOL at your own joke is as gauche as laughing at your own jokes. And laughing IRL to indicate that something was meant to be a joke is usually a sign the joke failed. Miserably.

Makes me wonder what was meant in the exchange captured above. Was it an attempt to lighten the situation? Break the tension? An overly cute attempted greeting (I walk into the room smiling and giggling, even when it's bad news!)? It's unclear. Maybe one of the participants will find this and elucidate.

Game Theory Visualized

2010-06-08T21:59:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Zach realizes how often he gets cited, positively, on a blog about religion, and if he'd feel he was doing something wrong if he did know.

Best explanation of Game Theory I've ever seen:

I'm not the first, and neither is Zach, to suggest this, but it's unfortunate how often religion gets forced into the position of being a juvenile form of social control. We need that type of guidance and limitation when we're young ("Alcohol is bad!", "If you go outside without a jacket you'll get sick!", "Vote Republican or the terrorists will win!"), but hopefully most of us outgrow it.

Ironically, I blame nostalgia. There are people that are just plain not intelligent enough to grasp more complex social contracts and interpretations of religion, but fortunately (and sadly) that's not most people. Even those with below-average intelligence can learn to grasp ideas like, "This is not always true, but it's a convenient way to teach." I think most people just want to keep their religion the way it was when they were kids.

I think the biggest problems people have with religion start because we continue to experience religion and the divine (however you define it) as we did when we were children. This is damaging to individuals in the short term and societies in the long term. An entire culture based around powerful-but-distant-daddy-issues is not a healthy one.

Conversations With The Rabbi

2010-06-03T00:20:00.000-07:00

Had a great talk tonight with our Temple's rabbi.

...and I wanted to say a lot about it, but apparently it's one of those that had too deeply personal an impact for me to process and share right away. That or I'm stalling.

Highlights:

I asked her opinion of some of the independent rabbinic schools, and her answers led us into a very open, frank discussion about the education, job, and life of a rabbi, and I completely got it. She made me realize my doubts aren't necessarily problematic, and to some extent they will never really go away.

One of the questions we discussed was why does everyone that feels drawn to Jewish life & work feel that becoming a rabbi is the only way to express it? Would it be possible to get the same benefit, spiritual/intellectual development, and community involvement by, hypothetically, being director of a JCC and taking lots of night classes?

Well, frankly, yes. That's a large part of the problem.

But having her ask me this made me do something I haven't done much recently; I had to argue my case for wanting to be a rabbi instead of taking this other path. And that forced me to refine a couple things in my mind to the point I could express them as arguments..

Basically, a large part of it is a matter of direction and perspective. I wouldn't become a rabbi so that I could be that JCC director, but if I became a rabbi and then took a job as JCC director that would be fine. Small difference, but important one.

Also, I want the link to Jewish communal life to extend beyond my current job. When I was bouncing around the non-profit world in a previous life, I felt at times like a mercenary. I will care deeply and passionately about whatever cause I am paid to believe in. What'cha got, heart disease? Great; let's go fundraise for that. Last week it was starvation in Afghanistan, and next week it'll be adopted children with developmental difficulties, but for now I completely and truly care about heart disease. It started feeling shallow and false, and completely at odds with the reasons I got into non-profit work. Being a rabbi is, first of all, for me. More than that, it represents the link, the common thread in my life. I may work with a congregation, or a summer camp, or a JCC, but as I move between those worlds I will still be a rabbi.

I don't know if I explained that well, it's gotten late and I've had a long day, but that's the evening's epiphany.

I forgot to mention...

2010-06-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Been busy lately. In all the hubbub I forgot to post to the blog...

...I'm getting married!

I can't believe I've been writing a Jewish blog for...how long now? Almost two years? And I missed out on the chance to write about Jewish wedding law! Oh, and to share the news with my friends and readers; that too.

It probably says something about me that posting important news online was not one of my early thoughts; I hope it's something good.

This Makes Me So Happy!

2010-05-27T23:18:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I missed this!

From The Daily Show:

Tuesday May 11, 2010
God Smacked
Jason Jones meets a pastor who teaches mixed martial arts and an evangelist who breaks inanimate objects in the name of Jesus.

This is...so...awesome! Fits with what I've been saying for a while now.

I feel better about spending this Shabbat engaged in acts of war.

Hanukkah Stubs

2010-05-24T23:14:00.000-07:00

Cleaning out my notebook. Ideas to develop more fully later:

What do people really mean by "Freedom of Religion"? Religious freedom vs. Freedom of MY religion.
Israel (Macabbees): Palestein = Assyrian Greeks: Israel (Modern)
Was the Macabbee war really the first war for religious freedom?
How much are the origins of our holy days romanticized, ala the US Founding Fathers?
We as modern, secular, integrated Jews are the ones "Seduced by the alien culture" that Macabbees opposed.

Miracles

2010-05-22T14:42:00.000-07:00

My feeling about miracles has always been that they're not about some seemingly impossible thing happening, they're about the right thing happening at the right time. In the story above, the "miracle" is not that David was able to kill Goliath (to paraphrase Salvatore, a rock through the head ends life quite naturally), but that when someone was needed to defeat Goliath, David was there.

Similarly, I've never had a problem with the attempts to scientifically re-explain the Exodus; if anything, I think they make the story cooler. A God that can reach down and smite pharaoh or part the seas? Interesting. But one that causes volcanic eruptions on the other side of the ocean in order to set off some Goldberg-esque series of events that would lead to our freedom? Neat! Besides, I think all evidence supports the idea that God would never take the simple and direct route when some unnecessarily difficult method was available.

The miracle was not that it happened, but that it happened at the right time, when we needed it.

Of course, this raises the question: on all those other occasions when we needed a miracle and nothing happened, where was God?

Saudi Woman Beats Up Virtue Cop

2010-05-19T18:34:00.000-07:00

For those that have yet to see the story:

When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.

But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping...

...the woman then allegedly laid into the religious policeman, punching him repeatedly, and leaving him to be taken to the hospital with bruises across his body and face.

This is a cool story for many reasons, not least of which is the "Virtue Police" totally deserve it and have well and truly made their own bed. Other people will cover the triumph of women's rights [interesting aside: Blogger's spell checker does not recognize the phrase "women's rights". Of course it also doesn't recognize "Blogger's", so don't read too much into that], the pro-feminist aspect, and, I'm sure, the positive effect of American culture on the rest of the world.

I want to point out a slightly different angle, though. Many people will praise this woman for her actions (In fairness: Jezebel also points out that " 'speaking out' is probably the safer, and ultimately more effective, route"), which amounted to beating a man lying on the ground. When was the last time a story reported positively on a man beating a woman, regardless of her current posture?

If this story was just about "rebellion against the oppressors" it wouldn't matter. I suspect, however, that most commentators will put some sort of gender-based spin on it. And the story wouldn't be nearly so salient if it was the woman's male companion who beat the cop. So let's look at it as a gender-based issue. How would this story read if the genders were switched, and it was an oppressed man striking the female representative of an oppressive regime?

Yes, I know; that scenario doesn't exist often outside of genre fiction and comics. Still, this story provides an interesting lens to consider our assumptions about and reactions to gender-based violence.

Nun Excommunicated For Recommending Abortion

2010-05-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

Not surprising, just disappointing.

A Phoenix nun has been "automatically excommunicated" for recommending an abortion to save the life of a woman, raising the question of how much the Church hierarchy really cares about women's lives.

Sigh.

Blog Against Theocracy

2010-04-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

Missed the deadlines for this year's Blog Against Theocracy; it's a hard event for me because I have trouble finding something new to say on the idea (namely, it's a bad idea for religion to run government when even people in the same religion can't agree on what they believe).

Still, if I had written a blog for it, I probably would have said something like this.

Go on, check it out; I'll wait.

Back? Good. Yeah, I liked it too.

Just started a new book on the origins, rewrites, and changes in the Torah throughout its life; so far it's taken me an hour to get to the first page, so this might last me a while. Point is, we're just guessing when it comes to most of this stuff. We can apply our own best judgment, common sense, and current social norms, but when it comes to the original texts - what the founders of our religions actually said and believed (allegedly) - we're stuck.

And that's fine for religion, where it's a matter of personal belief and what you do with your family, that's fine. But for government, when it comes to making important decisions about other people's lives, religion needs to be so far out of the picture that it's in a different museum.

And now to another favorite topic...

2010-04-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

Leaving momentarily to sing at the city's Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony. Once again I'm reminded that what we really need is a Holocaust Getting Over It And Moving On Day for balance.

I was at the bookstore last week, looking for a new Judaica book (picked The Bible As It Was), and was struck by how many Holocaust books there are. Within the "Jewish Studies" section there are two sub-sections: Holocaust and Kabalah. Guess which is larger. In fact, Holocaust books outnumbered any other single topic.

I know, I know; most Jewish holidays are centered around some similar wrong done to us. But the mayor of Los Angeles doesn't come out for Tish B'Av or Purim.

It's one thing to remember, and by remembering disallow a reoccurrence. It's another thing to live so completely in the past. We need to move past the pains of the last century and develop new tradition and meaning and value in our religion and in our culture. If not for us then for our children.

And with that, I go now to sing of past wrongs.

Response to D'var Shemini

2010-04-11T10:36:00.000-07:00

Back over at Edible Torah, check out this week's drash on D'var Shemini. Discussing the death of Aaron's sons, Leon puts forth the following as possible motives:

We need: “Crime Scene Investigation: Shemini”
Our primary suspect is Hashem. We have multiple eyewitness accounts that place the suspect at the scene of the crime. Our main task therefore is to establish a motive. Since the suspect has been historically unresponsive to direct questioning since the time of the Prophets, not to mention the fact that I’m pushing my luck with all the God jokes so far, I am content to use the evidence we have at hand to derive some conclusions.
Possible motives would include:
God requires perfection
God is random and vindictive
Nadav and Abihu purposely engineered their own death
Nadav and Abihu did something extremely horrible, the consequence of which was death

The second proffered motive stuck with me; in a comment I discussed the "random" part of God's behavior, but here I wanted to look at the vindictiveness.

The Old Testament Yaweh does have a vengeful - that is to say vindictive - streak. "I do this because of what he has done unto me" is a common theme. It may not be random; it may even be logical. Many temporal rulers and scholars of power have strongly believed that to maintain a rule, and keep your subjects proud of their ruler, a king must act against any insult offered him. Not out of emotional needs for vengeance, but in the same way you would put down any crime. Still, it is hard to label such behavior as anything but vindictive. For that matter, many people suggest that punishing any crime is more about retribution than rehabilitation.

God in the Old Testament is, right or wrong, a bloodthirsty deity; we all know that. Look at the swath of blood God leaves behind Israel in leading them from Egypt to the Promised Land. Then, suddenly, we reach the New Testament and the bloodshed stops. (Well, slows down considerably. And is done with much more apology.) I always figured this was because after generations of trying to get his followers to kill their own sons, but being stopped at the last minute (usually), God finally succeeds at killing his own son. As so often happens, death of a loved one is a growth experience, helping Adonai mature, develop greater empathy, and realize what a dick he was being to many people. After that the demands to sacrifice, commit genocide, and be vengeful and vindictive stop coming from divine sources. Plenty of human sources still encourage such action in God's name, but it's not fair to blame God for his followers.

Hiding Behind Religion

2010-04-09T21:11:00.000-07:00

We've all seen examples of individuals hiding behind religion, trying to excuse reprehensible behavior by claiming that a religion teaching peace, love, fellowship, and forgiveness wanted them to murder, rape, mutilate, or watch Fox News. (Cheap shot! Pow!) But sometimes larger, societal-level problems also get hidden behind the skirts (choir robes?) of religion.

Take, for example, this article by Mollie at getreligion.org: Priests aren't the problem

"We’ve seen a lot of stories that err not so much in what they say as what they don’t say. Sometimes we don’t hear all the details about a specific case. Sometimes we don’t learn about the efforts the Vatican has successfully made to change how it responds to sexual abuse. And I’ve seen very little media coverage that places the problems in the Catholic church in context of other religious groups’ problems or society’s larger problem with child sexual abuse...

...The story includes some helpful data points. Insurance companies that offer a sexual misconduct rider on liability insurance say their own studies indicate that Catholic churches are not at higher risk than other denominations."

She cites several articles that make the point even more strongly: Catholic priests do not commit child abuse at a higher rate.

So why does it seem so much worse? Mollie makes the point that it might just feel worse, since there's such a high expectation of trust. Or maybe it's because the Church did not act quickly enough to stop some of these priests, allowing them greater opportunity.

To me, though, this shows a different problem. We equate Priests with higher levels of abuse because it's easier to think of child abuse as a "Religious Problem".

This happens frequently in our culture. We equate a given "problem" with religious people (such as terrorism, polygamy involving children, or anti-intellectualism) and forget that there are many non-religious people displaying the same behavior. Granted, many terrorists have some religious motive. In other places, such as Palestine and Ireland, religion is so blurred with national identity and politics that it's difficult - and a little unfair - to lay it solely at religion's feet. And then there are Timmothy McVeigh and the Unabomber, neither of whom displayed any particular religious fervor.

I am not trying to write religion a pass here; there are definately bad people who have been inspired by religion, and others who, being bad, have found shelter and identification within it. But we too often forget that when discussing "religious wackos" it's the "wacko" part that's the problem, not the religion!

More importantly, by writing off such major problems as "because of religion", we risk ignoring much larger, systemic problems underlying them. If we got rid of all religion, would child abuse and terrorism also disappear? No; of course not. And hiding the real problem behind religion leaves us dangerously blind to it.