A story is told about a town that suffered from drought (I heard a version of it from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, but if you want to transpose it to a priest or a minister or imam, it will work just as well; if you Google the key words, you’ll see others have done likewise). People …
If you didn’t know I was a baby-boomer, it would surely become evident in my tendency to find timeless wisdom in the lyrics of pop songs. My new car has a CD player, which I immediately loaded up with personal favorites. Van Morrison’s 1968 \Astral Weeks\ is my desert-island recording: I got it as a …
Something is happening that raises my spirits: ultra-respectable liberal commentators — folks no one can reasonably dismiss as wild-eyed radicals (such as Elizabeth Drew, whom I wrote about on July 5th) — are standing up and speaking truth to power in a forthright fashion that knocks me off my feet. Latest case in point is …
When I read about your predicament as Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, presiding over hearings on the Bush administration’s next Supreme Court nominee, I think of Queen Esther. The biblical Book of Esther tells the story of a young Jewish woman who wins a beauty contest to become a queen of Persia. As time …
The day after millions consumed beer, barbecue and pyrotechnics to honor the 229th anniversary of our nation’s hard-won liberation from the British Empire, I’d like make a modest proposal. It appears at the end of this essay, but be patient: first I’d like to tell you why. If you read to the end and agree …
I’m one of those people who has a pithy little quote appended to my email signature. Whether I do this to share what touches me or in the impudent hope of instructing the world, I leave it to you to decide. But for the longest time, this epigram from the filmmaker Jean Renoir appeared at …
This just in: it really ticks people off when you mess with whatever they perceive as holy. I’ve been reading about the demonstrations around the world against U.S. use of the Koran as an interrogation prop at Guantanamo. Newsweek published an article on May 9 charging that interrogators tried to psych out Muslim prisoners by …
Years ago, I read an extremely woo-woo book whose author, the late ethno-botanist and psychopharmacologist Terence McKenna, posited time as a spiral descending toward a point of convergence in December of 2012, when the nature of reality would be radically transformed in some way impossible to predict. His theories were based on the Mayan calendar, …
I’m part of a discussion elist for progressive Jews, and like a zillion other online groups, we’ve been posting messages about the Terry Schiavo case (may she rest in peace). Over the weeks of its unfolding, people have sent eloquent expositions of their own widely divergent views to the list, from those who feel the …
Since mid-January, I have been trying to practice what Martin Luther King preached, to love my opponents. It’s rough going, and I’m not doing all that well. But as is said in \Pirke Avot\ (“Sayings of the Fathers,” a compilation of ancient wisdom that appears in many Hebrew prayerbooks), “It is not given to you …