Even tho’ Timmy got no decision, the Giants win over the Cubs was a good thing, even for this erstwhile Cub fan.
Tomorrow I tell you why. At the moment, I’m writing up the surgery notes from spaying a 6 pound dog with a uterine infection. Fun.
Comeuppance, or just another Turn of the Screw?
FENWAY AND THE RED SOX END THEIR SELL-OUT STREAK
Oh, how the proud have been humbled and made to lick the dust that covers home plate! They shall sit in stadia not full, cover themselves with greasy ashes from the grilling of sausages, and drink their overpriced yet watered down intoxicants in the loneliness and solitude! The millionaires of summer will cry out in the wilderness, yet no one will be there to offer succor.
Let’s face it: There’s more than a little amount of schadenfreude going around today. The Red Sox and their overpriced, crumbling venue has finally reached a point where the fans have said “Enough!”. A king’s ransom to take to the family to the ball park, plus $8.50 for Bud Light (Bud Light, mind you) can’t go on forevah. The owners thought it could, but let’s hope that this year more people will decide to go watch local Little League games instead, no matter how good this season’s crop of mercenaries plays “for the fans.”
Then again, they may show up in droves tomorrow.
Jerusalem from Jerusalem
viewed from French Hill, 1977.
This photo was probably taken from a building on Dakar Alley. Does anyone have an updated version?
Rabbi Victor Urecki Responds To My Previous Post On My Jewish Problem(s)
Rabbi Urecki, spiritual leader of Congregation B’nai Jacob in Charleston, WV, responded to my post via Facebook. I have copied it below.
“I tend to feel that the problem with our Sunday/Hebrew school education is that it is based on the mistaken notion that religion is passed on by a third party. It isn’t. It is absorbed through experience. Real passionate and regular experience. And like exercise, it is a life long endeavor. Read the David Brooks piece in This weekend’s New York Times. Religion is about doing. And doing AND doing. Most families have other priorities and Sunday school, therefore, becomes two hours of learning about meaningless rituals that have no purpose.
“We educators can explain WHY we do the things we do but only if the home is positively acting on those practices. And making it a cornerstone of their life experiences. Sunday school is boring because we try to get our students to do things their parents are unable or unwilling to experience or practice. Or at least try to understand and practice themselves. Kinda like trying to teach kids the value of good nutrition and yet, their parents take them to McDonald’s or Wendy’s every day. Not sure why I would like to eat healthy either. And then imagine parents eating at those places but telling their kids they can only eat salad for the next couple of years . “Why?” “Because it is good for you. I had to do it when I was your age” “But you don’t now! ” “When you are my age, you can eat whatever you want but for now, eat as your told”. Yep, that oughta work.
“Your piece deserves much more, but this is the best I can do on the stationary bike this morning! Hope all is well with you and your family!
My Jewish Problems, Vol 3c
Ok, it’s not really volume 3c, it’s volume 1, but these things are becoming more of a problem because my son is going to be bar-mitzvahed next year. Fortunately, he has started to ask questions, and they are intelligent questions to which he has given some rather provocative thought. But let’s face it, not only my son and daughter, but the vast majority of Jewish children sent to Hebrew schools have found the experience boring and stultifying. We remember with either humor or horror the teachers we had, we are proud of the misdeeds we performed, and whatever we may feel about our kids going, we are thrilled to have that part of our education long buried in the past.
Our cat was dying last week (she was euthanized on 3-7-13) and from my son there were questions about prayer and souls. S. asked whether or not I pray, and I said that I did not. This is a tough one, because so much of Hebrew school these days is devoted to ritual. Truth be told, ritual is boring for the majority of kids. (And adults, for that matter, otherwise we’d be bursting at the seams on Saturday morning.) In the olden days, that is, when I went to Hebrew school, we had two days a week plus Sunday mornings. The Tuesday and Thursday sessions were devoted to learning Hebrew, so that it wasn’t that hard to learn the ritual. We actually reached 13 years old with a reasonable level of foreign language skills. Not that we appreciated it. Who wants to go to school after school? And the subject matter? Could anything be better designed to alienate most kids? I said that the lack of prayer in my life did not mean that there was a lack of hope, but that I didn’t have anywhere to address that hope. A life without hope is a tough thing, I said. (My father didn’t go. His father was the son of a shokhet, a kosher butcher, and he wanted as little to do with Judaism as possible, at least as far as I could tell. My father inherited what I perceive as an indifference, but family history is another story.)
He also asked if I believed in the existence of a soul. In spite of my general rationalist science views on things, I do believe that we have souls. Whether or not they are superintended or live on beyond us is another matter entirely. Could they have a guardian, a judge, a creator that watched over them? I don’t think so.
So why am I sending my kids to Hebrew school? Because I went (that’s a stupid reason)? Because we need a history and identity ( so we can be better tribalists)? Because community is important (it is, but why this one, of all communities)? Because I think that there’s value in the ritual (mostly no, but a little bit of yes)? Because I think it can foster some concern for others (yes, but I’m not sure we need to foster belief in a deity, especially one I don’t believe in myself)?
Feel free to jump in, anyone.
(By the way, I have no problem with circumcision performed on infants, either myself, my own kids, or anybody else’s for that matter. Just in case you were wondering.)
Jews We Wish Were Gentile, Volume IIa
Besides the fact that being a Jewish Republican is already an obscenity, Mr. Adelson’s wasted $5,000,000 bribe (a bribe is a gratuity given in advance with the expectation that a favor will be done) to the Gingrich campaign is an embarrassment to Tribe members everywhere. Adelson admittedly gives lot of money to lots of worthy causes, which anybody with that kind of money is obliged to do. But the Adelsons, who tout themselves as the “World’s Wealthiest Jewish Couple” on their own website, should consider what else they can do with that money that would promote the interests of World Jewry. $5,000,000 would put 16 kids through a Jewish day school from K-8. $5,000,000 would help synagogues be able to hire 200 Hebrew school teachers. $5,000,000 would send at least 1000 kids to Jewish summer camps (the proven #1 way to keep kids affiliated). $5,000,000 would make a nice donation to American Jewish World Services or any number of organizations that feel that it is their Jewish responsibility to go out and improve the world.
Yes, Israel relies on the United States for its existence. But bribing the Great Adulterous Marshmallow because Obama is supposedly a threat to Israel’s existence? Even the Wise Men of Chelm couldn’t have come up with this one.
Occupy Boston, the Kid’s view
In general, I support Occupy Wall Street and the satellite movements it has inspired. I am concerned by the amount of vitriol the protests have inspired among a certain sector of the population. I would expect most Americans to be outraged at the fact that the Fed lends money to the banks for free, essentially, and then those same banks, the authors of our current woes, either won’t lend it to us at all, or lend it at usurious rates (Let us not forget that the current bankruptcy law was written by the credit card lobby, and was passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by George Bush, Jr. ) I think that most parents are upset that their children will live in a world of diminishing rather than rising expectations. I think that the country should be not just upset, but apoplectic that we are sending young people out into the world with crippling debt.
I have been down to Occupy Boston, and have even stayed there overnight with my kids. I wanted them to see what a protest was like. I wanted to teach them that we are guaranteed free assembly by the Constitution.
My son was bit apprehensive at first. “We’ll get hurt or killed, ” he said.
“No we won’t,” I said laughingly. “Why do you think so?”
“Because I saw on TV what happened in Egypt,” he replied
“This is the United States. Here we have a guaranteed right to assemble, if we are acting peaceably.”
My son had a fun night staying at Occupy. My daughter, I think, would have preferred that we go home and sleep in our beds. The weather was nice, there were fewer homeless than there are now, and there was a child-friendly drum circle. We explained to him why people were staying in tents. As for me, I had a lot of discussions, with sorts from Ron Paul libertarians, to capitalists who think that the current system is too unfair, to communists who think that capitalism will necessarily make an unfair system.
A few weeks later, the Occupy Oakland protest was attacked rather heavy-handedly by the police, and a Iraq war veteran received a serious blow to the head from a tear gas canister fired by the police. My son was watching the TV
“I told you it was going to happen,” he said, without a trace of smugness or pride.
Why I love Baseball
Baseball gives me great opportunities to teach my kids a myriad of valuable lessons. Sometimes, baseball even does all the teaching for me.
Check out the video in this article about the Phillies losing 2 out of 3 to the Giants. Charlie Manuel, the Phillies’ manager, not only taught my kids about bad sportsmanship, they also learned the meaning of “sour grapes.”
The Meta-Bug 