Sunday Sermonette: Identity crisis
Numbers 12 is puzzling in several ways, which the Midrash (a rabbinical commentary on the Torah) attempts to explain. The first puzzle is that Miriam and Aaron complain about Moses ' s " Cushite " wife. KJV has " Ethiopian " which is close enough. Cushite refers to people from the area south of Egypt, including what is today Sudan, Somalia, and Ethiopia. But when Moses fled after killing the Egyptian he sojourned among the Midianites, which is the identity of his wife Zipporah and her father. We don ' t know what direction he fled, but we do know that the Midianites are from Palestine. In one version of the abduction...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 23, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Descent into the bizarre
We ' ve had some really weird chapters before, but Numbers 11 is in competition for the Bizzarro Award. Many of the stories and prescriptions in Leviticus and Numbers can be explained as having an essentially political motive -- to entrench the power and wealth of the priesthood, or to create and enforce social order. Much of it, obviously, is about the glorification of God and demonstration of his power. Numbers 11 is in the latter category, but God ' s behavior is just lunatic. There is also a somewhat puzzling story in the middle of it all that may be explicable in political terms but is difficult to interpret. Fr...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 19, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The road to nowhere
As we have noted many times, the divisions into chapters and verses were made by medieval monks, and they often seem odd. Numbers 9 is obviously two separate segments. I ' ll insert comments where I have something to note.9 TheLord spoke to Moses in the Desert of Sinai in the first month of the second year after they came out of Egypt. He said,2 “Have the Israelites celebrate the Passover at the appointed time.3 Celebrate it at the appointed time, at twilight on the fourteenth day of this month, in accordance with all its rules and regulations. ”4 So Moses told the Israelites to celebrate the Passov...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 12, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Wake me up when it's over
The Old Testament is of course part of Christian scripture and it is taught -- or rather some of it is taught -- to children in Sunday school and some passages are sometimes read in church. However, Christians generally are completely unfamiliar with most of it. Christian awareness of the Torah pretty much extends to Genesis and Exodus, the broad narratives of which are familiar; and occasional, very selective passages from Leviticus and Numbers, particularly the condemnation of homosexuality, some of the more relatable ethical principles but none of the less relatable ones, and the benediction we read recently. But ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - August 9, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
2020: Jumanji Or Dystopia
“There’s No Going Back to ‘Normal’”, crudely proclaims the headline of a June piece from The Atlantic. “The Terrible Consequences of Australia’s Uber-Bushfires” reads a recent Wired article. One of our own April articles was titled “Will Medical Workers Deal With PTSD After COVID-19?”. If it wasn’t clear, an article published earlier this year in The Conversation rightly asks: “Are we living in a dystopia?”.
Indeed, what was once relegated to the fertile minds of fiction novelists has become daily occurrences. Many are drawing similarities to “prophetic” works of fiction such as the c...
Source: The Medical Futurist - July 28, 2020 Category: Information Technology Authors: Prans Tags: Artificial Intelligence Future of Medicine Future of Pharma Science Fiction Security & Privacy Telemedicine & Smartphones Virtual Reality black mirror dystopia coronavirus covid19 jumanji Death Stranding video games bushfires Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Nice work if you can get it
In Numbers 3 we finally get around to counting the Levites. It ' s tedious and seems largely pointless, but serves to reaffirm the status of the Levites in society. What is most noteworthy about this is that they have a very cushy gig. I interpolate a few comments.3 This is the account of the family of Aaron and Moses at the time theLord spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai.2 The names of the sons of Aaron were Nadab the firstborn and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar.3 Those were the names of Aaron ’s sons, the anointed priests, who were ordained to serve as priests.4 Nadab and Abihu, however, died before theLord ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 22, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The Book of Numbness
The (lame) joke in the title of this post is that much of the Book of Numbers is exceedingly tedious. It is called Numbers because it begins with a census, but most of the content consists of weird stories, largely about God torturing and murdering Israelites -- in fact twice he vows to exterminate them but gets talked out of it. Along the way we kill off some leading characters. Mixed in is more, largely repetitive, law and ritual. Numbers also contains the only reference anywhere in the Bible to abortion. (We ' ll get to it in just a couple of weeks, it ' s in chapter 5.) Obviously Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Robert Jeffress ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 15, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Inside Schizophrenia: Impact of Schizophrenia in Minority Communities
Rates of psychosis are more strongly influenced by ethnicity and socioeconomic status than any other mental health condition. In this episode of Inside Schizophrenia host Rachel Star Withers, a diagnosed schizophrenic, and co-host Gabe Howard discuss the impact of schizophrenia in minority communities. Guest Sakinah “The Muslim Hippie” joins to share her experiences in mental health care.
Highlights of “Impact of Schizophrenia in Minority Communities
[01:00] The realization
[02:08] Sociology definition of the word minority
[04:30] The stats of mental health and minorities
[09:00] Diagnosing differences
[12:00] ...
Source: World of Psychology - July 15, 2020 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Rachel Star Withers Tags: Inside Schizophrenia Mental Health and Wellness Podcast Psychiatry Psychology Racism Stigma brain Mental Disorder Mental Illness Minorities Minority Populations Source Type: blogs
Exposed, silenced, attacked: failures to protect health and essential workers during the pandemic
Amnesty International - Amnesty has collated and analysed a wide range of available data showing that more than 3,000 health workers have died after contracting Covid-19 in 79 countries, though the figure is likely to be a significant underestimate due to under-reporting. According to Amnesty ’s monitoring, the countries with the highest numbers of health worker deaths thus far, are: Russia (545), UK (England and Wales: 540, including 262 social care workers), USA (507), Brazil (351), Mexico (248), Italy (188), Egypt (111), Iran (91), Ecuador (82) and Spain (63). In the UK, early studi es indicate that black, Asian...
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - July 13, 2020 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Library Tags: Local authorities, public health and health inequalities Workforce and employment Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: God, the compassionate, the merciful?
Leviticus 26 is a structural underpinning of the Tanakh, and for better or for worse, of Zionism. Before I say anything about that, it is also the most succinct and clear description of the character of Yahweh. He is not benevolent, or merciful. He doesn ' t love humanity or even his chosen people. He demands to be worshiped and obeyed. That is all he cares about. While he has disgorged a torrent of commandments so far, the most often repeated, and reiterated here again for the greatest emphasis, are that he be the exclusive object of worship and that he be worshiped according to the rituals he specifies -- keeping the sab...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 8, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: This evidently seemed like a good idea at the time . . .
This chapter is actually vaguely familiar to most people, I think, but it does not have any application to contemporary Jewish or Christian life. In fact, there is no evidence that these rules were actually followed even in the Second Temple period. The seven year fallowing is highly impractical. The intent of the Jubilee in the context of Hebrew life in the 7th Century BC et seq has been discerned by some commentators, and I ' ll do my best to summarize my understanding of it. However, the likelihood that it would be strictly observed knowing what we do of human nature seems small.25 TheLord spoke to Moses on Mount S...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 5, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Pot pourri and lex talionis
As I ' ve noted before, the division into chapters and verses was made by medieval monks, and isn ' t always logical. (They may have been getting into the sacramental wine.) Leviticus 24 consists of three obviously distinct parts, two of which might have originally gone together as specifications of ritual but the third of which is unrelated. Furthermore, the whole thing is an interpolation between the schedule of festivals in 23 and the schedule of jubilees in 25. Leviticus generally is haphazardly organized. It seems the priests didn ' t really care about narrative or logical coherence, they just wanted to get everything...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 1, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
RSPB Snettisham and beach
Thursday, 25th June…I believe it was the hottest day of the year, so far. So, as lockdown eased somewhat and we are allowed to cautiously travel away from our homes, we headed for the beach. Not Bournemouth nor Lulworth Cove…North Norfolk and specifically Snettisham. We saw barely another soul other than an RSPB Warden who was reminding people not to walk on the areas of the beach and shoreline where birds are nesting.
Cock Linnet
We also saw a handful of other birders and a dogwalker or two and nodded to each from at least 20 metres rather than the requisite two. The virus hasn’t gone away, governments a...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - June 29, 2020 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Photography Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Turning of the months
Leviticus 23 remains essential to Jewish life and religious practice, though in ways that have changed considerably over the centuries. It outlines the important points in the liturgical calendar. Some new ones have been added since, and the nature of observance has changed with the abandonment of ritual sacrifice, but these major observances are still honored. A confusing point is that the liturgical and civil calendars have different starting points. The Festival of Trumpets is placed here at the beginning of the seventh month. It is now called Rosh hashana, marking the new year. So the liturgical year begins with Passov...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 28, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The holy swag
I said at the beginning that nobody reads Leviticus. It ' s mostly boring and extremely weird, offering little that is meaningful to modern sensibilities. Some fragments of ritual or practice survive in orthodox Judaism, but they are largely removed from their original context. The most important survival is probably the liturgical calendar, which we will get to shortly. In Leviticus 22, however, we return to rules of the sacrifice, which have no moral resonance and theologically make God seem like an anal compulsive nut. (That ' s the least of his psychological disorders. Just wait till we get to the book of Numbers...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 24, 2020 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
