My wife and I took the kids to our old neighborhood in Santa Monica this weekend and stayed overnight on Friday evening. A year ago, Santa Monica was devastated by the Black Lives Matter riots. On that fateful May 31, while a "peaceful protest" was happening on a beautiful Sunday afternoon on Ocean Boulevard, rioters and looters fanned out across the downtown area -- just one block inland -- and destroyed stores and vandalized just about everything. The city looked like a war zone for months. Many shops are still empty or boarded up. But with the slow reopening of California and Los Angeles County, life has returned to downtown Santa Monica. Outdoor dining in particular has brought the place back to life. Those restaurants that managed to survive are doing very well, and well-dressed people are enjoying the beach and the whole scene. There are lots of homeless people, far more than before, but Santa Monica manages to prevent them from setting up tents (unlike the city of Los Angeles, which has allowed homeless encampments to line the streets).
As happy as I was to see life returning, something was bothering me the entire day, which only became clear to me as I returned home this evening. When I look back at the past year, so much of what happened was unnecessary. Not just the COVID restrictions, which were way over-the-top, and largely political, but all the protesting and rioting and canceling -- everything.
We didn't just live through a pandemic; we lived through a violent revolution that we're not allowed to identify as such. When Joe Biden emerged -- almost by default -- as the Democratic Party nominee, the left, which hated him and did not believe he could win, decided that it would take matters into its own hands, and they launched violence across the country. The message -- alter echoed by Biden -- was clear: the violence will continue if Trump wins. The Democratic Party apparatchiks did their part by changing the voting rules and using Zuckerberg's money to push turnout and censoring social media and all of that. But the bigger picture was that the left used violence and censorship to take power. The sooner we are honest about this, the sooner we can start to push back against the ongoing efforts to take our freedoms away from us.
This week’s portion launches the great story of Abraham, who is told to leave everything of his life behind — except his immediate family — and to leave for “the Land that I shall show you.”
There’s something interesting in the fact that Abraham is told to leave his father’s house, as if breaking away from his father’s life — but his father, in fact, began the journey, moving from Ur to Haran (in last week’s portion). His father set a positive example — why should Abraham leave him?
Some obvious answers suggest themselves — adulthood, needing to make one’s own choices, his father not going far enough, etc.
But I think there is another answer. Abraham (known for the moment as Abram) needs to establish his own household. This is not just about making one’s own choice, but really about choosing one’s own starting point. It’s starting over.
Sometimes we start over in fundamental ways even if much that surrounds us remains the same. Sometimes the journey we have to ...
The story of Noah is familiar; the details, less so.
Noah is often seen as an ambivalent figure. He was righteous -- but only for his generation. What was his deficiency?
One answer suggests itself: knowing that the world was about to be flooded, he built an Ark for the animals and for his own family -- but did not try to save anyone else or to convince them to repent and change their ways (the prophet Jonah, later, would share that reluctance).
Abraham, later, would set himself apart by arguing with God -- with the Lord Himself! -- against the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, saying that they should be saved if there were enough righteous people to be found (there were not).
Still, Noah was good enough -- and sometimes, that really is sufficient to save the world. We don't need heroes every time -- just ordinary decency.
Hi all -- as I noted last month, I'm going to be closing down my Locals page, at least for tips and subscriptions -- I may keep the page up and the posts as well, but I'm no longer going to be accepting any kind of payment.
Look for cancelation in the very near future. Thank you for your support!
