Not long ago, I got into a political argument with a friend. It was terribly frustrating, as these things generally are, and led me to wonder about how people with seemingly similar values can see things so differently, and about the polarizing, stark division that’s become so rampant, that generally gets labelled left vs. right. …
Last Friday, Jan 31, 2025, Nahum Barnea, not some fringe “influencer,” but the senior columnist in the country’s largest newspaper, wrote an opinion piece echoing something I wrote many posts ago about “no innocent bystanders,” as well as my reaction to the spectacle of the hostages’ return. Here is a translation of the relevant part: …
For some time now, I’ve been feeling like this first half of Yeats’ famous poem perfectly encapsulates where we are as a society: Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony …
This morning I was so pissed off I recorded a rant. First time I’ve ever done something like that, I think. And I continued to be so pissed that I transcribed it and translated it. So it’s not something I outlined ahead of time, and it doesn’t contain all the counterarguments for objections people are …
This is what many Israelis say about Gaza. I’m not going to dispute it, at least not from the direction you might expect. Everyone here is still going through intense processes, seeing things that we didn’t perceive before. My process carries me in the opposite direction of most people. That’s how it usually goes with …
Altar in progress at the Ancestral Healing Intensive in Budapest, May 2024 The last political thing I wrote was not here, but on Facebook, because it was so short – was quite a while ago when I realized that Israel is not fighting to bring the hostages home, but instead of bringing them home. After …
Recently, I heard a religious woman describe how she has more of a collective consciousness than secular people, that for secular people it’s “every man for himself,” or at most for his family. As an example, she said that if she wants to cross a street on Shabbat and a car is just coming, she …
October 7 convinced the majority in Israel that there really is no alternative to “living by our sword” forever, making absolutely sure that we will always be the victors. What idiocy. If there’s one thing the history of this place can teach, it’s that every wall and every empire eventually falls. There is no …
Original post from Nov 7, 2020 We are a fairly brilliant species. I have no doubt that if we direct our efforts correctly, we can find effective and humane solutions (more on that term later) to the climate crisis and the massive extinction of biodiversity taking place. Instead, we direct our collective efforts primarily …
Post from Oct 17, 2020 If there is indeed a broad consensus that “we have broken the Holocene”, as I wrote last week, and that it is truly disastrous, how is it that we are not taking far-reaching steps to fix what we still can? The general assumption is that the main obstacle is …
