The festival of of Shavuot (AKA Pentecost) which falls on next Monday, and Tuesday for the Diaspora, marks the 49 days or seven weeks from Passover.

This morning, I overheard a conversation in the gym in which someone was declaring, in reference to the murders of the two Jews in Washington, that there are crazy people everywhere and murders happen. And that may be so. But crazy people are easily inflamed by the poison that the press and social media spread like manure.

The opera  Aida  was composed by Giuseppe Verdi and first performed in 1871. The story is about a mythical Egyptian Kingdom in which the...