1948 Birmingham Black Barons, Willie Mays age 17 (front left)
It is study hall in a junior high school. A group of guys spend it in the library, seated around a table, newspaper spread out. These are the baseball pages, yesterday’s games, today’s games, player stats.
There is a debate at the table, an argument, as there is many days, about who is the better player, Mays or Mantle. (An argument that still rages, all the years later.) Even if you are a Yankees fan, an unfortunate occurrence, there is nothing to discuss. Willie Mays.
Willie Mays then. Willie Mays now, in the wake of his death at 93 yesterday. Not just better than Mantle. Better than anybody, as you either know because you are a baseball fan, or will see, hear or read today even if you are not.
When I heard the news, appropriately while watching a baseball game, I cried. Not typical for me with celebrity deaths, whether sudden and premature or not surprising. We want to see things we’ve never seen before and are unlikely to see again. For baseball fans, we are not going to see Willie Mays again, though there are plenty of stars we admire. We are happy, blissful, that we had him in the game and in our lives.
There is a dispute about how many Palestinians, including children, were killed in the Israeli rescue of four hostages in Gaza. Gaza says 274. Israel says less than 100.
We have to step back and consider that dispute. Is it about numbers? To put it another way, are there moral metrics?
The answer to that last question is: of course. We have forever attached different judgments when bad or questionable acts are done in volume. Mass shootings and massacres have a different character than those with one or a few victims.
In recent and pertinent history, the massacre by Hamas is regularly characterized as the greatest Jewish catastrophe since the Holocaust, which stands as a modern standard for horror. If it had not been six million, but “only” five million or four million, would its character be in any way changed?
In the same recent history, the numbers of Palestinians killed in Gaza has captured the attention of the world. Maybe it is 35,000, maybe more, maybe less, maybe (almost certainly) thousands were children. Does the exact number matter? Is there a line at which “unfortunate but justified and necessary” crosses over? Or, as some in Israel and in America still say, no number is too high, no suffering is too much.
Which brings us back to this particular operation. I am disappointed in Jewish people for a very specific reason. We are the people of the Talmud, one of the greatest disputational records in world history. No detail was too small or arcane to discuss.
Jewish people are free to support any positions and policies they want. But my Talmudic hope is that the discussion goes beyond and beneath reflexive response, exemplified by “right to defend” or “right to exist.” There are questions that should be discussed, openly and without accusation. Earnest questions such as: Is collateral death of 100 different than 274? The Talmudists would have a field day with that one. The fact that we—heirs to those Talmudists—are not having those discussions would make them laugh and cry.
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962) was one of the most innovative and beloved twentieth century lyric poets. The poems are uniquely and unmistakably his, with an idiosyncratic use of words, punctuation and form that served his love of language, life and love.
One of his most quoted lines, one that I’ve repeated often is not from a poem. It is from the Introduction to his book New Poems (1938):
“Always a beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question”
It is rarely quoted in context (see the complete Introduction below).
Cummings did not live to see AI. Though he did experience World War I firsthand, as a medic in France (he was a pacifist) and as a prisoner. Since World War I was as significant as AI in changing the world forever, he and other artists of his time were profoundly affected and incorporated the experience into their art.
Generative AI operates by instructions and queries. But what does that have to do with beautiful questions leading to beautiful answers?
First we should determine exactly what a beautiful question is. Not surprisingly, and very meta, I turned to my preferred AI partner Claude:
Q: What is a beautiful question?
A: A beautiful question is a thought-provoking inquiry that encourages deep reflection, challenges assumptions, and opens up new possibilities for understanding and exploration…. Ultimately, a beautiful question is one that engages our minds, touches our hearts, and inspires us to explore the depths of our own understanding and the world around us.
If you do ask that sort of question of AI, then yes, there is a chance that the answer will approach the depth, engagement and inspiration intended. To put this in extreme perspective, the reported prank question to Google AI “How many rocks should I eat?” is not a beautiful question, nor is the advice to eat one small rock a day a beautiful answer.
Do ask AI to do things for you or to increase your knowledge. Always keep in mind the possibility and opportunity for beauty.
Leading up to the famous quote in the Introduction, Cummings wrote this:
“We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves.”
E. E. Cummings Introduction to New Poems (1938)
The poems to come are for you and for me and are not for mostpeople– it’s no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than the squarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings;mostpeople are snobs. Take the matter of being born. What does being born mean to mostpeople? Catastrophe unmitigated. Socialrevolution. The cultured aristocrat yanked out of his hyperexclusively ultravoluptuous superpalazzo,and dumped into an incredibly vulgar detentioncamp swarming with every conceivable species of undesirable organism. Mostpeople fancy a guaranteed birthproof safetysuit of nondestructible selflessness. If mostpeople were to be born twice they’d improbably call it dying–
you and I are not snobs. We can never be born enough. We are human beings;for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery,the mystery of growing:which happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves. You and I wear the dangerous looseness of doom and find it becoming. Life,for eternal us,is now’and now is much to busy being a little more than everything to seem anything,catastrophic included.
Life,for mostpeople,simply isn’t. Take the socalled standardofliving. What do mostpeople mean by “living”? They don’t mean living. They mean the latest and closest plural approximation to singular prenatal passivity which science,in its finite but unbounded wisdom,has succeeded in selling their wives. If science could fail,a mountain’s a mammal. Mostpeople’s wives could spot a genuine delusion of embryonic omnipotence immediately and will accept no substitutes.
-luckily for us,a mountain is a mammal. The plusorminus movie to end moving,the strictly scientific parlourgame of real unreality,the tyranny conceived in misconception and dedicated to the proposition that every man is a woman and any woman is a king,hasn’t a wheel to stand on. What their synthetic not to mention transparent majesty, mrsandmr collective foetus,would improbably call a ghost is walking. He isn’t a undream of anaesthetized impersons, or a cosmic comfortstation,or a transcedentally sterilized lookiesoundiefeelietastiesmellie. He is a healthily complex,a naturally homogenous,citizen of immorality. The now of his each pitying free imperfect gesture,his any birth of breathing,insults perfected inframortally milleniums of slavishness. He is a little more than everything,he is democracy;he is alive:he is ourselves.
Miracles are to come. With you I leave a remembrance of miracles: they are somebody who can love and who shall be continually reborn,a human being;somebody who said to those near him,when his fingers would not hold a brush “tie it to my hand”–
nothing proving or sick or partial. Nothing false,nothing difficult or easy or small or colossal. Nothing ordinary or extraordinary,nothing emptied or filled,real or unreal;nothing feeble and known or clumsy and guessed. Everywhere tints childrening,innocent spontaneaous,true. Nowhere possibly what flesh and impossibly such a garden,but actually flowers which breasts are amoung the very mouths of light. Nothing believed or doubted;brain over heart, surface:nowhere hating or to fear;shadow,mind without soul. Only how measureless cool flames of making;only each other building always distinct selves of mutual entirely opening;only alive. Never the murdered finalities of wherewhen and yesno,impotent nongames of wrongright and rightwrong;never to gain or pause,never the soft adventure of undoom,greedy anguishes and cringing ecstasies of inexistence;never to rest and never to have;only to grow.
Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question
Tzedahah is a Hebrew word often translated as charity, but in the Bible means righteous behavior. It is a requirement of Jewish life. On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, tzedakah, along with tefilla (prayer) and teshuvah (repentance), is how we are written in the Book of Life.
The famine in Gaza is at the highest level on the scale: Catastrophic food insecurity.
The International Rescue Committee explains:
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale is how hunger crises are measured. Famines are only declared if and when certain criteria defined by this system are met.
More than 1.1 million people in Gaza are already experiencing Level 5 catastrophic food insecurity, and the entire population is facing some level of hunger.
As it stands, children and families don’t know where their next meal is coming from, and they are already going hungry.
The entire population in Gaza is at imminent risk of famine. Without immediate assistance, thousands are likely to face starvation that leads to death.
This crisis is entirely man-made. Once famine is classified, people are already dying. Stopping famine from taking hold is a race against time.
As an act of simple charity, of tzedakah, donating to the International Rescue Committee would be a good thing. It does seem that Jewish people like me have a special responsibility in this case. Whatever your view is of the current war and how it is being conducted, this is exactly the sort of suffering that tzedakah is meant to relieve. Righteous behavior.
Any public life that includes Trump—so obsessively—would be. Having a disordered personality in such a prominent role would naturally lead to chaos and a dark downward spiral. (Reminder, no matter your feelings about Biden, do vote for him to defeat Trump.)
Biden, however, has added to the shambles. His Gaza “policy” has been at least equivocal and incoherent and at most destructive and duplicitous. Which is why some traditionally Democratic voters are wondering about supporting him, and why a very small but courageous number of people in his administration have left. To counteract the disaffection and loss of confidence, Biden could have long ago injected brave straight talk and active engagement into the situation, instead of toothless rhetoric, which only made him look weak when Netanyahu ignored him.
That didn’t happen. And if the latest peace plan, which may or may not go anywhere, is meant to erase all that’s gone on, that’s just one more miscalculation.
Israel is committed to standing alone in the world. In fact, it is part of its character and a point of pride. If Biden wants to also stand alone in the world, which on Gaza he is now doing, he has his own price to pay. He seems to be calculating that being too hard on Israel is politically worse than going easy. That is proving to be a risky bet.
It shouldn’t surprise you that after Trump’s criminal conviction, I’m not going to be supporting him or voting for him in the 2024 election.
It shouldn’t surprise you because…I’m dead! For those who say I am turning in my grave or crying, same thing.
But that doesn’t mean I can’t advise those in the Republican Party, since that was my party. Literally, “the party of Lincoln”.
I was never known to use much vulgar language, even when I lost my temper. Though times and politics have changed—not necessarily for the better—you won’t hear me say what I might say to these Republicans if I had 21st century sensibilities: What the **** is wrong with you!?
Current Republicans have missed everything I stood for. I was never an angel above politics. That’s not how you win two presidential elections. But I was a person and leader of principle. The Republican Party, the one prepared to nominate a convicted criminal whose crime was to subvert an election, is taking a torch to those principles. American principles, constitutional principles, principles of justice, principles of decent behavior, in and out of office.
I want out. I am begging the Republican Party to renounce me. Stop calling it “the party of Lincoln”. Please take my name off. I may be dead, but I hope my spirit lives on. Just not, apparently, in the Republican Party.
“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”
First music of the day is important. But not easy to choose. It has to fit inside and outside, me and the world.
This morning I chose All Along the Watchtower, written by Bob Dylan, performed by Jimi Hendrix.
The artistic heritage of both of them goes back before the 1960s. Dylan drank from the well of folk music and the beat poets. Hendrix began as a blues and R&B player. They flourished, like rare flowers, beyond those beginnings.
If you are new to either, suggestions. For Dylan, listen to albums from 1965 to 1967: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (personal favorite), Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding (includes Watchtower). For Hendrix, the only three studio albums before his death in 1970: Are You Experienced, Axis: Bold as Love, Electric Ladyland (includes Watchtower).
Anything more I would say is small and superfluous.
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief “There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”
“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke “There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”
All along the watchtower, princes kept the view While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl
The primary reasons for Netenyahu pursuing his Gaza war, whatever the actual success of the strategies, are to eliminate Hamas, hide his failure in preventing October 7, stay in power, avoid going to jail, and others.
There is a secondary reason, a bonus. Bibi has made Biden look weak and ineffectual. Biden’s rhetoric has been equivocal, leaning towards Israel. His actions have been less equivocal, since his arming of Israel remains intact, whatever he says.
This is exactly what Bibi and right-wingers in his cabinet want. They want Trump. Bibi, an agile politician if not a world-class statesman, can see that all this is costing Biden support and votes, increasing the chance of a Trump victory in what will be a close election. When Trump is back in office, they believe, whatever they want, whatever they ask for, he will be on their side. Unlike Biden, who seems to be having trouble holding steady in the political winds.
So while there are reasons that Bibi has remained stubborn and needlessly brutal in Gaza, helping elect Trump would be another good outcome for him. A bonus.
After the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered a halt to the Israeli offensive in Rafah, Israeli spokesperson Avi Hyman said, “No power on Earth will stop Israel from protecting its citizens and going after Hamas in Gaza.”
I have no two-way channel with God. Whether or not the age of prophets and prophecy is past or present, whether there are those who had or have revelations, I am not one. This has not stopped me from wondering what God would say or do when faced with the precise way Israel is going about its protection of citizens and its pursuit of Hamas.
It seems that Netenyahu and his war cabinet, and their supporters, believe that everything they are doing is exactly what God wants them to do. Whether that comes from direct communication or is derived from their interpretation of the tradition they haven’t said.
If they asked me how I interpret the tradition, that is, what I think God wants, I don’t think it is this. Again, I’m not a prophet, and they would never ask me anyway.
I imagine God being pretty harsh with these Israeli leaders. I imagine God would tell them that as strategists they are the worst. The word “idiots” might be used, if that is how God talks. I imagine that Israeli lack of mercy and compassion would come up. God might remind them that in biblical times, Israelites who strayed so far from basic moral principles could expect to be smitten.
Maybe this is what the spokesperson is hinting at. Yes, he might be saying, “No power on earth will stop us. But if God intervenes, that’s a whole different story.”
Political power is one of the great temptations. Read ancient or modern history, read the Bible, read today’s news.
That news includes Nikki Haley, who not long ago called Trump dangerous and demented, now says she will vote for him. This is only the latest example of these kinds of turnarounds. A roster of Republicans brutally criticized Trump while they were vying for the 2016 nomination. The moment he won the nomination and looked like a potential president, they changed their tune. None more radically than Lindsey Graham, whose unwavering support of all things Trump has led to speculation that Trump has some secret personal evidence about him. Pure speculation.
Democrats are not strangers to political expediency, equivocation and hypocrisy. Plenty of examples. But Republicans have taken it to a new level. The Trump phenomenon has laid bare that in the Republican domain, with a few exceptions, all elements of integrity are gone. Maybe sleeping, maybe on vacation, maybe wounded, but more than likely dead for now.
For those of us who are not politicians, just citizens and political observers, the question loudly arises: Is political office and power really so important that all vestiges of integrity can be sacrificed? There were moments in the Nikki Haley campaign when she sounded like she actually meant what she said. We now know she didn’t. Or if she did at the time, she has found something more important, like being president someday.
There are so many Christians who support Trump and so many Republican politicians who are faithful Christians. Which means they may have read the Gospel of Mark thousands of times, and quoted it just as often. Whether they understood it is a different question, as is the question of how closely they follow it.
It is worth, for them and anybody, recalling the words from Mark 8:36:
What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? (NIV)
There are a lot of souls forfeited along the Republican trail.
Bob Schwartz 