When The Music Stops

ADL CEO
Jonathan Greenblatt

Dana Milbank had an essay in the Washington Post this past week. One line jumped off the screen, immediately burning itself into my mind:

As Jews, we know at some point the music stops," Greenblatt said. "This is burned into the collective consciousness of every Jewish person."

 At some point, the music stops. 

The music stops.

Are We, the Jewish People, back to musical counties? Who will take us? Who will bar our entry? Where will our children be safe? Will we be able to start all over again?

If we learned nothing else from Germany in the 1930s, we learned nice neighbors draw the drapes so they can say they didn't know about the atrocities. 

Or did we?

On 60 MINUTES last night Scott Pelly of 60 minutes did a segment (beginning at minute 2:00) on the ballot and voting. Watching was enough to make me want to move abroad.  Pelly  opened with the following statement:

It's the vote. It's the vote that holds America together; belief that with a ballot voices are heard, disputes are addressed, and there's always another chance. Countries without this belief, tend to be in bondage, or at war.

Watch it. It's possibly the scariest thing you can see because it is all true.

Since they can no longer win elections by telling the truth, the GOP is using grass roots, lower level elections to spread the BIG lie... the one where Feckless Asshole won the last presidential election. Instead of having just the big offices out there, they are going after other state offices to move their agenda forward. This is absolutely the case in Minnesota, but we're not alone. Just like Minnesota, election deniers are running for governor in 19 states,  attorney general in 10 states, and secretary of state in 12 states. Pelly goes on to point out that although no fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election has ever been found, getting an endorsement from Feckless is dependent on a candidate's ability to spread doubt. 

So, how does this dovetail into the upswing of antisemitism? 

It's all about spreading doubt. Plant the seed, water it with rhetoric, then sit back to watch it sprout. That said, it's not as direct or obvious as one might think. Follow my thought train for a moment. 

As the Big Lie dominates the airwaves in the form of political ads for election denier candidates, we become inured to the rhetoric. As tired as We, the People, are of the lies, we've stopped calling them out. At the same time, slurs and hate speech on social media platforms have expanded exponentially according to a variety of sources, including LeBron James:

LeBron James

@KingJames

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Seguir

I dont know Elon Musk and, tbh, I could care less who owns twitter. But I will say that if this is true, I hope he and his people take this very seriously because this is scary AF. So many damn unfit people saying hate speech is free speech.

Yoel Roth, Twitter's chief "integrity" officer, responded thusly:

Yoel Roth

@yoyoel

Over the last 48 hours, we’ve seen a small number of accounts post a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms. To give you a sense of scale: More than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly using a particular slur came from just 300 accounts.

9:15 PM · Oct 29, 2022

Doesn't matter; the damage is done. 

The electronic banner reading Kanye is right about the jews that scrolled across TIAA Bank Field at the end of the University of Florida v. Georgia football game was not, according to an email released by Jacksonville's sheriff's office, a hate crime. 

At this time, the Sheriff’s Office has not identified any crimes having been committed; the comments displayed do not include any type of threat and are protected by the First Amendment. We will continue to monitor any reports of this nature to determine if they rise to level of a criminal nature.

I tend to be a free-speech advocate, but I'm not certain, considering the context, that this is not a dog-whistle threat. The FBI and other agencies are looking into it, but what does the sheriff's office imply with that statement? I'm just not sure. 

On Friday, Banners appeared over interstates reading "End Jewish Supremacy in America" and "Honk if you know it's the Jews."

This is not isolated; these banners are not unlike the ones hanging in Los Angeles last week. The upswing in incidents indicates this is a growing trend. The real question, the one that addresses how to stop it, has yet to be answered. 

German Jews believed they were safe in liberal, intellectual Germany. They were not. When the music stopped there, too many Jews waited for it to start up again. The scene was repeated in a domino chain of countries, even the US. We, the People, rounded up those of Japanese ancestry and origin at the same time we were turning away Jewish refugees. Ergo, this isn't exactly an aberration. 

I was thinking about Sukkot (being thankful it was finally over) and remembering some happier times when we would sit around a table in someone's sukkah and argue about Ushpizin...the 7 honored guests. Who would we invite? Who would we omit? But I also remember one sukkot, a more somber one, when we talked about where we would go when the curtain fell on free America. I think I prefer the image of the music stopping better than the curtain falling.

I don't think there is a Jew in America who has not had this conversation with someone. How sad is that?

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Do be a good scout. 

Be prepared.

What Else Can I Say?

 

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What To Expect When You're Electing

I am increasingly convinced most of the people running for office in this country...and state...have no idea

1. how the federal government works
2. how the office they're running for works
3. what actual powers are held by elected officials in any office

Tyler Kistner, running against Angie Craig for the MN-2 Congressional seat, seems to be under the impression that Joe Biden and Angie Craig are running the county. Dished up in an ad of false modesty about how he and his family can't afford Joe and Angie's policies, he provides no information, either in an ad or on his website, about his solutions. Just that there are problems. Hey, Ty! We waited FOUR years to hear the GOP plan to replace the ACA....and we're still waiting. You got a plan? You even have a clue? How about sharing that with the rest of us mere constituents you're trying to win over. So far, Craig has been a staunch ally for ALL Minnesotans, not just the Democrats. Ask anyone who takes insulin or has a small farm. Kistner, being an ex-Marine doesn't mean you have the smarts to sit in one of those chairs. You flap your lips incessantly, but nothing besides inane rhetoric comes out.

Jim Schultz, on the other hand, is under the incredible impression that the Attorney General's office can pick and choose its focus. He seems to think they should only be handling crime cases when, in fact, the Attorney General handles everything that comes down the road into the office. 

From MPR's statement on Attorney General candidate stances:

Schultz, a Harvard-educated lawyer who previously worked in the private sector, believes the AG’s office should enforce the laws on the books, increase the number of criminal attorneys, and refrain from bringing lawsuits against vaping or oil companies like Ellison has.  

To that, Ellison, a former six-term member of Congress who earned his law degree at the University of Minnesota Law School, said Schultz is “missing the lion's share of the job. But I will say that, yeah, public safety is a part of it … but it's by no means the whole thing. And we would miss-serve and undermine the welfare of the people of this state if we did not protect the markets and protect consumers.” 

Excuse me, Mr. Schultz, but I want my attorney general to deal with all this stuff because that's what he's supposed to do. It can not just be shoved to the side as you suggest. If you're not sure about the role of an AG, you can read up on it at the website for The National Association of Attorneys General.

No discussion of Idiocracy would be complete without at least a mention of Herschel Walker and his fantasy resume. Here are some tidbits from THE NEW REPUBLIC:

1. He did not graduate from University of Georgia in the top 1% of his class as he claims. He did not graduate at all. And he certainly was not valedictorian. 
2. He did not found a charity called Patriot Support. In fact, it's a for-profit arm of Universal Health Services.
3. He was not a cop for Cobb County in Georgia. He was given an honorary badge.
4. He did not train with the FBI: “I spent time at Quantico at the FBI training school. Y’all didn’t know I was an agent?” Nope. And you're not. 
5. He does not own the largest reupholstery business in the country. He owns NO reupholstery business at all.

I would also like to add that I am increasingly convinced way too many voters have no idea how the government works or what actual powers any elected official actually has. It was pretty obvious Feckless Toddler had no idea how any of it worked, and it was made painfully clear as he called people to try to overturn the elections, not to mention pressure his own vice-president to become a federal felon. 

If you don't know what the offices are  or what they're supposed to do, how can you vote for someone to fill that office? Unless, of course, they're promising you ice cream for lunch every day. That Herschel Walker has even gotten this far is terrifying. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

If you are not sure what any office is supposed to do,

Google it. 
I asked, "what's an attorney general supposed to do," 

and got a whole list of websites. 

It's so easy to find out so you can make an informed decision.

From Generation to Generation: The Traditions We Carry

It's not enough to just be holiday season for Jews, it's also been airplane season for me. Not to mention I keep having lunch with my big brother... 3 Sundays in a row. I mean, the guy lives outside Philly, so it's not like I can call him up and say, " hey, let's do lunch." First time was in Austin at the maternal-side wedding. Second time was at my house because he was here for Rosh Ha'Shana...which is when I usually see him. 

The third time was because I flew into NY to join the paternal-side for Aunt Cynthia's headstone unveiling. Uncle Lenny passed away several years ago and was buried in the family plot. His headstone had a blank space for Aunt Cynthia. When I was in New York this past August, I noticed the space was still blank. In a way, I was relieved. Since I've been saying kaddish for my aunt (mostly because I go to daily minyan,) I wasn't quite ready to see her name chiseled on there quite yet.

Unveilings seem to be a uniquely Jewish thing. They take place about a year after the burial. Some people do not visit the grave until the unveiling, and then regular visits for kever avot happen. But I really wanted to talk about unveilings. 

Unlike funerals, they're not usually weepy-wailers. They are smaller, more stoic, and when I was a kid, someone always pulled a card table from the trunk and laid out sponge cake, herring, and schnapps. These days, we go for lunch at the local kosher deli. But unveilings are important to share with the family. It's a marker moment, a fixed point in time when you really come to the end of mourning and the wound is theoretically scabbed over. Of course, there's not a real timeline for any of it, but the unveiling serves to gather us together for a sigh, a hug, and a wistful goodbye. I've always found them to be strangely cathartic. 

It would make it so final. But when we got to the cemetery this time (in the pouring rain which seemed oddly appropriate) there it was. As if it had always been there. But of course, it hadn't. We covered the stone with cheesecloth, my cousin Richard led the brief service, and we removed the cloth, and it was official. 

Now, Tante really is next to Uncle. Just like Mom is next to Dad. Grandma Bessie is next to Mom even though this is my dad's side of the family (long story best saved for another time.) Grandma Sarah is next to Grandpa Moishe. Having them all together is very convenient. 

(Ziggy and I actually have plots there, too, but he wanted to be buried in Minnesota,
 so I guess I'll end up permanently in the land of passive/aggressive.)

In the midst of the Jewish holiday cycle,  you end up thinking about what you're gonna cook, who cooked it before you, and why the hell they're not here to tell you what you're doing wrong. But it's more than that; it's a through line, one generation of Jewish women to the next. I know there are weird things I do because Grandma Bessie or Grandma Sarah did them, as did my Mom. I imagine one day Little Miss will tell her daughter or granddaughter that you must use seltzer when making matzah balls because that's what her Savta (me) did. Just like Bubbe and Grandma Bessie did. These are the unwritten traditions we pass from one generation to the next. Every time I stand at the cemetery, I recite the litany of what I've tried to pass down this year. 

When we sit around a shabbat or yontif (holiday) table or stand together as a family before the open Ark during Ne'ila, it links us to who and what came before us. Just as I have memories from my childhood, I hope the Senior Son and the Junior Son have equally fine memories. I can only hope Little Miss and Young Sir are already collecting their own memories of our fun, boisterous, happy family gatherings.

Is that so much to ask?

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Taking plants that were outside all summer into the house?

Don't forget to check for emerging bugs.

I'm a great believer in spraying the top of the soil 

with Dawn mixed with water.

Works like a charm.

Easy Fast to All - G'mar Hatimah Tova

Tuesday night is the eve of Yom Kippur. Jews all over the globe will stand together as a congregation to recite Kol Nidre , asking G-d to release us from our vows and renunciations. 

All vow, renunciations, bans, oaths, formulas of obligation, pledges, and promises that we vow or promise to ourselves and to G-d from this YK to the next…may it approach us for good…we hereby retract. May they all be undone, repealed, cancelled, voided, annulled, and regarded as neither valid nor binding. Our vows shall not be considered vows, our renunciations shall not be considered renunciations, and our promises shall not be considered promises. 

Anti Semites use this to "prove" Jews are untrustworthy because we ask G-d for release from our vows. Truth of the matter is, those vows are the ones to ourselves and G-d. They are not about vows between people. 

It's not an ancient prayer. Written in Aramaic and Hebrew, it's a medieval prayer, believed to have been written sometime between 589 and 1038 C.E. Some believe it was written to absolve us from the vows made in forced conversion of Christianity (think Spanish Inquisition here) or Islam. Whatever. The prayer is between the individual us and G-d even though we recite it as a congregation..

One of the things I love about being a Jew is the distinction that G-d cannot forgive us for sins committed between people. There isn't a person on the planet who doesn't have at least one doozy in the personal-responsibility closet. Those are the crimes we personally own. It's to our own benefit to deal with them and get them out of hiding, but sometimes, discretion is truly the better part of valor. Still.....

The confessionals (Al Het, and Ashamnu) and Avinu Malkeinu are all in the plural. WE have sinned. We confess as a community, as if every sin on the list is ours. There's tons of stuff written about why this is, but sometimes the simplest answer is the most satisfying: we cover each other's butt. We're a community, a large, rambunctious family, a single people that comes in an endless variety of colors, orientations, and every other permutation one can imagine. But over it all is the rainbow that is being Jewish. We are what we are. We need to stop hating those who are different. We need to accept there are differences and not a single one is worthy of sinat chinam...baseless hatred. 

If you are fasting, have an easy fast. And may you be sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year. 

גמר חתימה טובה

The WP's Tip o'the Week

Experiment with not hating anyone this week;

you just might find it liberating.