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Welcome To An All-Text, AI-Free Zone!

DEAR PATIENT READER (and anyone else who happens by),

Welcome! And now that you’ve found me, I’d like to offer a prefatory word or two:

1. If you’re eager to meet Prosatio Silban, the self-defrocked holyman in a fantastic land who ekes out a meager but honest living as a mercenary cook, here he is.

2. You may also/instead browse at leisure some rusty recollections, offbeat observations, friendly particularism, tasty recipes, unpretentious poetry, entertaining quotes, recreational science, and wry spirituality.

Thank you for your patronage, and please enjoy,

Neal Ross Attinson

A G?d With No Name

IT HAS BEEN said many times, including by me, that Judaism is the most misunderstood religion, and Jews the most misunderstood people, this planet has to offer.

Take this conversation I had with someone the other day. It should first be noted that this someone is one of the most inclusive, bighearted, and real human beings I’ve ever met; I both respect him tremendously, and regard him with a good deal of collegial affection. The context was how to big-tent the Jewish attendees at a local public event where he delivered an address containing various names for the Divine. But we ran aground on this point:

“What is the Jewish name for G?d?” he asked. “Is it ‘Yahweh?'”

“Well, that’s a great question,” I replied enthusiastically. “That particular name is a transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning ‘to cause to be.’ But most Jews don’t use it. Jews have more than one name for G?d, and like anything else Jewish, the answer depends on who you ask. Some would even say that G?d really has no name.”

He regarded me with a very polite and sincere version of a blank stare. And I don’t blame him.

Judaism is complex, in the way that any millennia-old, culturally adaptive, self-reinventing, participatory art project is complex. There are a few basic things that most Jews hold in common – monotheism, if they believe in any deity at all; a self-identity as Jews; some form of generational trauma – but that’s where the similarities end. For me, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (mid-20th Century) said it best: “Judaism is the evolving religious civilization of the Jewish People.” But not everyone would agree with that definition, either.

At its heart, Judaism requires a certain comfort with ambiguity that’s difficult for many Westerners to grasp. (For various reasons, the Western worldview thinks a thing either is or isn’t; there’s not much room for the excluded-and-fuzzy middle of “sometimes.”) Jewish tradition wallows in the ambiguity of contextuality – it doesn’t teach definitive answers so much as how to ask better questions.

I yearn for, and dread, the day when someone somewhere can define Jews and Judaism in a soundbite. I yearn, because it would be kind of nice for people to more easily “get” us – and I dread because it would reduce something transcendentally beautiful to a base commodity. The Talmud itself settles otherwise unsettle-able questions with the word “teiku” – an anagram of the four-word Aramaic phrase roughly meaning “Elijah the Prophet will answer this when he announces the coming of the Messiah.” May that day swiftly, and never, come.

Industrial Strength Peoplehood

A sermon I delivered this morning. Feel free to skip it if ethnoparticular rallying cries aren’t your thing.

DO GOOD FENCES really make good neighbors – or just a bad impression?

Let’s review the piece of Torah that our rabbi just chanted, specifically the part where the Canaan-bound spies report back to our assembled ancestors: “The people who inhabit the country are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large.”

Sounds hopeless, doesn’t it? Powerful people living in fortified cities. The spies can perhaps be forgiven for freaking out over the prospect of future conquest.

But Rabbi Jonathan Sacks sees the situation differently. He says the spies drew the wrong conclusion: that if the cities are strong; then the people are strong. But that’s not accurate: if the cities are strong, the people must be weak.

It’s like this: If the people were truly strong, their city walls wouldn’t need to be, because they could trust to their own strength to defend themselves against interlopers.

Rabbi Sacks says that this can be an analogy for Jews in the modern age. We couldn’t possibly build enough walls to keep out occasional threats. And anyway, Judaism teaches us to engage with the world, not retreat from it. Even when faced with our most ancient enemy, Jew-hatred.

From Pirkei Avot, that digest of rabbinical wisdom, comes this advice: “Rabbi Elazar teaches: Be diligent in the study of Torah, and know what to answer a heretic.”

In simpler language: Know who you are. Why you are. Where you come from. And how to take care of yourself in a non-ideal situation.

It may not be easy. But Rabbi Sacks assures us that Judaism is strong enough to withstand any challenge. We are, all of us, almost 4,000 years’ worth of strong. It’s a hard-won strength, gained from resisting some very severe attempts to marginalize or vanquish us. And though resistance isn’t always easy, either then or now, we’ve done it – and are still here to prove it.

So my question today is: “How do you strengthen and maintain your sense of Jewish identity?”

[pass mic: some of the dozen-or-so answers included studying our textual tradition, attending services, and cooking (and teaching!) Jewish recipes]

Thank you, everyone. Shabbat shalom.

Double Identity

IN ADDITION TO what else one may find in a wallet (money, DL, &c.), mine contains two cards that license me as a member of the clergy.

They’re neither what you think – I’m not a rabbi, nor will I likely become one in this life – but they do tell a semi-religious story nonetheless.

The first came c. 1999, after a friend who was a member of the Universal Life Church asked me if I too wanted to be ordained. “Sure! What do I need to do?” I asked him. After anointing my head with a frosty cold one (it was a very hot day, in the way that only Northern California Renaissance Pleasure Faire days can be very hot), he declared, “You’re in.” He then told me where to write and receive my free ordination credentials.

ULC espouses a single creed: “Know your beliefs and be true to them.” And because ULC is legally recognized in California (and other enlightened states) for solemnizing weddings, I have since married a handful of friends – which was, really, why I wanted ordainment in the first place.

The other ordination, also legally recognized in some places, belongs to the Church of the SubGenius. Those behind that inexplicable parody religion/religious parody/living art project published a trade paperback in 1983 which – much like science-fiction conventions and DEVO – assured lonely misfits that they too had a place, and a people, they could call their own. Of course, I took to it in a big, enthusiastic way.

Unlike the ULC, the CotS then charged $20 for an ordination kit. So, justifying it as for a good cause, I mailed a Jackson to their Dallas, Texas headquarters. Within a week I received an ordination card, a poster of Church frontman J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, and various pieces of SubG propaganda (some of which I distributed in the summer of 1985 at 2 a.m. in Times Square – but that story is classified.)

For a long time, my ULC and CotS “ministries” helped me feel as though I belonged somewhere spiritually important. I am grateful to be able to do that now in other ways. But I will always be respectfully grateful to the Revs. Kirby Hensley and Ivan Stang for opening their secretly famous doors and inviting me in.

Secret Signposts

HIDDEN SOCIAL NETS surround us everywhere we go, and those who know – know.

Example? Sure!

I was shopping in one of my favorite grocery stores earlier today when the guy behind the butchers’ counter noticed my black Firefly T-shirt.

“Nice shirt!” he said with a wide grin.

“Thank you,” I said, bowing.

Now, he could have added something like, “I’m a Firefly fan too.” Or “I really like that series.” Or even “How long have you been a fan?”

But instead, he indicated the leather bomber-jacket I was wearing (Sonoma mornings are cold these days) and said with a wider grin, “I see you’re a real Browncoat.”

If none of this makes sense to you, allow me to explain. Instead of stating the obvious, my fellow fan responded with another insider’s reference. You see, the shirt in question doesn’t feature the title of the show or anything like that – the only way to “get it” is if you recognize the image and motto: a burnt-umber image of the titular spaceship above the motto, “STAY SHINY.” If you don’t, then no harm done. His comment told me right away that he got it. And his grin told me that he was enjoying our little secret signpost as much as I was.

Connections. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Father’s Time

SOME TRADITIONS ARE axiomatic: just as a woman should inherit her mom’s wedding ring, so should a man wear his father’s watch.

My dad, who died at the end of January, didn’t like to faff around much. He was a happily simple man with happily simple tastes, and preferred straightforwardness in all things. That’s reflected in his choice of timepiece – a white-and-gold Timex Indiglo Easy Reader, mounted on a gold stainless-steel expansion band that conforms to the wrist without constant buckling and unbuckling. Simple and tasteful, and accurate without nerding out about it – it’s easier to say “a quarter to three” than “6:47 and 38 seconds.” After more than 40 years of wearing a cheap but rugged Casio Illuminator on a plastic strap that buckles, I actually and seriously feel “grown up.”

Maybe that’s why we inherit these things, or rather, that’s what it means to inherit them. In my dad’s absence, I am now the “man of the family” (for some values of “man of the family,” anyway, since now there’s just my sister and me), and in trying to figure out exactly what that means, it occurs to me that part of it means adopting certain cultural traditions.

Hence the watch.

Might there be the same effect as inheriting his car or house? I don’t think so, as these are not as intimate as, say, what I now wear to bed every night so that I can see what time I wake up. Or to synagogue board meetings. Or to conduct services. Or to the grocery store. Or even to simply look at and think about the man who wore it before I did, and wonder what he thought about when he looked at it.

Thanks, Dad. It’s good to feel like the man who’s your son.

Machine Time

HOW MANY HOURS do we waste waiting for our thinking machines to do their thing?

Browsers to load. Files to open. Printer jobs. Email delays. Forms to register. TFA codes to arrive. And a hundred other petty inconveniences that result in impatience, lost tempers, and general cussedness.

Now, I am a patient man, but I swear – if I had a dollar for every minute spent waiting for my machines to catch up to my schedule, I could retire to my own private Idaho. It’s a ridiculous feature of modern life that these (what used to be called) “labor-saving devices” may be actually causing more helplessness than enabling usefulness.

I have no solutions to this mishegas – what can one person do against a vast cultural tide anyway? – but I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way. Perhaps that Butler fellow had it right all along. Who’s with me?

Portable Holiness

ONE OF THE more mysterious details of this week’s Torah portion, Naso (Numbers 4:21–7:89), concerns the “nazirite” – someone who decides to swear off of wine and other grape products, haircuts, and engaging with the deceased.

Why would anyone do such a thing?

The Torah doesn’t explain, but Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz offers three traditional viewpoints:

1. Out of gratitude for a gift or blessing from G?d.

2. To fulfill a vow to G?d.

3. To draw nearer the Divine by achieving a measure of personal holiness.

That last point takes a bit of unpacking. For our ancestors, closeness to G?d could normally be achieved in only two ways – either through bringing a sacrifice to the Tabernacle or Temple, or by being born into one of the Levitical families who serve in it.

However, not everyone could afford a sacrifice. And while not everyone had the privilege of inheriting a sacred status, anyone could be as holy as someone who did. Being a nazirite took a dedication to principles, vigilance over one’s behavior, and a certain amount of self-sacrifice.

Though there’s no longer a Tabernacle or Temple, we call someone who holds and exemplifies those qualities a “mensch.”

Sounds a lot like holiness to me.

Put Your Hand on the Radio

A RABBINICAL ASSISTANT, two deacons, and a lay mystic walk into a radio studio.

Seriously.

Welcome to the Sonoma Valley Interfaith Radio Hour, a years-old, live and lively round-robin every Thursday afternoon from 3-4pm Pacific Time on Sonoma Valley’s independent station KSVY (91.3 FM and streaming/archived at ksvy.org). It features one Jew (me), the deacons (Presbyterian and Roman Catholic), and a Christian Science practitioner. (With occasional guesting by my rabbi, by an Irish Catholic priest, and by whoever else we can grab from our local ecumenical Cobb salad.)

Our informal discussions cover broad ground: e.g., different faith traditions’ understandings and manifestations of moral and ethical ideals; life-cycle events such as birth, coming of age, marriage and divorce, and dying/mourning; the multiform flavors of our worship services; observing holidays and holy days; encounters with the Bible and other holy books; and how we ourselves each came to our respective “ministries.” We have deep respect for each other’s religious backgrounds and deep attachments to our own – as our Presbyterian emcee puts it, “We’re all swimming in the same direction” – and are on the air not to convert or proselytize, but to educate, enlighten, and (we hope) edify.

What also makes the show work, I think, is that outside of our collegial collective, the Valley prides itself on a thriving interfaith fellowship; we’re so geographically isolated, it’s to our evolutionary advantage to get along as well as we do. It helps, too, that through our long association we have become quite close – itself a byproduct of sharing intensely real conversations every week. And speaking personally, I find that learning about others’ sacred practices makes me understand and appreciate my own that much more. Tune us in and see if that’s true for you!

Silent Revolution

PROPOSAL: EVERYONE-BE-QUIET DAY.

The Idea: We were fretting about leafblowers disturbing the local birds, and wondering what the world would sound like were all the machines to be turned off for a while…

The Action: On June 1, 2026, between 12:01 a.m. and 11:59 p.m. UTC, everyone in the world turns off all cell phones, computers, televisions, radios, games, leafblowers, lawnmowers, weedwhackers and cars — in short everything that beeps, rings, roars, rattles, or makes a sound louder than a normal human conversation and isn’t essential to maintaining human life. (Sort of like The Day The Earth Stood Still, but voluntary.) Conversation is optional during this period, but it might be fun (and instructive?) to enjoy the silence in silence.

The Method: Get the word out by linking this announcement through Facebook, email, Twitter, texting, DMs, Usenet, phone-pole posting, graffiti, listservs, Bluesky, letters to the editor, and whatever remains of talk radio. (Pretty please.)

Motto: “Shhh.”

The Cook For Any Price: Now With Art!

JUST A QUICK NOTE to announce that, thanks to the talents of locally famous Sonoma artist and musician Jon Shannon Williams, my e-books now have handsome new covers – which (I strongly believe) are reminiscent of The Brothers Hildebrandt (Google same if you weren’t a Lord of the Rings fan in the 1970s). Please check him/them out and bask in the glow!

Moon Shot

THE FOUR ASTRONAUTS who recently swooped around the Moon and back again – Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen, may their names live forever – did more than visually explore Earth’s neighboring world from close quarters for the first time in decades.

They injected into this world a burst of hope and vicarious glory sorely needed in this age of cynicism, distrust, chaos and doomcrying.

Think of it. When’s the last time you felt a surge of positivity and pride at human accomplishments? Speaking strictly for myself, it’s been more than one year, three months, and a day or two.

But watching the Artemis mission’s textbook-perfect splashdown and recovery had me shedding at least one tear of grateful joy.

This is what humans can do when we all work together, I thought, dabbing my eyes with a tissue. This is what’s possible.

I don’t know about you, but I needed that.

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