Tisha B’Av, the Ninth Day of the Month of Av, is the second most important fast day in the Jewish calendar, after Yom Kipur. All other so-called “minor fasts” run from dawn to dusk, like Ramadan. Unlike Ramadan, which lasts for a month, we have many fewer fast days, but we also have these two in the year that run…
General Topics
Refugees
In the USA a debate rages over the thousands of refugees from Central America streaming across the porous southern border. The fact that in the past few months over 50,000 of them have been unaccompanied minors makes the situation particularly emotional and complicated. This year alone some 300,000 immigrants have crossed illegally into the USA. Among them is a significant…
Why America?
Once again I need distraction from the painful world we live in. Who asked Hamas to send salvos of rockets into Israel? Are they doing it intentionally to have casualties to win back public opinion? To prove they are as good jihadis as ISIS? Perhaps Israel should just pack up and ago. Perhaps Islam should never have been founded. Perhaps…
Human Nature
We seem to be caught at present in a terrible battle of evil extremism. But the sad fact is that human beings have always been and continue to be this way. For all that Stephen Pinker might argue in The Better Angels of Our Nature, and even if one were to agree that on balance the world is a safer…
Eid al-Fitr and Diwali
There is so much evil in the world that one almost gets inured. The senseless killing of innocents, regardless of where, is a disgrace to humanity. But obviously when it touches us personally it becomes so much more painful. I cannot write about the three young men abducted and murdered in Israel. Neither can I write about many of the…
Soccer World Cup
They say soccer is a beautiful game, but it is also a symbol of what is wrong with society. Here is a game of skill that can produce artistry and physical prowess that at the same time can show all the corruption, degeneration, and disappointment that human beings consistently exhibit ( such as biting opponents). This may sound counterintuitive coming…