The events shaking the Islamic world are an essential part of the human need for freedom.  The very thought of freedom causes tremors in the halls of power where denial of freedom is customary, malicious and misguided.  Religious people are especially prone to fear real freedom, and they frequently join the political fearmongerers when they assume that freedom leads to chaos.  When people decide to march towards freedom there is no law that can stop them, and the only recourse the establishments have is violence.  Egypt, facing the loud and determined voice of its people, has an unprecedented opportunity to build a nation on the highest ideals, and will waste it by allowing the “Pharaoh” to build another pyramid.

Egypt’s value to the western powers is problematic.  Sadat, who set the bar extremely high, is clearly not Mubarak’s mentor.   Sadat was a hated man: a peace-maker who lost his life at the hands of Islamic militants.  Mubarak has his eyes on Pharaonic power: decades of police repression of his people, an increasing militarization of the government, and a Mubarak dynasty.  He is about to lose all.  His name ius already a faded entry in the so-called noble peacemaking process with the State of Israel and Islamic friendship with the United States.

Mobs, like the ones surfacing in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, are everywhere.  They pop up on Parliament Hill in both the senate and Parliament, on Capitol Hill, on the popular media, radio and television.  They incite anger and fear, foster division and ignorance, in their delusion that democracy is a sacred cow.  Their love of truth has little to do with a sense of community and faith or love, and they most certainly offer no hope but the endless conflict and debate that has characterized the trail of western powers.  A pyramid of truth wuld be helpful at this juncture in human history.   The pyramids of religion and capitalism are desined for the trash heap, and they will be lucky if anything is left to wow, puzzle and thrill archaeologists.

Egypt’s nation-building project is unprecedented.  There is no invasion,  no coalition of the willing, nothing more than mild warnings to an inveterate brutal dictator.  This Egyptian project uncharacterustically has only a handful of Egyptians on the job but a host of international helpers.  Whatever comes out of the fire will not last for even 7 years.  The Egyptian magnates and imams will ensure its demise through their interminable claims of superiority.  Alas,  this pyramid bites the dust.

There are resolutions, revolutions, and remakes happening all the time, and people see New Year seasons as particularly opportune for changing their lives.  Even when the change is essentially external people often miss the opportunity to move their personal issues – character, desires, and intellect – to a new level.   We would be hard-pressed to find someone who wished to move to a lower level, so we assume that “Happy New Year” usually means happier, better and – I dare say – more challenging (than last) year.  Happiness in the new year, like beauty, is in the eyes of  the beholder, and ought to include a new you.

New homes, schools, partners and jobs are exciting transitions and steps.  They confirm our upward trajectory, but these kinds of changes also face the hindrance of an unchanged perspective.  People who take vacations in foreign lands usually come back to their residence to face the same problems with the same tools and resources.  Would it not be great it we really left our cold, busy world  behind?  With 21st century technology linking us to almos everything we leave behind on a vacation, it is no wonder that vacations are merely a distraction, because for many, life on vacation continues as usual.

The options for a new perspective, a new you/me, are not many.  The cosmetic remakes are not all they are cracked up to be, and we are NOT what we eat.  A new you may revolve around a weight reduction, a change in assignment, or an ideological shift.  Most individuals need a revolution, a reversal of their thinking, and the further one can move from “life as usual” the better the chances of a new person emerging. 

A happy and new you would make your peers and colleagues stop and say “Hmmm, I want what s/he has”.  If the new you is not surprising it is probably not worth the effort.  So, by all means, get the new things, but get (into) the new inner-you.  It is not as distant or difficult as most people imagine.  A happy new you is as big as your dream and as close as the words of fidelity you speak to yourself.  Go for it: a happy new you, yeah!

The saying goes “Happy New Year” but even the 10-second rush as one year ends and another begins is not always happy.  One may be dragged into the transition by tradition or a zealous partner.   Some people saying “Happy New Year” are known to be struggling with bereavement and a host of ills.  Transitions, like New Year celebrations, provide an opportunity to hope and plan for better things, but hiding in the corner are the terminal illnesses that have restrained human progress for centuries.

Perhaps the most famous transition is the “War to End all Wars”, a disappointing turn for sure.  A close second is the creation of the League of Nations (the predecessor of the United Nations).  I recently came across a turning point in the return of the Hebrew people to Palestine.  The leadership was as zealous as can be, but a terminal illness was shaping the transition into a fatal venture.

In my recent essay Ezra, Scribe and Zealot I uncovered a maze of inconsitencies and a web of injustices.  The treatment of aliens hit a new low, as Ezra forced Jewish men and women to divorce their alien spouses.  To add insult to injury Ezra ordered the children “sent away”. 

The inability of the leadership to speak to and care for the alien spouses and their half-breed children shows  an incredible lack of vision, absent initiative, and an unsepakable low in interpersonal morality. 

Since Ezra’s appeal was to the constitution of the Israelite nation one has little to hope that transitions guarantee security and progress, especially when one is constrained to look back to traditions and sources of reliable guidance.  His zeal for the Law blinded him to common decency and stymied any chance that relations with Gentiles would ever take its place at the centre of Abraham’s vision for a global family of faithful.  Ezra’s campaingn for Jewish racial purity put him in a sobering conflict of interest with the Persian government.  After all, it was a Persian (Gentile)  monarch who had responded to God’s call to restore the Jewish exiles to Palestine, complete with financial and military support.  The Jew-Gentile worldview held by many observers is still a fatal illness which, if allowed to persist, will further corrupt the goowdill that should be at the core of revolutionary thinking, renewal movements and transitions.