Rich get Richer

    How would you feel if you found out one family had as much money as 120 million Americans.  Let me repeat that number -- 120 million Americans.  That is one third of the people who exist in America.  All of them put together have as much money as the members of one family.
    Nowadays, liberty has become “Security for financial operations.”  We are confusing this kind of liberty -- liberty for financial operations -- with the simple concept of Liberty.  The freedom to make as much money as you can is being confused with freedom.
    If you have the Freedom to make money then what has to happen is that money accumulates in piles.  The biggest pile?  The Walmart Family that has as much money as 120 million Americans.
    Or, in 2005  “21.2 per cent of US National Income -- that’s one out of every five dollars earned -- went to 1% of earners.”
    It’s not rich families who have inherited money that we are talking about.  Earners.  These are people who earn the money that’s out there for all of us to earn.  Ninety nine percent of us get four out of every five dollars, One percent of us get one out of every five dollars.
    Wow.  That’s inequality.  That’s somehow wrong.
    As the book I am quoting from says “In the 1970s the concept that the point of life was to get rich and that governments exist to facilitate this would have been ridiculed.”  Ridiculed.  Made Fun of.  Just forty years ago.  Government exists to secure liberty for Financial operations?  You gotta be kidding me.  Look at what happens in the so called Free Market.  One per cent of the people rake it in.  The rest of us get to split what’s left.
    That’s just not fair.
    In finance, the one per cent who are the best rake in 21.5 per cent of the money available to rake in.  And don’t you out there think you’ll join that one per cent.  In America, those who began in the bottom fifth in income, are less likely to get out of that rut than the bottom fifth in any other developed Western nation.  You know how hard times are now.  You know most people are struggling -- and yet we have laws in place to make sure the rich few get to keep what they earn and to multiply it.  The gap between the rich and the poor is greater now than it has ever been before in American history.
    We need to tax the rich more -- and perhaps we even need to curb their right to earn as much as they can earn.  That may sound like Socialism, but a mere fifty years ago, in the 1960s, in the good old USA, the very richest earners paid as high as 90 per cent of their income in taxes. 

Graven Images

    We all know that the second commandment states “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.”  But precisely what is a “graven image”?
    Any bible, in Spanish, in English, in Turkish, in Greek -- is a translation of an ancient language.  In a sense we will never-ever really know what was meant when the commandment, in Hebrew, says “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”
    We can guess, we do guess.  If you go into any synagogue in the world -- any synagogue, you will not see carvings of humans or cows, or trees, or images of any kind.  That is the simple definition of graven image -- something that represents something all of us recognize -- a Bhudda, a Christ, an image -- something we can see.
    I have just visited what is reputedly the most beautiful Synagogue in all of Europe.  It is in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and it is full, blatantly full of graven images.  Representations of humans?  No.  Images of any kind?  No.  So what do I mean when I say full of graven images?
    The Synagogue in Prague is carved out of gold.  I mean carved out of gold.  It glows.  It is yellow, beautiful, splendid -- it is the most beautiful synagogue I have ever seen.  It is all geometric patterns of one kind or another -- no image is to be seen.  The patterns fill the side walls, the domed ceiling, the columns.  The intricate patterns are varied, immensely beautiful.  But all I could think of is Gold, money.  These people worshiped money.
    We Jews do not place “graven images’ in places of worship because we believe only God should be worshiped.  He and he alone is worthy of our worship.
    Every time Prague Jews came to pray, they could not help but think of money, of gold, of the splendor that could only be bought with a great deal of money -- money for materials, money for craftsmen, money for designers.
    They had to leave this place of worship and lust for something resembling this shimmering golden splendor in their own homes.  It all glows.  It shrieks out -- I am rich.  I can afford all this.  Isn’t this beyond belief beautiful?  Isn’t this splendor on a vast scale -- and don’t I want some of it for my abode?
    Virtually every synagogue I’ve ever visited is simple, white, stark.  It may have a high ceiling.  It may be vast.  It may be beautiful in its way, but it is totally free of graven images -- no gold, no marble, no statues, no filigrees.  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.  Focus on God.  You are here to worship him, not the craftsmanship of Michelangelo, or a silver & gold maker.
    I do not mean to denigrate the splendiferous synagogue in Prague.  It is so beautiful that a picture of the inside of this synagogue, the dome, is now my screen saver.  I can’t stop looking at it.  It is so beautiful.
    But I am worshiping a graven image.  I do not think of God, or the meaning of my existence.  I think of beauty upon this earth.  And that is not what a Jewish god would want.