Last night I took my eldest daughter to see a newly-discovered comet, C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS), just after sunset. I would not have known about it except I happened to catch a random news bulletin on the radio (random because my car radio is malfunctioning -- a story for another time).
The timing was perfect, since we were coming back from her band practice. According to the news report, one had to look west about 45 minutes after sunset. We chose the Pacific Palisades bluffs, which have a clear view over the ocean from about 200 feet above the beach and Pacific Coast Highway.
We could not have anticipated the beauty of the setting -- nor what happened next. My daughter exclaimed: "There's neon in the water!" And sure enough, when the waves crashed, they were bioluminescent. That's rare enough -- the last time we saw that here was almost five years ago -- but with a comet!
The images I managed to capture on my iPhone were incredible. Interestingly, the comet was discovered by astronomers in China and South Africa, and I've actually been to the telescope in South Africa. It's near a remote town in the Karoo desert called Sutherland, a place spectacular in its stark beauty.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
Topics:
- The state of the economy
- The fight against crime
- The midterm election fight
- The struggle for peace between Russia and Ukraine
- The airstrike on the Venezuelan drug cartel
- The attempt to sink Kennedy
- The war in Gaza
- The case against Harvard
- The Trump presidency
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...
