My wife and I just spent a couple of weeks in Brooklyn visiting our six-year-old grandson Sam and his parents. They live in Carroll Gardens, an old Italian neighborhood of lovely brownstones and corner stores that is rapidly gentrifying. Middle-aged and elderly Italian men in the neighborhood seem to be living out the stereotypes … More Visiting Brooklyn
“He [Pope Francis] is really something!”—Donald Trump “The pope is, indeed, something. As Jesus himself said, ‘Blessed are the vague, for they shall inherit, you know, stuff.’”—Stephen Colbert
“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.” –Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
http://jewishcurrents.org/reflections-on-conversion-and-a-trip-to-israel/ I CAME of age in the United States during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Although I certainly never put my life on the line as some did in those struggles, as a university student I participated in them, especially the anti-war movement, and they contributed to my core values and political … More Reflections on Conversion and a Trip to Israel
I have taken up Stoicism as a practical life philosophy. My main source of information about Stoicism is Massimo Pigliucci’s blog “How to Be a Stoic,” which I highly recommend. I find Stoicism therapeutic, and in fact various modern cognitive therapies such as Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy have consciously drawn on the insights of the … More Stoicism As Therapy
Originally posted on Shalom Rav:
(Photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activeststills.org) If there’s one thing that virtually all Zionists can agree upon, from the political right to left and everywhere in between, it is their abject unwillingness to accept the Palestinian right of return. There is an almost visceral quality to this rejection, which is invariably presented as an existential…
Source: Gluten-free art
“Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath … More Quote of the Day
“An ideology that divides the world into those who are worth more and those who are worth less, into superior and inferior beings, does not have to reach the dimensions of the German genocide to be wrong.”–Amira Hass
“OK, I’ll admit that there is a .00000000000000005% chance that God does exist, but if he does, what makes you think he gives a shit about you?”–Albert Ellis
No Harm Spilt 