Many historical figures were reputed to be great beauties, from Helen of Troy and Cleopatra to Marie Antoinette. Many historical figures were reputed to be great scholars, from Plato and Aristotle to Adam Smith.  We know more of the latter because knowledge and wisdom are more easily preserved than appearance.

She should be better known

Osnat was brilliant and beautiful. I wrote about her in an earlier post.  Leading scholars and rabbis addressed her as ‘teacher’, ‘master,’ rabbi’, and more.  She was a  poet and a “Rosh Yeshiva,” head of the rabbinical academy. She fell into deep poverty trying to raise funds for the academy.  All her possessions, even clothes were confiscated by debtors.  A would-be rapist claimed her beauty was irresistible.  She fended him off through the use of holy names.

In addition to being a sage, Asenath was also beautiful.  A Gentile was attracted to her, and tried at night to sneak onto her roof, with evil intentions.  She immediately pronounced the names of holy men, which left the Gentile hanging on the beams of the roof, unable to move.  In the morning, lots of people gathered to see, but no one could remove him.  The governor of the town begged her to release the Gentile, but she refused, saying that “…since he came to me with the intention of corrupting my morals, he shall remain hanging in his place.”  The governor swore that if she set him free, the governor would hang him publicly, upon which she released him, “…and he was hanged from a tree to the amazement of all the people in the town.”

She had many accomplishments.  The Jews and Muslims of Kurdistan loved and honored her.  A folk tale describes how Osnat walked from Mosul to Amadiya to save a synagogue from fire.  In one version, the flames are extinguished by a flock of Houris, the beautiful maidens who accompany the Muslim faithful in paradise.  Contemporary Muslim Kurds speak proudly of her, offering her as proof that Kurdistan has been a good place for its Jewish population.

Osnat’s story needs to be better known.  She deserves to be one of the great figures of Jewish culture and lore, along with other great scholars and wonder-workers.  Until recently, she was mostly hidden in academic books and journals.  Online searches, if properly phrased, could pull up some information, one source a duplicate of the other.

A children’s book

In 2021 Sigal Samuel, an Iraqi Jewish author published a children’s book Osnat and Her Dove.  Well-written and beautifully illustrated, this book brings Osnat to life.  In doing so, it reveals an important aspect of Jewish heritage, and of women’s accomplishments.  If you have children or grandchildren, nieces or nephews between the ages of four and eight, this is a good book to read with them.  It’s a great way to introduce them to this oft-ignored facet of women in history, and Jewish culture.

Quantum Cannibals is a fantasy novel.  Its violence makes it appropriate for an adult audience.  Osnat and Her Dove is a gentle children’s story. Both honor the historical Osnat Barzani.  I recommend you read them.

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There is a sad children’s story about a Czarist Russian soldier who threatened an elderly, terrified Jewish man.  The brutal soldier rolled up his sleeve to administer a beating, revealing an ugly scar on his forearm.

The old man looked at the scar and froze.  “Yossele?” he said to the soldier.

“Huh?  Who’s Yossele?”

Tears streamed down the old man’s face, but not from fright.  “You are, my son.”

“What are you talking about?”  The soldier was confused.  “I’m Grigory.”

“Yossele, when you were a little boy, you loved to watch the Shabbat candles.  One day you went too close and burned yourself. Look at the shape of your scar.  I can never forget it.  Do you remember?”

“It was so long ago.  I don’t really—”

“Yes, you were eight years old when the Khapers (“catchers”) took you away to be a soldier.  Your mother and I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.  Do you remember anything?”

“When I was first taken away I was beaten for being a…  I don’t remember what.”

“A Jew, my son.  The Czar wants us to be Christian, he wants us to be regular Russians.  He took you into the army, my child because he didn’t want you to be a Jew.”

This past October (2021) I hosted (on behalf of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research and Indigenous Bridges) a webinar From Turtle Island to Zion: Native American /Jewish/ Israel Ties Today.  The Native American participants touched upon the Residential School system, designed to isolate indigenous children from their heritage.  Just as the Czar didn’t want Yossele to be a Jew, the American and Canadian governments didn’t want Cree, Sioux or Navajo children to live as Indians.  The horrendous conditions at many of the residential schools only became a public concern in recent years.

Finding Yossele

I read the Yossele story many years ago, but never thought about it much.  Ira Robinson, a Jewish Studies professor contacted me after the webinar.  He said the Indian Residential Schools reminded him very much of the Cantonist system of Russia.  I looked it up, and found Yossele and his father.  Jewish boys from the age of eight, were taken to serve in the Russian army for twenty-five years.  Rather than save the child, it amounted to a literal death sentence for many of them.  Boys too young to fight (under eighteen) were taken from their homes and families and brought up in the interior of Russia until they were old enough to join a regiment.

“They brought the children and formed them into regular ranks: it was one of the most awful sights I have ever seen, those poor, poor children! Boys of twelve or thirteen might somehow have survived it, but little fellows of eight and ten… Not even a brush full of black paint could put such horror on canvas. Pale, exhausted, with frightened faces, they stood in thick, clumsy, soldiers’ overcoats, with stand-up collars, fixing helpless, pitiful eyes on the garrison soldiers who were roughly getting them into ranks. The white lips, the blue rings under their eyes, bore witness to fever or chill. And these sick children, without care or kindness, exposed to the icy wind that blows unobstructed from the Arctic Ocean were going to their graves” (A. Herzen, My Past and Thoughts, 1 (1968), 219–20), cited in https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/cantonists.

The conscripts were needed to fight wars, but this was not the only purpose of the Cantonist system.  Czar Nicholas considered the army to be best residential school in Russia, so Jews were conscripted at twice the rate of Christians.  The children were forced to violate the Sabbath, eat non-kosher food, and forbidden to speak their language.  They were tortured until they agreed to convert, at which point their names were changed, and they were considered to be children of non-Jewish sponsors.  It was a policy of “kill the Jew, save the child.”

It didn’t matter if it killed the child

“The last awful scene connected with that system of recruiting children took place at Orel, when one winter’s night more than a hundred little boys were taken to town on sledges, but on taking them out they were found to be frozen to death, like poultry carried to market.”   –From: The Occident and American Jewish Advocate, January 1863

The Residential School system developed in Canada about fifty years after the Russian Cantonist program.  It had a similar agenda: to de-culture and integrate an alien population.  Some schools were near the native communities.  Many were boarding schools that tore families apart, transporting young children halfway across the country.

The pedagogical methods were not particularly effective in promoting literacy or teaching simple arithmetic, but that didn’t really matter.  The goal of the schools was not what they could put into the student, but rather what they could remove: a culture, a way of life.  Speaking your native tongue, even to your fellow students was a serious offense.  My friend Robert recalled the heavy stick hitting his back; punishment for speaking Cree.

Another friend’s grandfather had a mousetrap closed on his tongue for the same offense.   In a scenario more appropriate to a prison rather than a school, there were small manacles attached to the walls, to keep the students from running.  Often children were shackled to their beds.  Many had their faces rubbed in urine and excrement.

Students had to work on the schools’ farms, but the only vegetables given them were animal fodder.  They got one egg a year from the farm’s chickens.  Covered in lice, weak from malnutrition and the cold, it’s no wonder that in the early twentieth century, a quarter of the previously healthy children died in the schools.  It’s estimated that of the children who were sent home because of their illnesses, half to three quarters passed away after being released.  It was an odd way to save the child.

Sexual abuse was rampant.  Some contemporary religious institutions are infamous for their treatment of people they were responsible for.  In the Residential Schools, more so.  My colleague Amos described how the teenage boys were lined up after their shower so the missionary’s sister could inspect them.  It’s estimated that at some schools upwards of seventy percent of students faced some form of sexual abuse.  Rarely were any of the perpetrators punished.

Reasons

The Czar had his reasons to implement the Cantonist conscription program.  He primarily wanted to make the Jews into non-Jews (Christians), force them, ostensibly for their own benefit, to modernize.  One of the leading Hassidic rabbis had supported the Czar against Napoleon because he didn’t want Jews to be free to modernize.  So instead the Czar ripped tens of thousands of Jewish children from their homes in order to ‘modernize’ them.  His policy was to kill the Jew, save the child.

The governments of Canada and the U.S. had their reasons for implementing the Residential School programs.  They wanted to make the Native Americans into non-natives (Christians), force them, ostensibly for their own benefit, to modernize.  Government officials felt that way of life of many communities (eg. the fur trade) was no longer economically viable and would lead to starvation.  But by the time students were eighteen years old, most students had reached no higher than grade five.  This gave them little economic advantage in exchange for the torture, abuse, and death they suffered.  The policy of kill the Indian, save the child very often killed the Indian and the child.

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Happy New Year (we hope)

It’s the five thousand, seven hundred and eighty second birthday of that fourteen-billion-year-old ball of rock and water we call home (see Happy Quantum New Year for the math).  The day is relevant to all humans, not just the Jews.  After a year like 5781, everyone should take it seriously.

It’s not just that the COVID pandemic is so intractable.  There’s also the inability of many to have a calm discussion about it.  “Follow the science,” but science isn’t on a single path.  At times, we have to rely on common sense, a resource that’s been sorely lacking this past year.

Now let’s take Afghanistan.  Oh, wait, it’s already been taken by the Taliban.  They’re now in possession of billions of dollars worth of abandoned high-tech weapons developed by western nations such as Britain, the US and Israel.  The Taliban aren’t our friends, and we can be sure that this technology will soon be in the hands of our enemies, such as Iran and China.

Choose Life

It’s an accepted principle in Judaism that our fate for the coming year is written in a book on Rosh Hashanah, the New Year.  But just before the holiday, we have a Bible reading that says “I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Choose life.”  Rabbi Ronnie Hasson cites the medieval sage Maimonides that the verse teaches that “anything that a person wants to do, he has the ability to do…” and God will not interfere.  We must take responsibility for all that happens to us.  God rewards and punishes precisely because we have free will… Our success is due to many factors including the effort we put in, the decisions we make, the opportunities we capture, etc. We can’t blame God for our failures if we haven’t made the appropriate choices.

The Canadian government chose to allow Chinese scientists (later expelled) to work at the virology lab in Winnipeg.  The Americans chose to fund the Wuhan lab.  Should we say the pandemic is God’s will, or the result of horrible human choices?  When our own weaponry is used against us, whether in acts of terrorism or acts of war, is it God’s will, or people’s (leaders’) stupidity that’s the cause?

5781 is over.  What will we choose in the year 5782?

I wish you a healthy year, I wish you a happy year.  I wish that you make the appropriate decisions, and choose life.

The post Happy New Year! appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

Though answers may change, many questions stand.  Dr. Anthony Fauci made an important statement about the fluid responses to the Wuhan virus.

“So when you hear someone say something at one point and then two or three months later, if you stick with what you said at the original time when you had one-fifth of the data that you have now, I think that would be inappropriate.”

COVID is something new.  People panicked as it mutated into a global pandemic, not knowing what it is or how to respond.

Difficult questions

• Did COVID come from the lab or wet market in Wuhan?

  

• Was it deliberately enhanced by the Chinese government to make it more deadly?
• Did Xi Jinping (Chinese leader) deliberately spread the virus throughout the world?
• Is it Satan’s, Tam’s, Trump’s, Trudeau’s, Fauci’s, or the World Health Organization’s fault?
• Does closing borders help prevent the spread?
• Are lockdowns effective?
• Do medical grade masks help?
• Do dollar store grade masks help?
• Are the vaccines deadly, effective, or somewhere in between?
• Do ventilators help or harm patients?
• Is hydroxychloroquine a helpful treatment or a placebo?

So many questions.  So many deaths, so much suffering.  Not just from the illness, but from the disruption it caused.  So many people lost their livelihoods, so many other diseases went undiagnosed, untreated.

There are answers to all these questions.  The virus originated somewhere.  The ventilators had an effect.  Masks do something, but we don’t know where or how much.  We may never know.  The questions stand.

The Talmud, a book of Jewish law and tradition consists mostly of records of discussions between rabbis.  Sometimes they agree with each other, sometimes not.  The rabbis challenge each other with difficult questions.  There are many they cannot resolve, so they declare “Taiku.”  It’s an Aramaic word saying the questions stand unanswered.   It’s also popularly explained as an acronym for a declaration that Elijah the Prophet will answer all questions with the advent of the Messiah.  A declaration of “Taiku” is not an admission of failure.

The man Taiku

Taiku is also the name of a character in Quantum Cannibals.  As the chief of a thriving Bronze-Age village Taiku has to build roads, stop bandits,

calm ethnic hostility, and protect refugees, all the while facing an unfathomable foe that threatens to destroy his world.  He has many decisions, many questions, but his best source of answers has been murdered.

The invader follows its own version of the real 1999 People’s Liberation Army (China) military treatise “Unrestricted Warfare.” The authors of this

frightening work stress that there is no distinction between war and peace, and that all means should be used to defeat the enemy.

Taiku knows how to deal with most of the issues he faces, but on too many there is no clear answer.  The questions stand.

There are few clear answers regarding COVID, its origins or how to deal with it.  So much of what was assumed to be true at its outset has been proven false, and vice versa.  Politicians have to make informed guesses, relying on experts who for the most part, are also making informed guesses.  One says “left,” the other says “right.”  The questions stand, but the leaders cannot stand still; they are obliged to act.  In hindsight we know who to call brilliant, who to condemn for his foolishness.

We’re hopefully approaching the end of the COVID pandemic.  Would it have come quicker if our leaders had acted differently?  That’s another question that will stand.

Does Taiku get the answers he needs to save his world?  Read Quantum Cannibals to find out.

The post COVID: The Questions Stand appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

There’s an ancient story about a man who was walking down the road when he encountered a great sage, whom he greeted with great respect.   The rabbi replied “You worthless, ugly person. Are all the people of your city as ugly as you?” The man rebuked him, saying “I don’t know, but you should say to the Craftsman (God) that made me: How ugly is the vessel you made.”  The sage fell do the ground, contrite.

Contemporary studies find that beauty is an advantage.  Beautiful people are typically treated better by others, aren’t insulted by passing sages.  For women, researchers found that enhancing a woman’s attractiveness boosted people’s perceptions of her competence, likability and trustworthiness.  Of course concepts of beauty may vary, from Rubenesque fleshy appearance popular from the 15^th century, to the emaciated Twiggy look of the 1960’s.  Powdered wigs, blonde hair, green hair, no hair… the variation is endless.

Physical beauty or ugliness is rarely an issue in Judaism; wisdom and knowledge take priority.  In Proverbs we are told that a woman’s charm is deceptive, her beauty vain.  The same woman, though, is praised for her wisdom.

The novel Quantum Cannibals was inspired by a woman from history; both wise and beautiful.  I introduced her:

Asenath accepted her beauty and wisdom as a gift. The former, she ignored; the latter, she nurtured and fed. She didn’t feel arrogant about either. “Tanayt” wasn’t a name, but a title her people had bestowed on her. It was reserved only for the greatest sages, for the most able of leaders, and hadn’t been given to anyone in hundreds of years. Certainly not to a woman…  Such beauty, people reasoned, could only be a result of divine favor.

This description applies as much to the historical (16^th c.) Asenath Barzani as it does to my fictional adaptation.    She was head of the Jewish religious academy in Mosul, Kurdistan, and was admired by both the Muslim as well as Jewish population.  Although she was a legitimate female rabbi, her title “Tanayt” was a much higher designation.

I took my Asenath out of ancient Kurdistan.  I kept her as a scholar, but placed her in Bronze Age Mesopotamia.  I also set her in the arctic, where she was an exiled inventor, quantum biologist and warrior.  It may sound confusing, but if you read the book you’ll understand.

The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said “never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting.”  The historical Asenath Barzani was the personification of that idea in her beauty and wisdom; in her life.

The post Beauty and Wisdom- The Character appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

This is the first in a series of posts introducing characters from the novel Quantum Cannibals

Alex is a secondary character in Quantum Cannibals. He’s a renowned poet whose wife tells a friend “Alex likes young men and boys.”  The character was inspired by the pederasty of beat poet and cultural icon Allen Ginsberg. He said:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”

Howl was a brilliant poem, a work of art.  Not so brilliantly, Ginsberg also said

“Prepubescent boys and girls don’t have to be protected from big hairy you and me, they’ll get used to our lovemaking in two days provided the controlling adults will stop making those hysterical noises that make everything sexy sound like rape.”

I recall reading a transcript of his chat with fellow icon William Borroughs where they declared that the younger the child, the better the sex.  A progressive literary magazine in the 1970’s featured a story about a man who pursued sex with prepubescent girls (I won’t use the story’s obscene term).  The journal was progressive, it was cool.  Not perverted.

The issue of sex with children goes back farther.  There is a debate among scholars of ancient Greece and Rome whether sex with kids was considered normal.  “In Athens a man would have been regarded as perverted if he sought a relationship with another person equal to him in age and status.”

Sexy cuties around the world

In Afghanistan, the sexy cuties were found  in the widespread tradition of bacha bazi ‘dancing boys,’ some as young as ten.  Men force these boys (no transitioning counselling) to dress like little girls, then abused them.  Among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea prepubescent boys had sex with adult men.  It was crucial for them to swallow the men’s semen in order to develop into warriors.  I can’t find anything cute about that.

Given the wide history of sex with children, isn’t it just another cultural norm? Doesn’t progressive ideology believe that all cultures are of equal value?

If so, does ancient slavery justify contemporary slavery?  How about mass murder, pillage, cannibalism?  There are plenty of precedents for those throughout history.  Should we remove their contemporary stigmas because someone else did it at some other time?

There is a story in ancient Jewish writings about a rabbi (352-427 CE) who vilified the Biblical King Menashe (reigned 698-642 BCE) for pursuing idolatry.  Menashe appeared to the rabbi in a dream and rationalized, “If you had lived in my day, you’d have picked up the hems of your garment to run after idols!”  Maybe if we’d have lived in those eras, in those places we’d have no problems with slavery or cannibalism…  But we don’t live in those eras.

Is there anything you can’t do for the sake of art (and money)?  Many critics have accused the Netflix series Cuties of sexualizing young girls.  The creators of the show argue that they’re actually combating the sexualization of children by showing kids behaving seductively. Given all the history and culture of sexualizing children, should we really condemn Netflix’s sexy Cuties?

Better we learn from, rather than replicate the misdeeds of the past.  We shouldn’t look for history or art to excuse wrong behavior in the present.  There are poor rationalizations for the making of “Cuties,” but no justification.

The post Sexy Cuties: Art or Abomination? appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

1921-22, among the Iglulik Eskimo (Inuit):

“I once went out to Aua’s hunting quarters on the ice outside Lyon Inlet… For several evenings we had discussed rules of life without getting beyond a long and circumstantial statement of all that was permitted and all that was forbidden. Everyone knew precisely what had to be done on any given situation, but whenever I put in my query: “why?”, they could give no answer. They regarded it as unreasonable that I should require not only an account, but a justification, of their religious principals….

It had been an unusually rough day… The brief daylight had given place to the half-light of the afternoon. Ragged white clouds raced across the sky… our eyes and mouths were filled with snow. Aua looked me full in the face, and pointing out over the ice, where the snow was being lashed about in waves by the wind, he said:

“In order to hunt well and live happily, man must have calm weather. Why this constant succession of blizzards and all this needless hardship for men seeking food for themselves and those they care for? Why? Why?”

We had come out just at the time when the men were returning from their watching at the seal blowholes on the ice, toiling against the fierce wind… Not one of them had a seal in tow; their whole day of painful effort and endurance had been in vain.

I could give no answer to Aua’s “Why?” but shook my head in silence. He then led me into Kublo’s house, which was close beside our own. The small blubber lamp burned with but the faintest flame, giving out no heat whatsoever; a couple of children crouched, shivering, under a skin rug on the bench.

Aua looked at me again and said: “Why should it be cold and comfortless in here? Kublo has been out hunting all day, and if he had got a seal, as he deserved, his wife would now be sitting laughing beside her lamp, letting it burn full, without fear of having no blubber left for tomorrow. The place would be warm and bright and cheerful. The children would come out from under their rugs and enjoy life. Why should it not be so? Why?”

I made no answer, and he led me out of the house in to a little snow hut where his sister Natseq lived all by herself because she was ill. She looked thin and worn. For several days she had suffered from a malignant cough that seemed to come from far down in the lungs, and it looked as if she had not long to live.

A third time Aua looked at me and said: “Why must people be ill and suffer pain? We are all afraid of illness. Here is this old sister of mine; as far as anyone can see, she has done no evil; she has lived though a long life and given birth to healthy children, and now she must suffer before her days end. Why? Why?”

This ended his demonstration, and we returned to our house…

“You see”, said Aua “You are equally unable to give any reason when we ask you why life is as it is. And so it must be. All our customs come from life and turn towards life; we explain nothing, we believe nothing, but in what I have just shown you lies our answer to all you ask…”

“We fear the weather spirit of the earth, we fear dearth and hunger in our igloos, we fear the great woman at the bottom of the sea that rules over all the beasts of the sea. We fear the sickness that we meet with daily all around us. We fear the evil spirits of life, we fear the souls of dead human beings and of the animals we have killed.”

“Therefore it is that our fathers have inherited from their fathers all the rules of life which are based on the experience and wisdom of generations. We do not know how, we cannot say why, but we keep those rules in order that we may live untroubled.”

From the book “Intellectual Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos”, by Knud Rasmussen, published in 1929

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This Saturday is the anniversary of the death of my mother Tehilla. I would like to tell you about my mother, about her accomplishments, about my memories of her, how she guided and taught me.

I can’t.

My mother died of cancer when she was in her thirties and I was four years old. For much of those four years she was in hospital. We did spend time together, but I was too young to remember it. I know she did affect me, I know she shaped me, but I can’t tell you how.

My mother had her years taken from her. She died in great pain, she suffered. I shivered reading the medical reports from her final days, imagining the agony that was being coldly and clinically described.

Why did she have to suffer so? As far as anyone could see, she had done no evil. Why must people be ill and suffer pain? Why did my sister and I have to grow up without the one who bore us? Why?

Her earlier life was also difficult. Her father was hospitalized for many years. She and her sister were brought up by my grandmother Rivka in deep poverty. Why did she have to undergo that deprivation? Why?

You are equally unable to give any reason when I ask you why life is as it is. And so it must be. What can we know, what can we understand?

Can we understand an earthquake in India? “Amid an acre of blackened mounds sits Hauth Chand. Beside him is the body of his granddaughter Manisha and in his hand a surgical glove filled with water to sprinkle over her body, according to tradition. At 5 years old, Manisha is too young to be cremated.” There are a hundred thousand other personal stories from that earthquake.

Can we understand the suffering of the wrongly convicted prisoner, freed decades later by DNA evidence, or God forbid, executed? The victim of a terrorist armed with a car or machete? It’s harder to remember that these are real people, with feelings and aspirations, just as you and me. They’re not just players in a television or internet news drama.

How do we understand Jewish history? From 1648 to 1653 the Cossaks, occasionally allied with the Tartars or Poles killed close to one hundred thousand Jews. They didn’t have the technology available to Hitler but their viciousness and cruelty might have even shocked the Gestapo. This period of suffering, known as Tach V’Tat gave rise to the false Messiah, Shabtai Tzvi, helped give birth to both Hassidism and the Haskalah, secular Judaism. Jews tried to find some answer, some explanation for their suffering. They asked “Why, why…?” Why does it appear that two plus two equals five?

An ancestor of mine, Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller, the Tosafot Yom Tov, theorized that Tach V’Tat was a punishment to the Jews for talking and light-heartedness in synagogue. He instituted a prayer to be recited in honor of people who undertake not to talk during prayers. It’s still used in many institutions.

And of the holocaust? Eliezer Berkovitz, in “Faith After the Holocaust” says that he stands in awe before the memory of the holy martyrs who walked into the gas chamber with the Ani Ma’amin, I believe, on their lips. Berkovitz goes farther, however. “…so also is the disbelief and the religious rebellion of the concentration camps holy… Those who were not there and, yet, readily accept the holocaust as the will of God that must not be questioned, desecrate the holy disbelief of those whose faith was murdered. And those who were not there, and yet join with self-assurance the rank of the disbelievers, desecrate the holy faith of the believers.” Berkovitz continues that “…the disbelief of the sophisticated intellectual in the midst of an affluent society- in the light of the holy disbelief of the crematoria- is an obscenity.”

That disbelief can be holy, teaches that you are not obliged to shut your eyes, to erase your mind, to ignore your heart. If anything, we must keep ourselves open to truth. Torah is truth.  Two plus two equals five.  Is this the reality?

Gerald Schroeder, a physicist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, tries to explain suffering in the book “The Science of God.” The geological forces that give rise to earthquakes are necessary for the conditions that allow life to exist. He says that stars without lethal radiation that lead to mutations and birth defects would not be natural. “Obviously, an omnipotent Creator could remove all randomness from nature… But the price would be too high.” Randomness is necessary for free will. Free will and the potential for tragedy go hand-in-hand. Schroeder describes this randomness as an aspect of the divine contraction that allows our universe to exist.

Randomness? Schroeder is attributing randomness to the true Judge, whose every action is just? God could just have easily made a world supporting life without earthquakes. Stars without radiation could have been just as natural seeming as what we know and are familiar with. In fact, the only difference between nature and miracles is that we are so used to certain miracles, such as air, water, life, thought, that we consider them natural. A leading mathematician marveled at the fact that two plus two equals four. There is no intrinsic reason for it to be that way, he explained. Two plus two could have just as easily equaled five. God made it four, and we take it for granted.

The book Ethics of the Fathers asks “Why did God create the world with ten utterances? What does this teach us? He could have created it with one utterance?”

God could have created a world without cancer. He could have created a world without hunger, with good weather, without suffering. He could have made a world without terrorism. He could have made a world with free will, yet without random pain. God had all kinds of leeway in making the world. He is the One who can do whatever He wants. What does his choice of design come to teach us?

“Rabbi! I am forced to think and think constantly, and I cannot find peace of mind.”

“About what are you thinking so much?” inquired the Kotzker Rebbe.

“I am wondering if these is a Supreme Judge, who deals with the world justly,” replied the hassid.

“What does it matter to you?” asked the Rebbe?

“Rabbi, if there is no Judge and no justice, then what sense does the Torah make?”

“And why does it matter to you?” insisted the Rebbe.

“How can you say that? Surely it matters to me.”

“If you are so concerned, then you must be a good Jew. A good Jew is allowed to think,” consoled Rabbi Menachem Mendel. “Now go and learn.”

The Kotzker didn’t tell the hassid he would find an answer to his question. The inability to have such understanding is explained in the Bible according to the Kotzker by God’s pronouncement to Moses: “And you shall see My back- but My face shall not be seen. This means that although so many things in this world appear to be the reverse of what they logically should be, that is because the world stands with its back to the logical truth. The difficulty of the situation is that the “face” of God’s guiding light is hidden; it is far removed from human comprehension… it cannot be seen, for it is too bright for our eyes.

Albert Einstein deals with this difficulty: “The only incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” Putting the Kotzker Rebbe and Einstein together, we learn to appreciate our limited understanding, appreciate that He has given us the opportunity to glimpse his back, to see the refined light of his wisdom, albeit filtered and reduced, such that we can achieve at least some level of comprehension.

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My mother was an ardent Zionist, deeply involved in the creation of the modern state of Israel. She was a writer and a translator, having published an English edition of Yitzchak Leib Peretz’s The Three Canopies. She was cut down before reaching her potential. May her memory be a blessing.

I was too young then to say “Baruch Dayan Emet. Blessed is the True Judge.” I say it now.

I do not understand what happened to my mother or why. I do not understand why two plus two equals four.  But we are taught that by definition, everything that God does is good. That’s a difficult formula to grasp.

The post Two Plus Two Equals Five: the Miracle of Limited Understanding appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

I am pleased to announce that a new book ZIONISM- AN INDIGENOUS STRUGGLE, co-edited by Machla Abramovitz and me will soon be published  by the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research (CIJR) and RVP Press.  This one is non-fiction, but reflects the same interest in aboriginal cultures, exile, and return that lie at the heart of my novel Quantum Cannibals.

The articles are from academics, ambassadors, veterans and activists, be they Jewish, Native American, or other ethnicity.  All of us came together to bring forth information which is especially critical in an era where feelings are often confused with fact, history confused with narrative.  If you’re subscribed to this site’s mailing list, I’ll let you know when and  where you can order the book.

• Machla Abramovitz: Foreword
• Nathan Elberg: Introduction
• Allen Z. Hertz: Aboriginal Rights of the Jewish People
• Sally F. Zerker Israeli “Occupation”: The BIG LIE
• Mara Cohen: What it Means to Be an Oglala Sioux Jewish Woman: A Personal Account
• Nathan Elberg: Simple Truths: A Cree Indian Explains a 2,000 Year Old Rabbinic Teaching
• Ira Robinson: The David Ahenakew Affair and the Problem of Using the Canadian Justice System in the Fight Against Antisemitism
• Scott Benlevi: I Walk Two Worlds
• Ryan Bellerose: Conversation With a Métis About Israel
• Howard I. Schwartz: Savage and Jew: A Shared Stereotype
• Dr. David A. Yeagley: There is no Palestine, There are no Palestinians
• Jay Corwin: The Convergence of the Native American and Jewish Narratives in our Times
• Ambassador Alan Baker: The Indigenous Rights of the Jewish People
• Mara Cohen: Indians at Work
• Uqittuk Mark, as told to Machla Abramovitz: Uqittuk Mark: Inuit Defender of Israel
• Jose Faur: Jews, Conversos, and Native Americans: The Iberian Experience
• Select Bibliography

An abridged version is available online

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She told me Leonard Cohen gave her an unwanted kiss.  I didn’t know what to do.  Should I suggest she go to the officials?  Take her to a therapist?  Well, Leonard was an official, a counselor, so there was no point going that route.  Using all the wisdom my seven-year-old mind could summon up, I did nothing.  The girl, a couple of years older than me, chose the same strategy.  In fact, as Leonard’s fame as a poet blossomed, she was a fan, occasionally citing the token of affection she’d received at summer camp.  Fortunately, Cohen never identified strongly with any political faction, so the innocent kiss was never made into anything more than a harmless peck on the cheek.  It was nothing aggressive, nothing dirty, nothing incorrect.

Aggressive, dirty poetry

Ironic, really, since there WAS very aggressive, dirty, incorrect behavior by a famous poet of the previous generation. Allen Ginsberg, the leading Beat Poet of the fifties and sixties, played a large part in making poetry cool.  “Howl” was mandatory reading in many college literature classes, yet his fans paid no attention to his quirks. These included aggressive pedophilia and his promotion of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

Leonard Cohen did not promote controversy

Leonard Cohen promoted no political controversy, no perversion.  His 1973 song Story of Isaac criticized the eagerness of the biblical Abraham to sacrifice his son, and by analogy sending men off to war.  It could be considered anti-religious, anti-war.  By contrast, Who By Fire (adapted from the High Holiday prayer service) and Hallelujah are worthy of psalms, or perhaps prayers.  His final album You Want It Darker was made in collaboration with his synagogue’s choir. It again refers to the biblical story of Isaac, this time emphasizing God’s role in preventing the sacrifice of Abraham’s son.  According to his son Adam, Leonard Cohen considered his work a “mandate from God.”

A journalist asks, was Leonard Cohen in the end, a musician or a poet?  I ask, why do you have to categorize him?  He sang (with the encouragement of the folksinger Judy Collins), he wrote novels, and poems, both sacred (piyutim) and secular.  In the end, he blessed us all with a kiss.

The post “Yuck, Leonard Cohen Kissed Me” appeared first on Quantum Cannibals.

The Jerusalem Talmud teaches “The generation in which the Beit Hamikdash, the Temple, is not rebuilt is to be regarded as though the Beit Hamikdash was destroyed in that generation.” Can we establish a corollary that those not working to rebuild it are furthering, or at least mocking the destruction? Those who fast and sit on the floor while denouncing the actions or existence of a sovereign Jewish homeland would be better off eating a bacon cheeseburger on the 9th of Av then pretending to care about the destruction that took place two thousand years ago.

We are closer than we have ever been in the last two thousand years to rebuilding the Temple.  We have Jerusalem.  We are nearing the Temple Mount.  The prophecy of Zecharia (8: 4-5) has been fulfilled; old people sit, children play in the streets of Jerusalem.  Those in between shop at Mamilla Mall.

True, the Temple is not standing, but these things don’t happen all at once.  True, the government of Israel is not a religious one, but is that a problem?  The Jewish people weren’t considered to be in exile during the long reigns of a number of idol-worshiping kings.

When the Israelites were in the desert after escaping slavery in Egypt, they were sustained by a series of miracles.  As they approached their destination, the land of Israel, they realized that they soon were going to have to sustain themselves, earning a living through their own efforts, not God’s, not by sitting in Kollel.  Many were terrified and rebelled at the thought, preferring to stay in exile in the desert.

At the onset of that journey through the desert, faced with a choice of drowning in the Red Sea or death at the hands of Pharaoh’s army, the people cried and prayed for help.  God asked them why they were whining to him and told them to take action on their own.  Starting with Nachshon, a few brave chalutzim took the initiative and walked into the sea on the road to Israel.  The lesson is the oft-repeated ‘God helps those who help themselves.’

Mocking the Destruction with piety

Those who oppose the Jewish people helping themselves reclaim Jerusalem, reclaim the land of Israel are like the infamous spies in the desert.  They opposed entering the land of Israel, resulting in the Jews wandering in the desert for forty years.  The Satmar Chassidim, Neturai Karta, J-Street, Jewish Voices for Peace are the reincarnation of those spies trying to keep the Jews from redeeming the land they belong to.  Their fasts and lamentations on Tisha B’Av are crocodile tears over the loss of the Temple.  Their ideologies, their actions are mocking the destruction.

Get to work

If you want the Temple in Jerusalem to be rebuilt, yes fast and lament on Tisha B’av, increase your religious observance.  Move to Israel.  If you can’t bring yourself to make that big step, work with an Israel advocacy organization, such as The Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Stand With Us, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Honest Reporting (Canada), or any of the many such organizations.  If you can’t bring yourself to get involved with an organization, write letters to the editor, complain to the media about their lies and distortions.  Promote Israel on social media.

It’s important to cry to God to bring about the redemption.  It’s also important to get off your rear end, and make it happen yourself.  To do the former but not the latter is mocking the destruction of the Temple.

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