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	<title>The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County NJ, A Humanist Religion</title>
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	<link>http://ethicalfocus.org</link>
	<description>A religion of values and ethics, informed by science and reason.</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 13:07:33 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Students Make Environmentally Friendly Home Cleaning Products</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/students-make-environmentally-friendly-home-cleaning-products/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/students-make-environmentally-friendly-home-cleaning-products/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 15 May 2013 12:46:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Terri</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Sunday School]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1837</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[All students in the Sunday School program convened on April 7th to make a variety of non-toxic, environmental-friendly, and very effective home products. These items will be offered together as an addition to the 2013 Skills Auction Catalogue as a package. The products were chosen to provide an opportunity for the students to contribute to the Society with this unique and exciting offering. They were prompted by the upcoming annual Earth Day where they could demonstrate that all of us can make a small change in our lifestyles and preserve the integrity of the earth, air, and water. There have been articles online about how conventional commercial cleaning products contain chemicals and toxins that are both harmful to humans, animals, and to the environment. Something as innocuous as bleach inadvertently contains compounds that can induce adverse health effects, especially over time. The students were intrigued by the concept of making their own cleansers. The students measured, poured, stirred, and packaged ingredients that are safe (non-toxic), generally found in any kitchen, and affordable: baking soda, washing soda, vinegar, lemon juice, and essential oils to make them smell great. Not only are these compounds very effective in keeping kitchens clean and free of bacteria, they are the kind of products our grandmothers made themselves. And far more safe in the hands of toddlers who get into a cabinet. Some of the homemade detergents and cleansers include handy lemon dishwasher cubes, antibacterial soft scrub cleanser, homemade laundry soap, eucalyptus all-purpose cleanser, and lemon all-purpose scouring powder. No scratching and the most satisfying clean fragrance in the kitchen and bathroom. The basket of homemade cleansers will be up for auction. They are one of a kind and “recipes” for each product will be included to allow the purchaser to replenish his/her/their supply.]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>David Lewis of the Memorial Society of Northeast NJ  6/2, 1:30 pm</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/david-lewis-of-the-memorial-society-of-northeast-nj/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/david-lewis-of-the-memorial-society-of-northeast-nj/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 18:01:37 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Terri</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Adult Ed]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1701</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Sunday, June 2, 1:30 pm Learn about your rights, and about options for planning a low cost funeral. A presentation by David Lewis of the nonsectarian, volunteer organization, Memorial Society of New Jersey, about your rights and options for having a low cost funeral. No fee and no need to pre-register. “The Memorial Society of Northeast New Jersey has been helping people achieve the comfort and security of pre-arranging their end-of-life wishes for over 40 years. Members of the Society are people who want their loved ones to know their wishes to lessen the unnecessary stress and expense at a time of bereavement. They can be assured that their chosen arrangements will be handled by a locally-owned funeral business where personal service is still a hallmark. In addition, members of the Memorial Society benefit from the agreements made with the cooperating funeral homes to provide lower costs for some funeral services. “The Memorial Society offers an easy way to pre-plan an affordable and simple funeral. With a one-page membership application/pre-arrangement form and a list of cooperating funeral businesses in northeastern New Jersey, a person can easily plan their own end-of-life wishes. This is not a contract, no pre-payment is required and changes can be made at any time.” http://www.funeralsnenj.org Questions? Call the office: 201-836-5187 or email admin@ethicalfocus.org]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/far-from-the-tree-parents-children-and-the-search-for-identity/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/far-from-the-tree-parents-children-and-the-search-for-identity/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Apr 2013 22:35:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Solomon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[deafness]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disability]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[disabled]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Doris Friedensohn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[dwarfism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dylan Klebold]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Far from the Tree]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gay]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[identity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[schizophrenia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[transgender]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1672</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Author: Andrew Solomon (Scribner’s, New York, 2012) Reviewed by Doris Friedensohn Andrew Solomon is an exponent of “revolutionary love against the odds.” It is the animating subtext of Far From the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity. In the last chapter of this ambitious, tender, and mind-expanding book, he writes, “pain is the threshold of intimacy, and catastrophe burnishes devotion.” With these words, Solomon summarizes the bonds—beyond language and logic—that hundreds of parents he has interviewed over a dozen years experience with their “different” children. One needn’t be a parent of a child with disabilities or other special qualities—in fact, one needn’t be a parent—to feel enriched by his capacious perception of human connectedness. At the core of this study are deaf, dwarf and Down’s syndrome children, autistic and schizophrenic kids, children of rape and children who are criminals; also transsexual kids, musical prodigies, and those who may never lift their heads off a pillow. How do these children (commonly labeled disabled, special needs or exceptional) develop? How do they experience love, get educated, live in the world, find community and some measure of contentment? Much of the answer rests with their parents, the metaphorical tree in Solomon’s title. Parents are often the principle actors in his stories; and they are usually the most powerful narrators, telling how they raise and care for these “different” or “exceptional” children; how they feel about their outsized needs; and how they deal with the difficulties and gifts which come from a commitment to offspring who differ radically from themselves In Far from the Tree, the author’s own history figures prominently. The issue of difference is deep in Solomon’s experience, from childhood, when he recognized he was an odd kid and gay, to his present life as a happily married homosexual who is the father of two children. Being gay, he tells us, gives him a special sympathy for all of those different kids who are his primary concern. More remarkable—most remarkable, I would say—is Solomon’s connection to their parents. In interviews, he is fearlessly present, intimate with suffering, and non-judgmental (even as mothers and fathers sometimes wish for their children a normalcy which they and the writer know is impossible). So many parents, accustomed to bottling up their anguish, speak to Solomon as an instant intimate. He registers their pain in the face of social conventions and public cruelty, along with their Herculean efforts to accept the biological and psycho-chemical givens which have shaped their children. Repeatedly, he is inspired by their capacity for love and sacrifice, by the unexpected joys they have found in giving and nurturing. Masterful distillation of research: Solomon is also an indefatigable researcher. Among the 700 pages of text and an additional 200 pages of footnotes and bibliography is a masterful distillation of research about difference on medical, bio-chemical, neurological, and psychological matters related to the conditions of these children. In addition, Solomon and his research team have synthesized information on disability laws, schooling options, medical and support services, and public policy debates on educating and caring for the disabled. The search for a horizontal identity, apart from family history and genetics, is one of Solomon’s abiding interests. In each of the 10 chapters devoted to particular differences, he pays attention to such networks as exist for nurturing a (non-mainstream) sense of self. Deaf kids of hearing parents discover in Deaf Culture and Sign possibilities of full self-expression which would otherwise be denied them. LPA, Little People of America, runs conventions which help dwarfs enjoy experiences where their stature is irrelevant, where they can forget for the moment how other people stare at them and the problems of living in a world not suited to their small size. Gender Spectrum, based in the Bay Area, helps liberal families of kids in transition (male to female and female to male), including those dressing as the opposite gender, considering surgery to help match a felt identity, changing their names, and dealing with the problem of public bathrooms. Still, group support has it limits. Tragedy overwhelms many individuals and families. In the chapter on schizophrenia, Solomon, employing biblical cadences of the begats, lists dozens of American parents who have killed their children. Generally, the courts have shown great compassion for such parents, a fact that drives members of the organization Mad Pride quite &#8220;crazy.&#8221; There is no uplift, no unexpected positive spin in Solomon’s discussion of raped women and their children. Often, these brutal rapes are within the family and in the context of years of abuse. Guilt and shame: A special kind of devastating distress and deep confusion confronts parents whose children commit serious crimes. “Responsibility” haunts them. So often, they suffer from guilt or shame or both. To what extent is their bad parenting (or denial of the gravity of their child’s aggression or depression) a factor? Solomon’s interview with the parents of Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine shooters, stands as a marvel of revelation (and, yes, surprise.). In the face of 13 people shot and killed by their son and his companion, the Klebolds decide not to move out of town, not to run from the pain and humiliation of their son’s violent acts. “What I’ve learned from being an outcast.” his mother told Solomon, “has given me insight into what it must have been like for my son to be marginalized. He created a version of his reality for us: to be pariahs, unpopular, and with no means to defend ourselves against those who hate us.” In due course, the Klebolds feel able to live with this horrible history, to accept their son’s aberrant deeds and their love for him. In every chapter of Far from the Tree, readers are challenged to rethink assumptions about the normal, the different and the good. For example, should we encourage the deaf to use cochlear implants that may improve their hearing while implying that being deaf (and participating in deaf culture) is somehow inferior? What is the best fate for [...]]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/pound-foolish-exposing-the-dark-side-of-the-personal-finance-industry/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/pound-foolish-exposing-the-dark-side-of-the-personal-finance-industry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Apr 2013 19:07:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Bach]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elizabeth Warren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ethical Culture Review of Books]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Helaine Olen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[income]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jim Cramer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[John Bogle]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[personal finance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pound Foolish]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Suze Orman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[the latte factor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theresa Forsman]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1639</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  Author: Helaine Olen (Portfolio/Penguin Group, 2012) Reviewed by Theresa Forsman In the late 1940s, the first years of the Baby Boom, the number of workers covered by a traditional, employer-managed pension was on the rise, reaching two-thirds of all employees by the mid-1980s. Today, as the first Baby Boomers have started to retire, fewer than 20 percent of workers are covered by a company-sponsored pension. When these Boomers were young men and women, back in 1973, the average family spent 50 percent of its after-tax income on housing, health care and education. Today, those three essentials account for 75 percent of the typical family’s after-tax spending. At mid-century, there were no Visas and Mastercards. Today, America has more credit cards than citizens. The same era that brought us do-it-yourself retirements, shocking price inflation, and instant credit with double-digit interest rates also gave birth to the mutual fund industry, day trading and variable annuities. The personal finance industry, like our personal finances, has undergone a transformation—from the equivalent of a soft-spoken guy in wingtips and a bow tie to a flamboyant blonde with a deep tan and a big voice.  E.F. Hutton, meet Suze Orman. Orman gets her own chapter in Pound Foolish, the new book by freelance journalist Helaine Olen, who for many years researched personal finance while writing the Money Makeover column in the Los Angeles Times. As you could guess from the book’s subtitle—Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry—what Olen has to say about Orman, who just last month was ranked Number 9 on the Forbes list of Most Influential Celebrities for 2013, is not flattering. Olen demonstrates that the influential celebrity’s advice can be bizarre, contradictory, and just plain wrong, which has not stopped Orman from amassing an estimated $35 million net worth from the sales of her books and products, including do-it-yourself will kits and credit-repair kits sold on the shopping channel QVC. Olen shines her spotlight on other personal finance superstars, including Dave Ramsey, Jim Cramer, David Bach and Robert Kiyosaki, and on other aspects of the industry, including financial media, investment and credit products, financial education and financial therapy, revealing faulty math, big myths, exorbitant hidden fees, poor track records and conflicts of interest. One of the biggest myths she discusses was created by David Bach, a former Morgan Stanley money manager: the latté factor. Bach, whose latté obsession has since spread to many other advisers, rose to fame 15 years ago when he said you could become a millionaire by skipping the daily cup of fancy coffee. In his first book, “Smart Women Finish Rich,” in 1999, he advised readers not to drop $5 a day at Starbucks. Instead, they should invest that $150 a month in the stock market and watch it grow into $2 million by the time they reached 65. As Olen points out: “There was only one thing wrong with the latté factor. It wasn’t true. It didn’t work mathematically. It didn’t work in terms of what we were actually spending our money on. …Bach, whether by design or true belief, had concocted a catchy slogan that appealed to our desire for a quick and easy fix, but one that bore little relation to economic reality.” Ah, economic reality. Now we’re getting to the crux of the problem. No number of skipped lattés, no stock tip, and no amount of financial literacy courses can save you from the bigger forces at work on your bank account, the author says. Those bigger forces—political and economic—are why the median income for families in the 35 to 44 age bracket fell by 14 percent in the first decade of this century, from $63,000 to $53,900; why the income gap in America has widened alarmingly in the last 30 years; why banks and other financial institutions were allowed to trigger the Great Recession. “It wasn’t until the fall of 2008, when the ongoing recession and housing market collapse combined with the seemingly sudden failure of Lehman Brothers to set off a stock and credit market rout, that many Americans suddenly realized our personal finances were not fully ours to seize. We lost jobs at inopportune times, made ill-advised investments, or suffered health crises that no amount of planning could predict. …No amount of personal initiative and savvy could guarantee anyone an exemption from broader negative economic and social trends.” Through it all, Olen shows, the personal finance industry rocks on—in the form of brand-name gurus, television and radio shows, magazines, blogs, trade shows, workshops, free dinners for the AARP set—providing advice and products that are often useless and sometimes dangerous. The truth is that most money managers and most stock pickers do not beat a passively managed index fund, she points out, and generally the people on CNBC and Bloomberg and Wall Street Week don’t know any more than you do. That goes for Forbes and Fortune, too, she says, noting that AIG was the first pick in a Fortune magazine 2007 Investor’s Guide article, “10 Stocks to Buy Now.” What these outlets mainly provide is not wisdom, but “noise.” Olen is all for good financial habits—spend within your means, save plenty, get a good basic education on financial terms and instruments from, say, Personal Finance for Dummies. She has high praise for some advisors, among them Vanguard founder John Bogle, financial author Jane Bryant Quinn and Harvard professor and U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Amid the noise and confusion, the guilt and fear connected to money management and advice for so many of us, Pound Foolish is a straightforward assessment of the personal finance emperor’s sartorial condition. It is also a grim confirmation that careful budgeting and prudent investing are no match for the broader political and economic forces—from Wall Street to K Street and beyond—weighing on our wallets. Theresa Forsman is a longtime member of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County. &#160; &#160; &#160;]]></description>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Farewell, Fred Voodoo: A Letter from Haiti</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/farewell-fred-voodoo-a-letter-from-haiti/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/farewell-fred-voodoo-a-letter-from-haiti/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:02:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Amy Wilentz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[compassion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cultural superiority]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Doris Friedensohn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Dr. Megan Coffee]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[earthquake]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Farewell Fred Voodoo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Haiti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Letter from Haiti]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sean Penn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[victims]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1620</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Author: Amy Wilentz (Simon &#38; Schuster, 2013) Reviewed by Doris Friedensohn            How do we view people in conditions of abject poverty and powerlessness? In circumstances of catastrophic loss when the earth erupts beneath their flimsy dwellings, leaving them without a cooking pot, an extra tee shirt, or a blanket for the night? In Farewell, Fred Voodoo, about Haiti undone by the 2010 earthquake, Amy Wilentz takes on these and other discomforting questions. Her treatment of Haiti-in-the-world, the real subject of this book, is intellectually rich and politically forthright. Wilentz’s lyrical, emotionally charged prose makes this a riveting read. Literary non-fiction, with a national culture as protagonist, doesn’t get much better.          Wilentz subtitles her book A Letter from Haiti. But it&#8217;s really a love letter to Haiti&#8211;to the &#8220;man (and woman) in the street,&#8221; the voluble talkers and charmers she’s been deeply connected to for 25 years. They are the Fred Voodoos of her title. That term, it’s worth noting, was coined by British reporters in the 1980’s to encompass all Haitians, as a sign of their exotic, exciting Otherness. The author invokes the Fred Voodoo cliché even as she separates her own views from the abuses it implies.            The overwhelming majority of Haitians, who have been poor for generations, are even poorer now. As Wilentz demonstrates, they live out the tragic hand they’ve been dealt: by colonialism, slavery and imperialism, by climate and terrain, by powerful NGOs and naive do-gooders, and by the nation&#8217;s home-grown kleptocratic class.  Even as they have been systematically oppressed, Haitians have their quirky coping mechanisms and mysterious strengths. Wilentz’ portraits reveal them as people in the round, perhaps not fully knowable but fully human.            Amy Wilentz first visited Haiti in1986, on assignment from Time magazine, just as Baby Doc Duvalier&#8217;s dictatorship was ending. Since then, she&#8217;s lived there for extended periods, made many visits and learned to speak Creole. To be close to ordinary Haitians, as she has been, and to understand their lives, Wilentz couldn&#8217;t wing it in French (a language she also speaks). When she appeared in Port au Prince right after the 2010 earthquake, she sought out Jerry, Samuel, Black Rouge and Fillibert, guys she&#8217;s known since they were orphaned kids, sheltered and fed by Father Aristide (then a young priest and &#8220;the one to watch&#8221;). The men are full of chat, sweetness, sly maneuvers, anger and hope. They lead her through mud-running, trash-filled streets to old haunts she can no longer identify. The earthquake has destroyed every landmark.  Except for one. She spots a family of fat pigs, cheerfully devouring orange peels and compost. &#8220;Hi, pigs,&#8221; Wilentz says, remembering the spot at the corner of Rue Tois  where the animals always gathered for their midday feast.         Post earthquake, Haiti is more beholden than ever to NGO&#8217;s and multi-national benefactors. In fact, death and disaster are good for NGO business: terrible calamities, featured 24/7 on the news, bring in more money that most charities are organized to distribute to victims. There’s more to spend on staffing, on-site operations, promotional materials and conferences. One of the many ironies of relief operations is the generous flow of NGO funds to rich Haitians who rent their homes and cars to visiting project specialists along with providing drivers, cooks, construction workers, trucks and other resources.          Among the famous outside “players” profiled in Farewell, Fred Voodoo is Sean Penn. Penn, the biggest private philanthropist and biggest Celebrity on the post earthquake scene, arrived knowing nothing about the country. Yet he managed to get things done: moving rubble, rescuing cholera victims, building homes, and bringing medicine into Haiti. He was effective, Wilentz tells us, because he is Sean Penn. Everyone wants a piece of his aura &#8211; - or at least a photo op. Penn remains something of a puzzle to Wilentz. Why, really why is he doing so much, spending so much money, committing so much of himself to Haiti? Readers can appreciate her puzzling. Mystery is real. We’re poorer without it.         The opposite of Sean Penn is Wilentz’s unassuming volunteer heroine, Dr. Megan Coffee. An American in her 30’s,  Dr. Coffee not only ministers to patients in a TB ward but also provides pasta, which she cooks at home (to be served with ketchup and mayonnaise) for their breakfast or lunch. There are no hospital meals. Coffee, we learn, has no car, gets no salary, and pays no rent. Everything she needs is provided by friends and strangers, including a network of health care aid organizations. An infectious disease specialist, she thrives on the demanding work and learns from Haitians how to deal with their needs. She has no plans to leave any time soon.         Most outsiders, unlike Megan Coffee, believe they know how to fix Haiti. Wilentz knows better. She has seen too many overconfident aid mavens plan for Haiti in terms that don&#8217;t work for Haitians. These visitors-on-a-mission want to feel useful and validated. At the very least, they’ve got a new eye-catching  item for their resumes and new photos, perhaps with a smiling Fred Voodoo, on their Facebook page. Of course, Fred is no fool. He knows that the informal economy is his only lifeline. He’ll pose for pictures if asked and give good quotes to his journalist friends; they’ll give him loose change, a meal and a couple of smokes.         Wilentz quotes a Haitian saying: Tou sa ou we, se pa sa. Nothing you see is what it seems to be. The challenge for reporters, foreign funders, volunteers, investors, tourists and readers of this book is the same.  We need to learn how to look: to make sense of strangeness and not sentimentalize or demonize the unfamiliar. Some of the most difficult looking, Wilentz insists, is personal. She wants us to acknowledge our studied blindness, guilt, culturally induced superiority, and linguistic deficiencies. Is our compassion a form of contempt, she asks? Do we need to label others “victims” to appreciate our own well being? Doris Friedensohn, professor emerita of Women’s Studies at New Jersey City University, is the author of the food memoir Eating [...]]]></description>
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		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Must Humanism Be Reasonable?</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/must-humanism-be-reasonable/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/must-humanism-be-reasonable/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Mar 2013 23:32:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Leader's Talks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1613</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[       This platform address by Dr. Joseph Chuman, leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, was delivered on March 17, 2013.              I want to dedicate my address this morning to the life and memory of my esteemed colleague, Dr. Matthew Ies Spetter, who died last December at the age of 91.             Dr. Spetter’s formative experiences were shaped by the Second World War. Ies, as we used to call him, was born in the the Netherlands, and during World War II  was a liaison officer between sections of the Dutch and French undergrounds in Nazi-occupied Europe. He was caught by the Nazis, condemned to death, and was held captive at the Buchenwald and Auschwitz death camps. He escaped the gas chambers as a result of a clerical error, and once freed, served as a witness at the Nuremburg Trials before coming to the United States.             In the U.S., he discovered the Ethical Movement and worked as a leader intern in Brooklyn with the leader then, Henry Neuman. He served for several decades as the leader of the Riverdale Yonkers Society for Ethical Culture, where he became best known to us, and finished his career as a part-time leader of the New York Society.             Ies received his PhD from the NewSchool, trained as a psychotherapist and practiced psychotherapy during his long career. In 1960, he founded the Riverdale Mental Health Clinic, which still survives. He long taught ethics at the Ethical Culture Schools, chaired the Ethics Department, and taught peace studies at ManhattanCollege. Ies lectured often and wrote several books, all of which were dedicated to expounding his philosophy of life.             Ies was always a very formal man, a European man, who took life and Ethical Culture, to which he was wholeheartedly devoted, very seriously.  And because he did, many of us take it seriously as well.             Humanism based on personal experience: There is no doubt that Dr. Spetter’s understanding of humanism and Ethical Culture intimately emerged from his personal life experience. To give you a taste of his humanism, I would like to quote from the very beginning of his book, Man the Reluctant Brother. His opening words are rather harrowing. He wrote as follows:             &#8220;I need truth because I was an eyewitness to the premeditated murder of children.             The killers were men and women of a nation much akin to my own. The children were ours.              I need truth because my generation allowed the ultimately impermissible and because such killing continues. Men everywhere, while protesting their abhorrence, are still  willing to permit the impermissible, still willing to kill as “a necessary evil,” still willing to appease their conscience with justifications which fasten the tyranny of evil upon their souls.             I need truth and therefore, behind the veil of language and the logic of argument of this book stands my personal urgency. If no one is willing to renounce the murder of children how will we then be answerable for anything?             The murder I witnessed was of the children of Europe in Word War II. But many more murders have since been added. The killing was against children from France and Holland and Norway and Poland and Russia. They were of all religious backgrounds,  though the children of defenseless minorities were the prime targets. Their very defenselessness fanned the ferocity of the killers. Some children were suffocated by gas; some children were buried alive, some children were torn to pieces by fragmentation or fire bombs; some children were given neither food nor water.             All children were taken to be killed: lame children and blind children, children in hospitals and children in the street coming from school, children in light summer clothes, children who had gone for a swim. Yes, even children were taken who wept because they were afraid,              I have seen this and speak of it, not with sentimentality but with outrage and I will not permit it to be locked from you heart.&#8221;              No doubt, my colleague Dr. Spetter did not have a sunny view of the human condition. As a young man he had witnessed and was a survivor of the darkest underside of human behavior.  But he was by no means a defeatist or fatalist. His commitment to humanism was forged out of that sense of the evil propensities of which human beings are capable. As he often said of Ethical Culture and of us: Our mission is to rescue the human from all those forces which seek to degrade it. “Whatever we do,” I recall him saying years ago, “we must not hold human life cheaply.” It is a lesson that has stayed with me ever since.             From horror to hope: Just as he begins his book with horror, so he ends it with a note of hope. He wrote:             &#8220;I hold deeply that each life is a gift which the centuries bestow upon the continuity of existence.              A Passio Humana, a passion for Man, is what will negate totalitarianism and oppression, it will open the jail-doors of history, provided our mutuality and love outpace our tools.  All of us are constantly close to death and yet we are also in touch with the perpetuation of life through what we create and build.              The sense of future derived from this position has resulted for me in an infusion of insight, which even at moments during my captivity, when death seemed certain and sealed, did not desert me.&#8221;              Spetter, philosophically, was a kind of existentialist, believing that we can and we must forge our own lives and futures out of our experience, and out of the best that lies within us. His writings and speeches are frequently sprinkled with references to the great humanist Albert Camus, who wrote movingly of the courage and greatness of the human being, who, when confronted by adversity had the ability for sacrifice and courage. He also quoted often from Martin Buber, who wrote poetically about the irreducibility of the humanity that lies within each [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Mortality</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/mortality/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/mortality/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:03:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[atheist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Carol Blue]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christopher Hitchens]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[esophageal cancer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethical culture society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hitch-22]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mortality]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theresa Forsman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vanity Fair]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1565</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  Author: Christopher Hitchens (2012, Twelve, Hachette Book Group) Reviewed by Theresa Forsman             Christopher Hitchens took on death much the same way he took on life—with an unsparing, combative gaze, an absence of sentimentality, and a deep need to figure it out by writing it down. Mortality is what he had to say about “living dyingly,” from the day of his cancer diagnosis to the end, 18 months later.             The book opens with Hitchens describing the morning in June 2010 when he woke up in a New York hotel room feeling “as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse.” The well-known columnist and literary critic was on a book tour for his memoir, Hitch-22, which would become a finalist for the that year&#8217;s National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography. He was scheduled to appear on “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart and then, in the evening, to have a public conversation with his friend and fellow author Salman Rushdie at the 92nd Street Y. He made both events. Soon afterward—the day Hitch-22 hit the best-seller list—Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It had metastasized. He was 61 years old.             Graydon Carter, Hitchens’ longtime editor at Vanity Fair, is not divulging secrets when he writes in the forward to Mortality that Hitchens’ “insatiable appetites” for company, writing and conversation extended to cigarettes and scotch, too. The man with these appetites and with what Carter called “a great turbine of a mind” does not cry foul.        “I have been…knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that          it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely that reason, I can’t see myself         smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it’s all so         unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction         and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores         even me.”         Hitchens, a high-profile atheist, does not back down in the face of fatal illness. Here is the author’s response to commentary suggesting that his cancer is God’s revenge on a non-believer: “The vengeful deity has a sadly depleted arsenal if all he can think of is exactly the cancer that my age and former ‘lifestyle’ would suggest that I got.” What he has to say about the factions praying for him—both those who want him to die in agony and those who want him to see the light—is similarly witty and withering, and although Hitchens the cancer patient is very interested in surviving, he would find it “irritating” that the pious would then think their prayers had been answered.        Also irritating is much of the unsolicited advice he receives on topics including cryogenics, this must-visit clinic, that must-see doctor. The people who tell him stories about other patients make him think that a book on cancer etiquette would be a good idea so that the “populations of Tumortown and Wellville” might stop inflicting themselves on one another in unsavory ways.        Toward the end of Mortality, Hitchens refers to what he said about dying in his earlier book Hitch-22, back when the topic was still only theory.         “Before I was diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year and a half ago,        I rather jauntily told the readers of my memoirs that when faced with        extinction I wanted to be fully conscious and awake, in order to ‘do’ death        in the active and not the passive sense. And I do, still, try to nurture that        little flame of curiosity and defiance: willing to play out the string to the end        and wishing to be spared nothing that properly belongs to a lifespan.”         Doing death, for Hitchens, includes a critical dissection of Nietzsche’s declaration that “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” the realization that his identity and personality were only as strong as his ability to engage through conversation and writing, and an experience of post-traumatic stress brought on by cancer treatment and the atmosphere in which it was administered. Playing out the string forced Hitchens to conclude that he didn’t have a body, but was a body, no matter how powerful the mind it contained. Descriptions of the pain, the pills and the wearing away co-exist with the deep analysis, the hope for a miracle, the pining for life as it used to be, the struggle against despair.        Hitchens wrote seven brilliant, meaty chapters—much of it first published in his Vanity Fair column—before his death on Dec. 15, 2011. Chapter 8 in this slim volume consists of the notes he took about ideas he apparently intended to explore further. The afterward was written by Hitchens’ wife, Carol Blue, whom he had cited as one of his main reasons for never giving up.        As someone who reads to know how to live, I am very glad to have this intelligent and courageous (would Hitchens cringe at that word?) description of dying, an event that, the author points out, is our “common fate.” Theresa Forsman is a longtime member of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County.   &#160; &#160; &#160;]]></description>
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		<title>The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art, and Society</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/the-fertile-crescent-gender-art-and-society/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/the-fertile-crescent-gender-art-and-society/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 22 Feb 2013 17:42:06 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Uncategorized]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arab Spring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Doris Friedensohn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ferris Olin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gender]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iran]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Judith K. Brodskey]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mideastern]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestinian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rutgers Institute for Women and Art]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Fertile Crescent]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[women artists]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1555</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  Authors: Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin (2012, Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art) Reviewed by Doris Friedensohn         Timing, as we know, is (almost) everything. This is the case in national elections, peace overtures, Academy Awards, and what we choose to read. In 2007, when Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin, co-directors of the Rutgers Institute for Women and Art, began planning a number of exhibits by women artists from the Middle East, that region wasn’t yet every day’s headline story. How much has changed! First, we saw hopes raised by the Arab Spring for democratic governance and economic opportunity; and then the uncertainties, violence and dislocations of a continuing Arab Autumn. Now Brodsky and Olin’s remarkable book—part art history, part social critique, part catalogue—is especially welcome. A wise, compelling, and beautifully produced volume, The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society highlights women artists’ perspectives on their homelands and cultures.           The Fertile Crescent, a term coined by the archeologist James Henry Breasted in the early 20th Century, offers Olin and Brodsky a defining pun: Women are not just our bodies. Female creativity derives also from the eye and the hand, the mind and the spirit. While the term ”fertile crescent” may seem to suggest a unified region, the authors insist that it encompasses heterogeneous countries, cultures and artistic identities.         The cover of The Fertile Crescent shows a woman’s pale hand emerging mysteriously from a dark abbaya. The hand, dramatically lit, grabs the black-on-black textured fabric as if for protection from a hostile world. Or, could it be to assert control? Who is this mysterious yet iconic woman? That&#8217;s the tease. A hidden inner world, featuring the works and lives of 25 women artists of Middle Eastern heritage, beckons. Framing the artists’ statements and gorgeous reproductions of their work—exhibited in New Jersey during the fall/winter of 2012—are interpretative essays by feminist critics and art historians.         The images, be assured, are provocative, heart-breaking and unforgettable. They invite slow viewing and reflection. Whether we are looking at painting, sculpture, installation art or stills from  performance pieces, we feel the thrust of this work—sometimes like a laceration of the skin or an electric shock: e.g., a woman’s face covered with Koranic script or the abdomen of a belly dancer liberated from “the shame of having a clitoris.”         As the accompanying narratives make clear, the issues addressed in The Fertile Crescent are deeply rooted and complex. These include the vulnerability of women’s bodies, state brutality, ethnic violence, imperialism, gender/religious oppression, and exile. Dark themes, to be sure. Still, the inventiveness and energy on display overwhelm despair. We’re heartened by the power of women’s creativity and the seemingly bottomless capacity for hope.         Trapped between historic and modern: Consider the work and situation of Negar Ahkami. Ahkami, an American-born artist whose roots are in Iran, draws upon Persian patterned art traditions and elaborate blue-tiled mosques. Yet she confesses to the cartoonish quality of her canvases: animated, color-saturated landscapes (painted with glitter, nail polish and acrylics) that reflect both the distorted U.S. views of Iran as menace and the Iranian government’s crude presentation of itself as a fearless Islamic monolith. In a painting entitled “The Bridge, “a slight female figure—in a short dress with flowing black hair—leans over a lattice-like overpass, suspended in space. She is trapped between a melt-down of historic Persia (rivers of blue and green tile flowing into an abyss) on one side and beckoning modernity with its hyper-bright skyscrapers, all reflection and cold steel, on the other. Clearly, there’s no escape for Ahkami from nostalgia for a lost world. Nor is there any comfort in the West’s technocratic alternative. Her solace comes from the struggle “to create psychological spaces” that accommodate this tension.         Forced mobility: Space and place are principle concerns in the videos, collages and paintings of Zeina Barakeh. Barakeh, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, seeks in her art to move beyond the endless cycle of violence defining and afflicting the Middle East. Beirut, where she grew up, compels its residents again and again to choose sides. A few years ago, from a safe distance in California, she began imagining a resolution: “The Third Half,”  a “state” outside of these divisions, dedicated to survival. In the Third Half Passport Collection, the artist mixes details from actual and invented passports for three generations of family members. These seemingly familiar and matter-of-fact documents, while evoking the possibility of self-definition, are bitter reminders of the family’s forced mobility from the time of the British mandate (1943) to the present.         Maps of altered reality: Israeli Ariane Littman has been a news photographer, performance artist, and creative map-maker. &#8220;The Wounded Land Project” (2004 -12) is a virtuoso effort of cultural and psychological repair. Israel, her country, is all broken up. So, too, are the Palestinian lands. Littman’s invented maps, which remove existing borders, alter the reality. Using bandages and green thread, she sews a conflict-free space. Healing, she explains, is her mission. In “The Sea of Death,” a performance video, the artist’s bandaged body is carried into the Dead Sea, which is dying from pollution. She floats away from the shore, as vulnerable as the Israeli people on the one hand and the Palestinians on the other. A dead olive tree near a checkpoint at the North-Eastern entrance to Jerusalem is the focus of another performance piece. As Littman bandages the tree with plain white gauze, an Israeli woman and a Palestinian woman sing traditional Ladino and Palestinian songs of yearning for Jerusalem. The bandaged tree, like a bride reunited with Mother Earth, carries her hopes for healing in the region.         Hope is perhaps the most resonant theme in this richly instructive volume: hope for “liberation” and justice; hope that women’s voices will be heard; hope that the arts, with their profound and contradictory visions of human suffering and transcendence, will flourish; and hope that historic enemies will find ways to experience one another’s humanity and yearnings for peace.         Doris Friedensohn, professor emerita [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Learning from Lizards and Snakes</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/learning-from-lizards-and-snakes/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/learning-from-lizards-and-snakes/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 11 Feb 2013 21:27:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Ethical Kids]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bill Boesenberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[conservation]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ecology]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethical culture society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[lizards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[reptiles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[scales]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[snakes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Snakes-N-Scales]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1471</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[More than 90 children and adults got a lesson in some of the Earth’s most misunderstood  creatures—snakes, lizards and other reptiles—when Bill Boesenberg, founder of Snakes-N-Scales, gave a show-and-tell presentation at the Ethical Culture Society on Feb. 11. Among the reptiles Boesenberg shared with the group were a Burmese phython 11 feet long and weighing 100 pounds (left); a 6-foot-long Anaconda and a monitor lizard. Boesenberg, whose North Jersey organization rescues injured or unwanted reptiles, amphibians and fish, uses these creatures to educate children about environmental values, ecology, conservation and respect for life. A licensed reptile rehabilitator, Boesenberg has worked with the Newark Museum and the Plainfield Animal Hospital.   &#160; &#160;]]></description>
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		<title>Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier</title>
		<link>http://ethicalfocus.org/thanks-how-the-new-science-of-gratitude-can-make-you-happier/</link>
		<comments>http://ethicalfocus.org/thanks-how-the-new-science-of-gratitude-can-make-you-happier/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 10 Feb 2013 19:54:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>TheresaF</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[adversity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[book review]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Buddhist prayer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elizabeth Warren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ethical culture society]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Marc Bernstein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[non-believers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Robert Emmons]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[science of gratitude]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[thankful]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Thanks]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[trauma]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://ethicalfocus.org/?p=1429</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[  Author: Robert Emmons (2007, Houghton Mifflin) Reviewed by Marc Bernstein             I discovered Robert Emmons&#8217; book, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, at a difficult moment in my life.  My wife had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; one doctor gave her six to nine months to live; another, six to 12.           For the first time in almost 30 years, I envisioned life without her.  I thought I might hold up better if I concentrated not on what I would soon lose, but on what we had enjoyed for so many years:  a happy marriage.  I turned to Dr. Emmons’ book to help me re-orient my thinking.           The book is good example of positive psychology, a branch of psychology that has turned away from the study of abnormality to look at those qualities (gratitude, hope, love) that sustain the human psyche.   By relying on rigorous studies, life stories and wisdom literature, Dr. Emmons’ slender, clearly written volume provides a rigorous, rounded view of gratitude and its role in human life.            He begins, of course, with a definition.  Emmons thinks of gratitude as a condition of thankfulness in which we acknowledge goodness in our lives and recognize that the source of that goodness is partially outside ourselves. As the poet Teasdale put it, “I am a debtor to life, / Not life to me.”           Through a series of clever experiments, Emmons demonstrates the positive effects of gratitude on happiness and on physical health.  He manipulates the gratitude condition by asking one group what they have to feel good about; another, simply to fill out a neutral form. In one study, patients in the gratitude group who had neuromuscular disease reported more satisfaction with life, more sleep, and were seen by their spouses as more positive than similar patients in the placebo group.                  Of course, such experiments are a little contrived.  Emmons offers further evidence for the salutary effects of gratitude by citing a colleague’s research on gratitude visits.  A gratitude visit is a one-on-one thank-you to a person who has had a lasting influence on one’s life or has shown one unusual kindness.  Such visits alleviate depression, not for a week but for some length of time.  As Emmons presents more and more evidence, it’s clear that a thankful heart is good for you.           Several other themes come to light as the book progresses.  There’s a chapter on the role of gratitude in the major religions of the world, the author adding the observation that the faithful are more likely to feel grateful than those without a religious or spiritual commitment.  There’s a fine chapter on ingratitude, on those forces that impede the experience of gratitude.  A sense of entitlement, a feeling of victimization, an unwillingness to see one’s dependence on others—all are obstacles to being thankful.  Implicit in this chapter is a critique of American society (Americans are less likely than Germans or Israelis to see gratitude as an important value), and it foreshadowed an issue in the 2012 campaign.  Elizabeth Warren could have been Emmons’ spokeswoman on interdependence in her run for the Massachusetts Senate:          &#8221;There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there, good  for you. But, I want to be clear:  you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.  You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.  You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.  You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did.&#8221;           Assuming that Emmons’ reader has not had her heart closed by the forces of ingratitude, she will find a number of questions raised in Thanks! worth considering.           What about non-believers? Emmons mentions the value of religiosity in promoting a grateful outlook on life.  In fact, he begins one of his chapters with the story of Job.  But Job was a devoted believer; what about Humanists, atheists, Ethical Culturists? Can they not find a path to a grateful heart?           As it turns out, Emmons has suggestions for those of little faith. Nothing in the book argues that we freethinkers cannot also become more grateful.  He recommends the following Buddhist prayer as one element in a regimen to encourage gratitude in believers and non-believers alike: &#8220;Waking up this morning, I see the blue sky. I join my hand in thanks for the many wonders of life; for having twenty-four brand-new hours before me.&#8221;           Adversity or trauma? Emmons presents evidence that a grateful heart helps one during hard times.  A study of those caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s found that caregivers who kept a gratitude journal in which they counted their blessings felt a greater sense of well-being, less stress, less depression, and had fewer physical complaints over the course of the study than those who listed hardships they experienced every day.            But Emmons does not distinguish between hardship and trauma.  Would my friend, who lost a young daughter to suicide a year ago, find solace in the prayer cited above, or in keeping a gratitude journal?  Would the parents of the kids murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary?  Emmons’ answer would be that one must act gratefully even when one does not feel grateful, and eventually the feeling will follow. Well, I wouldn’t want to suggest this to my friend. He needs to heal in any way he can and talk of gratitude after such a tragedy seems inappropriate.           How to acquire a grateful heart: Overall, Emmons presents abundant evidence that a grateful heart benefits its possessor in many ways.  But how do we acquire it?  In his concluding chapter, Emmons outlines a program that will get us there. From journaling, in which we enumerate our blessings, [...]]]></description>
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