MMP Revisited

Six years ago, I wrote about NZ's voting system, MMP. Specifically, I talked about how it ensured the government accurately reflected the population, unlike the winner-take-all approach used by most other countries.

This week, it went to custard.

A quick recap: In New Zealand, Parliament has 120 seats and 71 districts. You vote for your local candidate *and* your preferred party. The candidate who gets the most votes in each district goes into Parliament and then they allocate the remaining 49 seats based on the overall party vote.

Of course, most people vote for the same candidate and party, but this means that if your local candidate doesn't win, your party still gets represented. For example, Party A gets 30% of the nationwide party vote, which means it is entitled to 36 seats (30% of 120), but only wins in 25 districts. Therefore, it gets to appoint nine more representatives (which come from a list that is published before the election).

To put this in US terms, in the 2012 elections, Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives received 48% of the votes nationwide while Republican candidates received 47%, but Democrats got 201 seats while Republicans got 234! If the US used MMP, then Democrats would have gotten 209 seats and Republicans would have gotten 205 seats.

So that's the advantage of MMP, but it does have one flaw: What if Party A gets 25% of the party vote but their candidates win in 35 districts?

You have three options:

1) Tell Party A to get rid of five elected represenatives. This isn't democratic.

2) Expand the number of seats from 120 to 140 so that 35 candidates now represent 25% of the seats. This would be a nightmare.

3) Carve up the 49 seats as before, then add five more seats. This is called "overhang," and this year it got weaponised.

That's because another feature of MMP is that it encourages people to vote for third parties. In the US, that would be considered a wasted vote because that candidate has no chance of winning, but in New Zealand it means that party will be represented (provided they get at least 5% of the vote). As a result, the major parties rarely win 50% outright. In the last 11 elections, Labour has won between 25 and 41% while National has won between 21 and 47%. (The only exception is 2020, where Labour won 50.01%.) So every election they have to put together a coalition with one or more minor parties in order to get above 50% required to form a government.

Last election, National formed a coalition with two minor parties (NZ First and ACT) and they made a real hash of it, so it didn't look like they would get a majority of seats this year. However, people on the right started telling people to split their vote: Vote for the local National candidate but give your party vote to one of the coalition partners. As a result, National got 42 seats when it should only have 35, while its coalition partners gained 6 seats from their 2023 results. As a result, they now have 67 seats when in reality they should only have 60.

Now here's the kicker: Normally, you only need 61 seats to control the 120-seat Parliament.  However, the Maori party decided to use the same tactic, encouraging its members to vote for their candidates but give their party vote to Labour. As a result, they went from having 3.1% at the last election to just 0.6%! That doesn't even entitle them to 1 seat, but because five of their candidates won their districts, they created their own overhang, increasing the size of Parliament to 131. As a result, you need 66 seats to form a government.

As I mentioned, the current coalition has 67 seats, but there are still about 400,000 votes to count. (These are the so-called "special votes" are from people overseas or who voted in a different electorate than where they live, which is very common in New Zealand.) For some reason, it takes 3 weeks to process these, but historically they've swung left, and there are currently four districts where Labour could overtake National (by 139, 456, 1092 and 1210 votes, respectively). If National lose two of these districts, they have 65 seats but they also lose the overhang, so Parliament goes to 129 seats and they can (just barely) form a government. If National lose three of these districts, they can't.

But even if Labour win all four of these districts, and Parliament goes to 127, that only gives the left bloc (Labour, Greens and the Maori party) 61 seats, three seats short of a majority! 

Enter The Opportunity Party. Formed in 2016 by Gareth Morgan, it got 2.4% of the party vote in 2017. A month later, Gareth Morgan resigned and six months later he announced he was cancelling the party's registration. However, new leaders were elected and they got 1.5% of the party vote in 2020 and 2.2% in 2023. Having never exceeded the 5% threshold, they never had any seats in government. A new leader was elected in 2025 and she had some crazy ideas, including a universal basic income that would cost about $24 billion/year, which was funded by a land tax that was supposed to raise $24 billion/year. They did not factor in the idea that people might not want to own land if it was taxed so highly.

However, the new leader was smart enough to bury that lede and come up with six talking points that she said was her "bottom line" to support any government. These were:

1. Bring down supermarket prices

2. Cap political donations

3. A 10-year health plan

4. Ban bottom trawling
5. Recommitting to emissions obligations under the Paris Agreement
6. Honour the Treaty of Waitangi, the founding document of New Zealand, which the Coalition government had spent three years trashing.

These all sound good but there's no real plan behind any of them (and #2 is particularly ridiculous considering Gareth Morgan invested $4 million to form the party in the first place). However, that was good enough for 6% of voters, giving TOP 7 seats.  If Labour flip three seats (which is a big if), they will still have to negotiate a four-way agreement with the Greens, the Maori party and the Opportunity Party to form the next government! 

The Special Votes will be posted November 27 and then the negotiations will begin. We may not know who actually won the November election until January!*

Addendum: Ignore the above. I just read the "split your vote" campaign didn't really affect National; they just naturally lost a ton of party votes (roughly 250,000) since the 2023 election. On the left, although the Maori Party told its members to vote for Labour, the Maori Party lost 50,000 votes but Labour only picked up 5,000! Interestingly, the Green Party picked up 50,000 votes...

* There used to be more Special Votes because new voters could register on election day. The National Party decided to end that - and require voters to register at least two weeks before the election - in a brazen attempt at voter disenfranchisement, because of course most new voters were young and therefore tended to vote left. However, National framed it as "speeding up" the vote counting process, so it's ironic that the first election after they changed the rules is going to take even longer than before to figure out the results!

(Labour wants to drop the voting age to 16, and although that's also a brazenly partisan move, I'm more keen on expanding voting rights than shrinking them.)

In memoriam

Seriously, one of the few highlights since my wife died was buying ten juvenile discus in Auckland last Christmas. Watching them grow over the past six months has been a delight. What hasn't been a delight is the algae in the tank. I never had an issue with my previous tank - in the same location - so I struggled to understand what was going wrong. 

Last month I bought a CO2 setup on the premise that if the regular plants grew faster, they would deprive the algae of nutrients. Sadly, it didn't help--the plants grew faster but the algae grew even faster.

I do a weekly water change (which, if I'm honest, isn't often enough for discus) and scrape off the algae. This weekend was going to be very busy -- I was going to be away, running from one task to the next -- so I wanted to do the water change before I left. That went fine but I also decided to lower the light levels to see if that would help with the algae, and while I was fiddling with the light timers I saw the CO2 wasn't flowing.

The CO2 valve has a "bubble counter" so you can visually see the rate of the CO2. Normally it's 2-3 bubbles per second, but when I looked I didn't see any, so I opened up the valve. That's when I realised the problem was there was no water in the bubble counter, so the CO2 was flowing but I couldn't see it. What I should have done was turn off the valve, add some water and adjust the CO2 back to 2-3 bubbles. However, I was already running late so I guessed at the rate and left.

That evening my flatmate sent me a photo of the discus lying on their sides, breathing but not otherwise moving. At first I thought maybe I didn't use enough water conditioner so I asked my son to add some. I googled some discus discussion groups but couldn't find anything relevant that would explain the fish being on their sides.

In the morning there was no improvement, so I tried to rearrange my day so I could come home between tasks, but it just wasn't going to work. It was about that time that it finally hit me that the problem was likely the CO2. For reasons someone else will have to explain, an excess of CO2 causes the pH to drop. It basically acidifies the water! I asked my son to shut off the CO2, which he did, but obviously that was about 18 hours late. 

When I finally got home Sunday at 9pm, the first thing I did was pull out all the plants so I could see the fish. Five of the discus were already dead. The other five I put in my quarantine tank, along with 4 Sterbai catfish and 2 upside-down cats. I tried to increase the pH of the quarantine tank but I misjudged and went too high. 

Meanwhile I did a big water change on the main tank, cleaned it up and replanted it. The pH was normal (about 6.5) but the water wasn't quite hot enough. I started putting the tank water in the quarantine tank and suddenly three of the discus perked up. Unfortunately, the other two discus had died.

At 2am I reintroduced the fish back into the main tank. The catfish seemed ok and two of the discus were upright, with the third one still struggling. I turned out the lights and hoped for the best.

To say I'm gutted would be an understatement. I know they aren't cats or dogs, but a fishkeeper is responsible for every aspect of the fish's life. After all, they did not evolve to live in such an unnatural habitat. So losing them doesn't feel like losing a pet, it feels like you murdered you me pet. Or in this case, seven of them.

I'll bury them in the morning.

I hate America

I know this may be considered traitorous by certain thin-skinned politicians, but I hate visiting the US. (And it's only day 3 of a 2week holiday...)

It was a 12-hour flight from New Zealand, which is about 6500 miles. (Even having to convert back to the Imperial system annoys me--I remember the US made an effort to convert to metric when I was a kid and no doubt the politicians at the time would have called this "woke" and insisted it was un-American to stop using the British system...)

It then took me nearly 6 hours to cover the last 70 miles! It took over two hours just to get out of the airport! The queue at the car rental was huge, there were only four people working and they spent most of their time trying to upsell customers. Instead of recognizing their were 30 people waiting and just trying to process everyone as quickly as possible, they ran through the 20-question script with each customer like they had all the time in the world. "Do you want to upgrade your insurance?" No. "Do you want to upgrade the car you specifically requested?" No. "Do you want to prepay fuel at an even more exorbitant price than the local stations?" No. "Do you want to prepay your tolls?" How much? "$59.99 per day."  What?? I'd have to cross the Bay bridge four times a day for that to make sense! 

Finally got on the motorway only to come to a complete stop almost immediately. Satnav said it would be 2.5 hours to go the 70 miles. That's less than 30 mph/50kmh. The famous US 8-lane freeways move slower than the back roads at home!

And the drivers -- I know you shouldn't diagnose mental health by observation alone, but these drivers were sociopathic. I mean, no empathy whatsoever. If they thought a different lane was going faster, they pulled into it without hesitation, without looking at other traffic, without signalling. And of course, as soon as all those cars pulled into the faster lane, that lane came to a standstill and they immediately switched back. Undertaking is not only encouraged here, it is it's own art form, and you better believe that if a lane is ending every car will drive at full speed until they have literally nowhere to go, then pull in front of you. 

And the saddest part is, I used to drive just like this! Growing up in Los Angeles, there was no other option. When I first moved to the UK and my girlfriend asked why I never signalled, I told her that in LA, when you signalled other cars would immediately move to cut you off, so you learned to only signal at the last second. It took me years to undo two decades of driving in LA, and now returning to it I am absolutely horrified. 

I can't find comparable statistics for car accidents but in 2021, the US had 14.2 traffic fatalities per 100,00 people. In 2022, New Zealand had 7.3 road deaths per 100,000 people. The real difference is that New Zealand thinks this is way too high and has been working hard to reduce the total number of deaths:

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

https://www.transport.govt.nz/statistics-and-insights/safety-annual-statistics

Thankfully I arrived at the hotel safely and got in line behind someone complaining the water wasn't hot enough. (It wasn't.) I checked into my room and unwrapped a cup to make tea, unwrapped another cup to get water, unwrapped the hand soap and unwrapped a spoon. And of course this was just the plastic on the single-user items that also went in the trash five minutes later!

In the morning I went down to take advantage of the breakfast buffet. That's when I remembered that what the rest of the world considers dessert, the US considers breakfast: Almost all carbs and sugar. I was in heaven, until I realised the cinnamon raisin bagel I had just shmeared was actually blueberry. That is a crime against humanity.

I then went to synagogue. I'd been to this little synagogue many times over the years and was always surprised by their total lack of security. Since my last visit, however, they'd installed a massive gate and, weirdly, had not installed any sort of bell or intercom. If you didn't know the gate code, you weren't getting in. On top of that, there was a local sheriff sitting in an SUV inside the gate, though it's hard to be sure because the windscreen was tinted which, of course, is illegal, but who's going to ticket them? Anyway, if he was sitting in the car, he saw me standing helplessly at the gate and completely ignored me. Thankfully, someone else arrived and let me in.

My brother was looking to buy a used EV and wanted to show me two options: One had a "branded title" which, I discovered, was a fancy way of saying the car had been written off by the insurance company and yet was somehow still allowed to be sold. The other had some damage from an accident. (This is why they were in his budget.) But first he had to return his rental car, which is when I discovered this little trek was going to take 3 hours!! And he didn't think this was unusual! I balk at driving to Palmerston North, which is less than 100 miles!

We got to Tracy, I expressed my reservation about the branded title, they wouldn't budge on the $9,200 price tag, so we got back in my car and, just as we were about to drive off, the salesperson rushed over and agreed to $8,000. 

My brother signed more paperwork than I've ever seen in my life. One of the forms was for new plates -- in some States, plates stay with the owner, but in California plates always stayed with the car, so I was confused. It turns out that, because it took 45 days for the DMV to transfer ownership, during that period all of the bridge tolls were applied to the previous owner, and rather than try to fix that system they just decided to take away the license plates.

In New Zealand, we would have just done a straight bank transfer and be done in 30 seconds, but the American bank system is about 20 years behind the rest of the world. (But don't tell Americans that; they don't know anything about the rest of the world and so assume there systems are the best.) So the only options were a debit card, which attracted a 3.5% fee, and a Zelle transfer, except it has a daily transfer limit that you can't override. Between me, my brother and my sister (who wasn't even there!) we figured we could complete the Zelle transfer and avoid the 3.5% fee. 

My sister's transfer went through fine; mine seemed to go through fine but then I got an email that said they were going to hold it for 3 days with no explanation; and my brother was told he had to call his bank to verify his identity before the transfer could be made, and when he called the number they gave him, they said it was a different department, and they were only open Mon-Fri. This was a Saturday. Even better, Zelle took the money out of my account immediately so even if I decided to switch to the debit card, I no longer had the money.

Needless to say, we couldn't take the car home, so in a few days - when the bank decides to let us transfer our funds - we'll have to make the 2-hour round-trip to Tracy to pick up the car. With the price of petrol in the States, that 3.5% fee is looking good...

P.S. The debit card option was never really an option because I use my sister's address for my US bank account, and the bank had sent a new debit card to my sister. For some reason she decided to open the envelope and put the debit card in a "safe place." When I arrived, she gave me the envelope the debit card came in, but she has no idea where the debit card is. 🙄

Drash on parashat Emor

Emor translates to “say” and the first line of the parashat is:

Vayomer Adonai el-Moshe 

emor el-hakohanim b’ney Aharon

v'amarta aleihem: 

L'nefesh lo-yitama b'amav.

God said to Moses:

Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron

and say to them:

None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin

Nefesh first appears in Genesis 1:20: haMayim sheretz nefesh chayah, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures.” Nefesh is translated as “soul” and chayah means “living.”

This same phrase is used in Genesis 2:7 when God breathes life into Adam.

In Emor, nefesh is used without chayah to mean "dead soul” or “dead person." The next word, yitama, means to become defiled. To defile something is to desecrate something sacred. In Jewish law, this is a spiritual state, not a physical one. Tum'ah is to be in a state of ritual impurity which restricts a person from holy activities, such as entering the Temple or consuming holy food. The rituals that return a person to purity, taharah, differ based on the source of tum’ah.

This first line of Emor is a negative mitzvah, the prohibition against Kohanim coming into contact with a dead body (with the exception for close family members). However, Leviticus 5:2 has established other ways that people become impure and, in Numbers 19 (Parasha Chukat), we learn that anyone who comes into contact with a dead body, or is in the same tent, or touches a human bone or a grave, becomes impure for seven days. Chukat also gives us instructions for purification: The law of the Red Heifer, one of the strangest stories in the Torah.

Briefly, a red cow without blemish that has never been worked is slaughtered by the High Priest; its blood is sprinkled seven times toward the front of the Tent of Meeting; its hide, flesh blood and dung are burned along with cedar wood, hyssop, and “crimson stuff”. The priest then becomes impure so another person must gather the ashes and deposit them outside the camp. That person also becomes impure.

A priest mixes some of the ashes with fresh water to create the water of lustration, which is sprinkled on the impure person on the third day and the seventh day. The person must then wash their clothes and bathe in a mikveh, and they become pure in the evening. 

This decree defies rational explanation and is considered beyond human understanding, but then it makes a dire warning: “Whoever touches a corpse and does not undergo cleansing, defiles God’s Tabernacle; that person shall be cut off from Israel.”

Other sources of tum’ah, in ascending order of severity, include:

• Semen Emission
• Childbirth (Yoledet): (7 days for a son, 14 days for a daughter)
• Menstruation (Niddah)
• Discharges (Zav/Zavah) other than semen and menstrual blood
• Skin Disease (Tzaraath)
• The Eight Creeping Animals: After Leviticus 11 defines what animals may be eaten, it then randomly lists eight animals whose corpses cannot be touched, including moles, mice, lizards, geckos, crocodiles, and chameleons.

Corpse contamination (tumat met) is considered the highest level of ritual impurity and is called avi avot hatumah (literally "grandfather of impurity"). The Mishnah describes several grades of tumat met: The corpse itself is the most severe; followed by anyone who touches the corpse; and then if that person touches anyone else, or food and drink, while they are still impure.

It would be very easy to dismiss this as public health dressed as religion: Corpses have diseases so requiring people to isolate and wash after contact with a corpse just makes sense, right? As far back as the 18th century BCE people were aware of contagion. The etymology of the word tum’ah is obscure but it reflects the idea that a defiling substance can be transferred from one person or thing to another, even if it is not visible.

But if this is for pragmatic reasons, why is the ritual so enigmatic? God repeatedly tells us, “You shall be holy for I am holy.” In Judaism, "holy" (kadosh) means “set apart” and ritual items have strict rules for their use. When we light the shabbat candles, we do not use them for light or warmth; when we wear tallit, blow the shofar or read the siddur, these are all treated with reverence. Similarly, for the Israelites to be set apart, to become holy, we also must have rules for how to live, as well as a way to return to a state of holiness.

In Jewish tradition, a human corpse is viewed as profoundly sacred—often compared to an "impaired Torah scroll"—retaining holiness even after death. The dead body creates the highest form of ritual impurity precisely because it requires special purification rites. And for those handling the body, death reminds us of our own mortality, it takes us out of the life-affirming nature of holiness, which in turn requires extreme steps for us to return. Tum’ah literally forces us to choose between life and death, and warns us that if we don’t make the effort to return to life, we are cutting ourselves off from God.

N.B. In copying this, all of the footnotes were stripped out, so apologies for not referencing my sources. 

Uber

I'm no longer working on Wednesdays so I thought maybe I'd do some Uber driving for pocket money, as well as to give me some structure and meet other people. I didn't expect it to be a get-rich-quick scheme but they say if you just work the rush hour you can make decent money, and I figured driving about 3 hours a week was reasonable. My car is also pretty banged up so I figured I could use some of the income to replace the bumper and fix the scratches.

I looked at the website for Uber drivers and it said:

It’s easy to sign up to drive using the Uber app. Here’s what you need:

1. Be at least 20 years of age
2. Have held a valid full NZ driver licence for at least 1 year
3. Have access to a vehicle that meets Uber's vehicle requirements
4. Be listed as an insured driver for the vehicle you will drive
5. Have a Passenger Endorsement card
6. Valid vehicle registration
7. Certificate of Fitness

The vehicle requirements said "must be a 4-door, 15-years-old or newer model with working air conditioning and 5+ seats." (My car is a 2014 Prius so I'm good until 2029!)

I thought I had all of those except the Passenger endorsement so I looked into that. Hilariously, they refer to a "small p" endorsement for taxi drivers and a "big P" endorsement for bus drivers. A "small p" endorsement costs NZ $224 for one year or $262 for five years* and you need:

1. A full NZ car licence for at least 2 years**
2. A medical certificate
3. Pass a background check  

I happened to have a GP appointment so I asked him for the medical certificate. I thought it was just a letter that said I didn't have epilepsy but it turned out to be a four-page form where he had to test my eyesight, go over all my medications, etc. Thankfully, even though the appointment ran over, he didn't charge extra. (That said, I made the appointment so I could get a 12-month prescription but while doing the medical certificate we both forgot and he gave me the standard 3-month prescription, so I'll have to see him again in 3 months...)

It said the background check is handled as part of the application, but the fine print said, "if you’ve lived in any one country (apart from New Zealand) for 12 months since the age of 14 you will need to provide to the NZTA a criminal history check for each country you have lived in." For the US, you submit an online application to the FBI and it costs US $18. For the UK, if you're in the UK it is £21.50 but if you're overseas it's.£70 (US $94)! I actually got a UK background check for my NZ citizenship application, but that was a while ago and I no longer have a copy.

OK, this is already starting to get expensive but I thought, when I apply, they'll know I'm American (from the accent) but not that I lived in the UK, so if I just provide the US background check I'm sure it will be fine. So I started to apply only to find I needed to submit my fingerprints in a very specific way, and basically the only place I could get that done was in the US.

But it just so happens I'm going to the States in a week! The website said I could get it done at a US Post Office but I decided to double-check: I'm staying in Vacaville but that post office doesn't do fingerprints. The closest post office that does it is in Fairfield, but only between 9am-2pm weekdays and 10am-11am on Saturday. (1 hour, I am not making that up.) Oh, and they charge US $50.

OK, so now I'm looking at $262 for the P endorsement and NZ $117 for the US background check. But it gets much worse.

Then I learned the Certificate of Fitness (CoF) above is different than the Warrant of Fitness (WoF) I have. The CoF is more stringent*** and can result in penalties! (ie. If you bring your car in for a WoF and the tread depth is below minimum, you fail. If you bring your car in for a CoF and the tread depth is below minimum, you fail and you may have to pay a fine!) You also need to file a "change of use" form, but it's unclear if there's a fee for that. I have no idea what the cost is for the CoF because not all inspection stations do this and those that do all say "call us" but AI says it's at least $175. (And it used to be every six months but they just changed it to be annually.)

So now we're at least $550 in the hole here. Then I checked with my car insurance and they replied: “Your policy does not cover any loss, damage, or liability arising from...carrying fare-paying passengers." I checked another insurer and they wanted $202 per month for commercial insurance. AI said the minimum I could expect is about $140 per month. It doesn't matter if you use it for 3 hours a week or 60 hours a week, the price is the same.

Then the final kicker: In the Uber fine print it says the vehicle "Must be in excellent working condition, with no cosmetic damage." So now I have to pay for the damage upfront! I don't have a quote but I can't imagine it being under $1,000. So now I'm in this for at least $4,000 before I've earned $1!

I then asked AI how much I might earn driving for uber for 3 hours per week and it said "approximately $60 to $100 before expenses." Let's assume I earn $100, spend $20 in gas and paid $15 in tax. After insurance ($140/month) and CoF ($175/year) I'd net $1,525/year, enough to pay off the $1,379 in fees and repairs and still pocket $146. That works out to less than $1 per hour.

And lastly, although I don't think there are any fees, it also says you have to complete driver safety education, purchase a child lock safety sticker, display a Small Passenger Service Licence Label in the windscreen a display a Transport Service Licence in the car. (You have to send a passport-style photo to Uber who then send you the latter.)

So I think this particular dream is dead. I know someone who does woodworking in his spare time and sells cutting boards at local markets on the weekend, so maybe I'll look into that...  

* Hard to imagine who would select the one year option to save $38, but the "big P" endorsement -- for large vehicles -- is the same price whether you want it for one year or five years! (And it's actually cheaper than the "small P" endorsement!)
** Yes, Uber says you only need a NZ license for one year and then says you must have an endorsement that requires you to have a license for two years...
*** As an example, if you have a hatchback vehicle then you may need to have a means to secure cargo so it doesn't hit passengers in an accident.

Life stages through the lens of relationships

My life stages have all coincided with different relationships. That was never the intent - I would have been very happy to have one relationship in this life - but it makes me wonder if this was all coincidental or if there was a causal relationship (and if the latter, was the relationship the cause or effect?)

In my teens, my best friend was a woman in her 50s. I know that sounds weird, but it wasn't. I had no interest in being a teenager -- I wanted to skip that phase and was desperate to grow up and be taken seriously, so for me this felt quite natural. However, the very thing that enabled that relationship is also what doomed it -- by the time I was 17, I had outgrown her and was ready to move on.

When I was 18, I moved in with a woman in her 30s. I adored her but I still had to deal with the actual transition to adulthood. I thought I could take a shortcut and skip university but I wanted a job in IT, and so I ended up working full-time and going to school part-time, which left very little time for a relationship.

For her part, she was not happy falling in love with someone so young, and I think that doomed the relationship from the start. I don't honestly know if I could have done anything to keep the relationship through that transition.

My next relationship started when I was 21, just as I was finishing school and settling into my career. Those were the salad days: Neither of us wanted kids, both of us were working, and I was no longer trying to grow up or be someone else. Those days passed in a blur of sunshine, friends and distractions. When we decided to move to rural Pennsylvania and open a B&B, I really thought our relationship was strong enough to survive that transition (otherwise I wouldn't have committed all of our savings) but I was wrong, and I walked away with practically nothing.

I felt like I was starting over so I decided to make it even harder by moving to another country. A relationship was the last thing on my mind, which is probably why I had my guard down and immediately fell in love. I was 38 and she was 35 and suddenly we were talking about having kids. I'd never wanted kids until I met her, and suddenly it was all I wanted. It was her desire to raise the kids Jewish that started me on the journey to convert to Judaism. That relationship was all about opening myself up, navigating a new culture and embracing change, but in the end she didn't really want a relationship with me. (If you thought I'd learned my lesson about protecting myself financially, you'd be wrong, and I walked away from this relationship with practically nothing, as well.)

Then at 44 I moved to New Zealand and was suddenly raising three kids. (My "pop-up family" as my wife used to say.) So that relationship was all about learning to be a father. My wife passed away and the kids are all now in their 20s, but they're still my pop-up family. Hopefully they will teach me about being a grandfather.

I'm sure there will be relationships in my future - I seem to fall into them - but I have no idea what they look like, or what I'll take away from them. What I can say is the adage, "the only common denominator in your dysfunctional relationships is you."

Parashat Tzav

[Drasha delivered 28 March 2026]

In today’s portion, we are warned of the consequences for eating fat or blood:

• 7:25 If anyone eats the fat of animals from which offerings by fire may be made to GOD, the person who eats it shall be cut off from kin
• 7:27 Anyone who eats blood shall be cut off from kin.

The first question is, what’s wrong with fat? Rambam¹ differentiates chelev (suet) which surrounds the organs and can be separated from the meat, and shuman (marbling) which cannot. Only chelev is forbidden. As usual, the Torah provides no explanation or justification, but various theories have been put forward, the primary one is that fat was considered the "choicest part" of the animal and therefore belonged to God. How do we know fat was the choicest part? Because in Genesis², when Pharaoh tells Joseph to bring his family to Egypt he uses the phrase “chelev ha'aֽretz.” meaning the best part of the land.

The prohibition against consuming blood is mentioned seven times³ in the Torah. At the time of Creation, humans were only allowed to eat plant life, not creatures with souls. Only after the Flood did G‑d permit the consumption of meat, admonishing Noah: “Every creature that lives shall be yours to eat… You must not, however, eat flesh with its life-blood in it.”

Rashi⁴ said that because blood represents the nefesh (soul or life-force) and that blood is placed on the altar to atone for the human soul, then blood is too sacred to be consumed as food. Rambam⁵ said that consuming blood could coarsen the human soul, making a person more cruel and less spiritually sensitive. Maimonides⁶ said the prohibition was partly to distance Jews from the idolatrous practices of surrounding nations who believed drinking blood would grant supernatural powers. (If that sounds crazy, please ask your Christian friends about Holy Communion.)

So how do you remove all blood from meat? The scientific answer is: Meat doesn’t contain blood – blood is contained in veins and arteries, and the shechita is designed to drain the blood before it is butchered. The red in meat comes from the protein myoglobin, which is different than hemoglobin in blood, but both bind to oxygen giving it the same red colour. That said, the “kosher” method of removing blood is to roast the meat over an open flame or soak it, salt it and rinse it. Liver must be roasted then soaked three times. Kidneys are also problematic but kosher butchers usually get around this by selling the hindquarters, including the kidneys, to non-kosher butchers.

As for the punishment, the term Kareth is translated as “cut off from kin” but it has been variously defined as dying young, dying without children, being denied a portion in the world to come or straight up being murdered. There are thirty-six⁷ laws whose punishment is Kareth including: eating chametz during Pesach, certain sexual violations, ritual impurities, a man's refusal to be circumcised or anyone who sins deliberately.

These are just two references in Torah which ties Judaism to food and from which we derive the laws of kashrut, meaning “fit [for consumption].” Others include:

• In Genesis⁸, after Jacob struggled with the angel: “Therefore, the children of Israel may not eat the displaced tendon, which is on the socket of the hip.” This is the sciatic nerve, or Gid Hanasheh, and it is why kosher butchers sell the hindquarters rather than try to remove this.
• In Exodus⁹: “You shall be holy people to Me: you must not eat flesh torn by beasts in the field; you shall cast it to the dogs.” The word the Torah uses for "torn by beasts," t'reifah, is the origin of the Yiddish word, t'reif. This is also why the food you feed your pet does not have to be kosher (but you still can’t give your pet chametz during Pesach).
• Also twice in Exodus¹⁰: “You shall not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.“ More on this in a minute.
• The next portion, Shemini, goes into details about what animals can and can’t be eaten.

In November 1885¹¹, a group of Reform rabbis met in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and explicitly called for a rejection of laws which have a ritual, rather than moral, basis. For kashrut, they wrote, “We hold that all such Mosaic and rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly purity, and dress originated in ages and under the influence of ideas entirely foreign to our present mental and spiritual state. They fail to impress the modern Jew with a spirit of priestly holiness; their observance in our days is apt rather to obstruct than to further modern spiritual elevation.” They rejected the notion that food laws were divine commands or necessary for ritual purity and viewed them as a barrier to social integration with non-Jewish society.

Today, many progressive Jews have chosen to reinterpret, rather than reject, kashrut based on ethics, sustainability, and personal spiritual meaning. This is often tied to Tikkun Olam, or repairing the world.¹² This may include eating vegetarian, not buying battery laid eggs, focusing on sustainable food sources, or considering the animal and/or labor conditions of food producers.

This is not new. The twelfth-century commentator Rashbam¹³ (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), believed the injunction against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk was not about mixing meat and dairy but instead was intended to teach tzaar baalei chayim, sensitivity to the pain of animals. As he wrote: "It is disgraceful and voracious and gluttonous to consume the mother's milk together with its young…. The Torah gave this commandment in order to teach you how to behave in a civilized manner."

One of the key tenets of Progressive Judaism is to find what is spiritually meaningful to you, and Torah recognises that what you consume – and its cost to the planet – must surely be one of the most important spiritual choices you can make. Rabbi Simeon Maslin¹⁴, past president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, wrote, “I view our family dining table as a mizbei-ach m'at, a miniature altar…it is a sacred space which connects us to God and to the history of our people.”

Food for thought. Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

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1. https://www.sefaria.org/Ramban_on_Leviticus.3.9.1.↩
2. Genesis 45:18↩
3. Genesis 9:4, Leviticus 3:17, Leviticus 7:26, Leviticus 17:12, Deuteronomy 12:16, Deuteronomy 12:23, Deuteronomy 15:23↩
4. Rashi, Leviticus 17:11.↩
5. Nahmanides, Commentary to Leviticus 17:13.↩
6. Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:46↩
7. https://www.sefaria.org/Keritot.2a.1↩
8. Genesis 32:33↩
9. Exodus 22:30↩
10. Exodus 23:19↩
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_Platform↩
12. A Sacred Duty: Applying Jewish Values to Help Heal the World (2007) https://youtu.be/Y9RxmTGHZgE↩
13. https://reformjudaism.org/beliefs-practices/spirituality/civilized-diet↩
14. Ibid.↩

Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach

[Drasha on Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach, 4 April 2026]

Chol Hamoed means “the weekday of the holiday” and the Shabbat that falls during Pesach is Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach We’ve been reading from Leviticus but during Chol Hamoed Eid Pesach we go back to Exodus. Not to the parts about Passover, of course, but to just after the incident of the Golden Calf.

Moses says to God, “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways”¹ followed by “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”²

God has so far spoken to Moses from a burning bush³, turned a staff into a serpent, brought about the ten plagues, freed the Hebrew slaves, parted the Sea of Reeds and “had come down upon [Mount Sinai] in fire”⁴ to speak to the Israelites. Moses has spent 40 days on Mount Sinai talking to God and God had written the first ten commandments on stone tablets. Yet only now does Moses ask to see God.

We can interpret this in two ways: Either Moses has established a strong relationship with God and wants to take it to the next level, or, despite everything that’s happened so far, Moses still does not trust God. There are arguments for both sides.

The verse before this portion, Exodus 33:11, says, “God would speak to Moses face to face [panim el panim], as one person speaks to another.” In Numbers, God tells Aaron and Mirian, “With [Moses] I speak mouth to mouth [Pe el Pe], plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds God’s likeness.”⁵ In Deuteronomy, after Moses dies, it says, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom God singled out, face to face [panim el-panim]”⁶ These passages speak to a very close relationship and it seems natural that Moses would want to put a face to the name.

I had a similar experience in 2013 when I received an unsolicited email from someone I’d never met, a woman in New Zealand, a country I’d never heard of. (Coincidentally, I was on holiday in Israel at the time, though I was in the Negev, not on Mount Sinai.) After some back-and-forth emails, I said I wanted to have a video chat and she said, absolutely not, no way, not going to happen. I said something along the lines of I’d have to stop communicating because I didn’t want to be catfished by a 40-year-old guy living in his mom’s basement. She reluctantly agreed to a video chat and, long story short, I moved to New Zealand and married her.

But I digress.

As for Moses still not trusting God, remember at the burning bush, after God lays out the entire plan for freeing the Israelites, Moses says, “Please…make someone else Your agent.”⁷ God becomes angry, ignores Moses’ request and continues telling Moses what to do. That sort of bullying does not engender trust.

And when Moses accepts the task and is on his way to Egypt with his wife and sons, one night God seeks to kill Moses! Zipporah saves Moses when she takes a flint and cuts off her son’s foreskin.⁸ Not the sort of thing you see at a trust-building workshop.

Later, after God gives the Israelites manna, they cry out, “If only we had meat!” Moses complains to God, not for the first time or the last time, “Why have You…laid the burden of all this people upon me?” God replies rather testily, “[I] will give you meat and you shall eat…until it comes out of your nostrils”⁹ Then Moses responds sarcastically, “The people who are with me number six hundred thousand foot soldiers [alone]... Could enough flocks and herds be slaughtered to suffice them? Or could all the fish of the sea be gathered…to suffice them?” God responds just as sarcastically, “Is there a limit to God’s power? You shall soon see whether what I have said happens to you or not!” None of this speaks to a close collaboration between friends.

And the final straw was at Meribah, after Miriam dies and God tells Moses, “Order the rock to yield its water.” But Moses strikes the rock, twice. God reacts badly: “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

Even at the end, when Moses pleads with God, “Let me…cross over and see the good land on the other side of the Jordan,” God says, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!”¹⁰

Either way, whether Moses trusts God or not, he asks to see God and God partially agrees, saying “I will make all My goodness pass before you…. But you cannot see My face, for no mortal may see Me and live.”¹¹

As God does this, God says about himself, “God! God! a Deity compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin—yet not remitting all punishment, but visiting the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

From this narcissistic run-on sentence the sages derived the 13 attributes of God:

1. Compassion before a person sins
2. Compassion after a person has sinned
3. Possessing the power to bestow kindness
4. Merciful [helps people avoid distress]
5. Gracious [God saves people from distress once it has overtaken them]
6. Slow to anger [God is patient with both the righteous and the wicked. He gives people time to reflect, improve, and repent instead of punishing sinners immediately]
7. Abundant in kindness
8. Truthful (fulfilling His promises)
9. Keeping kindness unto thousands (of generations).
10. Forgiving iniquity [corruption of the heart],
11. Transgression [a willful sin] and
12. Sin [sin committed out of apathy or carelessness]
13. And pardoning. [If one repents.]

According to Maimonides, these attributes are not qualities inherent in God, but rather are methods of His activity.¹² In other words, God does not possess human emotions or passions, but these attributes outline God’s ways of governing the world.

Similarly, in the Talmud¹³ these are called derakhim (ways), which calls back to the beginning of today’s portion: “Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways.”

Maimonides goes on to say that by imitating God's goodness we become, in a sense, agents of divine rule and providence. Perhaps we experience God’s presence through the goodness we create in the world.

These attributes are central to the S’lichot (prayers for forgiveness) and High Holiday services, often recited as a plea for divine mercy. The Talmud¹⁴ explains that God showed Moses a vision of Himself "wrapped" like a communal prayer leader, promising that whenever the people would sin, they could call upon these attributes to evoke mercy.

At a superficial level, we’d all like to “see” God, but I will finish with a warning from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

"I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."

"But," says Man, "The Babel fish could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."

"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Shabbat shalom and chag Pesach sameach.

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1. Exodus 33:13 ↩
2. Exodus 33:18 ↩
3. Exodus 3:2 ↩
4. Exodus 19:18 ↩
5. Numbers 12:8 ↩
6. Deuteronomy 34:10 ↩
7. Exodus 4:13 ↩
8. Exodus 4:24-26↩
9. Numbers 11:4-23 ↩
10. Deuteronomy 3:25-26 ↩
11. Exodus 33:19-20 ↩
12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Attributes_of_Mercy ↩
13. Sifre, Deuteronomy 49 [ed. Friedmann, p. 85] ↩
14. Rosh Hashanah 17b ↩

Losing it

A few days ago, I ran across an old receipt and for some odd reason I thought to myself, "Ten months ago I was a happily married man." At the beginning of February, we had just raised enough money to start the Enhertu treatment and the oncologists thought it would give my wife another year or two. It was the first optimistic news we'd had in a while and her death was the furthest thing from my mind. Two weeks later, she was gone.

Today, I went to a gym for the first time in 11 years. I've never been particularly fit but middle-age spread has hit me hard and I've ballooned to 96kg (211 pounds or 15 stones). In my defense, my wife was an excellent cook and, although she always made healthy meals, I always had two (or three) servings. On top of that, after she was diagnosed, she rarely had the energy to do any exercise and I happily chose to spend my time with her on the sofa. I always told myself I'd join a gym after she was gone. 

What I didn't appreciate was that, because I said that, joining a gym became emotionally tied to her absence. I thought about it often and I always found an excuse not to join--finances, time, commitment--but in the back of my mind I knew it was because it was one more tiny acknowledgement that she was gone.

Of course, I could have done a million other things to lose weight but I knew those were never going to happen. Last night a friend said she had been diagnosed as pre-diabetic and that was the wake-up call I needed. When I went in  to sign up, I don't think the person at the desk even noticed my anguish.

I'm already starting to forget the little things, like how it felt when she touched me. I know it was wonderful and calming and always full of love, and she stroked my head and rubbed my back and held me every day for eleven years, but I can't remember the actual feeling. All those little moment of us just being together, talking nonsense, making plans -- it must have been another person because I can't remember it. Sitting on the sofa with my hand on her leg - she always curled up so her legs were tucked against me - or the feeling of her hand in mine. I would give anything to feel these things again. 

The garden actually looks quite good; I think my wife would have been very pleased. The vegetable beds are really taking off and I've just planted clover as a walkway around them. (Last year we layered cardboard and mulch, which worked for a while, but it's a surprising amount of work. Plus the clover should attract bees which is good for the veggies, as well as the environment.)

My wife loved fairy lights and I used to have them in the bushes and strung overhead on bamboo poles. I had to take them off the bushes to do some trimming and never put them back, and I had to take them off the poles when the solar panels were installed and never put them back. I've just done a big trim so I really should put them back up. She would love that. 

Hushabye Mountain

Rae recorded a lot of songs on her iPhone. Most were religious tunes, but she recorded this with a note that she used to sing it to the kids when they were babies.