This week I got a haircut. No, I do not mean that I whacked away at my own head with blunt scissors, gazing in a hand-held mirror, trying in vain to remember that what I was seeing was the physical reverse of what my hands were trying to do. Nor did I trust my locks to one or the other of my two granddaughters, who seemed all too keen to have at my head. I actually went to my LA... Read more

In my last essay, I attempted to read a text from the Bible through the lens of the exploding conversation on race that the murder of George Floyd, among too many other documented deaths of African-American citizens at the hands of police, has generated in our time. Though violent protests have receded in our cities, large crowds continue to form, legislation has been proposed in the Congress aimed at addressing the crisis of racism, both among the police but also... Read more

Because I am a white man, 73 years old, and am thus up to my eyeballs in privilege, as little as I recognize it or acknowledge it, I today, in the light of the energetic and ongoing protests against the immediate and pervasive attacks on African-American lives by people in authority in our society along with the systemic racism made all the more obvious by those attacks and by the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, will try to hear a biblical story... Read more

Let’s begin by defining our terms. If one claims to be a Christian, as I understand it, that means that one claims to be a follower of the Christ, a follower of the anointed one that Christians say is Jesus of Nazareth. “Christos” is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word “Messiah” (meshiach), a word meaning “anointed” or “sent”. Other persons have claimed to be Messiah over the centuries, but for Christians the Messiah is Jesus. And because that is... Read more

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Well, there is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the USA. It is a grand statement, but has been fraught over its 240 or so years with any number of interpretations, broad and narrow,... Read more

The Bible appears in 2020 in numerous guises and in literally hundreds of translations. There are: The Blue Jeans Bible, The Soccer Mom Bible, the Salvation Bible, among many I have never and will never encounter. The New International Version nearly has a stranglehold on the Bible market, representing over 450,000,000 sales worldwide since its appearance in the 1970’s. Several updates of the translation have occurred, the latest in 2011, where attempts at gender neutral language for human beings were... Read more

As if the COVID-19 pandemic were not enough for us, the public face of racism reared its ugliest head in Minneapolis, when a police officer placed his large knee on the neck of a citizen of the city, an action that led to the man’s death. George Floyd had tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill, and for that act he died. It was cruel and senseless and monstrous beyond all telling, and though the policeman has been fired and... Read more

The modern state of Israel is both phenomenon and phantom, constitutional democracy and chimera. Of late, under the long-time premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu, the nation has moved decidedly to the right of the political spectrum, building high walls of separation between Israel and the two bits of Palestinian territory, the West Bank and Gaza, siting innumerable settlements on former Palestinian land against international law, and now threatening to annex the land on which those settlements sit into the nation of... Read more

I need not tell you that we are living in very strange times. I live in Los Angeles, where we are still under a strict lockdown after over three months of the same. Many parts of my adopted state are opening, but cautiously, allowing certain businesses to welcome patrons inside restaurants, shops, even barbershops and hair salons in a few places, but not LA. We have yet to demonstrate a significant easing of the march of the virus, so need... Read more

I used to get paid to read books, or at least that is how I often replied to those who asked me what I did for a living as a university professor. In those days, now over for almost 8 years, I would ensconce myself in my lovely office, sit calmly behind my commodious desk, open a tome, large or small, written in one language or another, and wile the day away, absorbed in the intricacies of history, or the... Read more