Yikes!

The Torch Has Been Passed

I'm in San Francisco right now, representing the company I work for at a conference. This evening, as I returned to my hotel after dinner, the bellman held the door for me and asked me a question.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?"

"I can't wait," I said.

"It's our turn." he told me. He was looking me right in the eye. A white male about my age, stocky with a well-trimmed goatee. I looked back at him.

"You're about my age," he continued. I nodded. He seemed to take it as an indication that I was open to a conversation. "We put him in to office, and now it's our generation's turn. They don't believe that we can do it. We need to show them that we believe in hard work, and that we can solve the big problems. I can't wait for tomorrow."

It reminded me of something I heard a couple of months ago, when I visited the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Forty eight years ago, Kennedy was inaugurated. At his library, I stood transfixed in front of a video monitor as he looked into my eyes and spoke to me.

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

The torch has been passed, and now it's our turn. For the past several months, Barack Obama has taught us that, yes, we can. We could, and we did. But tomorrow marks the beginning of the next chapter. The torch is in our hands, and we have to ask ourselves...

What are we going to do with it?

Now that we have that torch in our hands, now is the time for us to make a difference as a generation, to prove to our parents and grandparents that we're ready to lead.

Now is the time to close Guantanamo and tell the world that the United States of America does not tolerate torture.

Now is the time to make sure that every American has affordable health care.

Now is the time to say that the richest country on earth will not continue to allow the rising epidemics of childhood obesity and malnutrition to take over our nation.

Now is the time to say that all citizens deserve to marry the ones they love.

Now is the time to tell Israel that America stands with her, and that we need to work together to find a better way to respond to terrorism.

Now is the time to be a leader among nations by cutting our greenhouse gas emissions and halting the march of global warming.

Now is the time to look around and realize that life is not about us, but is about what we can do to improve our communities, our nation, and our world.

Tomorrow, as we watch as Barack Obama is sworn in as President of the United States of America, we should be awed and inspired by the enormity of the moment, by the enormity of the crowd who gathered to watch him take the oath of office, by the enormity of the presidency. But we must also be humbled by the enormity of the challenge before us. We live in a very broken world. Our generation worked hard to elect Obama because we believed that his leadership would empower us as a nation to fix that brokenness. The torch is in our hands, and we must not fail.

The hotel bellman was still looking me straight in the eye. "I can't wait for tomorrow," he repeated. "Tomorrow is a new day."

"Yeah, it is," I answered.

An Open Letter to the Gay Community

Dear colleagues, classmates, friends, and teachers,

I'm writing you two days after the election and the passage of Proposition 8 to express my outrage, my disappointment, and my sorrow. I'm also writing to tell you that I'm ashamed. And I'm writing to apologize for what we, the citizens of the State of California, did to you.

I've been a Californian and an American since I was born 28 years ago, and for most of that time I've been proud to be both. Today, and for the past few days, when I think about being either of those things, I feel nothing but shame. We did something wrong, and we did it to you, and for that you deserve an apology. (You also deserve to have this injustice righted, but for now that's not in my power. All I can offer is an apology.)

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to take away rights that were just recently granted to you, and that no one should have had to grant to you because you are human beings and Americans and Californians, and you deserve the same freedoms as your heterosexual neighbors.

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to say to you that your love is less real, and that your lifelong commitment does not deserve to be called marriage, at least not on paper in this state.

I'm sorry that voters in this state — in my state — voted to say that this is not a place of freedom and equality but of bigotry and hatred and fear.

I can't begin to understand what it must feel like to have your fellow Californians vote to deny you a basic human right, to decide that something about who you are as a human being makes you less worthy to live life like the rest of us. I would be lying if I said that I understood that kind of hurt because no one — at least no one in my own state and in my own country — has ever done something like that to me.

But I do understand what it's like to be in love with someone, and to enter into a lifelong sacred commitment to them. Today, my own marriage is worth less than it was when I was married just over five months ago. It's not that anything about my relationship to my wife has changed; if anything. our commitment is stronger than it was in May. Rather, my marriage is cheapened because the voters of the State of California chose to cheapen it.

The bigots who supported Proposition 8 believe that the institution of heterosexual marriage is threatened when two men or two women enter into holy matrimony with each other. They could not be more wrong. They do not understand freedom, and they do not understand what it means to be American.

In a place where anyone is not free, none of us are free. In a place that denies rights, none of us truly have any.

Today I am embarrassed to be married because you cannot be. But beyond that embarrassment, I realize that the legal bond represented by my marriage is less strong. In a place where some of us cannot be married, none of us are truly married.

Over two hundred years ago, George Washington wrote,

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.

I used to believe that Washington was describing the United States of America, a place whose government — elected by the people and for the people — "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." Since Tuesday, I've come too see his words as prescription rather than description, as a call to true Americans to stand up to bigotry and persecution.

I'm sorry that we failed to live up to President Washington's standard, and that we failed you. I didn't vote for Proposition 8, but I'm sorry I didn't do more to stop it from passing. I'm sorry I didn't shout louder and I'm sorry I didn't work harder. We have an obligation to protect each other's rights and each other's freedoms. On Tuesday, I failed to live up to that obligation. All of us did. We failed freedom, we failed our country, and we failed you.

I only hope that you can forgive me and forgive your state for this injustice. I'm sorry, and I won't let it happen again.

Sincerely,

Josh

Another Reason to be Excited About Nebraska

Some guy in Nebraska just grew a 1097-lb. pumpkin. Seriously.

Excited About Going to Nebraska this weekend...

...because this is what their Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, has to say about his party's vice presidential nominee:

"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials. You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."

"I think it's a stretch to, in any way, to say that she's got the experience to be president of the United States."

"I think they ought to be just honest about it and stop the nonsense about, 'I look out my window and I see Russia and so therefore I know something about Russia.' That kind of thing is insulting to the American people."

"I do think in a world that is so complicated, so interconnected and so combustible, you really got to have some people in charge that have some sense of the bigger scope of the world. I think that's just a requirement."

Hebrew Word of the Day

A few weeks ago, a NY Times article about the Annapolis conference contained this gem:

The long buildup to Annapolis, together with Ms. Rice's many trips to the region, have given birth to a new verb in Israeli government circles: ''lecondel,'' meaning, to come and go for meetings that produce few results. The word is based on Ms. Rice's first name.

I love Hebrew.

Bass-Ackwards Environmentalism?

Tonight they lit the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. The press is making a big deal about the fact that this year it's a "green" tree that is less environmentally wasteful. It uses less electricity to light, and its powered by solar panels, and the tree's wood won't be wasted. As the AP reports:

Organizers are planning to recycle the tree by using it as lumber for Habitat For Humanity projects in New York, the Gulf Coast, India and Brazil.

No word on the amount of fossil fuel required to ship lumber from a giant Christmas tree from New York to India and Brazil.

A Refreshing Voice on the Peace Process

I don't know Rabbi Yosef Kanfesky, the rabbi of B'nai David Judea (just down the street from me), but he's pretty well respected by Jews of all denominations in this town. From what I hear, members of his congregation think he's just the bees knees.

So I was pretty fascinated by his article in this week's Jewish Journal, entitled, "An Orthodox rabbi's plea: consider a divided Jerusalem." He writes:

To be sure, I would be horrified and sick if the worst-case division-of-Jerusalem scenario were to materialize. The possibility that the Kotel, the Jewish Quarter or the Temple Mount would return to their former states of Arab sovereignty is unfathomable to me, and I suspect to nearly everyone inside the Israeli government. At the same time though, to insist that the government not talk about Jerusalem at all (including the possibility, for example, of Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods) is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story -- a story in which our side has made no mistakes and no miscalculations, a story in which there is no moral ambiguity in the way we have chosen to rule the people we conquered, a story in which we don't owe anything to anyone. Cries of protest, in particular from organizations that oppose Israel's relinquishing anything at all between the Mediterranean and the Jordan, and which have never offered any alternative solutions to the ones they are protesting against, are rooted in the refusal to read history honestly. And I -- for one -- cannot lend my support to that.

Wow.

Amalek's Big Toe

A few months ago, Rabbi Jack Riemer decided that Islamo-Fascists are an incarnation of Amalek.

Last week, Rabbi Marc Gellman made a similar declaration in his Newsweek column. It turns out, according to Gellman, that Amalek utilized the same tactics as Hezbollah:

What made Amalek so dastardly was that unlike any other enemy who attacked the Israelites fleeing slavery in Egypt from the front, Amalek attacked the rear. This meant that his soldiers could kill women and children, the elderly and the infirm and in so doing avoid engagement with the soldiers at the front. In this way he could produce maximum carnage and maximum terror.

Of course Deut. 25:17-19 instructs us to remember Amalek for a good reason. Sayeth Gellman:

I believe this is because the planned and plotted slaughter of innocents even during wartime cannot be condoned and must be remembered as a bright moral line which can never be crossed.

Sorry. I have a bullshit meter that buzzes whenever someone uses the Torah to score political points. But maybe that's just me. Perhaps the Amalek label is appropriate here.

[Don't worry. Newsweek's erudite readers bash Gellman plenty in this week's Letters to the Editor.]

Cross-posted on Jewschool.

"Folks haven't been reading their bibles."

If there was ever any doubt that Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States, his recent speech on religion in politics should be proof enough. An excerpt:

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount - a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our bibles. Folks haven't been reading their bibles.

You can find the full speech here.

A Good Way to Boost Zoo Attendence

At Beekse Bergen Safari Park in Amsterdam, some bears and monkeys coexist in the same enclosed habitat. On Sunday, as visitors looked on, some of the bears grabbed a monkey (technically, a Barbary macaque), killed it, and ate it.

This wasn't intentional. This is the first time one animal at Beekse Bergen Safari Park attacked another.

While I'm sure this was disturbing for the many visitors present, they got a first-class education in the laws of nature. The zoo, embracing this for the public relations boon it is, posted pictures on their website.

I think they should do this at all zoos. Let the big animals hunt for their food. People would come, Ray... People would come.