Editor-in-chief: David Suissa
November 18, 2021
Will it be Biden, who recently declared his intention to run for a second term? Will it be VP Kamala? Or will it be someone else?
…the idea that Harris will be denied the Democratic presidential nomination if Biden doesn’t run and she does is questionable in the extreme.
If this level of disapproval continues, Harris may be seen as a losing prospect in 2024 and could even choose not to run for the Democratic presidential nomination of it’s open.
A number of Democrats are privately questioning whether President Biden will run for reelection amid anemic approval ratings… Biden insists that he will seek another term, and some see him as the best bet to defeat former President Trump if he runs again…
Democrats and two Republicans voted to censure Republican representative Paul Gossar over his posting of a violent anime video in which he appeared to behead a cartoon version of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More at Newsweek.
It embodies the ugliness at the heart of the radicalized Republican Party, which cannot bring itself to condemn white male violence, but rather condones and even cultivates it.
Mr. Gosar, who is 63 years old but acts like a teenager on TikTok, deserves ridicule more than censure, which should be reserved for serious offenses
Everyone is all mad about Rep. Gosar posting an anime video depicting him killing AOC but honestly where is this anger over the fact that Gosar is/was networking *directly* with white nationalists and holocaust deniers.
The results of an investigation have yielded multiple accusations of harassment and sexual misconduct at the Reform Movement’s seminary, Hebrew Union College. Among those named by the investigation are the late school president, Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk and his successor Rabbi Sheldon Zimmerman.
I would not have been ordained as America’s first female rabbi without Fred Gottschalk’s support. That does not make his other actions acceptable.
Many of the women interviewed described facing critical comments about their weight, appearances, pregnancies and very presence in a rabbinical school that ordained its first woman in 1972, under Gottschalk. Students and faculty alike recalled discrimination against queer students.
“We never thought this day would come,” Rabbi Mary Zamore, director of the network, told Religion News Service. “There’s a mix of gratitude and pain and shock. The report is very difficult to read. At the same time there’s so much hope in this at the level of transparency. We hope this is going to be a positive step forward.”
The pandemic has dealt heavy damage to in-person Jewish life, with many synagogues still dealing with far more empty seats than before. What fresh ideas could help us reverse course?
Well, for one thing, we can push ourselves to be more creative. Every Jewish center—religious or otherwise—interested in boosting attendance ought to have brainstorming sessions where no one will be afraid to stick their necks out.
In recent years, there has been so much attention and funding lavished upon a new generation’s small Jewish startup ideas, that the community sometimes forgets that synagogues still make the most meaningful influence on the largest numbers of Jewish people.
Zoom services were a necessary accommodation to a public health crisis, and it is unquestionably easier to tune in to services from home, but it hasn’t worked for me. Fifty disembodied faces on a screen feel less like a community to me than the 15 bodies draped in prayer shawls…
Russia’s use of a missile on one of its own satellites has filled the earth’s orbit with junk. Here’s why that matters:
Russia’s latest missile test may have increased the total amount of space junk, including discarded pieces of rockets and satellites in Earth’s orbit, by as much as 10 percent. These shards are spinning at incredibly fast speeds and risk hitting active satellites that power critical technologies, like GPS navigation and weather forecasting.
Space junk poses dangers to human life and well-being. Also on Monday, astronauts aboard the International Space Station had to implement emergency protocols due to close-passing debris—whether from Russia’s test or another source, we can’t be sure.
This is just another wake-up call for the new era we have entered. Space is a central war-fighting domain. The Space Force has its work cut out for it.
A new article in Bloomberg (below) has made the controversial argument that Americans should eschew overabundance and live more simply like folks do, apparently, in Europe.
If this continues, we may need to learn to do without; and, horrors, live more like the Europeans. That actually might not be a bad thing, because the U.S. economy could be healthier if it were less reliant on consumption.
After all, Americans haven’t always acted like this. We’ve entered an age of overabundance.
If Americans lived like Europeans, their life expectancy might be higher: a recent study showed that Americans had shorter lives than similarly situated Europeans. If they lived like Europeans, they might not have the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. If they lived like Europeans, they would likely be a lot happier than they are now. Even if their refrigerators were smaller.
…let’s not be like Europe. Many of us got out of Europe as soon as we could to come live in a place where abundance is celebrated.
We shouldn’t adjust to a scarcer lifestyle, our politicians need to fix the mistakes they made and return to us our land of plenty.