Arlene’s Blog

“This time”—my friend stood over a sinkful of dirty dishes, a stricken expression on her face—”I’m voting as if my life depended on it.” Extreme energies of hope and fear are rising and ricocheting over every city and town in the nation. I wish there were a way to harness a forcefield of this magnitude: …

Yom Kippur begins tonight. This holy day is the fulcrum of the Jewish year: in preparation, we do a cheshbon hanefesh—a soul inventory—cleaning up our conduct and relationships to ready ourselves for the moment tonight when the beautiful Kol Nidre prayer is chanted, annulling all vows, reminding us that in the deepest place, in the …

If you’ve been reading my blog, you’ve seen me quote before from the Reverend James Lawson’s founding statement of principles for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee well over forty years ago. What SNCC was seeking, Lawson wrote, was “a social order or justice permeated by love.” This has become one of many mnemonics lodged in …

The difficulty I have wrapping my head around patriotism is one I sometimes share with other children of immigrants, those whose heritage, like mine, was stamped with the dark face of nationalism, the imprint of a patriotism that believed the country where our forebears were born would be purified by our absence. I feel deeply …

Judging from my friends’ reactions (and the level of unrest in the Blogosphere and Punditstan), Sarah Palin’s nomination has unleashed a tidal wave of fear and despair large enough to sweep defeat from the jaws of victory—unless we can master this reactivity and get on with winning the election. I have lost count of the …

California is in my blood. But—full disclosure—it got there by transfusion. I was born in New York City. Before I was two years old, the three generations of my family then living in this country made the pilgrimage out west in time to meet my father when he mustered out of the Navy, ready to …

I recorded the several hours of the Democratic Party convention broadcast on PBS each night, then fast-forwarded through the pundification that occupied perhaps a third of each program, stopping to listen to all the speeches. On the first evening, I was aware of so many sensations in my body: my heart lifted, but with difficulty, …

Do you know that Billie Holiday song, “Good Morning Heartache”? Lady Day’s lyrics personify the misery she feels at losing her lover, casting pain as her constant companion. Good morning, fear. I can’t pretend to know how life delivers comeuppance, let alone why, but I’m dogged by the feeling that I am getting mine now. …

In the Jewish calendar, this is the last of three solemn weeks in preparation for Tisha B’Av, the 9th of the month of Av, which is marked by mourning for the destruction of the first and second Temples (2500 and 2000 years ago, respectively) the expulsion from Spain half a millennium ago, and other tragedies …

I sometimes find the idea of progress in human civilization deeply confusing. Aspects seem unquestionable: penicillin, microwaves, countless other scientific and technological inventions that make possible things our ancestors never imagined, from easy cures for once-fatal diseases to push-button world destruction to light-speed communication at a distance. Yet our basic physical and mental equipment as …