thinking jewish

Making the Move Real

Less than a month left in New York, I ordered moving boxes the other day. They're set to arrive today.

Makes it all seem so permanent.

Are you making a move any time soon? Check out the company that I'm using for my boxes: UsedCardboardBoxes.com.

All their boxes a reclaimed from businesses that use the cardboard once or twice, leaving it reusable. And it's cheap! So, to sum matters up, for my move I will be using cheap reused boxes made of recycled cardboard. If only I can also reduce the amount of total boxes I need, I'll close the loop.

If I didn't know better, I'd call myself the Green Rabbinical Student. Alas, that title is already taken.

A Night in Detroit

5:23 PM: Arrive at gate B15, coffee and paper in hand, for my 7:10 flight.

5:49 PM: Flight is overbooked by two seats.

5:51 PM: I volunteer to be bumped from the flight, in exchange for a $250 voucher.

5:53 PM: There are no open flights to New York tonight, either direct or connecting, nor Washington, Philadelphia, or Boston, on any airline. Agent tries to get permission from his supervisor to send me to San Diego for the day. Unsuccessful. Notes "this is like trying to bring out water from a rock." Nice reference to Numbers 20.

5:54 PM: Earliest arrival into New York will be at 12:30 PM, the next day, flying (backwards) through Chicago. They'll throw in the hotel room.

6:30 PM: I take the offer. Mad dash to pull my bag from the airplane ensues. Flight is delayed a half hour. I sit back comfortably and wait for my vouchers.

7:23 PM: Hotel shuttle pulls up. My new best friend is Arnold, the other man bumped from the flight.

7:38 PM: Westin is actually a Best Western. Damn. Hotel alttrium is circa 1972, with waterfall, neon lights and tanning room.

7:45 PM: Room 2025. View of the parking lot. King sized bed. TV. Soap. I think I saw this once in a Dateline special.

8:04 PM: In need of supplies, I go for a walk. Gift shop is closed. I go down the street to the Embassy Suites. Serious hotel envy ensues.

8:30 PM: Family Guy!

9:00 PM: Desperate Housewives. I too am very desperate.

10:12 PM: Onslaught of text messages. Why me? Why now?

10:14 PM: "Sleep".

12:30 AM: Awake.

1:09 AM: Really awake. TV time.

2:46 AM: Grey hair succesfully plucked.

3:42 AM: Shower. Pack. Go.

4:56 AM: How do lines exist at this time of day?

5:02 AM: Seat opens up on 6:15 AM flight direct to La Guardia. Celebration followed by trip to Starbucks.

5:03 AM: Yum.

5:08 AM: Only person at my gate, B14. Remember the good old days, B15? How I miss thee.

5:45 AM: Plane. Pilot. Flight attendant. Still no sun. Is this really happening?

6:15 AM: Goodbye Detroit!

Public Service Announcement

As many of you have already learned, I am in the process of moving this blog over to its own domain - thinkingjewish.net.

For now, both the old address and the new one are, more or less, working. In a few days, I will fully transport the site to the new domain, which will leave the old address visually inoperable (though still containing all the current content, ad infinitum).

Please alter your browsers accordingly. I will publish a few more reminders before the big change.

In Order

Home in San Diego for the holidays, I encounter new Jewish dilemmas with each rising of the sun.

Friday morning, Shabbat on its way, I was talking with my father about our plans for the evening. We had none. And everyone was working late into the afternoon. And my step-sister was arriving into the airport at 7:30 PM.

Shabbat is always an adventure, especially outside of the comfort zone of my home and New York. I have my standards, my normal behaviors and prohibitions and concerns. And, at home, more or less, I play the role of the lone observer.

So when I inquired, Friday morning, what our dinner plans were, I was really looking out for myself. I would not be leaving the house that evening. I would be eating dinner. I hoped the rest of the family would be able to join me so we could eat and celebrate together.

But busy schedules had their own demands and constraints. And so I offered to be the cook for the evening. I'd take care of dinner - some pasta and other carbs before our Feast of Matza a day later.

As the day progressed, I planned my menu. I bought challah from the best bakery I've ever found. We planned to eat when the family returned from the airport, at about 8:30. Evening arrived, and off they went. Shabbat came in shortly thereafter. I took a deep breath, relaxed, and sat down on the couch for a few minutes of rest before preparing the food.

Two hours later, my family came back home to join in our festive meal. As they stumbled into the house, I stumbled out of the slumber that had overtaken me since they'd left.

Oops.

Friday night. The sun was long-since set. There was no dinner to be had.

And in that moment, as I realized how I'd gone wrong, I panicked. It was late. I was embarrassed. Such an important part of my Friday night ritual would fall apart. There'd be no communal meal. The chance to make kiddush would all but pass.

There is, afterall, an order to how things are supposed to be done. The sun sets. Ma'ariv. Dinner. And so on.

The meal, like with so many Jewish times, is the highlight. The time for family. The time for celebration. The time for good food. And I'd missed that ship. Within minutes, the family would disperse, go their separate ways and eat food on their own. I would be left with my non-meal and a kiddush cup of wine all to myself. The natural order of Friday night was all messed up. And it was my fault. And I was terribly uncomfortable.

Uncomfortable because the natural order of how my Friday night was supposed to be would not happen; uncomfortable because things were not in order.

Erev Shabbat is not, certainly, the only time that order plays such an important role in the Jewish things we do. Order factors in constantly, most obviously in the Passover Seder. Fourteen acts, repeated every year, make up the essence of the ritual. The seder is named "order" for a reason. Do it this way, not that. In this order. This and then that and then that.

First night of Passover, I found myself in an out of order Order. Maror was before Motsi Matza and, after that, Rahtsa. We flipped back and forth through the pages of the hagaddah, back and forth and back again. I squirmed a little in my chair, trying to stay quiet and smiling. I put on my happy face.

We're together for the holiday, learning together and celebrating, I thought, and that's really what's important. Isn't it?

Because the rite is ritualized in a set order for a reason - it teaches its own lessons, inscribes itself in a certain matter in the tablets of memory. But the order itself is not the ritual. And the ritual itself is not the God we praise.

Standardization brings comfort - it normalizes an act. But we cannot become so enslaved to the normalcy of an oft-repeated ritual that, when forces beyond our control demand so, we are unable to do it a little differently.

Rituals, even out of order, are still religious acts. It takes a little humility, but the man of set order can learn to become comfortable in situations different from routine.

Dinner happened Friday night, afterall. The whole family came together to help out. We threw together a salad. We brought out some tuna salad and the challah and a little peanut butter. Vwalla.

Kiddush. Hand washing. Motsi. Let's eat.

An hour later we were deep in a political argument over the election.

All in all, the night was different. But it happened. Shabbat happened. The mitzvot were fulfilled. The people were happy. And, most importantly, I enjoyed Shabbat with my family, around a table, with love and good discussion filling the room. Ultimately, there was no reason for discomfort.

And the story of how I slept through cooking dinner will never be forgotten.

The Right Question

Reading the Times this morning as I sat in a grove of San Diego palms, drinking a delicious cup of Starbucks coffee, I flipped from page to page of the international section, engulfed in the human drama of the stories I was reading.

Today's international section seemed especially ripe with emotional stories exploring the human pain of the world in which we live: the Pope met with victims of sexual abuse; a bombing at an Iraqi funeral; near-political chaos in Zimbabwe.

And two specific stories caught my eye. The front page, A1, led with the deep shocks being felt around the world due to the current food crisis. As I near the hour when I will sit and share in a large Shabbat meal with my family, millions and millions of people around the world are suddenly finding themselves unable to afford enough food for more than a single meal a day. There is famine in the land.

Then there was A6, where the International Section led with a story about the debate going on in Israel over the Chametz law. An Israeli judged recently overturned the conviction of four Jerusalem shops and restaurants for having sold bread during last year's Passover. Current law makes it illegal to publicly display leavened products during the festival commemorating our exodus from Egypt.

A story about famine. A story about holidays and meaning and Egypt.

My father was a\ wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there.

Only a day before the start of the Feast of Freedom, these two articles could not have fit more perfectly together. But something went on in those New York Times pages, something more than mere confluence and coincidence.

This came to light in the story about Israel. The big news, after all, is not that the convictions were overturned - the law is clear in banning the public display of chametz, not its sale. Rather, the story came in the discussion that has opened up within Israeli society about the utility of the chametz law itself. Low and behold, a vast majority of Israelis - many of them pork-eating, Torah bashing, Tel Aviv-loving secularists - support the chametz law as a institutional reminder of Jewish identity in their country. Because, they believe, even if they doubt God, and even if they drive on Shabbat, and even if they think that "Amidah" refers to aerobic exercise, they know how important it is that they are Jewish, and that the story we tell on Passover is something they experienced too. We were all there in Egypt. God brought each of us out with a mighty arm. We were all slaves. Today we are free.

Sharona Mazalian, a secular Tel Avivite, said: "The further we allow ourselves to go from Jewish tradition, the easier it will be for those who reject our legitimacy as a Jewish state," said Sharona Mazalian, who lives outside Tel Aviv, works for a secular, conservative legislator and wants hametz banned during Passover. "We call ourselves a Jewish, democratic state. But the less Jewish we are the easier it will be for others to say, ‘Why not just be a democratic state for Jews and Arabs to live in together?'"

Had God given us the State of Israel, but not given us the Arabs to strengthen our Jewish Identity, Dayenu.

Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni summed up the argument a little better: "In my view, this prohibition is part of the substantive question of how we wish to characterize our identity in the national home for the Jewish people.”

How do we wish to characterize our Jewish identity? That is the right question.

And I see her struggle, I see the struggle of all Israelis, as trying to find meaning in a difficult wrestling match with God and tradition and history and memory, all in the face of a bleak reality. What gets them through the day? What gets any Jew through the day?

In the lead up to Passover, I have taught so many times in the last few weeks about the Four Children, the four archetypes that the Haggadah gives us of the people that may be at our seder. The most interesting, I think, is the wicked son, the one who asks "What does this seder mean to you?" We are told to rebuke him, to make fun of his removing himself from the Passover tradition. Had you been in Egypt, God would not have redeemed you. You would still be there to this day.

He asks the wrong question.

The wise child asks about the laws of the seder. He may be young, he may not be smart, but he is wise enough to want to learn, to try and understand, to insert himself into the process and become a part of history.

Be the wise child, the tradition prods. Remember Egypt.

And I do. Too much. I remember slavery's bitterness. I remember the tears of affliction. I remember the sweet taste of redemption.

I remember all of that, I remembered all of that, as I read the Times front page this morning, about a world going hungry not because we can't produce enough food, but because suddenly food is too expensive for much of the world to buy it. And I want to know why this happened. I want to know how we can fix it. I want to know how I in good conscience any longer eat a large meal without remembering my great fortune.

I want to know what I am doing to perpetuate this global problem - to figure out what I, what we all, must do to change our ways and help others out. What do I need to do to fix this? That is my question.

Tomorrow nights seders around the world will begin with the words, "This is the Pesah seder, let all who are hungry come and eat."

I hope so.

Happy Passover

Miracle on 59th Street

Different cross-town boulevard, different setting, different holiday entirely.

Ma nishtana halaila hazeh mikol halaylot?

On the ground floor of a building, on a warm Wednesday morning, at the base of the Queensboro bridge, six colleagues came together to eat good food, sing some songs, and tell a story, a story about freedom - about redemption and slavery and God's awesome might.

It was the most unlikely of happenings; the specifics were all wrong. The Feast of Matzah was still almost two weeks away, the seder is supposed to happen at night, but it was still morning. There was no gefilte fish or matza ball soup, the fine china was still away in cabinets. And around the table, in this community of individuals commemorating a most ancient event, sat one lone Jew. Me.

But this moment was not dependent on a minyan, it was not one of Jewish celebration. Rather, it was an experience of sharing and teaching and learning.

The narrative of freedom was familiar to us all. The experience of slavery was none too distant. One had been a slave to her past decisions, another found freedom in America, one was once in the bondage of his own intransigence, another redeemed by a change in life's direction. We all look forward to a better future world. Next year in Jerusalem.

The Reverend asked the four questions, the nun found the afikomen. A special, date-filled charoset was made to remind the Bangladeshi immam of home. There was grape juice, no wine, potato salad and deviled eggs - a hodgepodge of eclectic foods of particular importance to individuals in the group as scattered and eclectic a mishmash our group.

But the hallmarks of the Passover meal were all there. We asked questions, we told the story, we recalled the spilling of the Egyptians' blood, of God's great act of redemption, of the Pesach sacrifice of old.

And in the particularism of this most uniquely Jewish of acts - of an educational meal that epitomizes what it means to be a Jew - I saw the universality of the celebration's morals and lessons come to life. None of us is a stranger to oppression. We are all deserving of freedom. So often we can learn more from the questions than the answers. We all have the capacity within us to be the wise child, or the evil one. And, sometimes, we don't even know to ask.

But that morning, we all knew. And in the inter-religious exchange that happened at that seder table, I saw something beautiful come to life: a multi-faith, yet authentically rooted celebration and dialogue. Muslims, Christians and one lonely Jew - together for a Passover meal.

It didn't used to be so easy. Sometimes it's still extremely hard. There are competing messages and aspirations, centuries'-old hatreds and misunderstandings.

But that sunny Wednesday morning, it all worked. And that was a miracle. A miracle on 59th street.

In the Godly act, we were all redeemed a little bit more.

What I've Been Doing for the Last Eight Months

"These are the things that people eat the fruit of in this world but the principle remains for the world to come, and these are them: honoring one's father and mother, acts of loving kindness, attending a Beit Midrash morning and evening, hospitality to strangers, visiting the sick, welcoming a bride, attending to the dead, devoted prayer and making peace between two people, but the study of Torah is equal to them all." [Based on Shabbat 127a]

This text, based on a line from the Talmud, is said daily in the morning service. It is the text chosen to follow the blessing over the reading of Torah. That is, following reciting the blessing over studying Torah, at which point any text could be chosen to be studied, this text is the one specified by the Jewish tradition. This is no coincidence. Torah is meant to be a vehicle that leads one to acts of loving-kindness, and this Talmudic text outlines specifically the acts that summarize good, ethical behavior. Like Hillel teaches to the convert, "What is hurtful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary, go and learn it," (Shabbat 31a). Torah, a living body of literature to be studied over and over again, is itself not read for personal edification; Torah does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, its study is explicitly meant to lead one to a life filled with righteous acts.

Present on this list of deeds is "visiting the sick," known by the Hebrew "bikur holim." In its most basic form then, the chaplaincy in a hospital setting is a fulfillment of the Jewish obligation to visit those who are sick: to speak with them, be with them, provide for them, and help to cheer them up. It is a rote obligation enacted in deference to the tradition’s call.

Eight months ago, as I presented my first verbatim, this explanation was sufficient for me. I remember looking my supervisor straight in the eye and saying that this explained my theology of pastoral care. “Why do you do it though?” she asked. “Because it is a commandment,” said I. “But why do you do it?” she prodded. The conversation went in circles from there.

I was unversed in a nuanced understanding of what I was actually doing with patients. Were I merely visiting them, I would walk in with a smile and some cookies, talk to them, try to cheer them up and then leave. I would be as rote in my offerings to the individuals confined to hospital beds as the tradition suggests the acts performance should be: nothing more, nothing less. In many months of visiting patients, my theology has evolved significantly.

It began when I took the time to reconsider the I-Thou philosophy of Martin Buber. A year ago, as I studied his work in seminary, I found deep trouble with the God image the Jewish philosopher painted: it was too relativistic and, seemingly, flimsy; too personal, not communal enough. I still struggle deeply with his image of God. Yet I learned quickly in my work with patients, through our many didactics and the reading of Social Intelligence (Daniel Goleman) of the applications of the I-Thou philosophy to human-human interactions.

Looking at the chaplaincy through this lens opened up worlds to my young eyes. It allowed for the possibility that I am doing more than merely “visiting the sick.” I go into their rooms to be with them, to walk with them in their struggle. I feel with them, share with them, sit with them. In doing so, I help them feel less alone in their pain, I help them to bring meaning to their trial, I help to make it all make a little more sense.

So that original text, the Talmudic list of ethical obligations, no longer fits. I still read it each morning out of that feeling of rote obligation, but no longer do I attempt to graft this ancient Jewish text onto the modern institution of chaplaincy. Pastoral presence is too different.

For some time I was left feeling somewhat devoid of a Jewish context within which to understand my work. I had figured out why I do this – as a person – but had not yet found a compelling Jewish source that underpins my work. I searched and searched, but could not find the text that I sought.

And then, out of nowhere, I was related the following story. In a moment of lucidity it all became clear. This is the theological underpinning of my chaplaincy work.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, the late-18th century Hasidic rebbe, taught:

Once the king's son went mad. He thought he was a turkey. He felt compelled to sit under the table without any clothes on, pulling at bits of bread and bones like a turkey. None of the doctors could do anything to help him or cure him, and they gave up in despair. The king was very sad. Until a Wise Man came and said, "I can cure him."

What did the Wise Man do? He took off all his clothes, and sat down naked under the table next to the king's son, and also pulled at crumbs and bones.

The Prince asked him, "Who are you and what are you doing here?"

"And what are you doing here?" he replied.

"I am a turkey," said the Prince.

"Well I'm also a turkey," said the Wise Man.

The two of them sat there together like this for some time, until they were used to one another. Then the Wise Man gave a sign, and they threw them shirts. The Wise Man-Turkey said to the king's son, "Do you think a turkey can't wear a shirt? You can wear a shirt and still be a turkey." The two of them put on shirts.

After a while he gave another sign and they threw them some trousers. The Wise Man said, "Do you think if you wear trousers you can't be a turkey?" They put on the trousers. One by one they put on the rest of their clothes in the same way.

Afterwards, the Wise Man gave a sign and they put down human food from the table. The Wise Man said to the Prince, "Do you think if you eat good food you can't be a turkey any more? You can eat this food and still be a turkey." They ate. Then he said to him, "Do you think a turkey has to sit under the table? You can be a turkey and sit up at the table."

This was how the Wise Man dealt with the Prince, until in the end he cured him completely.

This story, grafted onto my work in the chaplaincy, is not meant to make light of the serious and real pain felt by the many patients with whom I interact. Rather, the state of the whimsical and insane prince is meant to serve as metaphor for the reality of our patients: they find themselves in a very lonely place, where their world is turned upside down and different from everyone else’s. What they need, what we can provide, is a way to make sense of their struggle, to help provide them with meaning, and to allow them to come out from under the table – turkey or not.

The methodology to providing this service is key. One who enters a patient’s room, who looks at the patient sitting there underneath the table from up above and expects to bring them out, is doing that patient a disservice. That approach does not validate the patient’s struggle, does not allow them to feel joined. Rather, the chaplain must go underneath the table and be with the patient – feel their pain with them – to begin to help them to find ways to live up from underneath the table.

The wisdom of Reb Nachman’s story is that the wise man alone is willing to go where the prince is – emotionally – to be a turkey with him. He alone is willing to be ridiculous, to set aside social standards and expected behavior and just be with his patient precisely where the patient needs him to be. He is, like the medical literature describes of the proverbial chaplain, a clown of sorts, ready to pull out of his hat an act to fit just this moment; prepared to be goofy or absurd or embarrassed if need be to help this other.

That is a Buberian act – one which can only be done in an I-Thou manner. This can only be accomplished if the patient is no longer a patient – no longer an it – but, rather, another human being with whom I will exist in relation – a Thou. It involves going to the place where the patient is and, if they want to be brought somewhere, helping them in that transition.

So chaplaincy and pastoral care, though they do fulfill the basic Jewish obligation of visiting the sick, are actually much more. They are a professionalized means of helping people – being with other human beings – in their most difficult and painful times. Pastoral care is the most human of acts, a virtuous attempt to aid other people, no matter how difficult their struggle.

"To Serve Man"

In seventh grade, I went on a class trip to Yosemite for a week. We stayed in small, freezing cold cabins and hiked in the great outdoors - some bonding or self-esteem building something or other. I'm sure it was nice.

Thirteen years removed from that trip, I remember very little of what we actually did. I remember biting down on mint candies in a dark cave to see if they actually sparked. I remember hiking to the top of Yosemite Falls - the long, endless snake path on which I thought I would breath my last breaths. I remember a lot of rain, little sleep, and adolescent boy bonding.

But more than anything else, I remember one night on the trip when, as a class, we went for a short hike down the road leading out of camp. We walked for no more than 10 minutes in a straight line, learned about something or other while sitting on a large rock, and then were sent back on our way to the cabins.

For the return walk, however, we were encouraged to take in the silent beauty of the night in pairs. Separated by maybe 30 yards from all other living beings, we were told to move in complete silence with our partner and witness the majesty of the forest at night. The path back home was straight, marked, and well lit. It was a pretty simple task: walk in a straight line on a flat course without talking.

But I, being the special person that I am, decided to do the walk alone. I didn't really like my partner. And how cool would I be to hike all by myself at night? I mean, really? What my teachers were thinking when they let me go solo, I do not know. No, they probably were thinking "It's a straight, flat, well-lit path. He can't get lost." That would be the logical conclusion. But, of course, I was able to prove them wrong.

About five minutes into my soiree into the great unknown wilderness, devoid of speech or sounds or any familiar sights, I came upon the camp. But, while the it should have been to my left, it was actually on my right. I figured I'd somehow come in on the opposite end - that somehow I'd been turned around but now was on the right course - and, so, I wandered my twelve-year-old self inside.

And it looked like my camp - the buildings were the same, the paths all aligned correctly - it felt right - only, it wasn't. My cabin was nowhere to be found, the layout was different, there were no familiar sights. I did not know the name of the place where I was supposed to be. I had no phone, no money, no idea where I was. I was lost. Completely, lost, in the middle of the night in a forest far, far away from home.

I walked around, looking for something familiar, my heart beat faster and faster, and I became more sure that, somehow, I had wandered into an alternate reality - one in which everything looked somewhat similar but was, in fact, totally different. I had somehow entered a parallel demention and was now stuck there, gone from the safety of home forever.

And then, finally, out of the corner of my eye, I saw some adults - SALVATION! I started moving towards them.

Three men, probably in their twenties, gathered around a picnic table drinking some clear liquid. I raced towards them, terrified out of my mind that my face would soon end up on a milk carton. Fifty yards away, then forty. From thirty yards away, I saw one of the men catch my eye. <i>I'm Saved!</i> I thought.

He looked my way, and started speaking. "I'm going to eat you, little boy! Come here! Come here! I'm gonna eat you!" I hightailed it in the opposite direction, running for my life like I have never run before. I was sure I was being chased by child-eating men. Help! Help! Help!

I was reminded of the episode this morning, as I sat on an over-crowded subway train, reading the Times. The front page ran today with a story detailing the incitement and hatred being preached by Hamas to the Palestinian people in its mosques, rallies and media.

Jews are called the cousins of pigs and monkeys, Israel is ignored from maps, suicide bombings are praised and those who carry them out exalted. In the name of Islam, Hamas brainwashes its people to love death more than life.

This is, after all, nothing new. It has been detailed by plenty of NGOs for over a decade, was supposed to have been done away with by the Oslo Accords and the Road Map a decade later. The Palestinian Authority, for its part, rarely uses such language anymore, except in school textbooks, but, these days, Hamas is the major power broker, so that's of little merit. But as well-known and publicized as this issue has been for some time, a large article on the front page of the Times lends it credibility of another level.

Sadly, Hamas is raising a generation of Palestinians to know Jews as nothing short of the Devil - evil colonizers who are less-than human. Children spend their mornings watching ripped-off versions of Sesame Street. "Tomorrow's Pioneers" originally starred Farfour, a Disney-like mouse. He was murdered by an Israeli interogator and replaced by a Bee named Nahoul, himself a victim of Israel's blockades of Gaza. The latest star is Assud the rabbit, who vows to kill as many Jews as he can and, "God willing... I will eat them up, God willing."

God willing indeed.

The imagination of children has an unbelievable ability to turn fantasy into reality. The line between real and imagined is often so easily blurred as to change the nature of existence entirely. The influence adults have over kids can be a tool for great good or, in this case, immeasurable evil. These poor Palestinian children are trained to be nothing short of murderers. All I have for them is pity. And all I have for their parents and leadership is disgust.

On that trip in Yosemite, as I ran away for my life, only moments later I stumbled into one of my teachers, who brought me safely back to my cabin, away from the evil alter-universe where everything is different but the same, where children cannot find their way home and where drunkards eat children for dessert.

I got away. I escaped the nightmare and returned to the real world - one of calm and safety and happiness. But Palestinian children cannot. They are stuck where they are - in the middle of a century-long conflict with no sign of letting up any time soon. But their parents are not comforting them in the despair of this pessimism.

They are only encouraging the evil to fester a century longer.