Are you a "Jessica"? If you are, your name says that you're a woman so beautiful people can't stop looking at you. You won't find this in any dictionary or website, or even Wikipedia (which offers a different explanation for the name). I learn it from Shakespeare and from the Talmud, two … [Read more...]
The Kabbalah Centre, 2003 – Zohar to the Palestinians
Read this post, if you want, as a belated tribute to the World Day of Prayer, observed last Thursday on the day better known as Patriot Day or simply 9/11. Or as a memorial to the late Philip Berg, head of the LA-based "Kabbalah Centre" where the celebs--most visibly, Madonna--learn their … [Read more...]
Conspiracy Theories and Jesse Walker – I Have Met the Conspirator and He Is Me
Review of Jesse Walker, The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory. HarperCollins, 2013. Conspiracy theories make me nervous. I've been the star attraction in too many of them. Not me personally, you understand. But as a Jew, I periodically emerge as an ex officio plotter against … [Read more...]
“Crucify Him!” – The Long Trauma of Easter
Easter. Not my holiday. In an earlier post I've written about how, as a Unitarian Universalist of Jewish heritage, I've taken to celebrating Christmas. Not Easter, though. Too much historical baggage there for me. The Christmas story is warm, inclusive, expansive. The poor Jewish shepherds … [Read more...]
Agnostic Robert Ingersoll – “Here, We Should Be Friends”
A lady named Priscilla Threadgill has posted a comment to my Facebook Fan Page, that may be one of the nicest things anyone's ever said to me. "Are you using UFO as 'unidentified flying object,' " Priscilla writes, "or something further like 'universal friendship organization'? Well, … [Read more...]
