I am not Jewish. I can't meaningfully comment on issues of Jewish identity. But I found this essay by Bertell Ollman on Judaism, Zionism, and internationalism very interesting (yes, the site is heavy on Marxism, but this essay has nothing to do with that sophomoric political philosophy):

From what I've said so far, it would be easy for some to dismiss me as a self-hating Jew, but that would be a mistake. If anything, I am a self-loving Jew, but the Jew I love in me is the Diaspora Jew, the Jew that was blessed for 2,000 years by having no country to call his/her own. That this was accompanied by many cruel disadvantages is well known, but it had one crowning advantage that towered over all the rest. By being an outsider in every country and belonging to the family of outsiders throughout the world, Jews on the whole suffered less from the small-minded prejudices that disfigure all forms of nationalism. If you couldn't be a full and equal citizen of the country in which you lived, you could be a citizen of the world, or at least begin to think of yourself as such even before the concepts existed that would help to clarify what this meant. I'm not saying that this is how most Diaspora Jews actually thought, but some did—Spinoza, Marx, Freud, and Einstein being among the best known—and the opportunity as well as the inclination for others to do so came from the very rejection they all experienced in the countries in which they lived. Even the widespread treatment of Jews as somehow less than human provoked a universalist response. As children of the same God, Jews argued, when this was permitted or just quietly reflected when it wasn't, that they shared a common humanity with their oppressors and that this should take precedence over everything else. The anti-Semitic charge, then, that Jews have always and everywhere been cosmopolitan and insufficiently patriotic had at least this much truth to it.

...

As far as I'm concerned, the comedian, Lenny Bruce, provided the only good answer to this question when he said, "Dig, I'm Jewish. Count Basie's Jewish. Ray Charles is Jewish. Eddie Cantor is goyish... Marine Corps—heavy goyish... If you live in New York or any other big city, you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're going to be goyish even if you're Jewish... Kool-Aid is goyish. Evaporated milk is goyish even if Jews invented it... Pumpernickel is Jewish and, as you know, white bread is very goyish.... Negroes are all Jews... Irishmen who have rejected their religion are Jewish... Baton twirling is very goyish".

Zelda's Inferno exercise: supported free-write on the (delightfully odd!) phrase "I love you like a dinosaur fossil". It's not close to a finished piece but there's definitely some bits here I like.

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
stony and ancient

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
the original material replaced, over the centuries, with something less alive but more durable

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
the flesh long gone, just the skeleton, the bones, the structure of the thing remaining

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
dug up after centuries of quiet burial

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
brontosaurus they say never existed, struck retroactively from the records

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
in a museum where the kids come by and ooh and aah at the reconstruction wired together in a back room by scientists based on scant evidence and best guesses, missing pieces filled in with plaster models

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
armor-plated ankylosaurus
or
terrifying rending velociraptor

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
ancient traces of a path abandoned by evolution
I love you like a dinosaur fossil
long gone but still captures the imagination

I love you like a dinosaur fossil
thunder lizard love
I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil I love you like a dinosaur fossil
I love you like a dinosaur fossil
some terrifying, some placid, some gigantic, some tiny, in the seas, in the air, occupying every ecosystem for a hundred million years

good dog

my back and shoulders ache
and I realize it's from digging his grave

it's a good thing, to dig
gives you something to do
relieves that furious need for action
even when action is useless

the vet offered cremation but
I knew it was best to lay him to rest here
in the little bit of yard that had been his
canine territory for a dozen years

I have wrapped him in an old bedsheet for a shroud
I unwrap him a bit so the other dog, his mother
can sniff his cold form for a half minute
how much she understands I'll never know

so a few feet of dirt are moved

Very interesting interview in the City Paper (Baltimore) with University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole, whose scholastic work has focused on Islam, on the situation in Afghanistan:

CP: One version of events of 9/11 is that it was part of bin Laden's strategy to lure us into Afghanistan and bleed us the way the Soviets were bled . . .

JC: Bin Laden said this explicitly in 1996.

CP: So why do you think we fell for the trap?

JC: It's just so tempting for a great power to have an area to go into. Central Asia is rich in resources--natural gas, and Kazakhstan has petroleum and gold--and there was this opportunity to assert U.S. interests in Central Asia and push Russia back. There are all kinds of reasons for which bin Laden was making us a very attractive offer. He was offering us a very large, delicious piece of cheese. Of course, it turns out that there was a very large mousetrap attached to the cheese.

CP: What about the terrorism component of this--the fear that the Taliban will shield al-Qaida and provide a safe haven that will give them a staging area to plan another attack on the United States?

JC: First of all, that premise is flawed. There is virtually no al-Qaida in Afghanistan. As we speak, something on the order of 10 to 15 percent of Afghanistan is more or less controlled by Taliban. And yet, there is virtually no al-Qaida in Afghanistan. So if the idea that Taliban equals safe harbor for al-Qaida isn't true in the present, why would it be true in the future?

In fact, why is it we don't think the Taliban can learn? They're pretty smart people. They took on the Soviets and defeated them. Surely they're dismayed at what happened to them after al-Qaida attacked the United States. I imagine a lot of them would slit al-Qaida's throats if they came anywhere near, out of anger at them for ruining the good deal the Taliban had in Afghanistan.

This came in to the unreasonable.org mailbag and might be of interest to some readers:

Hi,

The first time that I have come across your website which must be unique. If any of your members are interested in self-sufficiency, in the broadest sense of the word, they may be interested in a new social networking site exclusively for self-sufficient vegetarians and vegans http://tssveg.ning.com ‘The self-sufficient Vegetarian’. We are hoping that a vegan will set up a discussion group.

Dear friends: I'm very sad to inform you all that my dear dog Chewbacca passed on November 27. A memorial web page has been set up at http://infamous.net/chewie.php.

In truth, the American pastime isn't baseball, it's complaining about taxes. Ok, sure, nobody likes 'em, everybody would love to see a lower tax bill -- provided, of course, that the bill isn't lowered by sticking future generations with the debt, or by cutting vital public services.

But that's just what we've been doing. For the past few decades of conservative rule, we've been borrowing money and letting the infrastructure crumble, while lowering taxes, especially on the rich.

Many on the right say that taxes are too high, and that any rise will spell doom for our economy. The problem with that claim is that not only do most other nations have a higher tax burden and function fine with it, but that the current U.S. tax burden is historically low.

Every year, Forbes magazine publishes a comparision of the total (personal and corporate, national, local, and state) tax burdens of OECD nations. (It does include what Forbes calls "stealth taxes" -- in its words, "green and carbon taxes, for example", though many people would not call making businesses pay for the damage they do to the environment a tax; still, it's a useful comparison.)

Take a look, and notice that the U.S. is way down near the bottom of the list, with a total tax burden of 34.5% of the GDP. Only Switzerland (34.2%) and Japan (33.4%) have a comparable standard of living and a lower tax burden -- and note that both these nations also have very low military spending and a non-aggressive foreign policy. But of course that's merely a coincidence, right?

(The highest tax burdens are Norway (58.4%), Sweden (54.9%), Denmark (54.9%) and Finland (52.7%) -- three of these countries rank higher than the U.S. on the Human Development Index, and Denmark ranks 0.001 of a point below the U.S. Their high taxes don't seem to have made them hellholes.)

Ok, fine, but it's not fair to compare the U.S. against those dang foreigners, after all we're special, exceptional, God's own favored nation, the land of free enterprise with liberty and justice for all. We're proud of not providing public services that other nations take for granted, of not having government involved in health care. (Except for Medicare. And Medicaid. And the VA. And the CDC. And the National Health Service Corps. And all those local tax funded EMS systems.) Our taxes should be lower than other countries because we're special, but they're still too high -- our tax burden has been going up and up and up, right?

Well, once again reality shows its liberal bias. Our federal tax burden is at near-record lows, with the average family forking over about 9% in income taxes to Uncle Sam, down from a 12% in 1981.

I think my blog post that's generated the most comments here has been one regarding the Weston A. Price Foundation and it's advocacy of unhealthy animal-product centered diets and their spreading of FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about vegetarianism.

The inimitable John Robbins offers his perspective on this group at vegsource.com:

In fact, the more I've gotten to know the Weston A. Price Foundation, the less I've felt that it is actually carrying on the spirit or the work of the man in whose name it purports to function. For one example, Price never once mentioned the words "soy," "soybean," "tofu," or "soy milk" in his 500 page opus, and spoke quite positively about lentils and other legumes, yet the foundation has taken it upon itself to be vehemently and aggressively anti-soy, calling soy foods "more insidious than hemlock." ...

For another example, Price discovered many native cultures that were extremely healthy while eating lacto-vegetarian or pisco-vegan diets. Describing one lacto-vegetarian people, for example, he called them, "The most physically perfect people in northern India... the people are very tall and are free of tooth decay." Yet the foundation that operates under his name is strikingly hostile to vegetarians. Sally Fallon, the foundation's president, denounces vegetarianism as "a kind of spiritual pride that seeks ...to shirk the earthly duties for which the physical body is created." She further insults vegetarians by saying they frequently suffer from zinc deficiency, but think it is spiritual enlightenment.

In 1934, Price wrote a moving letter to his nieces and nephews, instructing them in the diet he hoped they would eat. "The basic foods should be the entire grains such as whole wheat, rye or oats, whole wheat and rye breads, wheat and oat cereals, oat-cake, dairy products, including milk and cheese, which should be used liberally, and marine foods." Yet the Weston A. Price Foundation aggressively promotes the consumption of beef, pork and other high-fat meats, while condemning people who base their diets on whole grains.

...

Toward that end, the Foundation has widely publicized an article written by a former member of the Foundation's Board of Directors, Stephen Byrnes, titled "The Myths of Vegetarianism."

The article is harshly critical of vegetarian diets, and concludes with an "About the Author" section which states: "Stephen Byrnes... enjoys robust health on a diet that includes butter, cream, eggs, meat, whole milk, dairy products and offal." In fact, Stephen Byrnes suffered a fatal stroke in June, 2004. According to reports of his death, he had yet to reach his 40th birthday.

Last night, Friday the 13th...I went to the 14 Karat Cabaret, haven't been down there in a while. In the basement of a building on Saratoga Street, a venerable venue for performance art and the more avant-garde sort of music and film.

I had forgotten that they have a swing hanging from the rafters -- a simple chain and wood plank swing, adorned with plastic flowers. It suddenly reminded me of my grandfather, the child's swing he set up in the basement when my brother and I were young boys. I don't think I'd though of it in many years. Perhaps it came up because the whole family-kids-what am I doing with my life question is close on my mind recently, between the recent romantic tangle, my best friend's son's first birthday party tomorrow, and my own odometer-turning birthday approaching. Still, odd what tweaks the memory.

Tonight, I'm at the Windup Space for the Telesma show, featuring a lecture and live painting by "symbolic" artist Bob Hieronimus. Hieronius's art is on display, and there's a program for the exhbit explaining (to some degree) Hieronimus's work.

I opened up the booklet and had to laugh -- according to it, "Former Secretary General of the United Nations U Thant also saw the importance of Baltimore when he introduced Hieronimus to his spiritual teacher U Maung Maung Ji, a Buddhist scholar, statesman, diplomat, and disciple of the Master Koot Hoomi."

The laughter was due to tripping across yet another "Koot Hoomi" reference. Koot Hoomi keeps turning up in my Pagan historical researches -- he was the foremost of the (semi-?)fictional "Mahatmas" or "Secret Chiefs" that Helena Blavatsky, fraudulent Spiritualist and founder of the Theosophical Society, claimed as the authority behind her work. Authorization by these Secret Chiefs were later claimed by MacGregor Mathers, Aleister Crowley, and even by Ernest Thompson Seton -- one of the founders of the Scouting movement who also has an interesting connection to the birth of Wicca.

So, now I have a Koot Hoomi - Baltimore connection. That alone was worth the price of admission!

Jesus of Nazareth, that old semi-mythical Jewish mystic that Christians of all stripes claim to follow, reportedly told his followers on several occasions that they should care for the poor and hungry. For example, in Luke 3:11, "The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same." Or, Mark 10:21, "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

Nowhere in any of the gospels does he address the issue of gay marriage. Nada. Not a word on the topic.

We might then conclude that, according to Jesus (at least, as reported in the Gospels), helping the poor is much more important -- indeed, given the many-to-zero ratio of mentions, infinitely more important -- than preventing the government from recognizing same-sex unions.

Yet, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington has decided that it is more important for them to protect their anti-LGBT bigotry than to continue their work on behalf of the poor. They are threatening to discontinue social service programs in D.C. if they aren't permitted to discriminate:

The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington said Wednesday that it will be unable to continue the social service programs it runs for the District if the city doesn't change a proposed same-sex marriage law, a threat that could affect tens of thousands of people the church helps with adoption, homelessness and health care.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

...

After the vote, the archdiocese sent out a statement accusing the council of ignoring the right of religious freedom. Gibbs said Wednesday that without Alexander's amendment and other proposed changes, the measure has too narrow an exemption. She said religious groups that receive city funds would be required to give same-sex couples medical benefits, open adoptions to same-sex couples and rent a church hall to a support group for lesbian couples.

Peter Rosenstein of the Campaign for All D.C. Families accused the church of trying to "blackmail the city."

"The issue here is they are using public funds, and to allow people to discriminate with public money is unacceptable," Rosenstein said.

...

"The problem with the individual exemption is anybody could discriminate based on their assertion of religious principle," Mendelson said. "There were many people back in the 1950s and '60s, during the civil rights era, that said separation of the races was ordained by God."