Is This A Start, Or Just a Flash In The Pan?

Last week the first civil marriage took place in Israel on Tuesday evening, between Svetlana Sadigursky and Gabby Liebeschitz, Mazal Tov! Unfortunately it isn't as good as it sounds- only couples in which both partners are non-Jewish or 'defined by the state as lacking religious denomination', can marry, after the original law, which would have enabled any Israeli citizen to marry in a civil ceremony was cut back drastically to avoid a veto by religious parties. Twenty five couples have met the criteria, reports the Jerusalem Post; all were questioned by rabbis to make sure they are not Jewish, and are investigated, with rabbis performing 'an examination of the local religious communities'.
This raises an interesting possibility; can an Atheist marry an Atheist in Israel now? And who defines a person as an Atheist? I rather suspect that the Chief Rabbinate will insist on defining a Jew as anyone who was born to a Jewish mother, no matter what their beliefs, thus making a mockery of the whole 'civil' aspect.
Is it just a coincidence that this is how Hitler defined Jews?

How Not To Pray

We have just sailed from Mindoro to Panay, these being two islands in the Philippines. On the way, we got into such bad weather that 'dread' is a good way to describe our feelings. In the past I must confess that I have resorted to prayer, bargaining with god, pleading and so on in situations of this sort, and this time too I found my thought patterns automatically forming the words " Oh God, please make it stop, or at least not get any worse, please, please... Let me live, God, please...Don't let that wave hit me in the face....oof, well not the next one....oof...don't let us sink.."
This time I decided to try to fight it. You must understand that generally people who are scared to death are less rational than people who are, for instance, sitting in a dry,stationary room without 2000 metres of roiling sea 2 metres below them. So, I started out by paying attention to my thoughts. Every time I caught myself whinging on I stopped myself with a sharp " Stop it!!!". This was all very well, but didn't get me any further than arguing with myself, although given enough time I may have managed to cure the automatic tendency to pray. The next step was to make myself look at the situation logically, and that went like this;
"Is this the worst weather there could be?"
"No, it could get worse (sob...)"
"So it's not as bad as it could be, and it isn't actually getting worse, is it?"
"Well, no, I suppose it's staying about the same."
"And we are travelling in the right direction, more or less?"
"Well, yes, but it's wet and scary and there are big waves and it's dark and I can only hear them and then they hit me in the face and I'm covered in salt water and it's horrid..."
"Yes, but we aren't actually sinking at all, so far, are we?"
"Please don't say that... Well, no, we aren't sinking yet, I'm just scared of sinking."
"So we are travelling in the right direction, not sinking and the weather isn't getting any worse. Even if it gets worse we can always run off downwind.Meanwhile we are getting closer to a safe port, and it will be morning soon.What are we praying for?"
This really worked, and I felt comforted enough to go and make some somewhat soggy sandwiches, a result I never managed to acheive with prayer, and I didn't even have to promise anything! No more being blackmailed by god!

Why I like Sam Harris

For Israelis being atheist isn't easy. On the one hand there are those who will immediately decide you must be extremely left wing, since if you don't accept the idea that the land of Israel is sacred and was given by god to the Israelites then you are liable to be a bit light handed about holding on to it. On the other hand there are the Israel bashers and antisemitic elements who can be found even on otherwise respectable forums using atheism as an excuse to attack Israel. In one post on a well known forum on the subject of multiculturalism in Britain, the author managed to find an excuse to call Israel " racist and anti-democratic". This in a post about Britain and British culture?
This political climate means that I generally start to read any new book on atheism with a certain amount of guarded skepticism. I'm just waiting for the first comment that makes me say " Well, here we go again...." Which is why I like Sam Harris. For Harris being atheist doesn't mean you have to be toothless. It doesn't mean being a pacifist, in fact he explains quite nicely in " The Moral Landscape" how immoral the pacifist position really is, and it doesn't mean that Israel is automatically wrong in every conflict or decision. I can actually relax and read, fairly certain that I'm not going to have to throw the book at the wall, which, since I read on a laptop, can be expensive.
The other thing I like about Sam Harris is that he doesn't deny the existence of something more than the thinking mind. This is a problematic position for an atheist because there is no real proof that there is anything else, any independent consciousness, but he argues that the techniques of meditation and objective description of subjective experience do have a place in trying to understand what we really are. In fact he pushes the boundaries on all sides, and for me removes the feeling of restriction I sometimes feel reading Richard Dawkins, for instance. ( Which is not to say that Dawkins isn't brilliant as well...)

Survey Shows Majority of Israelis Support Separation of Religion and State

A study just published by the Israeli Bureau of Statistics here, has some surprising statistics. The poll results, available only in Hebrew so far, support the view that religious parties, despite holding the balance of power in Israeli politics do not represent the views of the majority on most issues.
Israel has no form of civil marriage, meaning that Jews and non-Jews who wish to marry cannot do so inside Israel. In addition, Jews who wish to marry in a non-religious ceremony cannot do this in Israel, these laws being defended constantly by the religious minority as being the only way to avoid intermarriage, which they see as paving the way to the destruction of the Jewish state.
However the study, carried out in 2009 among 9340 Jews over the age of 20, shows that a clear majority would choose to separate religion and state. The most interesting statistics are;

• 57% of all respondents support separation of state and religion, while among those who defined themselves as secular 77% are in favor.
• 90% of secular Israelis are in favor of civil marriage, 60% of those defining themselves as traditional Jews are in favor, and only among religious and ultra-orthodox groups is there a majority against.
• 64% of all respondents support the opening of entertainment centres ( pubs, restaurants, cinemas)on the Sabbath, 93% among secular Jews and 76% among traditional Jews ( at the moment only areas outside city centres are generally open, and since there is no public transport on the Sabbath only people with a car can get there).
  
• 53% of all respondents are in favor of public transport on the Sabbath.

• 62% are in favor of sporting events on the Sabbath.

However, the study isn't all sweetness and light; 80% of respondents believe that religion has a strong influence on daily life in Israel, and 27% feel that their neighborhood has become more religious in the past few years. About half would like to increase religious education in state schools, this breaking down into 90% of religious in favor against 23% of secular Jews.
This study gives a clear mandate for reform in Israeli politics, but of course nothing will come of it while the religious parties continue to hold the Israeli public to ransom, enabled to do so by the mostly secular larger political parties both on left and right.