The following opinion column was written by Rabbi Aryeh Ben David. Aryeh grew up outside of NYC and studied psychology at Vassar College. He moved to Israel in 1978, received Rabbinic ordination from the Israeli Rabbinate and now lives in Efrat, Gush Etzion, with his wife Sandra and their six children.
He served as the Rabbinical Educational Consultant for Hillel International from 2004 – 2007, and spearheaded their spiritual initiative throughout the United States.
After many years in the classroom, teaching Torah, Talmud, prayer, ethics, and interpersonal relationships, Aryeh sought a way to enable students to more deeply engage with Judaism and to explore their spiritual identities. This led to the development of Soulful Education and the creation of Ayeka in 2008.
I found Ben David’s recent column in The Times of Israel interesting.
This week Mark Manson wrote a few paragraphs I wish I had written. Since I didn’t, here is the guts of Mark’s Monday blog post “Entertaining ideas without accepting them.”
How often do we remember that there is a difference between evidence and truth. Less and less. And social media and cable TV do not help us with this process.
So often, I shake my head and ask: Where the hell is Walter Cronkite???
Ben Fishel introduced his post (below) on opinions by saying that the quarantine seems to have made people more opinionated. I agree… but then there is a lot going on to have an opinion about.
The thought of Yugoslavia has come to mind, repeatedly. I know, I agree, strange. But I loved that country – traveled the full length of it right after Tito died. Then all hell broke loose in the 90’s. Neighbors turned on neighbors and families that had intermarried thought it was reasonable to kill each other – because of their different ethnic roots.
My opinion of what took place? It seemed irrational. Their opinion? Being different was reason to die.
My opinion right now? We need to lighten up in this country and focus on what we have in common. Being opinionated usually means being inflexible. It is not hard to make up facts if you know how to do it. It is easy to refuse to accept new “facts” when in love with the old ones.
The Atlantic Magazine ran a short article in April of 2013 on who lives longest based on who earned an obit in the NYT.
It reported on a 2001 PubMed study that found Academy Award stars live longer than less famous actors. Not surprisingly lung cancer and cause due to drug use and risky behavior were prevalent in the entertainment industry. Beyond that,
Researchers in Sydney looked at the age and cause of death reported in 1,000 consecutive New York Times obituaries published from 2009 to 2011. “Success,” by their measure, was defined as having lived a life that merited an obit in the paper of record. Some of these people were considered to be both successful and famous, like those in performance and sports, and, to a lesser degree, writers and composers, while others — categorized as business/military/political or professional/academic/religious — were mostly just successful.
RESULTS: People who were both successful and famous died earliest. The average age at death of performers and athletes, 77.2 years. (…) Businesspeople and their ilk lived longest. In fact, their average age at death, 83 years, was higher than the national average for 2010 of 78.7 years.
Philanthropists, academics, and doctors were more likely than others to die of “old age,” a diagnosis that occurred least often for performers, athletes, and creatives.
Incidentally, the gender distribution during this time period was 813 obits for men, 186 for women. (of course, but that’s for another blog post).
IMPLICATIONS:(…) (I)t would seem that fame isn’t necessarily associated with more health risks, but instead that people who are successful but not famous may be predisposed to being healthier.
All very interesting, isn’t it? It tells us how many years’ people have lived, but it doesn’t tell us how satisfying their lives were—even if the obits regaled hundreds of activities and organizations in which the persons participated.
So I asked myself: since my goal is to live long, would I ever agree to live short if more alive? Or do I already have the option to live alive when living long, but I just miss the subtlety involved?
And what is “more alive,” anyway? I know for sure it’s not about being busy. Alain de Botton asks us to think about this in the excerpt from The Book of Life that follows.
I grew up in the ’60s, another era filled with tears and tear gas and violent clashes about race and class.
I didn’t want to be a hippie, but I certainly didn’t want to be a fascist. I was sheltered in my demure blue school uniform and saddle shoes, watching the world burn.
The National Guard slaughtering students at Kent State. The Chicago police billy-clubbing yippies at the ’68 Democratic convention. Soldiers in Vietnam getting denounced as “baby killers,” and radicals vowing to “barbecue some pork” and spill the blood of “pigs.”
There’s a beautiful video featuring the late author, Dr. Maya Angelou. The video is titled, “Dr. Maya Angelou’s 3-Word Secret to Living Your Best Life.”
Dr. Angelou passed away in 2014 but her message seems especially relevant today.
Dr. Angelou’s advice is “Just do right.” It’s a simple message that transcends politics, race, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, and faith. It sounds simple, but it’s not.
Each of us is a complex tangle of history, experiences, emotions, ideas, biases, dreams, and more. Even the best of us can be egocentric, inconsiderate, vain, unforgiving, and hurtful. It takes discipline, focus, education, and time to rise above these flaws.
Lori Lakin Hutcherson’s column on white privilege was featured in this week’s On Being post. Hutcherson is a Los Angeles native, Harvard graduate, film & television writer/producer, and Founder/Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning website, goodblacknews.org.
As you will read, Hutcherson is not economically, intellectually or professionally destitute, which makes her point of view even more stark. I edited it for length.
