L’Shanah Tovah

Happy New Year. Rosh Hashannah began tonight — the Jewish New Year. I’m back at my parents’ house. We went to synagogue tonight, and we’ll go again tomorrow and the next day.

Rosh Hashannah is supposed to be a joyous holiday, but nobody was feeling particularly joyous. And for me, it felt kind of strange to be reciting prayers to God tonight. I’ve never been particularly religious. And if God exists, then I’m really pissed at Him right now. If He doesn’t exist, then it seems kind of futile and absurd and comical to be praying to Him. I don’t know. I just wasn’t into it.

This week’s New Yorker was in my mailbox this afternoon. I’d been curious to see what the cover would look like, and I was taken aback when I finally saw it. It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. It was rather astonishing in its simplicity. You’ll just have to see it for yourself.

The bulk of the issue was devoted to last week’s events.

There’s a pattern to the way the media processes things: first, it happens on TV. We get the immediate reactions.

The next day, we get the first newpaper stories and front pages. We get the first written record of the events as well as some analysis and some moving language.

Several days later, after we have begun collectively to process the events, we get the magazine stories. That’s where we’re at right now. Reading the New Yorker’s take on any particular recent event is always soothing, therapeutic, in a way. The quality of the writing in that magazine is just so damn good. This week is no exception.

The first piece in the “Talk of the Town” section, by Hendrik Hertzberg, is dead on. I quote:

With growing ferocity, officials from the President on down have described the bloody deeds as acts of war. But, unless a foreign government turns out to have directed the operation (or, at least, to have known and approved its scope in detail and in advance), that is a category mistake. The metaphor of war — and it is more metaphor than description — ascribes to the perpetrators a dignity they do not merit, a status they cannot claim, and a strength they do not possess….

The scale of the damage notwithstanding, a more useful metaphor than war is crime.

Oh, by the way, if you haven’t read this yet, you should. (via kottke)

I think the Bush Administration — no, I think our national government as a whole — is rather blind. Bush keeps on saying that America is the best country in the world and we’re number one and these evil-doers have awakened a mighty giant and so forth. All this is doing is creating more antagonism with the rest of the world. And even many European countries are getting a bit more skittish about going to war than they were at first. Who are we going to war against? How can you conquer an enemy when all it takes is ten guys with knives to kill 5,500 people? I think there’s a true lack of insight, a lack of fresh thinking, and an excess of America-centrism going on here. The reason this happened in the first place is because we throw our weight around — because even though this horrible thing happened in New York and Washington, some equivalent of this is happening somewhere every day. A huge percentage of Africa is dying of AIDS. Much of the world is poor. And us, we’re the largest consumer of energy on the planet. On top of that, we try to dictate the terms of almost everything going on in the world.

That’s not to say that any of last week’s carnage is justified. It was revolting and horrifying. It’s just that I don’t think our leaders really know what’s going on in the world.

I think that before you get elected to any national office in this country, you should be required to live overseas for a few years so you can see the United States from the point of view of an outsider. Our leaders are so narrow-minded!

America isn’t representative of the rest of the world.

America is an ivory tower.

Well, as we say in Judaism: have a Sweet New Year.