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(04/17/14 8:38am)
Since this week begins the holiday of Passover, known as “z’man heruteinu” or “the time of our freedom” in Hebrew, I had been working on a column about the meaning of freedom and just how often it is abused for people’s own personal ends. All things considered, it was a pretty good column (that would become much better after the editors made a pass through it). It started with a great hook to draw the reader in, had some broad strokes about the way the concept of freedom is often invoked selfishly or used to serve a political agenda and concluded with the way freedom is frequently abused as a blunt instrument to silence and oppress others. It even had a solid tie-in to this past Friday’s Day of Silence, the culmination of Genocide Awareness Week. And then…Kansas City. Specifically, Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City where many of my Jewish friends from summer camp called home. A place where many of their families still live and where other friends and colleagues now live.
(04/03/14 10:19am)
Two. Crucial. Words.
(03/20/14 7:46am)
Twitter is (sometimes) fantastic. The limit of 140 characters requires one to either be very concise or simply link to something much longer—like this article, which I will duly tweet out when it is published. But some people truly shine in this medium, turning out regularly clever statements all within the confines of 140 characters. And those are great to read. Others are simply astonishing, such as when a celebrity famous for being famous asks a question on Twitter and begins to receive answers.
(03/06/14 9:44am)
Even before he was The Dude in “The Big Lebowski,” Jeff Bridges was the dude. In 1982, he had a fantastic line in the movie, “Tron,” where he was told to be serious and stop fooling around. His deadpan response was, “With me, fooling around is always serious.” It's a great lesson for all of us: to take our fun seriously. It's an even more significant lesson when you consider the holiday of Purim. It's a holiday with a lot of fooling around, but it is also deadly serious.
(02/20/14 10:52am)
The Geneva Conventions dictate that chaplains are non-combatants and may not take part in active hostilities. This means that a military chaplain, who serves as clergy in uniform, cannot bear arms and use them when the need dictates, whereas everyone serving with him or her is able to do so. This sets up a sometimes challenging dichotomy for many chaplains, including myself when I served in the U.S. Navy, in that we're serving a population yet are unable to fully experience one of the more challenging aspects of life in the military—that one might be called upon to take a life in the course of his or her duty.
(02/06/14 11:06am)
More than once, Jews have been described as a people of laws. Sometimes this is used as a pejorative, to suggest that Jews are obsessed with legalisms. An impression that, while misleading, can be understandable if one considers certain sections of legal discussion from the Talmud—a commentary of oral law, codified in A.D. 500—outside of the larger context. Similarly, some of the publications of fervently Orthodox Jews dealing with matters of legal minutiae can seem mind-boggling to those outside that community. Even without those extreme examples, the fact that there are several thousand years of Jewish case law on the books would indicate that clearly the laws of Judaism matter.
(01/23/14 12:32pm)
Since this is Duke, we all know what “GTHC” means, and it isn’t going to be an attempt at a clever pun based on who is in the Super Bowl this year. We all know that we have the better teams and that we’re going to play hard and beat our rivals. We also all know that UNC has been taking quite a beating in the press recently, with the national media picking up on the fact that there have been (and possibly still are) some very significant academic issues with some of UNC’s athletes. Something else we all know is that it is hard to read about UNC’s academic transgressions without, at least, a little bit of schadenfreude when we consider that (as The Chronicle has recently reported) Duke athletic teams are ranked first academically in the NCAA with a 98 percent graduation success rate. Winning both on and off the field is what being a student-athlete is about, and we can say with a great deal of faith that we see this at Duke.
(01/09/14 9:31am)
Sadly, my favorite pair of jeans is starting to fall apart, and they’re going to be very hard to replace. They’re my favorite pair not only because of how comfortable they are, but also because they have great pockets. They’re deep enough to hold anything I reasonably need to carry around with me, but not so deep I have to shove in my arm to the elbow to try and retrieve something. They’re wide enough that my entire hand fits in smoothly but not so wide that things fall out. In short, they’re just right—the Goldilocks pocket. In an ideal world, all pants pockets would be like this.
(12/05/13 10:22am)
I have no problem admitting that I’m a huge Kanye West fan. Not of the man per se, as I don’t know him and have found some of his public conduct deplorable, but of some of his work. His song “Stronger” has a permanent spot on my workout mix, because I enjoy the song and respect the tremendous homage to the film “Akira” in the music video. (Although, Kanye as Tetsuo, really? Then again, the angry teenage behavior thing kind of fits…) But, most recently, I have to admit that I respect his ability to forgive others. Specifically, the President of the United States. President Obama has referred to Kanye West as a “jack---.” On the record. Twice. Yet clearly Kanye is willing to forgive him that public insult (after accusing the President of using him as a distraction) and rushed to defend Obama recently on a New York radio show.
(11/21/13 10:02am)
One hundred and fifty years ago this week, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a short, two-minute address that has become one of the best-known speeches in American history. The President wasn’t the featured speaker on the program (that honor was held by Edward Everett, revered as a great orator), and his two minutes of remarks could reasonably have been forgotten after the two-hour address that immediately preceded them. Yet they were not. Instead they have become immortal and integrated into the curricula of many schools throughout the country.
(11/07/13 7:42am)
Every October, a certain quote has special meaning in the American Jewish community. In the fifth chapter of the Book of Judges, the song of Deborah refers to there being “great decisions of the heart” among the clans of Reuben. In that case, it refers to their lack of participation in a war of self-defense against King Jabin of the Canaanites and his general, Sisera. In the modern era, it is nothing so weighty as an actual war but more of a cultural struggle—what do we do on Halloween? More specifically, what should we do on Halloween, and how do we talk about this with our families?
(10/24/13 8:14am)
One of the lines in the longer communal confession of Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) is “for the sins which we have committed through negotiations,” where “negotiations” is often translated as “business dealings.” The literal translation is “through giving and taking,” which in modern Hebrew usually colloquially refers to business. Hopefully it is a line that the people saying it really don’t need to say, particularly since that sort of sin is in the category of conduct between people and therefore is explicitly not forgiven on Yom Kippur! But somehow, of all the possible sins that could be committed (and with 613 commandments, there are at least that many ways to err), that makes the cut for the public and verbal confession.
(10/10/13 8:24am)
I used to know how tough I was. Growing up playing a variety of contact sports, practicing martial arts and serving in the military gives you the sense that you know your physical and mental limits. That feeling of pushing yourself as far as you thought you could go and then giving just a bit more is an amazing feeling of accomplishment as well as an affirmation that you can always do more and be more. Going through officer’s course as a chaplain candidate with a Marine drill instructor and serving with people who had been in a variety of combat roles prior to being called to chaplaincy, I was constantly impressed by not only how amazingly tough some of my colleagues were (and are), but also how our Gunnery Sergeant could draw just a bit more out of each of us. I knew I was tough even with people who were much tougher than I am, but that’s not enough.
(09/26/13 8:57am)
Tonight is the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, when the annual cycle of reading the Torah finishes for the year with the end of Deuteronomy and starts again in the beginning of Genesis. It is celebrated in a variety of ways in the many different Jewish communities across the world, but some things remain the same. The Torah is taken out of the Ark, we sing and dance with the Torah, we celebrate the blessing of having completed another annual cycle and that we are once again gifted with a new year to start the reading again. One familiar with the holiday could be present for the holiday anywhere in the world and feel comfortable. While the melodies and length of celebration may differ (the Carelbach Shul in Manhattan, for example, will celebrate until dawn Friday morning and then lead directly into Friday morning services!), there is more than enough commonality for them to not be all that different. That similarity and the weight of tradition mark a key transition in the Jewish calendar as we close the holiday season that began with Rosh Hashanah a few weeks ago. We go from a period of intense celebration and introspection to a time that simply… is.
(09/12/13 7:43am)
If you are ever offered the opportunity to attend an embassy party, take it. Go with some friends and arrive a little early to get a good sense of the event. Not only do they usually offer the best food that particular country has to offer, sometimes even flown in that day for the purpose of you enjoying it, but they are also fantastic places to meet some very interesting people.
(08/29/13 9:21am)
Welcome to a new year and to what I hope already feels like your home! As with any home, a lot has gone into building this one, both literally (in the original sense of the word as opposed to the new usage) and figuratively. You will soon be immersed in the history and traditions of our Duke community, and those who have been here for any length of time are eager to continue passing down the many traditions they have learned from others. This isn’t just about the “Unofficial Graduation Requirements” (you’ll see more of those columns in the Spring and some of them are more than a little risky). This is about what it means to become part of this community and take part in those traditions.
