Understanding's twin light is compassion; in its absence, it is no light at all.

Happy New Toothpaste Tube

Measuring time by hours, days and weeks seems unreliable and devoid of context or meaning and I have come measure the passing of my life by its consumption of commodities - tubes of toothpaste, bottles of shampoo, containers of milk.

In this blur of days, I seek to find meaning in the everyday and look for life’s lessons by transforming daily activities into metaphors for life, living and learning: the soft light of dawn illuminating the morning sky and offering hope and new vistas for the new day. I can see a bit of myself in the squirrel as it darts in front of imminent danger, pauses momentarily to choose rushing forward or desperately retreating (occasionally getting crushed in the process)

The weeks whip around. Monday becomes Wednesday which transforms into Friday and it is the weekend again.

D’var Torah in honor of my father Alvin who died at Age 49 on erev Shabbat Hagadol 37 years ago.

I am intrigued by the term “Yayekra” the name of the book of the bible that we are currently reading. Yayekra means “to call” as in “to summons”. But it can mean to name – to define. For instance after each day of creation God “called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." As we read through the bible those times when God “calls” someone - using the term “Yayekra” are often defining moments.

The first time it is used in this context Adam and Eve have just eaten the forbidden apple:

"But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:9)

Man and woman have defined themselves as creatures who are seduced by and drawn to knowledge. This capacity to know and the desire to pursue knowledge defines us has humans.

Another dramatic moment when the word “Yakerah is used is in the story of the Akedah, “the Binding of Isaac”. As the knife is raised in Abraham’s hand:
"the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"

"Here I am," he replied. (Genesis 22:11)

Abraham has defined himself as someone who is willing to make remarkable sacrifices to his God.

So what about Moses?

The first four times God uses the term Vayekrah to call Moses are very dramatic. The first is when God calls Moses from the burning bush. The next three times occur at Mt. Sinai at the giving of the Ten Commandments. Clearly these are defining moments for Moses and for the Jewish people. But what is so definitional about this time that God called Moses and what is so definitional about this whole book that it is called “Vayekrah”? And, by the way, this is the last time God “Calls” to Moses using the term Vayekrah.

“God called to Moses, speaking to him from the Communion Tent and said: Speak to the Israelites, and tell them the following: When one of you brings a mammal as an offering to God, the sacrifice must be taken from the cattle, sheep or goats.” (Leviticus1:1)

In the book of Vayekrah, the Jewish people and their relationship to God are defined by rituals and by behaviors:

• Sacrifices
• The rites of Yom Kippur
• Keeping Kosher
• Worship
• Observing holidays
  

Thus, it is not only those “wow” moments that define who we are and how we are defined by God but those things that we commit ourselves to do every day – day in and day out.

My father defined himself as many of our fathers did. By getting up every day at 5:30 am to wrestle with the traffic on the Long Island Expressway and spend the day mixing and packaging spices at the family business J. Raphael and Sons. Only after he died did I learn that he never enjoyed his work. He had wanted to be a teacher. He loved history. But his portion was to mix and package spices and he did it every day until he became ill with cancer.

His definitions were those of steadiness, commitment and sacrifice. He defined himself by his unwavering commitment to his family. And for this may his memory be for a blessing

Relativity

Those seeking to understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity should log on to their computer and either copy or download a large file. As the process initiates, a long rectangular bar displays on the screen and, beginning on the left, is gradually filled with green as the download or copy progresses. Often, the time remaining to complete the transfer process is cited below the bar. The progression of remaining time often reads something like this:

1hour 40 minutes

24 minutes

36 minutes

43 minutes

17 minutes

3 weeks, 2 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes

4 minutes

4 score 7 years

12 minutes

42 minutes

47 seconds

7 minutes

14 seconds

File download complete

This is profoundly unhelpful when you are seeking to organize your work flow.

Why do they bother? Perhaps it is a metaphor for life. Just as we feel that some satisfying conclusion to our current crisis is moving toward resolution the anticipated time of completion increases exponentially. Life is like that- you never know what will happen next. Perhaps this is the same for life in the computer world, where clearly, time is a relative matter.

This file will complete downloading in a period of time yet to be determined.

Smoothies

Has anyone else notices that, no matter what flavor you get, all smoothies taste the same? After a long hard week of work and school I took Jake out for smoothies (by the way: $12.41 for a small and a medium smoothie - I could have bought three grand skim lattes for that). He got the Strawberry Surprise and I opted for the Tropic Wonder (without sugar). Other than his being an unhealthy shade of red and mine being a odd off-yellow, they were identical. Next week I'm going to try the old shoe, spinach and fish head smoothie to compare. More to follow.

Bad Banks

I am intrigued by the notion of a “bad bank”. As far as I can understand it (even thinking the word “economics” causes me to descend into a stupor), a “bad banks” is a place to put “bad or toxic assets”. The World Street Journal says: “A good bad bank forces banks to write down their bad assets and cleanse their balance sheets with those made insolvent being recapitalized, nationalized or liquidated by the state.” To begin, this concept provides us with two new wonderful oxymorons to ponder: “Bad asset” and “toxic asset.” I’m not the linguist here, but it occurs to me that if something is bad or toxic it is not an asset. In a disturbing side note, I can’t seem to shake the image of Tim Geithner with a tiara and a wand querying: “Are you a good asset or a bad asset?”

The notion of a “bad bank”, a place to isolate or sequester something to prevent it from doing further damage to the society, is not a new concept. When we have people who are “bad assets”, we send them to prison. When people are toxic, we lock them in isolation wards.

• A quick glance at the Department of Justice website reveals that as of December 31, 2007:
• 2,293,157 prisoners were held in federal or state prisons or in local jails – an increase of 1.5% from year-end 2006, less than the average annual growth of 2.6% from 2000-2006.
• 1,532,817 sentenced prisoners were under state or federal jurisdiction.
• There were an estimated 506 sentenced prisoners per 100,000 U.S. residents – up from 501 year-end 2006.

Clearly, the notion of creating human bad banks for our human bad assets has been less than fully successful and thus I ponder the wisdom of creating a parallel bad universe for our economy. As a reminder, we remain one of the few nations in the civilized world where when people who are really bad assets can, to use the WSJ's language, be “liquidated by the state”.

Like the millions of people held in our prison systems, there is the hope, that these “bad or toxic” assets will ultimately be rehabilitated. American taxpayers will acquire bad assets and we hope that ultimately they will provide some value. In the interim, can we make some value of these bad assets? For instance, can we use bad assets to invest in license plate manufacturing? This, it seems to me, may be an approach to bringing together a new bad and a venerable bad American institution. Can we have the growing hoards of imprisoned white collar criminals, who have used their financial acumen to bilk honest citizens out of billions of dollars, use these toxic funds to invest in developing nations such as Iran and North Korea? Can we use these bad assets to pay a portion of Alex Rodriguez’s $28 million salary? Certainly, he has earned it.

Once Bernard Madoff is in jail, give him these toxic assets. If he can turn them around, and through his perverse wizardry make them into “good assets” he can use the proceeds to pay back the countless non-profit organizations and trusting individuals who he swindled for billions of dollars. Perhaps then, he can repay society a bit and, in exchange, spend slightly less time in eternal hell – which, by the way, is God’s approach to bad assets.

© David Raphael, 2009

Michael Jackson

Has anyone else heard the rumor that, in the wake, of the election of Barack Obama, Michael Jackson is undergoing plastic surgery to become black again?