It's May Fourth and I find myself listening, as I always do on this date, to a song from more than forty years ago, wondering. Miller, Krause, Schroeder and Scheuer would be in their early sixties if they were alive today.
It happened when I was too young to understand, but I went to college in northern Ohio ten years later. In those days, in that place, the tin soldiers still left a long shadow.
I wonder how, or if, to talk to my children about it. What lessons would I want them to learn?
People who seem normal and well meaning can turn fanatically cruel if they are given a reason to hate and fear.
Speaking truth, even today, is a dangerous business, but it is what we are obligated to do.
Elections have consequences.
The rabbis warned us about power and what can come of it. They warned the leaders of their day to love service to others, but to fear the power that comes with authority (Pirkei Avot 1:10). We have seen, in our own country, in my own lifetime, how twisted power can become, how ideology without compassion can turn into murderous brutality. I fear it could happen again.
How many more?
It happened when I was too young to understand, but I went to college in northern Ohio ten years later. In those days, in that place, the tin soldiers still left a long shadow.
I wonder how, or if, to talk to my children about it. What lessons would I want them to learn?
People who seem normal and well meaning can turn fanatically cruel if they are given a reason to hate and fear.
Speaking truth, even today, is a dangerous business, but it is what we are obligated to do.
Elections have consequences.
The rabbis warned us about power and what can come of it. They warned the leaders of their day to love service to others, but to fear the power that comes with authority (Pirkei Avot 1:10). We have seen, in our own country, in my own lifetime, how twisted power can become, how ideology without compassion can turn into murderous brutality. I fear it could happen again.
How many more?
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