Astonishment over Israel’s new government

Hallelujah! We Have a Government. Finally at last! And it’s unique in being one that nobody wanted and no one voted for. All over Israel yesterday people who were watching the nightly news programs on TV were astonished to find that an agreement had actually been signed, wondering why it took so long to achieve, and trying to weigh up who are the winners and who are the losers. [Dorothea Shefer-Vanson]

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Dorothea Shefer-Vanson, Middle East

Ritual purity and the coronavirus

When I was a young yeshiva student, I would get up every day and bathe in the hot mikveh (similar to a jacuzzi) around 5:00 in the morning. Then I would walk to the yeshiva hall and study the entire Mishnah while observing the sunrise. By my second year, I had completed the study of the Mishnah with its commentaries. This experience afforded me the opportunity to study the laws of animal sacrifices. Most people might be surprised to see how the sacrificial cult influenced the origins of Jewish prayer—especially with respect to the role of intentionality, for one stray thought, could invalidate a sacrifice.   [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel]

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Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi, Science, Medicine, & Education

Why your life hangs on this ‘essential business’

Don’t you just love the current pandemic gobbledygook? Reading too much of it can be harmful to you. Phrases like “social distancing,” “flattening the curve,” “frontline warriors,” and “quarantine,” just spin up frightful emotions. One that’s caught my attention is “essential business.” Today, it’s all about opening these “essential businesses” as quickly as possible. In this, my 31st daily emotional education piece, I will focus on an unusual essential business, yet one that’s always been quintessential and indispensable for living well. I believe our lives hang on this essential business. [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell

San Diego’s Internet Yom HaShoah commemoration

With social distancing policies in effect during the coronavirus pandemic, Rabbi Scott Meltzer of Ohr Shalom Synagogue and Rabbi Ralph Dalin, the community chaplain who works under auspices of the Jewish Federation of San Diego County, jointly conducted an Internet observance of Yom HaShoah on Monday evening.  The ceremony included such traditional prayers as the 23rd Psalm, and  El Moleh Rachamim as well as a special Holocaust Kaddish during which the names of the Nazi death camps are interjected into the traditional Kaddish text. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, USA

The eye of prophecy?

Great writers of science fiction literature often have a keen intuition of what the future might bring. Whether you read H.P. Lovecraft or H. G. Wells, whose science-fiction writings makes the impossible seem almost believable. H.G. Wells’ is probably best known for his classical story, The Time Machine, which he published in 1895. His insights into the future were prescient in many ways. Wells anticipated many technological changes, e.g., wars conducted in the air; the sexual revolution; motorized vehicles, world-wars, a federalized Europe (think: European Union), the emergence of the atomic bomb. Wells especially anticipated the dystopian genre. The same could be said about Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek series. [Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel}

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Jewish Religion, Michael Leo Samuel-Rabbi

We Remember!

In the Jewish tradition, we are commanded to remember (zachor) and not to forget (lo tishkach). This week we commemorate Yom HaShoah, the Day of Holocaust Remembrance. On this solemn occasion, 75 years after the end of World War II: We remember the six million Jewish martyrs, including 1.5 million children, who were exterminated in the Holocaust. .. [David Harris]

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International, Jewish History, Middle East, USA

The theology of pandemics

The interesting question is: What is the temptation to view a catastrophe like the plague as divine punishment as opposed to a brute fact of nature? Surely at least one reason we are tempted to do so is because, if it is heavenly retribution, then the hardship still has some meaning; we still live in a world with an underlying moral structure. Indeed, to many, the idea that such a great calamity is nothing more than a brute act of nature is far more painful to contemplate than an account by which God cares enough about us to punish us. [Sam Ben-Meir, Ph.D]

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International, Lifestyles, Sam Ben-Meir, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Cottbus, Germany joins San Diego in Holocaust memory

In a second day of Holocaust observance, the Jewish Federation of San Diego County sponsored a webcast on Monday featuring Steven Schindler in San Diego and Nicole Nocon and her daughter, Antonia, in Cottbus, Germany, the home town where Schindler’s late father, Max Shindler, was arrested as a child by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. [Our Shtetl San Diego County column by Donald H. Harrison]

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Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History, San Diego County, USA

How to cultivate rational living

Abert Ellis, Ph.D. believed that when we cultivate our ability to live by “rational principles,” we will likely experience positive emotions and satisfaction of our life’s goals.
We have a choice. If we choose to live with irrational thinking governing our lives, with high negative emotionality, dogmatic, rigid beliefs, we are in a very real sense, electing to suffer. We irrationally think about adversities by expressing our preferences and desires, our hopes and wishes, as demands, shoulds, commands, and musts. “Because I want to be able to socialize freely and get back to work and return to my gym, I MUST be able to!” [Michael R. Mantell, Ph.D]

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Lifestyles, Michael Mantell