Truth and Peace

One of my beloved amateur hobbies of late is an interest in ancient Hebrew scripts. So I was excited when I found something on the topic to post about. From around 1000 BCE to the Babylonian exile, the script in primary use by Israelites/Jews is what we today call " Paleo Hebrew " (or " ktav ivri " as it's referred to in the Talmud). If you live in Israel, you're walking around with examples of it in your pocket right now. On the back of the 1-shekel coin are the letters Yud Hei Dalet , meaning " Yehud ," which was the name of the Jewish province in Judah when it was reestablished after Cyrus the Great's decree . The 10-shekel coin also bears a Paleo Hebrew inscription. I may write more about script development another time, but right now I want to use Paleo Hebrew to offer a possible explanation for a textual variation between two chapters of Tehillim (Psalms), numbers 14 and 53. The two chapters are nearly identical, aside from a few word...

An article appeared earlier this week in The Forward , entitled, " On Women Rabbis, We All Talk Past Each Other. Here's Why ," penned by Alan Krinsky. I wholeheartedly agree with the title; we certainly do talk past one another. And I agree with the author's contention that the reason relates to a lack of empathy for where the other side is coming from, in terms of values, norms and ideology. The author cites some intriguing ideas from a book by Professor Jonathan Haidt at NYU, who maps out six dimensions of morality: Fairness/Cheating Care/Harm Liberty/Oppression Authority/Subversion Loyalty/Betrayal Sanctity/Degradation According to the author, Professor Haidt contends that: [P]olitical liberals tend to acknowledge only the first three of these as moral realms, while viewing the others as outside the moral universe. Only conservatives view the maintenance of authority, loyalty, and sanctity as moral goods and obligations, as well as subverting au...

Mammal at the time of the early Cretaceous Period A fossil that had been collecting dust in a museum in Germany was recently " rediscovered " by an American academic leading a field trip. The fossil shows an early snake-like creature, estimated to be 113 million years old, possessing small, vestigial legs. These are legs that, in an earlier epoch, had been larger and were used for walking, but which atrophied over the course of millions of years as the snake elongated and became a slithering creature. Some modern snakes are thought to still bear such vestiges. Boas and pythons have small buds protruding out where their hind legs would otherwise be, which they use to grip during mating. This isn't the first time such a fossil has been found, so I'm not sure what all the hubbub is about. But that's immaterial to what I wanted to get at here, which is an article posted by the Israel news site Arutz 7, reacting to the recent find: " Proof of the Torah? Sn...

A friend of mine, Brian Blum, wrote a candid piece in the Jerusalem Post about his experiences with online "bullying," in the form of malicious comments he's received in reaction to his articles. (I put "bullying" in quotes not to minimize the problem but to distinguish it from children who are cyber-bullied to the point of being suicidal . Hence my use of the term "jerks" in the title.) Steve Martin in "The Jerk" After reading the article, I started reflecting on what causes people, droves of them, to engage in such gratuitous verbal cruelty in online settings. And it occurred to me that there are a myriad of psychological and social factors converging here. Here are a few that come to mind:   1) Online culture is such that "strong" comments are rewarded with likes and attention - i.e. positive reinforcement.   2) People identify way too much with their "opinions." When an article or comment challenges th...

"We don't employ Arabs here." Posted on Facebook last November, as of today has upwards of 14,000 likes. 14,000 people who clearly are fed up with Jewish blood spilled here in Israel at the hands of Arabs - whether it's a Hamas "career terrorist," a thug throwing a Molotov cocktail at your car, or the guy who's been working with you for years and comes in one day brandishing a knife or rifle. It's a statement that there are consequences to all this, and that we'll choose "life" over being the nice guy if we have to... I get all that. I even sympathize with it. Nonetheless, I object to signs like this, for two reasons: 1) Arguably one of the most destructive forces in the world is the inclination to lump people together and condemn them based on their ethnic, racial or religious "category" (whites, blacks, Catholics, Arabs, Chinese, Jews, etc.), rather than judging them as individuals. That's the mentality...