A Toy for Jesus
Better Than Porn
A few days ago I had never heard of the Neti pot. Now I feel like I missed the latest cultural boom: nettypotting.
Now for the money shot:
Of Righteousness and Demonology
I’m no talmudist, and I’m not even capable of reading Aramaic. But from time to time I like to pry open my copy of Abraham Cohen’s Everyman’s Talmud and troll for wisdom. It’s a distillation–one of the first in English–of the oceanic collection of post-biblical Jewish folklore, wisdom, law and other treats (I know this is a poor summary, but I’m rushing through this) which form the underpinnings of modern Jewish culture. I’m assuming there are still people out there who’ve either never heard of it, or have an extremely vague working definition of what the Talmud is. Of course, this is entirely understandable, as it is one of the most maligned books in the history of the world. And one of the most overpraised.
Anyway, what drove me to this post was the skeptical tone of one (anonymous?) rabbi’s remark about charity–one of the great themes of talmudic moral hairsplitting. Should you give to the poor? Of course! It’s a mitzve to give, but a shanda to receive. But I never would’ve anticipated a remark like this:
“We must give credit to the imposters among the poor; were it not for them, if a man were asked for alms and did not give them at once he would be incurring punishment.”
In essence: since a good portion of beggars are misfits and crooks, there is nothing especially evil about casting an incredulous eye when the seemingly downtrodden ask you for change. Like most other things in life, it’s a question of individual judgement.
p.s. There are no links in the post because there is too much to wade through–both good and bad–on the internet. Just type “talmud” into any major search engine and see what I mean.
A Little Matter of Stupidity
Deborah Lipstadt brought this to my attention, but I recently had a dream about Ward Churchill. No shit.
He’s on the Chomskyite fringes of public discourse and, like other acolytes of the Dean, has come into hard times for saying really stupid things in public.
He doesn’t matter much, on the whole. He’s not worth getting upset about, even. He’s not well-spoken, like Noam, nor does he have any big achievements under his belt. He doesn’t get invited to speak on Al-Manar or Al-Jazeera–just at my alma mater, VCU. No shit.
So just sit back and dig his style. Straight up, no chaser.
Spring Fever
This could be me. It’s that time of year again.
And to show I’m not joking, here’s the lowdown on nasal irrigation.
The Late, Great Agnostic
Robert Green Ingersoll had many memorable things to say about a great many topics. He loved Shakespeare and Thomas Paine above all other authors. Most people have never heard of him, but he was one of America’s most famous speakers in the late nineteenth century.
Ingersoll had this to say about Darwin’s then-novel theory of evolution by natural selection:
“I believe that man came up from lower animals. When I first heard of that doctrine I did not like it. My heart was filled with sympathy for those people who have nothing to be proud of except ancestors. I thought, how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the duke Orang Outang, or to the princess Chimpanzee.
After thinking it over, I came to the conclusion that I liked that doctrine.”
And so should we.
Boxing Christopher Hitchens
Shmuley Boteach has a worthy rebuttal to Christopher Hitchens in today’s JPost.
As far as the New Atheist lawfirm Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and Dennett goes, the one I’ve always been half-hearted about is Hitchens. He is an excellent writer, and it is hard not to be persuaded by him, but sometimes he comes out with such screeds that you just want to say, “Stick a sock in it, Hitch!”
Then again, free speech is to be defended.
And I believe Shmuley Boteach would agree.
Chain Mail
We call them chain letters. In Italy they’re referred to as “St. Anthony’s letters”, and I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation as to why (but I don’t know it). They arrive at your inbox, usually with a subject like, “URGENT: READ AND PASS ON” or “THIS EMAIL WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.” Then there is the ubiquitous promise that if you send said message to five ten twenty-five fifty people, good fortune will befall you. Or at least you will have a nice day.
Today’s message reads, “The most beautiful email you will ever read.” Then it goes on to postulate a very probable situation: you are driving home in your car. On the radio you hear of a death on the other side of the world, but you think nothing of it. The next day you hear of more deaths, still far away but closer than before. Suddenly it appears an epidemic is threatening your country–and with it, the entire world. There is only one answer: create a vaccine that can be used to cure the sick. But, since almost everyone is infected and dropping like flies, good blood is hard to come by. Finally, they find someone with the kind of untainted blood they need, and he is your son. You are asked to choose: either humanity extinguishes itself as we know it from a preventable disease, or you authorize the doctors to draw your son’s blood–all of it–for the necessary vaccine to save the world. It is a question of child sacrifice. I think you can see where this is leading.
The tale ends with a tear-jerker: Would you be able to turn your son over to the doctors, while he cries, “Mommy, daddy, why are you abandoning me?”
OK, you get the point. The parents authorize the doctors to drain their son of blood, vaccinating all of humankind (yeah, sure) against the horrible virus, but the people of the world are too caught up in their own lives to notice the selfless sacrifice. The parents cry out: “Our son died for you! Don’t you care?!”
And then the little story dips into the real message: “God sacrificed his son for you! And you don’t care!!”
Man, do I dislike chain letters.
This is a man
Roberto Saviano has been living undercover since his book Gomorrah was published three years ago. It is an inconvenient book for some people, and Saviano has paid a heavy price. He walks around with seven carabinieri, frequently changes residence, and has no private life to speak of. Because of his book.
This is a man who has rendered a great and necessary service to his people, a man who has the courage to speak unequivocally about the cancer devouring his country. But Saviano’s message doesn’t stop there. His message goes beyond Naples, beyond Italy, beyond Europe (the Camorra has its tentacles all over the place) to the world. It is a message of liberty in the face of terrorism.
Last night on the Italian program Che tempo che fa, Roberto Saviano was given a two-hour platform to have his say. He was flanked by novelists Paul Auster and David Grossman, and (in New York) Indian writer Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City. What brought all these writers together was perhaps an enemy common to all: terror.
Bloggers’ Blues
I don’t usually read the high-powered bloggers that pop up on WordPress every time I log in to this blog (mostly they’re about business, and I’m not too interested), but today one caught my eye and I clicked. Here’s what he/she had to say about life on the internet:
“Everything you say/write can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion someday, somehow. Your behavior on the web can cost you a new job, a promotion, your career, your marriage, your friendships, endorsements, and even take you out of contention for college scholarships, military/law enforcement service, or public office.
So please, please, PLEASE, for your own sake THINK about what you are about to post to the web (especially blogs, social networking sites and Twitter). Before you click “send,” “publish” or “update,” assume that everyone you know will read your comment. And by everyone, I mean your boss, coworkers, parents, grandparents, exes, recruiters, future employers, and yes, even your kids (even if you don’t have any yet).”
This is wise advice from a guy/gal who knows the ins and outs (there are a great many comments on this post) of blogging. And I’m listening. Because there is nothing the young blogger wishes for more than to be read by people he/she doesn’t know. But who really ever thinks of the consequences of what one writes? I suppose if I ever convert to Catholicism I will regret my recent post on the pope’s remark about condoms. Which brings me to the whole notion of anonymity, which has in a sense been bugging me for some time.
Not long ago, Yaacov Lozowick attempted a blog-duel (The Judeo-Arab Conspiracy) with a certain anonymous figure who turned out to be too shadowy for anyone’s good. Lozowick cancelled the blog because he had doubts about his opponent’s identity (Lozowick uses his own identity to blog). His reasoning was the following:
“Already then we had a built-in problem, in that my identity is clear and transparent, and Google will tell you all about me, while Ibrahim ibn Yusuf is not the person’s real name. I was willing to accept this, since I know from experience how hard it is, perhaps even impossible, to find an Arab willing to engage an Israeli in dialogue between equals.”
It turns out that Ibrahim ibn Yusuf wasn’t an Arab at all, which defeated the logic of their brief encounter. I have had similar discussions with people about the importance of anonymity/transparency–especially when dealing with weighty issues like the Israeli-Arab conflict or Islam in general.
As anyone can plainly see, I may be a nobody, but I have opted for transparency on this blog.
If I can’t stand by my own positions publicly, then what’s the point of going public?
