Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/archive/2003/)
For three days in June, the Bush administration, the State of California and the City of Sacramento collectively spent millions of dollars pitching genetically engineered foods and industrial agricultural methods to some of the world’s poorest nations at the Ministerial Conference and Expo on Agricultural Science and Technology, June 23-25.
During the past few years I have been giving workshops on the psychology of prayer at temples, synagogues, and Jewish book fairs nationwide. At each event, I invariably get asked the same probing questions: “Is it OK to ask God for assistance?”, “Do Jews still talk to God about their dreams and desires?”, “Do these personal prayers and meditations make a difference?”
The portents certainly are terrible. Not even the happiest of possible scenarios can be expected to return us to the level of civil liberties we assumed normal before 9/11–not in the foreseeable future, and, if we believe the security services and the politicians of both parties, not ever.