Thoughts on Sefer Melachim.

Do miracles change peoples' behavior?

Does punishment serve as a motivator for ethical behavior?

Elija's currency is contained in grand events, but his educational method leaves much to be desired.

Maiseh on Melekh Shlomo

So the man said to me, "I'm not looking for a job. I'm looking for a life."

And I knew that he was right. If we become the sum total of our jobs, then we cease to use the tools of our humanity for building community.

Do you have a job? No? Volunteer.

We can all do a bit more of that.

You'll meet people. You'll make connections. You'll find people who need you in ways you didn't know existed.

East & West

The Tradition is invested in eternity. The West is not. The West would have electronic dishwashers that eventually end up in a junk heap. The Tradition would instead fashion a set of tefillin until they are ready to be solemnly buried. The Tradition exudes a yearning for the reanimation of the dead upon the coming of the Messiah. Does that include tefillin?

Buddhism & Shtus

Says Alan Watts, Buddhism is Hinduism, stripped for export.

In the same way that there are both cultural Jews (Hiloni) and religious Jews (Da'ati'im), there are also cultural Hindus and religious Hindus.

Hinduism asserts that one cannot be a full Hindu without living in India. There is a similar contention in Judiasm—that one cannot be a total Jew without living in the land of Israel. Perhaps it is at least the land of the Israelites.

In any land there is a cultural mix of elements, among which are climate, the arts, architecture, music and so on. These background elements inform the culture for the native Jew living in The Jewish land. Thus, Conservative Judaism can also be understood as "Land of Israel YKVK post-Israelite religion," but stripped for export. And that is among, if not the chief reason that the Conservative Judaism of the west is nearly irrelevant in Israel.

Had Conservative Jews settled Israel on masse, then perhaps the timbre of modern Israeli culture would be different. But Conservative Judaism fails to consider the reality of being an Israeli, living as an observant Jew. How does one craft an identity? The modern Israeli embraces a broader Jewish social state of being.

Conservative Judaism where I grew up, was like going to the circus. Purim was fun. Simchat Torah was flags, apples, and Hershey bars. But then when I got home, there was Elvis and Happy Days. The religion of Hiluni Jews in Israel is surely not more erudite or profound. For my Israeli counterparts however, because of their shared common experiences—living in an intentional Jewish national polity—the voice of everything is Jewish/Hebraic. The language of things in Israel is Hebrew language.

But the language in totality of a Jew in Israel reflects myriad influences, and surely no less than those faced by Jews in America. Israelis for example, share an implicit informality. Some are not necessarily polite, and others have limited patience. This appears to be inherent to Israeli life. These characteristics might be attributed to the effects of compulsory army life and the levels of urgency and camaraderie which that institution fosters.

I'm thinking that Israelis are this "way" also because they are more tied to ancient cultural attitudes and truths inherent to this part of the world. Whatever the case, I think that my idea here places an interesting focus on the distinction between natural Judaism and movement Judaism (natural meaning born in Israel, and the movement being a largely American phenomenon). Movements are subject to commodification, but more about that another time.

People living in a state of native comfort recognize one another on a different level. It is like tuning in to a radio wave. You either get it, or you don't. The transmission is either jammed, or it's clear. If you have the right receiver, you'll pick it up.

Alan Watts

Alan Watts explains the Buddha's dialectic method as such, via an anecdote about RH Blyth, the scholar who introduced the modern world to haiku poetry.

Blyth said, "If you ask me if I believe in God, the respons would be as follows: If you do, then I don't. If you don't, then I do."

From a pedagogic standpoint, this is a constant demand to achieve clarity in meaning. It asserts, "I know what I believe, but tell me what you believe. If you are seeking sweetness, then I'm here to tell you that everything is miserable, and if you are miserable then I'm here to teach you about the sweetness."

Parashat Noah

In this week’s parsha we learn about the generation of the flood: the antediluvian riff raff that was swiftly done away with, using what one midrash calls boiling waters of the deep. Eek.

As of recent I have been learning some material from Kings I—about the transition of power from King David to King Shlomo, and also the tarnished luster of Shlomo’s reign. The text outlines deals that Shlomo made with local kingdoms in exchange for lavish materials and artisans to fashion the Beit Hamikdash (God’s holy temple) and the King’s palatial holdings. I’ve also learned that difficult truths pulsate under this saga.

Now I’m not the type of person who enjoys “guilting" people. Quite the contrary, actually, because God loves all of God’s creations, as we’re about to see, even when we anger God. Shlomo must have had a good press agent, because even he comes out OK, despite his not-so-nice qualities. Firstly let’s examine conditions for the workers Shlomo hired; those tens of thousands who were employed to fell trees, construct, craft, and mine stones, were forced laborers. Plain and simple. If one was conscripted to do service for the King, he didn’t have much of a choice. It’s not as though he could say, “well Shlomo, let me check my calendar and get back to you.” Yes, it’s true, we’re not perfectly analogous to King Shlomo. For certain. But there are important things to consider.

Our flawed hero King Shlomo goes on to dedicate statuary and temples to other gods. I have to pause here to inject, that if I ever learned these facts about Shlomo in Hebrew School, then there must be massive holes in my memory, and that’s just disturbing. Curiously, I recall that my dad Shmuel Shalom Zynger z’l was very hip to both the exotic genius and the excesses attributed to King Shlomo: that he could talk to animals, like an ancient Dr. Doolittle, and that he had hundreds of wives.

This got me thinking about what it means to be a king in general. Kings have access to sumptuous resources, and can summon most anything their whims desire, be it the object of a fad or otherwise. Kings get what they want, and they will pay great sums to acquire stuff and status. But what if there were a king who checked, for example, if the metals used in his new iPhone 4S, were mined humanely? I suppose I sort of feel like a king when taking a moment to examine the comforts I enjoy.

Oddly, this got me thinking about the generation of the flood, and now we’re back in this week’s parsha. Genesis 6:5-6 reads,

“And the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart.”

So this is pretty heavy. God is not pleased with these people, but it also sounds like God loves these people. Anyhow, we know what happens. God decides to bring about a flood and destroy everything that lived on dry land. And let’s not pretend that God was ready to be merciful. For example, lest someone fought for dear life by floating on a scrap of driftwood , eating dead seagulls, like up in Halifax or somewhere. Nope. The waters of Genesis 6-8 remained for 150 days . . . I guess that 150 days was just to make sure.

With all this however, I do not posit that we today are the generation of the flood, nor are we all living lavishly on the backs of the poor and oppressed, like some despotic rulers do. Well not intentionally or callously at least. Seriously though, I do think there is something to be considered in all of this. That while we are not constructing palaces to false gods, we do find comfort in all the things which distract us from the glory of God’s creations, and that glory includes each one of us. The generation of the flood must have been pretty bad for God to have taken actions ensuring that the whole generation perished. Indeed, God would start over again with people like Noah. Cue double rainbow.

What does it mean? Good question! It means that humans earned a ribbon, and that banner was God’s form of a promise written in the sky, so to speak, when it reads in Genesis 8:21

'I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.

Thousands of years after the flood of Genesis, Shlomo’s massive building projects in Jerusalem lent notability and glory to the history of Israelites and their land. But Shlomo was a complicated character. He took for himself, and apparently thought little about the servitude by his workforce. Was Shlomo good for the local economy? Undoubtedly yes. Was he a fair employer? Not so clear. The passage above from Genesis shows God’s surrender to the evil of humanity, as if to say, “you’re rotten from the core, but gosh darn it, I love ya.” Useful here is juxtaposing ancient epochs of human development, against our current one. What questions does this raise for you?

It's essential to see Artoo Detoo for what he is: a tripodal service droid. Here he is along with a friend on an unnamed planet.