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Why I am a Liberal

I recently came across a book called “The Call of the Tribe: Essays” by the Peruvian Nobel Prize Winner Mario Vargas Llosa. It is a collection of short biographies of liberal thinkers that he admired, who avoided extremes of right and left that are now infecting our democracies. Sadly, it did not include Ludwig Wittgenstein who has influenced me more than anyone…

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Why?

Innocent worshippers were shot outside a synagogue. Children were mowed down intentionally at a bus stop in Jerusalem.  Seven people were shot in Monterey. Nineteen people were killed in storms in California. A hundred dead in mudslides in Peru. Over 40,000 and rising innocent humans were killed in Turkey and Syria by the earthquake and thousands more are left starving, freezing,…

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Israeli Theocracy

In the febrile political polemic of our times, language is a victim as people use words loosely, inaccurately, and without thinking of their significance or meaning. The most obvious is how the term Nazi is applied to anyone or any idea that one does not like! There is a lot of talk about Israel becoming a theocracy. But what exactly do…

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New Year for Trees

This week we celebrate Tu BiShvat, the New Year for trees. TuBishvat as we celebrate it today is a post-biblical creation of the great sixteenth-century mystic  Isaac Luria of Safed and is concerned with life and nature. Its origin lies in the Biblical laws of tithing produce and not eating the fruit of a tree for its first three years of growth. All of…

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A Different Generation

At a recent family gathering, I was surprised to hear how a negative image of my maternal grandfather had been passed down to some of his great, grandchildren.   Moses Jacob Cohen, known as M.J., certainly was a strong, opinionated, and demanding man. He was of course a product of his times. And the negative was certainly not the only aspect…

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National Anthems

There is something so dated, archaic, and non-sensical about National Anthems, and indeed flags, that takes us back to a world of ancient tribal warfare, conquests, and long-lost identities. One might understand the need to have means of identification both in war and peace. But anthems seem to me to be particularly problematic, archaic, misguided, and often offensive. I remember…

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