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Written by Diana Bridges
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Wednesday, 16 June 2010 07:41 |
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 A few months ago I went to see a movie with a friend. It was a chick flick. The plot was very predictable. Even without seeing the preview, I would have known that the two people who were together at the beginning weren’t meant to be. Clearly, when she opened her eyes, she’d realize that she needed to be with someone else who, happily, also needed to be with her. I knew what would happen before I found my seat in the theater. And I loved it.
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Written by Sara M. Herrington Jones
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Tuesday, 15 June 2010 07:37 |
 Not long ago, my husband had a business trip to Orlando, Florida so we took our boys, ages seven and nine, for the first time to Walt Disney World Resort. My husband had his business meeting the first day we were there, so it was decided that I would take the boys as early as possible to enjoy some of the Magic Kingdom which is geared for younger children before we were to rendezvous with the paterfamilias for lunch. We had been cautioned that the park was expected to be very crowded on this particular weekend and as the day promised warm sunshine with a hint of late-spring breeze it was with great care that I planned our excursion so that we would avoid “all the other thousands of people!” Concerned with only maneuvering my children to the best spots I dragged the boys out of bed very early to start our adventure. Determined to be ahead of everyone else I rushed my children through breakfast and down to the waiting shuttle bus. I positioned them to exit the shuttle quickly, and prepared them to get through the gates purposefully and past security efficiently. (We were going to get the full “Disney” experience even if we had to break our necks to do it!)
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Written by Michael R. Duncan
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Tuesday, 08 June 2010 09:48 |
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 “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Galatians 1:3-5, ESV)
Ah, the subtleties of letter writing. Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia starts off nice enough. Grace to you and peace . . . he began. Sounds a little like that friendly letter folks of my generation learned to write in elementary school. Ah, how things change. If it weren’t for my mother I wouldn’t receive any letters at all. I wonder if schools are teaching our children how to write friendly and formal text messages?
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Written by Rabbi Justin Kerber
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Friday, 04 June 2010 08:38 |
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In ancient times, just as today, maintaining the sanctuary was costly. Torah portion B’har-B’chukotai sets forth a detailed scheme for people to voluntarily pledge the value of animals, agricultural products, real estate, even the value of human beings for its upkeep. Leviticus 27:2-3 say “if anyone explicitly vows to the Lord the equivalent value for a human being, the following scale shall apply…” The scale’s valuation is determined by age and by gender, with males consistently being more highly valued than females. Does the Torah really mean that a male is worth more than a female?
Temple Emanuel’s Book Club recently discussed Half the Sky, by the husband-wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn of the New York Times. Kristof and WuDunn believe that in this century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle for gender equality around the world.
In the West, when we think of gender discrimination we typically think of inappropriate conduct in the workplace or unequal funding for girls’ and women’s sports. But in the developing world the stakes are higher. Women and girls are valued less than men and boys across wide portions of the globe today, which manifests itself in such practices as female genital cutting, so-called “honor killings” and human trafficking, including kidnapping women and girls for forced prostitution. A recent documentary, “Call & Response” estimates that 2.2 million children are sold annually into sexual slavery.
First, our verses do not mean that women are less valuable than men; they relate specifically to the pledges for upkeep of the sanctuary. Genesis 1:27 makes it clear: “God created human beings in the divine image…male and female”. Judaism’s commitment to women’s dignity is clear, from the prophets’ concern for the widow to the innovation of the marriage contract, or Ketubah in ancient Babylonia – one of the earliest examples of legal protection for a woman’s interests in marriage. Second, the issue touches Israel directly.
Each year the U.S. Department of State publishes the Trafficking In Persons (TIP) Report. The 2009 TIP Report specifically mentions Israel: “The Government of Israel does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. Israel continued law enforcement actions against sex trafficking and provided victims of sex trafficking with shelter and protection assistance…Extending protection services to all victims of trafficking identified in Israel, and improving identification of victims of labor trafficking and internal trafficking would enhance Israel’s anti-trafficking response.”
The annual publication of the TIP Report makes clear that the United States is concerned about human trafficking. As American Jews, we should be aware of the report and troubled that Israel is mentioned in it. After all, we are commanded to remember that we ourselves were slaves in Egypt. While it is good that Israel is making significant efforts to comply with minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, we should encourage those efforts until full compliance is achieved, and sexual slavery eliminated from Israel altogether.
 In ancient times, just as today, maintaining the sanctuary was costly. Torah portion B’har-B’chukotai sets forth a detailed scheme for people to voluntarily pledge the value of animals, agricultural products, real estate, even the value of human beings for its upkeep. Leviticus 27:2-3 say “if anyone explicitly vows to the Lord the equivalent value for a human being, the following scale shall apply…” The scale’s valuation is determined by age and by gender, with males consistently being more highly valued than females. Does the Torah really mean that a male is worth more than a female?
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Written by Michael R. Duncan
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Thursday, 03 June 2010 08:16 |
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It’s not easy not being God.
It’s not easy not being God . . . maybe that is why we human beings keep trying to play the god-role. It’s been that way forever. What was God thinking when the Divine Hands picked up a clump of earth, molded it and then the Divine Breath breathed life into it? Didn’t God know he was loosing a monster?
Apparently not, because the Divine then made another from the one and there were two of them. What one couldn’t think of the other could, and together they got themselves booted out of Eden. Goodness! I could have done better than that. Oops! You see, it isn’t easy not being God.
Had the first two (and then all the rest of us) paid attention, they would have known that it wasn’t necessary to be God. They were God-bred, created in the image of God. Could two people have been more stupid?
Apparently, it is possible to be more stupid. We keep proving it again and again. With eons of history behind us, with Eden lost, and multiple would-be Edens created and destroyed since, one would think that we would have figured out that being God is not our forte.
Along the way, we did figure out that God is in the kingdom building business. So, wanting to be god-like, if not God, we took on kingdom building. By might and stealth, nation after nation has tried to become the kingdom—to make a name for itself. Again and again the glory that was has tarnished and disappeared.
Yet, we carry on as did those before us; and like them, we find ourselves confounded. Post-flood things were going well and the people wanted to secure their place. They built and built, raising a tower up to heaven—so they thought. They wanted to call their own shots, determine their own destiny.
God was not pleased! Though, surely he chuckled at the thought of their thought of rising to heaven. God came down, which is a good thing in Jesus but not in Babylon. God coming down was like daddy stopping the car after multiple warnings to the fussy kids in the back seat. No matter how bad things seem in the back seat, you really would rather daddy stay happy than to stop the car.
We should know better, but still we seek to build our kingdom, not God’s. There’s has to be a better way. There is: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today” (Matthew 6:33-34 NRSV).
Michael R. Duncan
Pastor
Eminence Baptist Church
Eminence, Kentucky
 It’s not easy not being God . . . maybe that is why we human beings keep trying to play the god-role. It’s been that way forever. What was God thinking when the Divine Hands picked up a clump of earth, molded it and then the Divine Breath breathed life into it? Didn’t God know he was loosing a monster?
Apparently not, because the Divine then made another from the one and there were two of them. What one couldn’t think of the other could, and together they got themselves booted out of Eden. Goodness! I could have done better than that. Oops! You see, it isn’t easy not being God.
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