Marc Gellman

Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your habitations: spare not, lengthen your cords and strengthen your tent pegs, because you will break out on the right hand and on the left.Thus we read from the pundit who has the best take on the meaning of the midterm elections, the prophet Isaiah.Isaiah's imagery comes from the desert wanderers who were compelled to set up tents with long cords and strong pegs.

A popular but false saying we hear all the time is, "All I want is that my children should be happy."The most obvious reason this wish is wrong is that very bad people can be very happy.

This year I am declaring war on conventional wisdom, which is really nothing but a collection of sayings we think are true just because we hear them and say them all the time.

My prayer is not for 9/11 but for after 9/11. My prayer begins with sacred memory. You see, the memories of 9/11 are not just powerful. They are sacred, and sacred memories are different from all other kinds of memory.

This has been a good summer for creepy pervs.First there was John Mark Karr, whom we found out is not the murderer of JonBenet Ramsey that for some reason he claimed to be.

A few weeks ago the physicist James Van Allen died in Iowa City at the age of 91. Van Allen was America's most important early space scientist, a man who, in addition to inventing the instrumentation and circuits for many of the early satellites, discovered that the Earth is encircled by belts of high radioactivity trapped by its magnetic field.  They are now called the Van Allen Belts.  He was the chair of the physics department at the University of Iowa and had taught physics and astronomy...

The Bible is the greatest collection of books, and I believe it to be the complex but discernable word of God. However, the Bible can also be a dangerous book when it is used as a blueprint for any particular political or military stance seeking sanction and support through a few carefully selected and often misleading segments.On both sides of any war debate, both pacifists and provocateurs can use the Bible's authority.

When our daughter Mara first bungee-jumped off a bridge in New Zealand, I had her DNA checked to see if she was really my daughter or, perhaps, another baby switched at birth.

Dear Will,You do not know me, and I do not know how to get this letter to you except in this way.  On June 28th a new Superman movie will open. I await this new film with mixed emotions.

The arrival of Father's Day this Sunday has caused me to reflect on both the ties my dad wears as well as the general nature of our public holidays.All living cultures prove their vitality by both preserving old and generating new public holidays.

We are in the season of commencement, and I am happy and sad at the same time. I am happy and proud that despite our cultural predilection to give awards to bad music, worthless TV sitcoms and puerile movies, we still give awards for learning something.

Protesting about Darfur is unlikely to stop the carnage. But we still need to speak out against oppression.

I think I need to understand atheists better. I bear them no ill will. I don't think they need to be religious to be good, kind and charitable people, and I have no desire to debate or convert them.

A letter to Dr. Alan Coren, chief veterinarian of West Hills Animal Hospital, Huntington, N.Y., who is my friend and who was the veterinarian for my dog Miles who just died....Dear Alan,I could not write to you until now to thank you properly and personally for your compassion and care for Miles through his life and up to his last moments, when Miles died on the blanket you had spread out for us in room No. 2.

A friend I call The Flounder reminded me of the sorrowful fact that in the last nine months three television icons dear to me have, as we say in my line of work, passed to life eternal.  They are James Doohan, who played Scotty on "Star Trek," Bob Denver who played Gilligan on "Gilligan's Island," and Don Knotts who played Deputy Sheriff Barney Fife on "The Andy Griffith Show." May God receive their souls into the world where everyone is a star and where every life is syndicated.  Beyond the...

At the heart of the religious view of the world there is a heart. At the heart of the globalists' view of the world there is a pump. The pump pumps capital around he world, or it doesn't pump capital.

The cultural confluence of the NFL playoffs, Hollywood's award season, the NCAA basketball finals, the arrival of college acceptance/rejection letters and the publication of the new Zagat restaurant guide all have got me thinking about the spiritual corrosion caused by the cult of winning.

"We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are."-- Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, as quoted in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)Ariel Sharon is more like a cipher than a person.

Some people form their opinions of the most important religious trends of 2005 (and most other things) by licking their fingers and sticking them up into the wind.

Normally, I am not the least bit defensive about my remarks in this column. I have always believed the words of that great existential philosopher Popeye: "I am what I am and that's all what I am." However, this week I am feeling a little shaky because my remarks may well be misconstrued by some as anti-animal or, more specifically, anti-penguin.

America owes its two most important creations to guys named Hancock. In July of 1776 in Philadelphia, John Hancock (and a few friends) invented democracy, and in November of 1887 in Chicago, George Hancock invented softball.

What it takes to fight the war on terror is a decision for our leaders and our soldiers and the leaders of our soldiers. We must of course confirm their decision with our assent and our sacrifice, but in this war, more than in any war at any time, the front line is not a place but a state of mind.

sunyatapratitya samudpayaI had the pleasure of meeting His Holiness in 1989, soon after he won the Nobel Peace Prize. I ate chocolate-chip cookies with him and joked around with him. (Question: "Your Holiness, what do you miss most about Tibet?" Answer: "Yaks." It's Buddhist humor--I don't expect the unenlightened amongst you to understand).

So the Supremes agreed with me about the Ten Commandments being OK in Texas. Hooray! They then disagreed with the display of the Ten Commandments in Kentucky because that display had a "predominantly religious purpose." All of this reminds me of a formal but lighthearted debate I heard about years ago between a team from University College Dublin and a team from Harvard.

I know it. I'm funny. However, I also know that I am not professionally funny. It's just that if you think of me as a rabbi, I am hilarious, but if you think of me as a real comedian I am several clicks below ordinary.

My father is vanishing. Last week he was found in the middle of the night wandering the halls of his assisted-living center in Milwaukee looking for his secretary.

I'm a rabbi and I like Billy Graham.I don't agree with him about Jesus, but I like him anyway. He is coming to New York on June 24 for his last crusade (OK, I don't like that choice of words either), and I am praying for him and thinking about him.

Since the author of The Spiritual State in June is overscheduled with weddings, this seems to me an appropriate time to tell you everything I know about brides and grooms.

Theodore Roethke, the great Michigan poet who died in 1963, once said, "What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible." In his memory, I will occasionally highlight the work of impossibility specialists.

It was early in my friendship with Tommy Hartman, the priest. My wife, Betty, who freely admits to being the only woman in the world married to both a rabbi and a priest, was in Houston visiting her sister and I called up Tommy and asked him if he wanted to go out for a pizza and beer.