When thy son shall ask thee in time to come, saying … —Exodus 13:14 The Bible envisions different questions, apparently posed by different sons, all to the same effect: why do we Jews do this, that, or the other thing? From the character of the question, one infers the character of the … [Read more...]
Passover Seder – How Different Is This Night …
It’s Passover time again. Which means it’s time, if you’re Jewish and observe the traditions, for that archaic, baffling, weirdly compelling ceremony called the Seder. For those who don’t know the terminology: the Seder is the ritual meal for Passover eve, performed the first evening of Passover … [Read more...]
Gore Vidal and the UFOs
“Stars fell to earth in a blaze of light, and where they fell, monsters were born, hideous and blind.” —Gore Vidal, Messiah Did Gore Vidal believe in UFOs? That was the question I asked myself, with some excitement, as a teen-age “UFO investigator” reading Vidal’s 1954 novel Messiah. This … [Read more...]
Freud, Jung, Lindbergh – “More Things In Heaven and Earth …”
A friend sends the following comment on the story of Jung and Lindbergh and the UFOs, which I talked about in my last post: “I imagine Jung was very aware that he was conversing with an aviator, not a psychologist, and moreover a person not likely to follow or grasp the approach Jung took to … [Read more...]
The God Who Isn’t and Is
Some thirty years ago, one of my students at UNC complained that I was like all the profs in the Religious Studies Department. "They'll never tell you what they believe about God!" I thought it over and decided he had a point. So I tried to come up with a clear, straightforward answer I could … [Read more...]