SLACK AGAINST THE GRAIN

What if you looked in the mirror and couldn’t see yourself? For many Americans and others around the world, that’s reality. But Jason Collins is putting his reflection back where it belongs—in plain sight. Let’s not force others to disappear in the process. Two weeks ago, Brittney Griner, the 6-8 basketball All-American from Baylor, announced…

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A MISLEADING QUESTION

Yesterday’s Opinion Pages in The New York Times asked, “Can the United States stay engaged with modern democratic Middle Eastern countries that have sizable anti-Western populations?” The answers by the chosen debaters were reasonable. The question was misleading. Modern democratic Middle Eastern countries don’t exist—with the exception of Israel. Now let’s be clear: Millions of…

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YOU’RE WELCOME

Periodically, a Muslim shares in the media a particularly wonderful bit of wisdom. So it was last week. Yet the speaker or writer always seems to remain unaware of that wisdom’s source. It’s borrowed from Judaism. Such recognition might help to eliminate the hatred that many Muslims exhibit towards Jews. The Quran (Sura 5:32) states:…

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INSULT TO HUMANITY

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, offers fascinating insights into the workings of the human mind in his book, The Social Animal. Brooks points to how we often judge people in milliseconds based on stimuli recognized only the subconscious. I had that experienced with a recent photo in the San Francisco Chronicle. I immediately…

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THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT

From time to time, the leader of a Torah study session or Shabbat services will ask the group to come up with an Eleventh Commandment. (The Ten Commandments Moses received on Mount Sinai are well known but often misunderstood.) One of the earliest of these Eleventh Commandments was Holocaust survivor Emil Fackenheim’s instruction to survive…

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