Daily Archives: May 16, 2021

My eighth-grader cannot wait to get her COVID vaccine. Gone are the days of needle dread, when every trip to the doctors office prompted the same anxious question: Will I have to get a shot?

Now the question is, How soon can I get vaccinated? and, Then can I hug my friends?

The youngest, she will be the last one in our family to get the vaccine, approved this week for 12-to-15-year-olds by the FDA, with the CDC expected to deliver final public health guidance shortly. She can hardly wait.

My oldest daughter, now in college, is already fully vaccinated. She was 5 years old when, during a flu shot appointment, she made a break for it. She ran all the way down the clinic hallway and out the revolving door. She was headed for the parking lot when I caught up with her and dragged her back inside a scene neither of us will ever forget.

For years she hated needles. In high school she passed out cold after a series of shots at that same doctors office. But she, too, was delighted when she became eligible for the COVID vaccine, and rushed to get an appointment. It was great, she said nothing to it.

Lets hope all the vaccine-hesitant people in our lives undergo a similar transformation, from leery to gung-ho.

As public health officials keep reminding us, we need everyone who can get a COVID shot to get one, so we can achieve herd immunity and get our lives back.

We are on the brink, this spring, of getting back to normal.

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I recently started going into the Examiner office, after a winter spent sitting around the house with my loved ones, staring at our separate screens and bumping into each other as we cruised the kitchen and binged on crackers. Dont get me wrong, its wonderful to have the option to work from home, and cozy to be with the family. Everyone enjoyed it, for a while. Especially the dog. But its amazing to be back in the world again. The first day I visited our silent office after a year away, I cleared up yellowing newspapers with headlines from March 2020 about the pandemic, threw away dried flower petals scattered across the carpet by a bouquet that was quickly turning to dust.

Now, I look out the window and see crowded cafe tables on the street below. I hear bubbling conversation and music from the coffee shop downstairs. The coffee crowd slowly gives way to the after-work beer crowd as the sun sinks behind the Capitol. It feels like the world is coming alive again, especially in the beautiful spring weather.

We cant hibernate forever.

You would think the Reopen crowd would be thrilled by the success of Wisconsins tops-in-the-nation vaccination program, and eager to get their shots and put the pandemic behind us. But alas, you would be wrong about that.

Our own Sen. Ron Johnson the same guy who said COVID deaths were not such a big deal, that people needed to get back to work early in the pandemic and that stay-at-home orders were not worth the economic cost, is pushing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Johnson claimed on rightwing talker Vicki McKennas radio show last week that lots of people have died after getting the vaccine, and cited those (debunked) statistics as a reason for sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated.

Johnson, an Ayn Rand acolyte, truly does not seem to grasp the concept of public health or society, for that matter. If youhave avaccine, quite honestly, whatdo you care ifyour neighbor has one or not? he said,firmly staking out the political terrain that opposes the control of contagious disease.

This is the same guy who publicized snake oil remedies for COVID at a U.S. Senate hearing, to the dismay of doctors.

No surprise, then, that he was an outlier no vote on Tuesday when Andrea Palm, the former head of Wisconsins Department of Health Services, sailed through Senate confirmation to become the No. 2 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Palm must be so delighted to be moving up and out from Wisconsin, after enduring relentless attacks from state Republicans just for doing her job and trying to protect us all from a deadly virus. Johnsons no vote is practically an endorsement.

What is it with our states Republican leaders? Why must they start a war with sane public health policies in the middle of a public health crisis? Why must they opposemasks and social distancing and vaccination? Couldnt they pick one?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated. Some of the same dont tread on me sign-carriers who gathered on the State Capitol lawn to protest Gov. Tony Evers stay-at-home order last spring appear to have moved on to the Alliant Center, holding some of the same signs objecting to the nanny state while promoting Johsonesque anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Driving past this crowd reminded me of chasing my daughter through the revolving door when she was running away from her shot. Irrational fear is hard to control. The least our political leaders can do is not give it a running start.

Instead, they should remind people how badly they wanted to reopen the state a year ago. Nows their chance. Get vaccinated, so we can get back to normal.

If my shot-resistant kids can do it, so can all those Republican men. Because Im getting too old to chase you through the parking lot.

View post:

Wisconsin Examiner Kids are getting their shots so should Ron Johnson - Wisconsin Examiner

My eighth-grader cannot wait to get her COVID-19 vaccine. Gone are the days of needle dread, when every trip to the doctors office prompted the same anxious question: Will I have to get a shot?

Now the question is, How soon can I get vaccinated? and, Then can I hug my friends?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated.

The youngest, she will be the last one in our family to get the vaccine, approved this week for twelve- to fifteen-year-olds by the FDA, with the CDC expected to deliver final public health guidance shortly. She can hardly wait.

My oldest daughter, now in college, is already fully vaccinated. She was five years old when, during a flu shot appointment, she made a break for it. She ran all the way down the clinic hallway and out the revolving door. She was headed for the parking lot when I caught up with her and dragged her back insidea scene neither of us will ever forget.

For years she hated needles. In high school she passed out cold after a series of shots at that same doctors office. But she, too, was delighted when she became eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, and rushed to get an appointment. It was great, she saidnothing to it.

Lets hope all the vaccine-hesitant people in our lives undergo a similar transformation, from leery to gung-ho.

As public health officials keep reminding us, we need everyone who can get a COVID-19 shot to get one, so we can achieve herd immunity and get our lives back.

We are on the brink, this spring, of getting back to normal.

I recently started going into the Wisconsin Examiner office, after a winter spent sitting around the house with my loved ones, staring at our separate screens and bumping into each other as we cruised the kitchen and binged on crackers. Dont get me wrong, its wonderful to have the option to work from home, and cozy to be with the family.

Everyone enjoyed it, for a while. Especially the dog. But its amazing to be back in the world again. The first day I visited our silent office after a year away, I cleared up yellowing newspapers with headlines from March 2020 about the pandemic, threw away dried flower petals scattered across the carpet by a bouquet that was quickly turning to dust.

Now, I look out the window and see crowded cafe tables on the street below. I hear bubbling conversation and music from the coffee shop downstairs. The coffee crowd slowly gives way to the after-work beer crowd as the sun sinks behind the Capitol. It feels like the world is coming alive again, especially in the beautiful spring weather.

We cant hibernate forever.

You would think the Reopen crowd would be thrilled by the success of Wisconsins tops-in-the-nation vaccination program, and eager to get their shots and put the pandemic behind us. But alas, you would be wrong about that.

Our own Senator Ron Johnsonthe same guy who said COVID-19 deaths were not such a big deal, that people needed to get back to work early in the pandemic and that stay-at-home orders were not worth the economic cost, is pushing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Johnson claimed on rightwing talker Vicki McKennas radio show last week that lots of people have died after getting the vaccine, and cited those (debunked) statistics as a reason for sticking up for people who choose not to get vaccinated.

Johnson, an Ayn Rand acolyte, truly does not seem to grasp the concept of public healthor society, for that matter. If youhave avaccine, quite honestly, whatdo you care ifyour neighbor has one or not? he said, firmly staking out the political terrain that opposes the control of contagious disease.

This is the same guy who publicized snake oil remedies for COVI-19 at a U.S. Senate hearing, to the dismay of doctors.

No surprise, then, that he was an outlier no vote on Tuesday when Andrea Palm, the former head of Wisconsins Department of Health Services, sailed through Senate confirmation to become the No. 2 at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Palm must be so delighted to be moving up and out from Wisconsin, after enduring relentless attacks from state Republicans just for doing her job and trying to protect us all from a deadly virus. Johnsons no vote is practically an endorsement.

What is it with our states Republican leaders? Why must they start a war with sane public health policies in the middle of a public health crisis? Why must they opposemasks and social distancing and vaccination? Couldnt they pick one?

White, Republican men are the biggest anti-maskers and the least willing to get vaccinated. Some of the same dont tread on me sign carriers who gathered on the State Capitol lawn to protest Governor Tony Everss stay-at-home order last spring appear to have moved on to the Alliant Center, holding some of the same signs objecting to the nanny state while promoting Johnson-esque anti-vaccine conspiracy theories.

Driving past this crowd reminded me of chasing my daughter through the revolving door when she was running away from her shot. Irrational fear is hard to control. The least our political leaders can do is not give it a running start.

Instead, they should remind people how badly they wanted to reopen the state a year ago. Nows their chance. Get vaccinated, so we can get back to normal.

If my shot-resistant kids can do it, so can all of those Republican men. Because Im getting too old to chase you through the parking lot.

This article first appeared in the Wisconsin Examiner.

Read the rest here:

Kids Are Getting VaccinatedSo Should Ron Johnson - Progressive.org

We customarily spend Shavuot Eve (Layl Tikkun) engrossed in study of sacred texts and Jewish thought and history, gratefully re-enacting and reimagining and to a certain degree expanding upon the Revelation at Sinai that the festival commemorates. The specific subject matter we examine varies from tradition to tradition, year to year, community to community, student to student.

What follows is a collection of quotations from a wide variety of sources that acts as a book-by-book review of the Hebrew Bible all 39 books (counting the 12 minor prophets as discrete works). In some cases, the familiar English name of the biblical book is mentioned explicitly. Some books are identified by reference to their central theme, or invocation of a leading literary motif or famous verse. Others are alluded to still more obliquely through pun, word-play, even anagram. Often, more than one of these methods are combined to establish a clearer reference to the book in question. Some quotations incorporate the meaning of the biblical works Hebrew name, notwithstanding the books more familiar English appellation.

Shavuot celebrants aiming reverently to revel in revelation are invited thoughtfully to consider these quotes, presented in the traditional order of the Masoretic text (see below) and to explore (and perhaps to discuss, debate, and dispute) how they relate to the corresponding sections of the Hebrew Bible.

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In so doing, this Shavuot and through all the days that follow, may we come more deeply to celebrate and more gratefully to embrace what Abraham Lincoln referred to as the best gift God has ever given us the Bible itself.

Chag sameach!

Torah

I shall now proceed to the nature and genesis of the imagination. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Biographia Literaria,, or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions)

Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed ecstasy, not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an on-going exodus out of the closed inward-looking self toward its liberation through self-giving toward authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God. (Pope Benedict XVI)

Man is priest, and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Grown-ups like numbers. When you tell them about a new friend, they never ask questions about what really matters. They never ask: What does his voice sound like? What games does he like best? Does he collect butterflies? They ask: How old is he? How many brothers does he have? How much does he weigh? How much money does he have? Only then do they think they know him. If you tell grown-ups, I saw a beautiful red brick house, with geraniums at the windows and doves at the roof, they wont be able to imagine such a house. You have to tell them, I saw a house worth a thousand francs. Then they exclaim, What a pretty house! (Antoine de Saint-Exupry, The Little Prince)

Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble. (Yehuda Berg)

Former Prophets (Neviim Rishonim)

Joshing and ribbing need not always be cruel or inappropriate. It is okay sometimes to laugh at othersa comic or even our friendsespecially if they are in a position to tease us back. Humor offers an important way for us to have fun together, to laugh with (not just at) others, and to exercise our abilities for socialization. (Robert R. Clewis, Kants Humorous Writings)

Judges ought to be more learned than witty, more reverent than plausible, and more advised than confident. Above all things, integrity is their portion and proper virtue. (Francis Bacon)

I would not, could not, in the rain. Not in the dark. Not on a train. Not in a car. Not in a tree. I do not like them, Sam, you see. (Dr. Seuss)

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King)

The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of shoes and ships and sealing wax of cabbages and kings. (Lewis Carroll)

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question. (Thomas Jefferson)

Latter Prophets (Neviim Acharonim)

I say a final last prayer, this one in gratitude that there are people in the world who will protect kids with a fire that makes them sprint after cars, fight systems, curse with rage. Its enough to make you believe. Maybe not in symbols; maybe not in gods. But certainly in people. (Emery Lord, The Names They Gave Us)

Mark Twain said that every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction; jeremiads are the caustic, but necessary herbicide that keeps those seeds from ever bearing fruit. (Brett & Kate McKay, Were Going to Hell in a Handbasket! Hooray! Why Every Man Should Embrace the Jeremiad)

The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency the belief that the here and now is all there is. (Allan Bloom)

Minor Prophets (Trei Asar)

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, youll become happy; if you get a bad one, youll become a philosopher. (Socrates)

For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal. (Sren Kierkegaard)

Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue. (Barry Goldwater)

Servant of God, well done! well hast thou fought The better fight, who single hast maintaind Against revolted multitudes the cause of truth. (John Milton)

They will abide a great deal, sailors, but not a Jonah. (Patrick OBrian, Master and Commander)

The idea is to write it so that people hear it and it slides through the brain and goes straight to the heart. (Maya Angelou)

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. (C. S. Lewis)

Though vine nor fig-tree neither,Their wonted fruit shall bear,Though all the field should wither,Nor flocks nor herds be there;Yet God the same abiding,His praise shall tune my voice,For, while in Him confiding,I cannot but rejoice. (William Cowper, Sometimes a Light Surprises)

We cannot begin to define Gods knowledge. We know, simply and profoundly, that nothing is hidden from Him or incomprehensible to Him. (Elizabeth George)

Designing a dream city is easy; rebuilding a living one takes imagination. (Jane Jacobs)

Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles. (Alex Karras)

Man is a messenger who forgot the message. (Abraham Joshua Heschel)

Writings (Ketuvim)

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and Id be a damn fool if they werent. (Dylan Thomas)

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience. (Miguel de Cervantes)

Be thankful for your problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job. (Jim Lovell)

A bells not a bell til you ring it, A songs not a song til you sing it, Love in your heart wasnt put there to stay, Love isnt love til you give it away! (Oscar Hammerstein II)

People say I am ruthless. I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him. (Robert F. Kennedy)

This day I ceased to plead. I was no longer capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I felt very strong. I was the accuser, God the accused. (Elie Wiesel, Night)

The secular world is more spiritual than it thinks, just as the ecclesiastical world is more materialistic than it cares to acknowledge. (Lionel Blue)

I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me to be a Queen, as to be a Queen over so thankful a people. (Elizabeth I)

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Dont set out to raze all shrines, youll frighten men, enshrine mediocrity and the shrines are razed. (Ayn Rand)

God comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable.

(Shane Claiborne, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice. ( E. M. Forster)

To bring our forebears back to mind,Their deeds, their words, their manners kind,We must their chronicles at least,And their histories read out at feasts;The foul plotting of the knave,The noble record of the brave. (Robert Wace, Roman de Rou)

Joseph H. Prouser is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey in Franklin Lakes.

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)

Genesis Coleridge)

Exodus (Benedict)

Leviticus (Emerson)

Numbers (Saint Exupery)

Deuteronomy (Burg)

Joshua (Clewis)

Judges (Bacon)

I Samuel (Seuss)

II Samuel (Tolkien)

I Kings (Carroll)

II Kings (Jefferson)

Isaiah (Lord)

Jeremiah (McKay)

Ezekiel (Bloom)

Hosea (Socrates)

Joel (Kierkegaard)

Amos (Goldwater)

Obadiah (Milton)

Jonah (OBrian)

Micah (Angelou)

Nahum (Lewis)

Habakkuk (Cowper)

Zephaniah (George)

Haggai (Jacobs)

Zechariah (Karras)

Malachi (Heschel)

Psalms (Thomas)

Proverbs (Cervantes)

Job (Lovell)

Song of Songs (Hammerstein)

Ruth (Kennedy)

Lamentations Wiesel)

Ecclesiastes (Blue)

Esther (Elizabeth)

Daniel (Gandhi)

Ezra (Rand)

Nehemiah (Claiborne)

I Chronicles (Forster)

II Chronicles (Wace)

Read the original here:

Reverential and referential: A review of the Hebrew Bible for Shavuot eve - The Jewish Standard