Sunday, September 24, 2006

Jericho and Yom Kippur: TV worth watching & a holiday worth observing

Good grief! I just watched the first episode of that gripping new TV series, "Jericho". My jaw just dropped! What if what they described actually DID happen -- that there was a nuclear attack on Denver and Atlanta and who knows where else -- and YOUR small town was the only thing left standing in the entire USA? This is one heck of a TV show. I'm looking forward to future episodes.

How is the small town of Jericho gonna deal with what happens next? With radioactive fallout? With no more gas and electricity? With panic, fear and the disintegration of civilized behavior? With no more food -- not even spinich!
You know, the strange thing about this series appearing right now is that six years ago the whole premise would have been really hard to market. Nobody would believe such a thing could possibly happen. And now? There's nobody in the world today who can read a newspaper or watch TV news who doesn't believe that this scenario could happen at any minute.

So. What to do? Well, how about with Yom Kippur -- the sacred Jewish high holy day of atonement -- coming up, that every single human being in the entire world take a deep breath, count to ten and "Forgive thy neighbors". All of them.

"Jane! We can't do that! We have to bomb them before they bomb us!"

Sure we can. We can do this. Why? Because we have to. If we don't want to end up like the small town of Jericho, do we realistically have any other choice?