CHEYENNE, Wy — On June 22 at approximately 9:49 a.m. Cheyenne Police Officers were dispatched to 1515 West Lincolnway for a report of shots fired. The preliminary investigation shows that two male subjects at the location entered into a verbal altercation.
As the argument escalated, the suspect, later identified as Paul King, 63, of Cheyenne retrieved a firearm and fired multiple shots.
No injuries were reported. A short time later, responding officers located King in the parking lot of the location.
King was apprehended at approximately 9:57 a.m. without further incident. King was transported to the Laramie County Jail with felony charges pending. This case remains under investigation by the Cheyenne Police Department Detective Bureau.
“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.” -Luke 17:2 Recently, lesbian Attorney General Dana Nessel called for a “good education” for children. Her answer was “Drag Queens.” She then explained how Drag Queens …
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued its rubber stamp on Friday for emergency use authorization of the mRNA experimental gene therapy jabs from Pfizer and Moderna in children as young as 6 months through 5 years old.
Of course, all the empirical evidence suggests there is no reason for this since children are in no statistical danger from the cold virus called COVID-19. Then there’s the data for those 5 years old and up who have been jabbed that show the shots are not safe, not effective. Also from Friday was the latest data dump from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) which showed 28,859 reported deaths from the experimental shots.
Wyoming News has previously reported that the CDC admits itself that VAERS undercounts jab injuries by a factor of at least 6X while independent reviews suggest an undercount as high as 41X. That puts the likely number of deaths by jab between 173,154 and 1,183,219. Yet, the COVID insanity and corruption continue as America becomes the first country ready to jab infants, as Jordan Schachtel reported for The Dossier. Schachtel, noting there are no studies showing safety or efficacy let alone the need for the shots for children, wrote that only seven countries are on record for jabbing children under 5. “And NONE of these countries are allowing for COVID shots between the ages of 6 months to two years, which means that the United States has become the only country in the world to allow for experimental COVID injection shots for babies and 2-year-old toddlers,” Schachtel wrote.
As for the governors in America’s 50 states, only one has refused to participate in the Biden regime’s program to have the government inject babies. Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is refusing to take part in the government-run program to jab kids under 5, but he will allow “health” providers and parents to endanger children on their own. “Doctors can get it,” DeSantis said. “Hospitals can get it. But there are not going to be any state programs that are going to be trying to get COVID jabs to infants and toddlers and newborns. That’s not where we’re going to be utilizing our resources.” Regardless, Big Pharma is going to profit immensely by this latest FDA rubber stamp, and that’s really all that matters, right?
As Brian Shilhavy wrote for Vaccine Impact, Pfizer’s board of directors has admitted it’s been hard to study the jabs in kids because they’re just not getting sick. Specifically, that comment came from Scott Gottlieb who went from being the so-called “regulator” of Big Pharma as Donald Trump’s FDA commissioner from May 11, 2017, to April 5, 2019, before joining the Pfizer board.
Still, Pfizer demands it be allowed to profit off endangering. And as Gottlieb’s jump from the FDA to Pfizer shows corruption is clear out in the open.FDA to Pfizer shows corruption is clear out in the open.
“Not wanting to miss out on the last remaining market share of people who had not yet been given emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine, however, Pfizer did what every vaccine manufacturer does when facts get in the way of introducing a money-making vaccine: they lied and made up their own statistics,” Shilhavy wrote. Shilhavy added: “The FDA is simply a branch of Big Pharma and this was just a formality, as the Biden Administration had already purchased 10 million doses for this age group weeks ago, and began distributing them to the states in preparation.” No wonder Pfizer was able to manipulate data to get the FDA rubber stamp.
Dr. Clare Craig with the HART group, an organization of doctors presenting real data on COVID rather than the propaganda messaging, took a look at the Pfizer trials for 6-month-olds to 5-year- olds. “There’s an awful lot about this trial that has shocked me and I think will shock you too,” Craig said. Of note, there were 4,526 children recruited for the trials, some taking the jabs and some given a placebo. Pfizer threw out data from 3,000 children, two-thirds, then manipulated the remaining 1,526 to try and find evidence that the shots work. Still, the data showed kids jabbed were at a 30% higher risk of getting the cold virus than those who were not jabbed .
Cody Wyoming, The Park County, Republican Mens Club, now called the Sons of Freedom,sponsored a candidate’s Q&A event Thursday night. Those candidates in attendance were US House candidate Harriet Hageman, Chuck Gray who is running for Secretary of State, gubernatorial candidate Rex Rammell and Brian Schroeder who is seeking election to the position of Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The candidates were given 5 minutes of presentation time to tell about who they were and why they were running. They then were each given 30 minutes to answer questions from the body. Hageman offered up an impressive list of credentials, including fighting the Federal government in court on the issues of land and water rights and winning. She stood absolutely firm on the defense of the 2nd Amendment.
She is very concerned about the actions of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and his Republican backers that are going along with the latest Biden-led gun grab legislation. Chuck Gray’s most compelling issue was that of voter integrity. He believes that voting machines should be banned and that hand-counted paper ballots should be the rule. There should be no ballot drop boxes. Rex Rammell gave an impassioned presentation on the issue of state and federal lands.
He believes that the federal government should be invited out of Wyoming. He said that the state of Wyoming knows best how to take care of Wyoming land. Rammell thinks that no one but the Governor can make such a strong stand on this issue and that if Wyoming would take the lead, other states would be fast to follow suit. He believes that Gov. Gordon is in the pockets of New Green Deal advocates. Brian Schroeder was equally vocal about the meddling of the Federal government in our schools.
The latest and most egregious example, he says, is the overreach of the FDA. It has threatened to hold back federal Title 9 money (funds provided for school lunch programs) from states that do not advocate and promote the transgender agenda of boys playing girls’ sports. He said, “Fine, let them keep it.” He believes in making it clear to all in Wyoming that the parents and the taxpayers own the schools, not out-of-touch, authoritarian school boards.
The candidates were generally very well received and applauded on numerous occasions by the crowd of nearly 50. The group plans on another event of this kind in two weeks. For more information call Andris Vaskis at 307-271-2256.
Sons of Freedom (formerly Park County Republican Men’s Club) affirmed that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of these United States, as created, are the finest documents of their kind in the history of mankind. They support any legislation and promote all candidates for public office that remain faithful to the founding principles secured in them. They are committed to the last line of the Declaration of Independence that says, “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”
“We are sent to make war and to stop short of nothing but the subjugation of the world to the sway of the Lord Jesus.” -William Booth When I look at the present state of the American Church, or so it is called, I wonder what it is that men do not see (Jeremiah 5:21). …
Los Angeles: The Los Angeles Police Department’s Hollenbeck Division detectives are seeking information regarding an unlawful assembly that resulted in the injury of three LAPD officers.
On June 18, 2022, around 8:41 p.m., Hollenbeck Division patrol officers responded to the 600 block of Anderson Street for a radio call of a large group causing a disturbance and vandalizing nearby vehicles and buildings.
Officers arrived at scene and requested additional units for multiple vandalism suspects within the large group. The group responded to the officers’ arrival by shooting fireworks and throwing rocks and bottles at them. Officers requested help, and at around 8:42 p.m., an unlawful assembly and a dispersal order were announced.
Officers created a skirmish line and began to guide the group away from the vandalized area. During the dispersal, officers continued to be attacked by fireworks, rocks, and bottles, and the group was eventually dispersed. No arrests were made.
During the incident, one officer sustained a laceration to the torso from a thrown rock. Another officer suffered a head injury from a heavy object being thrown at his helmet. A third officer sustained an abrasion to his leg and wrist due to fireworks exploding on his body.
Officers discovered the aftermath of the vandalism. The area of 6th Street and Anderson Street was heavily vandalized, with nearby structures and buildings tagged by spray paint and graffiti.
BILLINGS – Following this week’s flooding at the City of Billings Water Plant, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and U.S. Senator Jon Tester took a tour of the facility on Friday morning to see the flood’s impact firsthand.
The plant became flooded late Tuesday night, forcing the City of Billings to ask residents to conserve water on Wednesday.
Tour of the Intake
“The timing of FEMA coming to visit Billings was very fortuitous. We weathered this flood event remarkably well. However, we have struggled at the plant for close to a decade. We have an ever-changing river that makes operations very difficult, increasing demands and we have been asking FEMA for funds to build our West End project for several years through grant applications. Having Criswell come to our city and see our plant and see the river in all its unrestrained beauty, shows how advantageous it will be for us to have the West End facility,” said Debi Meling, Director of Public Works.
Meling Kuklski Duray Greet Criswell
The City of Billings Public Works Department has requested FEMA’s assistance over the past several years.
In 2021 and 2022, the City applied for FEMA’s Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) grant, which would give the City $50 million to put toward the $140 million projects.
The project will feature two reservoirs on the West End of Billings along with a water treatment plant.
Tester Meling Criswell at Catwalk
The new system will give the City the ability to isolate from the Yellowstone River and withstand natural and man-made disasters like drought, flooding, chemical spills, oil pipeline breaks, and ice jams.
The site will be able to provide 40 days’ worth of drinking water for the city should a disaster occur. That’s a tremendous increase from the supply that was said to be available during this week’s situation of up to a day-and-a-half.
“Regardless of whether we get the grant or not, the city needs to construct a facility starting later this year,” Meling said.
A groundbreaking is planned for late fall/early winter of 2022 with construction starting the following spring.
If the City of Billings receives the grant, it will help reduce the rates that customers within the city will have to pay for the facility. However, the current rate structure is set up so the facility can be funded even if the City doesn’t receive the grant.
While the focus has been on the water plant this week, Meling expressed gratitude for all Public Works employees.
“Staff from the Street-Traffic Division have been dealing with storm drains that have been completely backed up and full. Workers at the Wastewater Plant have been keeping that facility running, and staff at the water plant have all been doing amazing work in less-than-ideal circumstances. The City is incredibly lucky to have the talent and diligence that we have at all of our facilities,” said Meling.
Also in attendance at Friday’s tour was Billings Clinic Chief Executive Officer Dr. Scott Ellner and Chief Communication Officer Jim Duncan. Billings Clinic along with St. Vincent Healthcare, RiverStone Health and Yellowstone County Disaster Emergency Services sent out a joint message of support this week as the Unified Health Command, asking residents to conserve water.
21:06 Patrol-Extra 2206180061 Officer initiated activity at Sheridan AVE/16TH St, Cody. Bike patrol. . Disposition: Completed. *========================================================================== 22:01 Traffic Stop 2206180064 Officer initiated activity at 8TH St/Platinum Ave, Cody. Ts-Driver warned for red light violation. . Disposition: Warning Issued. *========================================================================== 22:41 Patrol-Extra 2206180068 Officer initiated activity at 19TH St, Cody. On foot. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *========================================================================== June 19, 2022 00:14 Traffic Stop 2206190001 Officer initiated activity at 8TH St/Gerrans Ave, Cody. TS- Driver arrested. . Disposition: See Case. *========================================================================== 02:01 Miscellaneous Assistance 2206190004 Occurred on Sheridan Ave. RP would like to speak to an officer regarding his vehicle and his cousin. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *========================================================================== 08:44 Traffic Stop 2206190011 Officer initiated activity at Mountain View Dr, Cody. TS – Driver warned for speed. . Disposition: Warning Issued. *========================================================================== 09:14 Citizen Contact 2206190013 Officer initiated activity at 16TH St/Meadow Lane Ave, Cody. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *========================================================================== 10:25 Theft 2206190016 Occurred on Yellowstone Ave. Rp would like to talk to officer about thief in store. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *========================================================================== 12:48 Animal-Lost 2206190022 Occurred on Red Butte Ave. Small, tan dog with no collar. RP would like dog to be taken to shelter. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *========================================================================== 21:57 Patrol-Extra 2206190046 Officer initiated activity at West Yellowstone Ave, Cody. . Disposition: Completed. *========================================================================== 22:08 Traffic Stop 2206190047 Officer initiated activity at Yellowstone Ave, Cody. Ts-Driver citation for speed 45/30. . Disposition: Citation Issued. *========================================================================== 22:52 Animal-Noisy 2206190049 Occurred on F St. Rp-states there is a dog barking in the area believe it’s at above address. . Disposition: Unfounded. *========================================================================== 23:12 Citizen Contact 2206190050 Officer initiated activity at Blackburn Ave, Cody. Could not locate anyone at park or around vehicle. . Disposition: Assistance Given. *==========================================================================
In 1965, Vice Admiral James Stockdale’s plane was shot down over North Vietnam and he was taken as a prisoner of war. Five years after Stockdale was captured, his teenage son, Jim, sought out a counselor’s advice. It seemed so unlikely his father would ever come home so he was told, “You may be better off just considering your father dead and gone.”
Jim Collins tells the story in his book Good to Great where he coined the phenomenon “The Stockdale paradox.” Tortured over twenty times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived through the war without any prisoner’s rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again.
At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a “well-treated prisoner.” He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death.
How did he deal with it when he was there and did not know what would be the end of his story? Collins writes:
“I never lost faith in the end of the story,” [Stockdale] said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which in retrospect, I would not trade.”
Finally I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?” “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.” “The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused given what he’d said earlier.
“The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say, ‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–which you can never afford to lose–-with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”
That is the Stockdale Paradox – surviving what life throws our way requires maintaining the sometimes-contradictory attitudes of patience, hope and optimism on the one hand and realism and pragmatism on the other.
Miriam, the sister of Moses, embodied the Stockdale Paradox.
While enslaved in Egypt, she confronted her father Amram, one of the great leaders of the generation, who separated from his wife Yocheved in a fatalistic surrender. When he heard Pharaoh’s decree to kill all Jewish male children, he gave up hope in the future and felt it would be unfair to bring another child into the cruel and harsh world. Others heard and followed suit.
Miriam protested, telling him that his decree was more severe than Pharaoh’s, who had only decreed on the males. Amram was persuaded and remarried Yocheved who conceived and gave birth to Moses. Again, everyone else followed their example. When Moses was born, the house was filled with light and with promise. Amram praised Miriam and told her that her prophecy had been fulfilled.
The Jewish people have lived the Stockdale Paradox for most of their history.
But three months later they had to put the baby in an ark on the Nile, to hide him from being taken and killed. Amram chastised Miriam and said, “Look what you did! Why did you encourage us to have another child just to have to give him up in the desperate hope of his survival?”
With her dreams seemingly dashed, Miriam could have given up hope, At the bank of the Nile, she stood at a distance, with great faith and hope, to watch what would happen with her brother. She tenaciously held on to her faith, patiently waiting for a glimmer of hope. And she took action, intervening and enabling Moses to be raised by his mother Yocheved after he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter.
Some people are too rooted in realism and fall prey to Amram’s mistake of surrendering to the challenges and to the feeling that there is no greater meaning or plan. Others practice too much passive optimism, believing everything will be okay while ignoring the realities of the moment.
We are progeny of Miriam who held steadfast to her faith, despite the bleak picture, and took responsible action where she could.
Jews have lived the Stockdale Paradox for most of their history, anxiously waiting for the coming of the Messiah, while confronting the harsh reality facing them, without giving up hope and belief in what is destined to come.
Everything will be okay in the end. For if it’s not okay, it is not yet the end.
Ram Dass never called himself a guru, but he was the spiritual guide and role model for a generation of seekers. Similarly, he didn’t refer to himself as a Jew, but the way he lived his life was, in some ways, quintessentially Jewish.
I knew Ram Dass personally. The ashram in Cohasset, Massachusetts, where I lived as a monastic member for 15 years, was close to the estate of Ram Dass’s father, George Alpert. Ram Dass occasionally came to our ashram on Saturday nights for kirtan, a community songfest. When I wrote my first book, a biography of Swami Paramananda, in 1984, Ram Dass read it and wrote an appreciative review of it in the New Age Journal. Several years after I became an observant Jew and moved to the Old City of Jerusalem, Ram Dass came to my house for a Shabbat dinner.
The Alpert family into which he was born was strongly Jewishly affiliated like many Conservative Jews of that age. Like my own upbringing in Conservative Judaism, it did not feed him spiritually at all. A circa 1990 cassette tape of a panel discussion of Ram Dass with two other Jewish-born New Age spiritual leaders, including famous Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfeld, discussing their Jewish background, is a series of jokes and complaints about Hebrew School and their vacuous Bar Mitzvahs. Listening to it in my home in Jerusalem, where, at the age of 37, I had discovered the depth and spiritual power of Judaism, I felt sorry for them. An adult whose knowledge of nutrition had not deepened since he was 12 years old would be embarrassed, but how many Jews are satisfied to know nothing more of Judaism than what they learned as children?
My belief is that I wasn’t born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that.”
At the age of 60, Ram Dass confronted this lack. “My belief is that I wasn’t born into Judaism by accident, and so I needed to find ways to honor that,” he said in a 1992 interview. “From a Hindu perspective, you are born as what you need to deal with, and if you just try and push it away, whatever it is, it’s got you.” [1
Ram Dass immersed himself in Jewish sources and contemporary expositions for a lecture on Jewish spirituality that he was invited to deliver in Los Angeles. “I started to get into what it would feel like to be a very religious Orthodox Jew,” he admitted. “I began to see the heartfelt beauty of being a person who truly loves God in a Jewish way, how it relates to lineage and community, how the mitzvot are all techniques for remembering God, how halacha is a support system.” 2
Ram Dass even came to Israel at the invitation of Rabbi David Zeller. He met with a Kabbalist in the Old City of Jerusalem, a Hasidic rebbe in Tsfat, and numerous Jews who were ardently following the path of Torah, many of whom had once been Ram Dass’s students back in America.
Yet, despite his newfound appreciation for the religion into which he was born, Ram Dass never traded in his prayer beads for tefillin. He continued on the spiritual path that he had forged for himself since his first visit to India in 1967. That path, in some ways, was a very Jewish version of Hinduism. 3
Renunciation of the world or involvement with the world?
Hinduism is a religion of transcending the world. Its goal is moksha, liberation from the wheel of birth and death. The path to such liberation is meditation, through which the adept achieves a state of transcendent consciousness known as samadhi. The lifestyle conducive to success in meditation is the life of renunciation.
Holy persons in India are called sannyasins. They have renounced the world, specifically sex, family relationships, and material possessions. While Hinduism has many sacred texts, including the Vedas and the Upanishads, its concise “bible” is the Bhagavad Gita, in which Krishna teaches his disciple Arjuna about the ills of “attachment” and the ultimate value of “detachment.”
Judaism, by contrast, is the religion of sanctifying and elevating the physical world. With a few notable exceptions, the commandments of the Torah involve using one’s physical body to engage and thereby uplift physical objects by using them in the service of God: affixing a mezuzah on the doorpost, blowing a ram’s horn on Rosh Hashana, shaking a citron and green branches on Sukkot, etc. Far from the ideal of detachment, the Torah enjoins “devykut” (bonding or clinging) to God and love and involvement with other human beings. Feed and clothe the poor, lend money to the needy, love your neighbor as yourself.
Nowhere is this contrast between Hinduism and Judaism more pronounced than in their respective views of sexuality. Hinduism regards the highest path to God to be celibacy. Ram Dass’s guru Neem Karoli Baba and all the genuine gurus of Hindu tradition have been celibate. This is because of the ideal of renunciation explained above and because the Kundalini energy, which goes up the spine and culminates in samadhi in the highest chakra at the crown of the head, must not be dissipated in sexuality in a lower chakra.
On the other hand, Judaism considers the highest path to God to be marriage. With a tiny handful of exceptions, all of the sages of Jewish tradition have been married. Sexual union between husband and wife, sanctified by following the mitzvot of “family purity,” is the “holy of holies” of the Jewish spiritual path.
Deccan Herald
These opposite approaches to involvement in this world may pose a conflict for Jews following a Hindu path. Toward the end of my 15 years living in a Hindu ashram, this conflict came to a head. In 1982, a devastating blizzard struck the coast of Massachusetts, where our ashram was located. Tidal waves rising to 45 feet demolished scores of homes in the neighboring town of Scituate, and hundreds of local residents who had no place to go, including many elderly people, were put up on army cots in the local high school. The radio issued constant calls for people to take these traumatized disaster victims into their homes.
Since the ashram’s retreat cottages were then empty, I was eager to offer them for the rescue effort. While our guru, Srimata Gayatri Devi, was at our California ashram, I was the administrative head of the East Coast ashram. I telephoned our guru for her approval. She refused. She insisted that housing strangers of questionable spiritual vibrations would damage the rarified atmosphere of the ashram. I hung up the phone and wept.
Ram Dass was devoted to his guru Neem Karoli Baba, but he forged his own unique path, which actually gave free rein to the Jewish activist in him. In the 1970s, after returning to America, he founded the Hanuman Foundation, a nonprofit educational and service organization. It wasn’t enough for him to have discovered the benefits of meditation. Ram Dass developed the Prison-Ashram Project to teach meditation to incarcerated prisoners. After that, he co-founded the Seva Foundation to treat the blind in India and Nepal. He also dedicated himself to teaching workshops on conscious aging and dying. And, like his philanthropist father, Ram Dass donated the considerable proceeds of his books and lectures to charity.
Going Home
Two years before his death at the age of 88, Ram Dass became the subject of a short documentary (now on Netflix) showing his life after the stroke that paralyzed his right side.
“Going Home” shows Ram Dass in his home in Maui, where he spent his final years. His living quarters are festooned with pictures of his guru, plus a shrine with pictures of various gurus and Hindu deities. Jews, unlike non-Jews, are forbidden by the Torah to worship God through intermediaries. In this way, Ram Dass’s path was decidedly un-Jewish.
Yet, I’d like to suggest that his devotion to his guru saved Ram Dass from the egotism that ruined so many New Age teachers. As he recounts in the film, the major turning point in his life from a power-driven Harvard academic to a person cognizant of his soul came through drugs. His first mushroom trip revealed to him his soul essence. This led to Dick Alpert (as he was then known) working closely with Timothy Leary, also at Harvard, experimenting on the psychedelic effects of LSD.
Eventually, both of them were dismissed from Harvard. Timothy Leary was a disciple of my guru, Srimata Gayatri Devi, called Mataji. Tim distributed LSD to the monastic members of the ashram, who became enamored with psychedelic experiences. Mataji finally put her foot down and forbade her disciples from taking psychedelics. She told Tim, “A servant cannot serve two masters.”
Tim replied, “I disagree with you,” and broke off all connection to his guru. In 1963, he established a psychedelic commune in Millbrook, NY, and took most of Mataji’s ashram community with him. Listening to no one but the dictates of his own ego, he married five times, spent time in prison, and became a controversial, even zany, counter-culture figure.
Throughout the ups and downs that spiritual striving always entails, he remained true to the ideal of service.
Dick Alpert followed a different path. In 1967, he met Neem Karoli Baba in India, became convinced of his genuine spiritual greatness, and accepted him as his guru. Obeying a guru requires humility, and Dick chose to adopt that highest of all spiritual qualities. Neem Karoli Baba gave Dick the name Ram Dass, meaning servant of God. Throughout the ups and downs that spiritual striving always entails, he remained true to the ideal of service. His first blockbuster book, Be Here Now, defined the guiding motto of his life: “Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.” Although tens of thousands of New Age seekers considered Ram Dass their teacher, he never assumed the role of guru.
His humility was most starkly revealed in his 1976 article in the Yoga Journal called “Egg on My Beard.” In it, he confessed how, after the death of Neem Karoli Baba, he had become involved for 15 months with Joya, a married woman with psychic powers in Brooklyn, and how he had led many of his own followers to become devoted to her. I myself heard him extoll Joya (without using her name) in a mass teaching on the Harvard campus in 1975. In the end, she proved to be a manipulative, ego-tripping materialist. Ram Dass publicly admitted his mistake. “I was totally seduced by the melodrama, like an open-mouthed tourist watching a fakir do the Indian rope trick…Finally, I had to admit that I had conned myself.” It was a public humiliation that could be acknowledged only by a person with genuine humility.
Ram Dass ended his mea culpa with: “I hope you may learn something from my example and save yourself a big detour. If your longing for God is pure, this is your strength.”
Although Westerners often conflate Hinduism with Buddhism, the two religions are very different. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion. Hinduism, on the other hand, is a religion centered on God. Ram Dass had many Buddhist friends and often taught with Buddhist teachers, but his path was Hindu. He was a devotee of God.
GOOD MORNING! Recently, I began thinking about gift giving and the inherent conundrum it creates. A gift is given to make the recipient happy and to express the closeness of the relationship. In order to make the recipient happy you need to know what they want. However, if you don’t know what they might want, you can’t ask them because that demonstrates that you aren’t close enough to really know them.
Then, of course, there’s the situation where you get the person exactly what they want, but this gift might make someone else in their life miserable, like getting your grandchild a puppy or a drum set. This reminds me of the following story, a version of which happened to a friend of mine.
When the four-year-old boy opened the birthday gift from his grandmother, he discovered a water pistol. He squealed with delight and headed for the nearest sink. His mother was not so pleased. She turned to her mother and said, “Mom, I’m surprised at you! Don’t you remember how we used to drive you crazy with water guns?”
Her mother smiled sweetly and replied, “I remember.”
This week’s Torah portion includes a remarkable lesson regarding the importance of giving someone what they actually desire and not something that you think they should want.
“They awoke early in the morning and ascended toward the mountaintop saying, ‘We are ready, we shall go up to the place of which Hashem has spoken – we have sinned’” (Numbers 14:40).
This week’s Torah reading recounts the tragic story of the twelve spies whose negative report on the Land of Israel caused the Jewish nation to reject the notion of entering the land, and sowed seeds of both discontent and insurrection; “Why is God bringing us to this land to die by the sword? […] Is it not better to return to Egypt?” and “Let us appoint a leader and return to Egypt!” (Numbers 14:2-4).
It is quite astonishing that a nation that was barely a year removed from miraculously leaving Egypt – a country that had enslaved them for hundreds of years – was now pining for their halcyon home of yesteryear. As one might imagine, God did not take kindly to this ingratitude and He decreed that the Jewish nation would wander in the desert for forty years and that the entire generation would die and not enter the Land of Israel.
The story of the twelves spies is well-known, but there is an oft overlooked postscript to this calamitous story, it is the incident of the “Mapilim – Defiant Ones.”
In brief, the morning after the terrible decree that the entire generation would perish in the desert and not enter the Land of Israel, a large group decided that they would show the Almighty that they really did desire to enter the land. Thus, they began ascending the mountain and told Moses, “We are ready, we shall go up to the place of which Hashem has spoken – we have sinned” (Numbers 14:40).
Upon hearing their plans, Moses warns them explicitly, “Do not ascend, it will not succeed. Do not ascend, for God is not in your midst […] You have turned away from God and He will not be with you” (Numbers 14:41-43).
So the people listened to Moses, abandoned their plans and went back to their tents to spend some time reflecting on their misdeeds, right? Of course not!
Naturally, the people were intransigent; they adopted an attitude of “we’ll show you!” and defiantly attempted to go up to the Land of Israel anyway. Of course, and just as Moses had predicted, they were utterly wiped out by the Amalekite and Canaanite nations who dwelled in the mountains surrounding the Land of Israel.
One of the overriding principles of Judaism is that the Almighty desires a relationship with His children and gives mankind the opportunity to repent and return back to Him. This is the concept and process known as teshuvah and this opportunity is one of the greatest gifts that God bestowed on an imperfect humanity.
The great 18th century Hasidic master known as Bal Shemtov wonders why their admission, “We have sinned” isn’t considered a true repentance. In other words, they seemingly accepted responsibility for their sin of trusting the twelve spies and rejecting the Land of Israel. Why didn’t the Almighty accept their contrition and allow them to enter the Land of Israel? Why were they punished so severely?
There is a fundamental misunderstanding about what exactly the transgression was in the episode of the twelve spies. It is commonly understood that the Jewish nation was punished for not trusting in the Almighty and not believing that the land He was taking them to was a truly wonderful place.
While it is true that it was wrong not to trust the Almighty, this trust was violated initially by sending the spies in the first place. In other words, the very idea that the Land of Israel needed their approval was already a breach in their trust. Still, God tolerated this indignity.
Their real transgression, the one that caused the decree of death on the entire generation, was their refusal to go enter the Land of Israel even after knowing it was what God desired. The punishment of wandering in the desert for forty years wasn’t because they expressed distrust; rather it was for not fulfilling the will of the Almighty.
We know that the Torah was given as a means of having a most amazing life. This often leads us to attempt to justify or explain why keeping the mitzvos is really better for us – being faithful to one’s spouse will lead to a more fulfilling marriage, we shouldn’t eat pork because it can cause trichinosis, Shabbat is a great day to charge the physical and emotional batteries, etc.
This is a mistake. While it is important for us to recognize the amazing benefits of a Torah based life, we don’t just keep the laws for which we devise reasons or deduce God’s intent. We must never lose sight of the fact that the real reason we follow all the commandments in the Torah is because we accepted the Torah and committed to obey God’s will.
It just so happens that my wife HATES the cold. Anything less than 75 degrees and she wants a sweater. If I would decide to gift her with tickets to see Shakespeare in the Park in New York in January, it wouldn’t be much of a gift. You can’t gift others something that you want them to have, you have to give them something that they would want or recognize that they need.
This is what happened with the story of the “Mapilim – Defiant Ones.” The morning after the calamity of the twelve spies, they admitted that they made a mistake in listening to the spies who misled them regarding the dangers of the Land of Israel. However, they never admitted to the fact that they were wrong in not listening to God in the first place. They assumed they could undo the previous night by showing God that they now agreed with Him by expressing their enthusiasm for the Land of Israel.
But they missed the point. This wasn’t about the sin of trusting the spies, this was simply about not following God’s wishes to go into the land. The reason that their admission of “we have sinned” isn’t considered a proper act of repentance is because the Mapilim misunderstood what their sin was. They thought it was about not trusting God, when really it was about not obeying God.
This is why the next morning they immediately repeated their mistake: Moses explicitly told them that they were not obeying the will of God and that He would not be with them. Stubbornly, they went anyway because they wanted to display that they now agreed that the right decision was to enter the Land of Israel.
Unfortunately, they wanted to give God something that He did not want. Sadly, this led to their slaughter at the hands of the Amalekites and Canaanites
Shlach, Numbers 13:1 – 15:41
The Jewish people received the Torah on Mt. Sinai and were ready to enter the land of Israel. There was a consensus of opinion amongst the people that we should send spies to see if it was feasible to conquer the land. Moses knew that the Almighty’s promise to give the land included a guarantee to conquer it. However, one of the principles of life, which we learn from this portion, is: the Almighty allows each of us the free will to go in the direction we choose. Even though one man and the Almighty is a majority, Moses – by Divine decree – sent out the princes of the tribes (men of the highest caliber) to spy out the land.
Twelve spies were sent. Ten came back with a report of strong fortifications and giants; they rallied the people against going up to the land. Joshua ben Nun and Calev ben Yefunah (Moses’ brother-in-law) tried to stem the rebellion, but did not succeed. The Almighty decreed 40 years of wandering in the desert, one year for each day they spied in the land of Israel. This happened on the 9th of Av, a date noted throughout Jewish history for tragedy.
Deccan Herald
