Obamacare 1

I have paid close attention to the vitriol spewing forth from the likes of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and the Louis Gohmerts of the House railing against the ACA and not once have I heard even a remote suggestion of how the law should be changed or what they propose should replace it. Millions of people go without health insurance or have access to meaningful healthcare. Seventeen percent of our GDP goes to healthcare to the ruin of our economy and beyond railing against the law not one offers a suggestion of what they propose in its stead. Part of their problem may be that the ACA, in its current form, is modeled after the last and only suggestion the GOP made throughout this debate. Rather than the universal healthcare plan endorsed by most Democrats and a significant number of prominent economists we have capitulation by House Democrats and the President to the plan proposed by the Republican leadership...the very plan they now condemn. Perhaps they are unable to offer an alternative idea because what we now have IS their best and only idea?!

In Search of Home

It is admittedly overly dramatic to say that as with the story of the Jews cast out by Pharoah and left to wander the desert, I, too, feel as though I have been wandering a spiritual desert in search of a comfortable place, existentially speaking, for my Jewish religious identity. Too often I have found myself standing amidst strangers chanting prayers which have no connection to my life and leaving each such attendance completely unfulfilled and caught between still wanting to find something with some relevance to my life and my ethical being and gradually coming to the conclusion that I would never find such a connection. This year we chose...finally...not to succumb to the numbing traditions of years past by attending yet another meaningless service conducted by a rabbi who does not speak to anything relevant to my life. Instead, we joined tens of thousands of Jews around the country and the world, attending both Rosh Hashanna and Yom Kippur services streamed online from Temple Beth Adam in Loveland, Ohio through ourjewishcommunity.org. For the first time in my life I have found a view of Judaism that finally and for once speaks to my view of religion and history, of an ethical foundation and of a relation to the world around me that in my nearly sixty years I've never once experienced. Thank you for bringing me home.