Going East by Going West
By Gus Tyler
Ever since mankind discovered that the Earth is round, daring souls have attempted to get to the east by going west and vice versa. Columbus was one of them. When in 1492, he sailed the ocean blue, he was looking for a western route to India. There was a lively trade between Europe and India, especially in luxury items like silks and spices. If Columbus could find a western route to India by water, he would have revolutionized the trade between Europe and the East.
When in his bumping into the landmass of the Western hemisphere, he apparently must have thought that he had reached India. Indeed, he called the natives Indians. He did and we still continue to do so.
In the centuries between 1492 and 2007, there have been repeated attempts by daring souls to find a northwest passage to Asia. The chief obstacle has been icebergs and floating chunks of icebergs that have wrecked the crafts of many an adventurous sailor.
But things have been changing, thanks to — of all things — global warming. The icebergs and the chips of floating ice are melting in the rising heat. History was made this summer by Roger Swanson, an Englishman who started out from northern Canada and then into Alaska and — surprise — within spitting distance of Russia.
Yes. The earth is shrinking. And soon, everybody on the face of the Earth will be our next-door neighbor.
July 26, 2007, 8:02pm
An Early Jewish-Black Marriage
By Gus Tyler
In America, at the present time, a Jewish-black intermarriage is not uncommon. One of the oldest such marriages in recorded history was that of Moses to an Ethiopian woman named Zipporah. Moses’ sister Miriam and his brother Aaron were quite annoyed by the marriage and did not hesitate to express their disapproval.
When a male child was born, Zipporah wanted to have the child circumcised. Moses told her that he felt no need for such a procedure. Moses himself had never been circumcised. His parents had put him in a makeshift waterproof basket and set him afloat on a stream that was adjacent to the Pharaoh’s estate. They did this to save the infant’s life. The Pharaoh had decreed that firstborn male Jewish children had to be exterminated.
Luckily for Moses, a daughter of the Pharaoh found the child adrift in its basket. She fell in love with the infant, and the child was raised in the palace of the Pharaoh.
When Moses had his first child he saw no need to circumcise the newly born infant. But Zipporah was insistent. She performed the circumcision by herself. It was a bloody mess. With hands soaked in blood she smeared the foreskin on Moses’ feet to symbolize his part in the ceremony.
Thus, incredibly, did a black Ethiopian woman set Moses straight on the need for an infant Jewish boy to be circumcised.
May 28, 2007, 9:00pm
A Backward Glance Into The Future
By Gus Tyler
Iraq is the oldest civilization on earth. It has been blessed and cursed by the presence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and their tributaries. Regularly, these rivers would overflow their banks and leave behind a rich mud for successful agriculture. It attracted people who were nomadic tribes and now found a place to settle down.
Life was not easy for the settlers. With the spring came floods. For refuge, the settlers learned to make towers out of brick and mortar where they could survive until the waters settled.
The priesthood was annoyed. Once they offered solace to the inhabitants by appeals to the gods. So, the authors of Genesis explained that God came to Sumeria, where the Tigris and Euphrates came together to pour into the present Persian Gulf. He saw these towers and was enraged. Soon, these earth creatures would build ever higher and higher until they would enter His territory in the heavens. So, He put a curse on them. He created a babble of tongues so that nobody could understand what another spoke. The land they inhabited came to be called Babylon.
When after World War I, the British were granted a protectorate over Iraq, they discovered that the land was ungovernable, and they withdrew. In the next four years, there were seven new governments, each attained by a military coup. It was not until Saddam Hussein took power that a measure of order prevailed. His regime was secular with a complete separation of church and state.
With our removal of Hussein, Iraq returned to its tribal terrorism and chaos. We were not satisfied with the removal of Hussein. He was hanged in the public square. Why? He did not bring the chaos to Iraq. We did.
The great American philosopher George Santayana explained why all this madness has prevailed when he said, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.”
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