I became a Bar Mitzvah on June 3^rd, 1967. This was the last day Israel would ever spend under the boundaries of the 1949 armistice agreements. The Six Day War began the next day, the day you had to begin to distinguish “Israel” from “Pre-1967 Israel.” For half a century I have pondered the possible connection between those two events. Not that I think that my Bar Mitzvah in a small Reform synagogue in Queens had any impact on the course of events half a world away, but I have long thought that through this coincidence and synchronicity somehow the world was trying to send me a message, one that I have yet to figure out. read more

I was eighteen in 1972. My life, like that of most 18 year olds was a life of transitions. I was at college, though still living at home, slowly leaving Hashomer Hatzair, which had dominated my life for the previous half dozen years, because I was ambivalent about making Aliyah. (I should have gone, but that is another story.) And then, it happened as the famous phrase goes, “in the early morning hours of June 17^th, ” five burglars were discovered inside Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. The next two years were the happiest political years of my life. I still think June 17^th should be made a national holiday. read more

On Sunday May 14, I opened the door and found, right next to my home delivered newspaper, a beautiful Mother’s Day bouquet of yellow roses and a card from my family.

Every Sunday I open my front door to pick up The New York Times. I read the paper leisurely over what I consider a feast cholesterol breakfast of several kinds of cheeses, an egg-white omelet, toast, fruit and strong coffee.

Today in my dinning room there is a sudden burst of sun through an otherwise cloudy morning and the light streams in with a glow. I am joyous at the sheer gift of bright sunshine that fills the room, the table, greeting cards from friends and kin, the food, and now the flowers of beauty, of care, and connection. read more

They were a bunch of old rich white men, half of whom were slave owners, immensely self-interested, and they created the Electoral College, and the ridiculous provision that every state should have two members in the Senate, so that Wyoming (population 700,000) and California (population 35,000,000) have equal representation. Our so-called Founding Fathers, and I don’t care how many catchy tunes there are in Hamilton, they got a hell of a lot of things wrong. Don’t get me started.

But there are some things they got right. In recent weeks I have been thinking a lot about the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. If there is one idea animating both documents, it is an opposition to tyranny. The Declaration of Independence is all about the tyrannies of King George III; taxation without representative, closing legislative bodies, interfering with commerce, sending armies to crush the rebellion—if you have forgotten the particulars, and you want to celebrate the 4^th of July a bit early, read it again—all leading to the conclusion that “the history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” read more