One Love

Mary and I dressed up for a Halloween party at The Lantern out in Wassaic last night.  She went as a Nun, and I as an Ultra Orthodox Jew - the ultimate unlikely Interfaith couple.  A play on our true selves. A girl raised very Catholic who attended Catholic schools throughout her life married to the man who would be the Temple President.

I noticed that the reactions, chuckles, to our costumes were much greater when we stood together.  In other words, people found the humor and thought provoking aspect of a Nun & Chassid much more than either of us individually.

That got me thinking. And an irony came to mind. Why is the image of two highly faithful people who both believe in ONE G-d also sharing one love, so strange?  That is the unexpected humor found in Mary and my costumes.

This reminded me of our "bar names." Long before I decided to elevate my middle name Jonah to daily use, Mary and I would use our middle names, just for fun, when we were out by ourselves to a bar and found ourselves talking with others. We would introduce ourselves as Jonah & Theresa. We found it funny and it seemed to make us more intriguing, or so we thought. It seemed to lead to conversation. Who knows if it did! But we felt like we were playing little fantasy game and not being "Bob & Mary" seemed to kick it off.

Thinking about this now, there is a parallel. The same unexpected humor.  The same irony.  A concept that is universal and which raises a question for the ages.  Why don't we live together in peace.  An ideal captured perfectly by Bob Marley in his hit song, One Love.

Here are the lyrics:

One Love by Bob Marley (Catch a little trivia point at the end.)

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
Hear the children crying (One love)
Hear the children crying (One heart)
Sayin', "Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Sayin', "Let's get together and feel all right
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa

Let them all pass all their dirty remarks (one love)
There is one question I'd really love to ask (one heart)
Is there a place for the hopeless sinner
Who has hurt all mankind just to save his own?
Believe me

One love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
As it was in the beginning (one love)
So shall it be in the end (one heart)
Alright, give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right
One more thing

Let's get together to fight this Holy Armageddon (one love)
So when the Man comes there will be no, no doom (one song)
Have pity on those whose chances grow thinner
There ain't no hiding place from the Father of Creation

Sayin', one love, one heart
Let's get together and feel all right
I'm pleading to mankind (one love)
Oh, Lord (one heart) whoa

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right
Let's get together and feel all right

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The "heritage” of Judaidm in Jamaica might be synonymous with Rastafarianism. In fact, Rastafarianism is inextricably intertwined with Judaism: the religion’s messiah, the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie, claimed descendance from King Solomon and it shares symbols like the Lion of Judah and kosher laws. 

Part 1 - Midrash on the Story of Jonah: My Side of the Story

Midrash on the Story of Jonah 

My Side of the Story

By R. Jonah Ritter

"Midrash is an interpretive act, seeking the answers to religious questions (both practical and theological) by plumbing the meaning of the words of the Torah. (In the Bible, the root d-r-sh is used to mean inquiring into any matter, including occasionally to seek out God’s word.) Midrash responds to contemporary problems and crafts new stories, making connections between new Jewish realities and the unchanging biblical text." MyJewishLearning..com 

Prologue: I have always felt their is another side to the story of Jonah, and that Jonah got a bad rap.  After all, he did spare the sailors lives, and eventually went to Niniveh to risk his life again and saved the great city with the power of his word.  People have been too quick to assume they have learned the necessary lessons and morals of the Story of Jonah, and in doing so, miss much greater opportunities for learning about themselves.  This can be said about most of works of literature and art, but it is especially true of scripture, and particularly the Story of Jonah, in my opinion.  Why is Jonah's Story so important?  Well, considering the fact that it is the Haftorah story associated with the holiest of Jewish days, Yom Kippur, I think the answer to that question speaks for itself.  For me, the answer is also because I was named Jonah, it is my Hebrew name. And, my son was born on Yom Kippur.  The Story of Jonah is deeply personal to me and profoundly meaningful. 

Faith is a belief which should not relieve us of an effort to search for G-d, nor the value of questioning. As a means for my own personal search for a deeper understanding, and a more personal relationship with G-d, I decided to explore the Story of Jonah via the excercise of writing midrash.  In doing so, I found I needed to break the story up into parts, in order to address different questions and ideas that I have regarding the story. So instead of one midrash, I have a seperate midrash for seperate sections of the story.  This first midrash took me, and Jonah, up to before arriving at Niniveh.

It was also a conscious choice to write in the first person, as though I were Jonah.  This gave me a greater sense and awareness of what it was like to be Jonah.  It also allowed me to speak for Jonah; to offer my side of the story. By writing in the first person, my midrash felt more to me like a personal conversation with G-d.  In addition, I took the liberty, and a literary right, to give Jonah some knowledge of scripture.

As a ground rule, I adhered to a premise by Maimonides that the voice of G-d came to prophets in visions and signs, during dreams, rather than a direct conscious voice.  I also tried to be mindful of the historical context, including the relations at the time the story took place between the Hebrews and the Assyrians who populated the great city of Niniveh.  It is notable that the two peoples were enemies and that the Assyrians had a reputation for being fierce warriors.  

Last but not least is that I fully expect to change this story.  This interpretation will evolve.  As I write later sections of my midrash, the meaning and understanding that I derive causes my to want to modify previous sections that I've written.  So what you read today may change tomorrow. 

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To Noah You said God, "The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth has become full of robbery because of them, and behold I am destroying them from the earth. (Genesis 6:13)  And now God, you say to me, Jonah, "proclaim judgment upon [Niniveh]; for their wickedness has come before [you]." (Jonah 1:2) 

Lord, If I proclaim your judgment upon the assyrians, mine enemies and rivals, what shall become of me?   To Noah, you gave assurances, "I will set up My covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you and your sons, and your wife and your sons' wives with you. " (Genesis 6:18)  

Moses exclaimed "Behold they will not believe me, and they will not heed my voice, but they will say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you.'" (Exodus 4:1)  And for Moses, who doubted his speech and its power, you showed signs as you told him to "Cast [his staff] to the ground," and it became a serpent.  (Exodus 4:3)  You offered Moses other great displays "In order that [the Egyptians would] believe that the Lord," (Exodus 5.5) was his protector.  Besides, the Pharaoh and his wife still loved Moses.  Pharoah would not kill Moses. And just as surely,  the King or his people in Nineveh will kill me.  Am I to be a sacrifice?  Or speak to me of my powers. 

To Elijah, my teacher, you said, "turn eastward and hide" from his enemies. You even directed the ravens to supply Elijah food. (1 Kings 17:3-4) God, surely my evil enemies and rivals in Niniveh will silence me and your proclamation of their coming judgment well before I can make the three day walk across with your message.  Are you to be my shield?  I leave for Tarshish that YOU might make your proclamation and deliver your judgment directly on the people of Niniveh for their wicked deeds.  Let the idolatrous enemies of the people who keep Your Covenant, perish by your Hand!  Be this your will?  Why must I be sacrificed for your will to be done?  

In your sight I will board a ship leaving for Tarshish "having paid the fare ... to sail with the others." (Jonah 1:3) and I will take sleep in the hold of the ship that you might come to me in my dreams. ("Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the vessel, where he lay down and fell asleep. (Jonah 1.5))

Why do you Lord forsake me still in my sleep. The only voice that came was the captain's who cried out to me, “How can you be sleeping so soundly!  Up, call upon your god! Perhaps the god will be kind to us and we will not perish.” (Jonah 1.6)  All I hear are your angry seas, mad at me. 

Unlike the wicked people of Niniveh, these kind sailors are innocent and do not deserve to die for my disobedience.  As for me, I prefer to die by your hand from your seas for disobeying you, than by the hands of my enemies in Niniveh, so I told those God fearing sailors to  “Heave me overboard, and the sea will calm down for you; for I know that this terrible storm came upon you on my account.”  (Jonah 1:12) 

I was tashlich, cast off, and as "The floods engulfed me;" and "All Your breakers and billows swept over me" and I sunk to the depths, to the pit of Shoel, "I thought I was driven away. Out of Your sight." (Jonah 2:4 2:5)  And, as "The bars of the earth closed upon me forever."  At the time of my final slumber, "When my life was ebbing away," (Jonah 2:8) you came to me, and by your hand I was saved. As Micah, who prophesied Tashlich, from the depths, in the body of a fish I was saved from the evil eye and there I was cleansed of sin. You "provided a huge fish to swallow me."  I remained "for three days and three nights." (Jonah 2:1)  and from the belly of the fish your message came to me, "They who cling to empty folly Forsake their own welfare," (2:9)  That is what will come of the Assyrians.  "But I, with loud thanksgiving, Will sacrifice to You;"  "What I have vowed" from the belly of the fish, "I will perform. Deliverance is the LORD’S!"  And "You brought my life up from the pit.  O LORD by God!"  (Jonah 2.7)

With your word and intent firmly in my heart, you "commanded the fish, and it spewed me (Jonah) out upon dry land" (2.11). I must proclaim your judgement on Niniveh.  I will go at once to Nineveh in accordance with your command.  (Jonah 3.3)  For surely, without any signs of power given to me to display, all the people of Niniveh will "cling to empty folly" and "forsake their own welfare."  I give myself as your sacrifice. Now my enemies to perish.

Link to Part II 

Part 2 - Midrash on the Story of Jonah: I Am Taschlich

Part 2 of My Midrash on the Story of Jonah -- I Am Taschlich

By R. Jonah Ritter

This is the second of a five part Midrash I am writing which delves in the story of Jonah.  In this part I focus entirely on the the portion of the story when Jonah was on the ship, sailing to Tarshish and away from Nineveh and the service of the L-ord.  I've written this in first person, as though I am Jonah.  Through Midrash I sought to explore Jonah’s decision to disobey G-d, and what ultimately changed his mind. In the process, one might judge Jonah with a new understanding.  (Part I - My Side of the Story.)

G-d, I can not do what you ask.  I shall not go to Nineveh. My actions say, send me not into the vial hands of my enemies.  For it is not my life that I fear for, rather it is sparing theirs.  Not that my word alone is worthy of a true confession and repentance by those evil doers of Niniveh.  Save them?  Rather I die.  But my guilt is that I do not Your will.  By trying not to save they of Niniveh, I have sinned against You, not man.

G-d, You conflict me so.  And so I go to Tarshish.  And on my journey I ask You to come to me again. Speak to me; speak to the consequences for my action.  I can sleep well, knowing the fate of the dreaded and evil enemies of my people.  I sleep not, if my direction were to change Yours. As i sail to Tarshish, let the 40 days time, and the Assyrians, both pass. 

I am not their murderer, their fate You sealed.  But what of me?  What is my fate for sailing away from Your word.  Tell me, as I sleep. What comes of me, as I go, lay down below?  My act of defiance speaks to You. Come to me, in my slumber.

What's this I hear G-d, not the captain?  I rise to the voice of your seas G-d. Surely their anger is Your rath.  I hear Your call.  Punish me with Your ocean, will You, for failing to do Your will. And what must I do to accept my pentance?  Surely these honest sailors have no part in my sin! Must they pay a portion of my pentance?  

G-d, these sailors are simply doing their earthly service. It is me, Jonah, who refused to do Yours.  I paid the price for this journey, and I will pay the price the full price for my sins.  Must I be Taslich?  If that is the price You demand, so be it!

Cast me over sailors.  This sea is on my account. Cast me off for my sin.  I fear not for my life. And you should not pay my way on this journey. Give me to the Lord.  Send me to the deep. And you shall see. The sea will be calm once again. Let me go my way, so you may go yours. G-d wants us all, even the evil doers in Niniveh.  But now, in this hour, he calls for me. So cast me over. I am Yours L-rd!

"The floods engulfed me; All Your breakers and billows swept over me.  The waters closed in over me, the deep engulfed me. Weeds twined around my head.  I sank to the base of the mountains; The bars of the earth closed upon me forever."  The oceans cover over my sin. I do Your will.  I cry to You, please accept my sacrafice L-ord!!  

I am Yours L-ord. I have atoned. What comes of this sinner now?  Other then a better death than waited for me in Niniveh?

Low, what's this G-d?  I am consumed, rather than forsaken.  In the darkness, from the pit of my destruction, when "I thought I was driven away, Out of your sight." (Jonah 2.5.)  When i thought I would never gaze again upon your holy Temple.  You take me in.

"O LORD my God!"  As my life ebbs away, from the depth, in the belly of Sheol, my prayer came before You.  And Your answer comes to me now.  The fate of Niniveh.  "They who cling to empty folly forsake their own welfare."   You sent me to Nineveh to declare your judgment.  I was for a different sacrafice.  Oh G-d! Send me L-ord!  Send me again!!  Deliverance is the LORD’S!

By Your command I've been spewed onto dry land. And by Your command I will go at once to Nineveh to proclaim what You have told me: "Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Link to Part III

The Republic, the Republic, the Republic ...

"No country was ever saved by good men,”  Horace Walpole observed “because good men will not go to the length that may be necessary.”

CNN is like a pool of sharks when there is blood in the water.  They are pouring over old tapes of radio Shock Jock Howard Stern, one of the biggest pervs in the business, (that IS his business), when Stern had Trump on, and then taking snips out of context, and exploiting those clips to pile on to the feeding frenzy over Trump's bad reputation with women.  Trump brought it on himself, and as they say, "turnabout is fair play, " because it is fair for one to suffer whatever one has caused others to suffer.

Look, we get it.  Trump's a vulgar misogynists, and even more so a narcissist. And even though what CNN is doing still strikes me as foul, I think there is justice in what is happening to Trump.  But what interests me more is that where there is justice we often find irony.

Trump "lived by the sword," the swords being social media and being a bully.  Now he is "dying by the sword."  One of the most obvious morals, of this no morals story, is that what makes for a good story is a great example of Karma at its finest. That is what we have with Trump's demise. So to Trump I say, "Ain't payback a BITCH."  (Pun intended.)  If Trump could chime in now to my post he might quip, "It ain't over till the fat lady sings." (Pun intended, and queue up Rosie O'Donnell.)

The greater irony may be how analogous all this is to the most famous assassination in history.  The murder of Julius Caesar.  The take down of Donald Trump looks faintly like the stabbing and killing of Julius Caesar by many Senators.  And in the end, we may find that the political death of Trump may not save the Republic.

To make my point I will quote from a book about the death of Caesar, "The Moral of Caesar" by Roger Kimball.

"One of the great ironies surrounding the assassination of Julius Caesar is that, for all of the upheaval it occasioned, it failed utterly in its stated purpose. The conspirators sought to overthrow a dictator and restore the Republic. “The Republic,” “the Republic,” “the Republic”: that was the phrase they uttered ad nauseam. But the Roman Republic, devised to govern a city state, was overwhelmed by the cosmopolitan responsibilities of empire. By Caesar’s day, the Republic was a tottering and deeply corrupt edifice. As Caesar himself put it, cynically but not inaccurately, “The Republic is nothing, merely a name without body or shape.” By killing Caesar, the conspirators merely hastened the Republic’s collapse."

If you think i am streching it to compare Trump to Caesar, maybe so.  But if I have intrigued you, then maybe i can amuze you further with an excerpt from  "The Death of Caesar" by Barry Strauss, one of those rare academic historians.  Strauss quotes Emerson (who wasn’t wrong about everything): “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” The assassins thought that by killing Caesar they had killed tyranny. They hadn’t. Removing Caesar did nothing to remove Caesarism, i.e., absolute rule by one man, which, as Strauss points out, emerged from the bloodbath of the Ides of March unscathed. “The world without Caesar,” he notes, “was still a world about Caesar.”"

I ask you, am I the only one who sees a few strange parallels to Trump in these next words in which Strauss describes Caesar?

"By all accounts, he was a brilliant orator, deft politician, witty companion, insatiable womanizer, and passionate champion of the common man against the entrenched interests of the oligarchical senatorial class. “To the urban plebs,” Strauss writes, “he brought handouts, entertainment, and debt relief—but not enough to hurt the wealthy. To his supporters in the provinces he brought Roman citizenship. To leading Roman knights he opened up public offices and seats in the Senate.” Above all, perhaps, Caesar was an unstoppable egotist whose charm made him the busy point around which the world turned."

Surely this is a different place and time than Rome in February 44. But it is not a different world.  Consider how Strauss describes the atmosphere in Rome at the time. "Caesar had many supporters, but his increasingly cavalier, not to say disdainful, behavior provoked irritation and worse. Some say that Caesar was weary. Physically, his long years on the campaign trail had taken a toll."

Caesar’s assassination took place over 2000 years ago, but as Roger Kimball said, "... their significance continues to resonate, if only we have ears to listen."

To sum up my point in this post I again turn to Roger Kimball and words he chose in "The Moral of Caesar." Kimball quotes his favorite line from Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard: “If we want things to stay the same, a lot of things are going to have to change.” to make the following key point. "The Roman Republic had to change if it was going to endure. That insight escaped the wit of the conspirators and their allies. A look at the world today suggests that this is a paradox we neglect at our peril."

As I have said, repeatedly, if the vision that our great Nation was founded upon is to endure, things are going to have to change.  We must head the warnings, especially those regarding partisanship, that George Washington offered our fledgling Nation in his Farewell Letter.

To conclude my post, i must pun.  Trump, beware of the Ides of October.  And so I ask, what must we do to save the Republic?  If you think the answer is Clinton.  I would say to you, Hillary is just another Caesar for a different set of Senators to deal with.  You know my answer!  Vote for #GaryJohnson #JohnsonandWeld.  YOU IN?

Neither Party Deserves to Hold the Presidency

Trump is a vulgar pig.  Clinton is the epitome of what is wrong with Washington and politics.  Our duopoly two-party system of politics is bankrupting America and failing the vision of our Founding Fathers.  #JohnsonandWeld have my vote.  My vote won't be wasted -- it will be used to stand for my beliefs.  Which is exactly what a vote is for.  Send a message - vote Johnson and Weld.

Getting back to Trump for a moment.  His use of foul language is a non issue to me.  The fact that he is attracted to women and even objectifies them is not uncommon for men, and is constistent with male banter. Also a non-issue -- 95% of males would be guilty of that.  What IS most disturbing is 1) the statement that it is OK to grab women.  2) the casual admission the he tried to commit adultry.  3) The way his remarks appear to suggest that these actions are commonplace and frequent behavior.

Do you think Bill Clinton said worse?  Of course he has. And he has done much worse!!  Bill isn't running for President. But Hillary has been aware of her husband's obscene behaviors, affairs, and helped to cover for him.  Her hipocracy is as offensive as Trump's!  They both are not worthy of being President by today's ethical standards.  And I emphasize "by today's ethical standard," because male politicians have been having affairs since the beginning of civilization!!  And many US President's have been known to have had affairs!

What is missed, by most, is that all of this is a carefully timed and well orchestrated distraction.  Once again, our political leadership, and the media, are shifting focus away from the important issues like entitlements, trade, regulations, debt, war, taxes, prison population, climate effects, deteriorating infrastructure, partisanship, etc.  Rather than dealing with the issues that destroying America,  they take the low road and drag the discussion into the gutter.  Both political parties are guilty of of that. And the media is all too happy to take it there because the real issues are harder for them to cover and don't get the ratings they get from topics of sex, hate, scandals, etc.  Which is one reason why I do not believe either major party should be awarded the Whitehouse.