This is the second installment of a three-part post. For parts 1 and 3, and a postscript to the series, click here, here, and here. Once upon a time, maybe 1800 years ago, two rabbis went traveling in the Galilee. It must have been a long journey. They took care to get an early start. Rabbi … [Read more...]
Love Goddess Stories – Esther, Ishtar, and the “Doe of the Dawn” (Part 1)
This is the first installment of a three-part post. For parts 2 and 3, and a postscript to the series, click here, here, and here. The weekend after next is the Jewish festival of Purim. I don't plan to celebrate. Purim is not one of my favorite holidays. The text on which it's founded, the … [Read more...]
Maccabees, Taliban, and the Real Story of Hanukkah
I wrote this "Hanukkah Q&A" ten years ago for a web course on Judaism. Things have changed a lot since then, in the world and in myself. Back then I didn't identify religiously, as I do today, as a Unitarian Universalist of Jewish heritage. But when I wrote, "there's no holy book, ours or … [Read more...]
Jungian Psychology and UFOs – More On the Magonia Men (and Woman)
Four visitors from the skies—three men and one woman. First reported from Lyon, in what’s now France, early in the ninth century. Then from the Turkish Dardanelles, late in the seventeenth century. To reappear like that, after nearly 900 years, would be quite a trick for human beings. Even, I’d … [Read more...]
Passover Seder – Of Dream Teams and Wicked Sons
When thy son shall ask thee in time to come, saying … —Exodus 13:14 The Bible envisions different questions, apparently posed by different sons, all to the same effect: why do we Jews do this, that, or the other thing? From the character of the question, one infers the character of the … [Read more...]
