Thoughts on the National Day of Prayer

By Alan Caruba

I feel sorry for atheists and this is particularly true on the National Day of Prayer, May 6th. Curiously, almost every atheist I know has read the Old and New Testaments from cover to cover, apparently looking for a loophole.

I suspect that the earliest ancestors of modern man were praying in their caves and on their savannas. Prayer comes as naturally to our lips as a kiss.

Thinking about prayer led me to conclude that what we call prayer today is yet another gift of the Jews, one that preceded the gift of a messiah to Christians, even if Jews prefer to wait for one.

"The Jew gave us the Outside and the Inside—our outlook and our inner life. We can hardly get up in the morning or cross the street without being Jewish. We dream Jewish dreams and hope Jewish hopes. Most of our best words, in fact—new, adventure, surprise, unique, individual, person, vocation, time, history, future, freedom, progress, spirit, faith, hope, justice—are the gifts of the Jews." -- Thomas Cahill, Irish Author.

Adin Steinsaltz, writing in “The Essential Talmud” notes that, “In the First Temple era, prayer was entirely spontaneous; when a man felt the need to petition his God or thank Him, he prayed in his own words.” However, the “formal regulation of prayer had already commenced; the first psalms had been composed and were sung by the Levites on special occasions in the Temple, so the general public was aware of the existence of certain official prayer ceremonies that took place at fixed times.”

“The need for a recognized version of prayers became pressing at the beginning of the Second Temple era. “ Having returned from a long exile in Babylonia, the Jews had only sparse knowledge of the Hebrew language and of basic concepts of Judaism. “When they wanted to pray, they lacked both language and content.” As a result a Great Assembly was held and out of that came the decision to compose a standard prayer. It was composed of eighteen benedictions.

Much of this official prayer has survived to this day and it should escape no one that the Jews and Judaism have survived as well. And not just survived, but returned in our lifetimes to rebuild Israel as the world’s only Jewish state. No one with any knowledge of history and a sense of a greater power at work in the affairs of men can ignore the significance of this.

Olive Schreiner, a South African novelist and social activist, wrote: "Indeed it is difficult for all other nations of the world to live in the presence of the Jews. It is irritating and most uncomfortable. The Jews embarrass the world as they have done things which are beyond the imaginable. They have become moral strangers since the day their forefather, Abraham, introduced the world to high ethical standards and to the fear of Heaven.”

“They brought the world the Ten Commandments, which many nations prefer to defy. They violated the rules of history by staying alive, totally at odds with common sense and historical evidence. They outlived all their former enemies, including vast empires such as the Romans and the Greeks. They angered the world with their return to their homeland after 2000 years of exile and after the murder of six million of their brothers and sisters.”

Christian Americans, increasingly feeling the sting of rejection, ridicule, and efforts to isolate them, now have more reason than ever to identify with and understand the centuries of oppression Jews endured.

Jews will join in the National Day of Prayer and no doubt they will regard it as a good thing, having bequeathed a heritage of the earliest prayers and having institutionalized prayer to make it available to all, inside or outside of the temple.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

America's Christmas Wars

By Alan Caruba

It’s become the new Christmas tradition; a handful of people who demand that everyone else stop celebrating Christmas by displaying manger scenes in public places or stop singing Christmas carols in school, or stop saying “Merry Christmas.”

These people are annoying twits, but they too often get their way because the courts back them with the claim that the state cannot condone any religious expression in public places. Given the long history of religious faith and practice from the nation's founding and earlier, this is as idiotic as it gets. It runs contrary to America’s long tradition of tolerance.

In November, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Stratechuk v Board of Education, South Orange-Maplewood School District. It upheld the district’s policy banning celebratory religious holiday music at school-sponsored holiday concerts.

While holiday music could still be taught in music classes and songs with religious content “not specifically related to the holidays” could be performed in concerts, the music of Christmas was banned. The court rejected the plaintiff’s claim that the school was unconstitutionally restricting student’s access to ideas.

“Those of us who were educated in the public schools remember holiday celebrations replete with Christmas carols, and possibly even Chanukah songs, to which no objections had been raised. Since then, the governing principles have been examined and defined with more particularlty,” said Judge Delores Korman Sloviter in the 22-page opinion.

The controversy dates to 2004 when the Maplewood-South Orange district extended a 20-year-old 1990 ban on singing religious songs in school performances to include instrumental versions of those songs. An appeal of the decision is being considered.

Many, many years prior to the 1990 ban, I passed through the Maplewood-South Orange schools, from kindergarten to graduation from twelfth grade. In the earliest years, America was at war in Europe and the Pacific. In Europe, it was not only against the law to sing Chanuka songs, it was against the law to be a Jew and punishable by death. Following victory in 1945, Christmas took on a particularly joyous quality when the troops returned home and began families. In 1955 I bade goodbye to Columbia High School.

All through those years, Christian and Jewish students sang Christmas carols, many about a world at peace with good will to all men. In my experience, none of the Jewish students ever gave a single thought to singing the carols beyond sharing the joy with their Christian friends. Those songs brought everyone together.

Now they drive apart those who respect the traditions of all religions and those atheists who insist that everyone else reject belief in a higher power or give voice to it. Not content with toleration, they appeal to the courts and, as is the case in New Jersey, they get their way.

I am no jurist, but it seems to me that the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech…” Singing a Christmas carol or Chanuka song is not the “establishment” of religion and banning them in school-sponsored “holiday” concerts is a complete absurdity. Too bad the U.S. Third Circuit Court can’t understand this.

For myself, I am happy that I attended Maplewood’s school in what surely were better times, guided by teachers who taught us that we could all take joy in each other’s holiday celebrations.

Everything is in Free Fall

By Alan Caruba

It increasingly seems that not only is the economy in free fall, but so too have been the nation’s cultural values. I do not know if there is a link, but I would not be surprised if there was.

When it was announced that some pornographer was making a film, “Nailin’ Pailin”, featuring a Gov. Sarah Palin look-a-like, it struck me that this was some kind of nadir in the way our society has permitted commonly held values to erode. Exploiting a candidate for Vice President in this fashion reflects a loss of all restraint. We live, however, in a society where most girls have lost their virginity around the age of 17.

The Democrat candidate for President, Sen. Barack Obama, reportedly thinks it is okay to allow babies born as the result of a failed abortion to die. Having reneged on a pledge to take only public funding for his campaign, he has reaped millions from private donations, some of which are suspected to have originated in foreign nations. There are numerous investigations of a voter registration group with which he has been associated. Etc, etc, etc.

The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain, has not had to contend with comparable allegations because his life is pretty much an open book as opposed to Sen. Obama’s that lacks even the most modest paper trail, nor any indication he knows how to run any kind of enterprise, least of all the government of this nation.

We are about to arrive at an Election Day not unlike the one in 1932 in the midst of the last Great Depression when voters turned to Franklin D. Roosevelt to save them from ruin. The fear then was palpable and it is today as well.

Citizens expect their economic system to be managed prudently, carefully, and wisely. Ours has been managed by children in Congress and a White House for whom there were no known financial restraints. That contagion spread to Wall Street.

It is instructive that the higher Sen. Obama is in the polls, the worse the market gets as investors sell off their stocks, banks refuse to make loans, and corporations announce more layoffs in anticipation of an imploding economy.

What has taken place is the wildest spending spree in history as both federal and state governments, and individuals ran up huge debts while putting no savings aside for a proverbial rainy day. This is in part a reflection of a culture in which debt was encouraged and a belief that growth was inevitable. It is a culture that came to believe that the government would protect everyone from cradle to grave.

That’s not the job of government. If you check the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution, you will note that among the government’s most essential functions is to “establish justice” and “provide for the common defense.”

The Founding Fathers threw in “promote the general welfare” which is a phrase that has been so severely distorted that we have several giant federal bureaucracies such as the Department of Education and the Department of Energy, neither of which has demonstrated any useful contribution. Then, of course, there’s Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two “government sponsored” agencies that are responsible for the economic meltdown.

Most importantly, the Founding Fathers understood that the Constitution was intended to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity…” If a new Congress institutes a “fairness doctrine” on the broadcast media, the liberty to express views contrary to those approved by the government will largely vanish. Talk radio will become pure pabulum and television news will become so “balanced” as to provide no insight whatever. You can be sure that the tentacles of government control will be extended to the Internet.

When you add in the spread of atheism throughout our society, you can see how the former values of self-reliance, personal responsibility, and living by a Judeo-Christian moral code have been severely eroded.

Note, too, that a nation that will not safeguard its borders ceases to have a coherent and cohesive population.

Add in widespread belief in pseudo-scientific nonsense about “global warming”, used to justify efforts to thwart the provision of energy to a growing population, and you have the conditions that, when mixed with economic failure, could lead to either fascism or anarchy. History demonstrates that most people will choose fascism.