Pretty? Pay Up!

I’m not wealthy, nor did I ever think I would be, but I always felt I should have more money then I do. Now I know why I don’t: I’m not pretty.

According to University of Texas economist Daniel Hamermesh in Why Attractive People Are More Successful, pretty people average $230,000 more in earnings over the course of one’s work life than unattractive people. If you were smart enough to save that $230,000 as it came in, it could amount to millions. And all because you’re pretty.

Is this fair? Should there be an Ugly People’s Disability Act that boosts the income of the unattractive to match that of attractive people? I look the way I do because of my parent’s genes and because I never met a hot fudge sundae I didn’t like, and that too can probably be blamed on my parents; can I sue my parents for lost wages?

I checked into this with a lawyer I know who makes more and looks better than me, and he said no. I simply have to compensate for my looks with competence. He wasn’t kidding. What is the ratio of competence to beauty? He didn’t know.

I watch the folks on Fox & Friends (I would now change the name of their show to Foxy Friends) who seem to excel in looks while being a bit on the lighter side of competence, and wonder how I can compete. Then I watch Rev. Al Sharpton who makes up in decibels what he lacks in looks. Maybe that’s the way to go: loud and proud.

I’m really at a loss. And worse, I’m in my sixties so my level of attractiveness, as low as it is, is only going to get lower. Well it may be too late for me, but there are millions of Americans like me for whom some redress is possible. Here is my suggestion:

Take a look at yourself in the mirror and decide if you are pretty or not. If you are, prorate the $230,000 extra you will earn because you are pretty, and start giving that money away to the unattractive people who live around you. Have some cards printed up that read, “I’m sorry you’re not as pretty as me; here’s $100,” and but a fresh $100 bill in the card and start handing them out on the street or at the office. After you’ve given away 2300 cards you can stop and just go about your business. I look forward to getting your cards.

Avoid Future Disappointment & Regret

I love watching television. I find it both entertaining and educational. Just the other day I was watching a commercial for gold plated faux $50 coins and learned that by buying today I could “avoid disappointment and future regret.” Now that is something worth knowing!

Disappoint happens when I desire one outcome and receive another less desirable outcome. Regret is when I engage in an action designed to bring me (or someone else) pleasure, and which ends up bringing me (or someone else) pain. I can eliminate both by purchasing a gold plated faux $50 coin for about ten bucks plus shipping and handling. It sounds like a good deal. But is it true?

The only way to test the truth of this commercial is to buy a coin and see if, from the moment it arrives, I avoid disappointment and future regret. This would, by definition, take me the rest of my life, so buying this coin to test its truth claims is one long-term commitment I am not eager to make. Hence I cannot comment meaningfully on its truth claim.

What I can do, however, is think a bit more about disappointment and regret. Just a bit more—after all, this is only ten dollars worth of worry.

It seems to me that when it comes to disappointment, the Hsin Hsin Ming (On the Faith Mind) by the seventh century Chinese Ch’an master Chien-chih Seng-ts’an, offers the best advice: “If you wish to see the truth then hold no opinions.” If you want to avoid disappointment, simply accept reality as it is.

Future regret is similar. Future regret is a karmic ripening that happens when your intent while acting in this moment doesn’t match the result of that action at a latter moment. Karma yogis tell us that we should relinquish the results of our actions, doing what is right and good now, and knowing that we have no control over the outcome. But does that do away with regret?

It does if you hold to the notion of holding no opinions. If you have no opinions, no preferences, then whatever happens is simply reality and you deal with it without any extraneous emotions such as disappointment and regret.

The challenge is achieving the mindset of Chien-chih Seng-ts’an. The very desire to do so sets in motion the very things you desire to avoid, so you are screwed as soon as you begin. And because this is so, it will take you a lifetime filled with disappointment and regret to achieve your goal, if you achieve it at all.

So in the end it may be a lot easier just to buy the gold plated faux $50 coin. Which is why I watch so much television in the first place—you learn lots of stuff.

God is Messing with Texas

I believe God controls the weather, and uses the weather to reward and punish people. I believe this because it is in the Bible, and because most of my neighbors seem to believe it as well. It is comforting to believe what everyone else believes. Easier too.

Over the years I’ve been told that extreme weather is God’s punishment for American acceptance of abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage, and other sins of liberalism. I don’t doubt this at all. What I don’t understand is why God hates Texas, that bastion of all things godly.

Texas is boiling. July has been the hottest and driest month in Texas since Noah. The government is spending millions of dollars on a treatment plant that will allow Texans to drink their own urine, but the only showers the state can count on are golden ones.

But why? It can’t be Global Warming because Global Warming is a liberal hoax. It can’t be El Nino or El Nina because we put up a fence to keep Mexicans out. So it can only be God:

“Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods and bow to them. For the LORD’s anger will flare up against you, and He will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its produce; and you will soon perish from the good land that the LORD is assigning to you.“ (Deut.11: 16-17)

Sure you could say God was only threatening the Jews in Israel, but we didn’t limit God’s wrath to the past in the past, so we can’t do so now. So what god is Texas worshipping that is getting the LORD so angry?

It can’t be the god of the gay agenda, or the god of liberalism, or the god of compromise—Texas is the bastion of conservative, dominionist, and even secessionist Christianity. Is there a single state in the Union that loves Jesus more than Texas? I doubt it. So what could be the problem? Unless…

When Christianity started there was a notion that the God of the “Old Testament” was not the God of the New Testament, and that the Old Testament God should be abandoned. But it is the OT God that uses weather to punish people. Could it be that what we are seeing in Texas today is the wrath of the OT God aimed at Texas because Texas has sided with Jesus? Clearly Gov. Perry’s rally calling people to Jesus didn’t bring a change in the weather. Maybe that’s because the God of the weather isn’t a Christian.

I can’t pretend to know. But I will tell the people of Texas this: God is messing with you, and you had better find out why and fast. I suggest Gov. Perry hold a second prayer rally, and this time limit it to Jews. Have the rabbis of Texas pray for rain. They may be the only Texans left who believe in the God of weather.

If I Had 1000 Terrorists

“I would waterboard 1000 terrorists to save one American life.”

That’s what the bumper sticker read on the Ford Bronco driving in front of me this afternoon. It is a compelling confession. I couldn’t help wondering if it were true.

Based on the other stickers the truck carried, I wondered if the driver of the Bronco would waterboard 1000 terrorists to save one baby killing abortionist even if he or she were American. I think the driver would have the same reservation about saving one can gay American married to another gay American. In fact I doubt he would waterboard anyone to save President Obama who is a straight American with two kids.

Interesting questions to ask the driver at a stop light, but given the fact that waterboarding doesn’t result in good intelligence, does it really make sense to imagine that waterboarding 1000 terrorists would save even one American life? I suspect the driver would really want his sticker to read: “I’d waterboard 1000 terrorists just for the freaking hell of it.”

I guess that’s why I don’t drive a Ford Bronco: I wouldn’t waterboard anybody.

If for some reason I did have 1000 terrorists on hand I’d put them in prison rather than waste time and water on waterboarding them.

Where would one get 1000 terrorists anyway? I don’t think we have that many on hand. And if we did, why give them to someone, especially someone who drives a Ford Bronco?

Of course if I did have 1000 terrorists I imagine the government would think I was a terrorist mastermind and come after me. So I’d either refuse the delivery of 1000 terrorists or call the authorities once I had them. I’d call them even if I had only 999 terrorists. Or even 998. In fact if I had only one terrorist I would turn him or her over to the authorities. I just don’t want them around.

I had the opportunity of pulling up next to the Ford Bronco and asking the driver if he plans on getting his hands on 1000 terrorists, but when I looked into the front seat it had that, “I have no sense of humor and I will kill you for being a smart ass” look, so I just let him get ahead of me when the light turned green.

Are You Afraid of God?

Are you afraid of God? Millions of Americans seem to be. Their fear is tied to their belief in eternal damnation in Hell. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian Old Testament, knows nothing about this. For the early Hebrews everyone suffered the same fate: we all went to Sheol, a lifeless place similar to a Motel Six where they forgot to leave the light on for you.

Hell comes to us via the rabbis who probably borrowed the idea from Zoroastrianism. The rabbis made little use of the idea, while their their Christian rivals seem to obsess over it.

Oliver Thomas writes about this in USA TODAY (Monday 9/8/11). According to Thomas, when Jesus speaks of "eternal" punishment the Greek New Testament uses the word aionos which is better understood as "final" rather "eternal". And almost every reference to Hell is a reference to Gehenna, the valley on the south side of Jerusalem where garbage was dumped in Jesus’ day. Jesus’ message was this: change your life (teshuvah in the Hebrew, repent in English) or your final destination will be the garbage dump. Or, as Rev. Thomas puts is, repent or you wind up wasting your life.

If Jesus did not teach eternal damnation, why insist he did?

The answer, I think, is simple: fear brings power; the only way we can get people to follow stupid ideas is to scare them out of thinking any other ideas. This is what fundamentalism does to people. It robs them of the ability to think by scaring them away from questioning their beliefs at all.

If the motivations of the masters of this madness are clear—fear brings them power—it still leaves us with the question as to why people adhere to these ideas? To be blunt: Why volunteer to follow a preacher who preaches a sadistic god and a religion of hate? I can only think of one reason: the people who follow sadists are themselves sadistic.

When I suggest this to fundamentalists they are horrified, and claim they do not believe in eternal hellfire for their own benefit but because this is what the Bible teaches. This is, of course, nonsense. The Bible can be read many different ways. There are as many love-based versions of Christianity, for example, as there are fear-based ones. So why choose fear over love, torture over forgiveness; anger over compassion? There can only be one answer: they like the fate that befalls those who disagree with them. They are sadist.

I find this answer inescapable and very troubling. Please show me where I am wrong.

Religion By The Numbers

According to a study by University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor Philip Schwadel the higher one’s level of education the broader and more liberal one’s religious beliefs become.

I would like to take credit for this. I would like to think that as students are exposed to my World Religions class or my Religion in America class they become more open in their thinking about religion in general and their religion in particular. But, according to Schwadel this trend begins when people enter the eighth grade, so I really can’t take credit at all. It is cool, though.

The study shows that “for each additional year of education past grade seven” Americans are

1. 15% more likely to attend a worship service in the past week
2. 13% more likely to do that worship in a less strict mainline church
3. 14% more likely to believe in a Higher Power than a personal god
4. 13% less likely to think one religion us true and the others false

I am confused as to how I am to read these numbers. Am I to multiply these percentages by the number of years of schooling one has past the seventh grade? Does this mean that if you make it through high school you are 75% more likely to attend a church? Or that if, like me, you have 13 years of post-seventh grade education you are 169% more likely to think truth is present of more than one religion? How can you be 169% anything?

So what does this study show? It shows that some of us (that would be me) haven’t got a clue how to read sociological studies that include numbers. If you can help me out with this, please do.

In the meantime, I am gearing up for my fall classes and the off-chance that I will get a group of students who 1) have made it through the seventh grade; 2) did so on actual merit and not because their teachers cheated on their No Child Left Behind tests, and 3) are 196% more likely to believe in an impersonal god.

War Against the West or War Against the Rest?

To speak of an Islamic war against the West, as many do, is to miss the greater truth of our time. Islam is only one front of a larger war, the war of fundamentalism against post-modernity; What Christian, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish fundamentalisms have in common is a modernist obsession with answers cast in affirmations of pre-modern theologies.

Fundamentalism is all about answers, and their primary enemies are reason, free thought, and the scientific method, all of which are rooted in questions. When their answers are questioned they become afraid; when they become afraid they become aggressive; and when they become aggressive they become violent.

How do we who side with the reason, science, and freethinking win this war? I don’t know if we can. Indeed it may already be lost. Look at our debt ceiling “debate.” No matter what the facts there will be members of Congress (both Tea Party and Progressive) who will vote against raising the debt limit believing either than the country will not crash, or that it is preferable to crash than to borrow. This is a martyrology common to fundamentalisms. It is better to die for one’s faith than question it.

The same mentality is at play in the “debates” over evolution and climate change. According to fundamentalists science is simply a matter of opinion; facts have nothing to do with it. Facts are simply what we say they are, and truth is measured in decibels rather than empirical evidence. The louder you scream your “facts” the more “true” they become. This is true on the right and the left, and the middle—if there is still middle—has been silenced by all the screaming.

Vice President Cheney was wrong to deride the “reality based community,” and right to point out its growing irrelevance. “Reality is what we [meaning the Bush administration] say it is,” he said. And he was right. In a world where reality is spin spun loudly, can reason prevail? I doubt it.

Humanity is too young to know if this is a pattern or not. But we may eventually discover that there is a cycle to human civilization: we move from pre-modern superstition to modern science/reason to post-modern questioning of everything and then become so frightened by existential absurdity and the possibility of nihilism that we reject reality and take refuge in fundamentalist sureties. This leads to a long period of scientific and economic decline that results in on-going religious wars among competing sureties that eventually exhausts people to the point where they are willing to give reason a shot once more. Unfortunately rationalism in turn collapses into nihilism and the cycle continues.

My guess is we may be on the verge of a return to pre-modern religious wars and the violence such madness entails. I hope I am wrong, but I doubt it.

My guess? There is a war. And we have already lost.

The Muslim Radicals We Need

Asra Q. Nomani, in a USA Today op–ed piece (End gender apartheid in U.S. Mosques, July 11, 2011) calls upon U.S. Moslem women to use the U.S. court system (and the threat of losing religious tax-exemptions) to force mosques to end gender discrimination. This is nonsense.

Gender discrimination in Islam, Orthodox Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and certain Protestant Christianities is not a matter of policy but divine revelation. For the courts to go against the perceived will of God is anathema to the separation of Church and State. Even those who deny there is a separation of Church and State would suddenly discover it if the State went after religion in this way.

This is not a civil rights issue, as Ms. Nomani claims. Discrimination against women (and others) in religion is not unconstitutional. Secular authorities have no right to say what is and what is not Divine Law. Only you do.

If you don’t like the teachings of your faith, join another, or create your own. It is that simple. If you believe that your religion misrepresents the word of God, why stay within it?

If Ms. Nomani doesn’t want to pray in the basement of her mosque, she should start her own mosque. This is the kind of Islamic radicalism Islam needs: free people creating free mosques; American Muslims creating American mosques that celebrate American values in a Muslim frame, and Muslim values in an American frame.

Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionism Judaism, called this living in two civilizations. He sought to blend the best of Judaism with the best of America, and created his own denomination in the process. And part of his impetus was the synagogue’s discrimination against Jewish women. Ms. Nomani can and should do the same.

Is Rep. Michelle Bachman a Bigot?

“Hey, I’m not anti-Catholic, I just think the Pope is the Anti-Christ.” While not a direct quote (I will get to those in a moment) from Rev. Mark Schroeder, president of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, this is essentially his message in a July 18, 2011 piece he wrote for Religion News (www.religionnews.com).

The issue is whether Congresswoman and Presidential Candidate Michelle Bachman, who was once a member of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod, is anti-Catholic. On that issue Rev. Schroeder wrote, “Michele Bachmann is no longer a member of our church, and we are not in any position to comment on her current religious views. But we can say that her previous membership in our church does not make her guilty of being an ‘anti-Catholic bigot.’”

The reason why is that the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod itself isn’t anti-Catholic. As Rev. Schroeder wrote, “WELS holds to the historic Lutheran position that the Roman Catholic papacy fits the biblical characteristics of the Antichrist. We do this without reservation and without apology. We believe that our doctrines cannot be tempered by political correctness or modified to align with changing culture or public opinion.”

Holding such views about the Papacy isn’t the same as being anti-Catholic, and, as the good reverend says, “we rejoice that even in the Catholic Church (where we believe the gospel has been distorted) there are many Catholics who hold to a simple faith in Jesus Christ as their savior and who will ultimately be saved.”

Even in the Catholic Church? This is like someone saying, “I’m no Anti-Semite; some of my best friends are Jewish.”

Really if you think the Papacy is the Anti-Christ it stands to reason (which, I know, often has no place in religion) that those who follow the Anti-Christ are your enemies. But does this make you a bigot?

Merriam-Webster defines bigot as “a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” When Rev. Schroeder says “our doctrines cannot be tempered by political correctness or modified to align with changing culture or public opinion,” is the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod being obstinate or intolerant?

Of course it is. Being bigoted (as defined by Merriam-Webster) is, for many religious denominations, what being religious is all about. But do Michelle Bachman and Rev. Schroeder hate Catholics? I doubt it. In fact, I bet some of their best friends are Catholic. Politics makes strange bedfellows.

Bad Gods Make Good People

In a recent study of the impact of religious beliefs on human behavior* researchers found that those who believe in a punishing god are more likely to avoid cheating than those who believe in a loving god.

The reasoning is simple: if you think God is watching over you and ever ready to condemn you for sinning, chances are you are not going to sin. I get this. Whenever I’m driving and see a police car, I immediately make sure I’m not exceeding the speed limit. I don’t’ want a ticket. If I thought the officer would only give me a wink and a warning, hell what’s twenty miles over the limit anyway?

Researchers call this the supernatural punishment hypothesis or SPH: “the SPH specifically predicts that it is the punishing aspects of gods and the threat of divine punishment, rather than any loving or compassionate traits, which are responsible for keeping adherents from crossing ethical boundaries in anonymous situations where they would otherwise be tempted.”

Basically science says fear works, and that believing in a punishing god keeps you more moral than believing in a loving god. This is good news for the religious unless, of course, you’re the kind of religious who believe in a punishing god who will punish you for believing in science, in which case you are massively conflicted.

This must also be troubling to people like me who just can’t muster this kind of fearful belief. But there is hope!

The study also found that there was no statistical difference between believers and nonbelievers when it came to cheating. Both believers and nonbelievers cheated, on average, 11 out of 20 times. But believers who believe in a god of love cheated more that believers in a wrathful god and those who did not believe in god at all.

What does this mean? First, people cheat. And we do so over 50% of the time. Second, God has nothing to do with it: religious people are no more moral that unreligious people. Third, among religious people, the frightened are more moral than the beloved. And fourth, science proves the power of god! Unless of course you’re an atheist, which the study shows, is just as good.

*(Shariff, Azim F. and Norenzayan, Ara 'Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior', International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 21:2, 85 – 96)

America First Pledge

I am envious of Grover Norquist. First he's named after a Sesame Street character, and how cool is that? Second he controls the votes of hundreds of legislators and through them has his fingers on the throat of America. And all because of a simple pledge he concocted in the 80’s.

The idea of tying politician’s hands by getting them to sign pledges is an appealing one, as the growing number of pledges attests. So I want to create my own pledge and get politicians to sign it as well. Here’s what I’m considering:

The America First Pledge

I,______________, pledge to my constituents and the American people that I will:

1. put the welfare of the United States and her citizens ahead of partisan bickering, political gerrymandering, and personal gain;

2. value empirically verifiable facts over political propaganda, rational discourse over politically expedient demagoguery, sound science over cultural bias, and well-documented facts over well-spun lies; and

3. uphold these two promises even at the cost of my status within my party, my party’s status within the nation, and my own reelection.

Signature: _________________________

Date: _________________________

Witness: _________________________

Witness: _________________________


If you like this pledge, let me know. If you want to tweak it to make it better (but not longer), post your suggestions in the comments section of this blog. And if you have any idea how to promote this pledge to make it as ubiquitous as Mr. Norquist’s, please share your wisdom.

Color Them Orange

The Orange Order, a Protestant brotherhood, annually celebrates the 17th century defeat of Catholics by Protestants in Ireland. That’s 400 years ago. That’s a lot of annual parades, though I can’t say for certain when the parade thing started.

Anyway, who wants to have their defeat at the hands of heretics (i.e. Protestants) rubbed in their faces every year? Certainly not Catholic teens, hundreds of whom attacked police in Belfast before and after the Orange Order parade. (Where were they during the parade? Watching the parade, of course. Who doesn’t love a good parade?)

“We ain’t dead yet you heretical bastards” they might have shouted before and after the parade if they had asked me what to shout during their clashes with police who may or may not have been heretical bastards but who were certainly trying to keep those heretical bastards from getting hurt by (or hurting?) the Papist bull dogs who hounded them. “We ain’t dead yet.”

You might wonder why religion and violence go hand in hand. It’s simple. People are intrinsically violent. We are also intrinsically religious. Hence we are intrinsically violent when it comes to religion.

I was listening to a televangelist the other day who said, “Jesus came as a Lamb, but he’s coming back as a Lion.” We don’t want our gods to be like Mr. Rogers. We want them to be like Mr. T. That’s why Jesus, who was mostly like Mr. Rogers, had to be transformed into Christ, who is mostly like Mr. T.

Of course when I say “we” I mean mostly boys and those girls (like that televangelist) who have surrendered to boys and their gods. Left alone, girls have a different idea about gods. Girl gods tend to be wide of hip, large of breast, and more focused on crop yields than body counts. Not that they can’t whip your ass if provoked, but mostly they aren’t about war. That’s why most boy religions keep girls in the back room. We only want to hear about peace and love after we massacre those we fear and hate. Read your Bible, people!

Personally, I don’t like religious victory parades, and I don’t care to see Yaweh in the ring with Allah, or Jesus the Lionheart taking on Pope AntiChrist the XXXXII, though I might pay to see Saraswati and Aphrodite mudwrestle. I am a boy, after all.

Anyway, I just want to send a heartfelt congrats to the Protestants on their victory, and my condolences to the Catholics. But not to worry me boyos, you’ll get those heretics in the afterlife.

Jews are Cool. Judaism? Not so much.

Jews are cool. Not all of us, of course, but many. Some are humanist and some are Hasidic— being cool isn’t a denominational thing. It is a matter of being at home with yourself while dancing on the cutting edge of your culture.

Jewish establishments (those exceptionally uncool masters of money and meme) seem to understand the marketing potential of cool (though not its essence), and spend enormous sums of cash imitating it. But imitation cool isn’t cool; it is lukewarm crap. Which is exactly what so much Judaism is today is: lukewarm crap. To be cool you have to have the chutzpah to either fail miserably or succeed magnificently, and official Judaisms are too afraid to do either.

The other day my friend Rabbi Robert Barr (who is cool) told me about the demise of the music publisher JDub, one of the few vibrant lights of Jewish cool. Once funded by the uncool in search of cool, it is sad that JDub will die not for lack of quality and imagination, but for lack of funds.

Is this what we can expect of Judaism in the 21st century: a lukewarm and well-funded rehash of pre-modern Judaism with a splash of faux kabbalism added so we can stamp “New and Improved” on the box? I suspect it is. And, with it comes the growing irrelevance and marginalization of Judaism to postmodern reality.

Think about this for a moment: If it weren’t for Goldman, Sacks, Madoff, and Abramoff would we ever read about Jews in the mainstream press? And if not for rising anti-Semitism, the never-ending Arab-Israeli conflict, and the apocalyptic snuff-theologies of fundamentalists drooling over the deaths of millions of Jews as prelude to Jesus' Second Coming, I suspect Judaism would be as relevant to post-modern culture as the Amish.

This is not the fault of funders, of course. By the time they have the funds to share, they are probably so out of touch with cool that even the tepid is too hot to handle. This is the fault of Jews who know little and demand less, and who support synagogues without getting involved enough to be bored, demand change, or quit. This is the fault of rabbis, cantors and Jewish educators who think their job is to teach the past rather than invent the future. And it is my fault for having given up, and settled for digital rants from the sidelines.

So good–bye JDub; good–bye cool; good-bye meaningful Judaism. Hello…….?

I Wanna Be God

Ben Ferguson of Memphis Fox News took to the streets to see if anyone could answer this question: "Can you name the candidate who is running for president who believes that if he is a good person, he will get his own planet?"

The answer is Mitt Romney or Jon Huntsman, both of whom are Mormons. Part of Mormon doctrine is that all good Mormon men get to become Gods of their own planet. Jesus’ Dad was once a man who became a God and had a kid who is now also a God.

"Would you vote for someone for president who believes that if they are a good person, you will get their own planet?" Ferguson asked passersby, "You want your own planet, don't you?"

Mr. Ferguson’s intent was to ridicule Mormonism. Tennessee has a history of anti-Mormonism, but I found the question pertinent.

Would I vote for someone who hoped to rule a planet one day? Damn straight I would! How refreshing to vote for someone who thought he had a real chance at become a God rather than settle for the normal political hubris of demi-god.

And would I want to be God of my own planet some day? Absolutely. Sure I know how hard it is to be God. I’ve seen the Futurama episode where Binder becomes God (Godfellas, 3/17/02), but I still think I could pull it off.

I would probably do away with a few things. People for one. Actually that might just do it for me. But if I had to have people I would do away with free will. Why make a world where moms can kill their babies and get away with it? To give Nancy Grace a job? Not worth it.

And what is so great about free will anyway? If I didn’t have it, would I miss it? No. If people only had desires that were kind and just, would we long for murder and mayhem? I doubt it.

People tell me that God had to give us free will so that we could freely choose to love him. Of course if we don’t love God we burn in hell for eternity, so how free is that love anyway? But if this really matters, I’d create a world where you didn’t have to love Me. Really what do I care if humans love Me? I’m God for My sake!

And I’d do away with heaven and hell also. In my world people would die and become compost thereby helping other life to grow. This is much better than the narcissism of eternal life.

Some Mormons are complaining that becoming a God is a minority position among Mormons. Too bad. What’s wrong with a religion that goes for the gold? Stick to your guns, Mormons! And good luck with those planets, and the presidency.

Of Mayans, Mormons, and French Fries

I’m sitting at IHOP reading USAToday uncomfortably aware that the man in the booth across from mine is watching me. As I finished the News section, which I always read first, I grabbed the Sports section, which I never read, and offered both to my neighbor.

“Paper?” I said.

“No thanks,” he said, “I never read the thing. When I want to know what’s going on in the world I turn to the only source you can trust, the Bible.”

“Fair and balanced,” I said smiling.

“Just and true,” he said, not smiling.

“Really?” I said. “The Bible keeps you up on the day’s news?”

“It tells me what's really going on. You think those papers know anything? They distract you with the surface stuff, but the real news is that Jesus is coming back and soon. All these wars and the debt ceiling are just signs of the Apocalypse. The world comes to an end December 21, 2012.”

“That may be,” I said, “but that isn’t in the Bible, that’s the Mayans.”

“The Mayans were Jews who came here before Jesus, and Jesus came to them and gave them their calendar and told them and us when the world was going to end and when he was coming back.”

“That may be,” I said, “but that isn’t in the Bible, that’s sort of from the Book of Mormon.”

“I don’t know about Mormons, but I know about the Bible. December 21, 2012—the end. But you know that don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re the rabbi. I’ve seen your picture in the paper.”

“I thought you didn’t read…”

“You know Jesus is coming back and you’re doing everything you can to stop it.”

“Me personally?”

“You and all the other Jews who deny the Lord.”

“That’s pretty much all of us,” I said. “In fact, in American today, that pretty much defines what it means to be a Jew: we are just like you except we deny the Lord.” I was trying to bond with this guy, and failing miserably.

“Damn straight. You know you can’t stop him, and he is going to kill you all. All but some who will go to Israel to welcome him and worship him.”

“144,000,” I said.

“That’s right. Why don’t you want to be among them?”

“What makes you think I don’t want to be among them?” I said.

“Well, you’re sitting here in IHOP rather than in Jerusalem. He won’t come until all you Jews move to Israel.”

“Where he will kill us.”

“Yeah, but only if you don’t accept him as your Lord and Savior.”

“And that is going to happen on December 12, 2012? What about the pastor who says it’s going to happen on October 21, 2011.”

“He doesn’t know his Bible,” he said.

“Maybe he does. Maybe he knows it better. Maybe he’s just not a Mayan Mormon like you.”

That was a conversation killer, and I regretted saying it as soon as I heard the words come out of my mouth. I should have apologized, but the man had already shut down. He took a last sip of his coffee, exited his booth, and walked to the cashier to pay his bill.

I turned back to my eggs. They were cold, and I wasn’t hungry any more. I waited until the man had paid for his breakfast and left the restaurant. I then stood up to do the same. Something called my attention to the plate of French fries lying on his table. Most were laying on one side of the plate but two—one long, one short—lay on the other side in a cross formation.

“Jesus? Is that you?” I said silently. I waited for a reply. Nothing. I walked over to the cashier and waited for her to take my money. Two pens lay on the counter in cross formation. “Jesus?” I thought.

I kept seeing crosses all day. On my drive home I even saw two Mormon missionaries on their bicycles. I was hoping they’d knock on my door, but I knew that even then I wouldn’t believe. If a Mayan dropped by however, all bets are off.

Fat and Fatter in Tennessee

One good thing about living in the fourth fattest state in the US is that I look normal. According to our local newspaper, more that 75% of Tennesseans are obese or overweight. That means that obesity here is the norm. When we see someone who isn’t fat we assume they are ill.

According to a variety of scientific studies, we Tennesseans are fat because we are poor. Lucky for us we don’t value science all that much (Darwin is the Devil reads one bumper sticker), and when we look at people in poor countries they don’t look fat—they look like they’re starving. That’s why we send them money. And Jesus.

Just the other day I walked into one of our town’s two yogurt bars. The yogurt comes out of huge kegs like beer. You can sample all the flavors and then make your own yogurt treat. There are over a dozen toppings to choose from to help disguise the fact that you are eating yogurt in the first place. They charge you by weight—the weight of the yogurt and toppings, not your own weight.

Anyway, I walk into the yogurt bar and work my way through the samples. A gaggle of tween–age girls are doing the same. By the time I’m done I’m full, and don’t feel like eating any more yogurt. The girls feel the same and leave without buying anything. The clerk, a high school girl, is disappointed and a bit disgusted. She looks at me hoping I will not follow in the footsteps of the tweeners. I want to, but I’m too old to think eating this way is cool, so I buy a cup of yogurt. It was a bit bland, so I add some peanuts to it. Then some coconut. Then some hot fudge. Then some whip cream. I’m still not hungry, but I make the clerk happy, sit myself down at a table, and eat it all.

By the time I’m ready to leave, I’m feeling really bloated. I notice that the clerk is thin, and probably never eats the stuff she sells. I am feeling very fat, especially when compared to this young woman. My salvation lies outside.

As soon as I step out into the street, I’m surrounded by my obese fellow Tennesseans. As I walk the two blocks to my car the people seem to get even bigger, and I start feeling thin—hey, it was yogurt I was eating, not ice cream; and I probably walked off the calories by now anyway, and—my God!—how can these people let themselves get so fat? Have they no self-respect, no self-control? Maybe they are poor and just can’t afford to eat more healthily. Maybe I’ll send them some money. And Jesus.

Of Gods and Dogs

I have a friend who is going through something of a spiritual crisis. All her adult life she believed in Pre-Tribulation, the belief that all good Christians are raptured to heaven before God turns the earth into a living hell for seven years prior to the coming of Jesus. Believing herself to be a good Christian and certain to be raptured, she thought she would escape the horrors of God’s wrath.

But now she is studying with a new pastor and he has just about convinced her that Post-Trib theory is correct and Pre-Trib is heresy. Post-Tribulation theory says that the rapture will come only after all humanity—Christians and nonChristians alike—suffer the wrath of God—and it’s coming soon.

I feel for her; this is scary stuff. She never asks me which I believe knowing that Judaism is a Trib-free faith. So the last time she mentioned her crisis I asked a different kind of question: what about our dogs?

I prefer to dogs to people. I can see why God would hate people enough to torture them. I have those feelings myself. But I can’t see how God could hate dogs, or why God would torture them. Dogs should be raptured before the Tribulation, or at least they should if God loves dogs.

“Do you think God loves dogs?” I asked. My friend didn’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. Which led me to an interesting observation: you never hear of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Confucius, Mahavira, Martin Luther, Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, Madame Blavatsky, L. Ron Hubbard, or any other founder of a faith having a dog. Presidents often have dogs, but Popes never do. Why is that?

I can think of two reasons why religious founders don’t have dogs. Either they don’t like dogs, or dogs don’t like them. Or maybe they don’t like dogs because dogs don’t them, or dogs don’t like them because they don’t like dogs. Personally I wouldn’t want to follow any sage that didn’t love dogs and wasn’t loved by them. Of course if I’m going to use the dog standard I have to deal with the fact that Hitler had a dog who seemed to love him. Do dogs love unconditionally, or was this an evil dog? I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say.

Anyway, even if it’s not foolproof, I think the dog standard is a good one. I know Zen Buddhists for whom the question “Does a dog have Buddha nature” is crucial, but I think they’ve got it backwards. For me the crucial question is, “Is it the Buddha’s nature to have a dog?”

I think I’m going to join only those religions where the founders had and loved dogs. Let me know if you know of any.

Are You a Good Person?

I was browsing the religion section of the Franklin Barnes and Nobel when a well–dressed young man asked me, “Interested in these kinds of books?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” he said.

“No.”

“Are you a good person?”

“Sometimes” I said, knowing where this conversation was going. “Sometimes I’m a real SOB.”

“Have you ever told a lie or taken something that wasn’t yours?”

“Sure.”

“Then you’re a liar and a thief. Are liars and thieves good people? Do you know what happens to liars and thieves? They spend eternity in Hell. Their only hope is accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Are you ready to do that?”

“Burn in Hell or accept Jesus?”

“What?”

“You asked me if I’m ready to burn in Hell or accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I’m not ready for either. In fact I don’t believe in either.”

“But …”

“Listen, if you really believe that the Creator of the Universe is a sadistic torturer who needs the death of an innocent in order to forgive the guilty, you’ve got a major problem. If you dare speak of God as Love, and then imagine a god who will roast you in Hell for telling your friend she doesn't look like she's gained weight when in fact she does, then you're sick. We create gods in our own image, and if this god is your image I suggest you need serious psychiatric intervention. We’re you abused as a child by your dad? You should get help.”

“F#ck you!” he said as he stormed away.

I called after him: “Do you know what God does to people who swear? He makes them burn in Hell for ever.”

He gave me the finger. Jesus would be proud.

I'm a Rabbi Because...

“Aren’t you awfully cynical to be a rabbi?”

The question came from a fellow in a Torah class I was teaching in Nashville.

“You say religion is all about power. How cynical is that? I would think a rabbi would have something far more positive to say about religion in general, and certainly about Judaism in particular. Perhaps you shouldn’t be a rabbi any longer.”

It’s true: you would think that. Who wouldn’t think that? Rabbis are supposed to say things like: The Jews are God’s Chosen People; The Torah is God’s one true revelation; Israel is the Promised Land. I, on the other hand, can’t help but see such statements as marketing propaganda.

If you’re going to imagine a god who chooses people, it isn’t surprising that you imagine this god choosing you. If you’re going to imagine a god who reveals truth in a book, it isn’t surprising that you would imagine this book is your book. And if you’re going to imagine a god who dabbles in real estate, it isn’t surprising that you would imagine that your land is in fact the Promised Land.

What would be surprising—and perhaps far more convincing—would be if the Jews thought God chose someone else, wrote something else, and lived somewhere else.

And what about my notion that religious institutions are all about power? Can they be about anything else? By and large, religions are patriarchal hierarchies that demand do whatever it is that the clergy’s god wants. And what their god wants most of all is for them to do what the clergy say.

I’m not saying that religions cannot and do not do good in the world; they can and they do. I am only saying that doing good is not why they were created. Is this cynicism or honesty? I think it is the latter. So should being honest drive me out of the rabbinate? Not just yet.
I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis are iconoclasts, shattering the past against the sharp rocks of creative imagination.

I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis are heirs to the prophets and their passion for justice, and not the priests and their obsession with ritual and purity.
I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis are meaning–makers.
I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis reinvent the past as a means of creating the future.
I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis are willing to kill the old gods and invent the new gods by rewriting the old stories to make them new stories.
I am a rabbi because, at our best, rabbis are willing to speak truth to power, even when that power holds their financial future in its hands.

True, we are not always at our best. But many of us are, and the rest can always hope.
So I will continue to do what I think rabbis are supposed to do: teach truth as best we can regardless of where is leads us.

From Birkenstocks to Burkhas

I hate the idea of enslaving women to the mores and power of men. I want women to make their own choices regarding every aspect of their lives, and I will defend to the death of someone younger, poorer, and less able to avoid being sent to die in one of our seemingly endless imperialist wars than I, their right to do so.

But what do I do when they choose badly? It is one thing, for example, to hate the burka when it is imposed on women by men, and another thing to hate it when women freely choose to wear it. No, I’m not talking about Muslim women. I have my doubts that Saudi women are any more free regarding the clothes they wear then they are regarding the cars they drive.

I am talking about Jewish women. I learned from Miriam Shaviv’s column in the April 29th issue of the Forward that there is a small movement of ultra–Orthodox women in Israel who have taken to wearing the burka as a sign of modesty. Their men are not asking them to do this, let alone forcing them. Indeed, in 2005 a rabbinic court granted a divorce to one man married to a burka wearing wife on the grounds that any Jewish women who took modesty that far suffered from a “serious mental disturbance.”

The burkah babes are followers of Bruria Keren, a convicted child abuser who wears ten layers of clothing whenever she leaves her home. They argue that their fashion choice is a statement of modesty and choice. Ms. Shaviv disagrees seeing it instead as the logical extension of the male imposition of modesty on women. She sights the fact that ultra–Orthodox women must wear high necklines, thick colored stockings, long sleeves, and wigs, and that they are being asked to wear rubber soled shoes so as not to disturb men when they walk by. It is a small step from Birkenstocks to burkhas.

Maybe so. But since most Jewish women choose not to wear burkhas, I can’t help but think that those who do are doing so of their own free will.

So while I would like to use the burkha as a sign of women’s oppression in some Islamic societies, I cannot do so when it comes to some Jewish ones. Given this double standard, perhaps I should stop using it as a sign of anything.

I would love to hear from you about this. Are burkahs always a sign of oppression? What about male imposed modesty laws in general? What about restaurants demanding that patrons wear shirts and shoes when entering (exposing one’s genitals and butt is still OK)? Maybe we should all just go nude as sign of our freedom? I hope some of you agree with that. I hope most of you don’t.

Voting of the Damned: Why I Like Gov. Rick Perry for President

Despite Herman Cain’s and Michelle Bachmann’s strong performances last night at the GOP Presidential Debates, if he runs for president, Texas Governor Rick Perry has my vote.

I voted for hope and change in the last presidential election, and, as Dr. Phil (the only doctor my insurance company will pay for) says, “How's that working for ya?”

I voted for peace, and we went from two wars to five (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Yemen). I voted to curb extremist capitalism, and we only fed it. I voted for a new approach to empire and the environment and got more of the same. I voted for FDR and a new WPA and, well, you get the idea.

So this time around I’m voting for a man who offers me no hope and no change. At least that way I won’t be disappointed. Here is the Governor’s main selling point for me at the moment:

Governor Perry has called all governors to join him on August 6 for a day of prayer and fasting. This will be, he assures us, an "apolitical Christian prayer service" sponsored by the American Family Association. Right there he’s got me. A Christian only prayer service. That’s honest: America is a Christian Nation with Christian leaders following the Christian god. Of course Catholics, Jews and Muslims and other nonChristians can live here, but let’s not let them run the place. It gets better.

Governor Perry’s event has adopted the AFA's platform that, among other things, affirms the infallibility of the Bible (Science? Please, what has science ever done for us?); the centrality of Jesus Christ (There is only one god and JC is It, so enough of this ecumenical nonsense); and the eternal damnation of all nonbelievers. This last is the part I love the most.

Here’s is Governor Perry’s motto: “No hope (for salvation) unless you change (to my religion).” I admire a politician who is upfront and honest, and what is more upfront and honest then telling me that he expects me and everyone I love to burn in Hell for all eternity unless I convert to his religion?

Of course aligning himself with a god that will torment me forever in the next world suggests that President Perry won't care much about me in this world. I can hear him now, "Healthcare for Jews? They're going to burn in Hell anyway. Let 'em die." Nothing confusing there. Simple. Honest. Straightforward. What's not to like?

So, Governor, assuming you run, and you aren't raptured before Election Day, and I’m not burning in Hell on Election Day, and the GOP hasn’t yet figured out a way to keep Jews, Blacks, the elderly, the young, and the poor from voting at all, you've got my vote.

Westboro Church Coming to Nashville JCC

This Monday the good people of the Westboro Baptist Church are coming to the Nashville Jewish Community Center to sing these words to the tune of Hatikva, the Israeli National Anthem:

Christ is soon returning
to take you from this land

You won't obey Him
or do what he commands.
Wrath will soon pour on you,
for your awful sins

Your great affliction,
it will soon begin.

All the nations, on Israel will march.

You're not Zion, no hope in your heart.

You killed the Savior, for this sin you all must pay.

Those who fear God, come out from them - To Day.

Based on the last line, the intent of this hymn is to call Jews out of our ignorance and into the true faith as Westboro Baptists understand it. I don’t think it will work. Let’s take a closer look at the hymn to see why.

Christ is soon returning to take you from this land
 Actually no. If Christ returns he will take Christians from this land and lift them into Heaven. Jews he will leave behind to deal with later. Of course if the Jewish messiah comes he will take Jews from America and bring them to Israel. I’m looking forward to this seeing as I can’t afford to fly there on my own.

You won't obey Him or do what he commands. True. Most Jews just don’t take God and mitzvot all that seriously. We used to, but after two exiles, the Inquisition, innumerable pogroms, the Holocaust, and the endless wars against Israel we just got tired.

Wrath will soon pour on you, for your awful sins/Your great affliction, it will soon begin.
Yeah, this is pretty much our standard worldview as well.

All the nations, on Israel will march.
Yep, we’ve been saying that for centuries as well. As far as we’re concerned the Arab Spring just might turn out to be an Arab springboard for an all out war on Israel and world Jewry.

You're not Zion, no hope in your heart.
 This makes no sense. We are ZIONists, and HOPE is our anthem. It is the very tune they are singing.

You killed the Savior, for this sin you all must pay. While we might quibble that the Romans killed Jesus, certainly there were some Jews at the time who were down with that. But the fact is God isn’t punishing Jews for killing Jesus. God sends people to Hell for not accepting the right brand of Christianity and get the Get Out Of Hell Free Card that comes with it.

Those who fear God, come out from them - To Day. Most Jews are fairly agnostic on the God thing, and those who do fear God worry more about improperly killing a cow than illegally killing Jesus, so I doubt this is going to get the Westboro folks many converts.

All in all, then, the Westboro hymn is going to fall on deaf ears, and not simply because most of the Jews at the JCC at the time of the Westboro visit are old and deaf anyway. After you've survived the Nazis, a gaggle of Christians singing a silly song just isn't going to do much.

Even if the Westboro folks were coming just to remind us that God hates Jews just as much as they believe God hats fags (see their website godfatesfags.org), they would still fail. We already know this about God and gays. After all when it comes to God killing Jews, and calling homosexuality an abomination, we wrote the Book.

The Other Weiner Story, or, I Left My Heart in San Francisco, but My Foreskin Stayed with Me

A San Francisco initiative to outlaw circumcision for both girls and boys makes being Jewish in the city all the more challenging. I mean how can a Jew be a Jew without serving up one's penis to God? Yes, there seems to be the obvious exemption of fore skinning for girls, but women are exempted from many of the cooler aspects of traditional Jewish life like praying three times a day, wearing tefillin, and testifying in court?

You might think there will be a religious exemption to the San Francisco law based on the First Amendment, but this isn't always reliable. For example the government outlawed polygamy, and in 1944 the Supreme Court ruled that parents could martyr themselves on religious grounds but could not martyr their children as well.

If the intactivists (I didn't make that up) have their way, the Jews of Frisco will have to circumcise in secret or slip out of the city to have our penises whacked.

As always challenges such as these give rise to entrepreneurial ventures. I am exploring building a fleet of medical vans especially outfitted for ritual circumcisions. Called Cut 'n Run, these vans will whisk a Jewish family outside the San Francisco city limits where the van will park while the ritual circumcision is performed. The van will then return the family home where a catered meal and invited guests are awaiting them.

Of course the city will add Penis Patrols to their police departments to try and prevent my vans from making it out of the city, but I plan to paint cute dogs on the sides of my vans so that they look like dog grooming and exercise trucks, something no self respecting San Franciscan could oppose.

Onward Christian Soldiers

While it is common for some US Christians to complain about the Muslim war against Christianity, we rarely hear about the Christian war against Buddhism.

My friend Dr. Paul Knitter, Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions, and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, reports of fundamentalist Korean Christians attacking Buddhist monasteries and shrines to conduct exorcisms of images of the Buddha, and marching around shrines claiming the land for Christ.

A bit of research revealed that this has been going on for decades as South Korea becomes more and more Christian, with the Korean government, police, and army coming under Christian rule and being used to destroy Buddhist shrines and conduct “heavy and violent” propaganda campaigns against Buddhism.

You can see photos of the destruction at http://www.buddhapia.com/eng/tedesco/pic1/list.html

This is what we can expect in any country that falls under the control of fundamentalists of any faith. While it is vital that we distinguish between violent fundamentalism and saner liberal varieties of religion, it is important that we stand against fundamentalism.

As my Christian and Jewish friends demand that liberal Muslims speak out against their violent fundamentalist strains, we should be no less demanding of Jews and Christians regarding their own crazy cousins.

Dhimmis More

As the on-going war against Islam continues in Middle Tennessee, I was asked recently how I thought we ought to treat our Muslim neighbors. When my suggestion that we do unto others as we would want others to do unto us was dismissed as Socialism, I suggested we adopt a Tennessee version of the eighth century Pact of Umar.

Under the Pact of Umar Jews and Christians were dhimmis—protected subjects. Jews and Christians were guaranteed the right to practice their religions and to own property, though they were not allowed to build new churches or synagogues, or repair old ones. They were forbidden to hold public religious parades, or proselytize; they couldn’t strike a Muslim, bear arms, or ride horses, and they had to wear clothing that set them apart from the Muslim population. In time new rules were added and Jews and Christians were prevented from building homes taller than those of Muslims, from taking Muslim names, studying the Qur’an, selling alcohol, and serving in the government. And they had to pay a special tax so that they, along with Muslims who are taxed to support the community, would do the same.

So why not pass a bill that offered Muslims the same rights in Christian America as Christians had in Muslim lands? It really would solve a lot of problems here in the mid-state:

1.Allowing Muslims to practice Islam puts us in line with the 1st Amendment
2.Forbidding Muslims from building or repairing mosques ends the debate over mosques in TN
3.Forbidding parades and proselytizing (by Muslims but not of Muslims) would ease the fears of those who worry that Islam is taking over Tennessee
4.Forbidding Muslims from hitting Christians and bearing arms ends Islamic terrorism
5.Many Muslims already wear distinctive clothes, so making it mandatory is no big deal, and
6.Keeping Muslims out of government would ease any worries about Muslims using our democracy to impose their theocracy before we can use our democracy to impose our theocracy

I would make a few changes to the Pact of Umar, however. For example, no special taxes should be levied, as Muslim Americans pay the same tax as other Americans who lack the funds to lobby for and exploit exemptions that permit them to pay little or not taxes. I don’t care if Muslims ride horses, or sell alcohol. I would also permit them to name their kids Matthew, Mark, Luke, John if they want to, and build any size house they can afford, assuming there is no objection from any local mega-church groups. I would also allow Muslims to study the Bible as this might bring them closer to Christ.

So how about it? A Pact of Umar for Tennessee’s Muslims? Our Muslim citizens couldn’t complain about that—it was their idea. Let me know.

Rapture Reflux

Hello? Hello? Is anyone out there?

I just came back from a walk and I didn’t see a single soul. We’re you Raptured? Are you in Heaven?

It seems so empty in my neighborhood. So quiet. Even the cicadas seem to have been taken up to heaven.

SHEMA YISRAEL ADONAI…. Anyone? Anyone? There must be some Jews out there. Where are we going to eat? All the Chinese restaurants in my town are run by Chinese Christians and they went to heaven.

ALLAH HU…. Anyone? Anyone? Falafel and humus sound good just about now. There must be some Muslims around. Lucky them: all the people that hated them were raptured to heaven so now they can build their mosque. But they better build fast: in five months—fire! The whole earth burned to ash. Man when God cleans up after Himself He doesn’t fool around.

Well, I have no idea who’s left on the planet. There are lots of dogs barking, so I guess that book about dogs going to heaven was a lie. I bet the author is still around somewhere. He’s going to burn for sure.

Is there something we can do about this? I mean the good are gone and the rest of us are doomed. What if we convert? Jesus save me!...........

Nope. I’m still here. I guess he knows I can’t make myself believe what I was taught was make believe. So it’s my parents fault. HEY! My parents! They weren’t raptured. I think I’ll call them and see what is going on over there. I bet they have restaurants that are open—I mean they live in a Jewish ghetto. I never should have left home. I had no idea that God was going to take all my neighbors. I was certain that Catholics and Episcopalians would be left behind, but I can’t find a Papist or a Tory anywhere.

This is so sad. God, I’m sorry I killed Your Son. And I’m sorry I didn’t believe in Him. And I’m sorry I stayed Jewish when You wanted me to be Baptist. Can’t You forgive me? Hello? God?

WHOA! Outside my window! Cars are driving by. And there’s somebody walking her dog. Thank God, thank God, it wasn’t the Rapture after all. I just woke up early and no one was out and about yet. But now—they’re all here!

I knew it was a lie! Take that Jesus! Take that God of Love! We’re all left behind and maybe we’ll leave you behind too. How would you like that? Huh? Wouldya? Huh? Of course You may have taken a couple of people to heaven and that would count as the Rapture and that would mean that we will all die in five months. So I take all that back, God. We can be cool, right? I mean burning billions of people and animals alive that sounds harsh even for You. Maybe we should talk. You need help.

Rapture Ready? Tomorrow's the Big Day

Well this is it, the end times. Tomorrow is the Rapture when God calls all faithful Christians to heaven leaving the rest of us to await the destruction of the world by fire on October 21st. I knew it was coming, and even blogged about it a few weeks ago, but now it’s here, and, honestly, it has me rattled.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on loving kindness at a church this Saturday, and I expect many of the participants to be taken to heaven sometime during my presentation. Those who are left won’t be in much of a mood to be loving or kind, so we’ll probably end early. I’ll look for an ice cream store run by unsaved folks and hence still open, and order a hot fudge sundae. No point in dieting when there are only five months left.

Anyway, I don’t know if you are on the Rapture Train or not, and if you are I wish you well. But if you’re not, what will you do?

Seriously. What will you do? Is there any reason to go to work? Don’t worry about your rent or mortgage or any other bills. You can stall for five months and then its all over anyway, so why work? If you don’t have to pay your bills, you’ll have plenty of cash to use for food, so you won’t starve before you burn.

OK, so you won’t work. How will you spend your time? What would you do differently if you knew—as you can know if you want to know*—that the world is ending in five months? Would you leave your spouse? Move to another town? Admit that you’re gay or Kenyan or on the No-Fly list? How sad to think that you will just keep doing what your doing until you spontaneously combust on Friday, October 21st.

I know what I would like to do. I won’t tell you because I’m not going to do it on the off chance that the world will still be here on October 22nd Yes my fear of change is that great. But how about you? Are you as cowardly as me?

If you knew you had but five months to live, five healthy and financially sound months by the way, how would you live them?

*For more info on the end of the world, visit http://www.ebiblefellowship.com/outreach/tracts/may21/

Future of Inter-Faith

A very articulate essay* by Rabbi Michael Balinsky, a trustee of the Council for a Parliament of the World’s Religions, raises what is for me a troubling issue.

An Orthodox Jew, Rabbi Balinsky isn’t comfortable praying with people of other faiths. He was relieved to discover that the Parliament, out of respect for the different religions of which it is comprised, doesn’t do group prayer. From what I can tell, each religion is encouraged to stay in its own box, collaborating with the others only on those issues of common concern: climate, poverty, etc.

While I respect this, for me it just isn’t enough. When I sit with people of different faiths I don’t want to talk about what we have in common, I want to talk about where we differ. I want to learn another’s way of seeing the world, and learn it so deeply that it may transform the way I see the world as well.

Religions are lens through which their respective followers view reality. Each lens has its distortion that makes its view of reality unique and less than accurate. For me, inter-faith work is about discovering our distortions and seeking to correct them. One way to do this is to share lenses, and in so doing realize that all lenses distort, and that no lens is right, and in this way cultivate a deep humility that allows us to honor differing lenses without the illusion that any one of them reveals the truth.

It is this humility that allows me to pray in any religious tradition. To me the point isn’t the words or the world-view, but the experience of slipping into the greater whole of which I am a part.

I suspect I am leaving religion behind. I cannot stay within my box. I am finding myself less and less comfortable in the Jewish world and the inter-faith world. I love religion the way I love literature and music, but I refuse to be limited to one author, composer or genre. Humans create religion, art, literature, music, science, etc. I am human—it is all my heritage. Why is it so lonely in a place that should be so welcoming?

The first weekend of February 2012 I am hosting SAStalks at Scarritt-Bennett Center in Nashville. (SAS stands for Spirit, Art, and Science.) We are inviting 18 speakers to speak for 18 minutes each on the topic of “The Future of Inter-faith.” I hope to hear ideas that show me the way, because right now I am despairing there is one.

• http://www.parliamentofreligions.org/news/index.php/2011/05/do-we-have-to-pray-together/?utm_source=Parliament+Newsletter&utm_campaign=f72d956125-Newsletter_15&utm_medium=email

Surrounded by Books

I live surrounded by books. This is true physically and metaphorically. I am what I have read. In fact I have a book addiction: I am convinced that the next book I read will at last answer all my questions, so I buy lots of books. It never works, of course, so I buy lots more. I am forever skimming magazines for ads regarding new books, and then rush to my computer to order just those that will answer all my questions.

I know it doesn’t work, but I do it anyway. It is a compulsion. I am an addict. True, given all the other addictions one might have, an addiction to books is not so bad. It would even be better if I actually read the books I buy. The truth is, however, that after reading just a few pages I realize that I have read this book before—not this actual book by this particular author, but the same ideas. In a sense I keep buying the same books over and over and over again. The joys of addiction.

Everyone once in a while I pretend I’m going to change. I sift through all my books and cull the best, and donate the rest to the library at Middle Tennessee State University. That way I still have access to them if I need them without having to stare at them day in and day out.

It’s getting to be another of these “once in a while” moments.

There are only ten books that I really need: The Book by Alan Watts, The First and Last Freedom by J. Krishnamurti, I & Thou by Martin Buber, Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu, The Inner Chapters by Chuang Tzu, and the biblical books of Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and John. Together these form the library from which I invent my philosophy of life.

I am tempted to donate all but these ten to the library, but I doubt I’ll ever do so.

First, because I love other books by these authors, and like having them around. Second, because there are other authors I value highly and prefer to not live without: Spinoza, Kafka, Nachman of Breslov, Edmund Jabes, Hermann Hesse, Rumi, Bankei, Blake, Marshal McLuhan, Erich Fromm, and William James.

No, the first step toward literary sobriety isn’t getting rid of more books, but stop buying new ones. I should just reread the 21 authors listed here, and maybe I will.

It’s just that a bunch of new magazines came in yesterday, and there are so many interesting books being advertised, and I am certain that one of them will answer all my questions. So I will get to the books on my shelves just as soon as I add a few more to them.

Oh to be in America

Last night I participated in a panel discussion on “the religious other.” The panel was held at a Nashville Presbyterian church, so the “other” consisted of three Jews and two Muslims. Chance Dillon, my intern at Wisdom House, moderated. He did (in case he is reading this) a marvelous job.

Two things of interest happened during the event. The first was the realization that the same year one of the Jewish panelist’s sister was making aliyah (moving to Israel) to live freely as a Jew (1958), the father of the Palestinian American panelist was flying to the United States from Palestine (by which she meant Israel) because he could no longer live freely as a Muslim.

This was a moment ripe for deeper discussion, but it passed almost unnoticed. I am working with Chance to bring the two of them together over lunch to explore this further.

The second thing of note was a question a Christian man asked me after the event about the hijab worn by the Muslim woman. He wanted to know why she has to flaunt her Islam, and why she just doesn’t dress American. Her dress makes it clear that she doesn’t want to be American, and maybe wants Americans to be Muslims. The idea of a Muslim American just didn’t make sense.

I suggested he ask her, but he was intimidated. I said that it was an affirmation of her religion, and that to be American is to honor the differences this man wanted to erase. He disagreed. I pointed to my yarmulke and asked why this doesn’t bother him when the hijab does. He said it did bother him, but it was harder to notice. We both made mention of the fact that the Imam was dressed in a blue business suit.

I was wearing all black (as I usually do) either in imitation of my rebbe or in honor of Johnnie Cash. I’m never quite sure which.

What troubled me was my inability to make a convincing case that Americans are not monolithic. We think, eat, speak, act, dress, pray, and play in many different ways. He could see only one: Republican, pork, drawl, haughty, golfer, Protestant, and… well, I couldn’t tell what his game of choice was so perhaps he was a free-thinker after all.

Anyway, just asking the question about the hijab is a huge step in the right direction. For many Americans listening to a Muslim, let alone talking with one, is a novel and potentially life-changing event. I applaud meetings like this and urge all of you to sponsor them in your own houses of worship. And, in case you are wondering, the next one with this group will take place in the Imam’s mosque.

Invisible Women--Modesty at Its Most Divine

Everyone knows that religious men prefer their women modest. For some Muslims this means burying their women beneath burkahs allowing only a slit or mesh veil through which they are allowed to see and be seen. Pretty severe, but we Jews do them one better: we erase them altogether.

At least that is what Der Tzitung and Der Voch, two Orthodox Jewish publications, did when they erased Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and counter terrorism adviser Audrey Tomason from the iconic White House photo showing the nation’s leaders in the Situation Room during the operation to kill Osama bin Laden. According to Der Tzitung, printing photographs of women is contrary to Jewish laws of modesty. While Muslim men prefer not to see real women, Jews worry about seeing virtual women. Which leads to a wonderful business opportunity: Orthodox porn.

If I can get the backing, I plan to publish maideleh (Yiddish for young woman), a glossy magazine featuring naked Jewish women. Not being allowed to publish photos of said women, however, means I wouldn't have to hire either models or photographers. And the more women I featured, the more blank pages I could publish, keeping printing costs to a bare minimum (pun intended). Jewish guys would just have to imagine the naked women I’m not actually photographing or printing. Hey these are God's laws, not mine.

Maideleh will be the perfect porn mag for married Jewish men. When "the wife" sees them looking at it, they can say with confidence, "Don’t worry, I only read it for the articles."

Reading, Writing, and Body Counts: New Rules on Campus

Two Republican state senators are trying to pass a bill making it legal for students, faculty, and staff to carry guns on college campuses in Tennessee. The governor and Senate Speaker, also Republicans, are opposed to it. So too is the president of Middle Tennessee State University where I and my family work.

I for one like the bill. I think everyone on campus should be armed.

As a Jew, I would carry an Israeli made Uzi on campus as a sign of my Jewish affiliation. I would urge others to carry other ethnically associated weapons. Germans should carry Lugers, Brits Walther PPK’s. I would also keep a nine millimeter handgun in a holster on my hip, and another in the waistband of my jeans in the small of back.

I would of course be well trained in the use of these weapons, but I would have no hesitancy regarding their use: anyone who threatened my safety would be fair game. Unfortunately I am easily frightened. Knowing that everyone on campus may be carrying a gun, and knowing that I cannot know in advance who will suddenly snap and start shooting, I would feel justified in drawing and perhaps even firing my weapon whenever anyone abruptly put a hand into pocket or purse. True they might simply be reaching for a pen, but I cannot be sure, and must strike first to protect myself.

There are over 2500 faculty and staff on my campus, and around 27,000 students. As of 2006 1% of Americans were in jail at any given time. I think this means that 300 people on campus are potential criminals. But that doesn’t count all those criminals who avoid capture and plead out. So, without bothering with actual facts, let’s assume that 10% are potential killers. That is 3000 people out to kill me. Would you walk unarmed into a crowd of 3000 people bent on your destruction?

Of course not, but as a professor, I have no choice. Everyday I step onto the campus seething with thousands of would be killers I am risking my life. I have a right to protect myself. And because I can’t be sure which of the people I pass on campus are among the 3000 murderers enrolled or employed by MTSU, I am within my rights to shoot anyone who scares me.

I would, of course, grant the same rights to everyone else, so I expect to hear lots of gunfire during the day once this bill becomes law. I would of course have no choice but to return fire in the general direction of the shoots I hear, and that will make things all the more interesting.

You may or may not agree with me. I don’t care. This law will be passed eventually. And when it is, I for one am going to buy lots of stock in companies that make bullets.

God and Human Bondage

As we gear up to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War the issue of slavery is once again a hot topic in my neighborhood. Was the Confederacy all about slavery or was it all about state’s rights? It was about both: the slave holding states were concerned that they would lose their rights to own slaves.

This is not simply my opinion. As a loyal, albeit transplanted southerner, I take as my touchstone the immortal words of Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America, who, in a March 21, 1861 speech in Savanna, GA contrasted North and South and said the following:

“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth… [Those who oppose slavery are] attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal. In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.”

Not only was slavery the cornerstone of the Confederacy, the hope was that it would spread throughout the world as a hallmark of civilized and enlightened society. Who are we to disagree with Vice President Stephens? How dare we dismiss or twist his words to suit modern liberal sensibilities? Even pretending that we succeeded from the North for any reason other than slavery is to give to the North the moral high ground. We had to lie to our brave soldiers and tell them they were defending their homeland against Yankee aggression, for if we told them the truth, if we admitted that we were sending them to be slaughtered to protect the rights of the wealthy few to own slaves as a means of maintaining their wealth and power, they would not have gone bravely to their deaths. We had to lie to our soldiers; but let us not lie to ourselves.

As we commemorate, and in some circles celebrate, the formation of the Confederate States of America, let us not whitewash the principle for which so many hundreds of thousands of brave and loyal Southerners died. Let us not take the cowardly route and hide behind the notion that this was a war over states rights, but let us make it clear that the right we demanded was the right to enslave and own Negroes.

You may or may not agree with God’s great truth of white superiority and His great principle of slavery upon which the Confederacy was founded, but do not defame our heritage by pretending that we went to war for anything less than God and human bondage.

The Empty Tomb

Today is Easter Sunday, and I am going to preach at a local church. My plan is to share my new understanding of Good Friday with them (see the previous post, “A New View of Good Friday”) and then reinterpret Easter in light of it.

Good Friday, in my new reading, is the day God dies for His sins—the sin of creating a world filled with unnecessary suffering and where evil is perpetrated in His Name. God dies so that we cannot kill in His Name anymore.

On Easter we find the tomb of God empty. To me the tomb is for Christians what the Holy of Holies is for Jews, and the Ka’aba is for Muslims: an empty space speaking to the ineffability of God. In the Abrahamic religions God cannot be imaged, so of course their sacred space should be empty of images.

If God dies for His sins, the sins He commits by sanctioning evil in His Name, the only way He can express this is to step beyond Names and Naming—to become something that humans cannot use or manipulate to their own ends: the Tao that cannot be named.

The problem with Christianity is that Christians just can’t do away with images. So Jesus appears after the Resurrection. And even when he ascends to Heaven He promises to return—and this time as anything but the Prince of Peace. The Second Coming, the ultimate reinstitution of the Image of God is going to be the ultimate slaughter of those who worship a different Image of God. The Second Coming undoes Good Friday and makes a mockery of Easter Sunday. With the theology of the Second Coming God learns a harsh lesson: people want to slaughter one another, and if God Himself won’t condone it anymore, they will invent a new God who will.

The hate-filled blood spattered Jesus of Revelation is the hope of those who cannot follow God and atone for their sins. The God of Good Friday is sorry. The God of Easter Sunday is free. The God of the Second Coming is psycho.

So, if you buy my new reading of Good Friday and kill the Gods of hate at whose altars we humans have worshipped for millennia, and if you buy my new reading of Easter where the tomb is empty as a sign that we are free of Gods made in our own image and designed to sanction our own madness, what shall you do with this day?

My suggestion is simple: look deeply into your self, your family, your community, your nation, your faith, and free yourself of any image that sanctions evil, even and especially if it does so in the Name of God. If you wish to believe in God, fine, but believe in the God who is empty.

Easter is a holy day of hope, but let our hope not be in some coming horror. If we are to affirm hope, let us affirm hope in freedom, love, justice, and humility. Let us say, “The Lord is Risen and so is our Heart: risen beyond fear and hatred, beyond heaven and hell, beyond vindictive ideologies masquerading as Truth.” Anything less is just more of the same.

A New View of Good Friday

Today is Good Friday, the anniversary of the crucifixion of Jesus. For Jews this was a time fraught with danger. As Christians poured into their churches to hear how the Jews murdered their God, they often poured out of their churches to murder Jews. This is less likely to happen today, though I had a fascinating conversation with a Catholic priest the other day who suggested the times they are a changin’.

It seems the Church is changing the phrase “Christ died for all” to “Christ died for many.” In other words He died only for those who believe in Him, everyone else is damned. The Jews being the consummate outsiders are not included in Christ’s salvific act of sacrifice, and this may, my friend said, lead to renewed anti-Semitism.

While I don’t expect my Catholic neighbors to engage in pogroms anytime soon, he does raise an interesting point: for whom did Christ die?

I don’t believe in substitutionary atonement: no one can pay for another’s sin. I believe in the Gospel According to Pottery Barn: you break it; you buy it. So let me suggest a radically new understanding of Good Friday: God didn’t die for our sins, God died for God’s sins.

God finally realized that He was responsible for the sins of the world. It was His rejection of Cain that led to the killing of Abel. It was He who murdered almost all life in the Flood. It was He who sanctioned genocide after genocide, and called for the slaughter of hundreds of millions of animals. After centuries of this madness, He was, as the Hebrew prophets revealed, sick of it. He just wanted people to be good to one another. But what could He do to make amends and get this message across?

God chose to become one of us to teach us the new Way: the way of love. No temples, no priests, no rabbis, just people loving one another. And then, to make amends for all the killing He had caused, He allowed Himself to be killed as well.

God died for His sins, not ours. And having died for His sins, God can no longer be used as an excuse for our sins. God changed when He died at the Cross. Unfortunately we did not. We kept to the old ways, the ways of worshipping gods who commend and command what would otherwise be thought of as evil. We made of God’s atoning cross a sword with which to continue the bloodstained madness of the now dead god.

So Good Friday must be reinterpreted. Good Friday is the day that God died for His sins that you and I might stop killing in His Name. Good Friday should be the day we stop fostering hate and hurt and murderous acts in His Name. It should be, but I doubt it will be.

I am a Kosher Pescatarian

I am a kosher pescatarian: I don’t eat animals and do eat those fish permitted by Jewish law. I say this for three reasons. First: I feel guilty about eating fish, and admitting it makes me feel less so; second, I feel self-righteous about not eating meat, and proclaiming it makes me feel more so; and third, to introduce my response to a newly proposed Dutch law requiring that all animals killed in Dutch slaughterhouses be stunned into unconsciousness before slaughtering. Jewish and Muslim law do not allow stunning, so this law will outlaw kosher and halal slaughtering in the Netherlands.

The bill is supported by right wing anti-immigrant parties who want to make the Netherlands inhospitable to Muslims (Jews are collateral damage) in coalition with animal rights activists who would like to end the slaughter altogether, but are happy for any measure they believe will alleviate animal suffering.

Kosher and halal slaughtering also seeks to minimize animal suffering, so why can’t secular and religious authorities work together to achieve a common goal? If stunning actually alleviates suffering, why not make it part of kosher and halal slaughtering? Why do we Jews expend untold amounts of energy and ingenuity to get around Sabbath laws we find annoying, and none at all when it comes to killing our fellow sentient beings? I suggest we have lost our moral compass, and have made a fetish of Iron Age technology.

This is the danger of all religions that look to the past not only for guidance (which is often helpful) but also for authority (which is often unhelpful and even wicked). When we allow ancient mores and technologies to trump those of our own time (unless it inconveniences us, in which case they are suddenly deemed irrelevant), we have trapped ourselves in a religion that may survive but cannot thrive.

I welcome the challenge to kosher and halal slaughtering. I urge rabbis and imams to find more compassionate ways to kill our fellow creatures, and challenge them to take the next step and proclaim the eating of meat contrary to the wills of Yah and Allah. Just don’t outlaw fish anytime soon; I’m having tuna for dinner.

Tonight is the first night of Pesach, Passover. Jews around the world will gather to retell our founding story: how we were unjustly enslaved in Egypt and how God liberated us after crushing the Egyptians with unbelievable horrors. I just can’t get behind this story.

First of all we Jews were not innocent victims of the Egyptians. Read the closing chapters of Genesis to discover that Joseph and Pharaoh used the seven years of famine to strip the Egyptian people of everything they had: their land, their dignity, their freedoms. Only three groups thrived during this period: Pharaoh, his Priests, and the Hebrew people. I am not proud of this, nor can I herald Joseph as my hero.

So tonight before we get drunk on our innocence, let us atone for our guilt—for our having collaborated with Pharaoh at the expense of the Egyptian people—by seeing where we may be collaborating with evil today, and ending that collaboration during the week of Pesach.

Skip to the plagues. This was a war between YHVH and the Gods of Egypt. Each of the ten plagues is the defeat of an Egyptian God: from Hapi, God of the Nile; to Ra, God of the Sun; to Pharaoh, God on Earth. I love stories of Gods at War, but the collateral damage to the Egyptian people is untenable. The ancient rabbis knew this. That’s why they tell the story of God opposing the Hebrews’ celebration of the drowning of Pharaoh’s army, and why they commanded us to diminish our cups of wine that we not drink to the suffering of others.

Our liberation cost the Egyptian people dearly. Let that sober us up, and more importantly let it shift our attention to others, such as the Palestinians, who continue to pay a heavy price for our freedom.

For me the real heroes of Pesach are the women. Passover is a women’s revolution against the madness of Pharaohs and Gods: the midwives Shifrah and Puah refuse to murder the Hebrew baby boys, Moses’ mother Yocheved saves her son from the soldiers sent to kill him, Pharaoh’s daughter defies her father and raises Moses as her own son in his own house, Moses sister Miriam brings Yocheved to nurse him establishing a silent conspiracy of Moses’ two mommies against the all-powerful Pharaoh, and Moses’ wife Zipporah saves her husband from a God gone mad who seeks to murder her husband even as he makes his way to Egypt to save the Hebrew people. Had any one of these women failed, the story would end in tragedy rather than triumph.

Let tonight be more than a celebration of an ancient liberation from evil. Let it be a time to admit to and liberate ourselves from our own collaboration with evil; a time to admit to and end the suffering we cause others; a time to challenge the power of gods— religious, economic, political— and to celebrate the power of the few to do justly regardless of the odds.

Chag sameach Pesach.

Is God Necessary for Morality?

Is God necessary for morality? The question came up in class the other day. It is a perennial question, though one that is essentially beside the point. Whether you believe God decides what is right and wrong, or you believe that people do so, you still have to choose a moral system. It isn’t as if God or people offer just one.

If you say God decides what is right and wrong you have to decide which god is God before you can follow the moral system of that God. Most people follow the gods of their parents, but is this really a sound enough basis on which to determine one’s morality?

If you take another track and look for the common moral themes among religions you might come up with a generic list of values that all gods seem to support, but no religion agrees as to how to apply these values, so you are again forced to choose. For example all religions support modesty regarding women, yet for some Jews this means married women should wear wigs, while for some Muslims it means women should cover both head and face. Who’s right? And what do we make of women who refuse to do either? Are they immodest?

I think the best we humans can do vis a vis morality is to follow the advice of Rabbi Hillel. Without any reference to God, he simply defined the entirety of Torah as not doing to others what you do not want others to do to you. If you don’t want to be judged, don’t judge. If you don’t want to be killed, don’t kill. If you don’t want others to burn your holy book or outlaw your religion, don’t do the same to others. If you don’t want someone to discriminate against you because of your race, color, creed, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, politics, etc., then don’t engage in discrimination on these grounds yourself.

Honestly, I can’t think of a better moral guide than this.

Judaism's Mission Statement

[I was asked recently to articulate why Judaism matters. Here is my reply:]

Now HaShem said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. [As a consequence of your going] I will make of you a people vital to life, and I will bless you, and spread your reputation [as a people devoted to justice and compassion], so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse [those who follow the way of justice and compassion will be blessed with justice and compassion, those who do not will be cursed with injustice and cruelty]; and through you all the earth’s families [human and otherwise] shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3, my rendering)

This is the mission statement of the Jewish people. The Hebrew translated here as “Go” is lech lecha, and literally means to walk to your self, implying both an external and an internal journey. To take this journey we are challenged to leave behind nationalism, tribalism, and family baggage. Judaism is not about conforming to the past, but about living God's command in the present. It isn't about fitting in, but about moving on.

Where we are to go, the “land” mentioned here, is not revealed. While some insist it is Israel, I suggest it is something more (which is not the same as saying it is something else): a state of mind. In either case, this is a journey based on radical trust. We will be shown our destination only when we arrive at it.

Our importance as a people depends on our taking this journey into the unknown. We are called to be the boundary–crossers (this may be the original meaning of Habiru/Hebrew); we are the ones who "boldly go where no one has gone before." But the purpose of the journey is not to become great, but to become a vehicle through which all of the earth’s families will be blessed. Our goal isn't to conquer or convert, but to bless and bring blessings to the entire world, every family of every species. We do this by embodying compassion: engaging the world justly, lovingly, and humbly (Micah 6:8).

When asked to articulate the entirety of Torah while standing on one foot Rabbi Hillel said, “What is hateful to you do not do to another. This is the whole of the Torah; all the rest is commentary. Now go and study it.” (Tractate Shabbat 32a).

I take Hillel literally. The entire Torah, the entirety of Judaism, is a guide to compassion when we read and live it as such. If your reading of Torah and/or your living of Judaism does not make you more just, loving, and humble then you are misreading Torah and not living Judaism.

This is why I am a Jew: At its best Judaism challenges me to drop the known and step into the unknown; to be a blessing and a vehicle for blessing so that all life benefits from my life; and to embody a specific level of consciousness that embraces the world with justice, love, and humility. True, Judaism is often not at its best, but I can find enough examples past and present to keep me loyal to the mission.

Kahn-ing the System

Safoorah Kahn is suing the Berkeley, Ill school board for religious discrimination. The Obama Justice Department is siding with her. Wrong call.

In August of 2008, after working as a math teacher for only none months, Ms. Kahn requested three weeks leave in December to go on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca each Muslim is to make at least once in her life, health and finances permitting. Ms. Kahn understood her religion to mandate going as soon as one can afford, a position that no religious authority supports. She petitioned for the time off, and the school board said no. Ms. Kahn then quit her job, went on the Hajj, and upon her return sued the school board for religious discrimination.

This is bullshit. I teach, and December is crunch time. Getting a substitute teacher to cover for Ms. Kahn would have been disruptive to the students. It ruins continuity, and if she was building toward some goal at the end of the semester, her leaving would have made achieving it next to impossible.

I can understand that people want to scam the system, and how religion—any religion—can be useful when doing so. What I don’t understand is why the Justice Department is supporting Ms. Kahn against the School Board. This isn’t religious discrimination. Ms. Kahn could have saved her hajj money, and worked out a agreement with her school so that she could go on the hajj in a year or two. This would have been respectful of her religion, her job, and her students.

It is wrong for someone to take a job, and then dodge the requirements of that job and seek to avoid the consequences by hiding behind bogus claims of religious discrimination. If an observant Jew takes a job that requires working on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), and doesn’t tell her employer before she is hired that she cannot work Saturdays, she has no right to take Saturdays off or to complain about religious discrimination. If your religion makes doing your job impossible, go find a different job.

In Buddhism there is the obligation of Right Livelihood. Buddhists are prohibited from doing jobs that cause suffering. I’m not saying that all Buddhists follow their religion, but those that do shouldn’t take jobs that violate it. We should use this as a principle for all peoples: don’t take a job you can’t or won’t do because of your religious convictions. If pharmacists can’t give birth control pills, or doctors can’t perform abortions to save the life of a mother—go teach math. I hear there is a job opening in Berkeley, Ill.