Live life well...today

This morning I awoke to news of more deaths from coronavirus and wondered how long it would be before it was titled an international pandemic. Then I reflected again on Kobe Bryant and the others in that helicopter. Their death came so suddenly. Then I received a notice from my high school class (we graduated 700 in 1969) that another classmate had passed away this week. In summary, this could be depressing, but it isn't.

Of course, there is sadness. Of course, there is weeping. Of course, there is the reminder that life is ephemeral and won't last much longer. That in itself could drive some to drink and curse the day they were born. Since we are all going to die, let's eat, drink and waste ourselves. So some conclude.

But if any of you who reads this blog knows me at all, you know that I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy. You know that I'm keen to make the best of any and all situations if that's possible. Not a Polyana, but an optimist, to be sure.

So when I read of all this dying, and ponder what might have been with the Swine Flu or SARS or what might be with corona, it's a time for personal reflection. I want to live in the now, not in the fear of the future.

They say today is a gift, that's why they call it the 'present.'

That's not only for a Chinese fortune cookie; that's for me ... today! How will I live today? What will I do?

The 12-step folks have a 12-thought reading called "Just for Today." I share it below in full and hope that it helps you as it has helped me to live in the present.

Yesterday is gone; it's not coming back. So all my frustrations and self-kicking are gone. My regrets can be instructive, but yesterday is a bad day in which to live. The past at best gives me haunting or regrets. Or pride in accomplishments. None of that works for me.

Similarly, tomorrow never comes. No wonder the image about free beer makes sense. Hope matters and I don't want to demean those who live in hope. But the dwelling only in tomorrow in such a way that you miss out on today makes no sense.  Plans matter; a wise man has to make plans. But to live only in the future is unwise.

I'm not talking about the Grass Roots' wrong evaluation of "Let's live for today." Their dismissal of future planning is not in my view. I'm talking about living well today, making the best of situations in front of me today.

I'm letting the deaths of others remind me to live well today.

On my Facebook today in light of another classmate's passing, I wrote, "Some of our class were well known; others less so. But in his life, Bruce sounds like he made a difference in the lives of others, and that's to his credit. And to me, that's a good reminder to keep helping, keep reaching out, keep loving people. We all have a 'use-by' date... let's make a difference in someone's life today."  

Maybe that comment will put this in perspective and maybe it will help you as well.

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Just for Today:

1. Just for today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life's problem at once. I can do things for 12 hours that would appall me if I had to keep them up for a lifetime. 

2. Just for today, I will be happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that "most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Happiness is from within; it is not a matter of externals. 

3. Just for today, I will try to adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my licks as they come and fit myself to them. 

4. Just for today, I will take care of my body. I will exercise it, care for it, nourish it, not abuse or neglect it so that it will be a perfect machine for my bidding. 

5. Just for today, I will try to strengthen my mind. I will learn something useful. I will not be a mental loafer. I will read something that requires effort, thought, and concentration.

6. Just for today, I will exercise my soul in three ways: I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out; I will do at least two things I don't want to do, as William James suggests, just for exercise. 

7. Just for today, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible, talk low, act courteously, be liberal with praise, criticize not at all, nor find fault with anything -- and not try to regulate or improve anyone. 

8. Just for today, I will have a program. I will write down what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it all exactly, but I will have it. It will eliminate two pests: hurry and indecision. 

9. Just for today I will have a quiet half-hour all by myself and relax. In this half-hour sometimes I will thank God, so as to get a better perspective of my life. 

10. Just for today, I will be unafraid, especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love, and to believe that those I love, love me.

Charlotte Alter and the new politicians

In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria on CNN, Charlotte Alter, author of "The Ones we've been waiting for," was supposed to talk about the new politicians. After all in the 2020 elections in the US, several of the candidates on the Democratic side are and one on the Republican side is 70 years old or older. Zakaria wanted to know where the new politicians are and Alter weighed in.  (See CNN.com/Fareed).  Charlotte is a national correspondent for Time magazine.

She defined the young people (aged 24-39) as living in a world of precariousness. Their boundaries are gone. But that's not their doing. The attitudes and guardrails of American life in the XXth century are gone, crumbled, eroded. These Millenials are shaped by 9-11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and perhaps most clearly reshaped by the two major social and street activism moments of "Occupy Wall Street" and "Black lives matter."  So says Alter.  Her points are fascinating to consider.

She says that Barack Obama, who won on the strength of the young people's vote, disappointed them because he couldn't fix the systemic problems. That's why so many turned to leaderless actions in the Occupy movements and the "black lives matter" calls because there was no singular leader to those events.

The question then is who will lead them?
And will they vote for a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren at the ballot box, and not only show up at a rally?
Are they only enamored by the event and the possibility of change from the Donald to someone who will give them free health care or daycare for their children?
The questions loom large.

I was disappointed in the interview because Zakaria had promised something about the new politicians to be the candidates of the future, and then they didn't even discuss this at all. Alter does talk about that in her new book.

I'm hopeful that there will be new blood on the horizon. Maybe Yang or Booker or Buttigieg or Ocasio-Cortez represent substantial age change. And maybe they will have their day in the sun in the years to come. And maybe these Millenials will be less personality-driven than others. But then again, the proof is in the future pudding.

@CharlotteAlter

Bokser, carob, Jewish eating (or not!); It's all about the roots

From this article in Mosaic magazine, written by Soloveichik who is the rabbi of Congregation Shearith Israel in New York and director of the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University.

A Christian lady north of Dubbo dropped into our shop this week and brought enough bokser for an army. You are welcome to come by and collect a few pods. Given that, and the tradition of Tu Bishvat, I read this article by the rabbi and found his thesis of 'roots' very worthwhile. I also remember the bokser and how disgusting it seemed.  His comments will surely inspire you today. Maybe I'll see you in our Bondi Junction book shop soon.

Surely there are many American Jews, at least of a certain age, who still vividly remember, as children in religious school, imitating their ancestors by ingesting this fruit in honor of Tu b’Shvat, the annual Jewish festival of trees that is celebrated today. And there is ample reason why they should remember: carobs are remarkably unpleasant to eat. As my Mosaic colleague Philologos once candidly put it, carobs “are flattish, irregularly curved, serrated along the edges, four to six inches in length, hard as nails to bite into, and yield—if you haven’t meanwhile broken all your teeth—a mealy substance that has been described as smelling like Limburger cheese.”

Perhaps, however, a closer look can reveal just how and why this much-maligned fruit is, in its own way, an ultimate embodiment of Jewish vitality and endurance.

In the Talmud, the holiday of Tu b’Shvat commemorates nothing more than one in a series of halakhic deadlines related to the obligation to offer tithed portions of the year’s crops to the Levites in the Temple. For fruits in particular, the end of one fiscal year and the beginning of the next was marked by Tu b’Shvat, the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat. Because these laws of tithing applied only to produce grown in the Holy Land, celebrating Tu b’Shvat became throughout the centuries a way of connecting to the land itself. For Ashkenazi Jews, that meant eating one fruit: carob, whose name derives from the Hebrew haruv and whose Yiddish name, bokser, is short for the German bokshornbaum, the tree with ram’s-horn-shaped fruit.

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There’s no question that bokser had long been native to the land of Israel. Carob seeds many thousands of years old have been discovered in archaeological sites all over the land. Yet while the Bible celebrates the “seven species” of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates, nary a mention of haruv occurs in Scripture. And no wonder. Confirming our own culinary intuitions, the Talmud refers to carob several times as unfit for human consumption (maakhal beheimah).

So why did Ashkenazi Jews eat bokser, of all fruits, on Tu b’Shvat? The late Gil Marks explains: “In the days before quick transport and refrigeration, the carob’s hard, dry texture made it one of the few fruits grown in the land of Israel capable of withstanding long-distance shipping without spoilage.” Evidently, for the Jews of Eastern Europe and their far-flung coreligionists and descendants elsewhere, so great was the desire for a “taste” of the land that even bokser could be tolerated. And indeed more than tolerated. Rabbi Berel Wein, who (like me) grew up and celebrated Tu b’Shvat in the arctic tundra of Chicago, recalls:

The bokser was hard as a rock and tasteless as wood. Yet I noticed that my parents, Jews of an earlier generation who were born before there was a state of Israel or a time when free and open worship was really allowed at the Western wall without Arab or government interference, ate their pieces of bokser slowly and with great affection. Only later in my life did I realize that eating that piece of bokser validated their hope and belief that the land of Israel would yet flourish and grow under Jewish sovereignty, and that the vineyards and orchards of the land promised to us by our prophets would become abundant reality.

It’s with this in mind

that we can begin to recover the deeper dimension of bokser. In its discussion of “laws dependent on the land,” the Mishnah presents us with the following conundrum. Suppose a tree is planted on one of the land’s borders, with its roots in sacred soil but its fruit hanging over into non-native territory—into, in effect, the Diaspora. Is the fruit subject to tithing in accordance with the laws relating to Tu b’Shvat? The answer is unequivocally yes: everything depends on the roots, not the foliage.

Another talmudic ruling is also relevant here. The tractate of Bava Batra includes a lengthy discussion of the obligations we owe our neighbors. According to one ruling, we may not plant a tree near our neighbor’s well because the roots, though on our own property, will extend underground and possibly contaminate his water supply. Any tree, therefore, must be planted at a distance of 25 cubits from neighboring property. But certain trees, with exceptionally long roots, must be placed twice as far away. One such tree, the Talmud stresses, is the haruv, the carob.

So, according to Jewish law, identity is defined by roots: surely, an arresting idea. After all, we moderns often assume the opposite—that identity is not predetermined but malleable, that it can be shed and replaced like a suit of clothes, that we can be whoever we wish to be. And to a certain extent that is true enough; taken to an extreme, however, such an attitude, Judaism insists, denies human nature. “For man is akin to a tree in the field,” Deuteronomy informs us. In the view of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, this strange comparison suggests precisely that man, much like a tree, is in fact integrally connected with his roots, and indeed largely defined by them.

The carob, says the Talmud, has longer roots than most other Israelite trees; to eat its fruit was thus, for Jews in the Diaspora, to link themselves with a land and a heritage far away, and with an identity impervious to the often inimical forces of their surrounding environment. Unquestionably, sweeter and more exotic species of fruit exist abundantly in the Holy Land today, and can be almost instantly transported anywhere in the world. But even today, to connect with one’s long-ago ancestors in the land by savoring the humble carob is truly to comprehend the Psalmist’s confident exclamation: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”