Chapter One, In Which We Gingerly Enter The Blogosphere

My career used to require more writing than it currently does. I have a lot to say. And since I don't have deadlines and assignments any more, this blog will be my way of "forcing" myself to keep the writing muscles agile.

My primary preoccupations are all things Jewish (with a special emphasis on the mystical strain within Jewish tradition), folk music, the integration of science and spirituality, sports (as they relate to Real Life), language, comedy, movies, and whatever is in this week's New Yorker magazine. Despite this last item, and despite the fact that I live in New York, I am NOT a New Yorker.

It's Yom HaShoah--Holocaust remembrance day. I offer solemn, even mute, respect for those who still walk among us whose lives were touched directly by this horror, to say nothing of honoring the memory of the innocent slaughtered; I understand and support the need to commemorate them. Yet I am firmly in the camp that we have spent enough money building memorials. The most important way in which we can honor the memory of the Holocaust is to create a joyous, vibrant, proud, educated, strong Jewish community, both in Israel and the Diaspora. This is where our major money, time, and energy should be going.

I'm reading a collection of Carl Sagan's lectures right now entitled "The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God." Sagan, an astronomer perhaps best known in popular culture for the Jodie Foster movie "Contact" which was based on his book of the same name, was a master at articulating profound and complex scientific ideas in compelling and layperson's language.

Sagan calculates the likelihood of there being life elsewhere in the universe. He asks simple, compelling questions, like: if we believe that humanity is the product of millions of years of evolution, then why should we be its endpoint? Why shouldn't we assume that millions of years from now there will exist a life form on earth compared to whom we are like apes are to us now? And if there are billions upon billions of galaxies with stars and planets, why should we assume that our little planet is the only one on which the conditions that gave rise to intelligent life have ever or will ever exist?

As with the study of quantum physics (as much as any non-expert can fathom it, that is...) I find myself asking: how can any thoughtful person not be seriously concerned with these questions? And in particular, how can any religious person, especially religious leaders, teachers, and thinkers, not be extraordinarily concerned with them?