If you want to know
just how far out of touch, measured by years, modern Rabbis are from the Jewish
people, then look no further than the concept of Gd, always, always, always
compared to a king. Of course it’s in
the liturgy, of course it is in the whispered response to the Shema. And if you believe, as I do, that this
liturgy is divinely inspired, then there is one obvious reason that the divine
inspired this metaphor—because people could relate to it. There was certainly a time in human history
where those who ruled other people were thought to possess intelligence and
some kind of supernatural favor that allowed them to command armies and wealth
almost, but not completely, beyond the conception of regular folks. And for this reason kings inspired and
natural respect and even awe. And all of
this ended in 1215 C.E. at the signing of the Magna Carta. From that moment on, kings and rulers,Continue reading...

A friend commented on my last post, asking me to explore the
relationship between religion and hate, and this seemed like a good idea.  The problem is, of course, that the
conversation has been hashed and rehashed over and over, again and again, until
it resembles some little bit of verse that sneaks into the collective mind—such
as Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. 
So let’s change the dialogue just a little bit, and start with something
objective, as if we were discussing and comparing a still life by Rembrandt and
Van Gogh.  Let’s put a basket of fruit in
the middle of the table and use that as a reference point—something concrete
that we can both see and point to, an anchor dropped in the sea of words and
ideas. 

So how about we begin with a quote from noted biochemist
Candace Pert, something she said while being interviewed by Bill Moyers.  In the process...

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Like any problem or any idea, you can choose to look at it
from a perspective that will solve it or improve it, or you can look at it in a
way that keeps it around longer or makes it worse. You can see this throughout history—a very
simple example is Lavoisier’s little experiment in which he ‘discovered’
oxygen, as if before this experiment people didn’t know that they were
breathing, or that if they called stuff they were inhaling ‘air’ they were less
intelligent. I remember reading his
scientific paper, and as he compiled his data, he had a choice. We aren’t taught this choice, that helps the
myth of science continue, that the data interprets itself, but there was a
choice. He could have taken this data
and tinkered with the old theory to make the data fit within it, or he could start a
whole new theory. He chose the latter,
and began an era where humans began to create the...

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Purim late than never, right? I consider Purim to be a two-day affair, the
first day fasting, making sure the
tzeddekah gets into the right hands, in my case giving it to a rabbi of a
large orthodox congregation, and buying what I need to make some shaloch manot. I never expect to actually see the rabbi,
when I do it is always by accident, running into him at the store or I walk
into the main office as he pops out of his private office, and so our talks are
two minutes at the most. As is turns

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Position open for scientist, Biologist or Chemist
preferable. Base salary, with winnings
from Nobel Award, quite substantial.

I’ve said it before, and quite a few others have said it
before me, that in some key respects, Western science is lagging behind many
ancient cultures in some important observations and discoveries. We who live in the West need someone to step
up and help us to catch up to the rest of the world, ironically the ancient
world.

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Science mythologies blend into science like a well-dressed
person walking around the streets of Manhattan. They actually don’t belong there—there is no
room for myths in the world of science—but you’d be hard pressed to identify
the one that doesn’t belong, the myth sitting so comfortably in a world of
truth and verifiabililty, the moving mannequin in the world of empirical
humans. The last person you’d expect to
find the myths are the scientists themselves, who not only believe the myths

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If I was James Burke (and I confess to being a Burkian—or is
it Burkkie?) this is where the summary is placed.  So I’ll plop it down right here—why science
and religion can not only co-exist, but why each helps us to understand the
other.  It’s not a boxing match between
the two disciplines, it’s a marriage.  (I
will leave space for you to insert your own  joke.)____________________________________________.

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Used to be, it was hard to
conceive of the world as round. Now we
can conceive of galaxies and supernovas, the curves of space-time, black holes,
all because of some marvelous computer images.
It’s harder to think that the same rules that apply to everything else
in the universe actually apply, say, in your own kitchen, but they do. It’s hard to make the link between the cosmos
and your kitchen counter. And if you are

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The timeline, storyline, of the Torah takes 2488 years.  That is, from the completion of the universe,
the creation of Adam and Eve, until Moses death, 2488 years.  There are, within the first six days,
questions of course.  Some read those
passages literally and think those six days took what we consider to be six
days.  Others choose to read the passages
precisely and compute the actual elapsed time to be closer to 10 to 20 billion
years.  I’m a believer in reading

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In college it seemed like a truly good translation of any
300 page treatise of German philosophy would take about 1500 pages of
English. Of course this never happened,
and so the translations would be as close to the original 300 pages as
possible, and filled with nearly incomprehensible clauses held together with
dental floss. Fortunately, we had an
excellent professor, and in the 55 minutes of allotted class time we would work
our way through three or four sentences.

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I didn’t expect this, really. The last thing in the world I want to do, not
literally of course, literally I might enjoy it, is to even fictitiously debate
Christopher Hitchens. But since Rabbi
Boteach, by all eyewitness accounts, did such a fabulous job the other night, I
felt it would be wrong to leave the impression that Hitchens has the stronger
case, choosing instead to leave the impression that Rabbi Boteach can’t debate
his way out of a paper bag.

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Busting my Talmudic cherry, I still remember it. And like all cherry busting, it caused a wave
of sensations that I could never have anticipated, my first Talmudic cascade. That is, the distinct feeling that all of my
knowledge and beliefs were changing, not as independent items, but as part of a
whole, as if my inner encyclopedia began to change from A to Z with the
addition of one small entry. It was when

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My first computer encounter was with Microsoft Windows
3.1. It wasn’t a very good relationship,
we mistreated each other badly and ended up in computer therapy, long sessions
with the Help Line, where they would talk to me like the neophyte I was. I didn’t know, for instance, that if you turn
the computer on and off too much, you are creating and rearranging the basic
operating system, and then things wouldn’t work, and I would have to be talked
through the secret pathways of the labyrinth all to delete an extra comma from

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