New Horizons by Max Roy

                   Jewish Lives Matter There it is, now I’ve said it. I’ve said the thing that many Jews say in their hearts but never say out loud. Naturally, every ethnic group will say the same thing in their hearts. We don’t express these things out loud because it is not polite, and because we do not publicly want to admit that our particular group deserves some priority in the public mind. Of course, the Black Lives mantra is a reaction to the unjustified treatment Blacks have been exposed to historically. But isn’t that true for Jews as well? Don’t we know that Jews are the ones that suffer to the greatest extent from reported incidents of all kinds of attacks? And that’s not counting all the incidents that are not labelled for what they really are. And how many Holocausts have Jews suffered over the centuries of their dispersion? But when was the time that there were public demonstrations with signs p...

        

          The World We Live In Have you given some thought to the world we live in? Our earth is a happy accident, close enough to our sun to give us warmth in the summer, some chills in the winter, but far enough so that we kept our atmosphere and are shielded from toxic rays emitted by that body. Everywhere we have looked in our system we have not found another place where humans are viable. The last paroxysm our planet faced only made our supremacy more possible, more likely. What have we done with our heritage? Many of those who comment on that issue keep giving us a failing mark. I don’t see it that way. What was life like for humans five hundred, one thousand, years ago? The mere fact that we are now eight billion souls today, compared with the past, gives us the evidence that humans are flourishing on this spot in the universe. It may be that we will reach a point that population will stabilize. It is clear that birth rates reach a bala...

    75 th Anniversary of Israel’s Independence                Blood, Tears and Survival The Day that Israel’s independence was declared, May 15,1948…. forces from seven Arab countries entered the country to drive the Jews into the sea! When we examine the present in 2023, appreciating Israel’s prominence now, its contribution in so many fields being out of all proportion to its economic and population size, it is a shock to examine its early beginnings, and its fragility, when it issued its Declaration of Independence. In this year 2023, Israel will mark its 75 th anniversary with its population approaching ten million. In 1948, armies of seven Arab countries invaded to join internal Arab resistance to Israel’s existence. Many countries placed an embargo on the sales of arms to Israel. The war continued for ten months, through three ceasefires called by the UN, as the Arab side saw their hopes for a quick...

                Sunny Times, Rainy Times It strikes me as curious that sunny times are usually associated with happy and rainy times are associated with sadness. Yet in agriculture we need the rainy times to ensure a good, even a bountiful crop, and sad times make us better appreciate the happy times we are lucky enough to experience. Too much in the way of sun can lead to drought, with all the pain and loss that can accompany that, so that we will joyfully welcome the relief that comes with rain. We accept that the inherent nature of life means that a time of mourning is visited upon us whether we like it or not. We may not think much about that when we are rushing to embrace all the adventures of life in our younger years. It may be that we are more carefree before we have accumulated the responsibilities of being an adult. It may be that we look that those early years as being more sunlit than the years that ...

      The Nitty Gritty   They say we all die alone, the human fate. I see it differently. The most fortunate will see it differently. When I was a youngster, surveying the world around me, the place I inhabited, it was like a puzzle I was trying to unravel. Who were these people in the family in which I was planted? I had this sense that I had been dropped among them like a Cuckoo’s egg deposited in some random nest to be hatched. I left home for a year when I was eighteen. When I returned, my feeling of isolation was reinforced. How could I relate to these members of my own family who had not shared my growing-up experience? I felt inarticulate, unable to translate what I had become to the people with whom I was closest. What hope was there for achieving that with strangers? We go forward in life, like the Argonauts of ancient Greece, into the unexplored, the unknown. We gird our loins to confront the dangers we know that life will place before us, seeki...

  Preparing For Take-off   I once watched a program broadcast from the UK that told of a new initiative, the bringing together of (six) individuals who were all facing the verdict of terminal illness. They were to come together four times over the period of a year, with the presence of counsellors, to explore the benefits of mutual support as their deteriorating individual circumstance brought them toward to what appeared to be their inevitable end. Their individual agonies were displayed for us on the screen as they worked through the pain of facing the unknown, leaving loved partners and young children, facing the disintegrating personal relationships with close friends, lovers, husbands. Or, for some, facing the starkness of being totally alone in these circumstances, with no human liaison. What to do? Shall we drink wine and make merry while we can? Should we tick off items on our bucket list? Shall we spend our time exploring the infinite within ourselves in prepara...