A Shabbat Note: May 13th

Until you have walked in my shoes...

We like to say this, especially as young adults.  "You just don't have a clue as to what I'm dealing with!" or "You can't understand".  But secretly, we hope that the other will.  We strive to be understood.  From business to academia to philanthropy, psychology prevails, helping us to understand how we can better relate to our fellow man.

Constructing Hope

No, this is not a post about Barack Obama.

Despite retrospective goggles, it seems amazing sometimes how far our society has come in recent years.  Less than 60 years ago, Black Americans were subjected to legalized segregation.  Less than 50 years ago, women were treated like true second-class citizens, unable to rent an apartment or hold a job without the consent of a male guardian (father, brother, husband, etc).  Less than 20 years ago, homosexuals were being fired on a very regular basis due to their sexual orientation, and until very recently, most Americans thought the idea of two men or two women marrying each other deplorable.

Yet when it come to issues unrelated to the human condition, we are so much more relentless...

A Shabbat Note: May 5th

Turn on the news today, or go to any news website, and up pops Osama Bin Laden.  What were the true circumstances of his death?  Was he still planning attacks?  Red alert!  Red alert!

Yet as those of us in the Jewish Community prepare to spend Shabbat taking a break from the work week, celebrating the miracle of creation, we are reminded of the difficulties such an idea can pose.  This is the same confrontation that many of us experienced after the attacks on that fateful Tuesday morning almost ten years ago.  How can we relax, rest, and take a break from the worries of our lives when everything else in the world commands us to remain constantly on-guard and in some fear of an attack?

Recipe: Chocolate Toffee Pecan Crunch Cookies

I made these up this afternoon and they came out really good:

The Short Line Railroad

Living in Nashville for nearly a year now has led me to one conclusion over and over again: this place needs some better public transportation.  Ironically, I live only a mile away from the only commuter train line in the area, but have never taken a ride on it due to its limited schedule.  For those of you not from Nashville, the city is made up of a network of poorly planned highways, requiring dangerous weaving on the interstates, greatly overcrowded auxiliary roads which require motorists to sit for ridiculous amounts of time in traffic, and no timed stoplights, meaning that multiple lanes of rush hour traffic can end up stopped by every single light.  Aside from the great amount of gas and time this trip consumes, it should be noted that there are only 626,000 people in Davidson County and 1.5 million total in the city and metropolitan area.  Yes, Nashville has grown substantially over the past few years, but considering its size, this sort of traffic is ridiculous.

Meanwhile, the federal government is spending billions of dollars on national regional high speed rail lines that, aside from the Boston-Washington route, there is no evidence that anyone will use.

Prayer, The Last Refuge of the Scoundrel

Michelle Bachman is "quite literally" asking people to pray for her as she makes her decision as to whether or not to run for the Presidency.  She is also "asking the Lord to give her a special anointing on how to put our team together...and that He would bring those people to [her and her husband], because it won't be easy."  Might I suggest she instead purchase one of the many pieces of literature on the topic of campaign management.

...actually, maybe she would be better off staying this course.  It seems to be a better option for the American people.

Keeping the Faith

This Sunday, I will be teaching my last Sunday school class here in Tennessee.  The students are mostly in 7th and 8th grades, meaning that they really do not want to be there.  In spite of this the experience has been fun.  We talk mainly about what being Jewish actually means, and what it will mean over the next decade or so of their lives.

The Power and Destruction of the Teacher's Union

Yesterday, here in Tennessee, and with little media coverage, teachers were stripped of their union bargaining rights.  The vote, nearly split down party lines, with one Republican jumping ship to vote against the measure, is something that we are all too familiar with nowadays.

America, however, does not turn to two, major and opposing national movements when everything is fine.  The debatable fact is that our schools seem to be broken.  Our students are not matriculating, our graduate schools are becoming more and more full with students that were not educated here (see below), and nothing seems to be changing.  Americans are tired of it and many have chosen to place this blame squarely on the teachers.  The logic: if our kids are not being educated as well as the Scandinavians or the Chinese, it is the teachers' faults.  However, there seems to be enough blame to go around.