Ìętoo often poisons the air we breathe as we think about climate change. This is particularly true when it comes to understanding theÌęÌęby theÌęU.S.ÌęEnvironmental Protection Agency to repeal the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding established in 2009.

Climate regulation might lose its teeth due to the EPA’s decision, but politically viable climate solutions remain possible.

Many Democrats see climate change as an existential threat. To them, the recent actions of the EPA confirm their pre-existing belief that Republicans actively deny science, and that under Team Trump theÌęUnited StatesÌęis powerless to fight climate change.

Meanwhile, many Republicans are yawning over breakfast. The day after the endangerment finding was repealed, the top headlines atÌęfoxnews.comÌędescribed various criminal investigations, gerrymandering by Democrats, and a tantalizing story about a NASCAR driver. The EPA story was nowhere to be found.

Lawyers on both sides are steeling themselves for a bitter fight over the science behind the endangerment finding. Lawyers who chant “We Love Trump” are correct that CO2Ìęis not a local pollutant and that breathing it in does not endanger anyone. Lawyers who chant “We Hate Trump” are nevertheless correct that climate change has negative effects on the health of Americans, which means CO2Ìęcan be considered aÌęglobalÌępollutant.

It remains unclear who will win the legal fight, but to some extent these legal battles are a sideshow. What we really need in our toxic political environment is for partisans to learn from each other.

Republicans need to question their assumption that climate change is a trivial issue. PresidentÌęDonaldÌęTrump is correct that climate regulations sometimes present infuriating problems for business, and he is amazing at controlling the media narrative. But Trump is also an old man who will become irrelevant within just a few years. Just like the nation’s debt, climate change is an ongoing problem, and forward-thinking Republicans cannot dodge the issue forever.

If Democrats stopped treating Republicans as enemies, then conservatives might care more about the climate concerns of liberals.Ìę. Younger Republicans know this, and they take the issue much more seriously than their elder colleagues.

Just as the Democratic Party became less relevant by ignoring border problems, the Republican Party will become less relevant if they continue to ignore the importance of climate solutions. In the long run, anyone who agrees with Trump that burning lots of fossil fuels is our best long-term strategy will likely become ostracized in global, business, and even political circles.

Democrats need to question their assumption that the loss of EPA climate regulation means all is lost.Ìę. Our contribution is not trivial, but the world does not depend exclusively on the US to fix climate problems. Furthermore,Ìę, including under Trump’s first term.

Even under Trump 2.0,Ìę. The rest of the planet is also onboard. Just last year, for example,ÌęÌę– roughly enough to power the entire East Coast.

Democrats also need to learn thatÌę, not by their hatred of science.

A more productive strategy for climate-motivated Democrats would be to seek climate solutions that rely on markets rather than regulation and minimize the role of the federal government.Ìę For example,Ìę.Ìę.

Ultimately, EPA regulation is just one of many tools that belongs in a modern environmental toolkit. In a divided society, the most sustainable climate solutions will be tolerable to both Democrats and Republicans.

ŸĂŸĂÈÈ President Connie Ledoux Book was featured in a on how college administrators are confronting major disruptions in the higher education landscape, including international enrollment challenges and artificial intelligence adoption.

The article, “How 3 college administrators are tackling higher education disruption,” highlights remarks Book made during a panel at the American Council on Education’s annual conference in Washington, D.C.Ìę

Book pointed to tightening visa policies and shifting global student flows as key pressures facing institutions nationwide. She noted that even colleges not heavily dependent on international enrollment are feeling the effects of broader declines in traditional student populations.

“If you rely on immigration and international students as the primary driver of your enrollment strategy, you are vulnerable,” Book said.

Reflecting on how disruptions beyond Elon’s campus could affect the national higher education ecosystem, Book added, “We’re losing domestic students because of the hole that other schools are filling,” signaling that competitive pressures ripple across institutions when one segment of the student market contracts.Ìę

On the topic of artificial intelligence, Book noted that a liberal arts education could help students use AI in their work.

“This is going to breathe life into skill sets around philosophy, religion, problem-solving, history,”ÌęBookÌęsaid. “The human side is going to get a new burst of energy because that’s where the skill sets of connecting the dots and critical thinking live.”

“Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes; still it wailed ‘Let me in!’”

Thus speaks Mr. Lockwood, a clueless townie and milksop, narrator of Emily Bronte’s 1848 novel Wuthering Heights, about to appear – again! – Ìęon screen in a Valentine’s Day release.

This production generates a new burst of interest in a novel that’s never lost its coolness-cachet. Romance – doomed, of courseÌę – and the lure of Gothic darkness are bestsellers, particularly with a young audience.

Unsuspecting Lockwood, forced by bad weather to stay at remote and rural Wuthering Heights, the house now under the seriously unpleasant domination of brutal Byronic anti-hero Heathcliff, dreams that a child scratches at the window, begging to get in: “I’m come home! I’d lost my way on the moor!” she moans. ÌęOvercome with inexplicable cruelty, the otherwise normal Lockwood drags ghostly Catherine’s wrist across the jagged window glass.

Catherine, Heathcliff’s long-dead childhood and eternal love, is back.

Emily Brontë’s novel also is a bit of a cine-revenant: a silent film version in 1920 was followed by five English-language screen adaptations, including 1939’s version starring Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon. Foreign directors are not immune, with Indian, Spanish and Filipino films attesting to the pull of Brontë’s fiction.

It certainly channels the Gothic horror we all seem to crave. What fictional mode was ever more resilient than the Gothic? Born in eighteenth-century England with Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” (1764), the Gothic mode powered on, past Mary Shelley’s 1820 classic “Frankenstein,” through Daphne du Maurier’s “Rebecca,” up to the very recent “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

The Gothic closet is stuffed with ghosts, dead bodies, graves, vampires, the living dead, corrupt sexuality, damsels in distress, powerful and dangerous attractive men, Ìęgargoyled architecture and locked doors. The list is long.

But Gothic is a fragile literary mode, lurching sometimes into farce: BrontĂ« piles it on, ad absurdum: a kitchen with a row of hanged puppies, dead rabbits mistaken for kittens, a knife thrust casually into a servant’s teeth, and Heathcliff’s late penchant for grave-digging.

Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s declarations of eternal love indeed caught the irreverent eye of satirists in “Monty Python’s Flying Circus,” a seventies UK television series: “Semaphor Wuthering Heights” depicts the supposedly desperate lovers complacently signaling in neat flag formation across the desolate moorland.

But let’s get serious again. The novel is genuinely disturbing in its depiction of childhood love turned into adult obsession: “I am Heathcliff!” declares Catherine. “He’s always, always in my mind not as a pleasure . . . but, as my own being.” ÌęAnd we believe her. ÌęTheir individual identities are merged forever, even after death, when Heathcliff begs dead Catherine to haunt him: “Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! . . . I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Heathcliff – brought as a nameless street urchin into the Wuthering Heights household, mistreated in childhood, and bereft of Catherine – takes revenge on everyone implicated in his misery. Vampire-like, he sucks the free will, money and property from his victims, turning the landowning gentry system on its head.

The young novelist herself spent most of her life in her clergyman father’s northern England vicarage and was an unlikely author of such a startling fiction.

“Wuthering Heights,” originally published under the man-sounding pseudonym Ellis Bell, was slammed by reviewers, who denounced it as coarse, brutal, and irreligious. After her death at 30, Emily was “defended” by her older sister Charlotte, who resorted to claiming that her sister was just a child of nature, living secluded in rural Yorkshire. She really “didn’t get” polite society.

But Emily has had historical payback after those disapproving reviews. “Wuthering Heights” stays reliably in print, thanks to people like me, who teach it, and thanks to the film makers, who periodically boost it lucratively into the headlines.

The new film beckons. But I hope that moviegoers will turn again to the book: a real Gothic shocker, which entertains while inviting us to ponder the dangerous and wonderful strength of human feeling, to consider the possibility that individual human identity is permeable, and that we may really be able to live in each other’s hearts and minds – perhaps forever.

A recent article in The Conversation by Rena Zito, associate professor of sociology at ŸĂŸĂÈÈ who lives with Tourette syndrome, is challenging widespread misconceptions about Tourette syndrome, particularly the belief that it commonly involves shouting curses or slurs.

At the BAFTA film awards in London on Feb. 22, 2026, John Davidson, whose life inspired theÌęaward-winning biopic “I Swear,” involuntarily shouted a racial slur during Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo’s speech. The incident has inspired intense conversation around Tourette syndrome and its symptoms.Ìę

Zito writes that “fewer than 1 in 5 people with Tourette’s experience taboo tics, such as coprolalia — involuntary obscene or offensive speech.” Despite this, pop culture has cemented the idea that swearing defines the condition. In reality, she explains, most tics are far more ordinary, including “eye blinking, shoulder shrugging, throat clearing or brief sounds.”

Coprolalia, the clinical term for involuntary swearing, affects only about 10–20% of people with Tourette syndrome. Even fewer individuals experience socially taboo words such as racial slurs. Yet these rare symptoms often dominate public perception and media portrayals.

A key misconception, Zito notes, is the belief that “tics reveal what people ‘really’ think and feel.” In fact, she emphasizes, “tics often compel people to say or do precisely what they most wish to avoid.” The neurological urges behind tics are involuntary and do not reflect a person’s beliefs, character or intentions.

Zito writes that “these socially inappropriate tics can draw unwanted attention and lead to exclusion, bullying, hostile encounters and barriers to employment.” The stigma can be as distressing — or more distressing — than the tics themselves.

Her article calls for greater public understanding of Tourette syndrome’s complexity. By recognizing that taboo tics are uncommon and involuntary, communities can move beyond stereotypes and toward empathy, ensuring people with Tourette’s “need understanding and support to participate fully and safely in public life.”

Read Zito’s full piece in .

I teach college freshmen in an interdisciplinary seminar titled “The Global Experience.” I chose to focus on politics because these days it is impossible to understand global experiences without thinking about politics, especially the rise of Donald Trump in the United States. I wanted my students to understand both the attraction and the repulsion of President Trump.

In contrast, decision makers in Washington, D.C. seem more interested in blaming and shaming the other political party. Instead of engaging in dialogue, they circle the wagons, perform for their own party, and pretend that someday the other half of the country will magically fade away.

I believed my students could do better. I had this crazy idea that meaningful conversation about political disagreements is still possible. It certainly beats participating in political echo chambers or contemplating violence.

We began our politics unit with a coin toss. Heads – Republican Week, followed by tails – Democrat Week.

We celebrated Republican Week by reading everything we could find about the motivations and values of that party. Using a Republican lens, we explored foreign policy topics like immigration, border security, alliances, and tariffs. During Democrat Week, we repeated this exercise using a liberal lens.

Each week culminated in a debate between a team of student champions, nominated by their classmates, and a political opponent. I played the role of the opponent, but my arguments changed each week based on whether I wore a blue or a red T-shirt.

The third week, we explored the strengths and weaknesses of each party on major political topics. Then we voted anonymously on who had the stronger position.

ŸĂŸĂÈÈ favored Democrats for some issues, such as climate change and preserving traditional alliances. They favored Republicans for other issues, such as how to secure our southern border and how to achieve peace in Gaza. No clear party preference emerged for some issues, such as tariffs and the treatment of illegal immigrants. Some students favored neither party.

In written assignments on chosen foreign policy topics, students advocated for a variety of perspectives and solutions. Even as Congress failed to perform its basic functions, my freshmen managed to present viable solutions to thorny and pressing issues. None of them presented raw partisan dogma from just one side. Most sought out middle ground by blending ideas and policies from both parties. For example, some advocated for preserving foreign aid, but with greater oversight to ensure tangible benefits for Americans. Others advocated for deportation procedures that incorporated greater compassion.

I learned college freshmen can understand and respect multiple political viewpoints. In doing so, students did not have to sacrifice or water down their own political beliefs. Anonymous polls of my students showed equal levels of support and opposition for President Trump both before and after our politics unit. But encouragingly, my students also reported greater familiarity and less animosity towards the opposite party.

In an age when three in 10 Republicans and three in 10 Democrats agree that Americans may have to resort to violence to get the country back on track, it was encouraging to see students challenge this misguided belief. A negotiated middle ground rarely satisfies anyone, but it sure beats the ‘good guys, bad guys’ mentality that too often dominates our political discourse.

It’s challenging these days for elected officials to serve both sides of the country. Politicians who don’t fit the mold of a ‘pure’ Democrat or a ‘pure’ Republican get vilified by both sides, often leading to dysfunctional government. But my students have shown me that the gap separating Republican and Democratic positions is not as wide as we might believe.

—

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ.

When the Nobel Committee announced that László Krasznahorkai had won this year’s prize for literature, I pulled one of his novels off the shelf in Belk Library. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but when he was described as a “difficult and demanding” dystopian writer, I was intrigued.

I’ve always been drawn to long, complex books such asÌęWar and Peace,ÌęRoots, andÌęCryptonomicon. They are the kinds of works that stretch across generations. But this time, with Krasznahorkai, I couldn’t make it past three pages. My attention slipped, and my focus felt fractured. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the endurance that deep reading requires.

It’s easy to blame phones, social media, and the endless stream of short-form content. Screens compete for our attention every waking minute, training our minds to crave instant gratification rather than depth. But screens are only part of a larger pattern: a growing discomfort with stillness, boredom, patience, and the slow work of concentration that deep thinking requires. Our time isn’t the only thing being fractured; our capacity for sustained attention is too. Distraction has become the cultural default.

As a librarian, I’ve come to see that reading isn’t just an academic skill or a pleasurable pastime. It’s how we build complexity within ourselves in a time that increasingly rewards simplicity and quick conclusions. Deep reading means lingering with a text, following its ideas, and allowing it to challenge us. It slows us down long enough to notice nuance, to sit with ambiguity, to develop compassion and foresight, and to see how seemingly unrelated ideas might connect. It strengthens the mental muscles we need to navigate an ever more complicated world.

InÌę, neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf explains that the human brain wasn’t born to read: we taught it to do so. Each time we engage deeply with text, we strengthen the neural pathways that make abstract thought, imagination and empathy possible. Reading doesn’t simply transmit information; it builds the architecture of critical thought itself.

The Liberation of Reading
For most of human history, reading was a privilege of the few: priests, scholars, rulers and the wealthy. Literacy opened doors to knowledge, power and capital. As it spread, it reshaped the world. Ordinary people could interpret sacred texts for themselves, study new ideas, and imagine different futures. The printing press accelerated that freedom. Books moved from monasteries into homes and coffeehouses. Literacy crossed social lines, and ideas multiplied. Reading democratized thought itself. That same power to think for ourselves is what’s at stake again today.

That ability now feels more fragile. show that reading for pleasure in the United States has dropped sharply in the past two decades. reports that many students and adults struggle to finish full-length books. We skim, scroll, and summarize. Increasingly, we think in shorter bursts, leaning on AI to condense what once demanded our full attention. While AI offers an expanded toolkit for inquiry, helping us analyze and synthesize at larger scales, it works best as a partner to human reflection, not a replacement for it. The challenge is finding balance by using technology to extend our reach without letting it erode our capacity for depth. It helps us move quickly through more information, but the trade-off is depth, the kind of understanding that only comes from staying with something long enough to feel its weight.

What if, despite all our technology, we are returning to an earlier kind of culture, one built more on regurgitation than reflection? Are we sliding back toward older ways of organizing not just communication but culture itself, where ideas are consumed rather than examined and made our own? It’s a fascinating paradox. Our digital world is full of narration: posts, clips, comments, emojis, and reactions, yet so little of it invites us to pause and think. We swipe, we move on, and the cycle repeats. As James Marriott argues in , we may be living through a “counter-revolution” against reading itself, an era where the screen favors immediacy, emotion, and performance over reasoning and depth. We seem to know more than ever before, yet think less deeply about what any of it means.

Deep reading is a counterbalance. It restores the diversity of thought that our fast media diet erodes. Sustained engagement strengthens the neural networks we rely on for creativity, problem-solving and design. It helps us hold competing ideas, trace relationships, and find meaning in complexity. It’s the mental equivalent of cross-training, developing the stamina and flexibility our thinking needs to meet a complicated world.

Reading as Rebellion
If the problem is cultural, the response can be personal. To read a book today is, in its own quiet way, an act of rebellion. It resists speed. It refuses to be optimized. It asks for our full attention in a world that profits from distraction and constant stimulation. When I pick up Krasznahorkai at lunch, it feels like a small protest. His long, winding sentences offer no shortcuts. Reading him reminds me that some forms of thinking cannot be rushed and that not every kind of meaning can be summarized.

Reading is also a form of self-governance. It is how we choose what enters our mind and how ideas connect in ways no algorithm can predict. The physicist who reads poetry, the engineer who studies philosophy, the novelist fascinated by biology are all exercising the same muscle of synthesis. Every voice and story expands our map of understanding, and reading across difference stretches that map even further. It builds empathy and a sense of care, and it fuels the kind of innovation and creativity that come from seeing the world through many perspectives.

The Library as a Practice of Attention
Visiting a library, too, is an act of resistance in our attention economy. It offers space to think, create, and focus within a world that rarely pauses and continually pulls at our attention. If the mind is a muscle, the library is its gym: a space to stretch, strengthen and build endurance for complex thought. The more we exercise it, the more capable we become of holding tension, nuance, and imagination together.

Within its walls, ideas coexist across time and discipline. On the shelves, books gather like conversations, from Yuval Noah Harari and Octavia Butler to Paulo Freire, Mary Oliver, and Liu Cixin. Each offers a different way of seeing, but together they remind us that intellectual strength comes from diversity, from reading across difference and letting unexpected connections form. The library holds these voices in dialogue and invites us to join the conversation.

In an age of AI and an abundance of information, libraries teach something rarer than access: discernment. They help us slow down, weigh evidence, and find patterns amid noise. They remind us that knowledge is not a commodity to consume but a relationship to cultivate. They are one of the few places left where thinking still feels unhurried, where curiosity is allowed to take its time.

I’m sticking it out with Krasznahorkai, reading a few pages each day. My goal isn’t to do a deep analysis but to rebuild my focus and rediscover the kind of concentration that feels expansive, when the mind is free to wander and wonder. It’s about putting in the reps, retraining the muscles of attention one page at a time.

In a way, I’m rebuilding my own capacity for deep attention after years of digital overconsumption. I’ve started leaving my phone in another room, keeping a book on the table instead of an iPad, and carving out quiet time each evening. These small choices remind me that reading is both self-care and social care. It strengthens our inner lives so we can more fully engage the outer world. Every time I see someone browsing the shelves or paging through a book, I feel encouraged. I recognize in them the quiet act of stepping into the life of the mind. So maybe that’s the invitation: set the phone aside once in a while and pick up a book that challenges or surprises you. Give your attention something demanding to work on. And if you need a place to start, stop by Belk Library. We can always recommend a few books that will help you think.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ.

This is not an article to rehash pointless and stale political debates about COVID-19. Been there, done that.

I won’t comment on whether funding for vaccine research should come from the private versus public sector. I also won’t comment on whether anyone should mandate vaccines for their citizens or employees. There is room for legitimate disagreement on these important social topics.

My article will focus instead on the science of vaccines. And in matters of science, the data should take center stage. Legal and political opinions are secondary.

One well-supported conclusion about vaccines is that even though side effects vary, some vaccines have provided fantastic benefits to public health. Smallpox was eradicated globally by 1980. This could never have happened without vaccines.

Vaccines also allowed us to eliminate measles from the United States by 2000. A few years later the virus sneaked its way back into our country, largely because some folks concluded they and their children would be better off unvaccinated. The ongoing measles outbreak of 2025 unfortunately affects primarily these unvaccinated individuals. The data on the benefits of measles vaccination are so clear now that even Kennedy said he would “probably” vaccinate his own children against measles.

mRNA vaccines represent the latest in a long line of vaccination innovations. If you want proof, search the internet for a readable peer-reviewed article titled “safety and effectiveness of mRNA vaccines” in the open-access medical journal “Cureus.” More research is still needed on how to store mRNA vaccines at room temperature and on how to reduce negative side effects, but there is no question about their overall potential.

Traditional vaccines still work, but mRNA vaccines are categorically better. It’s like comparing flip phones to smartphones. Flip phones were amazing for their time, but no serious investor would place their money on flip phone technology today. Similarly, Kennedy is misguided to think that research money would be better spent on traditional vaccines.

Take speed and scale. Traditional vaccines take months and even years to develop. In contrast, mRNA vaccines can be produced an order of magnitude faster. The first step, sequencing the pathogen’s genome, takes just a few hours.
Scientists then synthesize a sequence of genetic material called mRNA that codes for the protein antigens found in the pathogen. After the mRNA is delivered to your body through a vaccine, your cells can then synthesize these antigens, which trains your immune system to target and destroy the pathogen. You can see this process summarized as an infographic by searching the internet for “mRNA vaccine production” at “genome.gov.”

Because sequencing and synthesizing genetic material is easy and cheap, mRNA vaccines are much more adaptable than traditional vaccines. They provide flexible manufacturing options for business. Next time we find ourselves in another rapidly evolving pandemic, mRNA vaccines will help us to remain a step ahead of new pathogen variants.

Just as smart phones facilitated new apps that would never work on flip phones, mRNA vaccines are bringing new applications that move way beyond the COVID-19 virus. For example, scientists are now testing new types of mRNA vaccines that show promise against various cancers, chronic infections like HIV and autoimmune diseases like MS.

As a proud American, I don’t want my country to fall behind the rest of the world when it comes to vaccine technology. And make no mistake, the rest of the world will move forward with or without us in the development of mRNA vaccines.

Let’s not squander the future by losing our faith in mRNA vaccine technology.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ.

In the Jewish calendar, we are well into the season of teshuvah, translated both as “repentance” and “turning back.” It is a heartbreaking time for deep reflection on our individual and collective moral failures.

In this week’s parsha, Ki Tavo, Moses instructs the Israelites on the curses and blessings that God will bestow upon them based on whether they follow God’s commands. These passages present a system of spiritual physics based upon our behavior. If we do x, we will receive y. If we obey God’s commands, we will be blessed (). If we sin, we will be cursed ().

Those of us with lived experience know that the reality of sin, punishment, merit, and reward is more complicated than our parsha’s formula. First, it does not explain how those who commit egregious moral transgressions still prosper in this world. Second, it implies that any evil that befalls the faithful is a natural consequence of immoral behavior, rather than the inexplicable tragedy we know it to be. Finally, this formula can give us a false sense of control over our lives, leading us to disappointment.

Rashi points to a more complicated way of understanding our parsha. One of the blessings the Israelites will receive for obedience is in : “Blessed shall you be in your comings and blessed shall you be in your goings.” teaches that this verse means that your exit (goings) from this world should be like your entry (comings) into this world – without sin, belo’ cheit (cf. ).

This interpretation raises two important questions. First, Biblical Hebrew has a rich vocabulary for describing sin. Cheit does not describe a severe transgression or rebellion – instead it connotes missing the mark. How can it be that any human being can live without sometimes falling short?

Second, this interpretation reveals a logical contradiction. The reward for following God’s commands is sinlessness. How can it be that the reward, sinlessness, precedes the behavior that merits the reward?

This week’s parsha presents an incomplete picture of sin, punishment, merit, and reward because it does not include teshuvah. If the blessings and curses from our parsha describe spiritual physics, teshuvah is all about spiritual metaphysics.

Engaging in the practice of teshuvah is not simply acknowledging our wrongdoings, making amends with those we have harmed, and committing to live differently in the future. These actions are fundamental components of teshuvah, but there is something much deeper going on.

Millennia ago, David modeled for us the heart-transforming nature of teshuvah. In Psalm 51, he acknowledges his sins, transgressions, and iniquities in a litany of confessions. He asks that God give his soul a good scrub: “Wash me thoroughly of my iniquity, and purify me of my sin” (). He then asks God to create his heart anew, much like a newborn: “Fashion a pure heart for me, O God; create in me a steadfast spirit” (). He then teaches that “True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God, You will not despise a contrite and crushed heart” ().

David teaches that the most important component of teshuvah is a broken heart. The breaking of our heart center is what allows the divine flow to wash over us from within and purify us from sin. Teshuvah is heart-breaking and ego-busting. We have limited to no control over this aspect of the process – we cannot purify our own hearts.

Despite our lack of control, our divine bath doesn’t end with our feeling refreshed. Instead, we must become active participants in our own teshuvah, working to repair relationships with those we have harmed and committing to live differently in the future.

For Ashkenazi communities, the prayers of start this Saturday night. Sephardic communities have already been saying these prayers since the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul. These prayers are an invitation to go deeper and let our hearts break with our pain for the world and our own individual and collective culpability.

My prayer for us all this year is that we experience the mystical power of teshuvah purifying us from within. And I pray that our purified hearts strengthen us in our renewed commitment to work for a better world in the coming year.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ. The original article appears inÌę.

Immigrants are the willing guests of the “host” country, unlike the unwilling guests of Hamas, their threatening hosts. But all are connected to the rich and complicated notion of hospitality, something I’m concentrating on right now as I prepare to teach (in translation!) Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey to my ŸĂŸĂÈÈ students this fall.Ìę

The hospitality theme recurs in the Odyssey, where Greek hero Odysseus, returning to Ithaca after the Trojan war, becomes the guest of many island hosts on his journey: some more kind and honorable than others.Ìę

Circe’s seductive charms pall, along with her party trick of turning Odysseus’s crew into pigs, as do beautiful but clinging Calypso’s. Odysseus the guest becomes a pampered prisoner who must escape. Cyclops chief Polyphemus punishes Odysseus’s bad-guest qualities by eating several of his crew; the fleeing survivors blind the giant’s single eye. Top of the nice-host charts is King Alcinous, who wines, dines and welcomes Odysseus to his court without even asking his name.

But even Alcinous has an ulterior motive: might Odysseus be a good catch for a marriageable daughter? Pure, disinterested, unconditional hospitality is a rare thing. Hosts usually want something from their guests.

It’s in the last book of the Iliad where hospitality is really tested. The stakes are high for both guest and host. Aged and frail Priam, King of Troy, visits famously angry and volatile Greek chieftain Achilles during the Troy v. Greece war. Priam seeks the return of his son Hector’s body, slain in battle by Achilles. Crossing the Greek’s threshold, Priam occupies the role of reluctant guest, and supplicant.Ìę

Scary host Achilles gives him a tasty dinner (from a “gleaming sheep”) and agrees to return Hector’s body for funeral rituals, along with a 12-day truce to accommodate them.

Priam has skillfully encouraged Achilles to identify with an aged father’s grief for his son by reminding him of his own old father, alone and unprotected, back in Greece. But Achilles, deeply moved by sympathetic (and guilty) sorrow, warns Priam: I might not stay calm. Don’t push your luck.Ìę

Hermes, Priam’s divine guide, agrees, waking Priam from his guest-room bed and hastening his departure back to the Trojan camp, with the returned hostage, the dead Prince Hector.

In this episode, we see the host and guest as “near enemies,” with the guest as both threat to the host’s emotional stability and a near-victim of his violent nature. This ambiguity is, as French critic and philosopher Jacques Derrida argued, the paradoxical heart of hospitality: calling it “hostipitality,” Derrida argues that hosts need guests to dispense hospitality and to be benefactors.

The guests thus look more like givers, not takers. They give the host the capacity to be generous, turning the tables of the hospitable encounter. Priam enables Achilles to be magnanimous.

What kinds of hosts are we, in the United States? Our national hospitality is conditional: we are not open-handed King Alcinous, and we definitely want to know the immigrant’s identity, to say nothing of every detail about his background.

And once the migrant is here, many conditions apply, as recent ICE arrests demonstrate. Migrants must be “good guests,” which apparently now means, like Priam, knowing when to leave.Ìę

Perhaps as Americans, we could be better hosts, realizing that our relationships with migrants are reciprocal: giving and receiving, benefactor and beneficiary, are reversible processes and roles. Guest-migrants give us the opportunity to be our best selves, generous and forgiving.

Right now, the Achilles-Priam episode is almost too meaningful, with its added poignancy about the return of the body of the dead enemy. In Gaza, Hamas fighters cling to their unwilling guests, dead and perhaps alive. In the earlier days of the war, a truce allowed the return and release of some. Now, Achilles’s gift of a twelve-day truce looks pretty generous.

Which Priam-like negotiator might be able to get a similar deal from the Palestinian fighters?Ìę Would they sit down to dinner? Would Hermes the messenger god be available as a guide and protector in enemy territory?

Immigrants and hostages: they play their parts in the drama of hospitality, which is as old as humanity itself and as fragile and dangerous as ever. But the good host and the good guest have the opportunity to achieve great things.

We can welcome our migrants with generosity and enlightened self-interest; and the wretched “guests” of Hamas can go home to their sorrowing fathers, after both sides have shared their grief and mutual sorrow.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ.

The Jewish calendar understands the three weeks between the 17th of Tammuz and 9th of Av as a time of intense mourning, when we remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Because of my childhood experiences, I used to have trouble associating destruction with summer. Not this summer.

During a late June heatwave, I used our local river – the Eno River – as a mikveh. On the Fourth of July, my family and I enjoyed a pool day with splash contests, coin-diving, and a greased watermelon competition. Two days later, our region, like Texas, was inundated in a . Flooding has happened throughout human history. However, with the onset of climate change, the intensity and frequency of flooding has dramatically increased, including just this week in the New York area.

The flooding killed several people including a member of our synagogue. It severely damaged homes, roads, and properties. Our local pool was eight feet underwater. The Eno River has been contaminated from leaked sewage and other pollutants. Riverside trails are closed indefinitely as officials evaluate the damage. I don’t know the next time I will be able to immerse in the Eno River safely.

It has felt like the three weeks started early.

On this first Shabbat of the three weeks, we will read a special haftarah: . Jeremiah was sent by God to warn Judah and Jerusalem of their impending destruction. He had the unenviable task of proclaiming to the people that their lives were about to rupture in ways they could not imagine.

In , God tells Jeremiah,

See, I appoint you on this day
Over nations and kingdoms:
To uproot and to pull down,
To destroy and to overthrow,
To build and to plant.
I used to read Jeremiah as a failed prophet. He was sent to warn Judah and Jerusalem of their impending destruction. Despite his warnings, they did not repent. Jerusalem was destroyed and its leaders taken into exile.

These days, I read Jeremiah differently. It may be that the destruction Jeremiah was tasked with proclaiming was unavoidable. Jeremiah was appointed to tell the truth of the devastation that would befall Jerusalem and to encourage people to find a way to live beyond it. It was never within Jeremiah’s power to avert disaster.

From this perspective, Jeremiah was a wildly successful prophet. He correctly proclaimed doom and hope. He did not deny the truth of the traumatic events facing Jerusalem. But as they unfolded, he was also able to give people hope amid the destruction of everything that they had ever known.

If you transpose the book of Jeremiah onto our times, Jeremiah could be prophesying about the climate crisis. We have all heard the warnings from climate scientists, and yet we have so far been unable to avoid barreling towards irreparable harm to our planet. Jeremiah’s language of “uproot” and “pull down” doesn’t even feel like a metaphor when surveying destruction from flooding.

However, Jeremiah doesn’t just proclaim uprooting, pulling down, destroying, and overthrowing. Jeremiah also encourages Judeans to build and plant. He encourages resilience in the face of unspeakable tragedy. He encourages hope amidst despair.

Before destruction comes, it is hard to imagine or prepare for it. But after destruction comes, it can be hard to find hope.

The season of the three weeks is an invitation to find a dynamic balance between hope and despair. Not only can we imagine destruction on a scale we have never seen, we can also imagine what it might look like to build, plant, and thrive after the unimaginable has occurred.

Views expressed in this column are the author’s own and not necessarily those of ŸĂŸĂÈÈ. The original article appears inÌę.