Hasta La Gadget!

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There are several names for the fourth book of the Torah. In Hebrew it is titled Bamidbar, “in the wilderness,” because the book describes events that occur as the Israelites journey through the wilderness of Sinai on their way to the Promised Land. But “Numbers,” the name by which it is most familiar to us and which comes from the Septuagint, the Greek translation, is fitting because the book opens with God’s command to Moses that he “number” the Israelites, that he count them: “On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the Exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, saying: Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head.”

From then till now, the Jewish people’s strength has never been in numbers. Indeed our status as a religious minority has resulted in our persecution across history and the globe. That is why we count our acceptance in America such a blessing. Rabbi Alexander Schindler, the Reform Movement’s former president, once wrote: “Everywhere else in our wanderings we suffered persecution; never here. In all other countries there was an established faith; here there is none. That is why…the separation of church and state is a gut issue for American Jews…[and] why we prize the First Amendment as the very cornerstone of our liberties.”

And that is why the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway allowing sectarian religious invocations at local government meetings is so upsetting.

The case stretches back to 2007 when two citizens of Greece, New York outside Rochester complained that meetings of the town opened almost exclusively with Christian invocations. For nine years running, every prayer had been Christian. Believing such a practice to violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause, they sued the town.

The Court’s decision handed down at the beginning of May was close, 5-4. One notes that its Jewish members all voted against the ruling, including Justice Elena Kagan who wrote for the minority. “I would hold that the government officials responsible for the above practices — that is, for prayer repeatedly invoking a single religion’s beliefs in these settings — crossed a constitutional line,” she said.

The religious right, which decries any attempt to remove sectarian religious expression from the government square as a “war on religion,” is hailing the court’s decision as a “great victory” for religious freedom — but in doing so, turns the meaning of “religious freedom” on its head. Listen to the perverse rationale of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty’s Eric Rassbach, who claimed after the ruling: “Prayers like these…demonstrate our nation’s religious diversity.”

Nothing could be further from the truth! How does prayer consistently Christological in nature demonstrate diversity? There are pockets of this country where small minorities — Jews, Muslims and others — struggle to maintain their identity and sense of belonging. When they attend their towns’ Memorial Day gatherings, all they hear are prayers of someone else’s faith.

Many leaders in the American Jewish community share my view, but not all. The Orthodox Union welcomed the Court’s decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway. And in his recent piece in The Jewish Week, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion sociologist and professor Steven M. Cohen suggested that as discrimination against American Jews has given way to our widespread acceptance, conditions no longer warrant our heightened concern over the separation of church and state, and that for our increasingly assimilated Jewish community the presence of greater religion in public life could encourage affiliation and engagement.

I reject that conclusion. It is my job to engage our people Jewishly, not the government’s.

Now having said this, I am not opposed to prayer or expressions of faith in government settings. I think it is even helpful for communal leaders to be reminded that their labor on behalf of the people they represent constitutes a sacred trust. In the ruling, all nine justices — including the four in the minority — supported the practice of legislative prayer affirmed as constitutional in 1983 when in Marsh v. Chambers Chief Justice Warren Burger noted that the same week of September 1789 the First Congress finalized the language of the Bill of Rights they also authorized a paid Presbyterian chaplain to open their deliberations. So the framers saw no contradiction. Three years ago, in fact, I was invited to deliver an invocation on the floor of the House of Representatives.

But the instructions given me were clear — that my words should recognize the diversity present in the chamber. And that is what is disappointing about this ruling: Not its support of legislative prayer, but the low bar it establishes for a prayer’s permissibility. The standard that it not “denigrate nonbelievers or religious minorities, threaten damnation, or preach conversion” is just not high enough. As Justice Kagan wrote, “Every citizen, irrespective of her religion, owns an equal share in her government.” None should be made to feel otherwise.

Ultimately the courts interpret the framers’ intent. But this ruling should raise serious concerns for us, a people few in number whose survival and prosperity in America were made possible only by the First Amendment’s protections; a people summoned by our history to build a just and compassionate society for all.

It was the twilight of the iguana.
From the rainbow-arched battlements
his tongue like a dart plunged into the greenness… — “Algunas bestias” (Some Beasts), Pablo Neruda

Imagine: For nearly 30 years, a valuable patch of resort real estate on Mexico’s Caribbean coast is left as an accidental nature preserve — chiefly for uncounted gray, green and striped iguanas. Twelve acres of dense jungle scrub, tucked incongruously between a pricey, beachfront timeshare development, and Paseo Kukulcan, Cancun’s main commercial drag. Yet it remained untouched as hotels, condos and businesses grew up around it. I know this because for three decades I have been coming to the resort complex with my family, marveling at the seeming oversight, peering through the green, chain link fence at dozens of dozing, basking iguanas just inside.

Then, several years ago, signs went up announcing that the pristine acreage would soon become the site of a new Maya Museum of Cancun. For the crested, wrinkled amphibians lazing unmolested in the tropical sun, the billboards could mean only one thing: There goes the neighborhood. A virtual biosphere sacrificed for another cheap show to siphon tourists’ dollars.

Of course, this would be nothing new for Yucatan, where modest natural wonders are routinely transformed into amped, antiseptic, overhyped and overpriced theme parks, as reminiscent of Orlando’s attractions as Cancun’s hotel zone has become of Miami Beach. But surprisingly, the Museo Maya de Cancun, which opened in November of 2012, is a tasteful facility, expertly-designed by Alberto Garcia Lascuráin, with a minimalist footprint, 4,400 square feet of exhibition space. Perched on pillars 32 feet above the ground to protect it from storm surges, the $15 million cost was shared by The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the state of Quintana Roo.

The park is so new there is no English catalog or guide book in the gift shop. Still, it’s a great place to spend a few hours on a rainy day, indoors in the museum or sheltered by the dense, low jungle canopy surrounding it. Regardless of the weather, it’s a haven for a brief, soothing, respite from Cancun’s otherwise sybaritic pace. Already it has some unlikely fans: “I went with my family,” said Rabbi Mendel Druk, of Chabad of Cancun. “I was happy that finally Cancun got a museum to bring more culture to the locals and visitors.”

After paying an entrance fee of about five dollars in pesos (Mexicans and Cancun residents enter free on Sundays), visitors ascend a circular, Guggenheim Museum-like ramp — there are two elevators for strollers and wheelchairs.

The three halls, one reserved for rotating and traveling exhibits, are on a single level. Included are more than 350 archaeological artifacts, in particular plates and pottery with delicate designs, masks and human figures in burnt orange, some displayed for the first time. One wing, devoted to the Maya of all of Mexico, on the right, features large bas-reliefs and dramatic clay heads. Flat screen TVs loop through well-produced mini-documentaries with English subtitles, like one on Tulum’s Sun God. A third hall is reserved for rotating and traveling exhibits.

The other wing, on the left, is devoted to the Maya of Quintana Roo State, and is much better lit, thanks to floor-to-ceiling glass walls in one corner offering a dramatic vista of Nichipute Lagoon, which separates the Hotel Zone from the mainland. Enhanced lighting makes the English texts and captions easier to read. However, one caption next to a modern sepia photo in the Quintana Roo wing has no English text – for understandable reasons. It describes the 1847-1901 Caste War of Yucatan, one of the bloodiest and most successful indigenous uprisings in the Western Hemisphere. During the war, the Maya killed hundreds of Spanish creoles, and drove the rest the light-skinned colonials from most of the Yucatan peninsula. Not a comfortable message to communicate to U.S. and European tourists.

A recent article in the magazine Science has focused attention on the jewel of the exhibit: a replica of a 13,000-year-old skeleton, known as “The Woman of the Palms.” The original relic was discovered thirteen years ago in Tulum in one of the underwater caverns called cenotes, and has been studied by the forensic archaeologists. Results of their DNA study, reported in Science, suggests that the girl, who researchers have named “Naia,” is descended from the Western Hemisphere’s first immigrants, from Asia. The original skeleton will eventually be displayed in Cancun, according to museum officials.

The museum complex occupies a relatively small corner of of the green acreage, just 55,000 square feet. Beyond, some of the original jungle scrub on what had been a coconut farm has been thinned or removed for paths and some formal landscaping beneath the museum. There has also been excavation and reconstruction of modest Mayan ruins on what was the San Miguelito Ranch, the most complete of which is the 26-foot-high Great Pyramid. Visible through the surviving banyan trees, some hosting termite nests, are a few piles of stumps and cleared underbrush, as well as new tropical growth.

When the mid-19th century American adventurer and explorer John Lloyd Stephens crisscrossed the Yucatan peninsula, one of the wildlife wonders he observed, “running across the road and up the trees [were] innumerable iguanas or lizards, from an inch to three feet long.” Today, the iguanas are still here on the museum grounds, although in nothing like the numbers in years past. (Or as they still are at the El Rey ruins up the road – for that reason alone a favorite of children, including my own and their cousins.) A sign in English and Spanish reads: “Help us care for the animals and pets of this region. This is their ecosystem and they will only survive here. If you injure or feed them or take them out of their natural environment they will die.” (INFORMAL TRANSLATION: LEAVE THE IGUANAS ALONE!)

In a way, the museum and grounds are sad but inevitable. If the practical choice was to bulldoze the site for commercial development, or preserve it in some form as a cultural artifact and a reduced habitat for the iguanas, then the government has made a good bargain.

The debate over this year’s transportation reauthorization bill has taken an important turn, as legislators, the public and the media are giving serious thought to a White House proposal that would allow states to toll existing Interstate highways to pay for their reconstruction.

But a curious thing happened on the road to more flexible highway infrastructure funding.

After the White House released its four-year, $302-billion highway bill earlier this month, observers began attributing greater power and potential to tolling than even the most ardent tolling advocate would ever claim. Somehow, inaccurately, tolling to fund states’ transportation budgets became tied up with the even more dire condition of the federal Highway Trust Fund (HTF).

The HTF will fall into insolvency as early as August unless Congress moves to replenish it. With billions of dollars in urgent highway projects in jeopardy, and tens of thousands of jobs hanging in the balance, it needs serious attention.

But tolling is a different conversation. Using tolls to fund Interstate highway reconstruction would not add any new money to the Highway Trust Fund.

The tolling provision would stretch a state’s federal dollars, allowing state and local authorities to assign their scarce federal dollars to other essential road projects. In that way, the Administration plan positions tolling as a central part of the solution to the long-term challenge of funding a trillion dollar plus Interstate reconstruction program. But it isn’t a short-term fix for the HTF.

The difference matters because voters are rightly concerned about where their transportation dollars are spent, and where they come from.

When we’re out on the road, trying to get from Point A to Point B in a reasonable period of time, we don’t think too closely about how our roads are paid for. The important thing to remember is there are no free roads. The only question is how it’s paid for:

• With tolling, users pay a direct users fee for the roads they use.
• We all benefit from non-tolled roads, where operating and maintenance costs are covered primarily by fuel taxes. But, the federal gas tax hasn’t been increased in 20 years and that’s one of the reasons why the federal Highway Trust Fund is on the verge of bankruptcy.

Either way, it takes a continual flow of dollars to keep a highway safe and reliable. As with any other kind of infrastructure, from power lines and water mains to your own furnace or roof, it’s dangerous and costly to fall behind on repairs and upkeep.

So it’s a good thing to have several options to fund our highways. There’s a vast difference between a crowded commuter road in parts of Texas, Florida or California, a rural route in Wyoming or New Mexico, and a freight corridor in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. States need flexibility to choose the funding options that best meet their needs, with tolling as an essential, proven tool in the toolbox.

The Administration’s transportation bill points to an important funding and financing tool that is proven and accepted in 35 states. Americans already make more than five billion trips per year on more than 5,000 miles of tolled roads and crossings. Drivers on a modern, all-electronic toll road get to pay their tolls at highway speed, rather than stopping at a toll booth and hunting for change.

And contrary to some of the misinformation that has circulated during the transportation reauthorization debate, toll collection on a mature, all-electronic tolling system is comparable to the cost of collecting the gas tax. It certainly helps no one to tout out-of-date figures that misstate actual costs.

America’s highway network is incredibly diverse, and no single funding option is right for every circumstance. Tolls are not a silver bullet to solve the highway infrastructure funding crisis–any more than the gas tax will ever recover from the rise of more fuel-efficient vehicles.

That’s why states need a mix of funding options, and the authority to use them as they see fit. Which explains the flurry of excitement that accompanied the Administration bill. After years of discussion and several Congressional commissions, momentum is finally building for a long-term, sustainable solution to the highway infrastructure crisis. And for the first time in more than half a century, the possibility of tolling the Interstates to pay for their reconstruction has entered the general political vernacular.

There will be many more twists and turns on the road to a final reauthorization bill, but this is a pivotal moment. It’s important to understand what the Administration bill sets out to achieve, and what it does not.

This week I hosted a roundtable discussion about the state of Black owned and operated advertising agencies. As America becomes more multicultural, many corporations have begun taking a total market approach when trying to reach consumers, rather than looking at distinct cultural attributes of multicultural segments. This, according to my guests, is leading to the decline of long-standing Black agencies.

In the following clip, McGhee Williams Osse, co-CEO of Burrell Communications Group, talks about the shortsightedness of the total market strategy and its impact on Black advertising agencies.

Be sure to listen to our full conversation airing on The Tavis Smiley Show from PRI at http://www.tavissmileyradio.com.