God is not One

Stephen Prothero’s new book, God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter, is a refreshing antidote to the too easy notion that all religions say the same thing. They don’t. Indeed, they are often mutually exclusive.

While Dr. Prothero suggests that all religions begin with the notion that “something has gone awry.” After that, however, they differ as to what is wrong and what to do about it. Fair enough. This is what is sometimes called the medical model of comparative religion: each religion has its own diagnosis of the human condition, prognosis of the disease, prescription for its cure, and medicine to cure it. Using this model is both easy and informative, and I employ it each time I teach Comparative Religion.

My own sense is that there is a disease underlying all diseases: the realization that we are going to die. Since mortality offends the ego’s sense of being entitled to immortality we invent a variety of ways to make mortality go away: heavens, hells, rebirth, reincarnation, becoming gods ourselves, and moving from plane to plane in search of more knowledge are all ways of defeating death, if only in our own minds. Perhaps the reason why so many religious people are willing to kill and be killed for their religion is that dying is really what religion is all about.

I think the point of Dr. Prothero’s book is to challenge the cheap unity that passes for serious discussion of religion in the popular media. Anyone who thinks Buddhism and Catholicism are the same thing, for example, has never compared an image of the meditating Buddha with the Crucified Christ. This isn’t a matter of apples and oranges, but of apples and road kill.

Does honoring differences preclude real dialogue and interspirituality? Not at all. If religious differences are simply a matter of tomato/tomahto then dialogue is unnecessary, and if religions are each unique and complete unto themselves then dialogue is impossible.

Dialogue is the willingness to step out of what we know to meet one another in the space between, the space of not-knowing. This happens only when you are willing to be addressed by another, to be transformed by the other. If I leave a dialogue unchanged I never really entered into dialogue in the first place. If my encounter with other religions leaves my Judaism untouched, I never really encountered them.

Dialogue rarely happens. Most people are too afraid of meet an other. Most of us are too busy running from mortality to stand still and “die before you die.”

In my own experiences with the faculty of the Spiritual Paths Institute true dialogue is known to happen. But only when we push one another. When my love for my friend leads to a love for what my friend loves then dialogue can happen, and then we can move beyond what we love to love itself.

Dr. Prothero doesn’t preclude this kind of transformative dialogue, he just insists that we don’t cheapen it.

Are Religions Violent?

Phillip Jenkins in Monday’s USA TODAY argues that “any faith can become violent.” True enough. But why?

Religions, professor Jenkins suggests, aren’t intrinsically violent, but “can be used to justify savagery and extremism.” No doubt, but I suggest that the reason religions can be used to justify savagery and extremism is because there is something intrinsically savage and extreme about them.

If I want to convince people to murder other people I will have more success if I focus on religious distinctions than soft drink preferences. There is nothing intrinsic to Coke and Pepsi that leads me, a Coke drinker, to seek to exterminate the Pepsi drinkers of the world. Indeed, when Coke isn’t available, I have been known to sip a Pepsi now and again.

Religion is used to justify violence because religion is inherently violent. Religion by and large is a zero-sum game: for some to win, others must lose. Zero-sum gaming is behind all notions of saved and damned, true believer and infidel, chosen and not chosen. As a zero-sum game religion pits one group against another, which I admit Coke and Pepsi do as well, and then raises that distinction to cosmic proportions, something no other zero-sum game can do.

You may believe Democrats are evil, and do your utmost to see that only Republicans are elected to office, but you can’t claim they are in league with the Devil unless you are willing to leave the confines of politics and take refuge in the cosmic drama of religion. Religion is the ultimate zero-sum game because it is the only cosmic version of the game, and because it is the cosmic version religion foments, not only justifies, savagery and extremism not only in this life but in the next life as well. Even Tea-party loyalists don’t imagine their liberal opponents burning in Hell for all eternity, but many religionists do.

What can we do about this? Not much. Religions are human inventions, so the problem isn’t with this or that religion but with us. All of us. We all fall prey to zero-sum thinking. Religion is the way we elevate our insanity to cosmic proportions. So there is no point in reforming religions until we have reformed ourselves. And since it is we who have to do the reforming, expecting any real reform is wishful thinking.

The solution isn’t more religion or less religion, but a radical investigation into the madness of the human being. Each of us must look at, take responsibility for, and seek to limit the amount of violence we do. Each of us must look at, take responsibility for, and seek to minimize the frequency of our zero-sum gaming— political, economic, religious, etc. If we refuse to participate in zero-sum games, the games will fade away. Religion won’t stop being violent until we do.

Good luck with that.

Iranian Women Rock the Planet

Weather is fascinating, isn’t it? Don’t you ever wonder why tsunamis, hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and volcanoes happen? I mean really know, not the groundless speculation that comes from meteorologists and other pseudo-scientific types. When I want to know the truth about the weather I go to the source—God. And if I want to know what God has to say about the weather I go to God’s spokesmen—the clergy.

That’s how I learned, for example, that Hurricane Karina was caused by homosexuals planning to hold a Gay Pride Parade in New Orleans. And that’s how I discovered that the hurricane that devastated Haiti was caused by an 1804 pact with the Devil made by the enslaved Haitians in exchange for the power to throw off their French slave masters. And that how I found out that the tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of Muslims in Indonesia was caused by the laxity of the victims’ adherence to Islam.

OK. But what about all the earthquakes shaking up the planet lately? What causes them—and don’t tell me anything about plate tectonics, Genesis says nothing about them so I don’t want to know about them.

Thank God I don’t have to rely on scientists for the truth. When it comes to earthquakes I can turn to my favorite meteorocleric the Iranian cleric Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi. Mr. Sedighi has revealed the fact that earthquakes are caused by women wearing immodest clothing and behaving promiscuously: “Many women who do not dress modestly lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes.”

Iranian Muslim woman are required by law to cover themselves from head to foot, but some manage to show off their curves anyway, and in doing so endanger us all. Listen to this meteorological prediction by earthquake expert Carole King, “I feel the earth move under my feet, I feel the sky tumbling down.” If burkas can’t save us, we are doomed.

So homosexuals and rebellious slaves cause hurricanes, woman cause earthquakes, and lax believers cause tsunamis, but what causes volcanoes? I’m sure some scientist somewhere has a theory about this, but I’m not going to fall for that. My guess? Lesbians, especially lesbians from Iceland. If every you want to have a tube of hot lava to explode just show pictures of even hotter lesbians. Works every time.

Beware the "O"

I attended the Murfreesboro Tea Party this past Friday. The banner spanning the speakers’ stage said this was a festival of FREEDOM, with the O replaced by a red five-pointed star. When I asked about the star I was told it was to remove the letter “O” which many attendees consider the new sign of the Beast. I get this. I felt the same way about the letter “W” during the Bush years.

What heartened me most about the event was the small turn out. A few hundred white people, most of whom were clearly socialists sucking at the teat of Social Security and Medicare. These people weren’t angry; they were tired, exhausted, beat, humorless, and mostly overweight. I thought I saw a placard that read, "Give me Liberty or Give me Breadth," but I think I may have misread it. “Sad” not “mad” best describes them.

The main speaker, a man we were told who speaks at Tea Parties across this great and God blessed nation of ours, filled our ears with so many platitudes I worried there wouldn’t be any left over for the other speakers. Who’s against freedom, individual responsibility, excessive taxation, and uncritical thought? OK, I admit to having some problem with the latter, but I clapped anyway. Clapping, like yawning, is contagious.

The most interesting speaker was a fellow from Act! for America, an anti-Muslim group, who warned us that America was being taken over by Islamofascists, and the only people who were aware of this were the disempowered ignorant masses. Did he mean us? The more education you had, the more political power you had, the more in the pocket of Islamofascists you were. Thank God the Tennessee educational system is so poor! We will save America yet.

I spoke with the people at the Act! booth, and learned that all Muslims are Islamofascists because Islam promotes Sharia law, and Sharia law is incompatible with American democratic values.

They have a point. If American democratic values are all about the freedom of the individual to be and do whatever s/he wants within the limits set by Ayn Rand, then Sharia law is a problem. But then so is Jewish law (Halacha), Catholic law, and the rules that Southern Baptists, Church of Christ and other Protestant denominations place on people. Freedom is freedom, and most religions are agin’ it. So, I suggested the problem wasn’t just Islam, but all religion. We ought to act to end religion now. No one agreed with me so I moved on to the next table.

This one promoted the John Birch Society. Until I moved to Murfreesboro and saw the John Birch Society’s float in the town’s Christmas parade I had thought the Birchers were out of business. Turns out I was wrong.

According to their brochure, the Birchers are against democracy because it inevitably leads to “overbearing government, crushing debt, and erosion of individual and minority rights.” Why minorities have rights different from those of individuals, I don’t know, and didn’t think to ask. The goal of the Birchers is to return to America to it was in its infancy where citizens enjoyed “limited government, kept the fruits of their labor and were responsible, moral people” who, I mentioned to the person at the JBS table, owned other human beings, committed genocide against native populations, and discriminated against women and people of different religious persuasions. They took back the copy of their magazine I was holding and suggested I move on.

There were lots of other tables to visit, and what they all had in common was a fear of all things left, liberal, nonwhite, and “O”.

All in all the Boro Tea Party was pretty dull. We applauded mom and apple pie, booed Pelosi and Obama, and swatted the pollen swirling around our heads. Should we worry about these people? Sure, if we are even more listless than they are, they will rule the nation within an election or two, but does it matter?

I doubt it. You can change the faces in Washington all you want, the real power lays elsewhere. Whoever is in office, the corporate powers that be continue to exploit the people, melt the planet, and send us off to fight the never-ending war designed to keep us afraid and keep themselves in power. The more things change the more they stay the same.

My Prayers Have Been Answered!

For years I have doubted the efficacy of prayer. I have read the studies and despite misinterpretations to the contrary there is no evidence that prayer works. Until now, that is. Because today my prayer has been answered.

Yes, I see the inconsistency here. I don’t believe in prayer and yet I pray. So sue me. And what do I pray for? The end of National Prayer Day. And that day has come. Well, almost, sort of.

United States District Court Judge Barbara Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin has ruled National Prayer Day to be in violation of the Constitution of the United States of America. Halleluiah! This doesn’t mean we can’t have a National Prayer Day only that the national government can’t endorse it. It is the same thing with National Car Rental. You can have it but the government can’t endorse it over Hertz or Avis or some other company.

Anyway, here’s a bit of insider information on Judge Crabb on why she may hate God if she does. I have no idea if this is true, but if Crabb is her maiden name and if she went through grade school with the name Crabb she must have had a miserable time: “Hey, Babs, why so crabb-y?” “Watch out guys, you don’t want to date Barbara. You’ll get crabs for sure, heh, heh, heh.” No wonder she hates God, look at the name he stuck her with. She probably prayed and prayed for a different name and nothing happened, so she went to college and law school and got appointed a judge so she could at long last have her revenge. If you think that is far fetched, remember that B.H. Obama spent decades pretending to be American born so he could become president and destroy this country.

Anyway Justice Crabb-y ruled that a national day of prayer is unconstitutional because the government can’t endorse prayer. Man, what is this country coming to? You can force a person to buy health insurance but you can’t urge them to pray? Does that make sense?

Yes it does. Why? Because it is part of Obama’s plan to insure we all get insurance. Everyone but scientists (except Christian Scientists) knows that prayer is the best insurance. If God wants you to be sick and broke that is God’s business, and insuring yourself against this is the devil’s work. But praying for God not to do this to you is good work and a hell of a lot cheaper than buying health insurance from some corporation. But Obama wants you to buy that insurance because he needs big corporations to fund his other efforts to socialize America so he is working to outlaw prayer, which is the better insurance. If you can’t pray, then you had better buy insurance. So you can see how this works.

I know that Her Honor Babs the Crabby Crabb God-hater didn’t outlaw prayer, but that is where things are going. Soon even impromptu prayers like “God Damn It!” will be against the law.

Why does this upset me? I am, after all, skeptical about prayer. True, but I was looking forward to the food at our local National Prayer Day breakfast. Now I heard that instead of eggs they are serving Crabb cakes. Not kosher. Nothing for me to eat. God damn it!

Dr. Ellis Rivkin, z"l

While I believe that the guru system is largely broken, and the clergy often ineffective and sometimes evil, I do believe travelers on the spiritual path need companions and teachers. Dr. Ellis Rivkin was one of mine. He died a few days ago.

I met Dr. Rivkin in Jerusalem. My wife and I were living in the city fantasizing about starting an English language magazine. I attended a series of lectures on Judaism given by Dr. Rivkin, and by the conclusion of the series I was set on following him to Cincinnati and pursuing rabbinic ordination at Hebrew Union College. Shortly after I arrived Dr. Rivkin hired me (and my friend Robert Barr) as his research assistant, a position I held for four years.

Rivkin was a brilliant and iconoclastic scholar. Raised as an Orthodox Jew he carved his own way in Judaism, promoting his theory of the Unity Principle. In a nutshell, he taught that the Jewish people is shaped by an insight into the radical unity of all things. It was this that lead them to the idea of monotheism and shaped the insights of Marx, Freud, and Einstein. Religion was secondary to the Principle itself. Everything the Jewish mind did it did in service to this archetype, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Dr. Rivkin was more than a scholar. He experienced this Unity all the time, and spoke and demonstrated its practical and mystical implications to me during the many private walks he would invite to take with him. If there is a single professor at HUC to whom I owe my understanding of Judaism it is Dr. Rivkin.

States' Rights and Wrongs

I got an email regarding my last post. Rather than add his comments to the blog, this fellow chose to write me directly. I don't mind, but it more interesting for all of us if people post their opinions for everyone to read. So, in the interest of doing just that, let me post what was sent to me:

Dear Rabbi,

As a Jew I don't expect you to understand what happened during the War of Northern Aggression. [I think his grammar is off; he means that since I am a Jew I don't understand, not that he is a Jew]. I am not an antisemite (sic) and know that the Confederacy was bankrolled by Jews, but you probably came over much later. Anyway, the war was not fought over slavery, but over states' rights. It was a defense of the Southern way of life against Northern imperialism. We are still fighting that war today, though now states northern and southern are battling the encroachment of the Federal Government. Please get your facts straight. Sincerely...

I sent the following email back and have heard nothing in reply:

Dear XXX,

Thank you for reading my blog and sharing your thoughts. I urge you to do so in the comments section so others can benefit from them, but I will respond briefly to you in any case.

While I agree with you that the South was defending states' rights, but the only right they were defending was the right to own slaves. The North wasn't going to war over cotton prices, musical styles, fashion, religion, food, or land. If the Southern States hadn't endorsed slavery there would have been no war. I don't think any state has a right to buy and sell human beings.

Sincerely,
Rami

Don't Mean Diddly

I would like to commend Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour for having the guts to say that the complaints against Virginia’s Confederate History Month being insensitive to African Americans because it fails to mention slavery “doesn’t amount to diddly.” He’s right! Slavery was a minor part of the southern life, and most slaves were happy to get free passage to America, and free room and board when they got here. Nobody in their right mind thinks that the American Civil War was fought over slavery. The real issue was economic: the South built its economy on the enslavement of black human beings, and the North opposed that. See, isn't that simple?

I hope Virginia’s Confederate History Month celebrates life in the Confederacy in all its glory, and I hope they create reenactments of Southern life in cities across the state. I myself have never seen a slave auction, and might benefit from watching a reenactment.

While we're at it, I suggest we have a Catholic History Month and ignore the Inquisition, Crusades, witch trials, anti-Semitism, and Priestly Pedophilia; and a US History Month that ignores treatment of Native Americans, African Americans, Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, etc; and a Nazi History Month that celebrates the creation of the Volkswagen rather than getting bogged down in the murder of six million Jews; and a Jewish History month that ignores the genocide of the Hittites, Jebusites, and all other biblical ites, as well as the plight of the Palestinian people.

Why blemish our histories with piddling things such as slavery, racism, xenophobia, genocide, anti-Semitism, and the like? Why not paint everything nice and rosy? Maybe if we didn't remind ourselves what a f#cked up species we are, we wouldn't be so f#cked up. You think?

Backpedaling on Pedophilia

This from the Associated Press: "Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher is likening accusations against the pope and the church in the sex abuse scandal to 'collective violence' suffered by the Jews. The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa said in a Good Friday sermon, with the pope listening to him in St. Peter's Basilica, that a Jewish friend has said the accusations remind him of the 'more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.'"

I don’t know whether I should laugh or cry, though the fact that Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa has a Jewish friend is nice. For the Vatican See that preferred to see little and say nothing while millions of Jews were being slaughtered by good Christians and Catholics throughout Europe, to now hide behind anti-Semitism to avoid having to face the fact of church cover-ups of pedophilia among priests is outrageous.

Obviously the Church can’t tell the difference between sticks and stones (not to mention guns and Zyklon B gas) and words. When priests are being indiscriminately rounded up and murdered because they are Catholics, then maybe we can talk. But when pedophile priests are not even rounded up, but in fact recycled into new parishes where they can troll for fresh victims, I think the analogy falls a bit flat.

But wait! Perhaps I am being too partisan. Maybe what Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa is saying is this: Just as newspaper accounts revealing the evil of pedophilia corrupting the Catholic Church are true, so Nazi revelations of Jewish evil corrupting Europe were true. Now it makes sense. He isn’t saying the charges against the Church are false, only that the charges against the Jews were true. Bravissimo!

Here is the problem with the Church and the Pope: they care more about the church and the pope than the people the church and the pope are supposed to serve. The Pope is protecting the brand at the expense of those it has harmed. Not surprising, of course. This is how most corporations react when faced with the evil they do.

Compare the Vatican’s statement that it doesn’t directly hire bishops and priests and is therefore not responsible for anything they may do with Union Carbide Corporation’s response to the disaster in Bhopal, India where 35 tons of toxic gas was leaked from a pesticide plant killing more than 7000 people:

Bhopal was a terrible tragedy that none of us will ever forget. However, it is important to note that Dow never owned or operated the plant, which today is under the control of the Madhya Pradesh state government. Dow acquired the shares of Union Carbide Corporation more than 16 years after the tragedy, and 10 years after the $470 million settlement agreement – paid by Union Carbide Corporation and Union Carbide India, Limited – was approved by the Indian Supreme Court. [For Union Carbide Corporation's perspective on the gas tragedy, visit its web site at www.unioncarbide.com/bhopal]

Isn’t this the same argument?

Happy Easter

I am preaching this morning, my second Easter sermon in so many years. I don't understand why a rabbi would be asked to address a church community on Easter, unless the hope is that s/he would at long last realize that the empty tomb means Jesus is Lord.

A couple of days ago during one of my university classes a guest speaker suggested that the simplest explanation as to why the tomb in which Jesus was buried on Good Friday was empty on Easter Sunday is that God had raised him from the dead. This struck me as odd. Wouldn't a simpler answer be that Jesus' body was removed by his friends, or by his enemies, or that he had faked his death on the cross and, once alone in the tomb raced out, married Mary Magdalene, moved to France, and started a family line that culminates in Dan Brown? Why make supernatural intervention your default position? And what is it like to live in a world where supernatural intervention is considered the simplest explanation of life’s mysteries?

To find out I decided to spend the next day with this hypothesis in mind.

As usual I could not find my car keys that morning, and, rather than blame my wife, my dog, or myself I assumed demons snatched them. When I did find the keys hidden beneath a magazine, I assumed that demons put the magazine on the keys and that God directed me to the move the magazine and discover the keys. I also assumed that demons made me subscribe to the magazine so they could use it to torture me at some future date. God, I assumed, preferred that I save trees and subscribe to the e-version of the magazine which is why He inspired Steve Jobs to invent the iPad, which the Lord wants me to buy despite the demons conspiring to keep me from affording one.

By the end of the day I was totally paranoid. Everything that happened to me was a conspiracy of God and demons. Chance and coincidence were banished, and everything was the result of a cosmic battle. This was not comforting, but I did get a sense that such thinking was a lot simpler than having to deal with the possibility of serendipity and randomness.

Will I share this insight with my listeners this morning as we proclaim the miracle of the empty tomb? It wouldn’t be polite or politic to do so, so perhaps I won’t. But who am I kidding? Of course I’m going to share it! That’s what they get inviting a rabbi to speak on Easter Sunday.

New Direction?

I am tiring of commenting on religion. It is getting too depressing. Just thinking about the new round of abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, the failure of a dad to sue the wicked Phelps "church," the rise of Christian militias, the madness of Israel politics and the Jewish taliban, etc. is just wrecking my spirit.

So I am thinking about dropping the essay format on this blog, and switching to Q & A. These would be shorter posts generated by you. Your questions and versions of my answers might then end up in print as part of my column for Spirituality & Health magazine.At last this way I would offer some positive help to people who might benefit from it.

Please let me know what you think about this idea.

Thanks,
Rami

Herding Katz

An editorial in the FORWARD newspaper cites Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, on the need for raising levels of observance among Conservative Jews—“too many Conservative Jews can’t read Hebrew, don’t keep the Sabbath and other central Jewish observances, and don’t find synagogue prayer meaningful or attractive.”

I doubt this is a problem unique to Conservative Judaism. Most Jews don’t read Hebrew for the same reason most Jews don’t read French—they don’t need it. The reason most Jews fail to observe Shabbat or keep kosher is that these traditions no longer speak to them. The reason they don’t find synagogue services meaningful or attractive is that 1) the liturgy reflects a medieval worldview that most 8-year olds have outgrown, and 2) because we have become used to theatrical production values that synagogue services cannot match.

What most Jews want—what most postmodern, postindustrial first worlders want—isn’t more tradition but more meaning and authentic encounters with reality. We live in a world of contrived meanings faux reality fed to us by advertisers and reality television. Even real disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are turned into soap operas by the infotainment media. Synagogue is just another faux reality where Jews are asked to believe in a god and worldview that most do not take seriously.

Liberal Judaisms as a whole rarely offer their members anything truly deep, challenging, existentially compelling, or spiritually transformative. But most Jews wouldn’t get involved even if they did.

Why? Because deeply transformative spiritual work is, well, work. And most people aren’t interested. This is true in any religion. The truly devout are always a minority. If liberal Jews wanted to be more observant they would be more observant. No one is stopping them; they just don’t want to.

So let’s focus on making our respective forms of Judaism as powerful as we can. Let’s make our ideas and our institutions as affordable and as available and as welcoming as we can. And then let’s let the people do what they want. That is what they are going to do anyway.

Trying to get Jews to do what they don’t want to do is like trying to herd katz.

Insulting America

I know this is going to earn me the ire of lots of people who insist that Israel can do no wrong, and that Jews must support Israel no matter what it does, but I find Israel’s continued building and/or expanding settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its slap in the face to Vice President Joe Biden infuriating.

Israel isn’t a stupid country, or a country of stupid people. Things don’t just happen. The announcement of the Israeli decision to build hundreds of new apartments for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem on the day of Vice President Biden’s arrival in Israel to promote peace talks between Israel and Palestine was a deliberate act. Whether it was perpetrated by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or by one of his enemies in the government hoping to embarrass him, I can’t say and I don’t care. Israel seems to assume it can do what it wants and America will simply fall in line. And they may be right.

Diplomacy aside, if I had been Joe Biden, I would have cancelled all talks with Israeli government officials, and met exclusively with Palestinian leaders and those Israelis from the human rights and peace ends of the political spectrum. And, if I were President Obama I would have sent the Israeli Prime Minister a note saying that the United States is done playing games with Israel, that we are putting a freeze on all aid monies until real progress has been made in bringing Israeli policy into alignment with the US position on settlements. Why should the United States fund policies we consider antithetical to our own interests and the interests of peace in the Middle East?

Yes I know Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. So what? And what kind of democracy is it? The theocratic nature of Israeli democracy is troubling; the second-class status of Israel’s Arab citizens is troubling; and the very idea that there are roads for Jews only and buses in which women must ride in the back smack of anything but democracy. And even if Israel were perfectly democratic, the US makes friends with lots of anti-democratic countries. It isn’t a country’s political system that matters to us, but whether or not it can serve our over-all strategic objectives. This is how politics works: you pay off your friends as long as they do what you want them to do, and threaten your enemies until they are willing to be bought off as friends. Or, if that doesn’t work, you bomb the shit out of them.

On a similar note: sometimes politically correct is simply politically stupid. Case in point: the decision by the US government not to fly the US flag over US compounds providing aid to Haiti so as not to drag up anti-American sentiment by reminding Haitians of all the times we actually invaded their country. Look, if the Haitians don’t want our help, fine. We can take our 12,000 troops home. If they do want it, then we have the right to fly our flag.

The same thing happened in Kuwait in 1991 when we agreed to cover up all images of the US flag. We were just a bunch of people armed to the teeth risking our lives for the sake of Kuwaitis who could have hired Blackwater to defend them against Saddam Hussein.

Come on. I have no problem saying when the US is wrong—in Afghanistan and Iraq for example, but this doesn’t mean I should sit back and ignore it when we are being insulted.

A Pope of Their Own

“Protestants’ leader is God, not man.” Or so says the headline in USA TODAY’s Letters department. Responding to recent criticism by Catholic leaders that Protestants need a pope of their own a woman from Cleveland, Ohio wrote in to USA TODAY to protest. Of course protesting is what Protest-ants do, so that in and of itself isn’t surprising. What I found delightful was the woman's love of the Bible; a love matched only by her ignorance of what the Bible actually says. So in the interest of Bible scholarship I will reprint much of the letter here (in italics) followed by Biblical passages (boldface) to illustrate what the Bible really says.

If more people would read their Bibles, they would know the Golden Rule and that would be their mantra. Instead, the world is full of hatred, bigotry, homophobia, and racism.

Really? No hatred, bigotry, homophobia, and racism in the Bible? Let's see:

Regarding hatred:

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. (Psalm 139:21-22)

Regarding bigotry:

You (Jews) are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men. (1 Thess. 2:14-15)

The women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor. 14:34-35)

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. (Eph. 5:22-24)

I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. (1 Tim. 2:12-15)

Regarding homophobia:

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. (Lev. 20:13)

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

I do not need someone to dictate what I should eat and when or how I should conduct my personal life.

Really?

You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard. (Lev. 19:27)

You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD. (Lev. 19:28)

They shall not make tonsures upon their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuttings in their flesh. (Lev. 21:5)

A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. (Deut. 22:5)

Judge for yourselves; is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her pride? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1 Cor. 11:13-15)

Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. (1 Tim. 2:9-10)

I can go on and on with the atrocious lies told that have led to tragedy and even slavery. These were perpetrated by man, not the Bible.

Really?

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness. (Lev. 25:44-46)

I, too, could go on and on, and I agree that these are human documents not divine revelation, but I’m afraid that just being able to read the Bible for yourself doesn’t preclude you from doing evil in the Name of God.

The only defense we have against madness, both divine and human, is a commitment to reason, compassion, and a willingness to question even the most sacred “truths.”

Smarter Than Thou

I knew it! I’m smarter than you! Well, not you, necessarily, but lots of people. And most of my neighbors. You see, I’m a liberal, and liberals are smarter than conservatives. I knew it.

I used to know this because I watch Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and they are smarter than Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and all the friends at Fox News combined. But now I know it because science has proven it.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary biologist from the London School of Economics, has found that young adults who identify themselves as “very liberal” score 11 points higher than their “very conservative” counterparts on standard IQ tests. I knew it! Not only are these smarter liberals liberal, but they also tend to be atheists. So take that Zeus!

Now I’m no longer an young adult, but I am very liberal, and my theology is atheistic if the theist’s god is an invisible white man who lives in the sky and constantly spies on people and who may or may not have a son, so I must be smarter than my very conservative and very religious neighbors.

Of course “very liberal” and “very conservative” are highly imprecise terms (though the fact that I can use a word like “imprecise” shows how smart I am, and the fact that I can challenge my own superiority shows how very liberal I must be). I may be very liberal when compared to those in my town who still harbor fond memories of the good ol’ days of slavery when black folk and women folk knew their place and there was no gay folk, at least not if they knew what was good for them. But I may be less than liberal when compared to those in my town who long for a total nanny state.

I’m neither a fascist nor a nannytarian. I’m just very liberal. Or at least I used to be. I don’t like income taxes much, and I think the government is too big, and big business is too big, and there is nothing too big to fail (remember the dinosaurs?), and I don’t like forcing people to buy health insurance from private insurers, and I don’t like cap and trade, and I don’t like fear mongering by climatologists any more than I like fear mongering by politicians, and I think we a live in a plutocracy (which is a state of the rich, for the rich, by the rich), and I think government is just a shill for corporate interests, and having discovered that the CIA allows agents to moonlight for private corporations doing global corporate espionage I have taken to wearing a tinfoil yarmulkah to protect myself from the mind probes of the corporate fascist overlords who are invisible white men with eyes in the sky that are constantly spying on me, and having watched what was supposed to be a very frightening CNN expose on air toxicity in airplanes, and having been captivated by the production values of the piece which was designed to frighten me despite the fact that the conclusion was that the amount of toxic poisons in the air of jet airplanes is so low as to be irrelevant, I now wear a hazmat suits whenever I travel by plane, and while I want to be environmentally wise and drive a Prius I won’t buy one until Toyota equips each car with an anchor that I can manually throw out the window to stop the car in the case of a computer malfunction that makes the car accelerate almost to the speed I normally drive at.

I had better stop thinking like this; I can feel myself IQ score dipping. How about you?

Compassion Man

“Hey, compassion man!” a guy called out to me waving a copy of the Murfreesboro Pulse newspaper with a full page photo of me on the cover accompanied by the headline, “Rabbi Rami… man of compassion.”

“You’re compassion man, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Citizen,” I said in a deep comic book hero voice, “I am Compassion Man, friend of all the little furry woodland creatures and…”

“I suppose you’re in favor of President Uganda’s health care plan, aren’t ‘cha? Why the hell should I have to pay for some loafers health care?”

Obviously this fellow didn’t get my joke, so I thought I’d try again.

“Actually I am opposed to any health care for loafers. A good spit shine once a week ought to suffice.” I paused. He paused. Neither one of us heard a laugh track, so he continued on:

“I worked hard all my life to pay for my health care. I went to school and studied hard and didn’t do crack or get some bimbo pregnant, and so I got a good job and full health care benefits…”

“So you don’t actually pay for your health care.”

“…and I don’t want to pay for anyone else’s. People make choices. They take crack instead of cracking the books and so they haven’t got jobs. That isn’t my fault. I’m no evolutionary Darwin atheist but this is survival of the fittest. Who wants near the wells to live and have babies anyway? If they haven’t got health care they will die sooner and in the long run that is what God wants.”

“So you are in favor of abortion funding for ne’re-do-wells? That way they won’t raise more ne’re-do-wells.” I was hoping by repeating the term ne’re-do-well and pronouncing it properly I could at least improve this fellow’s vocabulary.

“You know for a so-called man of God you really don’t know much. That’s ‘cause you’re a Jew and killed Christ and all, but God would forgive you if you come to Christ and do what’s right on health care.”

“But didn’t Jesus plead for the ‘least of these?’”

“I’m the least of these! I’m the one who put off having fun as a kid and stayed in school and got a job and raised a family while these others just drank booze and smoked crack and made babies and cashed their welfare checks. I suffered while these loafers loafed! But that is what God wants and that’ll get me into heaven while these crack smokers will be smoking in Hell.”

“Along with the Jews.”

“Damn straight.”

“Good luck with that… [We interrupt this factual account to bring you this fantasy ending:] I wish you well, brother. And I will pray for you, for I am Compassion Man. But now I must be off for there are others for whom my heart must bleed. Take care, Citizen. Compassion Man awayyyyyyyyy!” [We now return you to our factual account:]

I turned and walked away, but like Lot’s wife I had to glance back and saw the man toss my photo in the trash. And while I wasn’t turned into a pillar of salt, I have to admit it hurt.

The Rabbis and A Serious Man

Neal Conan, host of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” asked people in his “Post Oscars” show to call in to discuss how Hollywood treats their professions. I thought about calling to talk about the rabbis in A Serious Man. I thought about it a lot. I thought about it for 58 minutes and some odd seconds, and then decided to call—oh! Out of time! Too bad.

Yes, I’m a coward. I’m also an Enneagram 9 and thus avoid conflict like the plague. Well, that isn’t really true. My writing and teaching always seems to get me embroiled in some conflict, but it always surprises me. I don’t write to start arguments. I write to share what seems obvious to me. And that is what starts arguments.

Anyway, if I had had the guts to call Neil Conan, I would have said that the Coen brothers portrayal of rabbis was exactly as I experienced it growing up, and as I all too often experience it today.

I grew up with Rabbi Marshak, the aging Orthodox sage. Unfortunately even at my Bar Mitzvah I never really got to know the Rabbi, but I doubt he would have known who Jefferson Airplane was.

With the passing of our Rabbi Marshak (he didn’t die, he just got too old to fund raise and was fired), we hired a series of Rabbi Scotts, guys just out of seminary who didn’t have a clue about life, God, suffering, or anything else meaningful. “Look at the parking lot, Larry,” just about captures the depth of their spiritual insights. We hired them because they were cheap. When they got old enough and experienced enough to become a middle aged Rabbi Nachtner, we fired them. They cost too much.

Now that I am older I know lots of Rabbi Nachtners—the senior rabbis with lots of experience who hope that they can double talk you long enough to make you feel it is your fault that God is irrelevant and Judaism doesn’t speak to you, rather than theirs.

I have read several commentaries on A Serious Man claiming the Coen brothers are self-hating Jews, and that they stereotyped rabbis and Hebrew teachers. Maybe. But the Hebrew teacher in the film was taken directly from my life, as were the rabbis. These are not stereotypes for nothing.

Of course I have known brilliant sages as well— Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Waskow, Art Green, Shlomo Carlebach, Ellis Rivkin, and Eugene Mihaly, to name a few, but I suspect the Nachtners and the Scotts are the norm.

Anyway, Neal, thanks for taking my call. I’ve got to go and drain a cyst.

Beyond Denominationalism

An editorial in this week’s FORWARD newspaper cites Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, on the need for raising levels of observance among Conservative Jews—“too many Conservative Jews can’t read Hebrew, don’t keep the Sabbath and other central Jewish observances, and don’t find synagogue prayer meaningful or attractive.”

I doubt this is a problem unique to Conservative Judaism. Most Jews don’t read Hebrew for the same reason most Jews don’t read French—they don’t need it. The reason most Jews fail to observe Shabbat or keep kosher is that these traditions no longer speak to them. The reason they don’t find synagogue services meaningful or attractive is that 1) the liturgy reflects a medieval worldview that most 8-year olds have outgrown, and 2) because we have become used to theatrical production values that synagogue services cannot match.

What most Jews want—what most postmodern, postindustrial first worlders want—isn’t more tradition but more meaning and authentic encounters with reality. We live in a world of contrived meanings faux reality fed to us by advertisers and reality television. Even real disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are turned into soap operas by the infotainment media. Synagogue is just another faux reality where Jews are asked to believe in a god and worldview that most do not take seriously.

Liberal Judaisms as a whole rarely offer their members anything truly deep, challenging, existentially compelling, or spiritually transformative. And most of their congregants wouldn’t get involved even if they did.

Why? Because deeply transformative spiritual work is, well, work. And most people aren’t interested. This is true in any religion. The truly devout are always a minority. If liberal Jews wanted to be more observant they would be more observant. They just don’t want to.

What should be done? Stop thinking in terms of competing denominations and start thinking in terms of a spectrum of community offerings. Every decent sized Jewish community ought to have a JCC where rabbis from Chabad to Neo-Hasidic/Renewal to Humanistic Judaism are on staff, serving the needs of different kinds of Jews. These rabbis wouldn’t have to worry about building private communities to support themselves and their families. They would be paid by the Federation and hired to teach the theory and practice of their denominations.

Shabbat and Holy Day services of different kinds would be offered around the JCC campus, and the community would come together for Kiddush and, perhaps, dinner. No one would join a separate community; rather they would pay dues to the Federation or JCC to be registered as a member of the Jewish community at large. Membership would entitle you to access to all Jewish services, educational programs, and rabbis.

Denominations are draining our resources, financial and intellectual. Rather than retreat into our respective shtetls, let’s create new forms of belonging and learning.

Mystic Heart of Judaism

This past weekend I was at a Lutheran Church in San Francisco teaching with the Spiritual Paths Institute faculty on the “Mystic Heart” of our respective traditions. Here is the gist of what I taught.

First, let me make it clear that the Mystic Heart of Judaism I will share with you is my own understanding and not that of any authority. This is how I see it, and you are free to see it otherwise. Second, let me say that the Mystic Heart of Judaism has to point beyond Judaism. When a religion only points to itself you can be fairly certain you are hearing propaganda rather than prophecy, and you are engaged in a exercise of marketing rather than mysticism. Mysticism is the direct experience of Reality without the conditioning of words, theologies, ideologies, isms of any kind. Marketing is just clever ways of proving that my way is the best way, or even the only way.

So what is the mystic heart of Judaism? Where does Judaism point beyond itself? I suggest you find it in the opening verses of Genesis Chapter 12:

Now the Ineffable said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your parent’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

Unpacking these verses will reveal the Mystic Heart of Judaism. And to do so rightly we have to be clear that Torah is talking to you; God is talking to you. If God is just talking to Abram, who cares? If Torah is just for the Jewish people, my talking to those of you who are not Jewish is a waste of your time. But God addresses each of us continually—first with a question, then with a command or challenge.

The question comes in Genesis 3:9: Ahyeka? Where are you? Where are you in your life right now? Where are you conditioned and enslaved? Before you can become free you must realize you are stuck. Where are you stuck? Genesis 12 tells us: we are stuck in our country, our kin, and our family; that is we are conditioned by the propaganda, prejudices, biases of nationalism, tribalism, ethnicity, religion, gender, race, sexual orientation, all the psychological madness imposes upon us by our parents and our families—indeed everything we use to hide beyond rather than step out of hiding and face the reality of the Unconditional naked, raw, and unconditioned.

So the question is, ahyecha, where are you enslaved? The challenge is lech lecha, get free! In the story lech lecha appears to be an external going forth; Abram and Sarai leave home. But the Hebrew is more nuanced than that. Lech means to walk, lecha means toward your Self. Not the conditioned egoic self, but the unconditioned Self that is an expression of the Ineffable Reality Judaism calls YHVH, and which we reduce to either the highly conditioned, patriarchal “LORD,” or to the essentially vapid and all-purpose bit of noise pronounced “God.” YHVH is neither.

In Hebrew YHVH isn’t a noun, but a verb. YHVH is a form of the Hebrew verb “to be.” God is the be’ing of Reality, the is’ing of Reality. Not a Being or a Supreme Being somewhere else, but being itself in all its variations and multi-dimensionality. Abram is being confronted by Reality, and that confrontation challenges him to free himself from the blinders that keep him from realizing the true nature of things as manifestations of the singular nonduality Jews call YHVH.

How do we do this? By walking inward, but leaving behind all we know and think we know. By walking without isms and ideologies to a Land that only the Unconditioned can reveal. I am not talking about the actual geographic Land of Israel, but the inner Land of Israel, literally the Land of God-Wrestling, the place where you encounter the Absolute.

And what happens when you arrive? You become a great, blessed, and well respected. That is to say your impact on the world is larger than you imagine, and it is for the good. Those who bless you are blessed; those who curse you are cursed.

Be careful how to think of this. If you think with the conditioned egoic mind you imagine you are Chosen, or saved, or better than others. But this is incorrect. Think in terms of electricity flowing through a wall socket. If used well, it can light your home. But if you stick your finger in the socket it can kill you. “Those who bless you” are those who see you as a paradigm for what they themselves can achieve. Those who curse you are those who see you as a guru to be followed. If they do as you do, practice lech lecha and attain freedom (an on-going process, by the way, and not a once and for all state), they are blessed. If they turn you into another hide out, another layer of conditioning, they are cursed.

You are a vehicle for blessing: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That is the sign of one who is free. They are a blessing. They want nothing from you: neither money nor obedience nor loyalty. They aren’t asking you to follow them, but to free yourself. They offer you what God offered Abram: a territory to walk, but no map with which to walk it.

And that leads us to the mystic heart of Judaism—walking without a map. This is what I call fierce faith. YHVH doesn’t tell Abram where he is going. YHVH just says, lech, go! And Abram goes. No map, no brochure, no video showing him how glorious the destination. Nothing. He just goes. This is fierce faith, in Hebrew betachon, trust.

It is common today to mistake faith for belief, but they are not the same. Belief is all about content; faith has no content. Abram, Jesus, Mohammad (PBU), Arjuna, and the Buddha didn’t need beliefs; they encountered Reality directly. They freed themselves from what was supposed to be true, and saw for themselves what was true. And then—and this of course my opinion—they called us to do the same; and then—and this of course is my opinion—we betrayed them and turned their pointing to truth into a series of beliefs behind which we hide from that truth.

Fierce faith, the faith of the founders of the world’s great wisdom traditions, is a faith that dares to free the Self from the self and see what is without someone defining what is for us.

Fierce faith does not lead you deeper into the maze of your religion. Fierce faith doesn’t make you a better Jew or Christian, or Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim. Fierce faith makes you free. And freedom is the mystic heart of all religion that dares to speak the truth.

Ten "Too Jewish" Questions

I write an advice column for Spirituality & Health magazine, and I’m always on the lookout for questions that I can use as part of the column. Sometimes the questions I receive are too Jewish and don’t make it into the column. Here are ten of these “too Jewish” questions and my answers to them.

1. Is YHVH God? No. YHVH is one particular Jewish understanding of God, but God cannot be limited to particulars. For me, God is the Source and Substance of all reality; God is what is. The Hebrew YHVH, a future imperfect form of the Hebrew verb “to be,” suggests that God is the is’ing of reality. This comes close to my understanding, so I use the term. But I know that my understanding is still not a full understanding. The Tao that can be named, as Lao Tzu says, is not the Eternal Tao.

2. Are Jews God’s Chosen People, and is Israel God’s promised land? No. While Judaism holds tight to these claims, I cannot. To me notions such as chosenness, promised lands, saved and damned, true believer and the infidel are nonsensical and dangerous. God, as I understand God, chooses no one and promises nothing. God is what is; nothing more and nothing less.

3. Is Torah God’s revelation to the Jews? No. God doesn’t reveal or conceal anything. Torah is an amalgamation of stories, laws, teachings, and codes of behavior written by numerous individuals over centuries, and reflecting Bronze and Iron Age views of the world. While cloaked in history, most books of the Bible were written long after the events they claim to relate, and are more apt to speak to the people and the times in which they were written than to us.

4. Should we design our lives around the teachings of Torah and Talmud? Certainly traditionally minded Jews would say so, but I do not. While there are timeless teachings in both Torah and Talmud, and I value these along with other sources of ancient wisdom, most of what I find there is largely irrelevant to my life. On the other hand, if you want to be a traditionally observant Jew you have to accommodate yourself to Jewish tradition as spelled out in Torah and Talmud, as well as other sources of rabbinic law.

5. Are the teachings of the rabbis extensions of Torah? No. The earliest collection of rabbinic teachings, the Mishnah, is totally independent of Torah, and makes no attempt to link itself to Torah. The rabbis claim to embody a new Torah, the Oral Torah, which they say was given to Moses on Sinai and passed down separately from the Written Torah. While the Written Torah was given to the Priests, the Oral Torah was given to the rabbis. Is there any evidence for this? No. The rabbis invented their own Torah to legitimize what is in essence a religious coup in Jewish life.

6. Where does rabbinic authority come from? From the laypeople who choose to follow rabbis in general and specific rabbis in particular. While rabbis claim to be heirs to the Oral Torah given to Moses on Sinai, the fact is they invented this Torah as a means of legitimizing their movement. This is nothing new. This is how all religions operate. Do you imagine the Buddha spoke all the sutras attributed to him? Some were written hundreds of years after his death. People who need authority figures find ones they like and legitimize them. This is why Jews will shift allegiance from rabbi to rabbi and synagogue to synagogue in order to find a rabbi who speaks “truth,” that is a rabbi who agrees with them. The same is true of Christians who continually change churches or start new versions of Protestantism. They all claim to be revealing the Truth, when in fact they are only promoting their own opinions.

7. What is the most important element of Jewish life? Shabbat? Kosher? Passover? While all of these are important, the most important to me is Torah. Jews are a people whose identity is rooted in story. Notice I say “story” rather than “history.” There is scant evidence that the story of the Jews from Abraham through Joshua is historical. But that doesn’t bother me. I am not interested in history, but in story. We are the stories we tell. So if archeologists are correct and the Exodus never happened, it doesn’t bother me a bit. The story is what moves me (both positively and negatively); it is the story that matters. So if we were to lose everything but Torah (that is everything but our story and the freedom to continually interpret and add to it which is the Way of Torah) we would still survive.

8. Is the State of Israel central to Jewish life? Yes, but for all the wrong reasons. Israel has become the secular god of the Jews. Jews who have no interest in Jewish texts, teachings, or traditions link their identity as Jews to the Jewish State. This is unfortunate because Israel cannot live up to the spiritual genius of Judaism, and too often falls prey to its worst elements. Judaism is a mythos, a laboratory for meaning-making, Israel is a logos, a program for politics. As scholar Karen Armstrong repeated proves, when logos takes the place of mythos violence almost always erupts. When the state becomes god, it is the devil who rules. This is not to say Israel is irrelevant, only that Jews shouldn’t ask Israel to be other than it is: a political entity willing to do whatever is necessary to survive.

9. Since God is just and good, what did the Jews do to deserve the Holocaust? Nothing. The Jews were murdered for being Jews. No one “deserves” a Holocaust? The problem the Holocaust poses for believers in a just God is that this god is revealed to be anything but just. There are at least three responses to this discovery: 1) become an atheist; 2) defend god as God and blame the Jews; and 3) stop imagining a just God. Most Jews I suspect opted for #1, while traditional Judaism continues to focus on God, most Jews are no longer traditional. When they speak of God the word is often empty of anything but nostalgia for old ways of talking. Some Jews opt for #2 and continue the ancient argument that God punishes the Jews because we are not living up to God’s standards. I prefer #3, what I call the way of Job, who challenged the idea of a just God and discovered a God beyond good and evil, justice and injustice, who cannot be reduced to these human concepts. This is a minority position to say the least.

10. Who is your favorite rabbi? Me. I am the only rabbi who says exactly what I believe. If you asked me for rabbis other than myself that I admire, I would say the following: Hillel, Jesus, Shabbatai Tzvi, the Baal Shem Tov, Dov Ber, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Mordecai Kaplan, and Reb Zalman Schachter Shalomi.

Is Israel the Promised Land?

Is Israel the Promised Land? Yes, but only in the minds of those who say so.

This came up during a talk I gave recently where I said that I believed the whole world is holy, that life is God manifest in space and time, and that the notion of one slice of ground being holy while the rest was just dirt made no sense to me. I wasn’t speaking about Israel in particular, just about the idea of holy ground being a sociological phenomenon rather than a theological one.

One Jewish woman in the audience found this very upsetting, and asked why, when millions if not billions of people believe Israel to be the Promised Land and somehow more holy that the rest of the planet, I could so blithely (her word) dismiss the claim?

My response was a bit flippant. I asked her if she believed Mecca was the most holy city in the world, and she said she did not, and that Jerusalem was the most holy city. I then asked her why, since a billion Muslims believe Mecca trumps Jerusalem on the holiness scale, she so blithely (my word) dismissed their claim? Certainly on numbers alone, a billion Muslims versus twelve million Jews, one would have to go with Mecca.

She was not impressed with my math. I should have let the matter go, but there were still other people to offend, so I went on to say that Americans, too, have our marketing pitch that raises the United States above all other nations. We call it American exceptionalism, and it means that the United States is unlike any other nation in history, and that we are blessed by God and incapable of succumbing to the evils that have been the downfall of every empire up to ours. This refusal to accept America as just another nation with all the foibles that nationalism and empire entail allows us to blithely (yes I said “blithely” again) go about our business no matter how much evil we commit and damage we do without ever imaging we are doing evil or damage.

But I don’t subscribe to any of these claims. A nation is as good as the people who control it, and the policies they enforce, and the history of our empire doesn’t suggest that our political and corporate overlords are any more benign that others.

To her credit, the woman who started me off on this tangent challenged me. If it is all about self-identity, why are so many nonJews obsessed with the Jewish claim that Israel is the Promised Land?

The answer, I suggested, is simple: those who are caught up in this claim are Jews, Christians, and Moslems who believe in a god who privileges some at the expense of others, and who have a stake in the answer. Many Jews focus on the idea because it bolsters their claim to legitimacy in Israel; many Christians focus on it because the return of Jews to Israel proves God’s promises can be trusted, that they are being fulfilled in our day, and that this fulfillment heralds the massacre of all but a handful of Jews as prelude to the coming of Christ; and many Muslims focus on it in order to deny it in favor of their own claims just eh way Pepsi denies the claims of Coke. But the average Chinese person in China or Hindu in India probably doesn’t think about this at all, and may consider the entire contest insane.

Why do people need to be special, or to belong to the elite? Why can’t we simply admit that we are “all Bozos on this bus,” and do the best we can to see that we travel together with a modicum of respect and compassion for one another? Why do we have to be chosen or blessed or privileged by one god or another? Why do we have to argue over whom this god loves best? This, to me, is the real question we should be asking. And when we can answer it we might be able to put an end to our ranking and rancor, and move toward peace.

The Role of the Rabbi

What is the rabbi’s role in modern America?

This was the big question Moment Magazine put to a panel of rabbis in its January/February issue. I love questions like this, and was genuinely excited to read the responses of my colleagues. That is, until I actually read them.

I was hoping to read something new, something bold, daring, and radical; something that spoke to the 21st century rather than the 19th; something that made me want to be Jewish or to learn what Judaism has to offer. What I found from most of them was the same old clichés about God, Torah and Israel.

Maybe these old notions are just fine. But I doubt it. Few Jews attend synagogue regularly, and fewer still study Torah or engage in Jewish contemplative practices. Rabbis still seem to be curators of a museum fewer and fewer Jews bother visiting; still willing to train up kids in a religion few will rarely grow into and most will grow out of.

Of course I’m jealous of the collegues that were asked, and hurt that I was not among them. But that is why I write this blog: to right the wrongs done to me by those who don’t even know I exist. If I had been asked to answer this question, I would have said the following:

• The role of the rabbi is to be a shaman—to offer people the tools for ecstasy, self-transcendence, and God-encounter, and a safe community in which to use them. (When I use the word “God” I mean the nondual source and substance of all Reality.)

• The role of the rabbi is to be a storyteller—to offer people a grand narrative that weaves together the best of Torah and contemporary science, a story that liberates people from the false gods and their corporate sponsors/creators that posit a zero–sum worldview, and pits people against one another and against the planet as a whole.

• The role of the rabbi is to be a prophet—to offer people a way to resist the idolatry of American life by adapting a counter-cultural Judaism rooted in ancient Hebrew iconoclasm—a god that cannot be named or imaged or marketed—and Hillel’s understanding of Judaism as compassion for others.

• The role of the rabbis is to be spiritual friend—to offer people a partner with whom to walk and share their quest for meaning and purpose without imagining that they (the rabbis) have found the answer.

• The role of the rabbi is to be an educator—to offer people both a Judaism of compassion and justice that celebrates tribe without devolving into tribalism, and a distinctly rabbinic pedagogy rooted in argument, doubt, and finely tuned questioning.

• The role of the rabbi is to be a liberator—to offer people a means of escape from the self-serving fetishes of contemporary Jewish life: Chosenness, Holocaust, and Israel, and toward a fresh understanding of tradition and mitzvot that is creative, liberating, and intrinsically compelling.

In short, the role of the rabbi is to be a spiritual revolutionary imagining the future, and not, as all too often is the case, corporate apologists for the past.

A Serious Man

Last night I rented and watched the Coen Brother’s new movie, A Serious Man. While I have heard that some Jews found it offensive, I did not. I grew up in a similar environment, and knew all the characters first hand.

The movie is a parable of a parable, the original being Job, the story of a decent man plagued by God over a bet God has made with Satan. God wants to see if Job will abandon his faith if life turns against him. In the movie the Bet is whether or not physics professor Larry Gopnik (the movie’s Job) will accept a bribe and give a failing student a passing grade. The devil is Sy Ableman, who does all he can to destroy Larry’s family and career. It is interesting that the label “Serious Man” is bestowed by Rabbi Nachtner (your typical middle aged, middle-minded, mainstream pseudo-sage) on Sy rather than Larry. Mainstream clergy always mistake the devil for the able-man?

The deeper question asked by both Job and Larry is this: What is the nature of God? Neither book nor movie gives us a definitive answer. That isn’t their concern. Their concern is to strip away any ideas you may have about God, and see what happens next. In the film this is made clear by the recurring “Greek Corus” provided by Grace Slick and Jefferson Airplane and repeated by the reclusive sage, Rabbi Marshak: “When the truth is found to be lies; and all the joy within you dies…What then”

Rabbi Marshak and Grace Slick offer two different but complementary answers. For the Dark Sage (nacht means “night” in Yiddish and German), the answer (given to recent Bar Mitzvah Danny Gopnik) is “be a good boy.” Be a mentsch. This is the only mitzvah (obligation) Danny has to adhere to (bar). There is no truth, no lasting joy, there is just the madness of life. And how best to deal with it? Be a mentsch, be a decent human being.

Grace and Jefferson Airplane offer a slightly different answer: “When the truth is found to be lies; and all the joy within you dies… Don’t you want somebody to love, don’t need somebody love, wouldn’t you love somebody to love? You better find somebody to love.”

Decency and love, that is all there is. Will these somehow make life better? As the tornado of God moves closer to destroying the lives of our characters the answer is clearly “no.” There is no escaping the wildness of God and the amorality of creation.

Job (along with Ecclesiastes) is my favorite book of the Bible. Together, the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes strip away everything we think we know about God and life, leaving us no place to hide. Facing the awesome reality that is God evokes in me a sense of reverence, awe, fear, and respect (though not worship; God needs no worship).

Religion, mainstream or new age, is all about hiding from the truth behind self-serving lies. If we do what pleases God, God will do what pleases us. Nonsense say Job, Ecclesiastes, and the brothers Coen. God is beyond anything we can imagine, and a true encounter with God leaves us naked and raw.

The question is what do you do after this encounter? Do you fold? Do you give into nihilism or narcissism? Do you become even more fundamentalist and militant? Or do you redouble your efforts at being a mentsch and finding someone to love?

A Serious Man opens with a quotes attributed to the 11th Century Rabbi, Rashi: “Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.” With this it sets us up for the answer. Accepting with simplicity means accepting reality without hiding behind theories of reality. It means being open to the glory and madness of life without clinging to one or the other. It means being a mentsch and finding love. That is all there is. It is quite enough.

Ah, Tolerance

Ah, yes, tolerance. According to the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) tolerance is “the ability to accept things one does not like or disagrees with.” According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center tolerance means that Palestinians should simply accept the desecration of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem and allow the Center to build a branch of their—wait for it—Museum of Tolerance over the centuries-old graveyard.

The cemetery is Ma’man Allah, a graveyard for Palestinian dead for hundreds of years, fell into disrepair in 1948 when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled during the Israeli War of Independence. The museum, called the Center for Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, was given the land by the City of Jerusalem in 2002.

The irony of this is palpable. A museum called the Center for Human Dignity built over a desecrated graveyard? Can it be that our fetishistic passion for the Shoah/Holocaust has so corrupted our sense of morality that we can build such a thing without shame? Can it be that as we fight to preserve the dignity of Jewish graves, we can trample on the dignity of Palestinian graves? Is there anything left of the Jewish soul, or have we sold it to the devil of jingoism and tribalism?

Imagine a Muslim peace group trying to build a center for peace over a Jewish graveyard. Even if they promised to move the bodies and rebury them (something the Center for Human Dignity plans to do), the Jewish world would be up in arms. But when we do it to Muslims we expect them to simply tolerate it.

Not everyone is silent, however. Rabbi David Schmidl of Atra Kadisha, an organization devoted to the defense of Jewish graves, has spoken out against the project, as have several other Jewish activists both secular and religious. But the Israeli courts have sided with the Center, and, to the best of my knowledge, the Jewish world is largely silent on this issue.

I do not dispute that Ma’man Allah is in Israel. I do not dispute Israel’s right to exist. Indeed it may even be legal for the city of Jerusalem to give graveyards of any religious group over to contractors to build whatever they please. I do not know Israeli law, and I do not pretend to dispute it. All I am saying is that any Jew worth the name should be appalled at Jewish desecration of another people’s cemetery. And that is what really frightens me. We are no longer Jews.

I grew up believing that Jews were called to serve justice and compassion; that our God was the power that liberates humanity from slavery, injustice, cruelty, and war; that any interpretation of Torah that did not promote justice and compassion was a false interpretation; and that the State of Israel was to be the place where the highest Jewish ideals could be forged into living principles.

This was the Judaism that spoke to me, that called me to the rabbinate; that sustained me and nourished me, and made me proud to be a Jew. Is this Judaism dead? Has it been sacrificed to the false god of tribalism? Have we Jews reverted to a vicious tribalism that excuses immorality in the name of god and the state this god supposedly sanctions?

I know that some of you will come to the defense of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; and some will talk about Muslim desecration of Jewish cemeteries as if that made Jewish desecration of Muslim cemeteries OK. I understand this. It just saddens me that we allow ourselves to be defined by the lowest moral denominator when we used to be the people of the highest. If you cannot feel shame; at least feel the irony. As for me, I feel both.

Finnish First, Finnish Last

A Finnish atheist took Italy to court and won. Complaining that the Italian practice of hanging crucifixes in Italian classrooms violated her right to raise her child as an atheist, she convinced the European Court of Human Rights to order Italy to remove all crucifixes from government classrooms so as to not offend non-Catholics.

This is outrageous. Why is this woman incapable of raising her child as an atheist just because the majority culture believes otherwise? Unless there is a law making atheism illegal, she is free to teach her kid whatever she pleases. And why should non-Catholics be offended by Catholic symbols in a country that is overwhelmingly Catholic?

But wait! What about America? We are overwhelmingly Christian. Should we not allow Christian symbols in our schools? First, we do. Second, we have the First Amendment, so we shouldn’t. But we do. Am I offended as a Jew? No. I am not offended by another’s faith. Am I worried as an American? Yes. Our government is to be religiously neutral. But I’m not going to go to war over a Christmas pageant in December. When the government links loyalty to a certain brand of Christian faith to success in government and to promotion in the Air Force, then I worry. We do that too. Time to fight. That is why I am on the board of the Interfaith Alliance of Tennessee, the state branch of a national organization that works tirelessly to make sure the US honors and abides by the First Amendment.

When we go ballistic over every imagined slight to our beliefs, we make it all the more hard to muster outrage at and resistance to real threats to our religious liberties.

I am tired of people being offended. It offends me! Get over it. We live in the real world. If you don’t want your kid exposed to Italian society don’t move to Italy! If you don’t want your Jewish kid exposed to Christmas send them to yeshivah or home school them the way thousands of people do who are offended by science. But this is nonsense.

It is like dousing antibacterial spray over everything all the time. It actually weakens our capacity to deal with bacteria. Protecting our children from other people’s ideas only weakens their capacity to deal with other people’s ideas. In the end we will all fall victim to the some guy who just refuses to be silenced, and who has no compunction about silencing others. This degree of political correctness is political suicide.

The Dance Instinct

Nicholas Wade’s The Faith Instinct is well worth the read. Wade’s blend of biology and anthropology provides us with a solid understanding of the origin of religion and its impact on human society. When I read such books I am interested both in the past and future; I want to know not only where religion came from, but also where it might be going. Unfortunately, like most such books, Dr. Wade is strong on the former and weak on the latter. Nevertheless, he does provide us with ideas worth speculating about.

Religion arose 50,000 years ago among humans living in hunter-gatherer societies. Religion was the means by which people bonded together in cohesive communities, and the means for doing so were emotionally compelling blends of music, chant, and dance that lead some participants to fall into trance states where they believed they were communing with ancestors and gods. These communities were nonhierarchical and noncreedal. People weren’t seeking new insights, but fresh experiences of solidarity and, for some, transcendence.

This was human religion for about 35,000 years. With the shift from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural society things changes. Owning land was now essential to wealth and power, and religion began to speak to the need for expanding control over other peoples and their property. Religion grew politically and became central to a communities power structure. A priestly cast arose and religion was no longer open to everyone. Kings chosen by the gods or who were gods themselves demanded the loyalty of the people that had hitherto been given to the group as a whole. Rites were now tied to harvests and planting seasons.

With the rise of city states and early capitalism religion again shifted from temple sacrifices to creeds drawn from books controlled by a scholar class that determined what could be read and how what is read could be understood.

Resting religion on books becomes more and more difficult as people are encouraged to read and think for themselves. And postmodern deconstruction of the narratives that supply religion with their raison d’être may herald another shift in religion.

This is where The Faith Instinct ends. Though Dr. Wade offers us a closing chapter entitled “The Future of Religion,” he doesn’t offer much of practical value. Wade suggests that since music was/is such an integral part of prehistoric religion, we should look at our religions as we might a night at the opera, attending for the sheer joy of the music and pageantry.

This doesn’t work for me. If religion is nothing more than voyeurism, it is no longer compelling. I suggest we go back to Wade’s excavation of hunter-gatherer religions and draw upon the deepest spiritual impulses of humanity, creating new religious experiences around song and dance.

Notice I said new religious experiences and not new religions. While we humans continue to do the latter, it may be the former for which we truly hunger. Regardless of the religious label, imagine taking your place in the sacred circle and being invited into an hour or two of music, repetitive chant and rhythmic dance. This would give way to silent sitting for 30 minutes or so, followed by sharing tea and conversation.

No creed, no holy books, no special peoples, or promised lands, no professional clergy, no hierarchy of power, just a community created by shared song and dance supporting one another in surrendering to the magic of the medium.

Such a gathering would be a risk. You would never know what would happen. Trust would have to be absolute, as the community supports one another through whatever experience a person was having. The bond that would grow among the members of such a community would be powerful, and easily adapted to more practical concerns of seeing to one another’s welfare.

I have tasted something like this in Hindu and Kabbalistic kirtan, and Sufi zhikr. I have seen something like this in Christian Taize services and in the pre-dawn chanting of Psalms by Benedictine monks. I have participated in something like this in late-night Hebrew chanting in Hasidic communities in Jerusalem. But could we create a nondenominational community built on music, chant, and dance? Would you want to?

Two Wise Women

As my colleagues and I prepared for a few hours of interspiritual teaching and dialogue at Temple Emmanuel in Miami Beach this past Sunday, an elderly Jewish woman came up to speak to me personally.

She told me her name and identified herself as a survivor of eight Nazi concentration camps. In a well-rehearsed and brief presentation she told me how her mother chose to accompany her two baby sisters into the gas chambers rather than stay with her, the oldest of three daughters. She elaborated a bit more and then asked if she could be allowed to address the gathering.

This was a decision I was not empowered to make, and I suggested she talk to our host, Dr. Nathan Katz of Florida International University. I admit to being a bit worried about letting this woman and her painfully compelling story speak for fear she would shift our conversation from Interspirituality to the Holocaust.

Wiser hearts prevailed and she was given an opportunity to speak. She did so for only three minutes. In that time she laid out the horrors she had encountered and the only way she could survive—love. She said that as the Nazis broke her heart, all they released was love. She found in her terror a capacity to understand the terrors of others. It was the most eloquent affirmation of the power of the human spirit to triumph over tragedy I had ever heard.

Another woman survivor added her story as well, summarizing what she had learned about life from her grandmother, also murdered by the Nazis: “You are not defined by what you endure,” her grandmother told her, “but by what you give.”

With the high quality of the presenters from five of the world’s religions, there was a lot of wisdom shared that Sunday, but none so simple, true, and transformative as that of these two women who had endured an unimaginable hell only to manifest what it is to live God’s kingdom here on earth.

A Glassele Tay Party

This weekend the National Tea Party Convention is being held in Nashville, TN, just 25 miles from my home. I want to attend, but the $500+ admission fee is too steep. After giving most of our money to bail our Wall Street and Motown, I have no idea where these Tea Party folks are getting the cash to convene. So I can’t attend, but I want to be part of it anyway.

Let me admit up front that I am anti-tax, anti-health care, anti-war, and anti-government. Seriously, I don’t think we should pay any taxes at all. Everything should be on a pay-as-you-go policy. If you want education for your kids and are too lazy to teach them yourself at home, then hire people to do it. You don’t need a huge bureaucracy. Hire someone to teach your kids English, math, science, history, civics, and home economics (not just cooking, but really managing a home and a home-based entrepreneurial business). If you want to feel safe, hire body guards. Police are only good after a crime has been committed, but private security can shoot a mugger mid-mug. If you want healthcare hire a doctor. If you can’t afford healthcare then at least realize you are doing your species a service by dying young and ending a line of looser genes. Of course if would be best if people making less than $250,000 a year didn’t reproduce as well. While I am anti-government, if we are going to subsidize farmers to not grow crops, why not subsidize people making less than 250K a year to not reproduce?

I could go on, but you get the idea: the Tea Party is for me. But there is a problem: I’m Jewish. I’m not saying the Tea Party is anti-Semitic, but from what I can see the only use they have for Jews is either to blame living Jews for the financial meltdown or exploit dead Jews by linking healthcare to the Holocaust. So, sad to say, the Tea Party movement is more for poor white people and the rich white people who manipulate them, than it is for Jews. So what to do?

Growing up in Longmeadow, MA, we had a local country club that excluded Jews and African Americans. I don’t know what the latter did, but we Jews built a cooler club for ourselves; a place where we could exclude African Americans too, and thereby feel as American as those in the white club. Following this tradition, I plan to start my own Jewish Tea Party. No, I won’t exclude anyone, but I will focus on Jewish themes and concerns.

My movement is called the Glassele Tay Party (Yiddish for Glass of Tea; we Eastern European Jews drink tea out of glasses rather than mugs for some reason). Our platform is simple: If the government is for it, we are against it. This is even true if the government is for what we are for, and therefore is against itself. The Glassele Tay Party is flexible enough to be against what we used to be for if and when the government switches its position and is suddenly for what we used to be for. This will assure us perpetual rebel status, making us the darlings of MSNBC and Fox News depending upon which party is in power.

Our logo is a glass of tea with the tea bag in the glass and the string of the tea bag hanging out of the glass and the little paper on the end of the string bearing a Star of David and the words Glassele Tay Party in faux-Hebrew English letters.

Here are some of our slogans:

“There are lions in Africa, and Africans in Lyon.”

“End Socialized Medicine: Get Your Parents Off of Medicare.”

“End Socialism: Burn Your Social Security Card.”

“Take the US out the UN, and the UN out of Unafraid.”

“Drill Baby Drill—Eat Sugar and Support Your Local Dentist.”

“They THINK We’re Stupid. We KNOW We Are.”

“Fresh Underwear—Change We Can Understand.”

“Don’t Throw Barney Frank Under the Bus; End Public Transportation.”

“I will not grab my ankles. In fact I haven’t seen anything beneath my belly in years.”

“Say No to Pork. Say Yes to Brisket.”

“Moses, Jesus, Paul, Groucho, Lenny, and Jon—the most trusted names in Jews.”

Of course it takes money to get something like this off the ground, and you can consider this blog post a fund raising letter. If everyone who reads this blog would send me $10, I could get this party rolling. If everyone sent me $100 I could start the party, fold the party, and retire, but let’s not think too big.

And if you can’t send money, maybe you know someone who could at least design the logo and send it to me as a jpeg. And maybe they know somebody who can send me money. It doesn’t hurt to ask.

What God Hates

Religion is never boring. At least not in the United States. Case in point: Evangelist John McGlone visited our campus yesterday to preach the true word of God: Hate. Standing across from the Student Union in an area cordoned off with police tape, Pastor John screeched at students to mend their ways.

Students in my American Spirituality class urged me to cancel class so we could go watch the spectacle. I compromised, sticking to my class schedule for the first hour and then going outside for the last 20 minutes. But it wasn’t playtime. Students were to observe and then prepare an answer to this question: Short of ignoring them all together, what is the most effective response to preachers like this? True, ignoring them may be the best response, but that’s no fun..

The first thing I noticed as I wandered around the crowd was John’s sign: “Warning! God hates greedy thieves, liars, drunks, fornicators, immoral women, homosexuals… “ You get the idea. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd to ask John about the sign. He was too busy yelling at some young fornicator, but I did talk to one of his assistants.

“What I want to know is why you put the qualifier ‘greedy’ in the sign. Are you saying God only hates greedy thieves and not all thieves? Is a greedy immoral woman a prostitute who over-charges? God’s problem is with keeping the cost of prostitution down rather than ending prostitution?” The man didn’t understand. He had no clue what a qualifying adjective was.

So one suggestion for John’s next visit is to recreate his sign emphasizing the word “greedy” and celebrating nongreedy homosexuals, thieves, prostitutes, and fornicators.

I noticed another student with a drum and urged him to strike up an African rhythm and I would try to get people to do a circle dance around Pastor John. But one drum was too soft, and I was too embarrassed to ask any co-ed to dance. Just like my student days. Next time I would suggest we bring lots of drums and dance ourselves into a near-immoral frenzy.

Several pastors from local churches were on hand trying to offer a less hateful view of Jesus by handing out lollipops. What, Jesus loves cavities? These people were so passive as to be totally ineffectual, but I liked the food idea. Man cannot live on hate alone.

What I would do is set up food stand with a huge signs that read, “God Hates Shrimp,” and “God Hates Pork,” referencing Leviticus and God’s dietary laws. The stands would give away little squares of Gefilte fish skewered on toothpicks, or maybe little Hebrew National kosher hotdogs wrapped in tiny buns.

Speaking of signs, I would also print up signs referring to other things that God hates: Amalek, Hittites, witches, rebellious sons, and the like. I would fill the quad with signs of God’s hate. True some people will prefer to focus on love, but that is so wimpy. Pastor John is on the right track. God hates as much if not more than God loves. To be fair I might add a few signs from the Book of Revelation and the Koran to my Hebrew Bible inspired hate speech.

And then, I would invite students and faculty to a discussion latter that afternoon focusing on the dangers of blindly quoting scripture, any scripture, and the need to uphold universal principles of compassion and justice that much of our sacred books decry.

I look forward to Tuesday when my students are going to share they ideas. If they actually do so, I’ll share them with you. But don’t hold your breath. I have been doing this job long enough to know that the chances are slim that listened closely enough or thought creatively enough. When it comes to defeating people like John McGlone, place your hope in apathy.

It's Not My Job

It’s not my job. Saving the world, I mean. It just isn’t my job. My job is to write books and share ideas. That’s what I do. It is quite enough for me, taking up most of my time and leaving me with a quiet sense of satisfaction. But for so many who come to hear me share my ideas found in the books I write, it just isn’t enough.

Case in point: At the close of a program on Interspirituality in Miami Beach, Florida, one passionate gentleman demanded to know why we (my fellow religion teachers and myself) don’t lead the peoples of the world in a global effort to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, free the wrongly imprisoned, and become the next judges on American Idol. He may not have said this last one, but that’s what I remember hearing anyway.

My colleagues were wise enough to smile, nod reassuringly, and look for a question more on topic. I, being less wise and not a little annoyed, took up the man’s challenge and gently and compassionately rammed my foot up his ass. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

“The very idea that six religion teachers can save the planet is symptomatic of why the planet needs saving. Sitting here and asking us to do what you should be doing is simply a way for you to self-righteously do nothing. You claim that there isn’t enough to food to feed the hungry? Nonsense. There’s enough food, but when we send it to countries that need it (countries other than our own where 14 million go hungry every day), we tend to filter it through warlords and racketeers who seem to be our friends but who actually use us to oppress their own people only adding to the hatred of us by those very people we want to help.

“If you want to fix the world why not start by ceasing to participate in the American Corporate War Machine and its quest for Empire? Why not stop voting for politicians who are in the pocket of Wall Street even as they bemoan the fate of Main Street? And even if you did stop the war machine and save the hundreds of billions we spend on war each year, do you really think we would spend it to help people? We didn’t help them before the war on terror and we won’t help them after the war on terror. Why? Because we don’t give a shit. Not all of us, but those of us that count; those of us who make policy, and those of us who vote for them. So don’t excuse your own complicity in the horror that is humanity by waiting for the six of us to save the world. Save it yourself, starting with yourself.”

A smattering of applause followed my outburst, and the man never spoke up again. At least this is my fantasy—that I silenced another pious blowhard who thinks the system that thrives on oppression could possibly bring an end to oppression. I love my job. I just wish people would let me do it.

Beware the Gallon Sized Baggie

I should be home asleep in my bed. Instead I am sitting in the Dallas Airport waiting for a flight to Nashville. I had been in Florida to do a little teaching and to visit my parents. My dad turned 84 on February 1st, and my mom passed out two days earlier, fell, and broke three ribs.

I left my parent’s home, maneuvered my way down the parking lot that passes for a highway in South Florida, and flew west to Dallas to catch a plane that would fly me back east to Nashville. Gotta love the hub idea. My plane was delayed almost forty minutes. The cause of the delay was due to American Airlines’ policy of charging people $30 each way for checked baggage, thus incentivizing me and my fellow travelers to cram as much luggage into the overhead compartments as possible. This meant that storage space disappeared after the first 20 people got on board, leaving the next 100 passengers to wander up and down the aisle in a vain search for a place to park their bags for free. By the time we left Miami, arriving in Dallas in time to catch my connecting flight was a slim possibility.

Slim isn’t the same as none, however, and having received Gate Number and instructions on how to minimize the time racing to the gate, I ran off to catch my next flight. I got to Gate 22 in search of Gate 23, only to find there is no Gate 23. At Gate 27 a friendly American Airlines agent saw me coming (I was literally the only person in the terminal) and thought about holding the plane to Nashville for the two minutes it would take me to get from Gate 22 to Gate 27. Unfortunately for me I was looking for Gate 23. I turned back to Gate 22 to ask for help, and my friendly agent decided I have decided not to fly to Nashville after all. She closed the door and my flight departed without me.

Feeling sorry (guilty?) my friendly agent booked me into a hotel. I arrived at the hotel around 11PM and left again six hours later. Few Texans travel that early in the morning and I should have passed through security without having to wait in line. I was the line. And the line stalled.

As it turns out the people who booked my flight had used my Hebrew name, “Rami,” rather than my Christian Name, “Richard.” This didn’t upset the TSA as long as I was flying from Nashville to Miami, and from Miami to Dallas, but as soon as I had to fly from Dallas to Nashville some security threshold must have been crossed. “Richard” is a potential lionhearted king, “Rami” is a potential security risk, so the good people of TSA wouldn’t let me pass.

After speaking with a supervisor, however, and assessing the risk, I was allowed to go through bag check. Well, not through bag check exactly. It seems that while all my toiletries fell well within the “impossible to be used to bring down an aircraft” size, the clear plastic bag I used to haul them in was not. I had used a gallon-sized Ziplock bag, and that is enough to make me a card-carrying (“Rami” not “Richard”) member of Al Qaeda. I had to be quizzed and my bag unpacked and rescreened simply because of the size of my plastic bag.

I have yet to board the plane, and cannot predict what other adventures await me as I try to return to Music City. But I can be fairly certain that as long as airline agents are friendly, and TSA agents are focused on the size of our plastic baggies, we Americans have nothing to fear from terrorists. In fact the only things that scare me when I fly are friendly airline agents and baggie-obsessed TSA agents.