Petty, please

 I used to be good at some stuff. In fact, there are probably things that I'm still good at. I taught myself to juggle and I'm pretty OK at that. I play a few instruments, some better than others. And though I never god "great" at any, there are some that I actually became reasonable at. I can do some basic cooking and baking (and eating...) and have a mind made for remembering trivia. I sometimes can generate Torah thoughts, and I can do basic math without a calculator. Sometimes, I even get the answer.

But there is always someone better.

I recall watching Dwight Gooden pitch for the Mets right around the time that I saw barely-teens being called over the hill as they competed in Olympic gymnastics. Yup. Better, younger and even better. And even now, I watch videos on the interwebz showcasing people who play musical instruments, write comedy bits, bake cakes, and change lightbulbs, all better than I ever could hope to. Part of me wants to yell "that's not fair" and stamp my feet and hold my breath until I turn blue. But I'm sure that there is someone who could do that better than I could anyway.

There will always be someone better, or someone aiming to be better. Someone working harder because he's number two and you can't keep a good cliché down. So if you think you're the tops, then watch out because there's a new tower of Pisa gunning for you. And we are all, therefore, tempted to live our lives running race after race, looking over our shoulders or at the back of the person in front of us, competing for some phantom of fame and fortune (alliteration is a strength of mine). We end up feeling a combination of jealous and resentful of anyone better and angry and afraid of anyone on our heels.

You want to know what the 9th of Av means to me? It means that we, as a people are so focused on the getting and having, and not as much on the being. It means that there was baseless hatred in the temple days -- what is baseless hatred? It is that same petty jealousy and resentment that drives us today to knock each other down in an effort to get ahead. The Ethics of the Fathers teaches that someone is rich if he is happy with what he has. But what is that "richness"? Are we really supposed to be measuring our success by richness?

No. In Tanach there are plenty examples of the "rich" person being portrayed negatively (just look up עשיר in a concordance...there's a lot). So why would being happy with what I have make me rich if being rich is a bad thing? Well, the Ethics of the Fathers clarifies by citing evidence for its claim of happiness -- it points out that we should equate עשיר (rich) with אשר (happiness). Think about the word as used in Psalms (ashrei, happy are they). When that word is used, it is in the context of happiness spiritually. 

Take a look at that selection from Ethics (chapt 4, mishna 1) -- Ben Zoma establishes the definition of 4 words, but they aren't random, nor is their order capricious: wise, strong, rich, honored.

Ben Zoma lived in the first and second centuries CE, so right after the destruction of the second temple. I believe that he was giving his understanding of what happened so that we could reverse the loss and establish a new temple. He starts by saying that we need not to be jealous of others, and see every encounter as an opportunity for growth and improvement. Who is wise? One who learns from others. I shouldn't get jealous -- I should see how I can get better, or at least understand better by watching others. Who is strong? Not one who defeats enemies or knocks down his opponents, but one who can conquer his own impulse to circle the wagons and resent others. It is difficult to accept that others are better but instead of lashing out, we have to accept that the world is what it is. Then we can become rich, because we can learn to be happy with what we have. And what do we have? Once we see learning as paramount and can conquer our evil inclination, we can see clearly that we have a connection to the divine. And how can you be any richer than that. After all that, we can see each other person as worthy of our respect because each person is struggling to be the best version of him or herself and we need to recognize that struggle. When we honor others, then we are deserving of being honored.

I may only be good at things, but I'm sure I'm better than others. Do I want them to resent me? Do I want them to try and knock me off my relative podium to make them feel better? If they can see that I accept that there is always room for growth and I don't begrudge anyone else his or her success, then maybe that will be passed along, and others will respect my struggles and decisions.

If we want to rebuild the temple, we need to be wise' we need to be strong; we need to be full of the richness of life, and we need to respect others.

Ben Zoma laid out that path for us. So watch those videos and be impressed. Clap for the person who gets the question right when you got it wrong. Accept that you are who you are and each of us is a link in a very special chain - we are not competitors but teammates. Give respect instead of demanding it from others. Then we might be on the path to redemption.

Have a meaningful fast.

John Wick is NOT a documentary

 I apologize to anyone who has heard me opine on the following topic but I feel it needs to be written down for the wider world.

I have begun to believe that the John Wick movie is NOT a documentary. This is not because I don't believe that our society is a pastiche of assassins, tied together by a network of old computers, pagers, gold coins, pierced lips and deadly pencils. My realization was inspired by an experience I had.

Recently I gave blood. In a John Wick universe, this is a very important practice because it seems that people are often bleeding. After I gave blood I ran some errands and then came home and decided to take a nap. So far, so alive. Julie came home a little later and said that one fo the bottles I bought was leaking. So I jumped up from the couch, ran over to the bottle, crouched down to inspect and then stood up again, all way too quickly. Now, maybe it was because I had given blood. Maybe it is because I am on medicine which gives me very low blood pressure. maybe it was because I hadn't slept more than 3 hours the night before. Heck, maybe it was because I was smoking crack. I dunno. A lot of people were yelling stuff.

But the bottom line is that I passed out. I could feel it happening and I recall checking the screen door to make sure it was seculrely closed so I could lean against it as I fell. It wasn't. And boom goes the Dan-o-mite. With Julie's encouragement and help I crawled my way to the sofa and climbed aboard. Though I had not hit my head, I was not without booboos. And here is where I started to doubt the veracity of the events in the John Wick movie.

In the John Wick movies, characters get thrown from cars, pushed down flights of stairs, and shot repeatedly (and that's all done before the conflicts develop). People beat each other with books, get bitten by dogs and engage in martial arts fights in which they end up on the floor and then they (get this) GET BACK UP (all without the help of Julie). And don't tell me it is because John Wick is a young man so he can do things I can't. John Wick has got to be at least in his forties and by the time I was in my forties, the snaps, crackle and pops of my joints made for a joyful chorus, punctuated by the chants of "ouch" and "oy" which framed the music of my bones.

I passed out briefly because my body decided that standing was too difficult and I have scrapes and bruises to show for it. My nemeses were gravity and his henchman "the ground" and I'm still feeling the effects 2 weeks later. Bruises have turned a series of fashion colors and scabs cover my shin. The union is unhappy but them's the breaks. How is it that someone in that John Wick universe can be stabbed, fight back and incapacitate a room full of baddies, then stitch himself up and go out for a rousing game of pin the bullet on the villain, a game held somewhere in the Alps, which he climbs himself.

So I'm going to have to call BS on the John Wick documentary. Stuff like that can't really happen. Also, no one ever goes to the bathroom.

Bite me, Nostradamus

 I have been working on being psychic and I have come to terms with the fact that being psychic, as a skill, is not something I will successfully develop. So instead, I have decided to creating the air of psychic by exploiting statistics and circumstances. Now, to be psychic, I am specifically talking (for the sake of this silliness) about foretelling the future. Some people, using inferences and technology, get paid to tell the future on the daily (weathermen) but if they are anything short of 100% correct we kick and scream and we don't call their forecasts "predictions". Weathermen are not psychic. Also, there are near certainties in our world (the sun will rise tomorrow) so "predicting" those is not a mark of a psychic, and the one time the sun doesn't rise, anyone who predicted that won't really be in a position to gloat.

So here's my plan. Baseball.

As of today, the Mets have played 85 games and Mr. Pete Alonso has, in the 77 games he has been in, had 286 at bats and has hit 25 home runs. Let's assume that from the beginning of the season, I made it a practice, before every at bat, to say with confidence "Pete will hit a home run right now!" I would have been right a touch under 10% of the time. In terms of predictions, being right 10% of the time isn't horrible. But it isn't great.

Add this in, though -- I make sure, for each game, to be in a different place with different people. That means that in 77 games, 77 different groups of people would have heard me make a singular prediction about each at bat. Let's say that Alonso averages 4 at bats (I can't work with 3.714285714). Also, he has had only 1 multi-home run game.(April 5 I think) which means that he has homered in 24 separate games out of the 77 he has been in.

So back to my prediction. In 53 game situations, I will pull a goose egg and those 53 discrete groups of people will see me as a non-psychic. But 24 groups will see me as 25% of a psychic (1 home run in 4 at bats) which is better than 10%. Better than that, if I reduce my prediction to "Pete will hit a home run in this game" then 24 groups will see me as 100% a psychic while 53 groups will see me as a non-psychic. I think this means that my psychic-rating among the populace would be 31%. Of course, if I predicted in each case "Pete WON'T hit a home run in this at bat/game" my rating would climb substantially.

I might just stick to "the Mets are gonna lose" because then I'd be running over 54%.

College

 Recent news inspires me to have a variety of opinions. Film at eleven. The film will be unrelated to my opinions, but if you are looking to watch something at 11, you can watch a film.

I received a college education. I did so because of my parents, and that is a truth on 2 distinct levels:

1. I got in to the school I attended because they are alums

2. They paid -- and while I worked multiple jobs, what I earned did not make a real dent in the total tuition.

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Item the first causes me no end of consternation. The recent move by the court to abolish race-based admissions policies seems reasonable to me (especially as I attended a university created to give opportunity to those who were excluded from other schools because of religion). But that's because I don't see college as an inherent right, nor do I see attending particular colleges as an extension of that right. College attendance is a privilege, and yes, this privilege has been available to only a small section of the population for a long time, and this section has developed, historically, along mostly racial lines. And that's wrong. But do we solve that by flipping the script and creating admission with a preference for those in a disadvantaged group in order to ensure representation by a diverse population? All that does is even the disadvantage, not create equity. Now the group which has gotten the breaks in the past suffers so that it knows how it feels to be passed over because of race. Is that a good thing? Does that advance society? I don't think so.

College admissions has become more and more problematic for a while now and it isn't because of race -- it is because we have stopped valuing college as a domain for the educational elite. In a society that wants everyone to be the same, we have turned college into High School+, an option for everyone because everyone wants to get ahead of everyone else. But at the same time, we are stuck with a system that rewards attendance at "elite" schools so everyone jockeys for a spot in the most desirable colleges. Let's all be equally special, we say! Otherwise, the system only reinforces itself by rewarding that same small segment of the population.

Then, and we can blame the pandemic or other social forces, colleges stop relying on standardized tests so the ability to compare the academic prowess of diverse applicants is cut off at the knees. You can't trust local grading policies, schools have different levels of rigor in their separate curricula, students can get help writing essays and recommendations create a scenario in which 75% of a school population is in the top 10% of their class. In other words, there is no way to compare students and ensure that there is a minimum academic competency when assessing applicants. The idea of academics was already in jeopardy because of grade inflation and perceived testing biases, but if we use non-academics as metrics (read: race) and are driven by a need to create a diverse population, instead of a capable population, then the intellectual potential is no longer the driving force at all. Eliminate the numbers AND eliminate the race, and what do you have by which to judge applicants? Here's an answer and an disquieting one: use what the NY Times wrote about on July 2, "Adversity Scores." Admit students based on how much hardship they have suffered through and by how much they have overcome. That should ensure that those who are at more disadvantage have a better chance of getting in to school -- voila, racial equity supposedly. But what population will you end up with? Will it be fully diverse if entire sections of the population have not been at a disadvantage? Is being rejected because of a comfortable life going to be the new disadvantage? What suffering will count? Splinters? Divorced parents? Not having the newest phone? And can we then guarantee academic success to a student body whose presence is less a function of educational experience? Aren't we setting them up for failure, or just demanding that schools attenutate their content and standards to as to make the diploma a foregone conclusion?

College is supposed to be advanced education -- learning. It should be about helpng students gain specialized training and/or more complex and critical thinking skills. And no, I don't know the best way to determine who will succeed or not, or who will end up being more capable, but the answer isn't "how much you suffered." Here is where I get into the first point I laid out above -- I got in to a school when my grades should not have gotten me in. I benefited unfairly. I did, however, succeed academically and graduated with honors. So maybe this just proves that the academic standards for admissions are flawed. Maybe. Or maybe, that the actual college experience is over rated if someone below the expected level of smarts was able to graduate. Maybe. But I think we can agree that there has to be some minimum standard (and that I met that minimum). Should we eliminate alumni preference? Yes. Would that have meant that I would not have gone to college? NO. I would have to apply to other schools that had a different standard and that might have made me sad, but not every student is cut out for every college. There are MANY colleges in this country (nearly 4,000) with a variety of standards and expectations (and costs). Maybe I don't want to go to one particular school but if that's my option, I have to decide how much I want a degree. I shouldn't get preference to a school out of my SAT score's reach for a non-academic reason. So yes, my admission is part of the problem, as is my relative success in school.

Should we say that suffering gains admission and schools shouldn't be working towards flushing low achievers out. In that case, the notion of elite schools disappears because my suffering is the same no matter what school I apply to so I deserve admission to any school that has a minimum suffering coefficient that I satisfy. What defines the Harvards as Harvards if not the intellectual performance and capacity of its applicants? How do we make a school selective if not by demonstrated academic skills? "Extra-curriculars"? Do we reward oboe players over violinists because of the scarcity of oboe players? Does climbing Mt. Everest at age 7 mean more than joining an ambulance corps? How many teams, clubs, groups or organizations (or invent) must I join to prove that I'm Harvard material? And do those memberships and experiences matter if they are borne of fiscal advantage? Maybe admission should be to students who were not in ANY club or group or never went to camp because that shows more suffering. Maybe, having backpacked through Europe would count against an applicant, and only those who held the right kind of after school job should be admitted.

We are destroying the educational system in the quest for some egalitarian vision of society. I don't believe all people are created equal. I want my lawyer to be the best and brightest (that I can afford), I want my policemen to be physically able to do their job, and moreso than the criminals. I want all the  service providers I rely on to be the result of the most rigorous training and equipped with the sharpest of minds and bodies. Maybe my wish for excellence is contibuting to the problem because I am valuing skills and knowledge bases that are outmoded but when I'm on the operating table, I would like to think that my surgeon is brilliant, not that he succeeded in group work, can use his phone effectively and overcame a broken household.

Now for the second issue -- the government has tried to eliminate (or reduce, or something) student debt. Students now owe (collectively) some huge amount of money to the government for grants and loans given for higher education. Of course, if the debts are forgiven then the government will either have less money to give in loans in the future, or taxes will rise to make up the shortfall so the government can continue to hand out money with no expectation of return. Or we can just ask the mint to print more money -- that should solve everything.

I graduated without debt. That happened because my parents found a way to pay for my education. They sent me to a school that cost a lot of money but they shouldered that because they saw value in it. I sent my kids to significantly cheaper options (we actually forbade our kids from applying to expensive schools because we didn't want to go in to debt for the diploma). Other people made other value calculations and now are stuck in a financial hole. I feel sorry for their predicament but the answer is not to ignore that they owe money. I know that some teachers are able to work off debt by getting jobs through Teach For America -- public service loan forgiveness ensures that teh teachers get a paycheck, underserved areas get trained teachers and loans don't have to be prepaid. Could a model like that be exported to other fields? Some, maybe yes. Some, probably not. But a blanket reduction or forgiveness as a gift from the government, while it sounds nice, is not reflective fo the real world (which education is supposed to be preparing people for). Banks aren't going to ignore loans just because so people should get into the habit of not borrowing or spending more than they can pay back. And if we forgive loans, what does that say to the people who suffered in order to pay their loans, or who make sacrifices so as not to have to take loans? Or the people who intend to take loans tomorrow? We create an advantaged class which just ends up hurting anyone not in that class. Is this an overly simplistic restatement of the situation? Maybe, but the plethora of complex questions and challenges indicates that the issues run far deeper than a simple solution affords.

There ARE many schools. Some are subsidized and some aren't. Some are expensive and some aren't. Some offer more perks, bells and whistles than others, but the same can be said about cars. Not everyone can drive a luxury car, or even a new car. Some have to borrow money to afford an old, used car. But they have to pay that money back. Does that mean that someone might not get the car, or house, or meal that he would like? Yup. Some people take the subway or bus, and eat a meal of pasta at home. And yes, before you say it, I, again, was of the advantaged class in that I graduated without debt. So I'm speaking out of privilege and I'm part of the problem. Yada yada. That doesn't change the facts or make what I have presented as concerns any less valid. We want to create a fiscally even playing field by changing rules in the middle of the game and ignoring the impact that the new rules have on society as a whole.

Maybe society is broken. Maybe a system of capitalism which rewards people who already have with even more is patently and inherently unfair. Maybe having a socio-economic schema in place which allows for the incredible stratification which we have to develop is a recipe for inevitable inequity. Maybe an educational system which perpetuates the deep divide caused by history and the economic superstructure will keep us in a spiral of oppression and failure. Maybe we have blossomed into a society that wants contradictory things (let's all be tolerant of everything except intolerance). But maybe you can't fix cancer with a Band-Aid.

The Cow and the Rock

 Rashi, in his commentary on the Chumash, often asks why certain sections were placed near each other if, as is often taught, the text need not be presented in strictly chronological order. Once the timeline is not the defining feature, there must be a reason why certain stories, laws or events are related in the text when and where they are. One such question is presented in the beginning of Parshat Chukat. The laws surrounding the Red Heifer are followed immediately by the story of Miriam's death. Rashi asks why they are contiguous and explains that it shows the power of the death of a righteous person to help bring about atonement in a way similar to that of the ashes of the heifer.

I'm a big fan of Rashi and I don't totally object to his point but I think he misses a bigger picture here. No offense Rashi.

The story of Miriam's death can't be taken in a vacuum. The text says nothing about atonement and the story, in fact, has significantly larger implications -- what Rashi should be discussing is the proximity of the Red Heifer laws to the events surrounding the consequences of Miriam's death which are the continuation of that section of the parsha -- Moshe's hitting a rock.

So first, let's set up the situation. The people have been in the desert for 40 or so years and are ready to take on the task of moving in to the land of K'na'an and worshipping God there, in the place that he has chosen. They have been raised from the servitude of Egypt and are now on a lofty height (thus the text has them say that God "lifted them up"). They know that their state of ritual purity is incredibly important and are ready to be pure and follow God's will (yes, I know that this overly charitable presentation of their collective personality ignores certain problems but hey, I'm just a guy with an idea). They/we are told of an important law which they learned 38 years earlier (according to notes in the Stone edition Chumash) - that of the Red Heifer. An essential component of this and other purification rituals is water but with the death of Miriam, the guaranteed source of water disappears. The people are disconsolate and complain -- the Ha'amek Davar says that this was Hashem's way of getting them ready to deal with normal and natural cycles of the year -- (and, again, being charitable, I would assume not that they lack faith and think they will simply die but that they fear they would die in a state of ritual impurity as all the functions of purification dependent on water would be impossible).

[I'm not expert in the Chatam Sofer, but he seems to be saying that not having water is equated to not having Torah and the fruits listed in Bamidbar 20:5 relate to specific commandments that are impossible to fulfill in the desert. And if I'm misunderstanding, well then, I'm gonna stick with my reading anyway.]

Now, Moshe had a little experience making water out of nothing at all. In Sh'mot 17:5-7, Hashem tells Moshe to hit a rock and bring forth water. There is no particular explanation in the text as to why hitting is the method chosen -- God says hit, you hit. The Malbim makes the case that, had the people been deserving, talking to the rock would have sufficed but they weren't on that level yet. That subtlety does not appear to have been given to Moshe, or else he would have known that Hashem's telling him to speak to the rock in Chukat was a compliment to the people, that they are on that higher level. So Moshe, without knowing a particular reason, does what God commands and hits the rock, and he does so in public. It makes no sense (the staff had been used to change the water of the Nile and Moshe lifted it up to bring about the splitting of the Reed Sea) but God says so, so that's what you do. You do it in public and you show that God's command is powerful. This will be really important in a moment -- stick with me.

So in Chukat, Moshe is told to speak to the rock. No reason why speaking is now the method, but that's God's will. According to some commentators, Moshe didn't know which rock was the right one so he spoke to a few and nothing happened so he fell back on the tried and true method of hitting. So now, what do the people see? They see Moshe second guessing God's command! Hashem's telling Moshe to speak or hit is a prime example of a chok -- a law that has no particular stated explanation or reason and might not even make logical sense. But we do it because God said so. So when Moshe hits the rock instead of speaking to it, he is undermining the authority of the chok, questioning it and replacing it with his own logical reasoning.

Why is this story told here? Because the driving point of the beginning, the Red Heifer section is that power and primacy of Hashem's laws even when we don't know the reason. By using his personal thinking and hitting the rock, Moshe undercuts the power of that chok, and by extension, every chok, as typified by the quintessential chok, that of the Red Heifer. When Hashem castigates Moshe and Aharon it is for not believing (accepting without evidence) and therefore not sanctifying Hashem in public. When they hit the rock all those years ago, they WERE sanctifying Hashem by doing what he told them to, in public. But now, in public, they tried to out think Hashem and rely on experiential evidence instead of doing what the current chok demanded. Why then, Hashem is saying, would anyone of the people listen to any chok, if the leaders don't? What's the point of teaching the Red Heifer laws and expecting compliance if the leadership teaches that it is ok to use personal and human reasoning to decide what laws mean and when we have to follow them?

This wasn't about water, but about a missed opportunity to do what Hashem commanded. The series of chukim are equivalent -- we are supposed to do them without questioning and trying to figure them out. When Moshe hit the rock, he set the faith of the people back and this compromises the value and authority of all Torah laws.

At least that's my take on why the stories are related next to each other.