We sat at my sister-in-law\’s kitchen table, 11 of us from three generations of my husband\’s family, absorbed by a wicked game of dreidel on the fifth night of Chanukah, howling with abandon and anticipation at each seemingly endless spin. My 10-year-old daughter, the youngest present, was killing us all, amassing huge quantities of chocolate gold.
It\’s axiomatic that Jews tend to view all news through the lens of \”but is it good for the Jews?\” It\’s therefore no surprise that this filter now is being brought to bear on my former boss and mentor, Judge Samuel Alito Jr., who has been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.
\”But is it good for the Jews?\” That was the question many of our grandparents voiced when they perused the morning papers — a question we may have dismissed, even with affection, as a narrow or parochial expression.
Oddly, or perhaps not for a product of the Orthodox yeshiva world, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., profoundly shaped my religious life. His life story, with all its achievements, failures, complexities and wonders, is, like the lives of all spiritual giants, its own text and source of teaching.
There\’s a guy in line behind me whose name I can\’t remember but who is a good friend of a 50-year-old I once dated whose name I also can\’t remember, which is kind of ironic — I stopped dating him because he\’s too old, and it\’s my memory that\’s failing.
The pre-mortem eulogies, the stream of editorials, the international expressions of sympathy — what you are witnessing is Ariel Sharon\’s ascension to the Jewish pantheon.
Each of us lives a spiritual journey. One of greatest tasks in life is to know our journey, to understand its contours and what it demands of us. The Torah teaches us these journeys, these paths into our center.
This tour is no typical high school field trip, with its predictable mix of unruly, disinterested teenagers. These students are here mainly because their school, Jefferson High, became a flash point last year for fights between Latino and African American students. The overcrowded, underperforming campus in South Los Angeles was 92 percent Latino, 7.5 percent black and, seemingly on a handful of occasions, nearly 100 percent out of control.
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