Untetaneh Tokef Insert
The Jewish High Holy Days are still over a month away, but I received a version of a classic prayer that I think is worth sharing. The Unetaneh Tokef presents those days as days of judgement when all of us human beings are judged in a court-on-high where the judge is God’s Self. The record of our lives is before The Judge and so are two books – A Book of a Good Year and a Book of a Bad Year. During this season of repentence we seek to make things right in this world so that we can be forgiven and written in the Book of Life for the coming year. The traditional greeting among Jews is “May you be written for a good year.”
Some reading this may be familiar with Leonard Cohen’s extraordinary song, “Who By Fire.”https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=Leonard+Cohen+Who+By+Fire+youtube&refig=10665064ce0f486f9e73c593ba257557&pc=DCTS&ru=/search?q=Leonard+Cohen+Who+By+Fire+youtube&form=ANNTH1&refig=10665064ce0f486f9e73c593ba257557&pc=DCTS&mmscn=vwrc&mid=C7103F4E6079B81ED3FBC7103F4E6079B81ED3FB&FORM=WRVORC
Today, in my inbox, I got a new version by a colleague who is also a distant cousin, Rachel Barenblat. What I really like about it, is that she included a positive verse. I have never seen that before.
| B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivun,uv’Yom tzom Kippur yeichateimun: | בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן, וּבְיוֹֹם צוֹֹם כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן. |
(on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed)
Who will live, and who will die?
Who by wildfires and poor air, and who by lack of medical care?
Who by flood and hurricane, and who by the power outages that follow?
Who by polar vortex cold, who by heat that makes asphalt burn?
Who by lack of a place to live, and who arrested for being unhoused?
Who by the hands of those whom we entrust to protect and to serve?
| B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivun,uv’Yom tzom Kippur yeichateimun: | בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן, וּבְיוֹֹם צוֹֹם כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן. |
(on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed)
Who by bombs and rocket fire, who by starvation or disease?
Who by pandemic that’s not over yet, who by the next pandemic to come?
Who by polio or measles, resurgent because some fear vaccines?
Who by the greed for power and money driving decisions everywhere?
Who by bigotry, subtle or clear? Who by loneliness and despair?
| B’Rosh Hashanah yikateivun,uv’Yom tzom Kippur yeichateimun: | בְּרֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן, וּבְיוֹֹם צוֹֹם כִּפּוּר יֵחָתֵמוּן. |
(on Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed)
Who will live to the fullest, no matter what they don’t have?
Who will take joy in simple things, and who will savor complexity?
Who will uplift others’ hearts? Who will find blessings in each day?
Who will build and create and plant? Who will tend the seeds of hope?
Who will do what they can to help, and know that they are enough?
| U’t’shuvah u’t’filah u’tz’dakah ma’avirin et ro’a hag’zeirah. | וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָהמַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה. |
Teshuvah, and spiritual practice, and justice
Together sweeten every decree!
Our lives are written by our actions
And signed by our own hands.
Help us. We can’t fix this alone. Mere human beings
Are a broken urn, withering grass, a fading flower, a fleeting dream.
We are dust and ashes, yet we dare to believe the world
Was made for us. For every other creature, too.
You are slow to anger, ready to forgive.
Are we ready to turn from our ways and live?
Tisha b’Av – A Different Take
I see Tisha B’Av as an annual warning concerning what we have done to ourselves in our history.
In my study I have Rembrandt’s Jeremiah, the Biblical figure I most identify with. He stood up to a king and his court when they were planning to revolt against their Babylonian overlords because Egypt promised to aid them. Jeremiah was repeatedly rejected and thrown into prison. The revolt took place and Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed and the people exiled.
For Tisha B’Av this year I recommend reading Jeremiah chapters 28 and 38. The warning is clear.
In the year 66 there was a revolt against Rome and we all know how that ended. During the siege of Jerusalem the Zealot terrorist extremists fought other Jews and burned the city’s food supplies. In the end, a few years after the Hurban they were defeated at Masada (I do not believe Josephus’ account of mass suicide) and they represent a dead end in our history.
It was Yohanan ben Zakkai who saved us by going to the Romans to create Yavneh. Of the Merssianist Zealots he said, “If you are planting a tree and someone comes and says, ‘the Messiah is here, let’s go greet him,’ first finish planting the tree and then go greet the Messiah.
Half a century later Bar Kochba, another false Messiah, arose against the Romans. There is not one positive word about him in the rabbinic literature. When Akivah declared him as Messiah, his colleague, Yohanan ben Torta said to him, “Akiva, grass will grow from your cheeks and still the Son of David will not have appeared.”
Both Hurbans[1] were the result of nationalist hubris and the second from messianism.
When Israel prevailed in the Six-day War in 1967, it was regarded as miraculous. In terms of such a new and small nation against several larger foes, it was a welcome and amazing turn of events. However, certain religious Zionists at the time declared it the footsteps of the Messiah, a sign of the coming of the End.
One of the wisest voices against such thinking was Yehoshafat Harkabi in a book called The Bar Kochba Syndrome: Risk and Realism in International Relations. In this book Harkabi, who had served as Chief of Military Intelligence for Israel, was concerned about what would happen to Israel is the territories taken in the Six-Day War were kept by Israel. He referred to a Talmudic maxim: One who seizes too much has seized nothing (tafasta m’rubeh lo tafasta). Others, including this writer, foresaw the danger to the Jewish state resulting over governing a population that rejected that governance.
Now we see Israel in a war that endangers Israel, not from its foes, but from its own government giving in to the messianic politics of some of the parties in the government coalition. This war, which began as a response to a truly heinous attack on Israel, has expanded into a wider conflict while the government refuses to do anything in a search for ending the conflict through peace.
As the well-known George Santayana quote, “Those who cannot remember thre past are condemned to repeat it.” I see Tisha b’Av as an annual warning. It is one thing to mourn the tragedies in our history and quite another not to learn from them.
[1] Hurban is the Hebrew term referring to the destructions of Jerusalem and the Temples in 586 BCE and 70 CE
In Memory of Rabbi Karl Weiner
So far as I know, I am the only rabbi Temple Judea ever produced. My rabbi there was Karl Weiner and I believe he had a great influence on me. He was an advisor to me in many ways. He inspired me to carry on his devotion to interfaith work. In this essay I want to talk about both these things. He deserves to be remembered as the exemplary synagogue and community leader he was.
Of course, a part of that was my experience at OSRUI, back then known simply by its location, Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. I am sure others will tell about his visionary role in establishing this camp. It has a key role in my life as a person as well as as a Jew and a rabbi.
Before Jews began migrating from Chicago to Skokie in the early 1950s, that village was largely inhabited by ethnic Germans. Anti-Semitism was very much a part of life there. I experienced it in the schoolyard and even in the classroom. Karl (I hope no one will object if I refer to him by his first name) grew up in Germany and had been ordained at the famous Geiger Yeshivah in Breslau in 1938. He had known life in the Third Reich first hand. What was his response to what was going on in this new Jewish community?
He told me he believed that part of what went wrong in Germany was that the Jewish community there did not engage in outreach to the Christian communities. He made it a priority to pursue such relationships in Skokie and established the first interfaith clergy council there. In religious school we learned Comparative Religion, which basically meant we studied Christianity. We had programs with church schools from religious school and youth group.
This met a strong challenge in December 1961 (if I remember the date correctly). The Village of Skokie, at the request of the interfaith council had decided not to erect the usual creche on the Village Hall lawn that year. Unfortunately, someone on their staff had not gotten the message or, perhaps, disregarded it. The creche was set up, but, at orders from the local government was taken down. This resulted in an ugly, explicitly anti-Semitic protest one evening. Karl told me that he felt he was back in the Germany of his youth. But he persisted. That year, by the way, Skokie was up for the All-American City award, then sponsored by Look Magazine. Because of this incident, that award was given to another city.
Karl met an even bigger challenge in the summer of 1977 when a group of Chicago neo-Nazis applied for a permit to hold a march and rally in Skokie. This was probably one of the most effective publicity stunts ever devised. It got the covers of both Time and Newsweek. As it happened, I was in Chicago that summer and it was the universal subject of conversation, and not just among Jews. National Jewish organizations sent in teams of professionals. Karl complained to me that these organizations had run roughshod over his interfaith work, ignoring the local organized community. He was very unhappy about that. One of those professionals I talked with years later actually apologized for the way he had behaved there that summer. There was a film made telling the story rather badly. For one thing, all the synagogue scenes were filmed in Temple Judea, but the rabbi depicted was a young American who was basically clueless about Nazis. So far as I know there was no such rabbi in Skokie and the actual rabbi at the synagogue was a survivor. To indicate how truly tangled this was, the Nazi group was led by one Frankl Collin, nee Francis Cohen, who had been born in a DP camp in post WWII Europe.
Maybe all of this is too negative for some, but this writer thinks Karl should be remembered for the challenges he faced in his career.
When I was sixteen, I went on what was called a pilgrimage to the campus of Hebrew Union College with CFTY. Then and there I decided I would become a rabbi. That decision came and went over the following years, but that year I met with Karl to talk about that. He was very encouraging. I remember asking him about whether I should go for an undergraduate Jewish studies degree and he told me liberal arts would be a better choice. Congregants, he said, expect their rabbi to be well educated and able to preach about all kinds of subjects. I followed that advice and know he was right.
In my last year of college, I again met with him to discuss becoming a rabbi. This time his advice was different. I should pursue ordination only if I were prepared for the downside of being on the pulpit. He warned me about the lack of privacy for myself and my family. He told me about people criticizing me and my family on issues large and petty. There was more about what I should expect that would be difficult to deal with. Over the course of my career, I have come to know that all pulpit clergy must deal with such things. It is a stressful occupation.
I remember asking his advice on a few practical matters years later when I had my student pulpit. I remember telling him I was having trouble getting my board to accept new ideas I had for programs. His advice was something I followed until retirement. He said not to go to the Board and present my idea alone. Find a board member who likes the idea and have her present it as a good idea from the rabbi or even hers alone. That also applies to much else in working with leaders and members.
I am very happy to have the opportunity to memorialize a rabbi who had a profound influence on me as a rabbi, a Jew, and a person. He left this world far too early and we should make sure such a man is not forgotten nor his example lost. Y’hi Zikhrono Tzadik Livrakhah.
Conflict in Science History
I have a lifelong interest in the history and methods of science. That does not generally involve knowledge of a science itself but of the methods scientists use and of how innovations and discoveries have been used in the world. There are general two points about this I’ll try to make here.
The first is that the history of science is complicated by, well, scientists. This history is replete with rivalries and conflicts that have sometimes spilled over into politics and the social arena. I have not yet seen “Oppenheimer,” but I was raised by a physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project so I have followed those issues all along. Einstein wrote that famous letter to FDR and spent the rest of his life regretting it, once it became certain the Germans would never get The Bomb. I met Joseph Rotblat (1995 Nobel Peace Laureate) at a conference in Israel. He wasa leading scientist in Los Alamos and he quit as soon as that happened and spent the rest of his life trying to ban nuclear weapons. My father told me that almost everyone who works on the project held the same position, except Edward Teller and a few who followed him. Teller, my father told me, was universally hated among those scientists for what he did to Oppenheimer. I’m pretty sure the film will illustrate the politics.
One of the benefits for me participating in our group is that exchanges and posts often send me seeking new ideas and information. A quick Google search for conflicts in science yielded an article on such a conflict I had not known about which was quite dramatic and which spilled over into political and social realms. It is an excellent example of what I refer to.
Making sense of conflicts in science – Shells and Pebbles
There is a reference in the article to Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.” I read it decades ago and also last year when I read it with a group of college alumni. Very readable and an accessible explanation of how science progresses.
My other point is that science is in constant motion. Currently the pace of progress in many sciences is astounding. All of us in this group are aware of how different the technology we enjoy (or not) today from what we had in the past. Watch a TV show from a past decade and observe the technology (communication, computers, cars, etc.). Doctors are required to update their medical knowledge every year (for which we must be thankful). What was published a few years ago was probably superseded last year or earlier. Here is an article about the current state of science writing, which is rather troublesome due to the existence now of online publications with low standards and no peer review. That we have an anti-science movement today makes that even worse. Here is a The Conversation article about that.
The main thing is to understand that science is not static and orthodoxy is a barrier to science as is involvement of politics. Even when highly qualified scientists say something, be skeptical. No one has the last word, which, for me, is what makes science so interesting.
Brave New World and 1984 Revisited
I am currently rereading a book I first read about sixty years ago but which I have never forgotten. In a few weeks I will be taking part in a discussion with fellow alumni of my college via Zoom. Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1930 and George Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948. This book came out in 1958. Huxley here is writing about whether these dystopian novels describe our future.
Here is a passage that describes how democracy could fail and become something with elements of both books. His thinking is very much in line with what Plato wrote on why democracies fail in The Republic.
“Democratic institutions are devices for reconciling social order with individual freedom and initiative, and for making the immediate power of a country’s rulers subject to the ultimate power of the ruled. The fact that, in Western Europe and America, these devices have worked, all things considered, not too badly is proof enough that the eighteenth-century optimists were not entirely wrong. Given a fair chance, human beings can govern themselves, and govern themselves better, though perhaps with less mechanical efficiency, than they can be governed by “authorities independent of their will.” Given a fair chance, I repeat; for the fair chance is an indispensable prerequisite. No people that passes abruptly from a state of subservience under the rule of a despot to the completely unfamiliar state of political independence can be said to have a fair chance of making democratic institutions work. Again, no people in a precarious economic condition has a fair chance of being able to govern itself democratically. Liberalism flourishes in an atmosphere of prosperity and declines as declining prosperity makes it necessary for the government to intervene ever more frequently and drastically in the affairs of its subjects. Over-population and over-organization are two conditions which, as I have already pointed out, deprive a society of a fair chance of making democratic institutions work effectively. We see, then, that there are certain historical, economic, demographic and technological conditions which make it very hard for Jefferson’s rational animals, endowed by nature with inalienable rights and an innate.than they can be governed by “authorities independent of their will.” Given a fair chance, I repeat; for the fair chance is an indispensable prerequisite. No people that passes abruptly from a state of subservience under the rule of a despot to the completely unfamiliar state of political independence can be said to have a fair chance of making democratic institutions work. Again, no people in a precarious economic condition has a fair chance of being able to govern itself democratically. Liberalism flourishes in an atmosphere of prosperity and declines as declining prosperity makes it necessary for the government to intervene ever more frequently and drastically in the affairs of its subjects. Over-population and over-organization are two conditions which, as I have already pointed out, deprive a society of a fair chance of making democratic institutions work effectively. We see, then, that there are certain historical, economic, demographic and technological conditions which make it very hard for Jefferson’s rational animals, endowed by nature with inalienable rights and an innate sense of justice, to exercise their reason, claim their rights and act justly within a democratically organized society. We in the West have been supremely fortunate in having been given our fair chance of making the great experiment in self-government. Unfortunately it now looks as though, owing to recent changes in our circumstances, this infinitely precious fair chance were being, little by little, taken away from us.” (Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World Revisited (p. 15). RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition. )
This reflects my own thinking, which may be why this book stuck with me for such a long time. What I see right now in our country and also elsewhere is that fair chance being made unreachable. I have said often enough that I understand why Trump has such a big following. It is a symptom of the loss of any sense of a fair chance for too many people. How much money someone makes is far from the whole picture, but not having enough for what one expects in life is part of that. A sense of anomie is another.
Opinion polls show that a disturbingly large part of our people would favor or, at least accept, an authoritarian government in our country.
https://www.businessinsider.com/26-percent-of-americans-are-right-wing-authoritarian-new-poll-2021-6
When I say that I see our country (among others) following a path from democracy to authoritarianism, I base that on what political philosophy, history, and our current politics and social norms tell me. I believe that our ideals are still present and that this makes our future redeemable, but not for certain. Neither Huzley nor Orwell wrote trying to predict the future. Both dystopias depicted were intended as comments on the world these authors observed in their own time.
Living Under a Rock
This cartoon is from The New Yorker (free sub to their humor).
I’ve Never Been Happier.
What struck me about this cartoon and why I am posting it here is this. As I see it, denial of the ongoing effects of climate change, denial of the need to have followed basic anti-plague measures, denial of the need to do something about gun control, denial of the need for women to choose, and denial of the very real problems with nuclear energy etc., etc., etc. looks like this to me.
What I see are justices who should be following the law make the law follow them. The same for legislators and governors. They all argue there is nothing to worry about; nothing to see here; nothing to be done without consequences we cannot accept. In other words. Hear no evil, see no evil,speak no evil,
I was introduced to the Holocaust as a child (several of my friends growing up were children of survivors and my rabbi was a survivor). I have been involved in human rights work all my life – happening in right and left autocracies and in this country and other democracies.
Today I see folly all across the political spectrum and a lack of recognition of the reality of the dangers of ideological thinking and the irresponsible pursuit of power and money by political parties.
Fascism and Communism took over most of Europe because most people just could not be bothered or because they feared being punished for not going along. It was and is always a minority involved in what is done violating human rights and a minority standing up against that. The difference is in how most of the public responds. In Chicago this was put in terms of seeing the wind as coming from the garden or the outhouse. What is needed is a blend of idealism and practicality. Too much of either, especially without the other, is where societies and nations succumb.
Anti-Semitism in the GOP
The following article is from the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz. I have noted and am distressed by how anti-Semitism is re-entering our cultural and social mainstream. It comes from the left, as well as the right, but, on the right, it is found among elected officials and party leaders and spokespersons. If you who are reading this are a member of the GOP, I urge you to protest. They are certainly not going to pay any attention to the likes of me.
WASHINGTON – Republican officials have increasingly used the name of Jewish billionaire George Soros and invoked Nazi imagery in recent political statements, despite consistent warnings by leading U.S. Jewish organizations that such tropes reflect antisemitic messages.
The uptick notably began when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual gathering earlier this month that Soros, a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor who has been a long-time rival of his, “believes in none of the things that we do.” Before a supportive crowd of U.S. conservatives, Orban further accused Soros of “hating Christianity.”
Orban delivered his remarks days after U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt decried his prior statement alleging that Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race.” Despite that, Orban shared the stage with Republican lawmakers in Texas and was lauded by the crowd for his attacks on Soros, one of the largest donors to liberal causes in the United States today.
Days after the CPAC confab, the Republican nominee for governor of Illinois, Darren Bailey, defended past remarks in which he alleged that the Holocaust “doesn’t even compare” to abortion on the scale of human atrocities. Bailey said, without providing proof, that the local Jewish community and rabbis told him his comments were correct.
Bailey is not the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to make such a comparison. Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate in Pennsylvania, who became famous for his involvement in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, made comparisons involving the Holocaust in the past on issues such as gun control, abortion and the removal of Confederate monuments.
Mastriano has drawn national attention over the past month due to his ties to Gab, the social media platform known as a haven for far-right extremists and white supremacists. Following the controversy, Gab CEO Andrew Torba called Pennsylvania’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Josh Shapiro, an “antichrist,” adding that he is praying for the Jewish Democrat’s conversion to Christianity.
Arizona’s Republican gubernatorial candidate also joined the chorus, telling Steve Bannon that Soros and Cindy McCain, the widow of late Republican Senator John McCain, were conspiring to destroy America. Kari Lake, who won the party primary in the state by campaigning on conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 presidential election, accused McCain and the Jewish billionaire – who are not known to have had ties of any sort – of promoting a “globalist agenda, a new world order.
For his part, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren over his refusal to prosecute abortion-related offenses, calling the Jewish official a “Soros-backed state attorney.” Also in Florida, Senator Rick Scott, who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee, led the Republican charge in comparing the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to tactics used in Nazi Germany, directly comparing FBI actions to the Gestapo.
Scott was joined by Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, who called the raid “Gestapo crap” and later assailed the FBI for “Gestapo tactics” after it seized Rep. Scott Perry’s cellphone as part of its ongoing investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Bruce Reinhart, the Florida federal magistrate who approved the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, faced an onslaught of antisemitic attacks over his actions, and his Palm Beach Gardens synagogue (where he is a board member) had to cancel Shabbat services due to threats.
Attorney General Merrick Garland also faced antisemitic vitriol over the raid – most notably from former Congressman Steve King of Iowa, who tweeted: “I just learned Merrick Garland is a Jew. Therefore, I withdraw all my previous criticism of him. I cannot withstand another wave of charges of anti-Semitism like I received for criticizing Soros.”
In addressing the phenomenon, Washington Post columnist Max Boot wrote: “You have to be pretty deep in denial to ignore why so many right-wingers from Viktor Orban to (insert name of Trumpkin) vilify George Soros as a deep-pocketed political manipulator who is betraying ‘the people.’ This is a classic anti-Semitic trope.”
Stacy Burdett, a former senior official at the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, said these Republicans were “spouting antisemitic Soros conspiracy theories with impunity. The ADL, American Jewish Committee and IHRA definition are clear: Casting a Jewish puppet master controlling the media, economy, government for malign purposes is antisemitism, full stop [so please stop].”
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida also came in for criticism for tweeting: “The democrats just blocked my effort to try & force Soros backed prosecutors to put dangerous criminals in jail.”
Emily Tamkin, senior editor at the New Statesman and author of “The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society,” noted that “the issue here is not the identification of Soros as a political funder. That would constitute criticism, …but [Rubio] also seemed to imply that Soros is responsible for crime in this country,” adding Rubio “must be aware that it is considered an antisemitic trope to refer to Jews as foreigners and outsiders.”
Keep on Truckin’
Today’s equivilent to cowboys in the American mythos is the truck driver.
“America is replete with icons, the most famous of which is the American cowboy. We all know the image well: the cowboy on the range, with a six-shooter on the hip, the horse and the approaching ride off into the sunset. He symbolizes America’s desire of a never-ending movement westward, itching for adventure, resolute on manifest destiny. He is everywhere.” https://medium.com/@StormFoxEsq/the-myth-of-the-american-cowboy-22260d0fecd8
“The portrayal of the trucking industry in United States popular culture spans the depictions of trucks and truck drivers, as images of the masculine side of trucking are a common theme. The portrayal of drivers ranges from the heroes of the 1950s, living a life of freedom on the open road, to the depiction of troubled serial killers of the 1990s. Songs and movies about truck drivers were first popular in the 1940s, and mythologized their wandering lifestyle in the 1960s. Truck drivers were glorified as modern day cowboys, outlaws, and rebels during the peak of trucker culture in the 1970s.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trucking_industry_in_American_culture
Nowadays the reality of work for truck drivers is very far from that romantic icon. Our media report a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers and extremely high turn-over (translation: truckers are quitting and seeking other work). There are those who deny that this shortage exists and that truckers are well-paid. Here, from satirical commentator John Oliver, a real muckraker if ever there was one, is an explanation of why being a truck driver today is not what it was.
The reason truck driving is not a good living any more is how trucking companies take away from their drivers so much that they are left with a paltry income with few, if any benefits. This situation, for me at least, is evidence of why labor unions are necessary to get wage-earners a fair salary and benefits.
What really sucks is that those wage-earners have been convinced that unions are somehow bad for them. They have (and I am not just talking about truckers now) wages that in real terms have been stagnant for decades. Add to that “independent contractors” and other catogories that give workers no protection against employer abuses, and you have the reason that blue-collar families feel they have been ignored, disrespected, and abused by just about everyone. I include in that the Democratic Party, which used to be their advocate in government. Of course it includes the GOP, which sides with employers and owners every time. It is no wonder so many were attracted to a demagogue like Trump who at least acknowledged and praised them. I question whether he or his have actually done anything at all for them, but he does acknowledge them.
Our economy, despite inflation, is in very good shape, but too many people who work for a wage feel left out. I don’t blame them.
Putin. Who Can Bring Him Down? Putin.
Napoleon and Hitler will always invade Russia. Megalomaniacs always go too far. Human history shows this again and again. This follows the famous maxim by Ariel Durant. “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”
Russia has a millennium of paranoid history because it has been invaded and occupied so many times. Putin does not understand the lesson, perhaps because he is Russian. He is following the ambitions of Napoleon and Hitler and cannot see it.
It is said several times in the Talmud that, “one who grabs much has grabbed nothing.”
He did not even learn from the Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan, which is not called Graveyard of Empires for nothing. There was an anti-war movement because Russians did not see why their sons, brothers, and husbands were coming home in body bags from a distant country. Many who know the history believe this was a factor in the downfall of the Soviet Union only a few years after they withdrew from that land.
Ukraine is not Afghanistan. There are historic, cultural and ethnic ties between Russia and Ukrain going back to the origins of Russia itself. Soldiers are sent to make war on people who are very much like them. Military training involves making soldiers see the enemy as unlike them in order for them to overcome the natural instinct against killing one’s own kind. Putin claims to be saving Ukraine, because he cannot label them an enemy.
From what can be known from oujtside the Kremlin, Putin is isolated from the nation he rules. He is surrounded only by those of unquestioned loyalty. That likely means people who will not question him about anything.
It does not get near enough attention in the media, but anti-Putin activism has been ongoing for years. Some might think, what could unarmed citizens do against this kind of tyrant? In my work with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) I have met people who stood up to the KGB and lived to tell about it. Under the Soviet Union there were always dissidents. I have read much of that literasture, heard some of that music and I have seen Eisenstein’s “Ivan The Terrible,” which depicted the old despot as Stalin. I have met people who brought down autocrats in the Philippines, Chile, and Liberia. Protest movements brought down the regimres of all the Warsaw Pact nations. An attempted coup just after the fall of the USSR to restore the USSRF was brought down by a nonviolent protest movement.
As Margaret Meade put it, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
The anti-war movement against our war in Vietnam started small and grew. It forced LBJ to quit and it had a lot to do with Nixon quitting.
Never doubt.
Russian law has a universal male draft, but any member of the military cannot be sent into a combat zone without having assented by signing a contract allowing that. Russian soldiers who have not signed such a contract are in combat in Ukraine. Already there is a mothers’ movement questioning this and demanding that their sons be sent back home.
If Putin gets so desperate he orders the use of nukes, will those who actually have to do that comply with such orders? If they do, will the Russian people support that kind of mass murder? Even Hitler’s Wehrmacht had dissidents who refused to follow orders that violated their sense of right and wrong.
So maybe our country, the EU, and NATO cannot directly intervene (yet – and we have reason to fear what will happen if they do), it may well be that Putin has gone too far for them. His dreams of empire or a restoration of the Soviet Union are not based on reality. The Russian people, who already suffer from living in a poor nation, may not be able to tolerate the increased suffering this war is already bringing. His support is high now in the false glow of nationalism, but will it last?
When shortages of commercial goods increase and Russian men start coming home in body bags, the Russian tradition of anti-government movements under the USSR and now still lives.
Never doubt.
Why Government Should Help Those in Need
The following is in response to a series of posts on Curmudgeons (my discussion group) questioning whether it is constitutional for government to collect taxes to give to support those in need. In the most recent the question of differences between Jefferson and Hamilton was raised. British Common Law was referred to. Here is the response I posted.
Yes, it is today’s world that should determine how government spending benefits the nation and society, not the world of Hamilton and Jefferson, much less English common law. The idea of government taking on the basic needs of its people “from the cradle to the grave” was invented in the early 1870s. What might be very interesting would be how and why von Bismarck’s government adopted such a program.Here is an article from that radical publication, The Smithsonian Magazine. It puts the origin and early development of this idea into a broader context. That context includes changes in business, technology, and so forth. The Second Reich was a democracy and that should be remembered. Bismarck was anti-socialist, which should also be remembered.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/bismarck-tried-end-socialisms-grip-offering-government-healthcare-180964064/
I think that this shows that in a newly created democracy in the most industrialized nation in Europe, the people chose social benefits from government. It was not imposed by government, but a reponse to what the people of that nation wanted. The paternalism of arguing that people become lazy or selfish because of government social benefits is evident. This is the masculine equivalent of the nanny state idea. I’ll add to that the idea that qualities associated with women – compassion, mercy, caring – are a weakness. This is what I see in much conservative rhetoric.
The true roots of this idea go back much further. In Biblical law the major tax-payers were producers and the two tithes (total 19%) were applied to agricultural produce, animal and plant. Part of that was designated for sustenance for the poor. In addition there was a half-shekel head tax imposed on every adult male (which also served the census function). Then there were rules concerning gleanings and corners. Farmers were to leave the corners of their fields and whatever laborers dropped for the poor and the stranger to glean. There were no amounts associated with that. This was replaced, in the Diaspora (the scattering after the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed) by communal taxes and Tzedakah. The latter is usually translated as “charity,” but that is not the right meaning of the word. “Charity” is from the Greek word for heart and is what someone feels they should give. Tzedakah is from the Hebrew word for what is right (sometimes translated as justice). In the Abrahamic faiths, support for the needy is a religious obligation.
Of course, there are those who maintain that it is religious institutions that can and should meet the needs of the needy. This was what was meant by George H W Bush’s “A Thousand Points of Light.” The government program was called Faith-Based Initiative (the other FBI), but that really went nowhere. Back in 1982 I represented the social action arm of Reform Judaism at a meeting in Washington DC. The purpose of that meeting was to determine whether Reagan’s assertions about religion dealing with poverty were workable in practice. His federal budget removed support from many NGOs doing work in this and other areas. Charitable organizations were overwhelmed because the demands on their work had not decreased but federal aid on which they depended was largely withdrawn. That meeting included faith leaders and administrators of major NGOs serving the needs of the poor. One of the leading groups there running the program was Evangelicals for Social Justice (something that was once typical of Evangelicals). Report after report revealed the same thing. Their services were overwhelmed and could not keep up. Hands Across America, which was supposed to raise funds for the homeless, raised enough to buy every homeless person in America a Coke.
The idea of government spending to ameliorate social evils like poverty really got its first strong advocate in William Jennings Bryant, an Evangelical Christian from the heartland. What FDR was able to do had long before been proposed by Bryant.
In our secular system of government, the traditional functions of religious organizations have been replaced by government assistance. I’m the first to admit that some of these programs need improvement and reform. Serving the needs of the poor has always been a function of society, either met or unmet. There is nothing in this that violates democracy, nor is it a socialist thing. Of course, promoting the dignity of labor and a sense of personal responsibility should go hand-in-hand with assistance programs. The highest form of charity is to provide a way to meaningful work. In Judaism, in Christianity, and in Islam I know that even those living on assistance must give Tzedakah or Charity or Zakat.
The question of whether the public treasury provides for social inequities should not be a question. The question should be how to go about fulfilling a universal ethical obligation.
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