It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, May 31, 2022
Outbreak Investigation of Hepatitis A Virus: Strawberries (May 2022)
Do not eat, serve, or sell FreshKampo or HEB brand organic strawberries purchased between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022, FDA’s investigation is ongoing
The FDA, along with CDC, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, state, and local partners are investigating a multistate outbreak of hepatitis A infections in the United States and Canada potentially linked to fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo and HEB, purchased between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022.
Currently, the potentially affected FreshKampo and HEB products are past shelf life. People who purchased FreshKampo and HEB fresh organic strawberries between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022, and then froze those strawberries for later consumption should not eat them. These products were sold at the following retailers, including, but not limited to:
Aldi HEB Kroger Safeway Sprouts Farmers Market Trader Joe’s Walmart Weis Markets WinCo Foods
If you are unsure of what brand you purchased, when you purchased your strawberries, or where you purchased them from prior to freezing them, the strawberries should be thrown away.
Epidemiologic and traceback data show that fresh organic strawberries sold as FreshKampo and HEB brands that were purchased between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022, are a likely cause of illness in this outbreak. The traceback investigations show that cases in California, Minnesota, and Canada report having purchased fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo or HEB prior to becoming ill. Illness onset dates range from March 28 – April 30, 2022.
As this investigation is ongoing, additional products may be included. More information will be provided in this advisory as it becomes available.
Recommendation
Consumers, restaurants, and retailers should not sell, serve, or eat any fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo or HEB if purchased between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022. People who purchased the fresh strawberries and then froze those strawberries for later consumption should not eat them. They should be thrown away. Currently, the potentially affected product is past its shelf life. If you are unsure of what brand you purchased, when you purchased your strawberries, or where you purchased them from prior to freezing them, the strawberries should be thrown away.
If consumers purchased fresh organic strawberries branded as FreshKampo or HEB between March 5, 2022, and April 25, 2022, ate those berries in the last two weeks, and have not been vaccinated against hepatitis A, they should immediately consult with their healthcare professional to determine whether post exposure prophylaxis (PEP) is needed. PEP is recommended for unvaccinated people who have been exposed to hepatitis A virus in the last two weeks because vaccination can prevent a hepatitis A infection if given within 14 days of exposure. Those with evidence of previous hepatitis A vaccination or previous hepatitis A infection do not require PEP.
Contact your healthcare provider if you think you may have symptoms of a hepatitis A infection after eating these fresh organic strawberries, or if you believe that you have eaten these strawberries in the last two weeks.
Case Counts
Total U.S. Illnesses: 17 Hospitalizations: 12 Deaths: 0 Last illness onset: April 30, 2022 States with Cases: CA (15), MN (1), ND (1) Product Distribution: Nationwide
Who to Contact Consumers who have symptoms should contact their health care provider to report their symptoms and receive care. To report a complaint or adverse event (illness or serious allergic reaction), you canCall an FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator if you wish to speak directly to a person about your problem. Complete an electronic Voluntary MedWatch form online. Complete a paper Voluntary MedWatch form that can be mailed to FDA.
Biden says AR-15 owners who say they need weapons to ‘take on the government’ would be extremely outgunned Many gun owners say they need military-style weapons to defend themselves against ‘government overreach’
Andrew Feinberg Washington, DC President Joe Biden arrives with Vice President Kamala Harris to lay a wreath at The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, Monday, May 30, 2022, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
(AP)
Gun activists who claim they need the type of weapons used in a pair of deadly mass shootings earlier this month to defend themselves from hypothetical government tyranny would be hopelessly outgunned, President Joe Biden has said.
Mr Biden, who spoke to reporters upon returning to the White House for Memorial Day, said he has been “pretty motivated” to enact new gun safety laws long before he travelled to Ulvalde, Texas to meet with the families of victims and survivors of the mass shooting that claimed 21 lives at Robb Elementary School last week.
He said he has made a point of eschewing negotiations with Republicans until he visited the tragedy-struck town, and said the pain he encountered there was “palpable,” and he told reporters it was “hard to say” if the GOP would accept any of the proposals that have been floated in the last week.
But the president stressed that he could not “dictate” gun policy through executive action save for the actions he has taken so far in his term.
“I can’t dictate this stuff. I can do the things I’ve done and any executive action I can take, I’ll continue to take. But I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change a background check. I can’t do that,” he said. He added that he does not know whether negotiations between Texas Senator John Cornyn and Chris Murphy of Connecticut will produce any legislation that can meet the senate’s 60-vote threshold to overcome a likely GOP buster.
Mr Biden did not offer any specifics as to what he would prefer Congress to do, but he implied the assault weapons ban he helped shepherd through Congress as part of the 1994 crime bill signed into law by then-president Bill Clinton made a difference while it was in effect.
“I know that it makes no sense to be able to purchase something that can fire up to 300 rounds,” he said. “It did significantly cut down mass murders”/ Mr Biden added his view that there are limits even to the broad right to keep and bear arms enjoyed by Americans under the US Constitution
“Remember … the Second Amendment was never absolute,” he said. “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed and you couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weapons [today]”.
Continuing, the president said those who say they need AR-15 rifles to “take on the government” are “wrong” because the weapons they would need aren’t legal to own.
“To do that you need an F-15, you need an Abrams tank,” he said.
THAT WOULD NOT WORK AGAINST THE A10
While gun rights activists take an absolutist view of the Second Amendment’s protections, the president’s view is in line with the opinion expressed by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in District of Columbia v Heller, the 2007 case in which the court first guaranteed an individual’s right to keep a firearm in the home for personal protection.
“Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” Scalia wrote. “History demonstrates ... the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose”.
A short time after he spoke to reporters, Mr Biden warned that the “foundations” of America’s “great experiment” are “never guaranteed” because each generation must act to “defeat democracy’s mortal foes” while speaking at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to mark Memorial Day.
He said democracy is “how we undertake the constant work of perfecting our union”.
“We have not perfected it, but we've never stopped trying ... opening the doors wider, providing opportunity and prosperity and justice for people everywhere,” he said.
Robot “just another colleague” for faculty in innovative program
Rivera, Uruguay, May 30 (EFE).- Getting students’ attention is no problem for UTECO, the most unusual member of the faculty leading a post-graduate program in artificial intelligence and robotics involving universities in Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil.
A lack of eyes or vocal chords is not an impediment to teaching, as UTECO showed in a demonstration at Universidad Tecnologica del Uruguay (UTEC) here in Rivera.
As instructor Andre Kelbouscas told Efe, UTECO is “just another colleague” for the researchers taking part in the program run jointly by UTEC, Brazil’s Universidade Federal de Rio Grande (FURG), and Universidad Nacional de Rafaela (UNRaf) in Argentina.
“It has a series of capabilities such as seeing via cameras, talking through speakers, and also moving by way of motors, feeling touch, and others,” Kelbouscas said of the NAO robot that UTEC obtained from Robot Lab, a company in the United States.
He described NAO, originally created by France’s Aldebaran Robotics, as hardware with “very generic capacity” that can be programmed for specific functions.
For the UTEC-FURG-UNRaf program, the value of the NAO lies in exploring the possibilities of human-robot interaction, Kelbouscas said.
During the recent demonstration for several European ambassadors, UTECO was able to answer basic questions and respond to simple commands.
The robot, according to Kelbouscas, is built to function in Spanish, Portuguese, English, and Chinese.
And in addition to their brainpower, NAO models have a talent for soccer that has made them regular participants in international competitions such as the RoboCup.
But Kelbouscas and the rest of the team have loftier ambitions for UTECO, which they hope to provide with a “very large database of questions and possible responses to attempt to ‘generalize’ the conversation.”
“Generalization would be to propose a question that it has not been asked and having the capability to reply,” he said.
Alongside the work with UTECO, the UTEC-FURG-UNRaf initiative is collaborating with a group in Mexico on building “robot @HOME” machines to aid with everyday household tasks.
The program, which is conducted in Spanish and Portuguese and involves both in-person and remote coursework, currently included 10 students from each of the three countries.
Noting that the initiative is open to graduates from any discipline, Kelbouscas said that a lawyer, doctor, or journalist with an interest in robotics and artificial intelligence can gain valuable knowledge in the context of a world ever more focused on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics).
The program welcomes applicants with the aptitude to develop “processes and projects” related to robotics and “Industry 4.0” as well as approaches to “evaluate the social impact and possible ethical complications that the use of these technologies can cause.”
EFE apf/dr
A Conversation About Civilizational Collapse
This Is How Civilizations Collapse, And Why Ours Feels Like It’s Beginning To
I recently did an interview with veteran broadcaster Anthony Davis, formerly of the BBC. I don’t often do interviews these days, for a simple reason — I turn down most requests from American mainstream media because they expect me to be an actor. A pundit. They’re a charade, in which you’re expected to say certain things. I enjoyed this one — because I felt that with Anthony, we could talk…seriously.
And, friends, we need to talk. Why? Don’t take it from me — take it from the UN, which is now warning of an increased risk of “global collapse.”
How so? “When global collapse risk is analysed according to the nine planetary boundaries, scenarios that consider achievement of the SDGs and the Sendai Framework goal within the concept of planetary boundaries show a dangerous tendency for the world to move towards a global collapse scenario.”
We are living now in the Event. Extinction. It’s beginning all around us. You can begin to see it with your own two eyes now. Birds falling dead from the sky in a scorched subcontinent. War. Lunatics taking control of societies, as they give up on the future. Ecologies crashing and literally burning. It used to be a guess, a scenario, a theory. Now you can literally begin to see it happening. This is Extinction.
Anthony and I talked about many things. Collapse. Failure. Risk. That oh so American accusation — alarmism. Let me tie up a few the threads of our discussion here, using the notion of global collapse.
Anthony raised the point that people like me — us — are often dismissed as “alarmists,” which is because Americans, in particular, need a certain tone. One of sober-minded optimism. But what if the facts point to a different conclusion? Me? I’d rather be making music. Facts get in the way. Let’s discuss a few inconvenient ones that I’ve come to observe as an economist that alarm me.
There aren’t many economists left who study our civilization. They’re taught not to — the answer you’re inculcated into when you study Econ is that markets will solve everything, so, hey just put a market in place of something, and presto — you don’t ever have to look at a fact again. But when you do, if you do…
The way that the UN looks at the future is bottom-up. They outline certain scenarios. They have to do with climate change, and whether goals are being met, or enough pledges are being made. And every year or so, what happens is that the worst set of cases of all these scenarios seem to be coming true. That’s for a simple enough reason. Pledges and goals are easy. But fulfilling them is much, much harder.
The way that I look at the future — one way I do — is top-down. What does that mean? It means I look at the hard facts of our civilization. Not pledges and goals, but what you can call the macroeconomics of our civilization. And those macroeconomics are incredibly troubling. Let me give you three facts I discussed with Anthony that, to me, point squarely to global collapse.
Everything for a civilization has to do with investment. Investment is the linchpin of the project of civilization. Town squares, universities, science, art, literature, medicine — all these come from investment. Civilizaiton in a very real sense is just the act of collective investment. That is how we come to “be” civilized, to have things like schools and roads and hospitals and drugs and books and so forth. And then we live, hopefully, in peace, and intelligence, and with empathy. Everything depends on investment.
Our investment rate as a civilization is about 20%, give or take. That sounds high, maybe — but you need context to really understand it.
What does 20% investment get you? It gets you America. That’s America’s investment rate, too. And we can see, from the example of America, that it’s not enough. America doesn’t have any functioning systems — healthcare, retirement, education, even food. People live miserable enough lives that downward mobility has become the norm, and they’ve turned atavistic: they’re seeking belonging, meaning, stability, purpose, in regress, as their society simply falls apart. So they’ve turned back to every kind of lunacy, from fundamentalist religion to authoritarianism to supremacy and all those put together. The vicious cycle of collapse accelerates this way, because this atavistic turn makes investment more or less impossible, and so collapse hits harder and faster.
So. Fact one. We know that 20% isn’t enough. To keep the project of civilization going. To stop The Event, which is now beginning, which will cleave human history in two — Extinction. Human beings have been around for 300,000 years. The last time the planet was as hot it’s getting was millions of years ago. We have never — ever — experienced anything like what is beginning now, and human history will regard it is it’s greatest cataclysm and defining event. This is the Age of Extinction.
And that’s happening because 20% is too low.
Fact two. How high does our civilizational investment rate need to be to do something about The Event? Extinction. Can we stop it, or even try to lessen it? What would have to be done? Or do we just keep looking at goals and pledges and then next year, saying, it’s getting worse and worse? The temperature’s getting hotter. It’s 50 degrees Celsius in the Indian Subcontinent. Europe’s scorching. The American West is running out of water. How much longer do we have? Extinction.
The answer lies in looking at the only region in the world which has managed to cut carbon emissions. There’s only one. Europe. And Europe has an investment rate of 50%. That’s why Europeans enjoy all those things they’re renowned for, that Americans don’t have — good hospitals, schools, retirements, affordable educations, the right to live in dignity, without massacres every week. And that investment rate, too, is what begins to be necessary to begin to put the brakes on the runaway train of The Event.
So. We have an investment rate of 20% as a civilization. We need one of 50%. These are facts. They are not just idle opinions. They’re not alarmism or hyperbole or exaggeration or any of the rest of it. They are empirical truths about the world that we live in. Without a dramatic transformation in our civilizational economics, just as the UN says, we are heading for collapse.
The difference between me and the UN is that I’m more certain of it. Because, like I explained, the way I think about is top down. Beginning with civilizational macroeconomics allows me to see the whole picture at once. And hopefully you can too.
You can begin see how big this gap really is.
Fact three. Our entire global economy needs to transform radically and dramatically in the next decade, two, tops three — or collapse accelerates continues. It spreads outwards from America, and engulfs the world. The lights begin to go out. We’re already living in an era, now, of shortages, inflation, uncertainty, war, conflict, nationalism, fascism, fundamentalism. All that spreads and takes hold, and this atavistic turn that’s taken place in America — and India and Russia and so forth — goes viral.
Why do I say that? 20% needs to become 50%. But how big is that number, in hard terms? Our economy as a civilization is — let’s call it $100 trillion for simplicity’s sake. We invest $20 trillion of that back. It’s not high enough. That number needs to rise from $20 trillion to $50 trillion. That’s $30 trillion, in a decade or two.
We need the greatest wave of investment in human history. In all the 300,000 years since humanity first took its steps. The greatest one. What does that investment wave have to do? It has to provide decarbonized basics, from food to water to energy. But even deeper than that — as Vaclav Smil has pointed out, our civilization’s Big Four, fertilizer, glass, cement, and steel, all depend critically on hydrocarbons. We need to make those clean, too. And then we need to provide every human being on planet earth with a little money, food, water, shelter, sanitation, an education, so that fascism, which has already returned, is stopped in its tracks.
Big job. Big jobs.
Why do we have, at this point, three generations of chronically underemployed young people? Who are fast losing faith and optimism in the future? Who barely believe there’ll be one? Why is the feeling that young people will live worse lives than their elders?
Because we’re not doing this work.
Think about all the jobs this transformation — and again, it’s the greatest one in human history — would provide. Everything from young people figuring out how to make clean steel, energy, glass, cement, agriculture, to entire categories of careers and jobs we haven’t even imagined yet. “Extinction Guardian” — someone who’s job it is to protect collapsing ecologies. “Ecosystem Architect” — someone whose job it is to keep our critical ecologies alive, the ones which provide us food, water, air, medicine. “Planetary Systems Manager” — someone whose job it is to make sure every kid in the world is getting the education or water or food they deserve.
Think of the fact we don’t even know how many species are going extinct. How basic is that job? Just…counting? For a species like us, on a dying planet? We could just begin with “Life Systems Accountants.”
Now think of all the new institutions those new jobs would require creating. A Planetary Extinction Agency. A Global Systems Fund. A Life on Earth Development Foundation. And so on and so on. We don’t have any of those. Any of them, really. What we have are the ones left over from the last World War — the UN’s Development Agency, and it’s Children’s Agency, and so on. They do good, vital, crucial work. But we need to go much, much further now.
We need to invest the greatest amount in human history, in the shortest period of time. Or our civilization is going to collapse.
Again, you can accuse me of all the things you like. I have only spoken to you about facts. Empirical truths about the world we live in. None of this is anything but grounded in those truths. I have taken you on a brief tour of civilizational macroeconomics.
Now. What does “global collapse” mean? Collapse is a technical, formal term. It’s not something that I — or any good thinker — says to scare you. It’s meant literally, in a few ways. The collapse of economies, of social structures, of systems, and of institutions.
Global collapse means all those things, and it’s already here.
How much more do you pay for food this year than a couple of years ago? For fuel? For everything? Inflation is surging, and the cause isn’t just war. It’s Cataclysm, the Event. Extinction. Harvests are beginning to fail. The water is beginning to run out. What dirty fuel there is is left in the hands of fascists and lunatics. Inflation is here, and it’s not going to stop. Sure, there’ll be little hiccups here and there. But now…
We are in the age of fighting over the last few resources on a dying planet. Those conflicts have already begun. Russia’s war on Ukraine is about controlling the world’s food and oil and gas supplies — and while Russia’s losing soldiers, it’s succeeding, to an extent, in that objective. This dismal trend will of course only continue, because on a dying planet, without investment, there is not going to be enough to go around. Think of the Indian Subcontinent. Hindus and Muslims are already at each others’ throats. Now imagine what happens when it hits 60 degrees in the summer — and the water’s running out. Bang. Resource conflicts aren’t “going to happen.” They already are.
With Extinction comes the collapse of systems that we take for granted. My Western friends think they can turn on the ACs, retreat indoors forever, and ignore the plight of a dying planet. They’re wrong. What are they going to eat? Drink? Where’s their medicine going to come from? What happens as energy grids fail? Extinction is going to bring with it the breakdown of all these basic systems — and again, that’s already beginning. In the Indian Subcontinent, it’s 50 degrees already, and energy grids are failing. Water’s a precious commodity. Food’s skyrocketing in price, because the scorched Punjab feeds two billion people, and the harvests are failing.
What happens as systems fail? People lose their moorings. They turn on their neighbors and friends, desperate to feed their kids. They seek some kind of explanation for it all in fundamentalist religion. They seek some kind of optimistic vision for the future in authoritarianism. They look for already hated groups to scapegoat for it in neofascism. The entire project of civilization begins to come undone.
You can see this happening in America, which is why I use it as an example. Being the world’s “richest” country hasn’t protected it from all these forms of collapse. Because the resources, money, time, everything, has been hoarded by the super rich, who own it all, and the average person has been getting poorer for decades now. Now, life in America is a bitter, brutal struggle for the basics — healthcare, education, shelter, a little money to pay off all that debt, some kind of “job” to have it. One tiny misstep, and you lose it all. It’s a fight to the death.
And an increasingly brutal one. That fight has torn Americans apart. It has destroyed what was left of America’s social capital — it’s trust, relationships, community. Americans don’t just distrust one another now — they actively hate one another. Everything is bitter, rancorous, enraged. There’s no public life. Nobody smiles. America’s a divided nation, and half of it wants to go back to some kind of weird medieval slash fascist fantasyland. This is what the end of civilization looks like.
At least part of it. The other half, you can see in the Indian Subcontinent. There, it doesn’t feel that way so much because it still has social capital. There are reglious and ethnic divisions, but within those communities, people still like and trust one another. But resources are now in seriously short supply. What do you when it’s 50 degrees — and the lights go out all day? Or the taps stop running? Or there’s no medicine left, because it’s all spoiled?
Westerners think: he’s saying life comes to an end! No, it doesn’t. Civilization does. Life goes on. But living in a civilized way becomes harder and harder. A dark age falls.
Extinction — and I always have to add this caveat for new readers, so forgive me — doesn’t mean “everyone dies!” It means that there is an Extinction Event now unfolding. A huge, huge number of the earth’s species are going to be gone. So many we can’t even count them yet. Trees, forests, animals. All of that is going to cause a systems collapse, which it already is. Covid wasn’t a fluke — we are learning now that it was part of a trend, pandemics, which happen when animals and humans rub shoulders, as habitable land is scorched, burned, flooded, drowned.
Extinction is an Event. It means many, many things. We are all going to have to understand it. In subtle and complicated and thoughtful ways. I don’t bring it up so you just panic and react and some people lash out defensively thinking “he’s saying we’re all going to die!” Quite the opposite. I mean we are now beginning to live through the single event of greatest impact in human history, ever.
And we need to begin to understand it, in genuinely thoughtful and precise and reflective ways. So far, we don’t even have the vocabulary, language, ideas, which is why I write about it.
So. Let’s draw some conclusions. Are we headed for global collapse? I gave you three facts. My conclusion from those three facts is that we need the greatest wave of investment in human history, to even begin to lessen the impact of Extinction. The more that we do that, the more chance of surviving, in some form, our civilization has. But if we don’t do it at all — which is where we are now — sorry, let me add one last fact.
We need the greatest wave of investment in human history to begin to lessen the Event. Extinction. But. Fact four. Our investment rate is still exactly the same. This is why, every year, the UN has to do this sad dance — goals and pledges unmet, the worst case scenarios come true. The investment rate — our investment rate civilizationally — isn’t rising.
And you can now see what happens when it doesn’t. With your own eyes. The temperature keeps rising. Nations like America simply fall apart. Demagoguery and fascism recur. Resource wars erupt. Religious and ethnic tensions alight. Ecologies collapse. Our basic systems begin to fail.
We are now living in the Event. You can nowliterally begin to see what it means to be a species living on a dying planet. You can see with your own two eyes what happens when a civilization’s investment rate is too low, and it’s consumption rate is too high — this does. Extinction. It eats through everything, and replenishes not enough, and so it’s own life support systems come undone. This is where we are now.
We are travelers into the Event.
And we need to begin preparing for this journey, my friends. Nobody is going to escape to Mars. Nobody is going to live in some fortified compound and “ride it out.” We are in it together. This planet. Civilization.
It is not just parochial interests that drive West Virginia’s stubborn adherence to coal and opposition to green power sources. Anyone who has ever been to deep Appalachia knows that there is more than a grain of truth to the shibboleth that the only things there are coal and disability. Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
What is needed is a viable alternative to coal as the economic mainstay of the region — the only economic mainstay. The West Virginia legislature should have been working on this a decade ago, but, instead, it continues to fight the inevitable with its advocacy of “clean coal” and stubborn refusal to recognize the increasing obsolescence of fossil fuels. Sen. Joe Manchin III (D) should be working on it today.
It is not an easy problem. Because of its rugged terrain and remoteness from major markets and transportation corridors, the area is not conducive to manufacturing or other industries involving the movement of goods. Nor is it conducive to large-scale farming. White-collar industries, such as any form of information or data processing, require an educated workforce, generally lacking in the region.
Until a large-scale replacement industry takes root, the people of deep Appalachia will continue out of desperation to oppose anything that diminishes the coal industry and will express that sentiment at the ballot box. These people, most of whom have lived there for generations, are not going to just quietly disappear as the coal industry dries up. Transitioning them must be part of any solution.
Paul B. Weiss, Hedgesville, W.Va.
Rabbi James Rudin’s memoir recounts the interfaith movement’s hits and misses
In the book, 'The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents,' Rudin writes about his favorite collaborators, the challenges of cultivating pluralism and the future of interfaith relations.
“The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents" and author Rabbi James Rudin. Courtesy images
(RNS) — Rabbi James Rudin had a front-row seat to all the major developments in Jewish-Christian relations in the second half of the 20th century.
Probably no other rabbi has traveled as widely or met with as many global religious leaders as Rudin, who for 32 years worked at the American Jewish Committee, retiring as its national interreligious affairs director in 2000.
At 87, he’s now written a memoir chronicling his efforts to improve Jewish-Christian ties in the wake of the Holocaust and give Jews a measure of dignity and respect they were often denied.
Rudin’s book, “The People in the Room: Rabbis, Nuns, Pastors, Popes, and Presidents,” tells of his many travels — 42 times across the Atlantic — and his meetings with popes, presidents, Protestant denominational leaders and world-famous evangelists.
Rabbi James Rudin as a U.S. Air Force chaplain at the Iwakuni Marine Corps Air Facility in Japan in 1962. Photo courtesy James Rudin
Rudin’s personal biography before joining the AJC helped. As he writes in the first part of the book, he grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, among Southern Baptists. After finishing rabbinical school, he served for several years as an Air Force chaplain stationed in Japan and Korea. And then, while serving an Illinois congregation, he did graduate work in history at the University of Illinois.
In addition to possessing a curious mind eager to learn about other religions and make friends across the faith divide, he is also a writer, contributing hundreds of columns over the years to Religion News Service, among other outlets.
RNS spoke to Rudin from his home in Florida about his favorite collaborators in his interfaith work, the challenges, even today, of cultivating pluralism and the future of interfaith relations. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You devote a full chapter to the late New York Cardinal John O’Connor and another to a Catholic Sister Ann Gillen. Are Catholics the group you had the most success with?
No. We just hit it off very well. I came on board the AJC in 1968. That was three years after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council. Because of the excitement and the breakthrough of “Nostra Aetate” (the document that transformed the church’s approach to Judaism), there was a lot of energy around Catholic-Jewish relations. Also, Jews historically had more contact with Catholics than any other group. Cardinal O’Connor, of blessed memory, was a friend, a colleague. In private we called each other by our first names.
But growing up in Alexandria, Virginia, I also had an understanding of Southern Baptists. I knew these folks. I went to school with them. I went to their revivals. It helped me in relating to them.
Each December in the area I grew up there was a huge Christmas decoration contest. It was very important to these families who won the contest. They had a very divisive decision one December and it looked like it would be the end of the contest. They came to my father and asked him if he and my family could be the judges because we would be totally impartial, which we were. So for several years my late brother and father and I trudged round in the snow to judge which house had the best Christmas decorations. Our judgments were upheld because we were totally impartial. I don’t think too many rabbis had that experience.
One of the evangelicals you grew to respect is Billy Graham. How did your views of him change?
I met with him during his last crusade when he came to New York in 2005. In a private conversation he said that he would go on his hands and knees and beg forgiveness from the Jewish community for the things he said and agreed with in 1972 in his White House meetings with President Richard Nixon, which were full of antisemitism. He regretted it. He apologized.
A lot of the work you did abroad was trying to explain to Christians how their own Scriptures often cast Jews as Christ-killers. You devote a chapter to Oberammergau, a town in the Bavarian Alps famous for its Passion plays, which in years past were virulently anti-Jewish. How hard was it?
When I went there I was fully aware that we were trying to overcome antisemitism. Europe was a haunted continent because of what happened there. I went to Germany many times. I was one of the first interreligious American Jewish leaders to go to Poland in 1989 to build positive Christian-Jewish relations. But it was also very personal. My own family — my uncles, my cousins — were involved in battles with the Germans in World War II. I got a tour of Auschwitz by a wonderful Polish Catholic priest. It made the work sacred to me. But it was also very difficult.
The U.S. is having a hard time with pluralism these days. But you write about a battle back in the late 1980s over the design of a chapel at Camp David in which the committee you served on wanted stained glass windows with Christian symbols. How’d you get them to change their minds?
The committee felt they were not creating an interreligious chapel for a presidential retreat but a Christian church. I was told again and again, America is a Christian country. But the Founding Fathers had every opportunity to put Jesus into the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. It’s not an accident that it isn’t there. Ironically, Camp David is a place 99% of Americans will never visit. It’s a secluded presidential retreat. But that’s where it played out at the highest level. I had to deal with it diplomatically. It was a time for me to not only quote Jefferson and Madison but to point out that we were doing this for history. Once you put this chapel there, international visitors would come there of all religions and no religion. It was a very important and symbolic moment for me. It was one of my proudest moments. I’m not sure I would be as successful today persuading people to understand American history.
What do you think of interreligious work today when the authority of religious leadership is being challenged everywhere?
In the sexual abuse scandal we have the perfect trifecta. We’ve had the Roman Catholic sexual abuse scandal. Earlier this year we had sexual abuse scandal in my movement, the Reform (Jewish) movement. Now we have it in the largest Protestant denomination. Is it any wonder respect and commitment to various religious leaders are under attack? Religion is radioactive. Sometimes it can be very helpful; sometimes highly destructive. You have to handle it with great care. We need fewer declarations, fewer statements, fewer proclamations. We need less wholesale religion and more retail. I’m advocating for lay-led, small groups that tackle problems in communities on an interreligious basis. That’s the future; small pockets of religious energy.
In the U.S., all religions are represented. Nobody’s getting out of the boat. It’s a necessity that we have interreligious cooperation and bridges of human solidarity.
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