Counting the Omer: Saturday Night, 4 June 2016/28 Iyar 5776

Today is Day One of Week Seven of the Omer.  That is Forty-three Days of the Omer.  The Theme is:  Seven Principles

So here we are, starting the seventh and final week of the annual countdown from Pesach to Shavu’ot, known as Sefirat Ha-omer:  The Counting of the Omer.  It is customary during this time of the year, to become a little more serious and contemplative.  Shavu’ot represents the anniversary of the Sinai event.  We should experience each special Jewish day that commemorates a past event, as if we were experiencing the actual event present tense.  We therefore endeavour to prepare our hearts to receive the Torah, just as if Moses was even now ascending the mountain.

          I’ve devoted five full weeks of these daily thoughts, to the subject of Happiness, because I think there is no more important subject.  Being Happy is not just a desirable state, it is nothing short of an obligation.  And in truth, it is not always an easy obligation to fulfil.  First and foremost, because most of us go through life not even understanding what Happiness truly is.  And then, assuming we’ve crossed that hurdle, there are so many distractions along the way.  Sometimes it seems like happiness is, well, just hard work!  So many of us anaesthetise ourselves, seeking comfort and solace in things which are definitely not Happiness.

          Today, I’m going to start the final week of thoughts by digging up the seven most profound lessons of life that I’ve encountered.  These lessons are not original to me; they come from the late Dr. Stephen Covey, from his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  In presenting these ‘habits’ as life principles, I don’t mean to pre-empt Dr. Covey’s book.  If you haven’t yet read it, please find yourself a copy – or download it for your Kindle – and read.  For many people, myself included, Seven Habits has been life-changing.  Although it somehow gets classified as a ‘business book’ on some lists, it really has little to do with business – except that the insights one gains from it cannot but help you in business, or any other life path.  So, enjoy my daily thoughts based on the Seven Habits – but also order the book!

          The First of the Seven Habits is:  Be Proactive.  Most of us are familiar with the word, ‘proactive,’ which was actually coined by Dr. Covey.  It’s commonly thought of as the opposite of ‘reactive’ and that is Covey’s intent.  But in many people’s minds, it refers to the temporal realm meaning ‘act before something happens, rather than after.’  Now this is pretty good advice:  anticipate needs and prepare for them, rather than flailing around to account for circumstances as they occur.  It’s hard to argue that point.  But in truth, this is not what Covey had in mind when he coined ‘proactive.’

          Be Proactive means to act on Principle rather than circumstance.  It’s really much more profound than just getting a leg up on what might occur.  It means to be firm in our support of the principles that support your core values.  It means to work to brush asides emotions that can become overheated, and act in a way that supports what you believe to be right.  This is not easy to do.  First of all, because most of us are not truly aware of what our underlying core values are.  We know what we want.  But to know what values motivate you comes only after a process of self-searching and discernment.  The second big impediment to acting on principle is our prizing pragmatism.  Being pragmatic – acting according to circumstance – is usually more efficient and, at least in an immediate sense, effective – than being dogmatic.  And some pragmatism is probably a good thing.  We can’t always choose our world, or choose our battles.  Sometimes we do have to go along to get along.  We can’t fight every day of our lives.  But excessive pragmatism leads to moral complacency.  We would be well-advised, then, to stop to think about every sticky situation – obviously, when we have the luxury of time to think! – and decide to violate our principles only in situations where we can see a clear, long-term benefit in doing so and are willing to stick to our long-term plans.

          Every time I am put in the position of acting on circumstance, I ask myself:  If I’m going to Be Proactive, what am I going to do here?  Often, I have stuck to my principles at a great cost, and that’s okay.  Sometimes, I’ve decided not to take up the battle.  I have, from time to time, regretted either course – usually, because the results were not what I’d hoped for.  But the important thing is to be able to sleep well at night or, to put it differently, to be able to look yourself in the eye – in the bathroom mirror, every morning.  At the end of the day, that’s what matters in life.  A good week, all!

Counting the Omer: Friday Night, 3 June 2016/27 Iyar 5776

Harambe the gorilla

Today is Day Seven of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Forty-two Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

As we inaugurate Shabbat – and complete the sixth of seven weeks of the Omer, I wish to add one more thought concerning animals.  Not necessarily household pets, also including wild animals.

          Dennis Prager, a prominent American-Jewish social commentator whom I cite from time to time, likes to ask a question of high school students.  Would you first save a drowning dog, or a drowning stranger?  He has been asking the question over 40 years, and results have been quite consistent.  About a third would save the dog, a third would save the stranger, and a third didn’t know what they’d do.

          Prager reports (in a 2013 column) that a Professor Richard Topolski and colleagues, took Prager’s superficial research to a different level.  They surveyed some 500 people, but the questions were far more nuanced than Prager’s.  They found that the answers varied, depending on the closeness of the relationship to the person drowning – it was not ‘automatically’ a stranger – and the respondent’s ‘relationship’ to the dog in question.  Perhaps predictably, for immediate family the person would be more inclined to save the drowning person first.  As the relationship with the person grew more tenuous, to where the person became a complete stranger, the preference for saving the dog first increased steadily.

          This result should not have surprised me much.  Like you, for many years I have heard my dog-owning friends and relatives gush about how their pets are members of the family and just like a human.  I’ve listened to ageing parents whose grown children have not settled down to parenthood themselves, talk about their grand-dogs.  I’ve listened to those childless grown children, talk about my (four-legged) child.

          As I mentioned the other night, I have owned pets – dog and cats, often both simultaneously – for most of my life, except whilst I’ve been married to Clara who simply has a preference not to have animals in the house.  And when I had them – before I had children – I did very much think of them as members of the family.  And yes, I probably did gush over them as many people do.  But not having a pet for 25 years, along with having children and being a representative of a venerable religion that has quite a bit to say about the value of human life and the difference between humans and animals, has given me a somewhat different perspective.  I was not surprised by Professor Topolski’s findings.  But I was appalled by them.

          Animals are not humans.  We allowed to eat them.  At least, certain species.  I have nothing but respect for my friends who choose to be vegetarians, or even vegans; the discipline they’ve taken on – especially the latter group – is far more stringent than even the strictest interpretation of kashrut.  I have only respect for those willing to take on a strict discipline for a good reason.  Respect, but without even a shred of agreement.  G-d gave us licence to enjoy meat, fish, cheese, yoghurt, and many other things – within certain restraints.  We try to limit our consumption of meat to that which did not require undue suffering for the animal.  We buy completely into the free range, stall-free, hormone free mindset.  We eat only cheeses made with vegetable rennet.

          The elevation of animals to a status equal with humans, is rooted in the emotions.  It just feels so good to look upon cute animals, and ascribe a human-like soul to them.  And the fairytale depiction of wild animals in children’s books and films, only feeds the moral confusion.  The truth is that predatory species of animals, kill other species without any moral reasoning.  Herbivorous species live their lives in constant vigil and fear from predators.  Carnivorous or omnivorous species, when we’re not keeping them as pets or otherwise in captivity, kill other animals for food – without any morals entering into the equation.  I can hear someone reading this thinking, well, that’s just like some humans!  Exactly!  And when those some humans kill other humans for their own purposes, we call it murder.  And ascribe animal-like qualities to the offenders.  Because even though humans don’t always live up to the morals that we consider necessary for the functioning of a social order, we understand that when they don’t, social order disintegrates and comes to resemble the jungle or the forest – the animal ‘kingdom.’

          That’s why the incredible – to me – outcry over the unfortunate death of Harambe, the ill-fated silverback gorilla in the Cincinnati Zoo in the USA, struck me.  It has been pounding home in the media and ether since the incident last weekend.  In case you’ve been living under a rock, a child climbed into the gorilla enclosure at the zoo in question, and the 200 KG alpha male silverback rushed over and was dragging the three-year-old boy around when zoo personnel shot it dead.  They chose not to try to tranquilise the gorilla out of fear that the medication would take several minutes to have its effect, and in the meantime the gorilla might be enraged enough to do violent harm to the child.  So they quickly dispatched the animal, understanding that the child was at risk should they not act quickly.

We’re talking about a huge and powerful animal here.  Many of us have seen and were moved by the 1988 film Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver as the naturalist Dian Fossey who befriended a troop of mountain gorillas in Rwanda.  But here we’re not talking about an educated adult doing a serious study of the primates, but a child who inadvertently finds himself in the hands of a huge and, presumably agitated, animal.

          Yes, of course the gorilla’s death is unfortunate.  And yes, there should be an inquest to determine whether the enclosure was not secure enough.  The de facto answer is yes, it was not, because the zoo has already begun beefing it up.  That said, the gorilla exhibit and its enclosure has kept people out of danger for 38 years.  So it would have been reasonable to conclude that it was safe.

          And yes, it is reasonable to question how close the child’s mother was supervising him.  But I would not be too harsh in the regard.  When my daughter Ma’ayan was very small, perhaps four, Clara and I briefly lost her whilst watching a busker in Covent Garden, in London.  We’d only diverted our attention for an instant, and the crowd swallowed her up.  I ran around for a frantic few minutes whilst Clara held fast onto Eyal, until I found her wandering towards another show that had caught her eye.  I had feared that she was halfway to Croatia, or Bosnia, by the time I found her.  This was not a result of knee-jerk racism; at that time, there were gangs of migrants from those countries at work in London, abducting children for human trafficking.  This was years before the Liam Neeson Taken movies, and when I later saw them I thought of that stressful episode in my own life.  Anyway, when I heard the story about how the child was safe and in reasonable shape after the ordeal, my heart went out to Michelle Gregg, the boy’s mother.  Having briefly, and easily lost control of a young child in a crowd once, I have a hard time faulting her.  I think most parents have had such a scare at least once.

          But not others.  Since the incident, Ms. Gregg has apparently been receiving death threats from ‘animal lovers’ who think she – along with the zoo personnel – is guilty of murder, or something close to it.  Animal rights groups, as well as a number of Hollywood loonies, have been stirring of the ether all week.  Even a number of naturalists – including the zookeeper who cared for Harambe for the first 16 years of his life until he was sold to Cincinnati Zo last year – are mourning and second-guessing the staff who had to make a quick decision of the gorilla or the boy.  The idea of leaving an agitated gorilla alone to see if it would further harm the boy or not, is absurd.

          But this is a symptom of the moral confusion concerning humans, animals, and their comparative statuses.  And this is a caveat which I wish to place after any positive thoughts concerning animals and the way that we attach ourselves to them.  Animals are wonderful.  If Clara should ever agree to it, I would adopt a dog without hesitation.  In the meantime, I certainly enjoy visiting friends who keep animals.  And I love visiting zoos where the enclosures are deigned to allow the animals to live in a healthy and pleasant environment.  And I expect the animals kept therein to be treated with as much respect as is practical.  But, folks, let’s keep this in perspective.  As easy as it is to love an animal, and as hard as it is at times to love a human, it is necessary to keep the boundaries between one and the other as clear as possible.  Wishing you a joyous and Happy Shabbat…

Counting the Omer: Thursday Night, 2 June 2016/26 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Six of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Forty-one Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

Yesterday I wrote about how pets – our animal companions – can help to increase our Happiness in a number of ways.  Sometimes, when I talk to people about pets, especially dogs, I ask them exactly what is it about their pet that draws them to it.  And I usually get the same answer:  unconditional love.  Pets, but especially dogs, are loyal to a fault.  They love their humans:  it seems, unconditionally.  When you neglect them, they show no anger or disappointment.  They just seem to try harder to please.  When you’re feeling down or unwell, they seem to sense it and the pour on the love even thicker.  They’re never too busy, or too pre-occupied, or too tired to notice.

Human companions generally compare poorly, because our love for one another is not unconditional.  Except, perhaps, mothers.  Even the most giving human being will ultimately wear out if they do not feel their love is reciprocated.  Not so an animal.

The reality is that an animal, even the smartest of animals, is in many ways like a perpetual child.  Like an eternal two-year-old.  A two-year-old loves unconditionally.  It is a sign of maturity when a person begins to love discretionally.  Those who cling to their animals because the unconditionality of their love is enduring, probably don’t themselves love others unconditionally. 

In reality, to love unconditionally is not a virtue – unless we’re talking about loving your child.  If we love unconditionally, then those whom we love will come to take our love for granted.  It is a sign of maturity when we learn to love with a certain amount of discretion.  If you expect to be loved, you must, yourself, give love.  Love is, as the songsays, a two-way street.  And you cannot be expected to give love long after you’re realised that your love is not reciprocated.  To love in that way is obsession, not love.  It is unreasonable to expect unconditional love, and it is dangerous to your emotional health to love unconditionally.

What animal companions evoke in us, then, is a pining for childhood, its simplicity, its innocence, and its lack of accountability.  And we know what it’s called when a grown man insists on clinging to childhood.  It’s called ‘the Peter Pan Syndrome.’  And it isn’t a compliment to say that someone is afflicted with it. (I don’t know if there’s a female equivalent of the nomenclature.  But I can tell you that I’ve encountered a woman or two who was in the throes of the ‘disease.’)

And that’s the but in my assessment of animals as bringing us Happiness.  They can and do, for all the reasons I stated yesterday.  But we should not allow them to make us wish for a return to childhood.  We cannot turn back the clock, and if we could, it would not be a good thing.  Enjoy your pets’ love, and love them back, but remember that adult love comes with responsibility.  Learn to love in a way that is not unconditional, and you'll be on your way to Happiness.

Counting the Omer: Wed. Night, 1 June 2016/25 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Five of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Thirty-nine Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

          Back when I was young, there was an expression that I haven’t heard in a long time:  Everything (or, ‘everybody’) is going to the dogs.  It meant, to understate, that things are not going especially well.  One doesn’t hear this expression anymore.  Nowadays, I hear the same sentiments expressed:  Everything’s going south.  In other words, down the tubes.  But one doesn’t hear this expression here in Australia, perhaps for obvious reasons; the very name ‘Australia’ means, a place in the southern hemisphere.  For an Australian, ‘going south’ as a negative would be, well, emblematic of the cultural hegemony of the people of the north.  The parallel expression in Australia is:  Everything’s gone Pear-shaped.  The first time I heard this, I thought it was a reference to the human buttocks.  But my Aussie friends tell me it is a reference to a pear’s being round – sort of, but in an imperfect way.  It’s off-kilter. 

          So, Dear Reader, you might be wondering at about this time:  What does this have to do with anything?  And it’s this:  we don’t use going to the dogs to mean messed up anymore, because, in most peoples’ minds, there no negative association with dogs.  The idea of dog ownership is rarely thought of in less-than positive terms.  Unless, perhaps, you’re a Muslim.  I’m not making a dig against Muslims.  But it is well-known that for Muslims dogs, like pigs, are ritually unclean.  In Iran, keeping a dog as a pet is an offence punishable by 74 lashes.  Muslim clerics in other countries have spoken out in strong terms against their followers keeping dogs as pets.  So I’m guessing that for most Muslims, the idea of keeping a dog as a pet, just doesn’t compute.  But in the Western World, dogs as well as other animals as pets are viewed quite favourably.  Although the keeping of ‘exotic’ animals has been on the rise, the two perennial favourite species to keep as pets are are canines and felines:  dogs and cats.

          Unless you’re my daughter.  When we came to live in Australia, she thought we would be able to obtain a Koala as a pet.  (See!  I know to call the furry little things koalas, and not koala-bears!)  Four years on, she’s still disappointed.  But I digress…

          There’s no question that most everyone we know can be put into one of two categories:  people who keep pets, and people who don’t yet keep pets.  Okay, it’s not that prevalent!  But some days it seems so!  Every now and then – this actually happened to us very recently – someone whom we never thought would introduce a pet to his home, surprises us by going out and getting one.  (In this case, you guessed it, a dog.)  It’s just so prevalent in our culture, that it’s almost a given that any and every family will have a pet.  The pet-less home (like ours) is very exceptional.

          Okay, okay!  It only seems so exceptional.  Statistically, 50 percent of all Australian households have at least one pet.  So of course, that means that we’re in good company since there are 7.6 million households in Australia.  But…only 35 percent of households in Australia have at least one child under 16.  So there are 3.8 million pet-less households…and 4.94 million child-less ones!  And, in case you were wondering, with regards to the pet of choice:  38 percent of Aussie households have at least one dog, 23 percent have at least one cat, and 12 percent have at least one of each. 

          Psychologists generally think of pets as a positive influence in people’s lives.  Having an animal companion can help alleviate loneliness for those who are widowed, divorced, empty nesters, or socially awkward.  An animal’s unconditional affection helps their owners to see life in affirmative terms, and can help a person who has been hurt in a relationship, to work past that hurt.  If the animal is of a calm disposition, as many of the most popular dog breeds are, they can help to calm a nervous person.  For children, having a pet provides structure and lessons in responsibility.  And the pet often provides a sort of glue that keeps the family focused together.  It’s hard to see a downside to pet ownership.

          Well, that it except for the cost of keeping a pet!  But that’s only a downside for the individual pet owner’s ability to save.  For the economy as a whole, pet ownership is an engine that pumped 6.02 billion dollars into the Australian economy last year.  That’s an average of $ 1,584 spent per pet-owning household.

          By the way, if anybody was wondering, Rabbi Don is not anti-pet.  Far from it.  I have owned dogs and cats, often both simultaneously.  But Clara is not a pet person.  And in truth, given our peripatetic lifestyle since we’ve been married, that’s not a bad thing.  Being pet-less gives us a high degree of freedom and mobility.  Of course, we’ve had to take more than a little grousing from our kids over the years.  Them:  Everybody else has pets!  Us:  Well, we’re not everybody else.  Them:  We’re going to be maladjusted if we don’t learn to live with a pet.  Us:  We’ll pay for your therapy.

          Kidding aside, there’s no question that having a beloved animal companion can, and often does, increase one’s Happiness.

Jewish Journeys Weekly E-Gram

Dear Friends,

I know that, when I’m sending the daily thoughts during this time of the Counting of the Omer, I have a tendency to forget to send the usual weekly ‘housekeeping’ e-mails for those who attend our group’s Shabbat and other events.  This e-mail, then if for that purpose…the daily thought will follow later!

          If you’ve been involved with our group, you already know that Clara and I are going to leave Australia at the end of June as our visas are expiring and we have not succeeded in creating a community with a critical mass to keep us here for a longer term.  We regret that we’re unable to stay and continue our work here, but life has been good to us here and elsewhere, and we want you to know that we don’t regret for a moment the time and energy that we’ve invested in working with you.  But go we must, and here’s the schedule of events for our time remaining.

          This weekend (3/4 June) is our last ‘regular’ Shabbat, with the Friday evening service and dinner at our home, and the Saturday morning service and lunch at Pamela and John’s.  Friday we’re cooking lamb.  But don’t worry, we’ll have plenty for the non-meat eaters to enjoy!  Just, if you’re thinking of bringing something, make sure that it has no dairy.  And of course, Saturday bring your own lunch to the Barbera’s – and of course, if will be supplemented by Pam’s goodies!

          Next weekend (Friday 10 June – Sunday 12 June), we’ll do thing a little different.  We’ll still have the Friday evening service at our home, followed by dinner. (We’ll be eating dairy – cheese-filled pasta – that night.)  But that Saturday (11 June) there will be no Shabbat morning service.  Instead, we’re inviting all to join us Sunday morning to observe the first day of the festival of Shavu’ot.  As it’s customary to eat dairy on Shavu’ot, we invite you to bring your dairy creations, savoury or sweet, with you.

          The next two Shabbatot – 17/18 24/25 – we’ll be meeting for both the Friday evening and Saturday morning services at the Barbera’s.  Saturday morning, 25 June, is the last Shabbat service we’ll celebrate with you in person.  Details of the arrangements for food for those two weekends will be forthcoming.

          Several people have enquired about organising some kind of farewell party.  We want to forestall such talk.  The only fitting farewell for us, will be to see people continue to come to services and join together as a community.  So, the only happiness you can give us to come to each and every service we’ll share together until our departure.  There might be a few private dinners with a few people in our final days, but as far as group gatherings are concerned – we already have them.

          I have been working the technology side, and G-d willing we will be able to offer a Shabbat morning service even after our departure, thanks to Skype.  In a way, this provides the advantage that our friends who don’t live conveniently on the Gold Coast will be able to plug in remotely and thereby attend worship more often than now.  If this describes you, please don’t forget to talk to me about this before we go.  But if you’re on the Gold Coast, and able to get to the Barbera’s we would prefer that you join the services there, as they’ll continue after my departure.

Thanks for the part you have played in our community and will continue to play as we adjust to new realities...

Rabbi Don 

Counting the Omer: Tuesday Night, 31 May 2016/24 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Four of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Thirty-eight Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

I’ve been addressing the issue of religion, and how it can impact positively on one’s Happiness and even longevity.  Today, I’m going to address the connection between religion and mental health.  I do so with some trepidation; I freely admit that, whilst I do have some training in counselling and in the various schools of counselling and therapy, I am essentially an educated layman where it comes to clinical, mental health.  Nevertheless, I have read some interesting findings recently, and they do fit in with what I’ve been asserting over the last few days:  that religious involvement is a factor that can help lead one to positive outcomes in life.  And I’m not at all addressing the theological implications of being religious against being secular; that’s an entirely different argument to make, and whilst it is a valid argument it’s not how I wish to address the subject here.  Since I’ve been writing about Happiness for the past few weeks, and specifically behaviours and lifestyles that can help lead to Happiness in life, I want to address religion as one more tool, so to speak, that one can use in seeking to find Happiness and wholeness.  In other words, I am addressing religion strictly from a pragmatic angle here.

          I think that it is important to add the following caveat to the case I’ve been making for being religious.  It needs to be a positive and supportive form of religion.  I’m not going to give a list of what religions I think are ‘good’ in this respect and which are not.  It’s probably self-evident that I consider Judaism – at least the forms of it that I know! – to be in the former column.  But it certainly isn’t the only one in that column!  But all religion is not created equal.  It would be counter-intuitive for me to deny that there are instances of various religion – Judaism included! – that exhibit characteristics that would be unhelpful pragmatically.  Negative religious beliefs – that G-d is punishing or abandoning you – have been linked to harmful outcomes such as depression and unhappiness.

"If people have a loving, kind perception of God," and feel God is supportive, they seem to experience benefits, said Kenneth Pargament, a professor of psychology and an expert on religion and health at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. But "we know that there's a darker side to spirituality," Pargament said. "If you tend to see God as punitive, threatening or unreliable, then that's not very helpful" to your health, he said.

Studies on the brains of religious people tend to show activity in the areas that support good states of mind, the would help inhibit negative mental states.  That’s why, whilst I am not qualified to treat people with mental illness and I would never consider religious faith or practice to be a substitute for valid modes of treatment, I feel confident to say that religion – if it is positive and affirming and practiced in the midst of a supportive community – is an important element in finding peace with mental illness.  The tragedy is, that those who would benefit in this respect, often avoid religious involvement because of fear or judgement by members of the community.  The fear is real and its understandable, but the reality is that any and every religious community has many individuals who suffer from different forms of mental illness.

I know I’m late completing this evening’s installment, so I’ll conclude here and get this posted!

Counting the Omer: Monday Night, 30 May 2016/23 Iyar 5776

Today is Day Three of Week Six of the Omer.  That is Thirty-seven Days of the Omer.  The Theme continues to be Happiness.

          Two days ago, I cited one of a raft of studies done in recent years, that conclude that the more one is involved in religious life, the Happier one is likely to be.  The specific study I cited, done by the Austin Institute of Family and Culture with its finding released in 2014, showed a significant, direct relationship between increased religious participation and increased Happiness.  A number of other studies have reached similar conclusions.  The exact causality cannot be pinned down by the research done to date, but the correlation is undeniable.

          This is, of course counter to a popular image of religious people as dour, judgmental, and joyless.  Now I’m not contesting that there are dour, judgmental, and joyless religious people out there, but my anecdotal experience suggests that secular people are more likely to be dour, judgmental, and joyless, than religious people.  And I’m not talking just about Jews; thanks to my experience on the religious divide, I can say with confidence that the more religion/more Happiness correlation holds for people in virtually all the religious traditions, whose adherents I’ve encountered.

          But if greater likelihood of happiness is not enough of a motivator to be more religious, maybe this is:  religious people live longer.

          This, as concluded this year after a 16-year study of American women by the Harvard School of Public Health.  Although the study might seem limited in scope because it only included middle aged to elderly professional women, the number of subjects examined – some 75,000 – makes its results relatively immune to anomalies.

          What did the study find?  Those who attended religious services regularly (~once a week) died during the survey period at a rate of 33% less than those who did not.  In particular, the religious women were 27% less likely to die of cardiovascular disease, and 21% from cancer.  The survey did not show that the religious women were less likely to get cardiovascular disease of cancer, which they got at rates that were not significantly different from those of the non-religious women.  The difference was in the likelihood of death from the conditions in question.

          Once again the data do not prove causality, the only correlate the two factors:  religiosity and mortality.  But the differences in death rates, and the size of the population studied, suggest that there is a clear relationship between the two.

          Our chances of living to a ripe old age are not a factor that most of us consider when deciding how religious a life we’re going to live.  But perhaps it should figure into our decisions.