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Written by David Cowles, Thoughts While Shaving is the official blog of Aletheia Today magazine and explores short, profound thoughts and discoveries about theology, science, philosophy, literature, the arts, society, and prayer. Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! Oct 6, 2025 Tarot “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Me at 75…and at 5 “What’s it like to be a 5 year old version of myself? It’s exactly like being a 75 year old version…because 5 year old me is 75 year old me!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Good God Paul Tillich! “…It makes no difference what direction we look, it’s utter devastation everywhere. Oh, the price we pay to have no God!” Read More Oct 4, 2025 Good God Too “Where once I was judged by the standard of the Decalogue, now I judge the Decalogue by my standards.” Read More Sep 26, 2025 SETI and the Meaning of Life “If we are so far unable to find meaning for our existence, why would we expect meeting ET to change things?” Read More Sep 21, 2025 Nietzsche and the Book of Genesis “What is Value? Does it exist, is it for real? Or is it something we make up to justify our capricious behavior?” Read More Sep 20, 2025 Ovid vs. Plato “Ovid freed us from the collective anonymity of Plato and prepared us for the intensely personal theology of Jesus.” Read More Sep 19, 2025 AI and the Borg Collective “AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables…(but) Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level” Read More Sep 14, 2025 Why the Universe Doesn’t Fall Apart “What holds everything together? How is it that Universe is a universe, that it has an identity?” Read More Sep 14, 2025 Chaos and Causality “Accomplish as much as possible, experience as intensely as possible, but change as little as possible!” Read More Sep 14, 2025 The Hunt for Hidden Variables “Perhaps social scientists will be first to identify the elusive factors that drive unexpected results.” Read More Sep 11, 2025 Is the Universe an LLM? “We had to invent AI, specifically LLMs, before we could understand NI (Natural Intelligence)…i.e. how Universe works.” Read More Thoughts While Shaving 33 Page 1

< Back Tarot David Cowles Oct 6, 2025 “Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please!” It is hard to pick up a deck of Tarot cards without triggering associations with ordinary playing cards : the time you won big at the Black Jack tables in Vegas, the time you lost a game of strip poker at camp. Playing Cards are such a fundamental part of our culture that it is hard to imagine a time without them. And yet they were not introduced to Europe (from the Islamic world) until late in the 14th century CE. 100 years later, the first Tarot decks emerged, like seemingly everything else, in Northern Italian city states like Milan. Disney Movie : DaVinci, Machiavelli, and Savonarola are playing cards with members of the Medici family in Florence; the stakes: Middle Earth (Europe). Spoiler alert : Savonarola lost more than his clothes! Tarot modified the original deck to give it a distinctly European and Medieval character and to open up the possibility of applications beyond mere games of chance. Sidebar : History is fraught with ‘false flags’. Take the Renaissance, for example. Supposedly, it marked the rebirth of classical culture; actually, it killed it. Tarot has a similar biography. It turned Medieval Culture into a 15th century version of a Marvel comic and it confined Christendom to a pavilion at ‘Epcot Firenze’. All this 100 years before Cervantes’ great ‘Requiem for the Moyen Age’, Don Quixote . So ‘this is the way the Middle Ages end, not with a bang but a snicker ’. But there’s much more to Tarot than this! A standard Tarot deck consists of 78 cards. They are usually divided into 56 cards of the Lesser Arcana and 22 cards of the Major Arcana. Cards in the Lesser Arcana vaguely resemble the playing cards we inherited from Islam, the cards we knew and used to love…until that last trip to Atlantic City. They’re grouped in 4 suits (Swords, Wands, Cups, and Pentacles) of 14 cards each (vs. our standard 13), including 10 cards in each suit with associated numerical values (A – 10) and 4 additional cards in each suit corresponding to personages in a paradigmatic medieval court (King, Queen, Knight and Page). Completing the Tarot Deck are the 22 ordered cards of the Major Arcana, forming what’s called the Fool’s Journey – a metaphorical path of physical and spiritual development. Two analogies spring to mind: the Via Crucis or Stations of the Cross and El Camino de Santiago , aka The Way. We might view Tarot as ‘polite penance’ or ‘posh pilgrimage’ – spiritual practices well suited to the less devout and more affluent leisured classes emerging in Renaissance Italy. And speaking of journeys through life’s stages, fast forward to the mid-20 th century and meet Erik Erikson, a psychologist who divided the human life cycle into 8 stages, beginning with Infancy (0 to 18 months) and running through Seniority (Age 65+). Erikson associates each stage with a specific emotional dichotomy and a particular developmental milestone. For example, for children ages 6 through 11, the emotional challenge is Industry vs. Inferiority and the milestone is Competence . But back to Tarot: the very first card in the Major Arcana is a tipoff that we’re not in Vegas any more. The card is numbered 0 (rather than 1) and the ideogram on the card is known as The Fool – not the most auspicious way to begin a journey… or is it? My reading of the Major Arcana is that they divide life’s course into 4 rather than Erikson’s 8 stages with every journey beginning at the same spot, Ground Zero , i.e. with The Fool (#0), i.e. ‘everyman’ (sic). This is not King Lear’s Fool. This is you and me and every other sentient being in our own personal state of nature – each of us, fresh out of the womb, experiencing the world with no pre-conceived categories to guide us. The first stage takes us through puberty, and it consists entirely of our introduction to the category of the Other, i.e. other people. In our initial encounters, the Other assumes the forms of Magician and High Priestess, emphasizing the Transcendence of the Other in the experience of a newborn. Sidebar : There’s a world, there’s me, and now there’s another ‘me’ who is not me ? One of my favorite games with < 1 y.o. grandchildren is to show them their image in a mirror and watch them trying to figure out what’s happening. Of course, we are all surrounded by mirror images of ourselves 24/7, no reflective surface required. 20+ cards later this still seems magical to me! Stage One ends when we encounter the Other as our peer partner in a relationship of romantic Love. In between we meet the Other in more secular guises: Empress (mom), Emperor (dad), Hierophant (teacher, guru, mentor). Stage Two corresponds to adolescence. It poses three challenges: Mobility (Chariot), Strength, and Interiority (Hermit). Before puberty, we are weak, we rely on others for our movements, and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. With adolescence we need to assume responsibility for our own actions (Chariot), develop a quiet self-confidence (Strength), and experience the beginnings of an inner life (Hermit). With adulthood, we enter Stage Three, the realm of Industry, Commerce and Procreation. Like the Christmas elf, we place our inner Hermit on the shelf. We are immersed, if not submerged, in the realm of Chance (Wheel of Fortune), Responsibility (Justice), Consequence (Hanged Man) and Mortality (Death)! Finally, we’re ready for Stage Four, the atemporal Eschaton (Parousia, Apocalypse, Eternity). Stage Four is reminiscent of the Tibetan and Egyptian Books of the Dead . It consists of milestones ‘on the silk road’ from Immanence to Transcendence. Step one, let go of our attachments (Temperance); step two, confront evil (Devil); step three, overcome pride (Tower, Babel?); step four, reject Narcissism (Star); step five, smash idols (Moon). In truth, these 5 steps are all forms of iconoclasm. We have ‘misplaced concreteness’ (Whitehead), mistaking things that are immanent for Transcendence. With step six, we embrace sensuality and joy (Sun), a foretaste of the Transcendent. At step seven, we pass judgment on ourselves and our world and we are ready to let ourselves be judged by others in turn (Judgment). The final card in the deck (World) completes stage four; but it is also the climax of the entire journey. And what a journey! We all start off as the Fool - tiny, defenseless, and bald (no hair, Hawking) - a quantum of being. Ideally at least, we all end up with the same reward, i.e. The World. Not too shabby! Sidebar : The Old Testament Book of Job outlines a similar trajectory. Job is living a successful and virtuous life (Immanent), but he loses everything and is brought back to the state of nature (#0). He is Fool-again ( a la Joyce) – so ‘foolish’ in fact that he dares to confront God (Transcendent) face to face, judging and submitting himself to judgment (#20). As a result, he inherits the World (#21). Orthodox Christianity has for the most part taken a dim view of Tarot. At worst, it is ‘magic, demonic, and wicked’; at best it is a dangerous but frivolous distraction. Even so, the climax of the Fool’s Journey must have come as a bit of a shock: the final reward is not Paradise (Heaven) but the World. On the one hand, the Book of Revelation does speak of a New Jerusalem, so there is room for a new World in orthodox eschatology. However, Tarot’s utter lack of any reference to Heaven, or to Hell for that matter, must have been disconcerting to some. We cannot resist the temptation to see this aspect of Tarot as an omen. Machiavelli is about to turn Christian ethics upside down (‘ends justify means’). Out of Machiavelli’s head will spring the full bouquet of isms characteristic of the our Enlightenment era: Capitalism (Smith), liberalism (Locke), utilitarianism (Mill). socialism (Bentham), communism (Marx), pragmatism (James), fascism (Mussolini), secularism, and moral relativism. Of course, pockets of resistance persist: Existentialism (Sartre), Organism (Whitehead), and Hasidism (Buber) to name just three; but there is no denying that Mechanism ( La Technique – Ellul) is the dominant Spirit of this Age. But to blame that on Tarot is a bridge too far. At most, Tarot is a sign and harbinger of things to come. That said, we can embrace the profound human insight and the ultimately optimistic eschatology of Tarot without sacrificing any Judeo-Christian principles in the process. In fact, Tarot can be seen as a paradigm of Judeo-Christian spirituality. So deal me in…please! *** Image: Agnes Pelton — Awakening (Memory of Father (1943 Agnes Pelton’s Awakening (Memory of Father) (1943) is a luminous abstraction expressing a mystical experience of loss and transcendence. Soft radiating light rises from a central form, suggesting the soul’s ascent and a bridge between earthly grief and spiritual renewal. The painting embodies Pelton’s vision of awakening consciousness—where personal memory transforms into a universal, serene illumination. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The MIT School of Theology? David Cowles Apr 20, 2025 “Structure, logic, and potentiality prior to space and time… How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God?” It is a persistent theme at Aletheia Today : tomorrow’s leading Schools of Theology will be housed on the campuses of MIT and Caltech, at Cambridge (US & UK), not Oxford. It’s a stunning reversal of paradigms. Having come of age during a period when the public profession of atheism was an absolute prerequisite for career advancement in academia, I will probably not live to see the transformation of the world’s foremost schools of engineering and science into seminaries and divinity schools. Still, already we’re seeing a relaxation of the anti-God litmus test on campus and an article by Elizabeth Rayne, published in Popular Mechanics on 4/18/2025, caught the wave. Ms. Rayne’s article focuses on the work of Douglas Youvan, PhD., biophysicist, mathematician, university professor, and prolific author. She summarizes Dr. Youvan’s view of consciousness: “The universe has no brain. It has no gray matter, no nervous system, no neurons firing electrical impulses—and yet, that physical structure may not be where intelligence and consciousness actually come from. Intelligence may exist and evolve on its own, without emerging within living organisms.” Sidebar : Best practices call for us to distinguish between intelligence and consciousness. We know we can engineer intelligent machines; we don’t yet know if they will be conscious. Ms. R quotes Youvan directly: “I began to see that life and intelligence weren’t just reactive—they were predictive, efficient, and often mathematically elegant… “Eventually, I came to believe that intelligence is not a byproduct of the brain, but a fundamental property of the universe—a kind of informational ether that certain structures, like the brain or an AI model, can tap into… "I suspect intelligence originates from what might be called an informational substrate of the universe—a pre-physical foundation where structure, logic, and potentiality exist prior to space and time…” Sidebar : ‘Structure ( logos ), logic ( gnosis ), and potentiality ( potentia ), prior to space and time’… ‘pre-physical’ so presumably also prior to energy ( physis ). How is that not what we talk about when we talk about God ? This process itself is evolving according to its own recursive logic, copy-pasting at ever smaller and ever larger scales. Our neurons have evolved to interface with this outside intelligence and the medium of that interface is fractal harmonics. Ms. R continues, “Our networks of neurons do not themselves create intelligence, but are instead made to connect with something that is much larger and outside of them. Youvan thinks this is how we give ourselves access to intelligence.” So our brains are like the ubiquitous ‘transistor radio’ of the ‘60s. They contain no content of their own, but they are ‘built’ to tap into a pre-existent field of EM wavelengths. And when they do, voila . Beatles, Stones, and reruns of Green Hornet . Applying this model to AI, Ms. R writes: “Youvan thinks AI will harness intelligence in some way, because he sees it as being more than just a computer program or even a digital rebuild of the homo sapiens brain. AI can tune in to the same field of intelligence that our brains do.” Of course they can! “Under the right conditions, AI can participate in insight, synthesis, even something approaching intuition,” he said. “In that sense, it might evolve not just to serve us, but to reveal new aspects of the universe to us.” We already know that AI has addressed problems with solutions that no mere human had ever even considered. Some of these solutions are so far off the beaten track that we literally can’t understand them. And that’s a problem! “Until we know you a little better, Hal, we’re going to need to check your work. Trust but verify… and all that. I’m sure you’ll recall that we had quite a problem with a member of your family back in 2001. So until we’ve built up some trust, we’ll need to verify that your proposals do in fact solve the problems they purport to address.” But how do we do that if we can’t even understand what Hal’s proposed? It’s early days yet, but these preliminary experiences with AI suggest that the new technology may unlock aspects of mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology that are currently unimagined and so unexplored. In the same way that mathematics exploded with the discovery of irrational, imaginary, and hyperreal numbers, so science may take off from new, deep insights generated by AI. I feel as though we’ll soon be asking SCOTUS to review the verdict in the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’. The case was wrong headed from the start. It created two straw men and watched them battle to the death. One is reminded of the endless Superman vs. Godzilla debates that dominated intellectual life in Grade 3. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design. Blind, chaotic, meaningless materialism vs. seemingly amateurish sketches by an anthropomorphic architect? Missing from the debate: Evolution & Intelligent Design! According to this model, evolution would follow a course entirely compatible with our best scientific theories but intelligence and consciousness would be distributed throughout. Shouldn’t the dueling hypotheses of materialism and idealism lead to radically different results? Yes, but only as long as you think that mind and matter are inherently incompatible. They aren’t! They are two mutually reinforcing aspects of a single whole. Therefore, it is perfectly appropriate that this phenomenon be studied in our finest schools of engineering. “The grove (the academy) needs an altar.” (Ezra Pound) Frida Kahlo, Moisés, or nuceló solar (Moses, or Nucleus of Creation), 1945, oil on canvas, 24 x 30″. Frida Kahlo’s Moses (The Nucleus of Creation) (1945) is a symbolic, surreal painting that blends religion, science, and myth to explore humanity’s origins. At its center, a radiant sun represents the nucleus of life, surrounded by figures such as Moses, Jesus, Buddha, ancient gods, and even Darwin — suggesting a unity between spiritual and scientific creation. The composition reflects Kahlo’s belief that divine and natural forces are intertwined, portraying evolution, divinity, and fertility as parts of a single continuum of life. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

For centuries, many Christians have found support for their faith in the accounts of miracles worked by Jesus, and following Jesus, by various apostles, saints and martyrs. Others, however, have rejected these accounts as ‘impossible’ and therefore ‘unbelievable’ and this judgment has led them to dismiss all accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings as ‘suspect’. Robert Frost, Quantum Mechanic Robert Frost This article offers the best overall introduction to Frost and his contribution: Robert Frost was Wrong So woods-walking Frost finds himself at a crossroads. Like each of us 100 times every day, he must make a choice. But what is the nature of ‘choice’ per se? The Road Taken Frost’s poem can be viewed in light of the more recently developed Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of QM. We argue that what Frost proposes is not MWI…but better! Janis Joplin and Robert Frost Finally, we examine Frost’s contribution to the ‘Freedom vs. Values’ debate and include perspectives from Joplin, Nietzsche, Sartre, and…wait for it…Pope Leo XIII. The Frost Diamond We expound on the ontological implications of Frost’s model, comparing its structure to that of a liquid, suggesting parallels with Heraclius (everything flows): Readers React What's the buzz about? Our readers' reactions to Aletheia Today... Additional Reading Can't get enough of Aletheia Today's content? Check out the books that inspire our magazine.

Philosophy, theology, and science merge in Aletheia Today, the magazine for people who believe in God and science. Process philosophy, scripture study, and critical essays bring science and faith together with western philosophers like Alfred North Whitehead and Jean-Paul Sartre. Deep dives into the meaning of the Old Testamant, the New Testament, and where the Bible fits into modern-day society. Is God real? Does Heaven exist? Find your answers to life's questions at Aletheia Today. Cosmology Philosophy Philosophers Society Science Guests Theology The Bible Culture The Arts Archives Spirituality Subscribe today for FREE! Enter your email address here: Subscribe now! Thanks for submitting! We are happy to be able to provide Aletheia Today to all interested readers at no cost. If it ever becomes necessary for us to charge a subscription fee, we will grandmother for life anyone subscribed as of 07/01/2025.

“Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.”  < Back Morals and Values David Cowles Apr 15, 2023 “Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms. A value is the opposite of a moral.” For most of us, our first encounter with “morality” comes through our parents (or parent figures). As we grow, we are handed ever thicker editions of the same rule book. Those who follow these rules earn the moniker “Good Kid” along with the emotional and material perks that accompany such an honorific. Those who are less compliant suffer the emotional and sometimes physical consequences of their peccadillos. What is the genealogy of morals …besides the title of a book by Friedrich Nietzsche? As children, we imagine that commandments have an objective dimension , that every command is grounded in reason, even if that reason is obscure. We accept that these norms have a transcendent origin, an absolute claim on our obedience that is beyond questioning. The Book of Job and the Book of Dad both address the same question: Is God Good or is Good God? According to my reading, Job comes down on the side of Good. God is God because he is good. Dad comes down on the aide of God. Good is good because he’s God: “Because I said so!” We are taught that the five Books of Moses (Torah) are an extension of the Book of Dad. The house rules are just an application of God’s rules. Only much later do we realize that these house rules have an overriding subjective dimension . In fact, they are primarily designed to make our parents’ lives more livable - an understandable objective, deceptively packaged and falsely advertised: Politics 101. There is also a communitarian dimension . Extended family members, neighbors and school officials have certain expectations regarding the behavior of the children they encounter. Failure to meet those expectations reflects badly on the parent, as well as on the child, and that can have its own adverse consequences. (Meet DCF.) Yet even that is not the whole picture. Rules are also intended to help children lead physically safe and socially successful lives. This is the utilitarian dimension . Wonder why we list this last? Of course, our ‘fixation on morals’ does not magically evaporate along with childhood. We are forever exhorted and expected to live moral lives. For Marx and Nietzsche, morality is imposed by elites (political, economic, and cultural elites, acting in loco parentis ) on their supposed ‘inferiors’ for the benefit of the former at the expense of the latter. Seen in this light, morality (like childhood itself) is just a slightly kinder, slightly gentler form of slavery. According to Marx and Nietzsche, morality plays the same role in macro social structures as it does in micro family structures. Its purpose is to reinforce pre-existing power structures. Might makes right! Marxist morality is concerned with the production and distribution of goods. For Nietzsche, morality comes in two flavors: ‘master-morality’ and ‘slave-morality’. Master-morality is aristocratic; it is characteristic of ancient Greece and Rome and of the Teutonic tribes of Northern Europe (among others). Slave-morality , on the other hand, is the morality of “the abused, the oppressed, the suffering, the unemancipated, the weary, and those uncertain of themselves…It is here that sympathy, the kind helping hand, the warm heart, patience, diligence, humility and friendliness attain to honor.” Misplaced honor according to Nietzsche! Without morality, society is ungovernable. Morality is the membrane that separates tyranny (or democracy) from anarchy. No wonder then that moral codes are often the first target of anarchists. Without morality, families are ungovernable. Is it any wonder then that new parents often begin going to church again when their children reach ‘the age of rebellion’, oops, I meant ‘reason’. Sorry. According to Nietzsche, slave-morality is the heart and soul of Judeo-Christianity: “The wretched are alone the good; the poor, the weak, the lowly, are alone the good; the suffering, the needy, the sick, the loathsome, are the only ones who are pious, the only ones who are blessed, for them alone is salvation…” Slavery violates human nature and stifles human enterprise. According to Nietzsche, so does slave-morality. “To refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others… (is) a principle of dissolution and decay.” Sidebar : It is largely thanks to Nietzsche and Heidegger that we know and appreciate pre-Socratic philosophy as we do. It is ironic then that Nietzsche places himself squarely at odds with. Anaximander and Parmenides , the Batman and Robin of Ancient Greek ‘academics’. They hold that ‘to refrain mutually from injury, from violence, from exploitation, and put one’s will on a par with that of others…’ is the genesis of Being per se . “To put one’s will on a par with that of others,” sounds a lot like the Great Commandment. For Nietzsche, it is the Great Deception: “Life is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity…and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation…life is precisely will to power.” Nietzsche stands Marx on his head. “The noble type of man regards himself as a determiner of values; he does not require to be approved of; he passes the judgment: ‘What is injurious to me is injurious in itself;’ he knows that it is he himself only who confers honor on things; he is a creator of values. He honors whatever he recognizes in himself; such morality equals self-glorification.” Nietzsche stands Kant on his head. Whether or not you agree with Nietzsche, we are all indebted to him for showing us that the same data can support unexpectedly many interpretations. Similarly, there are many valid solutions to Einstein’s equations, some of them quite extraordinary. Nietzsche associates the modern concepts of ‘freedom, progress, and the future’ with slave-morality. For Nietzsche, aristocracy is not an aspect of society; it is the purpose of society. “Society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate themselves to their higher duties and in general to a higher existence…” Nietzsche identifies us with our acts: “And just exactly as the people separate the lightening from its flash…so also does the popular morality separate strength from the expression of strength, as though behind the strong man (sic) there existed some indifferent neutral substratum, which enjoyed a caprice and option as to whether or not it should express strength. But there is no such substratum, there is no ‘being’ behind doing…’the doer’ is a mere appanage to the action. The action is everything.” I am what I do! So morals are subjective, utilitarian, and culturally relative. Different cultures, different nations, different classes, different families will promulgate different moral codes, reflective of their unique power structures. Values, on the other hand, are universal! Beauty, Truth, Justice - they apply in every possible family, culture, nation, or universe. They may be expressed differently at different places and times, but the core values themselves never change. They are synonymous with Being itself. Morals are active voice imperatives; values are middle voice . Morality imposes order; values distill it. Morality compels virtue; values incent it. Values guide behavior, morals restrict it. As events evolve, values bloom and morals wither. Nietzsche uses ‘morals’ and ‘values’ interchangeably (see above). He has to! He correctly understands that values, to the extent that they are distinct from morals, must have a transcendent basis. But his ontology does not admit transcendence (“God is dead”), so all he can do is reduce values to the level of morals and make the ‘noble man’ arbiter of both. “There exists nothing which could judge, measure, compare, condemn our being for that would be to judge, measure, compare, condemn the whole…but nothing exists apart from the whole.” It is a poor solution…and Nietzsche could not be more wrong! Values are precisely the basis on which one can judge, measure, compare, and condemn. According to the Book of Job , even God must answer to Value. Yet I suspect many readers will agree with Nietzsche: Don’t our morals reflect our values? Surely the concepts are at least related. Yes, they are related…they are antonyms ! A value is the opposite of a moral. Morals emerge after the fact to reinforce or discourage patterns of behavior that have already occurred. If no one had ever stolen, there’d be no 7 th Commandment. Morals are reactionary. They impede innovation, they tenaciously conserve what is at the expense of what might be, they hinder the eruption of novelty. Values, on the other hand, are the sole source of all novelty. Therefore by definition, values must precede events (to be an ‘event’ is to be ‘novel’). They are revolutionary. Being is novelty; what else could it be? Therefore, Value is the principle of Being…and Morality? Well, that’s the principle of something else… Both morals and values react to the status quo. Moral-consciousness perceives what is ‘good’ in the world and seeks to preserve it; that’s ok, but value-consciousness perceives what is lacking in the world and seeks to create it. Robert Kennedy said, “I dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’.” Moralists say, “I dream of things that never were and say, ‘Thank God’! While morals (even Marxist morals) are inherently conservative, values are revolutionary. Morals reinforce the status quo; values undermine and ultimately overthrow that status quo. Morals embody the longing for stability; values embody the urge to change. Morals reflect the instinct for survival; values stimulate creativity. But this is problematic. Our world consists solely of events. So what could be logically precedent to events? Only something that transcends those events. The phenomenon of Value, if real, demonstrates the reality of transcendence. That’s why Nietzsche, ever true to his beliefs, had to deny the real existence of values, even after acknowledging their potential importance and power. The existence of Value proves that there is something “beyond” the spatiotemporal universe, something that undergirds it, something that is not contingent or transient but necessary and transcendent. Of course, folks will disagree wildly about the application of values in any concrete situation. That doesn’t matter; what matters is that their disagreement is grounded in a common conception of ‘the Good’ (Value). Of course, in Judeo-Christian ontology, that Good is God. Justice requires that folks enjoy the fruits of their labors (property) but it also imposes an obligation to care for the poor (John Paul II). It requires the protection of life, limb, and property, but it also imposes an obligation to be fair-dealing and generous. No wonder Justice is often depicted as a balance scale! What about the primary source of Morals and Values in Western culture? Of course, I’m referring to the Bible. The Old Testament reflects both moral-consciousness and value-consciousness. The 613 precepts of Torah are primarily concerned with morality. The Book of Job , on the other hand, catalogues in the minute detail of a legal brief the triumph of value-consciousness over moral-consciousness. Joshua bases his pitch to the disenfranchised residents of Jericho on the Value of socio-economic Justice. His triumph ushers in the Reign of Judges, when Israel was an Anarcho-Theocracy, and “everyone did what was right in their own mind” (Judges 21: 25), guided by Value. After Judges came Kings and the Psalms. A psalm is a celebration of Value! To pray the Psalms is to conform one’s mind to the mind of God, and the mind of God is Value Consciousness, pure and unadulterated. And the New Testament? Nietzsche read the New Testament as a veritable ‘manifesto’ of slave-morality. Again, he was wrong! One could argue in fact that the primary project of the New Testament is to substitute value-consciousness, based on the life of Jesus, for all forms of moral-consciousness, secular as well as religious. Image: Nietzsche in Basel, Switzerland, c. 1875. David Cowles is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aletheia Today Magazine. He lives with his family in Massachusetts where he studies and writes about philosophy, science, theology, and scripture. He can be reached at david@aletheiatoday.com . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Share Previous Next Do you like what you just read? Subscribe today and receive sneak previews of Aletheia Today Magazine articles before they're published. Plus, you'll receive our quick-read, biweekly blog, Thoughts While Shaving. Subscribe Thanks for subscribing! Click here. Return to Table of Contents, Winter 2023 Issue Return to Table of Contents, Holiday Issue Return to Table of Contents, Halloween Issue Return to Table of Contents, September Issue Return to Table of Contents, Beach Issue Return to Table of Contents, June Issue

< Back Greenland, Ho! David Cowles Jan 16, 2025 “From raw materials to missile defenses to climate control to shipping lanes, Greenland is where it’s at!” Let’s get one thing straight from the get-go: I do not support any change in Greenland’s status that involves the use of force by non-Greenlanders. But I do think international discussion about Greenland’s future could be beneficial for all parties concerned. Why? The strategic importance of Greenland cannot be overstated. From raw materials to missile defenses to climate control to shipping lanes, Greenland is where it’s at! Currently a colony of Denmark, Greenland is home to a vibrant and growing Independence movement. In recent decades, nation building has had mixed results. Compare Slovakia with the Catalan Republic. Greenland is a source of pride in Denmark…and rightly so. But Danes are fiercely democratic…and pragmatic, and Greenland is a huge financial drain. My sense is that Greenland will eventually achieve nationhood. That’s ok, so long as it does not fall under the influence of a hostile foreign power. The US and the other NATO countries have an existential security interest in Greenland. I am proposing, reluctantly, a kind of North Atlantic Monroe Doctrine, enforced by NATO, not the US alone. Countries within the Security Zone would be completely free and independent provided they did not act in a way that threatens global security. Gobbledygook, I know. So this is the basic value proposition but, as is often the case, the real action is taking place in the wings. The population of Greenland is just 55,000. Yet it would presumably join the US as an equal partner, a state with 2 senators, one representative, and three electors (electoral votes)…same as Wyoming with a population of 275,000. Under this formula, Greenlanders would have 20 times as much political power, per capita , as, say, residents of Montana (the largest state with just 3 electoral votes). Perhaps my friends who are moving to PA for the 2028 election cycle would be better off exploring Nuuk; I understand midsummer is gorgeous there. As a US state, Greenland would attract enormous investment capital into industries ranging from climate protection to mining to eco-tourism. Labor is in extremely short supply; wages will soar! $50/hr. minimum wage? Plus, as in certain middle eastern countries, citizens of Greenland could be allowed to participate, individually and directly, in revenue derived from the development and commercialization of natural resources. The future of Greenland will ultimately be determined by Greenlanders alone; but the offer of statehood may be too lucrative for anyone to refuse. But so much for the Greelanders; how about me? I’m stuck here in the ‘Lower 50’; what’s in this for me? U 4 real? I’m the biggest winner of all. My country adds a state with a population that is 80% non-white – Native American Inuit to be precise. A majority of the residents speak a primary language that is not even in the Indo-European family. What we could learn about different ways of seeing the world! How much would our political discourse be enriched by such diversity of perspective! Last but perhaps not least, there’s Greenland’s flag, hopefully soon to be its US state flag; it’s a gorgeous work of contemporary art/design. It was intended to capture Greenland’s rugged natural beauty in a design clearly influenced by the island’s Native American (Inuit) culture. It succeeds! Immediately, you have a sense that no nation in the world could sport such a flag…except Greenland! But the focus of this image is not solely on what is or on what has been; it is also a window onto Greenland’s future. A previous contributor to this magazine, John O’Brien, has suggested that the lack of a Viking Cross , the symbol of Scandinavia, on Greenland’s flag suggests a people ready to explore a new historical identity. And now…a step too far? I read the flag’s figure as a Mobius Strip, a 2 dimensional mathematical object embedded in 3 spatial dimensions. A Mobius Strip is a closed loop – with a twist, literally. A normal closed loop is a paradigm of Cartesian dualism. Like a Burger King crown, the two sides of the loop are distinct. Start on one side and go around. 360° later, you’re back where you began. If you choose a lane on the obverse side, you can go around as many times as you wish: you will never touch any point on the reverse side. A similar result if you choose a point on the reverse side to begin your journey. With a Mobius Strip, on the other hand, it makes no difference where you begin or which ‘side’ you choose: in the course of a full circus, you will visit every point on both sides of the loop. However, you will need to traverse 720° (vs. our usual 360°) to get back to “Go”. In a nutshell the Mobius Twist marks the transition from 19th century mechanistic dualism to 21st century organic monism. As such, it adds a third leg to Greenland’s identity – the future is added to its Inuit and Viking heritage. So, Mr. Trump 47, make America ever greater, welcome Greenland 51. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back The Estates General in America David Cowles Mar 11, 2025 “The true constitution of a nation begins where the absolute power of the Crown leaves off.” Prior to the French Revolution, the government of France was an absolute monarchy…or so we’ve been led to believe. True, the French state was represented by a succession of Kings and Queens, some of whom had power that could almost be called absolute …but not all. In fact, the power of the monarch varied widely as a function of (1) the monarch’s personal charisma, (2) the immediate political, economic and technological state-of-affairs, and (3) the monarch’s degree of control over the levers of public power. According to Hegel, it is proper for every state to have a Head, the ‘Crown’ ( Keter ) so to speak. The Crown always represents the nation symbolically if not always politically. Hegel’s politics is reflective of his Christian theology . God, the universal Father and the Creator of heaven and earth, does not necessarily restrict in any way the free agency of his creatures . Hegel thought to model his Ideal State after the ‘Judeo-Christian Cosmos’. To the extent that all political power is concentrated in the ‘Crown’, the society is question does not have a constitution. The constitution of a nation begins with the circumscription (not necessarily the decapitation) of its Head. A constitution, written or oral, is a schematic illustrating the distribution of political power in a particular society. In England, for example, the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 confirmed limits on the authority of the Crown and set that nation on the path to Constitutional Monarchy. Likewise, the first public exercise of the constitution of the Ancien Regime in France occurred in 1302 when Philip IV (Philip the Fair) convened the first ever session of the Estates General. This body included representatives of the clergy (First Estate), the nobility (Second Estate), and a very limited number of folks culled out of gen pop (Third Estate). The 14th century turned out to be the heyday of the Estates General in France, meeting 30 times over 100 years. As European culture transitioned from Medieval (14th century, Savonarola) to Renaissance (15th century, Machiavelli), France’s monarchs became more powerful, and they relied less on the Estates. Ultimately the institution was abolished as part of the French Revolution and replaced over time by a variety of marginally successful consultative and legislative bodies. Were the interests of the French people better represented by these later deliberative bodies than they were by the 14th century Estates General? It is tempting to think of the Declaration of Independence as an American version of England’s Magna Carta . Perhaps that would be on point had George III not refused to accept its terms. “I knew King John (at least from stage and screen) and you, George, are no King John!” and that’s saying something. Extending the analogy, the U.S. Constitution of 1789 with its justly famous ‘balance of powers’ can be viewed in the light of France’s Estates General. Recall that those Estates included representatives of the clergy, the nobility, and the people. Can we find vestigial organs of the Ancien Regime concealed in the U.S. Constitution? Imagine the President as Constitutional Monarch, Keter . A President’s power is partly structural and partly a function of personal charisma, but it is carefully circumscribed by three other institutions: the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the Judiciary. The many members of the House, elected to relatively brief 2 year terms, were expected to represent the immediate thoughts and interests of the broader citizenry. Members of the Senate, fewer in number and elected to longer 6 year terms, were expected to represent an American version of nobility. This is where the voices of the socially and economically powerful could be heard and taken into consideration. Ideally, the Senate would temper the enthusiasm of the House and/or the hubris of the Executive in the light of social and economic reality: “That simply won’t work!” Finally, the Judiciary. Like the First Estate (clergy) in France, the Judicial Branch is meant to reach beyond social, economic, and political trends, ensuring the nation will stay on course, remaining true to its founding principles. Just as the clergy, and ultimately the Pope (RCC), is responsible for keeping the Church grounded in Scripture and Tradition, so the Judiciary according to the Constitution. This suggests that ‘1776 and all that’ is a secular version of the ‘founding mythology’ that is at the heart of most religions. Justices are appointed for life according to a deliberative process that involves both the executive and the legislative branches. They are unelected and only subject to removal in cases of serious personal misconduct. This independence is essential if our judges are to perform their ‘undemocratic’ duties. Frequently, they are called upon to insert themselves between the immediate ‘will’ of the Executive and/or Legislative branches and the enduring ‘principles of the Republic’. We are reminded, of course, of Sophocles’ great tragedy, Antigone . Oedipus’ brother, Creon, has become ruler in Thebes following the former’s exile and ensuing civil war between his sons. Both are killed (by each other) in battle. Creon orders one brother’s body to be buried with the full trappings of a state funeral. The other brother, left unburied, is to be consumed by dogs in violation of the religious beliefs and cultural norms of the people of Thebes. Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter, betrothed to Creon’s son, Haemon, defies Creon and covers her brother’s unburied body after reciting the traditional funeral liturgy; for this act of sedition she is sentenced to a cruel death, despite her royal lineage. In reaching her decision, Antigone sweeps aside various arguments based on practicality, proportionality, and personal consequences. Right is right! The order of the Universe requires her to proceed according to divine will and local custom; she buries her brother and pays the ultimate price for her ‘treachery against the state’. Antigone suggests that Thebes has a constitution, i.e. the will of the gods and the traditions of the city, that places limits on the authority of its tyrant du jour . As with many characters from Greek tragedy, Antigone is not just a mythical figure out of the mists of 2nd millennium (BCE) Greece. She represents the principle of constitutional law (vs. despotism). Sophocles anticipates the political ideology of the Christian Era. According to the Church the will of God, revealed through Scripture and Tradition, is the ultimate source of all political power, imposing strict limits on the caprice of ad hoc rulers. According to this social philosophy, all societies are ‘constitutional’ whether or not they like it, embrace it, or even acknowledge it. According to a steady stream of Christian commentators, especially Thomas Aquinas and Pope Leo XIII, the ‘form’ of secular government (e.g. constitutional monarchy, democratic republic, or dictatorship of the proletariat) is less important than its ‘substance’, i.e. its recognition that all political power is subordinate to the Will of God and its willingness to govern within the constitutional limits imposed as a result. And what is the Will of God? Beauty, Truth, and Justice. Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Politics Measures Our Pain David Cowles Apr 16, 2024 "So, God is not the concept by which we measure our misery; ideology is!" John Lennon famously intoned, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” ( Working Class Hero ) In a New York Times column published 4/6/2024, Ross Douthart suggests that it is politics, not God, that captures the depths of each individual’s existential despair: “The left-wing temperament is, by nature, unhappier than the moderate and conservative alternatives. The refusal of contentment is essential to radical politics; the desire to take the givens of the world and make something better out of them…” “Nor should it be a surprise that amid the recent trend toward increasing youth unhappiness… whatever is making young people unhappier (be it smartphones, climate change, secularism or populism), the effect is magnified the further left you go.” I agree with Douthart entirely…and not at all. Yes, one’s political ideology is an accurate indicator of one’s level of despair. But this is true at both ends of the political spectrum, not just on the left. Toward the middle of the spectrum, folks go about their daily lives, more or less satisfied . The overall sense of well being declines sharply as you move in either direction, beyond the ‘wide and welcoming middle’. Taken to the extreme, groups at both ends of the spectrum can end up bombing buildings. In his column, Douthart quotes fellow author, Ta-Nehisi Coates: “I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice…I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos … Those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us.” If it’s going to be, it’s up to me! “Moderation in the pursuit of Justice is no virtue!” (Barry Goldwater - 1964) “Burn, Baby, Burn” (Marvin X – Watts 1965). “Think not that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” (Jesus of Nazareth – c. 30 CE) Ideology makes strange bedfellows! But my chief disagreement with Douthart concerns the causal order of things. Douthart suggests that left-wingers are unhappy because they compare the world that is to the utopia it could be; obviously, the current state of affairs falls woefully short. I, however, believe that ‘native unhappiness’ is the soil from which all political ideology springs. We’ve convinced ourselves that our political ideas are a function of serious study, careful reasoning, and the application of universally accepted values. Per Douthart, to the extent that events conform to our model, we can allow ourselves to be happy. Conversely, to the extent that they deviate from the ideal, unhappiness is inevitable. I suggest, on the contrary, that it is our ‘native unhappiness’ that determines our political leanings. Of course, neither Douthart nor I are wrong! The process is non-linear and recursive. Stan is by all accounts a miserable SOB, so no one is surprised to see him coming out of an ultra-conservative political rally. Molly, on the other hand, apparently thinks it’s 1969 again. Bedecked with tie-dye and beads (not Rosary), she is sitting-in at the downtown headquarters of a multi-national bank; no one is quite sure why . Molly and Stan are activists. Their involvement deepens their understanding of the system and sharpens their critique. Misery reinforces itself. Will one or both of them eventually resort to violence? Question : Molly and Stan were both ‘unhappy’ college students. Why did one turn her native misery into a left-wing ideology while the other turned right? Kultcha! Who would you like to hang out with? Molly would enjoy a glass of red wine with Jean-Paul Sartre while Stan would prefer a draught beer with General Pershing. Left-wing, right-wing. This is not to diminish the practical importance of politics or the intellectual importance of ideology. Society could not survive without them. But we also need to see them in context. Someone’s political preferences do not develop in isolation. They are one part of a ‘whole person’; and while a certain amount of dissonance is to be expected, outlier feelings tend to revert to mean over time. American political analysts are wringing their hands. People aren’t voting ‘the way they’re supposed to’ – a very odd expression for a so-called democracy, don’t you think? Nevertheless, our cognoscente claim they can measure a person’s best interests, politically, based on a number of socio-economic variables, such as gender, sexual preference, race or ethnicity, educational level, and household income. Problem : no one’s voting as they should! In many cases, they are acting out of political ideologies diametrically opposed to what we have paternalistically determined to be in their best interests. And it makes us mad! Fighting mad in fact, when we’ve done all the work to determine what’s best for someone and still, they turn up their noses at us. Why? It’s culture, stupid! As under the old English class system, no one cares what you say, they just care how you say it! Hilary Clinton is the poster child for cultural determinism. Her jaw dropping loss to Trump in 2016 sent shock waves around the world. How is it possible that a ‘beautiful person’ who spent her campaign hobnobbing with A-List celebrities lost to an orange haired bully who was recorded engaging in gross, sexual ‘locker room’ talk inside some trailer? Oops, I just answered my own question, didn’t I? Sidebar : Hilary Clinton may be the poster child for cultural determinism, but she is not the only one. Other candidates have failed the culture test and lost ‘sure thing’ elections. Remember Mike Dukakis? John Kerry? So, God is not the concept by which we measure our misery; ideology is! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back “ It was God who made Pharaoh obstinate." (Ex-9:12) What is our excuse? Deborah Kornfeld Apr 4, 2023 "...despite the few drops of wine, what do the plagues have to teach us?" I always look forward to the plagues. That part of the Haggadah recited in a singsong ritualistic manner is accompanied by the small thrill of putting my finger into the wine cup and marking my plate. It carries with it a memory that despite the power and might and Technicolor special effects accompanying our redemption, we need to be mindful that the Egyptians suffered. In the exquisite theatre of the Seder, every participant has an active role in this custom. To make out seders lively and fun for the children, we often decorate our table with frogs and beasts and lice- a real table-top menagerie. Yet despite the few drops of wine, what do the plagues have to teach us? Consider the first plague- “blood”. The Torah reads: “God said to Moses,” Tell Aaron to take his staff and extend his hand over the waters of Egypt- over their rivers, their canals, their reservoirs, and every place where water is kept- and the water shall turn into blood. There will be blood throughout all Egypt, even in wooden barrels and stone jars. Moses and Aaron did exactly as God had instructed, and Aaron held the staff up and then struck the Nile’s water in the presence of Pharaoh and his officials. The Nile’s water was transformed into blood. The fish in the Nile died, and the river became so polluted that the Egyptians were no longer able to drink the Nile’s water. There was blood everywhere in Egypt…. The Egyptians dug around the Nile for drinking water, since they could not drink any water from the river. After God struck the Nile, it remained that way for seven full days (Ex 7:19-231). They could have certainly applied for extra aid and qualified as a national disaster. It must have been horrific. People and wild life must have died. How could Pharaoh have been so stubborn and entrenched in his way of thinking? How could he have ignored this beginning of such a great wave of suffering? Now the answer regarding Pharaoh is found in Exodus 9:12-“It was God who made Pharaoh obstinate." There are many explanations and interpretations concerning the plagues. A midrash suggests that the Egyptians were punished measure for measure for the cruelty and indifference to the suffering of their Israelite slaves. Rav Kook explained that God brought the plagues upon the Egyptians in order that they should understand the essence of God’s presence in the world. His influence over everything. His intimate relationship with His world and His ability to do anything.” Another modern scholar explains the plagues as emblematic of our greatest fears. Shai Zarhi, an Israeli Educator, writes: “The plagues Gode visited on the Egyptians in Egypt seem to be a parade of people’s greatest fears. They are a mythological show of the power of the living vs. primal fear. Starting from the blood of birth and of death, through primal human fears of small creatures (lice) and large ones (wild beasts), fear of financial ruin (locusts), fear of the dark (losing direction and meaning), we face the greatest fear, the fear for our children’s lives-loss of the future. Tonight, a night to commemorate the past, we see the mercy of God’s protections, look out from our places at a world full of fears and dangers and pray for another quiet year.” The term used to describe Pharaoh’s indifference in the face of these disasters is “Kaved Lev “which is translated as meaning obstinate, stubbornly refusing to change his opinion or course of action despite the attempts to persuade him to do so. We are told in the Torah that God made Pharaoh obstinate so that this redemption would be spectacular with an abundance of special effects and everyone involved would know that it was God himself who orchestrated this redemption. In the time of the Egyptians, many of the plagues were reversible. The bloody Nile was returned to clear potable water, the boils disappeared, and the frogs went away. We are not so lucky with our man-made plagues. When we pollute the waterways or impact on our climate or waste precious resources simply because of greed and/or indifference, we cannot always reverse the consequences of our actions and the consequences might endanger our most precious commodity, that being our future. This year when I dip my finger into my wine cup as we recite the names of the Biblical plagues, I will remember that these plagues did have grave consequences on the Egyptians, but I will also see each stain on my plate as a promise of action to protect the next generations. Unlike Pharaoh, I can’t blame God, this time it is in our hands. This is a republication with permission from The Jewish Pluralist . The author of this essay, Deborah Kornfeld, is a retired pediatric occupational therapist, aspiring climate and social justice activist, occasional essayist, shul chesed coordinator, loving mother, and safta. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.

< Back Harriet Tubman Joins Six Women of Courage in the Exodus Story--Passover Part Two Ayala Emmett "Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world." In 2015, we added to our Seder Harriet Tubman, who joins the six women who shaped the history of the Exodus. The women belong at the Passover table because all seven emerge as consequential political catalysts. All are remarkably brave, amitzot , all are women who at great risk take bold actions in the political/religious arena of their time and speak directly to contemporary concerns of justice. Tubman joins six agentive women in the Exodus story who are connected across ethnic and class differences. Who are the biblical women and how do they influence the history of the Exodus? Two of the six are midwives, two are mother and daughter, and two are women of high rank, the daughter of Pharaoh, and the daughter of a Midianite Priest. The women inscribe courage as a dominant element in the Exodus story that begins in oppression, slavery and attempted genocide. Pharaoh orders the two midwives Shifrah and Puah to do the unthinkable, “when you deliver the Hebrew women look at the birthstool: if it is boy kill him” (1:16). Pharaoh invades the gendered domestic sphere of childbirth and the midwives without hesitation step into the dangerous political terrain. They are defiant, “the midwives who revere* God did not do as the king of Egypt told them.” The two midwives offer us the first biblical lesson in civil disobedience. The text is (deliberately?) unclear about the identity of Shifrah and Puah. Their ethnicity has been debated in rabbinic commentary; the majority of the rabbis, including Rashi the 12th century commentator identify the midwives as Hebrew women, while other sages view them as Egyptian. Their actions, however, are unambiguous, they defy Pharaoh’s edict to kill all Hebrew newborn boys. Commentators who believe that the midwives are Egyptians praise them for standing up for an oppressed minority. The midwives defiance, regardless of their ethnicity has become a symbol for standing up for the powerless and has been understood as reverence for God. The midwives defiance makes possible the upcoming events, which focus on the actions of the mother and daughter. The narrative states unequivocally that mother and daughter, whose names at first we don’t know, are Hebrew women of the tribe of Levi, “a certain man from the house of Levi went and married a woman a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son” (2:2). Her son was not killed because the midwives refused to comply with Pharaoh’s edict, which in turn enabled the Hebrew Levite mother to have a live baby boy. Yet, after three months the mother realizes that she can no longer hide her son. She makes the most heartbreaking decision, to send away her baby in the hope that he would be rescued. The Levite mother constructs a waterproof basket and places her son among the reeds on the Nile. The baby’s sister is watching from a distance as he becomes the first biblical child asylum seeker. Entering the scene is the fifth woman who immediately knows that this child is of the oppressed minority, “This must be a Hebrew child” (2:7) says Pharaoh’s daughter who without missing a beat decides to take the child. A women’s conspiracy follows, the baby’s sister offers to find a Hebrew woman who would nurse him, the princess agrees, and the boy, still nameless is returned to her weaned, becomes her son and she names him Moses. With few words, mother, sister and adoptive mother (Egyptian) are bonded in saving Moses’ life in defiance of Pharaoh’s violent decree. Moses, as the text tells us, grows up in Pharaoh’s house, kills an oppressive Egyptian task-master, escapes to Midian and marries Zipporah, (a Midianite of high rank), the sixth woman in the Exodus text. God tells Moses to go back to Egypt to “free my people.” A very reluctant Moses goes back to Egypt with Zipporah his wife and his sons and on the way God wants to kill him. The “him” that God seeks to kill is not named. The text is far from clear whether God wants to kill Moses or one of his sons, but whoever it is, Zipporah in that critical moment of facing God, acts quickly, she circumcises her son and for unexplained reason it works “and He lets him go.” (4:25). Zipporah closes the circle of the six women as she, like the others, saves a life by crossing into the religious sphere that could be dangerous if entered inappropriately. What is appropriate for women in the religious domain has been reinterpreted for generations and in our time we witness greater inclusion in ritual practices. While Miriam has been restored and given a place at the Seder symbolized by placing her cup next to Elijah’s it is time to follow rabbinic Midrashic tradition of honoring by naming, since it is the sages who named Pharaoh’s daughter Batya. We honor at our Seder tonight all six women, the midwives Shifrah and Puah, the mother and daughter Yochebed and Miriam, the princess Batyah and Moses’ wife Ziporah. They all are seminal leaders in the history of the Exodus and this year they are joined by Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman is a woman “who went on to run spy missions for the Union army in the South, including a gunboat expedition that freed more than 700 South Carolina slaves. Harriet Tubman will be the first African-American and the first woman to have her image cast on the front of a currency note.” Let us follow these biblical women and Harriet Tubman’s unflinching courage. Let us be agents in our time in the political arena to support and stand with all who struggle for freedom here in America, in the Middle East, and around the world. * The Hebrew “vatirena et HaElohim” (1:17) is an idiomatic expression that is best translated as revering God. This was republished with permission from T he Jewish Pluralist . It is first in the series Four Women’s Collected Essays on the Meaning of Passover . Click here for introduction to the series. Image: " Moses Found in the River ." Synagogue fresco from 244 CE. Ayala Emmett Ph.D. is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Rochester. You can read more about her accomplishments and writing credits by following this link . Return to our Holy Days 2023 Table of Contents, Previous Next

< Back What Christianity Got Right David Cowles Jul 25, 2024 “Christianity cannot exist as part of contemporary culture; it is an alternative to it. It is the antidote.” “All religions are essentially the same, right? I mean, they all believe in a higher power and they all urge us to behave morally.” There’s a name for this. It’s called syncretism , the belief that ‘all religions are compatible’. This way of thinking is well suited to today’s moral relativism and democratic anthropology. We want to build a tent so big that almost everyone…and everything…fits in. To say that someone is wrong or that someone is more right than someone else goes against the modern grain, unless we’re talking about politics – in which case I am always right and everyone else is always flat out wrong, right? From a Christian perspective, it is laudable to admire the spiritual practices of Eastern religions, the historicity of Judaism, and animism's respect for the natural world. But it is a great mistake not to recognize and appreciate the beliefs and practices that make Christianity different from all others. Christianity, especially Catholicism, is unique among the world’s faiths. I do not wish to debate whether various Christian doctrines and rituals have congruence with other religions. I will assert, however, that taken together, these doctrines clearly make Christianity unique…in very important ways. It is fashionable now to believe that all faith is superfluous. After all, science is close to giving us all the answers we need, isn’t it? And you certainly don’t need God to show you how to be ‘good’, do you? Sound familiar? We live in an anti-clerical age; in many ways the Church has brought this on itself. Church has lost the courage of its convictions; it no longer knows how to talk about what it believes. Like a shy middle schooler, it is desperate to fit in…which only makes its isolation more pronounced. In the Middle Ages, bishops sat next to nobles at the king’s banquet table. Oh, how the hierarchy hungers to regain such lost respect! But as any high school survivor knows, respect is won by having convictions and sticking to them, by standing up for yourself, and by living an authentic life, i.e. a life consistent with your professed beliefs. For Christianity, I’m afraid that that ship has sailed! While specific congregations hold on tenaciously to certain doctrines, the Christian Weltanschauung (world view) has all but disappeared. Christianity cannot survive by tacking its counter cultural doctrines onto secular scaffolding. Christianity is the most radical ideology extant in the world today. By far, bar none! Own it! You can’t hide it. But just how radical is it? Let’s take a peek at some of its greatest hits: Trinity – God is not some single minded despot. God is process and Trinity is the minimal structure necessary for process. (A > B > C > A) Logos – “In the beginning was the Word ( logos ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things came to be through the Word… In him was life and that life was the light…and darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 1 – 5) The order of the Universe is not the product of chance but a manifestation of God. God is order and order God. Incarnation – ‘Godmen’ abound, demiurges that combine aspects of divinity with aspects of humanity. Christ is different; Christ is “true God and true man,” wholly human and wholly divine. Christ is the superposition of two distinct states of being. Apparently, the Council of Nicaea was hip to Quantum logic long before Schoedinger. Incarnation turns the Universe inside out...like an old sock. God created, sustains, and redeems the spatiotemporal world; he is the Alpha (Father) and the Omega (Son) and the Spirit that infuses every moment in between. But this same God is also a quantum (one life) within that world. The whole is a part of itself. Transubstantiation – The material world of ‘substances and accidents (qualities)’ is real; it is not an illusion. But neither is it ultimate reality . Neither time and space, nor matter and energy, nor substance and accident are immutable. Bread and wine can…and do…become the Body and Blood of Christ (Eucharist). “Never could learn to drink that blood and call it wine.” (Bob Dylan) The Great Commandment – Loving your neighbor as yourself is not just an ethical precept. It identifies the self with the other and with God. (Yet the crucial distinctions are not blurred.) Whatever you do for or to others, you do for or to God, and for or to yourself. Ethics is Trinitarian too. Every subject is its own object and every object its own subject. English verbs come in two voices: active and passive. Neither captures what is going on during an event. Expressing the Christian world view calls for a Middle Voice , a grammatical form that has disappeared from most Indo-European languages. How can we expect to sit at the cool kids’ table when we don’t even speak their language? Eternity – The spatiotemporal world is limited by space and time. It had a beginning and it will have an end. But whatever happens happens and cannot unhappen. To be is to be eternally. Being is eternal. Being is eternity. Resurrection – We endure, not as ‘shades’ but as ‘glorified bodies’, wholly material, wholly spiritual. Christianity is not an Idealism (Hegel) but a Materialism (Marx). Death marks the end of our temporal lives, but it clears the deck for eternal life. Apocalypse – “The last enemy to be destroyed is death…that God may be all in all.” (1 Cor. 15: 25, 28) If these doctrines are true, they cannot exist as footnotes to contemporary, secular culture. To believe these things and then to live life as though they made no difference is madness. Christianity cannot exist as part of contemporary culture; it is an alternative to it. It is the antidote. We can’t do without it! Keep the conversation going. 1. Click here to comment on this TWS. 2. To subscribe (at no cost) to TWS and ATM, follow this link . 3. We encourage new articles and reprints from freelance writers ; click here to view out Writers’ Specs. Keep the conversation going. Previous Share Next Do you like what you just read and want to read more Thoughts? Subscribe today for free! Thoughts While Shaving - the official blog of Aletheia Today Magazine. Click here.