THE BRAVE NEW LAND

Well, last week I ended on a bit of a downer with what most of the news outlets around the world referred to as, “What the Israelis ‘called’ a terrorist attack,” intimating that it was somehow a… what?... maybe an errant m-80 packed with ball bearings that some hoodlum kid blew up, killing and maiming civilians at a bus stop, just for kicks? So, when I was trying to finish the blog, right before I left for the weekend to Jerusalem (of all places), I couldn’t really finish it properly. I just had to go with the flow a bit. Actually, looking back at it, the flow that I had to go with ‘was’ really what the blog was about after all. You know... the difficulty in understanding the idea that if God controlled everything, down to the minutia of time and matter, how could things like this (or God forbid even worse) happen? Maybe more on that later; but, that was last week and this is not, so… For Shabbat, as I indicated previously, we were in Jerusalem. We were, as usual, so ridiculously fort...

Based on our extensive reading and pondering of the pervasive mass of pixilated light that is contained within this blog (alone), the universe (great and small) from the Big Bang onward has pretty much zero, that is ‘efes in Hebrew,’ chance to have begun without a, for lack of a more PC term, Creator. From this blog alone, we also know, without a doubt that based on the MIT physicist Dr. Gerald Schroeder’s collective works, such as ‘Genesis and the Big Bang’ and ‘The Science of God,’ the Bible (the original or nowadays, the ‘Classic Hebrew Edition’) mirrors the absolute facts of the known universe and its nefarious beginnings to the way any known and respected science (especially physics and I don’t mean meta…) describe them; and I might add, in a way that is so uncannily matched that it will send chills (for better or worse) up and down the collective spine of humanity; that is, when we finally get down off of our oh-so-righteous and ego-driven high-horses and pay attention finally to...

First of all, while writing this I became feverish and am now spinning out words that may be truth or may be just reality; so, here we go... While thinking about life in this week of undoing, I could not find the path to tie together the parsha of the week, Tzav (Leviticus 6-8), but Purim, whose energy is written throughout the land from a time long ago, was whizzing around inside my head. With some trepidation, I found, that there’s just too much confusion to choose from, to much to process, and too much to organize and end with the total of a sum. You see, returning from Rome, I was gripped with a melancholy that wouldn’t subside, no matter how hard I tried. It may have begun, while there, in the land of Esau, when we had a night to remember with Yafet and the Irish, whom did not want us to go, but to stay and to slip to the dark side of seventy, a place where the chaos of Purim dwells. We were so tired from the day of uncircumcised giants in plaster and stone, from the painted ceili...

When in Rome, do it your own way. I know; it is supposed to be ‘do like the Romans’ but, let me take a second to explain. It all goes back a few thousand years when Jacob was encouraged by his mother, Rebecca (who was given certain information by God in a dream), to dress up like Esau and step into his slightly older brothers long red hairdo in order to receive the proper blessing. Now, I say the proper blessing, because, in the end, he did receive the proper blessing. Jacob’s was the spiritual, intellectual blessing. Esau received, in the end, the proper blessing as well. He received the blessing for wealth and for power in the world. It was Isaac that seemed to be confused and wanted to reward cunning, prowess, and just general manliness, with the wrong blessing. Rebecca knew, as do pretty much all females (sorry guys...), the right thing to do in this situation. Esau went on to become Edom, then became Rome through Antipater (King Herod’s dad) and King Herod himself, who invited the...

Dude catapulted off the top of the fence and ran away last Shabbat... Every time that I see him, wagging his tail and groveling on his back in the street in front of the house, I want to scream at him and, really, I loose myself with it. Buried deep down, I know that he is the cutest when he does that, but I just can’t seem to get the notion out of my head that he is destroying the fence just for ‘me,’ which of course ignites the inner, lurking Hulk that is also buried deep down. This is the problem in my life... Dude the dog. How ridiculous is that? I have been challenged with this test before, especially with my dog Cody in Boulder. He would shred himself trying to get away from lightning. I was constantly fixing fences and, in the end, put metal plates under the wood of the gates. It didn’t help... So, I have to wonder, ‘Why am I being tested with this special issue?’ I mean, am I just not getting something here? On another related topic, this week we are still watching the crisis a...

Every week, as I begin to look deeper into who I am (and what I am supposed to be doing on this amazing inter-dimensional Planet Earth space ship), I often pull out the parsha of the week to derive some inspiration. As is quite often the case, I cannot get any farther in my reading than a few paragraphs before something grabs me with an iron fist and won’t let go. This week, it is Shabbat. In the very first sentence of Vayakhel (the parsha of the week), Moshe says to the Israelites, “On six days, work may be done, but the seventh day shall be holy for you, a day of complete rest for Hashem; whoever does work on it shall be put to death. You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.” Then Moshe moves right into building the Mishkan (Tabernacle), as if there is some intrinsic connection between the Sabbath day and building the Mishkan… Hmmm, I wonder…. Well, we know that Moshe was speaking to the Israelites (the Jews) and not to the nations of the world when he w...

Last week on Shabbat I was sick. I had already been sick for a few days before and took some time on Shabbat to recuperate a bit. I slept in, prayed at home, and even tried to read the newspaper. While reading all about Egypt and how Facebook and social media in general was considered the spark point of unrest (or some such holier-than-thou ‘Social Media’ is the new deal nonsense), I stumbled across a really interesting article about an art and design exhibition that was exploring how a new generation of creative thinkers from around the world, having grown up in a globalized context, were looking at the world from a fundamentally different place then the rest of us old-timers that remember when it was a really anticipated event for movies (you know, from the movie theaters) to play on our TVs. These kids always had instant messaging, the internet, and anytime-anyplace access to movies, music, and online reading of any kind, just about anywhere in the world. The exhibition was positing...

Did you ever wonder whether or not there was an intrinsic interconnection between everything in the perceived universe, like ripples in a pond rolling out across the surface of existence that cause everything and everyone to bob and roll in time with them? We keep hearing about how we need to ‘go green’ for instance. ‘Our environment can’t take much more of this abuse,’ the scientists tell us. The politicians also seem to be getting on board with this agenda, if only to collect votes in the upcoming election, but this is a good thing, right? I guess that when I really think about how much impact I have on the world, I can’t get away from the idea that, no matter how much I try, I will always be leaving my boot prints strafed across the landscape in my wake. It all seems to be a matter of how fast I run, while attempting to put distance between my footsteps and me. The problem is that the faster I go, the more dirt flies, so I start to invent ways to preventively cover them up. I pass r...

Now that jetlag is waning and I have begun to settle in to my life back in Israel, I am reminded of the idea that it is hard to live while perched, bracing into the Ruach (Hebrew for wind and for spirit) on the spiritual highland of the physical world. I often feel like there is a giant magnifying glass poised above Eretz Israel (The Land of Israel), causing the molecules that imbue us all to vibrate and bounce off of each other at a much higher rate than is normal elsewhere on our Planet Earth spaceship. Just the way that Israelis are capable of multitasking (however annoying it can be to wait in line while the clerk is answering 3 questions, typing on the keyboard, and talking on a cell phone, all at the same time) is evidence of this idea. Virtually as soon as I got off the plane, I was bombarded by action and reaction of social, political, religious, and spiritual natures. An acquaintance of mine is being torn down by the press and by others as well, the international terrorist org...

My mind is quite sharp, but only at night. I roll over speed bumps with my face in the window. Upside and down-sized, backwards and forerunner, I fall down the hole and stand up tall. Under the grass, I watch the sky, which tick-tocks and sways, between tomorrow and yesterday. The style of today is far too farfetched, as I nod off another spin off, and my dreams are too busy, but nothing is done — apart from the moon. Jet lag is a very strange business... It is 4:39 in the morning two days after arriving home from my whirlwind homecoming trip to California. I woke this morning before four, no longer dreaming, but thinking. I started to mentally swagger and then to stumble over my to-do list that I forgot. I didn’t get any garlic salt when I was in the States. I forgot to buy deodorant... It popped into my head, the knowledge of reality, and I opened my eyes, to see the darkness again. When Hashem came to the nations of the world, He asked them each, one at a time, “Would you like my To...