I Am Extinct

Today I found out I am extinct.

I was talking with a very nice man in his forties about the Bible. I mentioned that I taught Bible at Middle Tennessee State University, and he said joyfully, “Oh, you are a Christian!”

“No,” I said, “I am a Jew.” I expected some response, some well polished piece of evangelism designed to save my soul from eternal damnation for not believing in Jesus just the way this fellow did, but he simply stared at me. He had no idea what I just said.

“You, know,” I prompted him. “I’m Jewish. Like Jesus.” He continued to look at me without any expression at all. And then he said, “I didn’t know there were any Jewish.”

Now I am not a novice when it comes to ignorance about Jews, whether it comes from fellow Jews or Christians, but this is the first time I have actually encountered a person who had no idea that Jews still existed. After all who did he think ran Hollywood? And who would be slaughtered at the Second Coming? And who would be the 144,000 to finally accept Jesus as Christ at the End Times? This guy thought we were extinct. Wishful thinking? Not at all: Christians needed Jews to kill their god and continue to need them to recognize him when he comes back.

“Aren’t Jews Christians?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “We came before Christianity, about 4000 years ago. Jesus was a Jew, Christianity comes after Jesus.” I probably should have left this last part out, it only confused him more.

“Jesus is a Christian. His last name is Christ. That wouldn’t make sense if he weren’t a Christian.”

I know when I am licked. “You know you may be right,” I said. “It is like talking about King David. He must have been a king or we wouldn’t call him that. Or Mother Mary, she must be the Mother of God or we wouldn’t call her that. Or the Prophet Mohammed, he must have been God’s prophet or people wouldn’t call him that either.”

For a second I thought he caught my sarcasm. But then he said, “Yeah, like that.”

So there is hope. The key to interfaith dialogue is not seeking truth together, but not making a big deal out of each other’s ignorance.

Two Minds on the War

When it comes to talk of war I am of two minds. Here is what they sound like:

Mind One: First of all, we did not go into Iraq to free the Iraqi people, we went in to make sure that US oil companies would continue to dominate the oil market. This is an old-fashioned war of empire, and I am not necessarily adverse to it. As long as the United States insists on being an oil-based economy we must control the oil markets.

Mind Two: I agree, but I don’t want to minimize the religious element. It is not simply about empire and oil, it is about which god is the True God. Since biblical times there has been only one way to prove which god is the True God, and that is by killing the followers of the other gods. The only way out of this mess is to wake to the fact that all gods are created in the image of those who benefit from them. What we need is a spiritual revolution that no longer allows people to be manipulated by religion.

Mind One: I would welcome that revolution, but we also need to end our dependency on oil. As long as I want to drive and fly and keep my house, car, and office at 72 degrees regardless of the weather, I am consigning myself and my country to war until the last drop of oil is pumped out the ground and we are reduced to fighting over barren sands…

Mind Two: Which we would be all too eager to do if we imagine our god wants us to.

Mind One: Yes, we have to lay down not only our weapons, but our gods as well.

Mind Two: But churches and Hummers are here to stay, so if we want to end the war we must do something else. First, we must reinstitute the draft without any deferments. Until everyone is equally at risk of dying we will not have the political will to stop the rush to empire. Second, we must raise gasoline taxes to fund research and development of new oil independent technologies.

Mind One: Good luck with that! The fact is we are in the early stages of World War Four, a war for God and Oil that will last decades. We will draft tens of thousands of people, and we will make serving in the military a fast-track to American citizenship for thousands of people who wish to come here from other countries.

Mind Two: And I thought I was the pessimist. So I just want to say thank God for global warming. Maybe we will simply drown in melting ice caps and not have to wage war on behalf of middle eastern sky gods.

Mind One: Praise Neptune, Lord of the Sea!

Mind Two: Praise Neptune? No way! Praise Yam, the True Sea God.

Uh-oh.

Sabbath (Ar)Rest

In a USA Today feature “A Call to Honor the Sabbath,” Henry Brinton, a Presbyterian minister from Virginia, offers a fine essay, but one that does what so many essays on biblical themes do: it ignores the truth.

When Pastor Brinton honors the Sabbath, which he does every Wednesday (he works on Sunday which is why he cannot honor the Sabbath on Sunday which makes no sense since God says the Sabbath is Saturday, see Exodus 20:8) he goes for a long run (as opposed to Sunday when many of his parisioners think he runs long).

I have no problem with Pastor Brinton running on Wednesday or running on and on on Sunday. What bothers me is that he thinks God’s commandment (number 4 for those of you who are counting) is so flexible. God is not saying, as this essay seems to suggest: Thou shalt taketh a day off from work that thou might beeth more productiveth during the rest of the week. God is saying that we should cease all work on the Seventh Day because God ceased working on the Seventh Day. When we rest on Saturday we do so in remembrance of God.

God says of the Sabbath what Jesus says of Communion, do this in remembrance of me. If we were as loose with the latter as with the former, we would find millions of Christians skipping the church’s dry wafers or scraps of bread, and heading to Burger King (of Kings) for a Whopper.

God’s Sabbath is not about being more productive or taking long runs. It is about doing nothing. This is what is so hard about it. Doing nothing means the ego is still for a day. And a still ego is no ego at all. “You” exist only in doing. Stop doing and “you” stop being. And when “you” stop being, God is realized (though by whom is unclear). Hence: “Be still and know I am God.”

But what I really don’t get is how people make light of the Sabbath (as opposed to making Sabbath lights) when the Bible so clearly does not. Remember this story: Some people found a guy picking up sticks on a Saturday and dragged him to Moses for punishment (Numbers 15:32). The assumption here is that it is wrong to pick up sticks but ok to drag a person around while you look for Moses. Anyway, Moses didn’t know what to do since God had not yet been confronted by a stick-picker, so he imprisons the man while he goes out to ask God how to handle the situation. God, who might have preferred to rest on the Sabbath, does not blast Moses for bothering him, and rules that the man should be stoned to death by all the people. This proves that while picking up sticks is a capital crime, picking up stones to kill a guy for stick-picking is not.

Here is my point: If we are going to use the Bible to make some point, let’s be honest and use all the Bible to make this point. So Pastor Brinton should have told us why the church feels it can change the Sabbath to Sunday and why he feels he can change it to Wednesday. And at least find a way to work around the stick-picking thing. Otherwise you might as well admit you are making the whole thing up and go for a long run on Wednesday pretending this is the Sabbath and God has so commanded thee.

Religion's Ills

I am reading a book called Orthodox Psychology, a fine exploration of Orthodox Christianity. The book makes the case that Christianity is not a religion but a healing science. In so doing it spills the beans on religion: religion is based not on health but on illness. Before any religion can offer you its cure, it must first infect you with its disease.

The disease for which Christianity is the cure is Original Sin. Original Sin refers not to the creativity of your sinning, but to the First Sin, Eve’s Sin, the sin of eating from the Tree of Knowledge. So before Christianity even makes sense, you have to believe in Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden as historical fact, and the inheritance of sin as a metaphysical truth.

I love the story of Adam and Eve. I love the idea that Eve is willing to die for wisdom. She is the Hebrew Prometheus stealing the fire of wisdom from the god of the Garden. She is my role model. I only wish I had her courage. But I do not take the story as history. It is myth, not in the modern sense of falsehood, but in the premodern sense of metaphoric truth. The truth of the story is that wisdom costs you big time.

Christianity isn’t the only religion to sell us disease. They all do. The disease of Judaism and Islam is failing to live up to God’s commandments. The disease of Hinduism is mistaking illusion for reality. The disease of Buddhism is mistaking ignorance for truth, and thereby desiring permanence when none exists.

Now you may believe you have one or more of these diseases. I think I suffer from all of them, which is why I am open to all religions. But I only think this way because I was taught to think this way.

But what if none of these diseases is true? Then none of these religions will help. When someone tells you what religion they follow they are also telling you what disease they prefer.

I prefer to be healthy from the start. I prefer a faith not rooted in illness but in health. Is there such a faith? I don’t think so. But there are hints of this in every religion. To sight but one example, each morning observant Jews say, “God, the soul you place within me is pure.” This is the opposite of Original Sin. Your soul, your true self, is pure. Pure what? Pure Godhead!

So start with that. Whatever else you may do during the day to screw yourself up, remind yourself first thing each morning that your true self is pure, unstained, sinless, wise, and real. Build your faith and that, and see where it takes you.

Who's Your Daddy?

It was only a matter of time. Once we knew that Jesus had children with Mary Magdalene, it was only a matter of time until some of his great, great, great ... grandchildren stepped forward to make their presence known.

The first to do so is Kathleen McGowan whose novel, The Expected One, reveals that she is one of Jesus' descendents. This may be news to many, but not to me. Ever since reading The Da Vinci Code I have been searching out the contemporary line of Jesus and the Mary.

The first one I uncovered was a cousin of mine, fifth removed on my material grandfather's paternal uncle's maternal aunt's side of the family. Like Ms. McGowan, I too have incontrovertible evidence proving this to be so, but, again like her, I am not at liberty to reveal this to the public.

Since finding this cousin, I have stumbled on dozens of Jesus descendents all of whom are related to me. Now I know that this means that I too am related to Jesus and Mary. Ordinarily this would not really mean much to me. After all it is such a tenuous connection. Yet, I found out that not only am I a descendent of Jesus, my next door neighbor, with whom I have never gotten along, is descended from the High Priest who plotted Jesus' death. And not only that, but the guy around the corner is in fact related to Pontius Pilate, the Roman Procurator who actually had Jesus killed. Neither my neighbor nor I get along with him.

And there is more. Knowing my lineage explains so much about my life. Now I know why I feel so persecuted. Now I know why I used to get the hives in high school wood shop. Now I know why thorns frighten me, and why I loved subtraction in elementary school but broke out in a cold sweat every time I had to write the plus sign in addition problems.

Lots of readers will deny Ms. McGowan's claim, seeing it as a crass marketing ploy by her and her publisher. But I haven't written a novel about my ancestors, so I have nothing to gain by disclosing my heritage. Well, maybe not nothing. I am writing to Aunt Kathleen to ask her to help out a starving relative when the millions she will reap from this disclosure start poring in. I am sure she will be delighted to send me a substantial percentage. After all, it is the Christian thing to do.

Leaving on a Jet Plane?

Here is a question that every Jew, somewhere in the recesses of his or her mind, asks on a regular basis: When will I know it is time to leave the country?

I heard this growing up and used to dismiss it out of hand. I am an American. America, from George Washington on, has been built on the principle of inclusion. Jews are part of the fabric of the United States, and while I am not blind to Anti-Semitism it has never been a governmental policy. For Jews America is not like Spain, or Germany, or England where we were summarily exiled or killed. American is more like Amsterdam where we were welcomed, albeit with some trepidation.

But things are changing. The Southern Baptist Convention turned back a move to pull their kids out of the public schools, and have called upon their members to take on the culture of public education with “godly influence.” I don’t know which is worse. The idea of millions of SBC kids freed from any public school influence and indoctrinated in SBC truths— mistaking myth for history, metaphor for fact, and theology for science— can only dim the future hopes of America in the world. But the idea of millions of SBC families applying “godly influence” on the public schools means imposing SBC ideology on the rest of us. Just as the Southern Baptists may worry about activist judges imposing liberalism, I worry about activist school boards imposing the inquisition. Extreme? Maybe. But I read Ann Coulter.

And then there is the move in Kentucky to replace the inclusive BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) with BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Year of Our Lord). Of course the Jews, Chinese, and Muslims have their own calendars, and I have no problem with Christians using BC. and AD among themselves. My problem is that when we use godly influence to go from Common Era to Year of Our Lord we are making it clear that America is for those whose Lord is Jesus.

America is not a Christian country, but it is a country of Christians. There is a difference, but only if the Constitution and the principles of freedom upon which the country was founded remain intact. When people call for a return to Christian values and point to the piety of the early settlers as proof of America’s Christian roots, I shudder. Not because they are wrong to do so, but because the Christian values the early settlers brought to America included the expulsion of Christians whose Christianity differed from their own, an attempt to keep Jews out of the settlements, the Salem Witch Trials, and the killing and exploitation of the Native Peoples, to name but four.

Most Christians I know who want to see America return to its Christian values are right wing Republicans who mistake the Contract With America for the Sermon on the Mount. I can see them creating their own version of the Inquisition in the name of rooting out heresy. And for a Jew that spells trouble with a capital H.

So is it time to leave? Well I’m not packing my bags just yet, but I am keeping my passport up to date. And I sent a donation to the 700 Club just in case.

Which Came First: Allah or the Egg?

This is true: Reuters News Service reported today that a chicken in a Kazakh village (i.e. a village in predominately Sunni Moslem Central Asian state of Kazakhstan) laid an egg with the word “Allah” written in Arabic on its shell.

This is not: The Christian organization, To Hell with Unbelievers (ToHU), immediately issued a statement saying in part:

“The Allah egg is an obvious forgery. First of all God’s Name is God. Second of all, while God does license the images of his Son and his Son’s Mother to appear in a variety of baked goods, pizza slices, grilled cheese sandwiches, and other food stuffs, the Lord of the Universe does not authorize the use of his signature or Name on eggs.”

Intrigued, I contacted the director of the ToHU, Mark Matthews, and asked what God has against eggs.
“It isn’t that God has something against eggs per se,” Mr. Matthews told me. “The problem is having been born of a woman, Himself, God does not choose to license His Name or Image on other birth products. And, before some liberal takes this as a slap at women and other females, God does not allow His Image to appear in pools of semen either.”

That settled, I wondered if Shiite Moslems were offended that the Allah egg came from a Sunni bird.

“No,” said Abdul Kayyam, the twenty-something head of a hip Shiite group out of Manhattan called Shiite Happens. “We are simply glad that Allah decided to get into the food manifestation business. For years it has been an insult to Moslems everywhere that Jesus and Mary dominated the Holy Face in Foodstuffs movement. Of course, neither Allah nor Mohammed, peace be upon him, would ever lend their faces to food, it is good to see that Allah has found a way to let the world know that He is the God.”

Having been reminded of the prohibition of drawing Mohammed’s face, I did some investigation and found that a Dutch newspaper was holding a contest challenging Dutch chickens to lay eggs with Mohammed’s face on them. No word yet as to how this is going.

For the sake of balance I also called Rabbi Moishe Gross of the Image of God in Food Society, which, despite its name, tries to debunk claims that God’s face or signature shows up in food. “This is nonsense,” the rabbis told me. “God would not sign the Ten Commandments, let alone an egg, and a nonkosher egg at that. No, the signature is a forgery. The pizza with Mary is more problematic, seeing as how a slice of pizza stacked diagonally on another slice of pizza actually reveals the Star of David, but since she only appears on one slice, we are not worried.”

Well, then, neither am I.

The Way of the Window Crank

You never know when controversy will strike. I was reading the paper over lunch and came across an article about the future of crank windows in new cars. It seems that in the near future automatic windows will be standard on all makes and models of new cars. OK, that is somewhat interesting I suppose. But then came the shocker.

Toyota spokesman Kim Kwong predicted, and I quote: “You are going to see crank windows go the way of the dinosaurs.” Oh…my…God…! The way of the dinosaurs. This isn’t simply controversy, this is catastrophe.

Why, you might be asking yourself? Because the way of the dinosaurs isn’t pretty.

Basically you have two choices when it comes the way of the dinosaurs: the scientific way and the Creationist way. Neither one is going to make you sleep better tonight.

If you adhere to the theory of Creationism, the dinosaurs coexisted with human beings and both were caught up in the Flood. Noah and his family survived and so did two of every kind of dinosaur, but after the flood the earth just wasn’t same and the dinosaurs couldn’t adapt or, dare we say, “evolve,” fast enough. The last of them died after the flood.

Now let’s apply this to crank windows. If they, too, go the way of the dinosaur, we are in for another Flood— and (at least according to prophet Kwong) soon! Yes, I know God promised not to drown the earth a second time, but there are millions of people who believe in Creationism and the Flood-bath that killed the dinosaurs so I wouldn’t be so sure. A second flood is coming and, unless you are currently building an ark under God’s direction, you are screwed!

But, if you are a pseudo-intellectual sophisticate life me, you can always scoff at the Flood theory and go with more scientific data regarding the way of the dinosaur.

I always thought an asteroid stricking the earth 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous period killed off the beast. (Yes, I know, you thought it was beauty that killed the beast, but that is because you are a hopeless Romantic and not a real scientist.) It turns out, however, that the climate had already turned too cold for them, and the asteroid was simply the final straw (so to speak). The dinosaurs were freezing to death.

Sure, I know we are supposed to worry about global warming, but, if we are to take Kim Kwong and science seriously, the truth is that extreme cold is going to kill off the crank window. And I mean extreme!

Think of it this way: window cranks are made of plastic. Do you know the freezing point of plastic? Neither do I, but I do know that gasoline will still burn at minus 97 degrees Fahrenheit. Since both plastic and gasoline are made from petroleum you can be pretty damn sure that it has to be pretty damn cold for plastic to freeze. Since the scientific way of the dinosaur is freezing to death, and crank windows are going the way of the dinosaur—it is going to get really cold really soon.

So what can we do? Nothing. Religion and science agree: If crank windows are going the way of the dinosaur as Kim Kwong predicts, we are doomed.

Our only hope is that Mr. Kwong is wrong. But when it comes to predicting the future of the automobile, the people at Toyota are rarely wrong. So here is my advice: Roll up your car windows and burn as much fossil fuel as possible to up the greenhouse gas levels. It may keep the floodwaters out and you a little bit warmer. But not for long.

Homorein (with thanks to E)

Do I really care about a Gay-Pride parade in Jerusalem? Do I really feel compelled to comment that in a city where thousands of Jews dress as if they were living in medieval Poland there are Jews who want to make sure that thousands more don’t dress up as the Village People and march down Ben Yehudah Street? Yes I do.

And not because I am gay. I am not even happy most of the time. Nor am I eager to watch Jews with more piercings than Jesus walk along the Via Delarosa. No, I care because I can’t stand it when other unknown rabbis suddenly make the news, while I am condemned to blog about it

The rabbi is question is Rabbi Yehudah Levin of the New York-based Jews for Morality. He is supporting a petition to cancel a Gay-Pride parade in Jerusalem. I’ll tell you about the petition in a moment, but first, I have to say that I never heard of Jews for Morality, though most of the Jews I know are for morality. Why is it when you capitalize a regular noun other than at the beginning of a sentence you suddenly own it? If I am not a member of Jews for Morality, does that make me immoral? And if so, how much does it cost to become a member of Jews for Morality and hence become moral?

I checked out their website to see. First of all these Jews are the circumcised equivalent of the Rapture Right. The only difference, beside the missing foreskin, is that when the Rapture comes, these people will all be left behind. You can be as right as you want, but if you aren’t right with Jesus you are wrong. So there. Second of all, I couldn’t find out how to join. I am hoping that merely clicking on their website is sufficient because that is all I could do.

OK, back to the petition. The petition says, “[s]uch a parade in Jerusalem, of all places, is a great blow at the ages-old Jewish character of the city and its holy values, for the Jewish and non-Jewish public in Israel and around the world. To hold it in Jerusalem is a provocation and a declared mockery of all that is precious and sacred in the Holy city of Jerusalem in the eyes of the entire world."

I know what you are thinking: Why not simply move the parade to Tel Aviv? Rabbi Levin has that covered. Speaking on Israel National Radio he said, "If they think that we will be silent if the parade is moved from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, they do not understand our entire struggle. The Holy Land in its entirety must not be defiled; the basis for our continued presence in this land is that it remain pure."

Pure means “free of homosexuals.” It probably also means free of women in pants. Does this sound like Nazism? It does to me. Yes, I know it is vile to link anything Jewish to the Nazis, and I am not saying that Rabbi Levin is calling for the extermination of homosexuals, but echoes of Judenrein are still dancing in my head.

Rabbi Levin also said that the newly appointed mufti of Jerusalem, as well as other leading Moslem clerics, have shown great support for his cause. Good for him. These are the kind of moral giants we all wish to follow.

The real problem is not Rabbi Levin or Jews for Morality. The real problem is not that they are misrepresenting Judaism, the way we desperately hope that Muslim extremists are misrepresenting Islam. The real problem is that the Torah hates homosexual acts between men. Read Leviticus 18:22: male homosexuality is an abomination. Torah is very clear about this— clear and wrong. It is wrong on many things, and until we are willing to stand up and say so publicly and reject it when it is wrong without having to play games to pretend it doesn’t mean what it says, or says what it clearly does not say, we will continue to be plagued by the madness that passes for religion.

The Lobby of the Lord

I never heard of Hobby Lobby before moving to Tennessee, and when I did I assumed it was a large crafts store, which it is. But it seems that the true concern of Hobby Lobby is not to lobby for your hobby but to lobby for Jesus and a Christian America. Hence its full-page ad entitled In God We Trust in the July 4th issue of USA Today.

The ad is an anthology of quotes from past presidents, founding fathers, Supreme Court justices, Congress, and others making the case that America is more than a nation of Christians, but a Christian nation. Maybe this shouldn’t upset me. It is just that I love being an American, and I find the Fourth of July truly inspiring. I think we should assemble on the Fourth to read and debate the meaning of the Declaration and the Bill of Rights. I think the Fourth of July should be for Americans what Yom Kippur is for Jews and Easter is for Christians—the day when we consider the deepest truths of who we are.

So when I find an ad that violates the very genius and spirit of America and does so in the name of America, I get upset. No, not upset—sad. Sad and worried. And then a bit more sad.

In addition to being sad, I also find this ad to be a fine example of false advertising. Hobby Lobby does not trust in God. If it did it would relax and let God take care of things. HL wants to impose JC on the rest of us. And if HL can’t turn all Americans into believing Christians, it wants to make sure all are forced to live by Christian values (as they define them) and do away with science, contraception, and homosexuals.

If they really trusted God, they would simply leave these things up to God. If God is willing to allow us to imagine and teach that humans and apes share a family tree, why should HL take offense? And if God created people so that people might create condoms, who are they to interfere? And if God created everything, then God created homosexuals and who is HL to condemn God’s creation?

What bugs me about HL is their hubris. They sift through the teachings of Jesus, focus on what he has to say about homosexuality, stem cell research, evolution, and contraception, and ignore all the rest. (Note: For those who have not read the Gospels, Jesus says nothing about any of these things.) Their Jesus is created in their image, not God’s. He is their son, not His. They did the same with this ad. America was not and is not a Christian nation, and because it isn’t, Christianity flourishes here unlike anywhere else on the planet.

So I call upon America (notice how I assume America reads this blog) to trust in God but not in Hobby Lobby. I, for one, will no longer shop at Hobby Lobby. (OK I never have before, either.) I will not shop at Hobby Lobby not because I have no hobbies (which, sadly, is true) but because I can’t support their lobby. And I hope you won’t either. I am calling for a boycott of Hobby Lobby. Or, if you just have to buy stuff there, buy some stuff to make a sign that tells others not to buy there.

Happy Fourth. And God bless you (or damn you as the case may be).

Knit One, Pearl Two

When most of us think of the creation of humanity in the Bible we think of Genesis. In Chapter One God simply has the idea to create men and women and— whoosh! — there they are. In Chapter Two God creates the male human first by fashioning a clay manikin and then breathing consciousness into it. Both versions of human origins have something to teach us.

We are an idea in the mind of God. We are, as the Hindus say, the dream of God. Or better, we are God dreaming. The creation you and I experience is a cosmic game of hide of seek with God hiding from himself and then finding himself which ends the game for a few millennia until God starts playing all over again. We know this intuitively which is why one of the earliest games babies learn to play is peek-a-boo: now you’re here, now you’re not.

The second creation story reminds us that we are not (as the first story might suggest) alien to the earth, but fully of it. This is just the opposite of the Christian call to be in the world but not of the world. Genesis 2 says we are of the world, literally. We are the clay of the earth made self-conscious. To me this means that we are the way life comes to know itself divine. We are the way nature cares for the poor, the homeless, and the hungry. Unfortunately we are also the way nature produces poverty, homelessness, and starvation. There is nothing we can do about that. We are both the problem and the solution.

But there is a third creation myth in the Bible. In Psalm 139:13 we learn that God knits us together in our mothers’ wombs. I love this image for several reasons. First, the Knitting God just cannot be the angry, imperial, and dysfunctional Lord God running around creating life, drowning life, and proclaiming fatwas and jihads against anyone who crosses the Chosen people. With the exception of Madame Lafarge, knitting is done with love, not malice.

Second, the Knitting God is God as Mother and Grandmother, a welcome alternative to God the Father. In my family women knit, men fart. This image of the Great Mother God knitting me into existence is so loving. I have God’s full attention, and better, I am the result of God’s full attention.

Third, knitting is an image quite different from breathing life into a blow-up doll. When you knit you take different threads and weave them together. The more complex the pattern, the more glorious the piece. Given the excitement around string theory in physics, I can imagine God knitting the strings of existence together in an infinite array of more and less complex patterns eventually knitting a sweater and pants set that thinks and can knit its own socks!

So the next time you hear someone say we ought to teach Biblical creationism in the schools, you should agree with them. Just do it in during home economics.

Kal-El, Son of God

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s a gay guy!

Is Superman, the quintessential American superhero, gay? Enquiring minds want to know. Actually not “enquiring” minds but stupid, silly, bored minds with nothing better to do than debate Superman’s sexuality. But, since they started…

Actually I have no idea if Superman is gay or straight. And, since he is a COMIC BOOK CHARACTER, I don’t care. But apparently some people do, but not the people you might think. It isn’t the wacko-Christian fringe that is obsessed with a gay Man of Steel, but the wacko-gay fringe. They can’t imagine that a guy in tights and wearing a cap is straight. What do they think the big “S” on his chest stands for, anyway.

As I investigated the truth behind the gay Ubermensch (UberHomo?) I discovered a more fascinating understanding of the big “S.” It doesn’t stand for “straight” but for “Son,” as in the Son of God. The May/June issue of New Man, a Christian men’s magazine (talk about gay, there isn’t a single photograph of a woman, let alone a scantily dressed woman, in this magazine), the Man of Steel is the Son of God. Here’s the proof:

Superman’s powers come from the sun (Son, get it?).
Superman has X-ray vision; God can see everything.
Superman has super hearing; God hears all prayers before they are spoken (Isaiah 65:24).
Superman has heat vision; Christ’s eyes blaze like fire (Revelation 1:14).
Superman has super speed; Christ is everywhere in times of trouble (Psalm 46:1).
Superman is raised by Martha and Jonathan which sounds like Mary and Joseph. (And, though the magazine didn’t mention this, “Kent” rhymes with Lent.)
Superman’s archenemy is Lex Luthor which sounds a lot like Lucifer, aka, the Devil.

You get the idea. Of course it doesn’t hurt that in the up-coming movie Jor-El, Superman’s dad, says he is sending his only begotten son to save the earth. And it damn well helps to know that Superman’s real name is Kal-El, which the two Jewish creators of Superman, having recently become bar mitzvah, knew is Hebrew for “All-God” (Jor-
El means nothing in particular, though El is Hebrew for God).

So is Superman a gay, Jewish, Christ-figure? Yes, he likes to run around in tights and a cape, but the rest of his wardrobe is kind of boring. Yes, he has a great body, but he never works out. Yes, he trying to save humankind, but he never sacrifices himself, preferring to beat the crap out of his enemies. Yes, his name is Jewish, but he flies on Shabbos.

The truth is, we don’t know. Does it matter? Not to me. Jesus wore robes, hung around with a bunch of guys, never married, remained a virgin (sorry Dan Brown), and seemed to attract a lot of women without himself being attracted to them. Maybe Jesus was…. Nah.

What Makes Us Unique

My friend Hal gave me a copy of “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert. I’m only on page 3, but I already feel compelled to comment.

Gilbert speaks of The Sentence; that one line on which so many of us live or die: “The human being is the only animal that…”

Gilbert says humans are the only beings that think about the future. I don’t know if that is true, but, true or not, there are other ways to complete this sentence that I find more compelling: The human being is the only animal that… pays for sex; packs things with Styrofoam peanuts; and bothers to complete the sentence: The human being is the only animal that….

But these answers, while wildly clever, don’t mean much. Thinking a bit more deeply, I would say the human being is the only animal that imagines God cares about what he or she believes God cares about. We are the only animals that worry about heresy, blasphemy, and making sure that Passover matzah is baked no longer than 18 minutes.

Now you might argue that I am missing the point, and that we humans are the only animals that care about Truth. But I don’t think truth is what we care about. What we care about is belief. What you believe may be totally insane, but you will fight to the death (preferably someone else’s) insisting otherwise.

Most likely the insanity belongs to those who believe other than you do. For example, it is insane to think that a bit of dry cracker becomes the body of Christ, but it makes total sense that the sun stood still at midday to allow Joshua enough time to finish his military conquests. Or, it is ludicrous to think that God kept feeding lines to Mohammed in a cave, but the quintessence of reason to believe that He dictated a few lines to Moses on a mountaintop.

I am not saying that one person’s belief is another person’s heresy. I am saying that when it comes to religious belief people are nuts. And we like it that way.

Take the Buddha. He comes to a very simple insight: life driven by unquenchable desire is painful, so stop living that way. That is a very clear, testable truth. And then his followers spend innumerable hours decorating it with wild stories about cobras, demons and virgins over whose existence we can argue incessantly.

So here is another ending for Gilbert’s sentence: The human being is the only animal that prefers fantasy to reality.

Now it is your turn: The human being is the only animal that…

The Name Game

A couple of days ago I commented on changes to the American Catholic liturgy. Today I read that the Presbyterian Church (USA) is considering some drastic changes of its own.

The church’s national assembly voted to “receive” (one step short of approving) a more gender-inclusive reference to the Trinity. No, not Natalie, Martie, and Emily, they are the Dixie Chicks. In addition to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (nee Ghost) the Trinity may soon make a liturgical debut as Mother, Child, and Womb” or “Rock, Redeemer, and Friend” or “Lover, Beloved, and Love.”

The goal of the changes is to remove the misnomer that God— King of Kings, Lord of Lord, and Man of War—is male. Not a bad goal as goals go, but to say that these changes “do not alter the church’s theological position,” as the church claims, is to say you are not taking these changes very seriously.

If God the Father is now God the Mother, just how did Mother impregnate Mary with Child? And if She did, what does this say about homosexuality in the church? God is now a lesbian, so how can we say lesbianism is an abomination? Gay men are still out, of course, because it is man on man sex that really freaks the Church Fathers out. Women on women, well lets just say boys will be boys unless they are gay in which case they are abominations.

But could a Lesbian God really hate gay men? I doubt it. So I imagine that soon after the return of the Mother we will find a way to welcome gay men as well.

I for one am happy about this. I am a bit less comfortable with the Holy Womb.

A womb is a uterus, a hollow muscular organ located in the pelvic cavity of female mammals. True, I believe that God manifests as all things, so this hollow muscular organ is also God, but do I really want to pray to it? When people say they are moved by the Holy Spirit, am I to imagine they are being squeezed by an invisible uterus? And if we are trying to make our religious language gender-inclusive, did it ever occur to people that only women have wombs?

For a moment I thought the way out would be the Lover, Beloved, Love trinity. But lovers need not be spouses and spouses need not be lovers, so now God is supporting love outside of marriage which makes everyone not living in Massachusetts very nervous.

So what to do? Opt for the liturgy of the unformed Quaker service: silence. Just sit in God’s presence and know that whatever images come to mind regarding God are neither real nor accurate.

As Lao Tzu has been trying to teach us for thousands of years: the God that can be named is not the eternal God.

A Shameless Plug

My friend Rich called last night and urged me to let my readers now that I have recently published a new book with Skylight Press. The book is called the Sacred Art of Lovingkindness. It should be in most bookstores by now, and can be ordered from either Skylight or Amazon.

If you are readers of my books, I would like to ask a favor. If you can make the time, please go on Amazon.com and write comments in the review section. Of course I am assuming you would right positive reviews. If you didn't like the book no need to write a review.

Thanks,
Rami

A Shift in the Making?

Just when I was packing to move to Canada, or Amsterdam, or Israel (notice the order), I read that the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Frank Page as the group's president at its meeting in Greensboro, N.C., and Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori is elected to lead the Episcopal Church USA. While too very different persons of faith, they share a broader vision that shifts (in the case of the Baptists) and maintains (in the case of the Episcopalians) the direction of these two denominations toward the left.

Now, don’t get too excited. Rev. Page and his Southern Baptists are not about to vote for gay marriage, something Bishop Schori supports, but the obsession of the religious right with bashing the liberal left may be waning.

Does this mean that the War on Christianity is over and the Civil War among Christians is underway? I doubt it. As American Jews know, feeling hated and oppressed is a great marketing tool. It is easier to raise money from followers who feel attacked, then from followers who feel victorious. So I doubt the War is over. But at least there may be a new front opening: more liberal (relative to the establishment) leaders are coming to the fore bringing the teachings of Jesus to bear on the issues that really mattered to him: poverty, injustice, exploitation of the common people by the religious and political elites, rather than abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research.

I for one am heartened by these two elections. What Christianity, Islam, and Judaism need is their how Dalai Lama. We are no where near this at the moment, but maybe we moved a bit in that direction this past week. Let’s hope so.

Making a Mess of Mass

Religious ritual is theater. Its power rests on its use of music, symbol, and liturgy to open the heart, mind, and soul of the worshipper to the presence of God. Mostly it is bad theater, primarily because the people in charge of worship refuse to treat it as theater. Case in point: the newly proposed changes to the American Catholic Mass.

In the new version the standard exchange between priest and people: “The Lord be with you”/”And also with you” will now be “The Lord be with you”/ “And with your spirit.” This is supposed to better reflect the Latin from which the English Mass comes. That may be. My Latin is limited to E Pluribus Unum and Biggus Dickus. But it is bad theater.

The repetition of “you” in the two phrases links the priest with the people. We could bless one another as equals. Now the people are asking that God be with the father’s spirit. But what about the rest of him? This splitting of body and spirit is both false and unfortunate. A church still reeling from child abuse scandals should know this most of all.

The second change deals with Communion. Prior to taking Communion Catholics used to say, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you.” Now worshippers will say, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof.” What were they thinking?

Taking the Body and Blood of Christ into oneself is the center of the Mass. This is a moment of integrating God and wo/man. No one is worthy of this, and thus it is a sign of God’s love that it is offered to you. But to shift from receiving God to having God under one’s roof misses the point completely. God isn’t entering under your roof; God is entering your mouth. Even if the liturgical writer was thinking of the roof of one’s mouth when he made this change (which I doubt), it is a terrible change.

I have been to many Communion services. I have seen the power of this intimate in-taking of God. It is moving and stirring. This new liturgy can only take away from that.

These changes reflect the error at the heart of organized religion. Rather than work to deepen our experience of God’s presence here and now, organized religion focuses on conforming to some historical experience there and then. These changes to the Catholic liturgy are just the latest example of how religion misses the mark.

True worship should have elements of continuity with the past, but should not simply imitate the past. Imitative worship cannot open us to God, unless the god it presents to us is also imitative. Indeed that may be the problem. Religion is all about the second-hand. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob rather than the God of you and this moment. Even if you add the matriarchs to the mix—Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah—you are doing nothing to shift worship into the present.

When I go to a worship service I want to moved to let go of past and future and awaken to what is here and now: God manifest. I guess that is I why I rarely go to services.

Soylent Green is People (Chinese People)

Remember ice cream trucks? Where I grew up in Western Massachusetts the ice cream truck was a summer staple. Everyday, though we never new just when, we would hear the jingle as the gleaming white van made its way through the streets of our neighborhood. As the jingle got louder we knew the van was getting closer. We would practically mug our mothers for change, and then wait anxiously at the curb for the arrival of the truck.

The truck drove slowly down the street so as not to kill any potential customers. As it pulled up in front of us our eyes scanned the myriad signs plastered on the side of the truck announcing just what was inside the coolers that day. Popsicles, Push-Up Pops, Creamsicles, Fudge Bars, Ice Cream Sandwiches, the list seemed endless. And the guy dressed in white pants, shirt, and sailor-like paper hat was the master of ceremonies. He worked efficiently, never loosing his cool. I wanted to be that guy.

My cousin Bob actually drove an ice cream truck for a while. The envy of many of my friends, but his route was far from our neighborhood, so having a family member in the business did nothing to lower our personal ice cream expenses. He loved that job. I bet he would do it again, given the chance.

I read today that the Chinese have something similar. Or not so similar. The twist is that, in China, they are not selling ice cream, they are killing people. The Chinese van, which looks just like the ice cream trucks of my childhood, is a deathmobile that comes to your neighborhood to inject convicted criminals with lethal chemicals and then cart away the bodies in the back of the truck.

Critics of the idea say China uses the trucks to increase their harvest of body parts to sell on the black market. Not a bad idea. If we did this profits could offset the costs of trials, or be given to the families the criminals have harmed. In fact, we could harvest body parts from living criminals. We could offer a reduced sentence to criminals who would give up a lung or kidney or eye.

I am thinking about writing to the Chinese embassy to suggest that they could get more out of the vans if they let the drivers sell ice cream out of the back of the trucks. They already have coolers to keep the newly harvested organs fresh, so why not start the day with the coolers filled with ice cream. Rather than sitting around waiting for a criminal to kill, drivers could cruise neighborhoods and sell ice cream, stopping for an occasional lethal injection, and careful not to mix the deadly serum with the butterscotch topping.

I am not saying we should have deathmobiles, or that the Chinese should sell ice cream. It isn’t my place to tell other people what to do. It is just that if we did do it maybe my cousin could get a part-time job driving one of the trucks in my neighborhood so I could get a free hot fudge sundae now and then.

Dear Rami

Dear Rami,

I just found your website (www.rabbirami.com) and read most of what you had posted there. It was very irritating. I know you say you are a rabbi but I am not sure. I think you should stop using the title rabbi. Then we won’t have to take you seriously anymore.

X

* * *

Dear X

You don’t have to take me seriously, but I worked hard to become a rabbi, and I have no intension of dropping the title.

In fact I love being a rabbi, just as I love being a Jew; though I admit to pushing the limits of both. And in the spirit of doing just that, let me share a couple of thoughts your email sparked in me.

A rabbi is a master of Torah, God’s revelation to Moses and through Moses to the world. The heart of that revelation is what I call the Jewish Creed:

Hear O Israel, YAH is our God, YAH is one. Love YAH with all your heart, with every breath, with all you have and are (Deuteronomy 6:4-5); and Love your neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and the stranger (Leviticus 19:34) as yourself.

[I use the Name YAH (as in Hallelu-YAH, praise YAH) rather than Adonai/Lord to avoid the patriarchal and hierarchical dualism associated with the more classic LORD. The Hebrew is best understood as the verb TO BE. God is the is-ing of reality.]

A Jew is someone devoted to this Creed who continually strives to deepen her capacity to listen and love, and uses the tools Judaism offers as her primary means for doing so. A rabbi is someone whose life is devoted to facilitating this deepening in both others and him/herself.

Of course these are not standard definitions, but they work for me, and I thought I would share them with you. Thanks for the opportunity to comment on this. Feel free to ignore my thoughts if you wish.

y-K-v-K

“We report to a Higher Authority” is a very successful marketing slogan for kosher meat producer Hebrew National. It suggests that kosher products are holier and therefore healthier. That may be true for Hebrew National, and I have no evidence to the contrary. But it is not true of all companies who call themselves kosher.

AgriProcessors, a major kosher meat producer selling its products under the Aaron’s Best brand, has been under fire for mistreatment of animals since December of 2004 when an animal rights group shot video of the plant’s slaughtering processes. At the heart of kosher is the principle of “tzar baalei chayyim,” sparing animals from unnecessary suffering. Not so at AgriProcessors. Of course since meat eating itself is unnecessary, and God’s prescribed diet in Genesis is clearly meatless, one could (and I do) argue that true kosher is vegetarianism. But the suffering of the animal is not the only issue; of equal importance is the treatment of workers.

Exploiting laborers renders products, both food stuffs and other goods, treif, unfit for human consumption. A new study of AgriProcessors’ labor policies reveals that on this count too they are decidedly treif. Workers are often undocumented, underpaid, poorly trained, and overworked. (see the Forward, May 26, 2006).

“Aaron’s Best” is really what is best for Aaron, and seems to bear little resemblance to anything remotely holy. Yet religious Jews continue to buy their products. Why? Because law is God and God is law in so much of what passes for Judaism. But this is not Judaism; this is idolatry.

Judaism is not alone in making idols. Every religion offers up a lens (it is really a mirror, but that is for some other time) through which to view God and in time begins to worship that lens as if it were God. That people don’t see this amazes me. Religion is too often bullshit from a sacred cow (if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor).

I take kosher very seriously. I think that doing your best to only consume items that do as little harm to animals, people, and the environment as possible is what kosher is all about. I am a kosher Jew, and while tuna, salmon, and halibut consider me a Nazi, cows and chickens think I am Gandhi. Mea culpa to the fish; my kosher is a work in progress.

The fact that a company that causes needless suffering to animals and workers can still be kosher simply reinforces my sense that orthodoxies of any sort are corrupt to the core.

What Judaism needs, what all religions need, is a prophetic voice standing in the marketplace of ideas and speaking truth to power. Jesus may have been the last Jew to do this for Judaism, and look what happened to him— they turned him into God! There is no better way to avoid the message then worshipping the messenger. How terribly sad for us all.