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Amen

‘”Amen.” It is not a natural utterance. You must learn to say it.” (Kaddish, Leon Wieseltier, p. 468.) Many believe that amen is a statement of confirmation, as in “this is my life – amen.” Others believe that amen is a statement of affirmation, as in “this is the greatness in my life – amen.” Those who study the word a bit more closely understand that amen contains a strong element of fatalism, as in “Is this my life – amen?”

To recite amen with conviction, the proclaimer must take a long journey. The present has not context without the immediate and often the far past. The journey begins by revisiting the past, not with nostalgia but with clarity. The journey continues with the present and where one stands now and just as importantly, why. Then there is the future and one’s hopes, expectations and fears. Bring all of these explorations together and the word amen falls easily from the lips.

Sound so simple on paper, simply do this or that. Yet amen is the hardest word a person will utter. Amen.

Interfaith Relations snapshot

Interfaith relations in the United States is a convoluted mess of perceptions, international conflicts, and xenophobia. The Pew Trust has released their latest survey of American attitudes towards various religions and no one scores particularly well.

As anyone who works in the field of interfaith relations will confirm, there is a vast difference between doctrinal relations and personal relations between clergy and between informed laity. The doctrinal is always more contentious as mistrust and triumphalism infuse the statements of faith and belief. These relations are usually led by Defenders of the Faith

The best and most productive is the one-to-one relationships between believers of one tradition and another. This is a self-selecting group who meet other traditions a variety of reasons. Some want to explain themselves, some are curious to learn what others believe and a good number seek out other faiths in hope of better informing their own religious beliefs.

Religion can build bridges. Religion should build bridges and yet, religion often does the opposite. This is what Pew found:

A most appropriate new year message

Questions of War

The United States is back in the aerial war business again. We did manage to precipitate the fall of Muammar Gaddafi using aerial bombardment and the developing events afterwards have been nothing less than bloodthirsty and heedlessly violent. Now we have threat of Sunni extremists in the region of Syria/Iraq who go by the name of The Islamic State and we have been bombing them for weeks.

Our military learned in Afghanistan that an aerial war is far too indiscriminate to be effective. To see men digging next to a road at 30,000 feet is not the same as forward observers with binoculars. Afghani farmers share the scarce resource of water on a rigid timetable of shared irrigation. One digs up his valve and releases the water only to close the valve and bury it again on a fifteen or twenty minute schedule. The same farmer looks like a terrorist planting an I.E.D. from far above.

Does the new coalition have forward observers on the ground in Iraq and Syria? I doubt it. Then who are we bombing? Are we hitting the correct targets? Who is going to go out into this vast battlefield to identify targets and confirm misses and strikes?

The United States is not sending soldiers onto this battlefield. Who will?

Why is no one asking the hard questions?

Books and National Book Award Books

The 2014 list for the National Book Awards have been released. http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2014.html#.VBxJ3Vd4Vw1 Perhaps the time has arrived for a another slew of good reads because surely all of the books on the list are qualified texts. The content of these contest lists have been a debate on both sides of the English speaking Atlantic Ocean complete with accusations of judges who do not read all of the texts, unqualified readers, and the ubiquitous crossroads of greed, pride, and publishers.

Since the shift from bookstores to online purchasing and ebooks, finding reliable recommendations for books has become more difficult. Barnes & Noble puts its sponsored content first, complicating its site with different levels of paid adverts. The category may be written as “Staff Recommendations” but publishers and authors can pay to be included in that category. The bricks and mortar B&N bookstore is often a showroom for books that will be purchased online. The books laid out on the table are often in purchased slots.

The successful reader-driven sights have been purchased by for-profit companies. Goodreads.com was the largest and most popular of the reader generated recommendation sights but the website was acquired by Amazon. Amazon now controls the recommendation search engine. Alternatively, readers can seek out reviews on Social Media sites such as reddit.com/r/books but the content is skewed by the readership, which is often High School and college. There are other sub-reddits such as r/mystery and r/sciencefiction yet these sites tend to draw the highly motivated fans more than the casual readers who just want a good read because “I’ve some free time.”

The sheer volume of books available has exploded. Many are self-published; many are bland and repetitive as was always the case with pulp novels. What a joy the delete button can be. I miss the sound of a lousy paperback thumping into the bottom of the trashcan but I still get satisfaction when the “Are you sure?” screen pops up and I press “yes”.

Got Research?

An NPR story today tracks the loss of academic jobs in science and medical fields. Only 15% of the PhD’s who have graduated in the past decade will actually get a tenure track job. These fresh PhD’s are working temporary jobs in labs across the country for as little as $40,000 a year. These are some of the best and brightest minds in the United States.

Up until the 1980’s, the U.S. government supported basic research in universities and colleges across the nation. In the 1980’s a new political philosophy emerged and the curtailment of government monies for research began to wane. At times the money has increased temporarily, only to dissipate just as rapidly, further eroding the amount of government sponsored research.

All of this basic research was the genesis for many of the new fields of employment we have today. Biomedical research, pharmaceuticals, energy sources (both repurposed and alternative), computer hardware, software, opticals, nanotechnology, quantum physics, and especially cell phone technology all began with government sponsored research in anonymous college labs.

Private corporations are not going to fund research in any significant manner. They have not done so in the past thirty years.

This report should be a call to arms. We should be having a conversation about how Congress spends our money. However, I fear that our national legislators are unusually nearsighted and are unable to see beyond their next election, which has little to do long term issues and trends of our nation.

We need to get these people to work at their best levels, doing the research they have spent years training to do. <http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/09/16/343539024/too-few-university-jobs-for-americas-young-scientists>

The Terrible Calculus of ISIS

The drumbeat of war sounds loudly as the world turns its focus on to Iraq and maybe even Syria. The Islamic State, or ISIS according to its previous name, has taken terrorism, regime change, and war to new heights of violent gore. They have executed hundreds or thousands of captured soldiers. They have murdered, kidnapped, raped and sold into slavery persecuted minorities. They have beheaded prized foreign prisoners on digital media.

They oppose Bashar Al-Asad of Syria but that is not good although he is a mass murderer as well. The Islamic State opposes Iran and Hezbollah, enemies of the United States and Israel but this is not good either. What we have is a fanatical group of violent, well-armed men who butcher and maim at will with few strong enough to oppose them.

The permutations and complications are vast enough to fill a dozen books. Consider the list of those directly involved: Syria, Turkey, Kurds, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Hezbollah, Sunni tribes, Shiite tribes and Syrian militias. Add those who are just a half-step removed and list grows to contain the Druze, the Alawities, Israel, Hamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Lebanon, Kuwait, Western Europe and the United States. While confined to a specific geographic area, the implications are global.

Even without listing the specifics of every group, tribe and country given above, the idea of a comprehensive strategy to defeat ISIS seems remote. There are too many players with too many justifiable agendas for an elegant answer. Whatever the arising coalition chooses to do, the instruments will be blunt and create will many terrible consequences that will highlight the shortcomings of the decisions being made now. A lot of innocent people are going die.

Then again, if the nations of world do nothing, then a lot of innocent people are going to die. What a terrible calculus.

To Criticize Israel

Israel has critics within and critics without.

The United Nations announced this week that Israel may have committed human rights violations during the conflict this past summer. For those who do not follow the United Nations, its agencies, and its history, the body has never failed to condemn the State of Israel in each and every conflict, major or minor.

No mention has been made of the assassination of “collaborators” by Hamas after the ceasefire – the roundups and deaths were caught on film. There has been no declaration of condemnation for the 200,000 dead in Syria or the ten thousands more in Iraq. Muslims can kill Muslims and expect the world body to maintain silence but not when Jews kill Muslims.

In this context, Jews who want to criticize the policies of the State of Israel silence themselves. Words that are given with love, respect and concern are twisted by outside agencies and used as bludgeons to further pummel Israel. This is not a liberal, progressive, or conservative issue. This is a phenomenon known by no other name than Jew-hatred.

As we have witnessed and documented across the globe, Jew-hatred is on the rise again. Much of it has little to do with Israel no matter how vocal the protestations. Will this scourge ever disappear?

American Democracy 2014, part 2

The United States has the best Congress that money can buy. The funny thing about that statement is not the money, which is true, but the idea of the best Congress. The approval ratings for Congress among the polled population of the United States is in the ten’s or teen’s. If we were viewing Congress on Amazon or Zappos, we would not be clicking the “Buy” button.

Congress is not happy with themselves either. They will not sit in the same dining room with each other, nor exchange greetings in the hallway or even acknowledge the others’ existence except as caricatured villains. Why are they unhappy?

They have the same issue their constituents have – they despise the money that funds their legislative seat. Individual senators and representatives must spend hours each day raising campaign money. They must raise between $1,500 to $10,000 each day (analysts disagree on a number) to fund the ever more expensive, longer campaign season. Your legislators sit in a Democratic or a Republican campaign office just off of Capitol Hill every day trolling for money. They will spend more hours asking for money than they will spend legislating according to some commentators.

Almost everybody is unhappy with the system we have now. Almost everyone.

Our national legislators may be compared to hamsters on the wheel in a cage, a very nice cage to be sure. They have to keep going; they have to fill the campaign chest. They also have to write legislation and vote on it. People are on the other end of the phone telling the senators and the representatives how they should vote but it is usually not constituents. Constituents talk to the legislative consultants on staff. Their leadership is telling them how to vote for the sake of the party apparatus, which also needs money. Somewhere, far out there is in the field, is a press secretary telling the constituents that the representative and the senator is doing all he/she can to get it right for them.

The nature of American democracy is that there should be some money involved. People willing to put up money to fund a candidacy is a legitimate test of worth and electability. However, we are far beyond the reasonable test of money in campaigns. The extremely high bar for dollars that we have now has invalidated and corrupted what was once a worthwhile hurdle.

American democracy 2014 is the most expensive Congress that money can buy. We expect Congress to help us when it seems that we need to help them more.