Israel is a real place

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 ’Elul 5770 (Parashath Ha’azinu).

Today’s holidays:  Ramadan (Islam), Laylat-al-Qadr (Lailat ul Qadr, Lailat-ul Qadr, Night of Power) (Islam), Twenty-Third Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Henry Louis Mencken (Church of the SubGenius).

Topic 1:  A big backlog on anti-Semitism and the Arab-Israeli War:  “Selective Outrage: Israeli Facebook Photos Spark Media Circus”, “Action Alert: CBC Drags a False Equivalence”, “EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Dramatic Reunion Ten Years After The Photo That Started It All”, “Iranian youth athlete withdraws from fight with Israel competitor” (translation:  Iran would rather force its taekwondo fighters to chicken out like wimps rather than let them lose with honor), “Lancet Editor "Responds" to HR Critique”, “Ha'aretz Journalist's Speaking Tour: Sponsored by Anti-Zionists”, “BBC Panorama Shocker: Balanced Review of Gaza Flotilla Incident”, “Incitement is not one-sided”, “Dead Jews and living trees” (some people have completely missed what the Holocaust is supposed to teach us), “The Root of the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Classic Islamic View of Jews”, “The Despair of Zion” by Walter Reich, and “Egyptian minister calls on Muslims to flood J’lem” (completely forgetting that any Islamic identity of Yerushalayim is completely forged and that Muslim pilgrims there will be giving money to Jews, directly or indirectly, if they want to eat, sleep, or travel).

Topic 2:  I need to start writing about my pilot trip to Israel, my future home, and I still do not know where to start.  So let us start with something basic which at first sounds ridiculously obvious:  Israel is a real place.  Rationality requires us to try to recognize things as they are, for what they are.  The Israel I visited is not a religious fantasy of a Jewish or ecumenical utopia.  Neither is it a successor to Nazi Germany, as anti-Semites would have us believe.  In many respects, Israel is a lot like the United States, being a fully modern, Western country.  This includes the general rule of law and familiar products and technologies.

So how does Israel differ from the United States?  The most obvious (and relevant to this blog) is that while most of the West is predominantly Christian, Israel is predominantly Jewish.  There is a sizeable Muslim minority, and there are Christians, Bahá’ís, and members of other religions as well; but I stayed within areas with Jewish majorities, and this was reflected even within the secular culture.  (I do plan to go into this further as I discuss my trip.)  And while in the United States people are often not so visibly demonstrative of their religion, people who look religious are everywhere in Israel.  Even in Tel ’Aviv, the great bastion of Israeli secularism, there were some people who were visibly observant Jews, including one woman I talked with at a company at which I interviewed.  To be sure, there are enclaves, and whole neighborhoods are set up with particular religious groups in mind.  But in many places, people of different religious strains mix freely and without incident.  This includes on buses; despite what you may have heard about Ḥaredhim (sometimes derisively called “ultra-Orthodox”) holding by segregated buses, I saw plenty riding ordinary, mixed buses.

Israel is also a visibly multilingual society.  In the United States, government-issue signs (such as for traffic and street names) are usually only in English.  In Israel, they are typically in Hebrew, the international language English, and Arabic.  And while the most common language spoken on the street and found in non-governmental signs is indeed Hebrew, I also encountered a fair share of English, Arabic, Russian, Spanish, French, Yiddish, and what was probably Amharic.  One may also easily end up talking to people in languages other than Hebrew.  Someone at one synagogue did try speaking to me in Yiddish, which I do not know.  (I got a C in Yiddish in college and have made no attempts to study it since.)  Several people, upon hearing my American accent even when speaking Hebrew, switched to addressing me in English.  (I myself must admit guilt at switching too frequently from Hebrew to English when I had trouble making myself understood in Hebrew.  Hebrew is not my native language, and it requires more mental effort for me to speak or understand.  And I am under the impression that my accent is not the easiest for Israelis to understand either.)

I need to move on to other things today.  I hope to write about the Old City of Yerushalayim tomorrow.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “The transition”:

And again, if anyone knows anything about where this notion of black cats being evil comes from, please let me know.

Peace.

Aaron

A big backlog of stuff

Image of where I am working towards going via Wikipedia

Greetings.

Jewish date:  8 Tammuz 5770 (Parashath Balaq).

Today’s holidays:  Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Joseph Smith (Church of the SubGenius), Litha - Sommer Solstice (Wicca).

Worthy causes of the day:  “End Violence Against Women - The Petition Site”, “Friends of the Earth U.S.”, “Action at Oil Change”, “Obama, Say No To Commercial Whaling! - The Petition Site”, “ONE | 3.5 Million Healthworkers Needed”, “Support Women's Health with the Global MOMS Act - The Petition Site”, “Please Include the Temple Mount in the Heritage Plan - אנא הוסף את הר הבית לרשימת אתרי המורשת Petition”, “Working Families » Take Action!”, and “What President Obama should have said.”

Note:  The big gap in postings is largely due to me attending an ‘Aliyyah Absorption Information Expo last week.  This is also the reason I have not yet written a review of Mort (The Discworld Series, book 4) while having finished reading Sourcery (The Discworld Series, book 5).  Expect the next Discworld review to be for at least two books at the same time.  On this past trip, I have also acquired a copy of the first season of Serughim, an Israeli show which deals with a group of Dathi Le’umi (religous Zionist/Modern Orthodox) singles in Jerusalem.  The point of getting this set of DVDs is to work on my understanding of spoken Hebrew (Israeli radio is too fast for someone unused to rapid Hebrew speech), but there is enough going on religiously in the episodes I have already watched that I expect to eventually be writing episode-by-episode reviews.

Also:  Since I have a huge backlog, expect this post to be very short on commentary.

Topic 1:  Updates on anti-Semitism:  “CBC National Corrects Gaza Infant Mortality Rate Error”, “Gaza Flotilla: The Battle for Public Opinion Continues”, “SUCCESS! - Yahoo Reunites Jerusalem”, “Best Seller”, “Their Problem”, “Bowen: My Critics Are "Enemies of Impartiality"”, “SUCCESS: BBC Apologises for Al-Dura Inaccuracy”, “Israel Bashers Bash the Beeb”, “HRC Rebuts Mayor's Diatribe in Journal de Montreal”, “Guardian Israel Obsession Reaches New Heights: Flotilla Stats”, “When concept trumps reality?”, “Cairo court rules on Egyptians married to Israeli women”, and (in a different vein) “The Never-Ending Lynching of Sholom Rubashkin” and (the very worthwhile read as it exposes some serious hypocrisy) “A modest proposal for solving the kosher slaughter problem”.

Topic 2:  Other Islam-related things going on:  “BP, Kaddafi, and Britain’s Oil Comeuppance”, “Eurological Problem (2007)”, “Turkish Tomorrow?”, “Barcelona will ban use of face-covering Islamic veil in city buildings”, “Deafening silence from Left as Iranians protest”, “Islamic Sharia Law to Be Banned in Oklahoma”, “World Cup 2010: Somali football fans executed for watching matches” (I cannot make this up, and I do not understand it), “Appeal for Afghan Christians, sentenced to death for their faith”, “Target killing count continues to rise”, “Surge for Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party”, “Ahmadis press for protection”, “Egyptian Couple Shot by Muslim Extremists Undaunted in Ministry”, “The killing of a Christian businessman in Kirkuk rekindles fear among Christians”, “Muslims Order Christians to Leave Village in Pakistan”, “Prisoners convert to Islam for jail perks” (definitely the wrong reason to convert), and “Chain e-mail claims Muslims will be a majority in U.S. in 20 years”.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor, which deals with a commonly voiced paranoia:  “Consequences Of Gay Marriage”.  I do not support gay marriage, but this graph gets it right as to what would happen if homosexual marriage were allowed.

Peace.

Aaron

Mind over crude oil???

Greetings.

Jewish date:  29 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s holidays:  Day 44 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Ascension Day/Feast of the Ascension (Christianity), Feast Day of St. Judy Tenuta (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Support Clean Energy Jobs - Take Action Today @ The Hunger Site”, “End the Pet Primate Trade - The Petition Site” and “Take Action: Tell Obama to stand up to Big Oil!”

Topic 1:  “Guess Who 'Enjoys' US-Israeli Tensions”.  HonestReporting keeps reporting on anti-Semitic bias from the BBC.  I keep passing the reports on to you.

Topic 2:  “Boulder man hopes to stop Gulf of Mexico oil spill with meditation”.  I cannot make up something like this.  People like talking about “mind over matter”, but that only really works to some degree over one’s physiology.  There are no nerves linking this man’s brain to the gaping hole spewing petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “Pope Happycat the 1st”:


Peace.

Aaron

On The Light Fantastic (Discworld Series, book 2)

Greetings.

Jewish date:  27 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeMidhbar).

Today’s holidays:  Day 42 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Tuesday of the Sixth Week of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Salvador Dali (Church of the SubGenius).

Worthy causes of the day:  “CARE : Defending Dignity - Fighting Poverty :  International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act”, “Stop Terrorists from Buying Guns and Explosives - The Petition Site”, “Friends of the Earth U.S.:  Tell President Obama to Support a Financial Speculation Tax”, “Save BioGems: Take Action: Stop the Pebble Mine”, “Ban New Offshore Drilling - The Petition Site”, “Working Families » Take Action!:  Sign the petition to Albany”, “Take Action: TrueMajority.org:  Mr. President, THIS is why drilling is bad.”, “Empowering Women Can Save Children - The Petition Site”, and “Heart Disease and Stroke. You’re the Cure.:  Ask Your Legislator to Override the Veto!”

Topic 1:  The daily dose of anti-Semitism:  First up, the cartoons “The Goldstone Whitewash” and “Jerusalem (1982)”.  Both of these deal with hypocrisy and double standards in anti-Semitic politics and diplomacy.  Notable articles include “Complex crisis most analysts fail to explain”, “Biased Broadcasting Corporation?”, and “Glorifying murderers only scores points at home”.

Image via Wikipedia

Topic 2:  The reason there has no blogging for a few days while I wrote the review:  The Light Fantastic (Discworld Series, book 2) by Terry Pratchett:

WARNING:  SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Light Fantastic picks up where The Color of Magic left off, with the wizard Rincewind, the tourist Twoflower, and the Luggage going over the side of the Discworld.  (The demon in Twoflower’s camera presumably goes over the side of the Discworld, too, but only by implication.  He barely appears onscreen in this book, as Twoflower does not get in much photography.)  However, instead of ending up as a stain on the shell of the world-turtle Great A’Tuin, our heroes (if you can really call them that) suddenly find themselves back on the Discworld elsewhere.

What at first might seem like an attempt by the Lady to cheat Fate (or a gross continuity violation), is actually the result of the spell from the grimoire Octavo which Rincewind carries around in his head working to preserve itself.  

Meanwhile, Great A’Tuin is now getting closer and closer to a red star with eight moons.  The wizards of Unseen University, lead by the dangerously ambitious Trymon, determine that they need to read all eight spells of the Octavo in order to save the Discworld.  Thus they set out, both in person and by proxy, to find Rincewind and bring him back to Ankh-Morpork so that all eight spells can be recited.

The misadventures of Rincewind, Twoflower, and the Luggage on their way back to and in Ankh-Morpork contain frequent religious references.

• Our heroes (if they can be called that) encounter Druids(!) trying to repair a Stonehenge-like stone computer.  (The humor falls a bit flat since the author’s understanding of computers falls short.)  As part of the process, the Druids try to sacrifice the virgin Bethan.  (Whether any of this bears any resemblance to real Druidism is beyond me.  I have not studied it yet.)  Luckily, Bethan is saved by Rincewind, Twoflower, and the 87-year-old hero Cohen the Barbarian.  (He is an obvious parody of Conan the Barbarian, even to someone who never read the relevant literature and only remembers two of the movies fuzzily.)  In this segment of the book, Rincewind notes that in his culture sacrifice is normal, while Twoflower claims that is totally absent back on the Counterweight Continent where he comes from.  I applaud Terry Pratchett for making the Discworld have multiple religions.  (Compare the Star Trek Universe, in which the usual case is for a planet to have a single religion and a single culture.)
• Rincewind finds himself in Death’s Domain, where he finds Twoflower teaching the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to play a card game.  Death for some reason has an adopted daughter, Ysabell.
• The approach of the star to the Discworld (or its relativistic equivalent, the approach of the Discworld to the star), sets off a religious panic.  Many people flee the cities for the mountains so they can have a better view of the coming destruction.  A new red star cult forms which tries to bring practically everything on the Discworld to a standstill by violence or threat thereof.  Notably, the Discworld gods, who were so prominent in the previous book, are silent here.
• Trymon steals the Octavo for himself and absorbs the seven spells still within it, intending to gain power for himself besides saving the Discworld.  In the process he opens the Discworld up to the Dungeon Dimensions, inhabited by clones of creatures from the (dreadful) horror stories of H. P. Lovecraft.  Interestingly, Pratchett describes the Dungeon Dimensions creatures not as evil, but as “eldritch”.  And he explains the difference:  evil may seek power over your soul or the world, but it sees the value of your soul or the world.  “Eldritch”, on the other hand, sees no value in your soul or the world and will step on you if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  This is actually a misinterpretation of what “eldritch” is supposed to mean (“weird and sinister or ghostly” according to the New Oxford American Dictionary via Apple’s Dictionary.app), but it is a faithful characterization of how the pseudo-gods of Lovecraft’s stories behave:  they simply do not care about humanity.  Trymon, who has acted callously and selfishly throughout the entire book, quite poetically transforms into one of the Lovecraftian creatures.  Of course, Rincewind defeats him (obviously, since this is not the end of the series), but how that happens will not be spoiled here.
• Once Rincewind beats Trymon, he evicts the eighth spell from his head back into the Octavo and reads all eight spells.  The red star’s eight moons hatch into (relatively) small world-turtles, each with four (relatively) small world-elephants and a (relatively) small discworld on the elephants’ backs.  Great A’Tuin and the hatchlings paddle away from the star, thus averting the crisis.  Thus is a nice chunk of the mystery of the origin of the Discworld cleared up.  (Actually, the spells of the Octavo discuss the origins of the Discworld earlier in the story with Rincewind, but none of them agree on what happened.  And they do not mention anything like this.)  This setup suggests that the Octavo being left behind on the Discworld by the Creator was not an accident.  No word is given on whether each of the new discworlds has its own copy of the Octavo, though considering that the series has a few tens of books, there are plenty of opportunities to find out.

Overall classification:  Humorous fantasy, but not for children.  Beware of the Luggage.

Theological rating:  Q.  (Absurdist.)

Next up:  Equal Rites (Discworld Series, book 3).

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor: “PINK??! BASEMINT CAT”:


Peace.

Aaron

On conscience in V

Greetings.

Jewish date:  22 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath BeHar-BeḤuqqothay).

Today’s holidays:  Day 37 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Guiness (The Stout) (Church of the SubGenius), National Day Of Reason (Humanism), National Day of Prayer (USA).

Worthy causes of the day:  “Sign the Petition | Terror Gap” and “Samsung: Come Clean About the Hazards in Your Workplace - The Petition Site”.

Topic 1:  The latest episode of V, “Hearts and Minds”.  This episode puts Father Jack through a wringer.  Our heroes shoot down what is supposed to be a V craft without any humans aboard, and in the wreckage they find what are apparently bones—human bones.  While no one is particularly happy about this, Father Jack, being a priest, is distraught.  He is very explicit that preservation of human life is paramount, and he cannot bring himself to deliberately endanger humans.  He even tipped off Chad (who is turning into a double agent) not to be aboard any V crafts the day our heroes planned to shoot one down.  At the end of the episode Father Jack insists that even though they are at war, they must not let the Vs compromise their principles.

Also:  In his distress, Father Jack talks to his bishop without actually specifying what he feels guilty about.  The bishop, while all for confession (they are Catholics, after all) tells him that if what Father Jack feels guilty over having done is a matter of (state) law, he should make a “different kind of confession”, that is, go to the police.  Intuition suggests this is a reflection of how the real-life Roman Catholic Church should have handled cases of suspected sexual abuse by priests.  We can only hope that real Catholic clergy will act this way in the future.

Also:  Lisa seems to be developing a conscience.  She looks disturbed at a human being subjected to the V version of abduction and probing.  (Think of cliché alien abduction scenarios which make more sense in terms of paranoid fantasies rather than ways to gain knowledge of humans.)  Furthermore, her feelings for Tyler appear to be genuine, and in an effort to apparently spare him being tortured or whatever Anna have in mind for him, she breaks up with him and then tells Anna that she has failed to convince him to live aboard the V mothership.  Anna, however, climbs to the next level of being a psychopath.  Her response is to punch Lisa in the face so hard as to leave a bruise, and then she orders one of her guards to break Lisa’s legs.  The point of this is to claim that Lisa was attacked by the Fifth Column and to lure Tyler into trying to help her.  I have to admit:  the writers are definitely doing a good job of making Anna scary.

Topic 2:  The daily dose of anti-Semitism:  “BBC's Non-Response to HR Report”.  Essentially the BBC tried to bluff their way around a serious bias problem.

Topic 3:  “Shanghai Is Trying to Untangle the Mangled English of Chinglish” and “A Sampling of Chinglish”.  This article and slide show are about translation gone horribly wrong due to people relying too much on dictionaries and not enough on people who know English well.  This should be a warning to anyone underestimating the importance of good translation.  Try to envision the level of disaster when stuff like this happens to religious texts.

Topic 4:  For today’s religious humor: “Crossin’ bridge to holy grail, BRB”:

I think there may be something of Monty Python and the Holy Grail in this one.

Peace.

Aaron

A fatwa against South Park?

Greetings.

Jewish date:  16 ’Iyyar 5770 (Parashath ’Emor).

Today’s holidays:  Day 31 of the ‘Omer (Judaism), Feast Day of Pius V (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of St. Elvis Costello (Church of the SubGenius), Walpurgis Eve (Thelema).

Worthy causes of the day:  “We want the DISCLOSE Act - A project of Senator Russ Feingold, Senator Patrick Leahy, and Senator Chuck Schumer” and action.firedoglake.com | Sign the petition to President Obama: End plans for offshore drilling“”.

Topic 1:  Today’s dose of anti-Semitism:  “In-Depth Media Analysis:  BBC:  January 1- March 31, 2010”.  Much effort has gone into quantifying bias in the BBC’s reporting.

Topic 2:  “'South Park' and the Informal Fatwa”, “South Park”, and “‘South Park’: Drawing a Line in the Sand”.  These articles deal with the recent censorship of South Park.  South Park is a cartoon which reportedly vile and insults practically everyone, the sort of thing which if all the vileness were removed would result in little or no show at all.  If only show on television were going to be censored, this would be near or at the top of the list.  And yet people are complaining that an episode of South Park has been censored.  Why?  Because what was censored was a depiction of Muḥammad, the prophet of Islam due to an ambiguous death threat; rather than maintain the show’s reputation for equal-opportunity offense, Comedy Central caved and decided to treat Islam a lot better than it treated other religions.  This is a form of the logical fallacy appeal to force, in which one wrongly assumes that whoever is going to hurt someone else if he/she does not get his/her way must be right.  Not to mention caving in to threats teaches people that making threats works; as a result, it is now more likely that there will be threats the next time Muslims are offended.  And the more threats work, the more endangered is our freedom of speech.  You should be ashamed, Comedy Central, for caving.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “HAVING MISPLACED BOTH THE CHESS SET AND THE VIOLIN”:

Hint:  The Seventh Seal and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”.

Peace and Shabbath shalom.

Aaron

Joe Biden shoots his mouth off and someone sells bottled ghosts on eBay

Greetings.

Jewish date:  26 ’Adhar 5770 (Parashath Wayyaqhel-Fequdhe).

Today’s holidays:  Bahá’í Month of Fasting (Bahá’í Faith), Friday of the Third Week of Lent (Roman Catholicism), Feast Day of Jacobus Burgundus Molensis the Martyr (Thelema).

Worthy cause of the day:  “Save BioGems: Take Action: Protect the Spirit Bear”.

Image of no true friend of Israel via Wikipedia

Topic 1:  “YOUNG ISRAEL MOVEMENT CONDEMNS VP BIDEN'S COMMENTS ON JERUSALEM”.  Probably everyone by now has heard about US Vice President Joe Biden shooting his mouth off condemning Israel for deciding to build more housing units in eastern Jerusalem, i.e., in Israeli territory.  This article correctly notes the (probably unthinkingly) anti-Semitic discriminatory nature of Biden’s condemnation and how the tactic he is trying to use to move along the “peace process”, putting pressure on Israel, has no chance of working because the Palestinian Authority is interested in destroying Israel and has no real interest in making peace.  (The sad thing is that despite claims of being great friends of Israel, all the US presidential administrations at least as far back as Jimmy Carter have pressured Israel to do stupid things and appease terrorists in the name of “peace”.  Had John McCain been elected president, I fully expect that it would be Sarah Palin getting mad at Israel for no good reason instead of Joe Biden.)  Also notable on the topic of anti-Semitism:  “BBC Complaints: A Complaint in Itself” and “Expose ‘apartheid’ charge's real agenda”.

Topic 2:  “New Zealander auctions "ghosts" in a bottle”:  I appreciate the fact that the seller admits the effect of the exorcism might have just been psychological.  Rituals do often have psychological effects.  However, if I were buying bottled ghosts, I would want solid evidence that there really were ghosts in the bottles first.

Topic 3:  For today’s religious humor:  “Build Your Own Easter Island Kit” and “Build Your Own Stonehenge Kit”.

Peace.

Aaron