I know I am supposed to love all of God’s creatures and more specifically, every Jew. Ahavat Yisrael, it is called. Every day of my life I am troubled by this paradox that I do not! Yet I manage to live with it. Some people seem to have it in abundance. Why can’t I? Was it my education, being brought…
General Topics
Heresy
This week, after the sad fast of the Ninth of Av, two things cheered me up. The American women gymnasts won the team gold and the team captain Aly Raisman ended their performance with a flawless dance routine to the sound of Hava Nagilah. Yes, I know the tune has become a cliché, but where else in the world (outside…
Another False Messiah
The fast on the Ninth of Av, Tisha B’Av, commemorates both the Babylonian and the Roman destructions of Jerusalem and the First Temple, in 586 BCE and then in 70 CE. The mourning for these cataclysmic losses affected law, lore, and the psychology of Jews no matter where they were exiled. Anyone who thinks Zionism is a response to the…
James Joyce and the Jews
A recent biography of James Joyce (by Gordon Bowker) reminds me why I have such a soft spot for him. Much has been written about Jews in Western literature. But what is it that determines whether writers are pro-Jewish or anti? Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta were both written at a time when Jews were perceived…
Higgs Boson and God
In 1964 the physicist Peter Higgs suggested that there had to be a crucial particle (a boson) that helped explain how matter could emerge from the “Big Bang” explosion of gases that is the most popular scientific theory as to how our world came about. Higgs said the so-called “God particle”, which is the building block of the universe, only…
Itsu Kaszirer
My father-in-law of 24 years, Itsu Kaszirer, died on the second of Tammuz at the age of 90, in Antwerp. He was a remarkable man in many ways. Nowadays the tendency is to create myths after people die, but he was a myth in his own lifetime. He grew up in the Romanian badlands of the Carpathians, known both for…