A pagan friend on monotheism

Some don't disbelieve me; others mock me. The one camp thinks that somewhere deep within the bowels of my home or office there's a computer upon which I write. The scoffers say things like: “Josh, [I've asked them to call me 'Excellency' but to no avail] I just hit the 'send' button and whoomph, my letter is received.” Maybe, I mentally concede, but I'm a Luddite because I know that when the Postal Service mail arrives at my door, there's more than just bills, circulars and occasional invitations. There are letters from friends and relatives, long epistles I can open, and read, and savor. The joy of receiving real mail trumps the speed of truncated missives. Over the years I've collected hundreds of letters from correspondents who took the time and trouble to write to me. I suppose you can save E-mail as well, but it's not the same. You don't get the tactile sensation of holding the paper, the same hint of the sender's fragrance lingering.

One fellow I've known since before high school recently came out of the closet. Not gay, pagan. This surprised me. I didn't think there were pagans in my old neighborhood, but he assures me that there were and are. I tease him about sacrificing goats to mythical beings long since discredited; he denies the goats but insists that paganism is much to be preferred to monotheism. What follows is recently received:

“Excellency:

“Do you really think your god is the only one? Pshaw. I don't know if any god exists but to play it safe I'm worshiping Zeus this week. What harm can it do? Look at the universe. It's 14 billion light years from here to wherever. That's roughly 5 trillion miles times 14 billion miles of space. Do you really think there's one god who not only created it all, but governs the life of every creature within it? Double pshaw. OK, maybe there's one god per planet, but even that's a stretch. (Can you imagine the despondency of the poor schlub of a god who created Pluto? Barren, cold, and now not even a planet!)

“And what benefit is there to humanity to impose the one god theory? When we pagans ruled the roost we had wars, and you have wars. Our wars, however, were never to impose a religion on anyone else; yours are often enough just about that. Muslims conquered the Middle East and North Africa and imposed their religion; Christians launched a series of Crusades to kill infidels (and Jews). And if that's not bad enough, within the monotheistic religions, but never amongst us polys, people kill each other over the proper belief and practice of the one true religion. Christians used to massacre other Christians over such arcane questions “as is god the son equal or inferior to god the father,” and “does the bread become the body of Christ, or not?” Barrels of blood flowed over these questions. Have you seen pictures out of Baghdad recently? Sunnis are killing Shiites and Shiites are killing Sunnis and then if they remember, almost as an afterthought, they kill Americans. We pagans never imposed our beliefs. We're immoral, you read? And the proof of that is condoning homosexuality? Pshaw. Just ask your Reform and Conservative rabbis about that one!

“You might point to the bible and say, 'see, here are examples of pagans persecuting Israelites.' Ah, verily, I say unto you, not so. Pharaoh didn't try to impose his religion on his slaves, he just wanted them to work harder. He didn't deny your god, he just didn't know about him until Moses showed up—and neither did the Hebrews, if I remember correctly. The Amelikites didn't try to impose their religion, they fought to prevent illegal immigrants entering their territory. Canaanites didn't impose Baal, they were interested in re-conquering land. The Greeks didn't impose paganism on the Jews, Some Jews thought pagan practices would get them in the good graces of their conquerers, at least until the fanatics stepped in and went to war against both the Hellenists and the Hellenized Jews. Until that nut Nero, the Romans didn't persecute Jews and yes, they did persecute Christians, but Christianity was illegal and subversive—the way Communism was seen to be here in the '50s, and persecuted.”

I wrote back and asked if I could use his letter in my column. A week later I received his response:

“Sure, why not. God willing it will provoke some intelligent discussion.”

On taking the oath of office using the Koran

Back in the day (which is, I gather, au courant for “Once upon a time” or “A long time ago” or simply “Once”) there was a kingdom that was the master of the world. Or so it seemed. Upon it the sun never set. Or so it seemed. Within this bastion of proper Victorian behavior there was harbored a small community of interlopers, people whose ilk had been expelled in 1290, returned in 1656 and a hundred years later were demanding equality.

In 1753, Parliament granted the small sect complete equality with Anglicans but popular opinion would not countenance such an action, and it was quickly revoked. In another hundred years, by 1858 to be exact, two prominent members of the sect, David Salomons and Lionel Rothschild, had each been often elected and as often denied permission to sit in the House of Commons. This because they could not take the required oath “on the true faith of a Christian.” They were finally seated when Parliament voted to strike the clause when Jews were inducted.

Somehow the empire managed to survive this assault on its ancient traditions yet another hundred years. Remarkable.

We have a similar issue. The voters of Minnesota's 5th congressional district elected Keith Ellison to Congress. Let me check my constitution. Yes, that seems to be their prerogative. One Virgil Goode, the Republican representing the 5th Congressional district of Virginia (no relation) has a problem. Not only is Ellison a peacenik, calling for the withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, he's also (gasp) a Muslim. Gevalt. Goode sent a letter to constituents which reads in part: “When I raise my hand to take the oath on Swearing In Day, I will have the Bible in my other hand. I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim Representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district and if American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on [severely limiting] immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.” Oh, right, I forgot to mention it. Ellison had announced that when sworn in he'd have his hand on a copy of the Koran. Will troubles never cease?

OK, one thing at a time. The least important is that Emerson was born a Christian in Detroit and converted to Islam in college. (I've just checked the constitution again, and apparently this is legal.) Immigration is clearly not an issue here. It's beyond being a red herring. This particular fish is scarlet. More to the point, Goode either has not read, or he choses to ignore, the words of the constitution to which he is swearing, hand on Bible. Unfortunately for Mr. Goode's position, it reads in part: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Damn! What it does not say is that Members of Congress, or any other federal official, have to take an oath on the Bible. It also fails to make the Bible the one book upon which one may (or may not) rest one's left hand while raising his right. Double Damn!! Oh, those atheistic founders. Curses be on them.

We are, I hasten to remind, Mr. Goode and others, A SECULAR REPUBLIC. (As in, “What part of 'secular republic' don't you understand, Mr. Goode.”) Here's a nasty little secret that I share with Mr. Goode and with my readers: Islam is no more absurd than any other so-called revealed religion. That, at any rate, is what we can draw from reading the constitution.

Cleverly, Ellison took his oath on an English language Koran that had belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, of course, was an atheist who had such little respect for revealed religion that he truncated the New Testament by removing all references to the miraculous.

That sound you may just have heard was Mr. Jefferson rolling over in his grave. Not because Ellison borrowed his old Koran, but because Goode's district includes, of all places, the area in which Jefferson lived. Oh, the irony. And the swearing in on Bible or Koran? It's all for show, a photo-op. The real oath is with hands on the constitution.

The real danger to the republic is not Muslims pretending to swear on a Koran; it's fundamentalist bigots who have abandoned the principles for which the founders fought and later wrote the Constitution.

On distortions of history

People ask me, “How do you get your ideas? Issue after issue, there’s ‘The Old Olivetti’ like clock-work.” The short answer is that I don’t get ideas, I just turn on the machine and start typing. Ollie does the rest. Other people say, “Don’t you have a computer? Do you really use an old electric typewriter? How do you correspond with your editor?” The answers are “no” “yes” and “by carrier pigeon, sometimes by phone.” Then they usually look at me oddly and question the carrier pigeon part. “Nu, so what‘s not to believe?” I ask. “Well, you gotta admit, they rejoinder, carrier pigeons in this day and age are a bit archaic, almost anachronistic, virtually Luddite.” So, “Yes,” I admit, but ask, “So what?” “So why not come live in the modern age?”

Live in the modern age? When I’m not being a shaper of opinion (usually my own) I‘m an historian. “The modern age” is like a stream. Go stand in the river, drop a feather at your feet, feel the water flow by you. By the time you‘ve gotten over your numbness, that feather is out of sight, beyond the bend or simply beyond sight. You have been left behind. Live with it; you’ll never catch up. What’s so great about the modern age? It's already someone’s past. It’s the past that is permanence, no matter how people pervert it. Things happened. Along come historians who try to tell what it was and understand it, impart meaning to it; along come exploiters who either twist it, deny it or make it up.

It’s twisted by Bush who makes Kerry (the war hero) the villain while he (the shirker) emerges conquering hero.

It’s denied by the likes of David Irving, David Duke, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Neturei Karta. Whos Neturei Karta?” You ask? It’s not a who, it’s a what, and don’t ask. It is a group of self-proclaimed “Guardians of the City” a small but vocal Chassidic band of Shabbas-protecting rock-throwing brothers who believe that the establishment of a Jewish national home without divine authorization is a shanda! Members don’t exactly deny that the holocaust happened, but they do deplore using it as an opportunity to create the State of Israel which they see as “a poison, threatening true Jews” and they pray “that the underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle east, namely the state knows as Israel, be totally and peacefully dissolved.” So much for a two-state solution. Oh, and the Holocaust was the divine will. “The Zionists,” their spokesperson told the Tehran anti-Holocaust conference, “with their secular pompous approach behave in complete opposition to this philosophy and dare to say ‘Never Again.’ They have the audacity to think that they can prevent the Almighty from repeating a Holocaust. This is heresy.” Nu, so call me a heretic. Can we arrange for a steel cage grudge match between these fellows and those other religious zealots who want to tear down the Dome of the Rock to build the Third Temple? I'd pay money to see that show of piety.

Then there are those who make up history. Parson Mason Weems comes to mind. Do you know of him? Johnny-on-the-spot, when George Washington died, he published “A History of the Life and Death, Virtues and Exploits of General George Washington” which is as close to fictionalized hagiography imposed on the American public until the more recent exploits of Karl Rove. “I cannot tell a lie, I cut down the cherry tree” Washington, or Weems? Weems. Washington praying on his knees in the woods at Valley Forge? Weems, not Washington. Washington asking all to leave his death bed, praying, lifting his feet onto the bed and gently expiring, his soul lifted up to heaven? Weems. In an op-ed piece in a recent New York Times I was reminded of the fact that Washington illegally claimed land west of the line the Brits said should be reserved to the Indians, fought a war to invalidate British land policies hemming in the settlers (amongst other things) and then protested when squatters squatted on his land now legally his. (Not Weems.)

So I use an old Olivetti and carrier pigeons. It’s more honest that way. Oh, wait, a bird just few into the coop bearing a message. It’s from fearless editor. Let me read it. “Josh: Stop telling people we correspond by pigeon; it’s a lie.”

On the Conservative Movement's Gay Rights stand

The other day I was sitting at my desk, the old Olivetti humming in anticipation, both of us just knowing that this was going to be the break-out column, the one that would win the Pulitzer, the one that would get us out of this one-horse-town, to the big time, Peoria, at least. We were going to combine analysis of the Bi-partisan Iraq report with intra-Palestinian bloodletting, Christmas on public property, the slaughter of Muslim by Muslim in Iraq, the possible fall of the Lebanese government, the “Holocaust is a Hoax” conference in Iran, and the price of gasoline. It would've been terrific.

But then, over Ollie's humming, I heard another sound, a grunting sort of noise, accompanied by an indescribable odor. “What's that?” asked I, sotto voce. It typed back that I was covering it's i so it couldn't c (he thinks that's funny). Slowly, ever so slowly, I turned around. What greeted my astonished gaze was an 800 pound gorilla, sitting in my easy chair, chomping on Nachos® wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “No Anal Sex.”

Somewhat taken aback, I asked the monster, “Who are you?” He replied in a Dickensian voice, “I am the personification of the Conservative Movement's Law Committee Decision on admitting gay rabbinical and cantorial ordination, of permitting gay commitment ceremonies.” “Oh, that 800 pound gorilla,” I said. “The one that will prevent me from writing about serious issues.” “Yes, boychick, that one.”

Elsewhere in these pages you will find two rabbinical opinions. The one fellow, Epstein, says triumphantly that no longer will halakhah be used to prevent openly gay people from becoming rabbis or cantors—but they aren't to have anal sex, just... What? We can only guess. The other fellow, Roth, says it's not true, it's all unhalakhic. He's wrong. By majority vote. Later that day I got a call from a friend of mine who attends the Orcharder Avenue Schul. He asked, “Why don't you come and join my place? After all, we don't care about halakhah either.” I demurred. Moments later another friend, this one from the Rochambeauer Synagogue rang me up. “Why don't you come to our place? We actually believe in halakhah.” You can understand my confusion. The world is going to hell in a handcart (Nukes in North Korea and will soon be coming to a radical Islamic state near Israel) and the Wise Men of New York are debating amongst other things whether rabbis can have anal sex with other men? “No,” is the answer, but others thought “Yes.” And who's to check on this? Do we trust rabbi Moishe Pipick who is openly gay and living with a partner not to engage in forbidden er, pleasures or do we put a camera in his bedchamber? Gods, what fools these mortals be. I've heard of re-arranging deck chairs on the titanic, but I never thought I'd live to see the day. Read the newspapers, Rabbis. There are actual real crises out there.

So, why do they engage in this debate? Because they want to be fair to a minority that feels itself excluded. But is there no blow back from this? Membership in the Conservative movement is on the wane. Will this increase membership? Probably not. Will it further diminish it? Probably it will. Similar arguments are occurring in the Episcopal church. So is secession; whole congregations are abandoning the American branch of the Anglican church and are affiliating with African and other more traditional Anglicans. (Yes, it's a strange world in which we live.)

What is to be done? Gay people are people. They want the same opportunities as the majority. And who can blame those who strive to give them what they deserve? Not I. But I can quote Hillel in Pirke Avot, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” This decision will please gay people and those straight people who advocate for them. But it will fracture the once proud Conservative Movement as surely as that 800 pound gorilla collapsed my easy chair. It can be argued that if one looks for the right time to make radical change, it will never come. Martin made this case in his Letter From the Birmingham Jail, and gay people associate their cause with the civil rights struggle. They have overcome. Mazal Tov. Let's see if Conservative Judaism survives the take-over. It might. After all, Hillel also taught that we ought not judge our fellows until we have stood in their place.

William A. Donohue, and the “CATHOLIC LEAGUE for Religious and Civil Rights”

The Iraq war is over. Well, no, it’s not that Iraqis have stopped killing Americans and each other; that continues unabated, it’s that there is now near unanimity that the war was a disastrous mistake from the beginning and only getting worse. But there is a new struggle to replace it. It was brought home to me by a series of disassociated articles in last week's New York Times all of which had as their theme the conflict between religion and secular society.

The piece that really set me going was an advertisement appearing on the November 28 op ed page written by William A. Donohue, president of an outfit called the “CATHOLIC LEAGUE for Religious and Civil Rights” whose logo contains a phallic sword, rampant, emblazoned on a shield with the point penetrating the crest. Surely this is a man who each morning must decide whether to wear his brown shirt or if the black is still sufficient. He tells us that the United States is 85% Christian (which, he informs, means we are more Christian than India is Hindu and Israel is Jewish) and that 96 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. “So,” he asks indignantly, “why do we have to tippy-toe around the religious meaning of Christmas every December?”

Let’s stop here for a minute and study the math. 85% of America is Christian? Really? Does Il Donohue know that large segments of right wing Protestants don’t consider Catholics to be Christian at all? Even if we do concede that Catholics are Christians, a full 11% of Americans who are not Christian celebrate Christmas? They do? Religiously, as opposed to decorating their stores to increase sales? And 97% of Americans say that are not offended by Christmas celebrations? The Gallup people didn’t poll me. Did they you? So, what is it that Donohue and his group want? He’s not entirely clear, but apparently he’s opposed to “the neutering of Christmas” which extends to banishing Nativity scenes from public squares, the expulsion of the baby Jesus from crèches not otherwise forbidden, something about banning red and green at school functions and the censoring of “Silent Night” at municipal concerts, etc.

Oh, the horror of it all.

So as not to be misunderstood, Herr Donohue reminds that “it is important to recognize that the few who are complaining do not belong to any one religious or ethnic group—there is plenty of diversity to be found among the ranks of the disaffected.” He means Jews. I don't remember Hindus or Muslims protesting public displays of religious Christmas, but Jews aplenty have for years let their feelings be known. Dirty Christ killers that we are.

Fairness, Donohue informs, dictates that their intolerance (he means our intolerance, gentle—not gentile—reader) “should not trump the rights of the rest of [ready for this?] us.” Us. Not you. He then goes on to extol, or at least to justify, excluding people—Mother's Day, Father's Day, Veteran's Day, Black History Month, Gay Pride Parades—they all exclude someone. All of those are religious, William? Who knew?

By celebrating Christmas, he states in his peroration, “we” (he means not Jews) are celebrating diversity! We should not let “the cultural fascists get their way this year.” Psychologists call it “projection,” the ascribing to others the sins of ourselves. It's a kind of projectile vomiting of inner conflict. If Mr. Donohue is looking for fascists, his mirror is his best source. His rhetoric is identical to Mussolini's in the 1920s and '30s. The will of the people as expressed in me, Il Duce, must not tolerate any dissent!

What do we know of Mr. Donohue? A quick Google search turns up some fascinating data. Here's an interesting item, one among many: “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular.” Well, I can't speak for Hollywood, but I am a secular Jew and I hate neither Christianity nor Catholicism in particular, though I don't have a particular fondness for Mr Donohue or his ilk. I can't speak for Jesus, either, but as he was a co-religionist, perhaps I can guess what he would think of those who would impose religious values on all. The Catholics I know were appalled when the Supremes ruled that a nativity scene, when surrounded by secular objects like Santas and reindeer is just as secular. They are not; they are objects of devotion which should adorn front yards, and churches. Happy Holidays, Bill!

On Milton Friedman and Karl Marx

Caveat lector: Whole books have been written on what I do not understand about economic theory. Nevertheless I understand that economics is rightly called “the dismal science.” Last week Milton Friedman died. He and Karl Marx would seem as far from each other as polar opposites can be, but to these eyes, not distorted by hours of actual reading, there is a remarkable similarity between the two giants. (There is the well known story that on his death bed Karl lamented, Je ne suis pas un Marxiste, a claim Milton could also have made.)

Friedman predicted what another economist would later call stagflation—the concurrent rise of prices and decrease in employment. The way out of this dilemma is by fostering a market economy. The market will clear things up if government doesn't interfere (except to control the money supply). But that's not all. Government should not interfere in any way in the economy. Doctors should not be licensed, the market will weed out the good from the bad practitioners. It is an invisible hand, controlling everything.

Marx also believed in the invisible hand. It wasn't the market though, it was class struggle. Soon the gap between exploiter and exploited would be so narrow that the overthrow of capitalism was inevitable. Government would eventually wither away once the workers had survived the inevitable assault on their revolution by capitalist forces.

So, the arch-capitalist and the scientific socialist, are both economic determinists. Marx being discredited, let's explore Milton. Of course the market will weed out the good doctors from the quacks, but without a regulatory agency there'll to be a lot of quacks doing a great deal of harm until word of mouth exposes them. Have you tried to book an airline ticket since deregulation? There were about a dozen national carriers and the meals were free and travel agents could book you. Now? Choices are limited, food costs, and fares are way up. When energy was a monopoly controlled by government, Enron didn't brown-out California. It couldn't; there were regulations that prevented it. I'm not old enough to get confused about which Medicare plan I'll choose, and my hope is that by the time I need it the market will have driven out the crooks, but in the meanwhile, how many seniors are confused? Friedman advocated abolishing the draft—a smaller army means less money to sustain it and longer enlistments mean better soldiers. Let's compare. With the draft we lost Vietnam; without it, we are losing Iraq. If the idea of having an army is winning, what has been accomplished other than creation of what we used sneeringly to call a mercenary army? The poor, the unskilled, still predominate. We talk a good game about supporting the troops, but the non-economic reality is that while those mercenaries are fighting and dying, we're not paying attention, we're watching football and tsk-tsking whenever we see on TV that four more Americans were killed. And why should we be paying more attention? They're mercenaries after all; it's what they do. If they were our children I think we'd be more involved.

Milton said that “The free market is the only mechanism that has ever been discovered for achieving participatory democracy.” These are strange words coming from a man who provided economic advice to the Pinochet regime in Chile. He had Stalinist Russia in mind, but blaming Marx for Stalin is like blaming Jesus for Jerry Falwell. Give the guys a break. Marx was living in a period of ruthless exploitation of the proletariat and he saw the world through that prism. Allowing the market place to dominate wages would result only in continued degradation of the human workers without whom there is no product to sell on the open market.

What Marx and Milton ultimately share is that they are both wrong. There is no economic law valid for all times and all places. The world works beyond economic statistics. Those soldiers I callously called mercenaries might define themselves as patriots. Marx said that family was, essentially, only a mutually beneficial economic unit. I beg to differ. Love, companionship, humor, sharing of emotional burdens is more than an economic relationship.

I'm sorry Milton is dead. He was a brilliant man who missed the point. I'm sorry Marx was forced to say that he wasn't a Marxist, so far from his ideals had his successors traveled. Long live humanity as, dismally, we work through the fog of economic theorists.

Morgan's escape

On another page you will note pictures of dogs and other lesser pets. There you will see Morgan the Wonder Dog, canine of my heart, bane of my existence. That she is smarter than most people I know, including myself, is obvious. That she knows and exploits this is, unfortunately, equally true.
For example... Last winter we had a heavy snowfall, eight inches of the white stuff, which a few days later was reduced on sidewalks to occasional patches of ice. To make a bad situation worse, my wife packed her bags and left me. No, she hadn’t finally come to her senses; she had a conference up in Cambridge. This meant I, I of all people, had to take the dog on her early morning walk, a joy I generally am more than willing to avoid.
So, we are walking, Morgan and I, and she pooped and I scooped and then I hit the inevitable patch of unseen ice. Flop-plop I flipped somehow managing to hold onto the bag of poop but releasing the leash. Morgan immediately realized she was free, but stayed around long enough to make sure I wasn’t dead (after all, no Josh equaled no breakfast). I wasn’t too sure myself. I’d managed to fall on my left hip, or what passes for my left hip since all that’s there now is steel and cement connecting femur to pelvis. I was sure I’d smashed it and wondered if the lack of excruciating pain meant that I was dead. Morgan, about 10 paces away, looked on with an expression of some concern (breakfast, now being in doubt). “Morgan, come!” I commanded menacingly. In vain.
“Ha! He lives,” the light in her eyes announced, and she frolicked away, leash dragging behind her. But then, to mock me she came back, circled me once (I was still aground, trying vainly to get up). I lunged for the leash, and missed. “Morgan, come here!” I said in my most authoritative voice. (Just how commanding I could be under the circumstances—prone, feet slipping on the ice as I tried to rise up, a bag of dog poop in my hands, you can only imagine.) Finally, as from the lagoon out of our most ancient amphibious ancestors arose I unsteadily achieved verticality. But Morgan had fled.
My limbs were sore, my chest was sore, my hip was sore, and my dog had run away. In all the world, all I had left was a bag of poop. But then, salvation. Morgan, who loves to ride in cars, saw that some people were opening their car door. She jumped in and commanded, “Drive, quickly, let the wind rustle through my ears as the air is sucked into my nostrils; drive, drive, drive.” The mother screamed in terror, the children, who had helped me gather in Morgan on previous escapes, screamed in delight, and grabbed the leash. I hobbled over to them, collected my disloyal dog and limped slowly home.
“Breakfast, Josh?” She asked, hopefully. “What happened to loyalty?” I asked. What happened to “if you’re hurt, I’m there for you”? “Instead of kibbles, how about some of that canned food?” she replied. “Why did you leave me when I called you?” “Because of the story I read last week.” “You’re hitting our books again?” “Only when you sleep.” “Which story?” “‘The Last Match.’” “That’s what you model your behavior on? The man is dying of hunger and cold, he calls his dog, and the dog abandons him?” “The dog left the man because the man was going to kill the dog and eat it.” “Oh, yeah, but I wouldn’t do that.” “You never know, you just never know. Open the door; let’s eat.” Well, I fed her, of course, but I also punished her. When I went out onto the deck to fill the bird feeders, I didn’t let her come out with me—she loves to chase squirrels out there and to see the birds flap away—so she sulked. It by now being late I grabbed my lunch bag and hopped into the car. As I drove off to school I looked out the window and saw that she was looking out at me with a smile on her face. I didn’t know quite why until I got to my office and noticed the poop bag still in my coat pocket. My lunch bag was safely at home. For those of you keeping score, it’s Dog 106, Human 0.