Happy Purim

There are many intriguing aspects to Purim, the Jewish holy day celebrating the salvation of the Jews of Persia through the daring of Queen Esther. First there is the fact that intermarriage is central to the story: if Jewish Esther had not married the Gentile King the Jews would have died. Second, there is the fact that God plays no role in the story: it is Esther who saves her people, not God. Third, there is the tradition of allowing cross-dressing and the skewing of rabbis as part of the holy day fun. Fourth there is the custom of giving gifts and tzedakah (charity). And fifth there is the tradition of getting so drunk on Purim that you can no longer tell the difference between Mordecai and Haman, i.e. Good and Evil. Couple these with the fact that the entire story is fictional and based on the Babylonian Gods Ishtar (Esther) and Marduk (Mordecai) you have a deeply compelling tale of existential spirituality.

Unfortunately too many Jews think of Purim, which falls on March 19-20 this year, as a kids’ holy day—sans the alcohol. In the interest of full disclosure, I have never gotten drunk. I don’t even like Rum Raisin ice cream, so getting beyond good and evil with the help of alcohol falls outside my experience. And yet…

The relationship of good and evil is central to much of my thinking. I believe in both, and see each as a necessary corollary of the other. Just as you cannot have front without back, so you cannot have good without evil. They go together. Good and evil are part of the binary dynamic of the phenomenal world, the world that you and I experience moment to moment. So what might it mean to go beyond these?

That would be a wonderful discussion for adults to have during Purim. Raising the level of our holy days in this way would capture the imagination and intellect of adult Jews and help bring about a revival of Judaism. Using Purim each year to discuss the state of moral discourse and to explore ever more deeply the nature of good and evil would help return Judaism to relevancy in the lives of many Jews for whom it is largely inconsequential.

So whatever else you do this Purim, make some time to talk with friends about good and evil. And for those Jews seeking to blur the divide between Mordecai and Haman, remember: Jews don’t let Jews drive drunk.

Unchain Their Hearts

Today is the Fast of Esther, commemorating Queen Esther’s call to her fellow Jews to fast on her behalf as she prepares to risk her life to save theirs. It is also International Chained Woman Day referring to those Jewish women (agunot) who are chained to husbands who either refuse to give them a divorce or who are missing (in battle or otherwise) but cannot be proven dead, and who are therefore married to the missing for the rest of their lives. (Women have no right to divorce in Judaism but do have the right to refuse a divorce their husbands may desire, so that men, too, can be chained.)

Many Orthodox rabbis work with women’s groups to find a way out of this nonsense, but estimates put the number of chained of women in the thousands.

Does this sound right to you? Does it make any sense to maintain a Bronze Age marriage bond that enslaves spouses to one another? Isn’t this just the kind of madness with which people who worry about Sharia are concerned?

Here in Tennessee I have spoken with many Jews who are worried about Sharia (Islamic law), and unconcerned about halacha (Jewish law). Why? Either because they believe halacha comes from God, or they have abandoned halachic observance, and choose to live their lives as modern rather than Bronze Age Jews.

Why do modern men and women voluntarily bind themselves to halacha and Sharia? The answer is that they believe this is what God wants of them. But this only begs the question: why believe in a god who demands this of you?

The answer to the craziness of religious laws isn’t legalized oppression of religious expression, but free men and women walking away from such craziness. As long as we in the United States maintain a country that protects both freedom of religion and freedom from religion, we don’t have to worry about either halacha or Sharia forcing us to live in ways most of us find repugnant. But this requires a knowledge of and support for the First Amendment that more and more Americans seem to be abandoning. The danger isn’t Muslim or Jewish orthodoxies, or even Christian fundamentalists who find freedom of religion a stumbling block to their version of a God fearing America. The danger is that we liberals will be out-maneuvered and lose the very rights that make the United States the exceptional experiment it is.

The Real Mau Mau Revolution and What It Means for America

I am incensed over the current attacks on Governor Mike Huckabee by the left wing drive-by lame stream Islamo-terror media. Yes, the Governor misspoke when he said President Obama grew up in Kenya, but that does not mean the Governor was wrong when he said that President Obama, his father, and his grandfather have a very different understanding of the Mau Mau revolution than that of most Americans. They do, and it is time they admitted it. All three of them.

Governor Huckabee is a master of history. True, believing that the world is only six thousand years old makes this mastery a bit easier, but the Mau Mau revolution is quite recent, taking place here in the United States only 45 years ago. No, I am not talking about the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonialism. Why should American’s care about that? We never had to deal with British colonialism, and as far as I know we are all proud members of the British Commonwealth.

The true Mau Mau revolution, the one that should strike fear in the hearts of all patriotic Americans is The Del-Tino’s 1966 hit, Papa Ooh Mau Mau in which we find the revolutionary lyric: Oom-ooma-mau-mau, papa-ooma-mau-mau. Ooma-mau-mau, papa-ooma-mau-mau. Papa-a-mau-mau, papa-ooma-mau-mau ... (you put the Ooh Mau Mau.......)

Did you catch that? “You put the ohh Mau Mau?!?” Do you know what that means? Do you know where they are going to put it? [Here’s a hint: the Bible is against putting it where they are planning to put it!] Do you know what that implies for the future of America? Do you have any idea what the Governor is talking about, and how vital it must be to the salvation of this country because the Governor is talking about it?

Neither do I, but I trust that the Governor thinks he knows what he is talking about, and that is good enough for me. As long as he thinks he is thinking I don’t have to. Indeed, none of us has to, and that is what is so great about having a President Huckabee in the White House: no history, no science, and no Papa Ooh Mau Mau. God save the Queen!

Rabbis & God: A Call for Intimacy

Carol Ochs, a wonderful teacher and spiritual guide, wrote an article in the current issue of The Reform Jewish Quarterly entitled: “Fostering a Relationship between Rabbi and God.” I had high hopes for the essay, but was very disappointed.

First Dr. Ochs says, “If we are to deepen the formation of a religious life in others, we must nurture a growing intimacy with God in ourselves. Oddly, we have to put aside the first question we may ask—What do we mean by God?— so that we can overcome the distance required for analytical thought and enter the closeness aspired to by a lover.”

This doesn’t make sense to me. Do we want to be intimate with just anyone? Is our “lover” an unknown quantity? Is there no place for reason in relationships? If we don’t define God how do we know that with which we are becoming intimate is God? If we don’t define God how can we say to a Jew who takes Jesus or Krishna as her lover that she is outside Judaism, or should this no longer concern rabbis?

Dr. Ochs goes on to say that rabbis and rabbinical students need to “return to our own personal experience of the presence of God. In this way we can wrestle with the question, “How do we relate to God, who is now the center of our reality?”

If we do not know what is meant by God, how can we speak of the presence of God? And if we do not what God is, how can we say God is now the center of our reality? And how are we supposed to return to the presence of God in the first place?

The bulk of her essay is a series of interpretations of lines pulled from the Torah, lines she finds to be “touchstones” on her “unmarked journey to a maturing relationship with God.” Despite her claim to the contrary these texts not content free, and do in fact assume a theology, one that I suspect most Jews no longer hold.

For example: “Although you intended me harm, God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). Clearly God is a self–conscious being who has intentions and who somehow controls our lives and does so for our own good. Most Jews don’t think this way, which is why organized Judaisms that promote this theology have less and less impact on Jews.

What Jews (and everyone else for that matter) need is a way to encounter reality at a level that transcends and transforms the narrow mind (mochin d’katnut) of self and selfishness, opens us to the spacious mind (mochin d’gadlut) of Self and selflessness, and awakens us to the truth that Alles iz Gott (all is God), understanding God as the intrinsically creative source and substance of all reality.

If I were the head of a rabbinical college I would offer students shamanic training where they learned the ecstatic kabbalistic visualizations of Abulafia, the ecstatic dancing and nigunnim (wordless melodies) of the Hasidim, the dream work of Solomon Almoni, the meditation techniques of Nachman of Breslov and Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, and how to use these and other techniques to create services and life-transition events that had the potential to transform people.

Calling rabbis to God is great. But unless we give them the tools for meeting God—not the anthropomorphic god of the Bronze Age but the timeless God who is Reality itself—the call is going to fall on deaf ears.

God Slayer No More

I rather liked being a God–slayer, so Pope Benedict XVI’s admission in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, that the Jews are innocent of the execution of Jesus came as a bit of a downer. I used to feel like Buffy without having to learn all that karate.

Of course Christians have murdered millions of Jews over the past 2000 years under the guise of payback for our killing God, so it wasn’t always cool. But today Christians don’t get to kill Jews anymore, though millions still look forward to other people killing all but 144,000 of us before the Second Coming, so let’s not get too excited.

Anyway, if we Jews are innocent, can we sue for damages? Even if we could, no amount of money I got from the Church would make up for my no longer being a God slayer. Especially now, when we need God slayers more than ever.

So, my thanks to the Pope for his honesty. I will write and ask him for a check, and use the money to set up a training academy for the slaying of Gods through the creative and compassionate use of the human imagination. I think I'll call it Imagine. If the Pope doesn’t respond, I’ll try Yoko.

Will People of Good Will Stand Together Against Hate?

Democracy and responsibility are not the same thing. While I welcome, support, and encourage democratic movements among all peoples, I have to recognize that they may use their new freedoms to foster ideas that I find hateful and threatening. Case in point: the return to prominence in Egypt of Sheik Yusuf al–Qaradawi, an anti-Semitic preacher of hate.

In a 2009 television interview on Al Jazeera, the Sheik claimed that Hitler was sent by Allah as an act of “divine punishment” for the “corruption” that is the Jewish people, and he hoped that Muslims would carry on this work. In a separate interview, al–Qaradawi expressed his hope that before he died he would have the opportunity to go to the “land of jihad” and shoot Jews.

Sheik Yusuf al–Qaradawi is a major player in the Islamic revival, an advisor to the Muslim Brotherhood, a media star hosting “Sharia and Life” on Al Jazeera, and a symbol of Egyptian freedom who delivered the Tahrir Square sermon on February 18 to a million Muslims. I worry that the Arab principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” will encourage the emerging democratic leaders to double down on Jew-hatred and use anti–Israel sentiment to cement their positions of power.

What can we do about this? First, know it is coming. Second, talk to your Muslim friends and neighbors about it. Third, ask that your local Muslim leaders take the moral high ground in this, and preemptively speak out publically to their communities and to the media in general about the evils of Jew–hatred. If they are afraid, offer to stand with them. If they refuse, think seriously about standing against them.

Liberal Jews and rabbis have long been doing the same with regard to anti–Islamic feelings among Jews and others: at this very moment, I am working against the hate–filled Tennessee law seeking to outlaw Sharia and hence Islam in the state of Tennessee. Now it is time for our Muslim colleagues to do the same for us among their fellow Muslims.

Will they? I don’t know. Challenge them, and report what you find.

The Real Danger of 2012

While millions of Americans are preparing to obsess over the end of the Mayan calendar, the real danger to America in 2012 is renewed anti–Muslim fear mongering tied to the 2012 elections. I suspect this is what is fueling a new bill introduced into the Tennessee Legislature by Sen. Bill Ketron and Rep. Judd Matheny, both Republicans, which makes following Sharia, Muslim law, a felony punishable by 15 years in prison.

“The threat from Shariah¬–based jihad and terrorism,” the bill states, “presents a real and present danger to the lawful governance of this state and to the peaceful enjoyment of citizenship by the residents of this state.” True enough; that is why we have laws prohibiting acts of violence and terrorism, regardless of the perpetrator.

Sen. Ketron and Rep. Matheny, however, aren’t seeking to strengthen laws against violence, but to criminalize Sharia, and hence Islam, as a whole. Sharia includes professing one’s faith in God and Muhammad, daily prayer, giving charity, fasting during Ramadan, and making pilgrimage to Mecca. Do we really want to criminalize these activities? Sharia also outlaws theft, murder and illicit sexual union. Would outlawing Sharia decriminalize these acts?

Sen. Ketron and Rep. Matheny have (deliberately?) equated extremist Islamic teachings for mainstream ones. While actual Sharia is a set of principles that is open to various interpretations depending on the scholars involved and the countries in which they live, their bill claims that "Sharia requires all its adherents to actively and passively support the replacement of America's constitutional republic, including the representative government of this state with a political system based upon sharia… sharia requires the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the United States and Tennessee Constitutions and the imposition of sharia through violence and criminal activity."

This interpretation of Sharia puts Sen. Ketron and Rep. Matheny in sync with Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, and American born jihadist Abu Mansoor al–Amriki, and if Sen. Ketron and Rep. Matheny were Muslims I would support this bill, and do everything I could to get them removed from office. But they aren’t Muslims and actual Tennessee Muslim leaders reject this interpretation of their faith. Tennessee is not in danger of becoming Saudi Arabia. Does anyone imagine that we will vote to make drinking alcohol and eating pork illegal? Are we really going to force the women of Tennessee to dress in chadors and give up driving?

This bill isn’t about protecting Americans; it is about scaring them. We are an easily frightened people, and when we are frightened we are capable of doing very bad things. As our country gears up for the next round of political insanity, anti–Muslim fear mongering will increase. Why? Because it generates votes. If such fear mongering were not a staple of American politics I would say we are witnessing the end of our democracy. But we aren’t. This is simply the sad way too many of our politicians play the game.

Meaning and Suffering

Last Friday I attended a lecture by New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman. During the talk he mentioned that he had abandoned his fundamentalist Christian faith because he was unable to reconcile its belief in a good and interventionist God, with all the suffering he saw in the world. I understand Dr. Ehrman’s problem, but opt for a different solution.

My own position is simple: God is not good. Neither is God bad. God is just God, Reality. We humans invent the categories of good and bad: good is what we like, bad is what we don’t like. Different people have different lists of likes and dislikes, and some among us insist that their lists come from God. God never says otherwise, so their claim can be ignored or denied, but never refuted.

As a student of the Bible I have trouble believing that God is opposed to suffering. God drowns almost all humanity in Genesis, terrorizes the Egyptian people, and murders their first born sons in Exodus, and then goes on to order the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Promised Land.

Causing suffering is God’s MO: look what He is willing to put His Son through just to keep Himself from condemning all of humanity once again. God could have simply forgiven humanity, he didn’t need the torture and death of Jesus. Or did He? The Jewish and Christian Bibles make it clear that God needs the death of innocents (animals, babies, Jesus, etc.) to assuage His wrath. So who says God is anti-suffering?

I find the Book of Job to be the most honest book in the Bible. Job suffers because God wants him to suffer. In his conversation with Job God makes it clear that suffering is part of life, and there is nothing anyone (including God) can do about it. That insight was enough for Job, and he found comfort in the chaos of life. I accept the truth of Job, but I want something more: I want the chutzpah of Abraham.

When God tells Abraham of the coming destruction of Sodom, Abraham demands that the Judge of all the world should himself act justly (Genesis 18:25) . Killing the innocent along with the guilty is wrong. God agrees, though both he and Abe are willing to let the city die if ten good people can’t be found within its gates.

Dr. Ehrman left Christianity because its loving God seemed false. I have yet to leave Judaism because its God—Job’s God—seems all too true.

Judaism is (for me) a blending of Abraham and Job. Like Job I know that suffering and injustice are inescapable, and like Abraham (and the Prophets) I fight against them anyway. Judaism is a rebellion against reality: making meaning in a universe that transcends meaning. It is a rebellion that cannot be won, yet cannot be abandoned (It is not for us to complete the task, but neither are we free to abandon it—Rabbi Tarfon, Avot 2:21) . Our messiah is always coming and never arrives because our vision of a perfect world is always a hope and never a reality.

Suffering does not drive me from Judaism, it confirms the need for it.

Peace Treety

With all the turmoil going on in Egypt and other Muslim countries I am being constantly asked about future hopes for peace between Israel and her Arab neighbors. While I hope for peace I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. This is because for many the battle isn’t earthly but cosmic. It is a war between Allah and YHVH and their respective armies of the faithful. There are only two ways to end a cosmic conflict: one God wins and desimates the people of the other God, or people stop allowing themselves to be manipulated by Gods altogether. I can’t see the latter happening, so I take seriously this Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him):

Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger as saying:

“Judgment Day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, until the Jews hide behind the tree and the stone, and the tree and the stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him:’ – but the Gharqad tree will not say this, for it is the tree of the Jews.”

This is a good news/bad news Hadith. The bad news is that most Jews will die. This isn't unique to Islam. Some of my Christian friends tell me the same thing: all but 144,000 Jews must die in order for Jesus to return. There is just something about the death of Jews that turns some Gods on. The good news is that there is a tree of the Jews. I had no idea.

It turns out the Gharqad tree is Arabic for the boxthorn, a tree of the nightshade family, of which there are ninety species. I don’t know why this tree loves the Jews, but I am glad it does. All those other trees and stones are antiSemites—damn you, Magnolia tree in my backyard! Curse you Maple tree in my front yard!

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start planting Gharqad trees everywhere. And while you may think me silly, you can at least see why I say there will be no peace in the Middle East. When the future depends on talking trees, you can be certain that the insanity and violence of people and their Gods is too much for what little rationality we have left.

[Case in point: anti-Jewish protests in Tunisia: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/142405]

Live Free and Fart

I get a lot of scam emails. You know, the ones that ask you to help a Nigerian woman cash in on her husband’s millions by paying a bribe to the bank president. I’ve worked with several of these women, and these things never pan out. That’s how I know they’re scams. But since so many people are trying this, I assume some people are making money at it, so I have come up with two similar scams that I would like you to help me beta-test. Please share the following two letters.

My name is Howard Thachapanda. I am a citizen of Malawi, and I am in grave danger. My problem is simple: I fart. I fart a lot. And I make a lot of noise and emit terrible odors when I do so. Which is a lot. My country is about to make farting a crime, and I fear arrest at any moment. I have tried hiding, but the noise and smell of my farts gives me away no matter where I hide. I am contacting you because I know you are person who understands both farting and freedom. I have almost enough money to escape my country, and I am hoping you can supply the rest. It is only $50 dollars. If you can help please reply to this email, and I will ask for your bank account numbers, social security number, and the name of the dwarf who turns straw into gold in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Please help me. And soon. I had a large plate of beans just moments ago and I fear the police are patrolling near-by.

If you don’t feel comfortable pretending to be a citizen of Malawi, try this variant:

My name is J. Morris. I am a United States citizen living in Malawi. I am a mild mannered reporter working for a major metropolitan newspaper, and I am about to be tried in Malawi for the crime of farting. It was an accident, as I understood the law against farting, but I could not find a rest room and was forced to fart on the street. I did not know the man standing next to me was with the Malawi secret police. I was being targeted because I was secretly interviewing leaders of the Live Free and Fart movement in Malawi. I need to raise money for my defense. I was given your name along with several others because you are a champion of freedom, and, so I have been told, a fart sufferer. If you can help me, please respond to this email and we will figure out how much I can take you for. God bless you. And God bless America. And God bless Beano.

So please try these out and let me know which of them works the best. Any money you make from these is yours to keep as a “thank you” for being part of this product testing effort. If you do reply to this post please include your bank account numbers, social security number, and the name of the dwarf who turns straw into gold in the Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

Thanks.

Keynote for TN State Interfaith Harmony Breakfast 2011

[I gave this talk this morning at the Tennessee State Interfaith Harmony Week Breakfast. For more on the week check our website: http://www.interfaithharmonybreakfasts.org]

There are two kinds of Interfaith programs: the safe and the frightening. The safe leave us untouched; we are same persons going in as we are coming out. The frightening leave us not only touched but transformed; we are different coming out then we were going in.

In the safe program representatives from various religions set forth the key teachings and practices of their respective faiths while their fellow panelists nod politely, pretending to some universal agreement that we know doesn’t exist if for no other reason than if it did exist, it would render our religions redundant.

Safe gatherings avoid both controversy and real conversation. They are not opportunities for dialogue, and focus on serial monologue instead.

Now, lest you think I am opposed to this kind of gathering, let me say quite clearly that I am not opposed. On the contrary: I believe there is a real need for safe Interfaith programming. For some of us just sitting on the same dais with members of other faiths is a breakthrough, let alone finding some common ground of agreement with them. I am not asking people to go further than they can. I am only interested in challenging them to go as far as they can. And for some of us, the safe is nowhere near far enough.

The deeper, scarier Interfaith dialogue to which I am committed happens when people of different faiths engage with one another in the realm Martin Buber called “the between.” Standing in “the between” you no longer follow a script; you are no longer an apologist for your faith, but a seeker of that Truth toward which all faiths may point and no faith can own. Standing in “the between” you cannot know in advance what you are going to say, because you are responding to the unknown and fundamentally unknowable. It is by standing together in “the between” that we share the possibility of hearing something new, and being changed by it.

Those of us who do this dangerous work need an understanding of religion that allows such meeting to happen. Let me share my own understanding as a means of starting a conversation on the promise of Interfaith.

I approach the world’s religions the way I approach the world’s languages. First, while we might say that the capacity for human language is God-given, specific languages are human creations. Second, there is no right or wrong language, no true language or false language. There are only a multiplicity of languages that help those who speak them to make sense of life and plant meaning in its midst.

Languages, like religions, differ. They have different grammars, emphases, and tones. They each see the world in slightly and sometimes vastly different ways. Hence there are things you can say in French that you just cannot say or cannot say as well in Chinese, and there are things you can say in Hinduism that you just cannot say or cannot say as well in Catholicism.

The more spoken languages I know, the richer and more nuanced is my understanding of the world. The more religious languages I know, the richer and more nuanced is my understanding of life.
This has nothing to do with creating some religious version of Esperanto. I love my mother tongues—both English and Judaism—and have no desire to abandon either. But I am enriched beyond description by learning Sanskrit, Chinese, Arabic, and Greek; Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, and Christianity. No one should be asked to abandon her mother tongue, and everyone should be encouraged to study the other languages of human religiosity. Deep Interfaith encounter is one way to learn another’s language, and when we do we cannot help but be transformed by that knowledge.

This is the kind of Interfaith dialogue I long for. This is the kind of Interfaith dialogue Scarritt-Bennett Center and Wisdom House promote in our monthly Common Table breakfasts, our Dialogues on Faith groups, our Essential Conversations lunches, and other programs. We are not looking to change the languages of faith, but to change those who speak them. We are not looking to create a new religion, but to help foster a new religious sensitivity. We are not interested in blending religions or laying claim to a false and facile religious unity, but to helping one another find in our differences insights of spiritual genius that can transform our lives.

Hinduism’s Rig Veda, perhaps the world’s oldest sacred text, teaches: “Truth is one; different people call it by different names.” The names matter. The Tao isn’t Allah, and Christ isn’t Krishna. Rather they, and all the names we humans have created for that which is ultimately Unnamable, speak to part of the Truth. The more names we know, the more parts we understand, and the closer to Truth we come. But we can never reduce Truth to words. This is why in addition to dialogue we must engage with one another in silent meditation as well.

As the Tao te Ching tells us, “The Tao that can be named is not the Eternal Tao.” Ultimately all words fall short; and all voices must fall silent. It is good that we share our liturgies; it is better that we share the greater silence. And this too is the promise of Interfaith.
When we are free to share our languages without having to defend them, we will at last come to the end of talk, and fall silent together in a humbling stillness that frees us from words, and awakens us to that Ultimate Truth that no words can frame.

This week is World Interfaith Harmony Week. The harmony we seek is not the cheap harmony of serial monologue, or the faux harmony of people ignoring differences, or the fragile harmony of people pretending to believe what they do not believe simply to get along.

Real harmony will take more than a week to create. It will not happen among those who fear to hear, let alone speak, another’s religious language. It will not happen among those whose faith needs defending, but only among those whose faith leads them to the ultimate humbling, and the courage to step into “the between.”

To enter “the between,” first in words and then in silence, is the challenge and promise of Interfaith, the goal of World Interfaith Harmony Week, and the mission of Scarritt–Bennett’s Wisdom House. This is the path on which we embark this morning. Let us walk it to the end.

Gimme That Old Time Religion

It seems that Malaysians are going gaga for Lord Murugan, a Hindu fertility God whose holy day is coming up shortly. While Malaysia is overwhelmingly Muslim, the Hindu influences on the population are growing. The festival, called Thaipusam, is so popular that the government declared it a national holy day in 2008 to allow people time off to celebrate.

As part of that festival people giving thanks to Murugan fast for 48 days prior to Thaipusam. On the day itself many will shave their heads, cover themselves with sandalwood paste, and chant themselves into a trance at which time their bodies will be pierced with spears and hooks.

Lest you think this is only for Malaysians, there is a Murugan Temple in Maryland, though their website says nothing about Thaipusam.

Now I’m liberal when it comes to religion, and have no desire to deny or ridicule anyone’s faith (though there may be a fine line between my sense of humor and ridicule), but I don’t think I violate either by asking the question, why do people choose to believe in a God who requires body piercing?

Maybe it is just that I’m squeamish, and phobic about pain. Maybe I’d like it if I tried it. But I’m not going to try it. My preferred God would rather I repay Her kindness to me by having me be more kind to others.

On a similar note, I met a Jewish fellow in New Orleans recently who told me he was involved with a Jewish group in Israel that has reinstated animal sacrifice and is killing animals for Yahweh twice a day. He insisted he was telling the truth, and that they were preparing for the day when Judaism would once again be all about killing animals.

I get why we killed animals thousands of years ago, but not why anyone would do so today. There is a violent streak in religion that some people cannot avoid. It is a kind of pathology. Christianity, too, is nothing without the belief that God needs the death of Jesus in order to restrain himself from killing all of humanity, but at least they don’t want to bring Jesus back so they kill him again (though I do know Christians who believe that Jesus is still tortured by God every time a human sins; talk about child abuse).

The more I know about religion the more bizarre it seems. No wonder it can’t get enough of it.

You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Be Happy But It Helps

Jews are the happiest people in America. At least according to the just released Gallup–¬Healthways Well¬¬–Being Index.

The Index questioned 550,000 Americans over a seven month period, and found that Jews ranked number 1 in well–being followed by atheists, agnostics and other nonreligious folk, who themselves are followed by Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, and those of other nonProtestant faiths. Protestants came in dead last.

This curious statistic demands parsing. Are Jews happiest because they are the most religious? Not at all. While it is true that among these happy Jews the religious are the most happy, even atheist Jews are happier than atheist non-Jews.

So why do Jews win the happiness prize? Maybe it has to do with our history: it sucks. Our motto is, “It could always get worse.” With that idea stuck in your head, no matter how bad it is today you figure it could be worse tomorrow, so you better be happy now. Or maybe it’s because religious or not, Jews are big on community, and having a community is somehow uplifting. Or maybe it is because Jews, even religious Jews, just don’t worry about the after–life, and therefore tend to make the best of this life. Which may explain why Protestants come in last in happiness: the Protestants I know worry a lot about the afterlife. Of course if they’re right that only they get to go to heaven, they will be happy a lot longer in heaven than we Jews are here on earth.

On the other hand, neither Martin Luther or John Calvin, sort of the founders of Protestantism, strike me as very happy people. Martin Luther thought his Church had gone to the dogs, and Calvin was convinced that humans are totally depraved. Not much to be happy about in either case. Maybe a steady dose of “you are sinner in the hands of an angry God” is enough to depress anybody.

Jews concerned with growing the tribe should use this study in their marketing. Every intermarrying couple ought to get a copy of the survey with a banner headline saying, “Want Happy Kids? Raise them as Jews!” Or how about huge billboards on highways that read, “Be Happy. Be Holy. Be Jewish.” Or maybe an anti–drug campaign like, “Don’t Smoke That Lid, Just be a Yid.”

Governor Bentley: Christian and Colorblind. Which is Worse?

During a speech at a Baptist church in Montgomery on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Robert Bentley, Alabama’s newly elected governor, admitted to having a serious handicap: color blindness: “I was elected as a Republican candidate. But once I became governor ... I became the governor of all the people. I intend to live up to that. I am color blind."

I think the Governor should have told the citizens of Alabama about this during the campaign. It might have impacted their voting choices. My dad is colorblind and he often mixes up the wrong socks, and sometimes wears an orange shirt with red pants (he lives in Miami, red pants are cool there), and when he does it is embarrassing to the entire family. Imagine the governor of your state going out like that. It would make you the laughing stock of the nation.

Rebekah Caldwell Mason, the Governor’s communications director, wasn’t available to comment on the issue of colorblindness, nor was she available to answer another question reporters had about the fact that Governor Bentley only considers his fellow Christians to be his brothers and sisters:

"There may be some people here today who do not have living within them the Holy Spirit. But if you have been adopted in God's family like I have, and like you have if you're a Christian and if you're saved, and the Holy Spirit lives within you just like the Holy Spirit lives within me, then you know what that makes? It makes you and me brothers. And it makes you and me brother and sister… So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

For some reason some Alabamans are more upset by the Governor’s Christian bias than by his colorblindness, but I think they have it backwards. I don’t want to be the Governor’s brother. The last thing I want is for Governor Bentley to invite himself over to my house for Thanksgiving, or to ask me for money, or any of the other things brothers may do. But I do want him not to wear orange shirts with red pants.

Look, if the Governor doesn’t care about nonChristians, fine. If he thinks we are all going to Hell, so what? If he limits his compassion and concern to Christians, well, that is what you get when you put a fundamentalist Christian in office. The Governor isn’t evil; he’s just that kind of Christian. I’m sure voters knew that before casting their ballots. But if he is going to inadvertently dress like a clown—my God that is grounds for impeachment.

The Wrong Message

American Muslims are feeling nervous. Their mosques and clerics are under increasing scrutiny, Rep. Peter King plans to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims, and the legislature in Utah passed a law that bans the influence of sharia on Utah law-making. Is there a war on Islam?

I doubt it. But it makes for good conspiracy theories, and Muslims are just like everyone else when it comes to conspiracy theories.

But even if there is no war on Islam, there is a wariness of Islam and Muslims among many Americans, and I do not fault American Muslims for worrying about their place in the United States.

And I can even understand why the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) plans is holding a conference called, “FBI Raids and Grand jury Subpoenas: Know Your Rights and Defend Our Communities.” What I don’t understand is why the poster for the event urges Muslims to “Build a wall of resistance. Don’t talk to the F.B.I.”

The poster, featured on the CAIR website has been removed, but the message may not have been stopped. The response of the Muslim American community must be to open itself up not close itself in. We need all Americans to talk to the F.B.I. when they suspect terrorism, and if Islamic leaders are promoting the opposite view it is going to be all the more difficult to convince the average nonMuslim American that Muslim Americans don’t have something to hide.

If Muslim Americans fall victim to the same anti-government conspiracy theories that flood some right wing Christian communities we are on the road to losing the very soul of our nation.

Barbarians at the Womb

Are you a Jewish woman, or do you know any Jewish women? If so you must read this blog.

Are you or some Jewish woman you know planning to have a child with a Gentile man? Are you or some Jewish woman you know planning artificial insemination using Gentile sperm? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, stop! Do not do it. You are endangering the life of the entire human race.

Rabbi Dov Lior, a prominent leader in Israel’s Religious Zionist movement, in a speech at a women’s health conference, explained that sperm carries the character traits of the donor, and Gentile sperm, being the sperm of Gentiles, carries “negative genetic traits that characterize non-Jews.” Using such sperm will, Rabbi Lior said, “lead to barbaric offspring.”

Rabbi Lior’s position is in opposition to the mainstream rabbinic ruling that a Jewish woman using donated sperm is better off using the sperm of a Gentile than that of an anonymous Jew since the latter might be related to her. When having to choose between Cohen and Conan, most rabbis go with Conan; Rabbi Lior suggests the opposite:

“The character traits of the father pass on to the son. If the father is not Jewish, what character traits could he have? Traits of cruelty, of barbarism! These are not traits that characterize the people of Israel.”

What traits do characterize the Jewish people? According to Rabbi Lior, Jewish traits are mercy, shyness, and generosity. And if Rabbi Lior is any proof we might add xenophobia and stupidity as well. But better to be a boor than a barbarian, I always say.*


*(Well, not always. Truth is, I’ve never said this before, but I intend to always say it starting now.)

Sarah Palin and the Blood Libel

I’m not a Sarah Palin fan. I didn’t read her books, and while I have watched her kill a few animals on her television show, I am not a regular viewer. I say this because I want to be clear that when I say that I find it beyond the pale that anyone would accuse Governor Palin of kidnapping and murdering Christian babies, and using their blood to make bread, I do so as a challenger of her policies and not a supporter.

I know people are accusing her of this because she said so in a video she released earlier today. The Governor said that her critics “should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the hatred and violence that they purport to condemn. This is reprehensible.” I agree. Whoever is manufacturing this blood libel must be condemned.

While the false claim that Jews sacrificed Greeks in their Temple in Jerusalem was spread by Apion in the first century CE (a lie that caused the murder of thousands of Jews in Alexandria), the “official” blood libel was the invention of Christians. And while it pains me say so, I suggest it is among Christians and not among Greco-Egyptians like Apion that we must look if we are to find the accusers of Gov. Palin.

In 1144 Christians accused Jews of murdering William of Norwich. About a century later they accused Jews of kidnapping and crucifying eight-year-old Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, and using his entrails for purposes of divination. In 1475 Christians burned alive fifteen Jews for supposedly murdering two-year-old Simon of Trent. Baby Simon was made a saint by Pope Sixtus V in 1588, but his sainthood was revoked by Pope Paul VI in 1965. A double blow to Simon’s family, I’m sure.

In a sign of interfaith cooperation, Muslims picked up the blood libel in 1910, and as late as 2007 Raed Salah of the Islamic Movement in Israel accused Jews of using the blood of Muslim children in the baking of bread.

This is serious stuff. The blood libel is not to be taken lightly. The fact that Jews are forbidden from eating blood in any form (Leviticus 7: 26-27) is irrelevant to those hate-filled perpetrators of this slander. And though it is true that Sarah Palin is not a Jew, and therefore is permitted to consume blood, it is no less slanderous to claim that the blood she consumes is that of little children.

So let’s be clear: while Governor Palin, like millions of Americans, may enjoy a good slice of wheat or rye, she does not spice her slice with the blood of Christian or Muslim babies. Whoever is saying this about her must stop. Argue against her policies if you must, but do not claim that she eats the blood of the innocent. Unless, of course, they are caribou.

Let's Drop Religious Labels

Iraqi war criminal Tariq Aziz may escape the death penalty. Convicted for his roll in the murders of thousands of Shiite Muslims, the President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, refuses to sign off on offing Aziz saying, “I feel compassion for Tariq Aziz because he is a Christian.”

Does that make sense? I could see it if President Talabani said he has compassion for Aziz because he, President Talabani, is a Christian and Christians are supposed to have compassion, but the President isn’t a Christian but a Muslim. It is Aziz the Christian who is supposed to have compassion. It is Aziz the Christian who should have said “no” to the murder of thousands of his fellow Iraqis. What good is being a Christian if you can still commit mass murder?

And what about the Muslim Talabani? He’s a Muslim not a Christian. Why is he feeling compassion? I read the paper, watch Fox News, and listen to Glenn, Shaun, and Rush on the radio, and I thought Islam was all about killing, especially about killing Christians and Jews. Here is his chance, and he says “no” because he is too compassionate?

This is all so confusing. If you are a Christian, be compassionate and stop killing people. If you are Muslim, be brutal and start killing people. Stop confusing me. Or maybe we should simply drop the labels Christian and Muslim and go with compassionate and not compassionate instead? Rather than tell me you are a Christian or a Muslim, which really tells me nothing about you since the Christian Aziz is a war criminal and the Muslim Talabani is a “saint,” why not tell me whether or not you are compassionate. Yes, that would be much better.

Is Religion a Scam?

David Silverstein, president of the American Atheist Group was on The O’Reilly Factor the other evening to explain why his group is claiming that religion is a scam. His answer, “because it is.” Reaffirming as true something you claim is true is not the same as proving it is true. So right away viewers knew that they were in the presence of a propagandist rather than a philosopher.

Now in the interest of full disclosure, I too sometimes say that religion is a scam.
When I use the “s” word I mean to say that all religions can be used to manipulate people to adhere to whatever rulings their respective leaders find it in their best interests to make. It is always easier to get people to do evil things when you can convince them that it is God’s will. As the Qur’an says, "Fighting is prescribed for you, but you dislike it. But it is possible that you dislike a thing which is good for you, and that you love a thing which is bad for you. But God knows, and you know not (Sura 2:216)." As long as you believe that God knows and trust that your leader knows what God knows, you are apt to do what the leader says because you believe it is what God wants.

When I read the Book of Leviticus, for example, I see the Priestly Writer promoting the power of the priesthood, and when I read the Book of Deuteronomy, I see the Deuteronomist promoting empire sometimes through genocide. I suspect that these authors knew what they were doing, i.e. that they were using peoples’ belief in God to promote their respective agendas. And thus what they were doing was a scam.

I suspect the same was true when the Roman Catholic Church invented Papal Infallibility in 1870, and when Mohammed received the revelations in Medina that conveniently allowed him to expand his power and the power of Islam.

Priests, popes, prophets all too often hear what they want to hear to promote what they want to promote. This doesn’t mean that religions don’t contain timeless and universal truths, they do, only that they also contain self-serving propaganda as well.

If this was the conversation Bill and David had had, it would have been wonderful. Unfortunately they couldn’t rise to the occasion, and took refuge in ignorance in stead.

When seeking to explain why he believes in God Mr. O’Reilly pointed to the regularity of the tides: the tides go in and out and nobody knows why, he said. Bill has obviously not gotten the news about gravity. Unfortunately, neither did Mr. Silverstein who admitted that he too couldn’t explain how tides happen, but he was certain that it wasn’t caused by an invisible man in the sky. Honestly, David, without gravity in the equation, the invisible man is as good a cause as any.

Stupid is as stupid does, as Mother Gump told us, and discussions of religion on TV are really stupid.

American Exceptionalism

Is President Obama opposed to American exceptionalism? Many Republicans, including many running for his job in 2012, are suggesting he is.

The term was first used in the 1920s by the American Communist Party. It referred to class mobility within American society, and to the resources (both natural and human) that America contains. These factors, the Communists believed, would allow the United States to postpone (but not escape) the collapse that all capitalist societies are doomed to experience. In this it was exceptional.

Today American exceptionalism has come to mean that we are better than everyone else, and that the spreading of American values (religious, social, and economic) is the gift America can give to the rest of the world.

I understand American exceptionalism to be rooted in the uniqueness of our Constitution. We are the first and only state based solely on a set of ideas—freedom, equality, individuality, capitalism, and consent of the governed to name but a few. In a world still given to power rooted in blood, tribe, religion, we are an exception to the rule. Sure we have huge blind spots in our history, but that doesn’t in any way demean the idea or the ideal.

Is President Obama opposed to these ideals? I don’t believe that for a moment.

As long as we demote American exceptionalism to American superiority we may lose our devotion to the ideas that made and make us exceptional. As long as we equate American exceptionalism with being number one, we may fail to defend the things that make us exceptional: freedom of religion through separation of church and state, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, etc. As long as we mistake American exceptionalism for American jingoism—USA! USA! USA!—we betray the very country we imagine we are celebrating.

And as long as we reduce our politics to personal attacks rather than focusing on competing policies we will soon find ourselves anything but exceptional.

I am looking forward to real debate in Congress. I want to see principled people on different sides of an issue passionately (and politely) argue. This is part of who we are. When we demonize the other as un-American we spitting on the very heart of America.