Some of the terms and places used may be unfamiliar, please look them up.

1. Tzaadi has traveled on four continents but has never been below the equator.

2. For years, Tzaadi dreamed of becoming a writer but until recently never pursued it seriously.

3. Since he was seven, he has been encouraged to become a minister (and later, a rabbi), but still thinks that’s a choice for someone else.

4. Once had a world ranking of 289 in amateur tennis (1972) and captained every school tennis team he played for.

5. Scored 27 points in a college basketball game for his club team (The Rainbow Club: 2 Blacks, ‘Rodriguez the Puerto Rican’, ‘The’ Hawaiian, and 6′ 9″ John ‘the strong White boy from D.C.’). We won the club championship then absolutely destroyed our varsity team which was defending conference champion. The varsity coach was a bigot who benched many of us our freshmen year. We had something to prove.

6. Has been dreaming about a quiet life, married with kids, living in another country.

7. G-d willing, will never retire, opting instead to work happily until death.

8. Was part of the first group of students (8 among 1200) to desegregate the public school system in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

9. Is still miffed about his childhood stamp collection (many from colonial Africa and pre-war Europe) and rare stones collection (including Devonian fossils found in Binghamton, NY and geodes) discarded by his parents.

10. Had the beginnings of a global consciousness at age 9 when his parents gave him the best gift ever, a lighted globe of the world. I found it on eBay last year and will buy it when I can afford it. I remember spinning the globe with my eyes closed and making a wish to someday to travel to the first country I landed on. I landed on India. Twelve years later, I was there.

11. Believes that the existence of so many different cultures is proof that religious exclusivity is a false god.

12. Laments the destruction of indigenous peoples worldwide. They are older and perhaps wiser than us, just not as powerful.

13. Knows that he is ‘gilgul’, a reincarnated Jewish soul.

14. Wore only a loin cloth and hunted with bow and arrow with the Kondha tribal people of India for a month.

15. Believes that people who wish for the end of the world and ‘righteous judgment’ are misguided, selfish and criminally lazy.

16. Was very happy as a teacher and wants to be happier as a mentor.

17. Once read passages from the mystical traditions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam for a group of ministers, rabbis and imams and challenged them to tell him which traditions each passage came from. Out of six read, only the imam knew that a particular passage was Sufi. The others claimed their own traditions.

18. Absolutely loves poetry particularly that of medieval, Middle Eastern poets, Rumi and Shalom Shabezi.

19. Wants his epitaph to be inscribed in Hebrew, Arabic, French, Igbo, Telugu and English.

20. Occasionally wears silk ties and silk boxers, though usually not at the same time…though once the combination was the start to a really great evening.

21. Cuts his own hair and needs to do that soon.

22. Was saved from drowning in India by Charlie Lindley who now is a psychiatrist in Massachusetts.

23. Remembers the afternoon he spent in Jericho drinking tea with Palestinians. Later that day, he braved a snowy nor’easter to sing Lecha Dodi at Ha’Ari Ashkenazi Synagogue in Tsfat (Safed) where it was written.

24. Understands linguistic exogamy and admires the cultures that practice it.

25. Watched a total lunar eclipse rise at sunset from the Bay of Bengal.

May The Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

My first memories of it are from childhood. My pastor recited it during the Benediction and my grandmother and father often whispered it to me as I feel asleep. I passed on that family tradition to my son, saying it lovingly into his ears at bed time. That it is still chanted daily in churches and synagogues worldwide, is indicative of its importance to Judeo-Christian tradition. But where does it come from? A bit of research reveals the prayer’s Jewish roots.

It first appears in the Torah (Old Testament), in Bamidbar (Numbers) chapter 6, verses 23-27 as a directive from G-d to Moses to his brother Aaron, high priest of Israel, to bless the people. Known as the Birkat Kohanim (beer-khat ko-ha-neem), the ‘blessing of the priests’, it is the oldest known Biblical text yet unearthed by archaeologists. Amulets with these verses have been found in burial chambers dating from the First Temple Period of Solomon, beginning over 3,000 years ago.

When spoken by rabbis, it is accompanied by the simple ritual of spreading hands out over the congregation, with the fingers of each hand splayed open in roughly ‘W’ shape.

hand blessing

The ‘W’ resembles the Hebrew letter Shin, the first letter in Shaddai, the Hebrew name of G-d as Protector. Thus the ritual saying of this prayer echoes the priestly responsibility to channel the protective power of G-d to the people.

Hebrew Shin

If the blessing’s hand placement looks the least bit familiar, it should. Try this on for size:

Vulcan Hand Salute

Leonard Nimoy, who was raised in a traditional Jewish home, used a single-handed version of this gesture to create the Vulcan Hand Salute for his character, Mr. Spock. He explains that while attending Orthodox services as a child, he saw the gesture. Many years later, when introducing the character of Mr. Spock, he and series creator Gene Roddenberry thought a physical component should accompany the verbal “Live long and prosper” greeting. The Jewish priestly gesture looked sufficiently alien and mysterious, and thus television and science fiction history was made.

Back in the 80′s, my word hobby received a weekly boost when National Public Radio aired a series with wordsmith and poet, the late John Ciardi. If you’re interested, a few podcasts from the series have been reposted on the NPR website. No matter what I was doing on Fridays, I found time to listen in on him to get my weekly fix. Some of those sessions hold a prominent place in memory, continuing to inspire. For me, the older the origin, the truer the meaning. Discovering the origins of a word is like archeology or time-travel. However, I don’t ‘need no’ fedora like Indiana Jones or an imagination like H.G. Wells, just pajamas (where does that come from?…oh it’s Persian!), a fast Net connection and Wikipedia, Google or the OED online (Oxford English Dictionary). By the way the word ‘fedora’ comes from ‘Fédora’, a popular French play by Victorien Sardou (1831-1908) that opened in 1882. The heroine, a Russian princess named Fédora Romanoff, was originally performed by Sarah Bernhardt, actress and notorious cross-dresser.

Here are a few discoveries:

Copacetic, (or copasetic or sometimes, as in Black vernacular, ‘copastetic’) meaning ‘very acceptable’, ‘just fine’. ‘Everything is copacetic’.

According to Ciardi, copacetic originates in the Hebrew phrase ‘(ha) kol beseder’, (literally ‘all in [the] order’) meaning ‘everything is alright’. The Seder or ‘order’ is the ritualistic retelling of the Exodus annually for Pesach (Passover).

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Ignite, meaning to ‘set on fire’. Virtually every dictionary will tell you that ignite and its derivations originate in the Latin ‘ignis’ or ‘fire’.

However it actually comes from PIE or the Proto-Indo-European language and cultures associated with it. The root of ignite emerges from the Vedic culture of India, thousands of years older than Rome. In the Indian classical language, Sanskrit, ‘agni’ or ‘fire’ is both a noun and a deity. Agni is the god of fire, lightning and the sun.

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Lufthansa, the German airline, is a combination of two words from the Sanskrit, ‘lupth’ meaning ‘air’ or ‘invisible’ (‘luft’ is ‘air’ in German) and ‘hansa’ meaning ‘swan’. When the air service first started, the aircraft they employed were pure white, resembling huge white swans as they disappeared into the distance.

Lufthansa Airlines logo

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Abracadabra (sometimes spelled Abrakadabra) is a word used as an incantation or theatrically by stage magicians.

The original Hebrew and later Aramaic was either ‘avda kedavra’, which means, “what was said has been done,” or ‘avra kedavra’, which means “what was said has come to pass.” Over time, it was corrupted to its current pronunciation with the replacement of both “v” sounds with “b” sounds (b and v can be interchangeable in Aramaic).

More recently, it was an incantation to be used as a cure for fevers and inflammations. The first known European mention was in the 2nd century CE (Common Era) in a poem called ‘De Medicina Praecepta’ by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who prescribed that the sufferer from the disease wear an amulet containing the word written in the form of an inverted cone.

Abracadabra as an amulet

Of late, we hear ‘Avra Kedavra’ in the Harry Potter series of books as a killing curse, but this is a gross debasement of its original intent. The original Hebrew ‘avara kedavara’, in a religious context, describes the matter-producing, life-giving utterance of G-d that created the Universe.

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We are inundated with words of African origins, but true to form, etymologists that study the roots of Indo-European languages typically overlook them, assuming that little of African origin is of real substance. So we are left with commodity words like banjo (Bantu), banana (Wolof), coffee (Amharic), jazz (Mandinke), jamboree (Swahili), mojo (Fulani), okra (Igbo) and many others.

In my research, I found one extraordinary African concept marginalized to a criminal degree. Before being sullied by Europeans, the word nigger (originally pronounced ‘en-jer’) was revered as the ‘divine epithet’ of the ancient Egyptians, who called themselves Kemites and their land ‘Kemet’, the ‘Black Land’ or ‘Ta-Merri’, the ‘Beloved Land’. N-G-R (‘en-jer’), a word without vowels like many classical languages such as ancient Egyptian or biblical Hebrew, was the word for G-d. In Kemetic society, the word for ‘nature’ which is interchangeable with deity, was ‘N-Y-T-R’ (‘net-jer’). Pronounce ‘net-jer’ then ‘nigger’ and one hears a clear, but problematic connection.

In many African languages particularly the Niger-Congo language family, words that connect with people, gods and groups often begin with ‘n’. For instance, the word ‘Nkosi’ in Xhosa (South Africa) is ‘god’. The word ‘Ndaba’ in Zulu (South Africa) is ‘council or gathering of elders’. ‘Negus’ in Amharic (Ethiopia) is ‘emperor’.

In this context, the study of word origins becomes significant. By knowing who I am, racist remarks and racial epithets become impotent. Every time someone uses ‘nigger’ to refer to a Black person, they are actually calling that person ‘god’.

Teach this to your children. It makes a difference.

The preeminence we enjoy as Americans is neither a divine right nor a gift. We earned it. We became a great nation because our great grandparents, grandparents and parents answered the call and accomplished what no nation had done before.

Now the call is upon us again, but the landscape is very different. China and India both are hungrier for preeminence than we are. And, based on sheer numbers alone, their opportunities for success are greater. For example, China graduates 250,000 engineers a year, compared with 50,000 in the U.S. To recharge our dwindling lead, we must educate ourselves better than they do. We must create new opportunities for this great nation and KEEP those opportunities HERE rather than selling them to our national competition.

I have a very small job with UPS, currently the greatest shipping company on the planet. Every night I see the results of exported American technology when planeloads of PCs built with our manufacturing, design and software know-how arrive here in Louisville. Dell and H-P ship tens of thousands of their products daily from China. In my two years at UPS Freight, I’ve watched the volume of imports from Asia and Latin America increase significantly. During that time, our American shipping volume has remained essentially flat. America is producing less at home, opting instead to close factories in Ohio and Michigan and relocate them to Mexico or China.

In this context, I see in this report my opportunity to do something about guaranteeing American preeminence. I can provide superior service to my customers. If given the opportunity to ship early, I can take it. When a shipment is due tomorrow and we still have the opportunity to make flight or truck it, I can take it…even if it means exhorting my employees to stay a few more minutes. And why? Not because FedEx has its Louisville operations down the street. It’s because I know that there is a younger person in China, with more energy and better grades, who has to make the same decision.

Now is the time to demonstrate that we are the greatest nation in the world. We have much work to do. As a nation, we have to become hungrier, leaner and more competitive. As a necessary first step, we must become less divisive and learn again to be a nation.

Next, take nothing for granted. Asian economies are strong and growing partly because workers there realize there is always someone waiting in line for the opportunity to replace them. Unfortunately, we too often assume that our livelihoods and current national preeminence is a birthright. Wrong.

Finally, replace rhetoric with action. We can no longer afford to sit back and tell each other how great America is. That lip service falls on deaf ears in Asia anyway. Regardless of predicted trends of waning American influence, we need to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Whatever work that is, do your very best. It has implications that are greater than yourself…it has the potential of keeping our nation great.

Apparently Peter Schiff did…back in 2006. Schiff points to the low savings rate of the United States as its worst malady, citing the transformation from being the world’s largest creditor nation in the 1970s to the largest debtor nation by the year 2000.

Fortunately, it appears at least other investments I made will weather the recession we find ourselves in. And yet, I have resumed saving my hard-earned money like my life depends on it. Certainly my quality of living does.

Do yourself a favor and watch this video. A penny saved IS a penny earned.

1 Whole Chicken
Paprika (preferably Hungarian)
baking pan
tablespoon for basting, small dish to hold the spoon

Set the oven to 350 F. I use an old one where the actual temps are suspect but works just fine. Wash the chicken well in cool water, removing the gizzard and other ‘parts’ you might find stuffed in it. Set the chicken in the baking pan and rub in lots of paprika covering the entire chicken in a couple of coats of that wonderful paprika red. I always pretend I’m giving deep massage to the chicken, thanking it for its sacrifice.

After the rubdown, I wash my red hands and place the chicken in the oven. After 30 minutes, I check it. By now the skin is taut and browning, and just a bit of juice drippings are there for basting. I tilt up the pan letting the juices flow from the open end of the chicken. Initially, I might get a couple of spoonfuls of drippings to baste with. After another 15 minutes, I do the basting again and now have enough juice to cover the entire chicken and all its crevasses. That’s all that’s to this recipe. Just keep basting every 15 minutes after the initial basting, until the chicken is done. For my ancient oven, that’s usually 2 hours. And that’s all it takes! Because of my schedule, I serve it spartan-style with a couple of slices of breast meat next to a full plate of salad. It’s also great with steamed or sauteed broccoli and a sweet potato.

The symbiosis between the chicken juice and paprika gives it incredible flavor and is great for those on salt-restricted diets (or should be). In fact, it must be good because on the nights that I cook before heading off to 3rd shift at UPS, I leave the chicken covered to cool. When I do that there always a leg missing and bleached-white and gnawed bones in the garbage on my return. Apparently my sister can’t resist.

Now I have one more reason to get that digital camera. Y’all must see the finished product!

Worldwide some 300 million people retain strong identities as members of indigenous cultures, cultures rooted in their own history, their own languages and attached by memories to their particular places on the Earth. These cultures are old and represent much of the collective experience and intelligence of humanity. And yet, increasingly their voices are being silenced, their unique visions lost in the firestorm of change, conflict, globalization and encroachment from societies that marginalize those different from themselves.

National Geographic Explorer Wade Davis has done as much as anyone else on the planet to celebrate the diversity of the world’s indigenous cultures. In this speech given at TED 2003, he gives us a glimpse of his deep experiences among the extraordinary peoples he’s encountered…the very ones disappearing right in front of our eyes.