Here is a hilarious if sacrilegious clip, in the spirit of Purim, from over five years ago when no one had even heard of something called Covid. https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FnckKtUWnZaA&data=05%7C01%7C%7C0f63c06ebfd547c6669208db1d73b419%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638136154996370333%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=b17ZCTxeJoqri3oGljjPfvzQA8LpcYUs176%2B2S8K%2FRI%3D&reserved=0 Recently a prominent Charedi Israeli rabbi has warned his community not to kiss mezuzahs in case they pick up some new infection. Despite the current fashion, this custom was not one our…
Nicanor Day
It’s the festival you might never have heard of, Nicanor Day, the 13th of Adar, the day before Purim. Two thousand years ago it was more widely celebrated than Purim. Yet it ended up being replaced by the Fast of Esther. How come we turned a happy day of celebration into a sad one? Nicanor was a general in the army…
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…
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…
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,…
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…