Challenging Assumptions: Am I an Atheist?

This is the third in a series of posts that have resulted from a dialogue with C. August of Titanic Deck Chairs about where I stand with respect to Objectivist ideas. As is the nature of good dialogue, C. August has posed a series of challenging questions that probe my assumptions about human reason, religion, and ethics. The post that inspired this dialogue--for it is not a debate: C. August appears to be interested and curious, rather than missionary--was Rules for Patriots? , the first response from Ragamuffin Studies was Objectivist Questions About Rights and Religion (Part I) and the second is more parsimonously titled Objectivist Questions (Part II) .

In his comment to my response to his question about natural rights, C. August begins by saying:

"Thank you for the very detailed response. It's a lot to go through, with the same amount of specialized (Jewish) language and concepts that non-Objectivists must have to deal with when reading detailed Objectivist philosophical arguments."

Very true, and indeed, my specialized vocabulary is probably harder for a non-Jew to wade through than Objectivist arguments are for a non-Objectivist who has some experience with philosophy. I was not trying to snow you--part of the exercise in writing these responses was to answer your questions and thus engage in dialogue with you, but the other part of my purpose is to clarify my own thinking for me, by putting it into words.

C. August then gets right to the point, which is an Objectivist virtue, and says:

"To put it simply, it sounds to me like you have recast Judaism to emulate Objectivism... or perhaps, recast Objectivism to fit Judaism. I'm not sure which. Maybe you even mean that they are basically the same in your eyes, and no recasting was necessary?"

Hmmm. I would say that I started with Judaism as I understand it, and although my practice of Judaism is rather traditional, my thought is not quite in accordance with traditional Jewish belief; rather the bent of my mind requires me to delve into more abstract Jewish philosophy. Jewish ideas concerning moral philosophy and political philosophy have evolved, perhaps rather steadily with one exception, and that is the punctuated leap from the Israelite sacrificial temple cult to modern Rabbinic Judaism that began with the rabbinic notion of Oral Torah--an interpretive tradition that allowed the Rabbis (capitalization denotes the authoritative Talmudic rabbinic tradition) to reinvent the religion while simultaneously claiming authority from the tradition. As the Engineering Geek would say, "very clever, these Hebes."

This evolution is possible because normative Rabbinic Judaism understands the human mind, and the knowledge gained from examination of nature of which it is part, to be equally definitive with the religious tradition. Thus, a Jew must study both Torah and the sefer ha-olam, the book of the world, to fully know the universe. My thought is in line with Maimonides, who fully stated the rabbinic notion that there can be no contradiction between Divine revelation and the discoveries of the human mind. These discoveries were defined by Maimonides to be science and philosophy, in accordance with Aristotle's definitions. Therefore I am no mystic; however, in accordance with Maimonides and unlike Aristotle, I understand Providence to extend to individuals rather than to some collective notion of humanity.

I am still ignorant on the point of whether the universe is purely external (in accordance with Aristotle) or created out of nothing, which is the normative Jewish view. I tend toward the former, but I have not studied the issue sufficiently to say that I know all of the implications of either claim. Suffice it to say that my understanding of G-d* proceeds from the nature of the physical universe alone. I do not accept the concept of a reality that cannot be defined or measured. I do accept that we have not yet measured or defined all of reality. There is ever more to be discovered!

*It is the Jewish custom not to complete the Name out of respect. Some Jews, myself included, use this custom to denote that our understandings of G-d are incomplete, and differ from the cultural Christian norm.

Am I an atheist? I do not define myself as such, rather I identify myself as a Jew.

However, as I state above, I can find no evidence at all for any supernatural (or supranatural?) realm of existence. Therefore, I understand much of the religious mythic tradition to be metaphor for observations about the world and human nature that our ancestors had insufficient knowledge and/or vocabulary to describe in any other way. And taken as metaphor, the mythic tradition can give us insight into the beginnings of human metacognition about human existence and ethics, but it cannot give us any scientific understanding of the universe.

When I say this, though, I need to make clear that I am not a Progressive. That is, I understand there to be certain moral absolutes derived from human nature that cannot be altered by novel political systems imposed on human societies. Human knowledge, understanding and wisdom with respect to the universe in which we live progresses with time, it evolves. But this progress does not imply that human nature is infinitely plastic. Genetic changes in the human brain that would reorganize the large-scale structure would result in speciation--the arrival of a new species on the human cladogram--rather than in the pefection of Homo sapiens as H. sapiens.

Am I an atheist? No, I am a Jew.
But in line with my Jewish understanding, I understand G-d to be bound by the same Natural Law that binds the universe, and that defines human nature as rational, and establishes moral absolutes derived from reason. Therefore, I see reason as primary and autonomous.
Perhaps the Dutch philosopher Grotius put it better than I just did:

" Even the will of an omnipotent being cannot change the principles of morality or abrogate those fundamental rights that are guarranteed by natural laws. These laws would not change their objective validity even if we should assume--per impossibile-- that there is no God or that he does not care for human affairs." --Hugo Grotius, Introduction to De Jure Belli et Pacis, as cited in Cassirir, E. (1946). The Myth of the State. Yale University Press: New Haven. p. 172.

Am I an atheist? I do not define myself as such, but normative Christians probably would. That is their problem, created by their need to define the concept of God universally and in their own image and likeness. It is the same problem that causes liberal Christianity to do mental gymnastics to simultaneously reject Judaism as an acceptable religion according to Christian scripture and yet claim that somehow Jews share in Christian salvation.

As for me, I am a Jew.

Objectivist Questions (Part II)

Note: This is the second part of two posts. The first part may be found here, and the introductory remarks, at the very least, are well worth reading, as there I explain the cirmcumstances by which these blog entries were conceived, and I stipulate the background that underpins my thinking.

Yesterday, in his response to my response to his question, C. August posed another question, and also began to expound on an idea about the Founders that was quite interesting. I would love to hear more of this thoughts on this, but in the meantime, in this post I will respond to his further query.

C. AUGUST FURTHER QUERIES

"You highlighted as one of the qualities that make us human "the need to know the difference between good and evil, and the need to choose the good in order to choose life." I'm curious how you determine what is the good?

The Objectivist view is succinctly put in Galt's speech: "All that which is proper to the life of a rational being is the good; all that which destroys it is the evil." And this of course is based on the metaphysical facts of man's nature as a rational being, and one of volitional consciousness, who must pursue values (the good) to further his life (the ultimate value)."

RESPONSE

Firstly, the Objectivist view so beautifully put by Rand in her exposition that you quoted from Atlas Shrugged demonstrates that although she was not raised in a religious home, she nevertheless learned the ultimate Jewish value. Life. Rand clearly retained that Jewish value (among others) when she developed and explained her philosophy, however she did not overtly draw upon Jewish tradition to do so. Rather she built her philosophy on the basis of human nature, specifically in terms of human psychology, by which I mean how a human being thinks and makes choices. Since Rand did that, and did it so well that I have nothing to add to it, I will instead draw upon Jewish tradition and mythos to make the same point.

As a Jew, I also say that the ultimate value is Life. And I would add that I do not mean here an afterlife, but rather this life, embodied on this earth. As far as I know, there is no other, and thus Life must be lived for it's own sake, and not as preparation for death. (This is a major point of departure between Judaism and medieval Christianity). From a Jewish perspective, I come by this value from a Jewish perspective of the first Creation myth in B'reshit (Genesis).

The structure of this story, as written in Hebrew, demonstrates that it was never intended to be taken literally. The structure itself points to the reason that the Priestly author wrote it: it was to contrast the Israelite world-view about the value of life and the earth with that of the surrounding Akkadians. Certain Hebrew words would have recalled to the hearer the older, and very different creation story in the Enuma Elish. That the story has a sophisticated mythic structure is evident from the first Hebrew words "b'reshit bara elohim . . ." which can best be translated as "once, when G-d was about to create . . ." Whereas the Akkadian myth has the world created as a result of a war among the gods, and the earth itself was the shell of the dragon-goddess Tiamat, which points to the idea that embodied being is debased at best, the Priestly story tells of an orderly and lawful creation of the world by the peaceful spoken word. The orderly nature of the earth and all that inhabit it is demonstrated by the order of the days: each of the first three days is paired with the second three, so that light is paired with the sun, the expanse of the sky is paired with the birds of the air, and the separation of the dry land and ocean is paired with the life that lives on each. And each physical act of creation is termed "good." Just in case the hearer had missed the point. In particular, in this story the human being that is created on the sixth day is called "very good." Embodied human life is very good, and belongs to the physical universe.

Human life is very good in Jewish eyes, as it is, and on this earth. I will not expound again in detail on the Jewish understanding of the story of garden, as I have done that in several posts, including a digression in Rules for Patriots? Suffice it to say that there is no concept of Original Sin in Judaism. Human life is good as it is. Right here on this earth. We have no need of heaven(In the morning service, Jews deliberately repudiate the concept of Original Sin by saying: "The soul that you created within me is good . . .". This was necessary to keep that concept firmly out of Jewish thought during our sojourn in Christian Europe).

The mythos behind the rest of that story is that human beings cannot go back to the womb. We cannot forever be children living in the garden, needing to make no effort to live. That would not be Paradise, rather it would become hell. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is a metaphor for the human understanding of our own mortality, and the urgency that puts upon our efforts to sustain our lives. As I said above, human beings, alone of all of the mammals, know that they are mortal, and make their living on the earth by use of their minds, and they therefore have the power and responsibility to choose between that which promotes life (good) and that which destroys life (evil). The fruit of the tree, therefore, implies not a fall from grace, but a promotion to conscious being, and it did indeed make humans "like gods" even as the snake (the ancient symbol of wisdom) promised that it would. Wisdom and knowledge come with a price; that price is the need to exert effort to comprehend, to learn, and finally, the knowledge that life is finite and therefore, that the time of a human life is precious and irreplacible to its owner.

From this story we can then infer these values: Life is good, death is evil. Knowledge is life promoting, willful ignorance promotes death and is thus evil. Humans must work to promote their own lives and those of their offspring, and they must make choices and take action to do so. It is therefore evil to take away a person's ability to freely act upon their own knowledge and make their own choices. Thus freedom is good, and slavery is evil. Since "by the sweat of your brow you must earn your bread", a human being has the need of property: the fruit tree and the wheat field. Thus property is good, but theft is evil.

The ability and necessity to choose is a result of consciousness. It is a quality that is ascribed only to G-d and to human beings, and this is why there is story in Midrash that depicts angels as being jealous of the human condition. However, sin (in Hebrew, aiming badly) is the result of making the wrong choices or, and more importantly, the deliberate refusal to consciously choose. This is so because that refusal will inevitably result in death and destruction.

This tale is told again as exposition, where in Devarim (Deuteronomy), we read:

"I have set before you this day life and death, the blessing and the curse*; Choose life, that you and your children may live!"
* The parallel structure of Hebrew poetry pairs thusly: life = a blessing, death = a curse. This is not a magical incantation, it is poetry.

This, then, is how I determine what is good. That which promotes life and those means by which a person can protect, preserve and enhance his or her life.

The Problem with Progressivism is Messianism

Evolutionary biologists take pains to teach students that evolution has no direction; it has no preferred path precisely because it has no specific end. As Steven J. Gould used to say, if you rewind the evolution of life on earth and set it back to the beginning, there is no guarantee that it would play out the same way again.

Unlike social Darwinists, who tend to believe that their preferred form of being human is the pinnacle of creation (note the conceptual contradiction here), evolutionary biologists understand that 'fitness' in the Darwinian sense does not imply a more 'perfect' member of a species, rather it defines individuals who can live long enough in certain environment to reproduce. Thus the measure of individual fitness is not wealth or a certain definition of perfection, rather it is the number of offspring one successfully brings into the world.

As a scientist trained in ecology (the science not the social movement) and evolution, it is rather amusing to observe how much the cultural elite really does not understand the theory of evolution; nor do they grasp its principles nor accept the consequences of its reality. To them, as to their creationist opponents, it is a political tool used to force their ideology on others, rather than a scientific idea that serves to illuminate reality.

Less amusing is the use of the theory of evolution as an excuse for the early 20th century Progressive push for eugenics, which appeared first here in the United States. (See for example Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' opinion, when writing for the majority in Buck v. Bell, which enshrined forced sterilization into law in the United States). It was the Progressive movement's goal to build a more compliant, less independent citizen; one who would be willing to subsume his will to that of the State, in order to fit like a cog in the all-powerful and all-knowing State.

The problem with the Progressives is twofold. The first is that they believed that the term "fitness", as used in evolution, implies some quality other than differential reproduction. They believed that they could redefine fitness to mean whatever they wanted it to mean in order to direct human evolution toward what they conceived to be its proper end. And this leads to the second problem, namely, that they believed that evolution has a direction and a goal, and further, that they, by virtue of their vision were privileged to define that goal and direct humanity towards it.

In short, Progressives were (and are) Messianists. They believe that human beings are not good as they are, and should not be allowed to pursue their own ends, but that they must be perfected in some way in order to be made to conform to better ends. The only difference between the Progressives and religious Messianists, is that Progressives proclaim that they themselves are qualified to define the end of evolution and the perfection of the human being, whereas the religious Messianists rely on scripture and tradition, ultimately blaming their own desire to restrict human freedom on their various gods. But both religious Messianists and Progressives believe in some form of original sin--the concept that human beings are inherently evil and that they must be fundamentally changed to accomodate a perfect world. That this unchanging and perfect world would not be a human world is left unstated.

The particular form of Messianism that plagues Western culture began during the time when the tribal Israelite religion was evolving into modern Judaism. The Rabbis of the Talmud were, for the most part, suspicious of the apocalyptic nature of the Messianic goal. Those who espoused it (e.g. R. Akiba), learned the hard way of the danger of it during the third war with Rome (the Bar Kochba Revolt--132-135 C.E.). The Rabbis came to realize that fervent messianism was not compatible with the survival of the Jewish people. Knowing that they could not eradicate it from the minds of the people, they enshrined it as a distant hope in an unattainable future (e.g. Pirke Avot: the Messiah will come when all of [the people] Israel keeps the Sabbath perfectly). They also created a system of law and custom that kept people's focus firmly on their own lives, not on some future immortality. Thus the average Jew was taught to pray for the coming of the Messiah three times a day, but to value his life and the goodness thereof in the here and now. To this day, one notable quality of most Jews is that they have their feet firmly planted on the ground, and do not accept the idea that death is the gateway to a better world.

It helped that Judaism never accepted the concept of original sin. The Hebrew version of the story of creation uses a play on words to make the point that the material world is good, and that the presence of human beings makes it very good. (The play is on the Hebrew word for human being--Adam--which has three Hebrew letters, alef-dalet-mem; rearranged these letters become--meod--mem-alef-dalet, which means very; so with the presence of human beings the universe, which was called tov--good, is called tov meod--very good.) When confronted with the Christian notion of original sin, the Rabbis added this statement to the morning service: "The spirit that you have created within me is a good one, O G-d . . ." Every morning, a religious Jew thus affirms his own goodness.

In Judaism, morality rests on the notion that human beings have free will, and because of their knowledge of good and evil, are constantly required to make choices. No one, neither human nor divine, can save another from the necessity of choice and the consequences that follow. A human being, by his nature, must go through life asking himself: "Right or wrong? Good? Or evil?"

However, Jews, just like other human beings can become lazy and wish to avoid the consequences of free will, though this is quite impossible. Choices must be made and the consequences of those choices follow like night follows day. Nevertheless, people often desire to avoid the painful consequences of their wrong choices, and try to evade their reality.

(This is especially true in times of great difficulty, such as those Jews encountered during the Reformation and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was actually an en-dark-enment for Jews in Europe, as Christian anti-Judaism mutated into the race-theory of modern antisemitism culminating in the European genocide by the National Socialists).

In modern Europe, socialists and fascists took the Messianic idea out of the religious context, where it was dangerous enough, and decided that certain "enlightened" individuals have the wisdom to determine what the good life and the perfect person ought to be, and to force others (for their own good) toward this goal. They determined that goodness means that individuals must give up their lives and aspirations for the "public good" as Holmes stated in Buck v. Bell:

"In view of the general declarations of the Legislature and the specific findings of the Court obviously we cannot say as matter of law that the grounds do not exist, and if they exist they justify the result. We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind." (Emphasis added).

The emphasized words demonstrate that to the Progressive, individuals exist to serve the interests of a few, who call themselves 'the State' and 'Society'. These terms are really a mask for tyranny.

The real engine of American progress has been liberty. Our founders understood that human beings are endowed by their very nature with individual rights, and that governments exist to protect these rights. That people have the right to their own life, and thus must have the liberty to make their own choices, in order to pursue their own ends. The founders put these ideas forth in Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." (1776)


But Messianists tend to have little regard for the lives and happiness of individuals because their vision of perfection is collective. As the consequences of their evasions of reality pile up, they tend to blame it on everyone and everything but their mistaken ideals, as F. A. Hayek astutely pointed out in The Road to Serfdom. Thus they blame it on the inherent wrongness of human nature (original sin), which they believe requires them to force goodness on their victims. Finally, they come to a place of such embittered hatred of human existence that they'd rather see the whole world enslaved or dead than give up their Vision of the Anointed.

And yet the whole reason that their visions don't work, and that they cause such death and suffering, is because their visions do not conform to reality; it is the realness of matter and the consequences to mortal beings that require individual choice. It is the Progressive vision of humanity that is wrong, and their imposition of it upon others that is evil, not the nature of the human being.

Human beings evolved with all of the aspects of human nature because this enables humans to go on living and reproducing in this environment, on this earth. There is not some teleological perfection that we are missing, no ideal end that we must sacrifice our lives to attain. We are here now. We live now. Our pursuit of the good is the pursuit of our own lives in our own time.

An evolutionary biologist knows that evolution has no direction, no goal.
And she knows that it is the diversity of individual choices and personal ends that can vouchsafe a future for the species on this ever-evolving planet. For a while.

Of course, evolution is not moral. It is an idea, and thus cannot make choices. But people who understand the idea that evolution has no direction and no preferred end can infer from it that life itself is the goal of living, and what is good will always be those choices that maintain life.

Human life on this earth is tov meod. This is very good.

The Sabbatical Year of Marriage

On Monday, June 8, the Engineering Geek and I marked our seventh marriage anniversary.
This year, then, is our Sabbatical year of marriage.

Since the Boychick is at BSA camp this week, we took the opportunity to go out alone together to a very good Greek place, and we splurged on a bottle of wine and dessert as well, since we could linger over our dinner.

We held hands at the table and shared our memories of the wedding and our honeymoon trip to Alaska. We still feel like teenagers in love, but we're old enough to really appreciate it.

Signing the Ketubah:
A Jewish wedding is legal when the Ketubah--the marriage contract--is signed. Ours is traditional, but has also a more contemporary paragraph.

I am already veiled--the bedecken--the veiling ceremony occurred when the EG was led into the chapel where I was was seated, waiting for him to see me for the first time that day.

Under the Chuppah, with our family, bridesmaids and groomsmen around.

The wedding ceremony itself is called

Kiddushin--holiness--for the covenant

of marriage takes us back to Eden.

The Bimah is decorated with greenery

for Shavuot, which occured the day prior.

Shavuot--the Feast of Weeks--when

the Eternal solemnized the Covenant of Sinai,

and the Mountain was our Chuppah.

Now we are in our Sabbatical Year, a time to count the harvest, share it freely, and rejoice in newly creating our covenant.

Yom Ha Shoah: Ani Ma-Amin (I Believe . . .)

Today is Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day.
In Israel today, the sirens wailed and silence for two minutes descended on the land, as people stopped and stood where they were, remembering our nameless, sacred dead; they were murdered for no other reason than that they were Jews.
They died al Kiddush ha-Shem--for the Sanctification of the Name. For their graves, if they had them, were unmarked. Many of their names have been lost. Most were turned to smoke, the molecules that once composed them taking to the air, to spread over the earth. An offering by the Nazis to the gods they bowed to: death and destruction.

But they went to their deaths singing:

Ani ma-Amin--I believe

b'emunah shleimah--with complete reliance

b'viat ha-Mashiach--that the Messiah will come . . .

Here is a setting of Ani-Ma-amin with an Israeli song that tells the story of the Death Camp Treblinka, and beyond. There is hope, even though the Mashiach tarries and does not come, for od am yisrael chai--the People Israel yet Lives! And the survivors had their coming into the land.

This was posted to You-Tube by an Israeli woman who shares my name.
Our name means "G-d is my oath!"

Never forget!
Never again!

Pesach: And G-d Knew . . .

This year especially, the theme of Pesach, the story of slavery and freedom is not only in my thoughts, not only in the Haggadah, but also real and alive in the world, as I watch my countrymen wake up and the Freedom Movement take shape in the face of the gathering storm.

I have written about how different parts of the Maggid--the Telling--come alive each year, and that this year was no different, except that the words that move like fire off the page had a particular intensity at this time in the saeculum.

I have been thinking about the coming forth from Egypt a great deal this winter and spring, as I have watched people react to the developing crisis in several ways. And one question burning in my mind was what is it that makes people accept slavery with a certain resigned equanimity? Last year, I talked about the slave mentality in a post, but this year a different part of the Haggadah is resounding in my mind, for I am thinking also about what is it that wakes people up from the slave mentality?

"And G-d looked upon the Israelites, and G-d knew . . ." (Shemot 1:25)

" 'And G-d knew . . .' What did G-d know?

"When the Israelites had grown accustomed to their tasks, when the Hebrews began to labor without complaint, then G-d knew that it was time to be liberated.
For the worst slavery of Egypt is when we learn to endure it.
And G-d knew . . .

"As long as there was no prospect of freedom, G-d knew the Israelites would not awaken to the bitterness of bondage. First Moses taught the taste of Freedom's hope, and only then did servitude taste bitter.
So though bitter slavery is first, and then comes liberation, the Seder teaches us to taste the Matzah of Freedom first, and only then the bitter herbs of bondage.
And G-d knew . . .

" . . . If our freedom had been given us by Pharoah, we would have been indebted to him, still subservient, within ourselves, dependent, slavish still at heart. . . .
And G-d knew . . ."
(Central Conference of American Rabbis [1994]. A Passover Haggadah [a.k.a.the Baskin Haggadah], Revised Edition. Drawings by Leonard Baskin. New York. pp. 41, 43)

Freedom, Liberty and Rights: these do not come from kings or governments.
Our founders taught "that they are endowed by [the] Creator"; they are part of the fabric of our nature as human beings.

To be free, we must live free; to have rights we must exercise them. That is why the Israelites had become innured to slavery after generations of servitude; because, according to the Haggadah, they did not have the taste of freedom in their mouths, they did not know of freedom in their hearts. The generation that cried out, finally, did so because Moses taught them the taste of freedom.

My D'rash: Moses knew. How did Moses know the taste of Freedom? For to teach, one must know. In the story in Shemot, we read that the women around him acted as free people, even under slavery. The Hebrew midwives--Shifra and Puah--delivered Moses to life, not death, acting freely, against Pharoah's command. His mother,Yocheved, hid him, and then set him free to float on the Nile. His sister Miryam guarded him, and guided Pharoah's daughter to take his own mother as a wet nurse, so that Moses took in the taste of freedom with his mother's milk. And Batyah--Pharoah's daughter--took the Hebrew child in, acting freely, nurturing the life of a child whose death had been ordered by the tyrant. Thus, Moses experienced freedom once-removed, through the actions of those who saved his life and raised him. And when he was grown, and saw the taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave near to death, Moses knew. And he killed the taskmaster, and went to the desert, the elemental cradle of Freedom, where a person must choose and choose freely, whether to live or die. So Moses experienced Freedom first hand. Moses knew . . .

Now I understand why Ronald Reagan said that if our generation gives up our freedom, it will be lost for generations. Because our children and our children's children, down to the fourth and fifth generation will live in servitude to the debt that we are making as we trade our liberty for an illusory security.

When we pass this debt on to our kids because craven politicans care more for their immediate power than their children's future, and because we did nothing to stop it, following blindly like sheep, then our children's children will not have the taste of freedom in their mouths--they will consume only the bitter herbs of slavery and the salt water of their servitude.

And G-d knows . . . we, who still know freedom, even if but distantly as it fades, even if imperfectly because we were not taught in our schools, it is we who must act freely and restore to future generations the heritage of our liberty.

And this is why so many of us will gather next week, on taxx day, to cry out. There are three boxes for the preservation of our liberty:

The ballot box.
But our non-representing representatives do not heed, though elected. They believe their power resides outside of the rights of We the People. The siren call of power seduces them to tyranny.

The soapbox.
This is the work of the Tea Parties, the Petitions for Redress, the Committees of Correspondence and the Committees of Safety. The New Continental Congress.

And . . .

Let it end at the second box. We do not want our children made indentured servants, and live in a world made dark by servitude; We do not want them to have to rise up and kill the taskmasters because they have only a dim memory of freedom passed down from the generation that handed over their birthright for a mess of pottage.


"And G-d knew . . .

"If our freedom had been given us by Paroah, we would have been indebted to him, still subservient, within ourselves depedent, still slavish at heart. We had to free ourselves!"

"And G-d knew . . ."

Pesach Denial

"Why is this night different than all other nights?
Don't ask!"

That's the saying printed on my Pesach Seder night apron.
Wednesday night at sundown, the Passover Seder will commence, and somewhere around 2 A.M. on Thursday morning, Jewish baalabustas ( mistresses of their homes)everywhere will wash the last piece of china, crystal or silver, and give thanks that another Seder was a success.

This year, I have been in what Magpie Ima calls "Pesach Denial." Oh, I have been getting the cleaning done, planning the Seder, but without any real conviction that Pesach is actually coming.

(Picture from the Sarajevo Haggadah)


I have no enthusiasm for the whole thing, and a sense of liberation from the chametz of my life is the furthest thing from my mind.

Is it my lack of energy this spring generally? Am I tired of having Pesach preparations devolve on my 5' 1 and 1/2" frame? Is it the weather? Lingering depression from Zoey's death? My general lack of enthusiam about my neuroimaging class? My health?

So, nu? Whatever it is is, Pesach is three days away, and the work is coming along, but I am not into it. Like the Boychick's special ed coordinator at Machon, I am saying inside: "I just don't want to do it!"

(I have been planning this post since Saturday, but our DSL went down again. This time, I talked to the tech guy they sent out personally, and I hope the problem is permanently resolved).

Ready or not, Pesach is nearly upon us!

Zissen Pesach!

Edison Hour: Where Would You Rather Live?

This picture has been displayed on numerous blogs.

Capitalist South Korea, the country at the bottom of the picture is ablaze with light at night. Totalitarian North Korea, above it, is in darkness.


Last night, many people and cities participated in the symbolic gesture of sitting in darkness for one hour. As others have pointed out, it is one thing when, at the end of that hour, people can turn the lights back on and go about their lives. They can read, use the computer, watch TV, work on crafts, or enjoy a glass of wine with friends. Electric lights extend our day, giving us the blessing of leisure and participation in hobbies after work. It is again one thing when, during that symbolic hour with the lights off, the water heater is still keeping water for that soothing shower hot; and the furnace is still keeping the room at a constant, comfortable temperature; and the refrigerator is still humming away, keeping the perishable food safe to eat. And of course, people can get in the car and drive to the restaurant for that candlelight dinner; the hospitals still have electricity to start a failing heart and to autoclave the instruments needed for surgery; a woman in labor can use that cell phone charged at an electric outlet to call for assistance; and the taxicabs are still cruising the city to take her to a hospital.


It is entirely another thing to live in a place like North Korea, where there is no leisure after work, and a person considers himself lucky to drop onto a bed much mess luxurious than the Sleep Number with Memory Foam; where there is no perishable food and no refrigerator to keep it safe; where people starve to death, and where a hot shower is an unimaginable luxury. A place where the infant mortality rate is very high, and where death in childbirth is common. A place where an accident that would be easily treated in the industrial West, can lead to death.


Ideas have real consequences.
Economic systems have real consequences.
As Thomas Woods says about our government's economic decisions over the past year, they are "a flight from reality" (From his book Meltdown) .


I will not rehearse all of the arguments about global climate change here; I have discussed them elsewhere in this blog. (See for Example: The End of the World as We Know It and Global Climate Change: Science, Politics, and Ideologies .
However the above picture shows where those who would like to use the idea to declare a crisis are taking us. The science about global climate change is not settled; it is in dispute, as a paradigm like this ought to be.


The above picture is a stark representation of a fundamental difference between ideas their consequences.
Where would you rather live?


I choose not to go back to the dark ages, and I accept responsibility for the way of thinking that modernity requires. I imagine that if ever I stand before the Eternal for judgment, I will be asked, "What new knowledge have you brought into the world?"
For the One who whispers to each blade of grass, "Grow! Grow!" must certainly expect that the human being, endowed with the knowledge of right and wrong, must choose the right, and life. We must continue to use our special faculty, the ability to think and to choose, in order to grow and thrive.


And I celebrate the Edison's of the world, who have stepped forth from the darkness, and shined a beacon of reason that guides us in the direction of a longer, more productive, happier life.


"Blessed is the One who endows the human being with Wisdom, Knowledge and Understanding."

Chag Purim!

It's Purim, and when this post posts, because it was post-dated --or should we say post-houred--we will be off to the Chabad of New Mexico drowning out the name of that evil Haman, as we read the Megillat Esther.








Some of us will drown our sorrows until we cannot tell the difference between a Bailout and a Stimulus . . . oops, I mean the difference between "Bless Mordechai" and "Curse Haman."





And the Purim Shpiels will help us laugh at the economy. This one makes as much sense as most of the economic advice we get today. Just remember that "gornisht" means "nothing"!

HAPPY PURIM!

For Shame, President Obama!

In 2001, just a week before the September 11th attacks, then Secretary of State Colin Powell withdrew the US delegation from the U.N. World Conference on Racism & Etc. (the whole title is entirely too politically correct for this blog) held in Durban, South Africa.
The Bush adminstration withdrew the delegation because the conference became a demonstration of Holocaust denial and virulent antisemitism, largely controlled by avowed enemies of the West.

A personal note: it was the twin shocks of the progressive reactions to Durban and then the 9-11 attacks that convinced me once and for all of the moral bankruptcy of the left, and made me understand that the left may use naive Jews, but that ultimately they will stab us in the back. Alas, I am a slow learner.

On Saturday morning, February 14, the Obama Administration announced that it was sending a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland, to help plan Durban II, the Durban Review Conference, which is intended (in the UN's own words) "to reaffirm the Durban Declaration." You know, the one that denies the Holocaust and reaffirms the old UN canard that Israel is a racist state.

This conference is chaired by Libya, Cuba, Iran and Pakistan. These are countries that not only demonize the US, but also hideously oppress their own people. As you can see below, they would also like to see your freedom of speech and expression removed.

For shame, President Obama! First, to announce this on Valentine's Day, early in the morning like that, means that the adminstration knows this is a shameful action. Secondly, for the US to participate in the planning of the reaffirmation of the Durban Declaration is to associate ourselves with the enemies of our Western values. The purposes of the conference is described thus by The Wall Street Journal:

As for what this Review Conference is supposed to achieve, some clues are provided in the latest draft of the so-called Outcome Document. Israel's "racial policies" are a major theme, as is "the plight of Palestinian refugees and other inhabitants of the Arab occupied territories," meaning Israel itself. Under debate, however, is whether to include a line that the Holocaust "resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people." Presumably Iran objects.

The draft also calls "on states to develop, and where appropriate to incorporate, permissible limitations on the exercise of the right to freedom of expression into national legislation." Yes, you read that right. The transparent purpose is to criminalize all criticism of Islam, a.k.a. "Islamophobia." There is also a not-so-sly effort to extract reparations for the long-banned trans-Atlantic slave trade: States that "have not yet condemned, apologized and paid reparations" for the trade are urged "to do so at the earliest." (Does an anti-Semitic conference deserve US participation of any kind? The Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009).

According to the WSJ, as well as the Jerusalem Post, the Obama Adminstration is well aware of the purpose of the conference, and is not committed to participating in April, but is sending a delegation to the planning meetings in order to "try to change the direction in which the review conference is heading." This is disigenuous at best. How does participating in the planning of a Conference whose express purpose is to reaffirm the goals of the previous conference going to mitigate anything. The amoral underpinnings of the Obama adminstration's pragmatism is showing clearly in this action. To paraphrase my grandmother, may she rest in peace, show me who an adminstration hangs out with, and I'll show you its character.

This action on the part of the Obama adminstration is not only a slap in the face to Israel, it is a profoundly anti-Western act of appeasement to the worst sort of characters. It also betrays a profound misunderstanding of what sort of people one may compromise with and with what sort one may not. What compromise can be reached between an enemy's desire to destroy you and your own desire to live?

For a scathing review of this policy decision from one of the members of the Oslo negotiating team, see Obama's Durban Gambit at CAROLINEGLICK.com

BO! The Slave Mentality and Freedom

Often, as I study the weekly parashah, the Torah portion, it seems that myth and reality, fact and legend, and past and present become woven together as I struggle with the text on many levels: the plain meaning, hints of something deeper, allergory and myth, and maybe twice a year, transcendance.

This week's portion, Bo! (Go!) is one that I struggle with every year, twice a year.
And, no, there is no exclamation point in the original. The word Bo begins a sentence: "Go to Pharoah." But I see it with an exclamation every time I hear the parashah read.

This portion picks up in the midst of the ten plagues upon Egypt.
And, although the plain meaning of the text is clear, the plagues are a contest between Pharoah and G-d, I still feel the sting of injustice every time I read that "every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharoah to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the millstone." (Shemot 11:4-5). This is myth, of course, and it is the meaning that we draw from myth that teaches something.

But yesterday, as I sat listening to the portion as it was read in Women's Torah Study, I heard a different piece. One that I have heard every year, of course, but one that my mind had not highlighted. (This is the reason that we tell and re-tell the great stories).

First I noted, as I do every year, when I read the Hebrew text, that when Moses and Aaron go before Pharoah, Moses says:

"Thus says YHVH, the G-d of the Hebrews . . . Send my people forth that they may serve me."

This brought my mind to a demonstration of idolatry that I saw on the internet the other day in which various actors and musicians take a pledge to do good in the name of the great and powerful Obama. (One wonders why these people did not until now do good in the name of their own free will.)

The part that I heard again in my head was toward the end of the video, when one of them says: "I pledge to serve Barack Obama . . ." and then they all say together, "I pledge to be a servant of Our President and all Mankind . . ." (you can hear the capital letters in their voices) as their individual likenesses all fade into the Che Guevara kitsch poster of Barack Obama's face.

Then I heard this part of the parashah:

"Pharoah's servants said to him: '. . . Send out the men that they may serve their god, YHVH. Do you not know that Egypt is lost? So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharoah and he said to them: ' Go, worship your god, YHVH! Who will go forth?" And Moses said: "We will all go, with our underlings and our elders,, we will go with our sons and daughters, with our flocks and our herds . . ." (Shemot 11: 7-9).

But Pharoah says no, that he would be a fool to let them all leave, when if this is just about a religious observance, then only the princes and elders should go. And he sends Moses and Aaron away.

And I began to think about the slave mentality. It is a way of thinking in which the slave's self is divided; someone else stands between a human being and her ultimate purpose. Someone else takes responsibility for the slave's will and being, making him less than a person.

Torah does not say, "Let my people go!" It says, "Send my people forth that they may serve me!"
Why?
Because in Egypt the people are servants to a man. They must worship his every whim. And by accepting their service, Pharoah commits the idolatry of seeing himself as above them in the eyes of heaven. He sees himself as a god. Thus the servant and the master both sacrifice to idols by the act of placing something lesser in front of their freedom.

And what is the sense of the "we will go . . ." piece? If the people are divided, so that some may leave to perform a religious duty permitted by Pharoah, they will retain the slave mentality. They will return to serve Pharoah. There is no half-slave and half-free. Freedom is all or nothing. People cannot choose the nice things about slavery, and refuse the hard choices that make up freedom and expect to remain free.

But if they all go forth, after seeing the signs and wonders, then in the wilderness, they will no longer be servants of Pharoah. And at Sinai, they can choose to make a covenant and accept Torah, placing themselves as servants of the Law of the Eternal.

And what of those signs? They are the plagues.
The plagues are a metaphor in this story for what happens to a land when people accept the slave mentality and must worship at the feet of a king, a master, an idol.
Then, even the innocent son of the slave girl behind the millstone will suffer. As will the mothers of Mitzrayim (the straits), who will mourn the destruction of the future generation in the name of the power of Pharoah and his priests and courtiers.

Free people do not place a person between themselves and the Eternal Law.
They choose to do what is right out of a whole self, not out of the half-being of servitude to others, be those others presidents or "all humankind."
A free human being may not worship at the altar of any man.

Thus I cannot, I must not, pledge to be a servant to Barack Obama or to all humankind.
To do so would be idolatry.
I serve a different covenant.
As an American, I pledge to uphold the Constitution.
As a Jew, I serve only the great I AM.*

*YHVH, the unprouncible Tetragrammaton, is a symbol for the root that conveys the meaning of being. It is a combination of three verb forms: I was, I am, I will be. The Name is unpronouncible because it is both infinite and incomplete. It comes from Moses question: "Who are you?" To which the Eternal replies something like: "Wait and see what I will do. Then you will know who I was, who I am, and what I will be."

Unknowing Propagandists for Iran

Yesterday, I opened my local newspaper to the weekly Letters to the Editor, and was unsurprised to count two letters (one by my rabbi) supporting Israel's Operation Cast Lead, and seven or eight letters accusing Israel of violations of international law and war crimes or worse.

We know where we stand. Whenever Israel responds to a violation of her borders, the anti-Israel propaganda machine gets going, and we can expect Israel (and by proxy, Jews) to be called all of the old names and some new ones. I am not going to reiterate the tired and the new epithets here. As Jonah Goldberg says in today's column (I read it in my paper but you can click the link to find it at the NRO), you can simply go to You Tube or do a web search to find them.

We know where we stand, but I wonder if those who write letters to the editor in support of Hamas really know who they are supporting? One letter said:

" . . . Israel's response is excessive and disproportionate to the handful of homemade bombs fallen randomly upon the Israeli-Occupied territories of Palestine . . ."

Let's unpack this in view of the facts. A handful? There have been more than 8,000 missiles lobbed into Israel over the past eight years. Homemade? The terrorist organizations Hamas and Hizbollah receive weapons, funding, and ideological support from Iran. The weapons are smuggled across the border into Gaza by Hamas for the purpose of attacks upon Israeli sovereign territory. Fallen randomly? Here the writer would have us believe that these weapons simply fall from the sky. They have been targeted to schools, daycare centers and other areas where civilians gather in southern Israel. Hamas intentionally targets civilians. So far, it has been a very good thing for Israelis that Hamas has very bad aim. Upon Israeli-occupied territory? These rockets have been fired into Israeli sovereign territory. Israeli citizens in border towns like S'derot have 15 seconds from the time of launch to seek shelter.

Several of the letters stated that Israel had not ended "occupation" of the Gaza because it controls the borders. Occupation? Actually, the Gaza strip, which was partitioned to Palestine by the UN in 1947 was occupied by Egypt following Israel's War for Independence in 1948, just as the West Bank was occupied by Jordan, which was also supposed to be part of the Palestinian state. Neither of these Islamic states established the UN- mandated Palestinian state in these places. In 1967, Israel was threatened by numerous surrounding states with a war of conquest. In June of that year, Israel pre-empted that attack and in six days, took the Sinai, Golan, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza. These lands were conquered by Israel in response to threats (aired publically from many places including Radio Damascus) to "drive the Jews into the Sea." It took some time, but Israel withdrew from the Gaza in 2005. Israel did what Egypt and Jordan did not, ceding both the Gaza and the West bank to the Palestinian state. The West Bank is controlled by the PA/Fatah, but the Gaza is ruled by Hamas, following a coup in which Hamas killed and tortured Palestinians who supported the PA. Hamas has since turned the Gaza into an armed terrorist operation, to the detriment of any state building or support of the residents there.

Israel does control the borders between Gaza and Israeli territory, just as any country controls its own borders. And Israel has shut the borders using sanctions in an attempt to stop the flow of arms into the Gaza; arms that are then used to attack Israel. Egypt does the same with its border with the Gaza. Apparently, they don't want Hamas crossing into Egypt any more than the Israelis want Hamas in Israel.

None of these letter writers appear to have a grasp on even the recent history of the area. One claimed that this war has been ongoing for 4,000 years. That is also untrue. The Palestinians of today are not the Canaanites of the Bible. The movement of peoples across the Middle East (and across the face of the earth for that matter) has been ongoing for a very long time. It is possible to make the case that Islam's war against Jews has been ongoing since Mohammed's flight to Medina, where Arabian Jews were first massacred for not submitting to the messenger of Allah, but that was also before the Palestinian's time.

In any case, who are these people really supporting? Whether they know it or not, they are supporting Achmadinejad and Iran. It is Iran that tells Hamas and Hizbollah what to do, and it is Iran that supports these Islamist terrorists groups morally and materially. In the summer of 2006, Hamas raided Israeli territory, killing Israeli soldiers and taking two hostages. As Israel responded, Hizbollah then began incursions across Israel's northern border, starting what Israelis call the second war with Lebanon. Iran was in the background, orchestrating it all.

The president of Iran, Achmadinejad, has publicly called for the destruction of Israel, and has said many times that he will "wipe Israel off the map." (In the West's current bout of Chamberlain-style appeasement, no one wants to admit that Iran might actually do it). In the past few weeks, the French President Sarkozy has received a report that Iran will pass the nuclear threshhold this year, and will be a full-fledged nuclear power by 2011. The report, based entirely on open-sourced material that Iran freely verifies, also states that this year is likely the last in which the world has the opportunity to stop Iran from getting the bomb and ICBMs to launch it. There are some commentators who believe that Iran's decision not to back Hamas with Hizbollah this time may be a diversion. Whether or not this turns out to be true, the stated purpose and only goal of Hamas is to destroy Israel, and to kill not only "the Zionist Entity", but Jews everywhere within their reach.

And Jews are just the appetizers. The stated goal of the Islamist Jihad is to make every human being on the face of the earth submit to Sharia law as Dhimmis or to become Muslim. Israel is seen by the Jihadists as "the little Satan." It is the United States that is "the Great Satan."

And the Palestinians? They are pawns in the current ambitions of Iran.
Hamas and Hizbollah are both content to use them as human shields.

FYI: A short video about Operation Cast Lead from IDFdesk at You Tube.

Hannukah: I Remember Judah the Maccabee

Rabbi Sam Glaser brings us a song about Jewish identity, Hannukah in the midst of an American Christmas, with apologies to John Lennon.

JewishFan brings us the story of Judah's fight for Jewish spiritual survival.

Enjoy!

HAPPY HANNUKAH!

Hannukah: Celebrating Jewish Identity

Last night, Jews all over the world lit the first candle on the Menorah, and upon singing the blessings, ushered in Hannukah, the Festival of Lights. The word Hannukah comes from the phrase Hannukat ha-Bayit, which means Dedication of the House. On Hannukah, Jews remember the war with Antiochus the Tyrant, who called himself Epiphanes--"god made manifest." When the war was over, the victorious Maccabees held an eight-day celebration to rededicate the Holy Temple to the service of the Eternal One, G-d of Israel.

Here at Sedillo, as the Solstice sunset lit a fiery sky, we also began the preparations for Hannukah.

This first night, we celebrated with friends in Edgewood. They made a roast and the obligatory latkes, the potato pancakes, fried in oil, to remind us of the miracle of the oil--the miracle of Hannukah. The story goes that when the war was finished, the Maccabees came to the Temple in Jerusalem, to purify it from the depredations of the Syrian Greeks, and dedicate it (khannuk) once again to the service of the Eternal. They found only one small cruz of oil that bore the seal of the high priest, and thus was fit to light the great Menorah. The oil was not enough to keep the Menorah lit for the seven days it would take to purify more oil for the Rededication of the House. But they lit the great seven-branched lamp anyway, and TAMO (then a miracle occured, as the Boychick says) and the lamp burned for eight days.

The oil in the story represents the burning flame of identity within each Jew, passed on from generation to generation, from individual to individual. This is the fire of Torah, burning white fire upon black fire; that covenant that we mark upon the bodies of our sons, and that burns within, transforming our hearts.

Each year, as our children light the candles, the light growing from day to day, we remember Judah the Maccabee, son of Mattayahu the Priest of Modi'in. When Antiochus the Tyrant decreed that all the conquered peoples of his empire must lose their unique identities in order to create a false unity in service to the king, there were many Judeans who went along for the sake of peace, and to consolidate their own wealth and power. But when Antiochus decreed that to bring a son into the covenant by the ritual of B'rit Milah (circumcision), that to teach and study Torah, that to pray as a Jew, that these were all capital crimes, Judah and his brothers stood up and said that they would rather die fighting to be Jews than to live on their knees, subject to the whims of a tyrant.

The covenant of Torah is a Covenant of Law. The Law is supreme over all human beings, and even a king is subject to it. That Antiochus put himself above the Law by calling himself "Epiphanes" made him, in the eyes of the Maccabees, a tyrant and a fool. Thus they called him "Antiochus Epimanes" -- Antiochus the Fool.

The miracle of Hannukah is the miracle of passing the flame of our identity, the knowledge of who we are. We are am k'shei oref -- that 'stiff-necked people' that bows before no man because we understand that no human being is above the Law. In every generation, we have chosen to live the covenant, we have chosen for ourselves and for our children, so that we and they might have the fullness of life and freedom. And too often, we have paid for our freedom with our lives, for that stubborn flame of identity that burns within will allow us to accept no human being as a god to rule us.

To be a Jew is to accept no substitute for freedom. Our story began with our liberation from slavery; slavery of the soul and the mind, as well as of the body. Our story continues as we pass down that stubborn insistence that human beings must be free, that they must be able to choose good from evil, and the Law declares that no one else may choose it for them; that each one is responsible for his own choice.

It may be that in the coming days, we will be required to remember who we are once again, and to stand up for our freedom to live under the Law, bowing to no tyrant. Thus, each year at Hannukah, we rededicate that flame of identity that burns within us. And as we watch our children ignite the fire, candle by candle, we see each one catch flame, the light growing with each passing day of dedication.
For as Zechariah admonishes us, it is:

"Not by might,

and not by power,

but by spirit alone,

says the Eternal."

Klezmer from Chicago!

This year, one gift the Engineering Geek and I gave to each other is a pair of donor tickets to the Eight Nights of Joy CD release party here in Albuquerque.

We were looking forward to seeing The Maxwell Street Klezmer Band from Chicago, with whom Rabbi Joe Black made this CD. Although we thought the concert was too much of "the Joe Show," and the first set was extremely pediatric, we were very excited to see such a famous Klezmer band up close and personal right here in Albuquerque. Our donor tickets afforded us a reception (complete with latkes) with the band prior to the show, and reserved seats for the show, as well as the satisfaction of making a donation to the synagogue general fund.

Klezmer music is Jewish "Soul," brought over by the European Jewish immigrants in the early part of the last century. The word "Klezmer" comes from the Hebrew: K'lei zamir -- literally, 'instruments of song.' The music is an incredible testament to the musical talents of European Jews, of which the Fiddler on the Roof music is just an appetizer.

Here is Chicago Does Klezmer!, a short montage of some of The Maxwell Street Klezmer's work.

The music during the film montage is from "The Lark."

The second bit is from Ocho Candelikas, a Ladino (Spanish-Jewish) Hannukah song.

The third is part of a performance of the "Teichel (Handkerchief) Dance, a traditional dance in which a handkerchief must be used for a man and woman to dance together.

Fourth comes the Benny Goodman piece, And the Angels Sing, with a Klezmer surprise in the middle.

Last is a bit of Litvaker vs. Galitzianer (Lithuanian v. Poland), a great rivalry in the Ashkenazi Jewish world of pre-Shoah Europe.

Although we did not hear enough of Maxwell Street, what we heard was wonderful enough to make our evening. Imagine being in the second row for this music! Our hands were together, our toes were tapping, and there were moments where it was all we could do not to get up and begin a hora.

At the end, we were all on feet shouting "More Klezmer! More Klezmer!"

We were treated to two encores, the last of which was a "Compote" of classical, klezmer, and holiday tunes. This is traditional to klezmer as well.

At our wedding, we were fortunate to have The New Shtetl Band for both the ceremony and the celebration. They are another well-known Klezmer revival group, from right here in Albuquerque. For a sense of what our dance was like, take a look at the Wedding Workshop video from the Maxwell Street website.

Ah, but we had a good time last night! It was a welcome respite from the stresses and concerns of this season and this year of uncertainty. And the wild, joyous, humorous and plaintive Klezmer music took us out of it all, as good music is supposed to do.

Mumbai: For the Sanctification of the Name

Even as we have been fulfulling our obligation to give thanks for all of the good things that we have this Thanksgiving Holiday, we have also been watching with great concern the terrorist attacks on the Indian city of Mumbai. As the Editorial in The Albuquerque Journal stated today:


". . . Just as chilling, though, is the growing realization that in Mumbai we are witnessing a deadly progression in terrorist strategies and capabilities . The global disease of terrorism has metastasized since Sept. 11, 2001. This attack on innocent civilians, or "soft targets," in Mumbai will be remembered as a multiple-day event: Nov. 26 - 29, 2008.
It is as if al-Quaida, instead of blowing up the Twin Towers, had decided to take and hold Manhattan. . .
The challenges facing the incoming administration of Barack Obama have just been ratcheted up. "

--In Mumbai, World is Seeing Terrorism 2.0,

The Albuquerque Journal, Saturday November 29, 2008 p. A6

The challenges are grave indeed: There is great evil at work in the world, and it must be countered, as the Indian Army and Special Forces did over the last three days. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for those soldiers to confront the enemy in one of the great cities of their country; to see a city of progress and business transformed into a war-zone, where innocent civilians died and tourists fled their hotels in terror. These soldiers were the force standing between their country's desire for peace and economic progress and the terror and destruction of property brought by men with bombs and guns.

We were particularly saddened by the murder of our fellow Jews at the Chabad-Lubavitch Outreach Center. We watched with great fear as the commandos were lowered to the roof of the building and we prayed that the lives of Rabbi Gavriel Noach and Rebbetzim Rivkah Holtzbert, z"l (may their memories be for a blessing), would be saved by those brave men. Alas, they were brutally killed, although the quick-thinking cook saved the life of their two year old son as she fled the building.

But what are the lives of six more Jews to terrorists? What of their work to men who carry such hatred of their fellow human beings? The terrorists have a mission: to spread anger and death and destruction among human beings in order to destroy what they refuse to become. They claim that they do this in the name of G-d.. But they do not worship G-d. For by their actions, they demonstrate that they worship at the altars of such idols as hatred, destruction, and terror.

But Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg spent their lives in the work of Tikkun Olam--the Repair of the World. As our New Mexico Chabad wrote to us yesterday:

"Chabad's 6000 emissaries throughout 3500 centers worldwide are in their respective countries primarily to be of service and help, to each and every one of their Jewish brothers and sisters unconditionally, no matter what their affiliation or background, with whatever is needed, physically and spiritually, and to help all humanity with goodness and kindness in their respective cities, states and countries. In short, the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent the emissaries to help make every city, state and country and thereby the entire world, a better place for all mankind. Unfortunately there are those who try to hinder and destroy good."

--e-mail communication from Rabbi Chaim Schmuckler

sent Friday afternoon, November 28, 2008/1 Kislev 5769

And the Rabbi and Rebbetzim Holtzbert were murdered, as so many many of our people have been, because they were Jews. In contrast to the claims of their murderers, and of those who incite murder and destruction in the extremist madrassahs, it is the Holtzbergs who died al Kiddush ha-Shem, for the Sanctification of the Name.

Terrorism must be fought and evil must be countered.

The Indian Army fought terrorism with guns and force, and this is necessary.

But it is not sufficient.

The evil must also be countered. As Rabbi Schmuckler said in his e-mail:

"Chabad's answer is, as Gavriel and Rivky would have said, to bring more goodness and more kindness into the world. This is the lesson of the Chanukah candles. Just like the Chanukah candles, when it is dark, that is when we light the candles, and we are not content with just one candle, but we continuously add a light each night, ultimately illuminating the world with G-dliness, kindness and goodness."

In a few weeks, when the moon of Kislev wanes to new, Jews will celebrate Channukah, the Festival of Dedication, the Festival of Light. And at Channukah, we will, as we do every year, dedicate ourselves to lifting the sparks and bringing light into a darkening world. That is the job of all Jews, as it is the job of all menschen, all real human beings.

Here at Ragamuffin House, we are deeply saddened to learn of the senseless, violent murders of Jews, once again killed only because they were Jews. We did not know them, but we know who they were.

Here at Ragamuffin House, we also pray for the leaders of our own country, in whom we place the responsibility for our own defense against the destruction at work in the world.

And here at Ragamuffin House, we are also thinking about what small things we can do to raise the sparks here as Americans, and to build up the House of Israel everywhere, as Jews.

"And I tell you the good in us will win,

Over all wickedness, over all the wrongs we have done.

We will look back at the pages of written history and be amazed,

and then we will laugh and sing,

And the good that is in us, children in their cradles will have won.

Here I stand, the Jew, marked by history, for who can count how long?

Wrapped in compassion as in a Tallit, staring every storm in the face.

Write songs of pain, sing prayers of torment, refresh yourself with suffering.

Too much for one people, small and weak --

it is enough to share out among the whole human race.

But G-d has planted in me goodness, compassion, as a mother loves her children,

So I sing and weep, sing and weep,

For the blood knows the heart of the world is not made of stone . . .

And the heart knows that there is a day and an hour, and a Mountain,

And then all the sufferings will gather there and will all become song,

Ringing out into every corner of the earth from end to end,

And the nations will hear it, and like caravans in the desert will all

to that Mountain throng.

". . . Pour down, O heavens, from above and let the sky rain down righteousness;

let the earth open, that deliverance may flourish, and let righteousness spring up."

--Siddur Sha'arei T'filah, The New Union Prayerbook, Gates of Prayer

CCAR Press, 1975, p. 707