Adventures in Judaism

I have, over the past I-don't-know-how-many years, had several people try to explain the concepts of "white privilege" and "institutional racism" to me, and I must confess that for most of that time, until quite recently really, the best I could manage was to nod my head politely and pretend to understand. The idea, in case it hasn't been explained to you on multiple occasions, is that (a) even though it is no longer okay in most circles for a "white" person to be openly derogatory toward people of other "races" (I put words about race in quotes here because race is a vague and socially-constructed idea at best, but because we don’t really have better words for the ideas behind them) or ethnicities (or at least it hadn't been okay before the rise of "white nationalism" and the "alt right" during Trump's run for the White House), and (b) even though there may be quite a number of "white" people (...

Everyone seems to like John Lennon's wistful ballad "Imagine". I admire a lot of its sentiments, but I always flinch at the words "imagine no religion", which equate the entire enterprise of religion with war and prejudice and the rest of the awful things Lennon is imagining a world without. A friend of mine from Seminary who has gotten rather soured on religion lately echoed on Facebook this morning the sentiments of writer Dan Brown that " the world will be just fine without religion and that it is heading that way quickly. ". I disagree with the idea that the world would be better (or even "just fine") without religion. You see, the woman I call my "adoptive grandmother" died recently. And because of my religion, I had a few pre-built ways to cope with this. Now, before you jump to conclusions, I do not  mean that I had a canned set of handy beliefs about the afterlife that made it possible for me to say "she is oka...