August 2009 Archives

Almost immediately upon her arrival in Israel, Madonna traveled to the Old City in Jerusalem and headed directly to the Kotel, the Western Wall. Perhaps the most significant thing is that the grand mistress of all things PR-related did not say a word to the hordes of reporters gathered around her. She prayed for about thirty minutes and simply departed.

Whatever one thinks of Madonna, her attachment to Kabbalah, or whether any of this merits attention, her visit modeled the kind of simply spirituality which all people should be able to respect. For thirty minutes, this mega-star wanted what we all want - a few minutes of peaceful prayer time in one of the worlds holiest places. I hope that she got it. I hope that we all do.

The truth is we don't need a wall for that to happen.

What if you were told seventy years ago that Hitler was planning a holocaust that would include the deaths of 6 million Jews, simply because they were Jewish? If it was within your power to keep that from happening, would you? The answer may seem obvious, but 6 million more will die in the coming year, and we can help keep it from happening. A holocaust, of sorts, is happening and it is within our power to do something about it. The question is will we do so.

According to study released by the American Cancer Society, 6 million people next year from cancer, heart disease, emphysema and a range of other smoking-related ills.

"Tobacco accounts for one out of every 10 deaths worldwide and will claim 5.5 million lives this year alone," the report said. If current trends hold, by 2020, the number will grow to an estimated 7 million and top 8 million by 2030.

When I opened this morning's New York Times, the first words I read were those splashed across the front page: Senator Kennedy, Battle Lost, Is Hailed as a Leader. How wrong they were to use those words.

Neither Senator Kennedy, nor anyone else who battles a terminal illness, extends their lives as much as possible and finds what they consider to be a good ending, can ever be thought of as losing the battle. In fact, they are all winners in the truest sense of the word.

Having already been diagnosed with a fatal disease, the battle is for a decent life and a decent end to it, not a victory over the illness - that would be impossible and therefore not what was ever being sought. Yes, this is a personal issue for me as I have had a rare form of cancer called Carcinoid. It was successfully addressed with surgery four years ago, and thankfully has not recurred. The longer I go with no sign of disease the better off I am, at least from a statistical standpoint. But were I not so fortunate, blessed, lucky (take your pick), the battle would be to make the best possible use of the time I was given.

Hailed by many as perhaps the greatest senator of the 20th century, Ted Kennedy died today following a 15 month long battle with brain cancer. I don't know if he really was the greatest senator, but he was a model of how to combine passionately held views and genuine civility toward even those with whom he passionately disagreed.

In a world of increasingly mean-spirited politics and polarizing politicians who sit on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Kennedy's death is a loss for all Americans. His combination of passionate liberalism and respectful engagement with even the most strident conservatives was rooted in an approach to life about which he spoke often and which can be traced to ancient biblical and rabbinic teachings of which I am reminded on the morning of the senator's death.

Ted Kennedy regularly referred to the fact that "the work is unfinished". Perhaps that sense of unfinished business was connected to the legacy of his two brother's lives which were ended by assassin's bullets. Or perhaps it was connected to the grand image of the good society which he sought to create, but was never fully attained. Perhaps it was something else altogether. But whatever it was, Kennedy's sense that there was always more to do, allowed him to accept those with whom he disagreed and to make pragmatic deals with those same people.

Since the work to be done would always be unfinished, Senator Kennedy never worried about ideological purity or being compromised by making compromises, as long as things were moving in a direction with which he could live. That kind of pragmatism is anything but soulless. It is actually animated by the pursuit of really big goals, goals which are always pursued and never fully attained. And in that, whether he knew it or not, Mr. Kennedy's politics were rooted in the Bible and the words of the rabbis of the Mishnah.

Despite denials by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, stories continue to circulate that Bernie Madoff has cancer. More than a few people have suggested that he is getting what "he deserves" and that this is his "punishment from God". Of course, if that is true, then we would also have to accept that all those people whose lives were turned inside out and upside down by Madoff's thievery were also "getting what they deserved from God".

If there is a God who controls the details of our lives at every level of specificity (a possibility I readily accept) and whose actions are immediately understandable and just from a human perspective (a position which I find preposterous), then Maddoff's alleged cancer and the suffering that he caused are all ascribable to divine will. If however, we don't accept the entire package as being from God, we dare not invoke God, or God's justice, as the way to understand Madoff's possible illness. Doing so would just have us using God as the cover for our own desire to wreck vengeance on Mr. Madoff - an entirely understandable, but equally absurd, understanding of God as nothing more than a projection of our own desire for control.

In fact, if we go down this road of too easily ascribing things to God, one could imagine a new defense against the ugliest crimes, including Bernie Madoff's: "if God didn't want it to happen, then God would have stopped me. The devil didn't make me do it, God did! Blame God, not me."