HORSERADISH

     ."To a worm in horseradish, the world is horseradish" This is an old Yiddish proverb and just think of its applicability to the world of today, the world we live in, like it or not. Horseradish, for those not in the know, is a red or white semi solid sauce used on food to enhance taste, especially gefilte fish. It can be sweet or truly powerfully strong, depending upon additives to the original base of the root vegetable. No one could beat the hand ground white horseradish my Zaydie made for Passover! No one could stop the tears raining down the face as the mouth was set on fire. And isn't that the name of the game!

That is the name of the game of life living in  a horseradish world. Life now can be very bitter, so strongly so that we are overwhelmed by it and its problems. From  a death rate that is climbing exponentially, and 400,000 seems now to be an underestimate as we already crossed 350,000 dead, and the hospital system of LA is on its last toe, never mind its last leg. This situation is mirrored all over the country as the bottles of bitterly strong horseradish fly off the shelves of life. People are dying again at a crazy rate, families are gasping with shock, stunned by the sudden death of their loved ones, alone, comfortless in a sterile hospital bed, and that horseradish is going down the throats with a burning such as we have never seen before. 

Unfortunately, we are not alone. No, not the aliens that people are once again reporting on sightings, but not alone in the dire presence of death and dying. For example, Israel has lost almost 4,000 dead to this pandemic and in a country of 9 million, think of the percentages and know how large a number, how big a blow it is. Such is the fact all over the world, now living in a bitterly acerbic bottle of horseradish. It appears that the bottles of sweet horseradish are nowhere to be found. Will they return? Can they return in our new world?

In such a dangerously ill and afflicted world there are more bitter states of being to follow. We have an acknowledgement that the world as we knew it prior to 2020 will never return. There is talk of a Great Reset, a change in the dynamics and paradigms of the world's nations. There will be a global consensus in attitude, a realization that lines on a map are not walls that stop viruses and other ills. It is time, people say, that we recognize this and fight dangers together, pool resources, and grow together in an endangered world, the horseradish world we worms live in. 

It is all the more complicated and threatening when we realize that there has been a reaction both before and after this new thinking. It is almost time here to learn the new salute, as a group of Republicans, if they can have any ownership of that name, as they have so shamed that name, shamed its leader of all time, Lincoln, have attacked the very foundation of democracy right here in America. 

It is the most blatant, obvious and dangerous attempt to install dictatorship in the country, one wherein a demented man will be indulged, allowed to throw tantrums in private and online, even as the rest of the conspirators run the country. Away with voting rights. Away with equality. Away with civil rights. Away with any attempts to treat people fairly. Away with justice. On with a ruling class, a new American declared aristocracy worse than even Metternich could have designed!!

There is now a group of Senators and ones soon to be who are advocating, despite all realities, all thrown out lawsuits, all reasonable answers, despite everything, who are determined to overthrow this country, and that includes the man I have been warning about all along - the Devil's Spawn, Pence.

As far as I am concerned, these people are traitors to this country. They have advocated locking up people and shooting them, execution style, and well, they need to look in the mirror. All I hear nowadays is that there is nothing they can do "legally", but so what! Since when do these people stop at the line that demarcates and separates legal from illegal. The overthrowing of a legal and legitimate government is treason, is illegal, and yet these traitors are girding themselves openly for their attempt on January 6, the culmination of all their false and dangerous accusations and campaigns to screw all Americans, including their deluded supporters who will be the first to suffer lack of economic resources, health care, educational opportunities and a future for their children. Does anyone out there realize this, understand this, feel the deep and abiding ache in the gut, or are we drowning in that bottle of horseradish that the world now resembles?  

The violence that accompanies overthrows of government is already here. The Proud Boys await the day when they will riot and terrorize in DC. Their allies await all over the country. The homes of both Democratic and Republican so called leaders have been vandalized, by angry and hopeless citizens who feel the despair in which they are immersed, the bitter taste of that horseradish, wondering where the sweet variety has gone and why it has gone?

It has disappeared because too many have become complacent and believe that we need not be vigilant in protecting democracy in this country and around the world where it is quickly becoming an endangered species, almost at the extinction level. It has disappeared because we do nothing until finally we will not be able to do anything.

People, from the heart, I plead with you to be awake and alert, to understand the existential danger to democracy that now exists. For too long and for too many times, Jews have lived in worlds of horseradish, unstable worlds of danger and disaster, of uncertainty and death, of hopelessness and despair. We have seen the Jewish people almost wiped out time and time again, yet the world has learned nothing and genocide in its many realities continues on. Nor does it stop, for hatred and violence feed themselves, on themselves and consume all in its path, even as the horseradish turns more and more bitter, unsure of footing, and an end to all that is sweet and joyful in life.

We have already begun this new year with a continuation and worsening of 2020, the year we all hated and endured for too long. Let us clean off these miserable bitter bottles and substitute the sweet ones, the ones that provide good taste, good enhancement of the pleasures of good food and families and friends around with whom to share the joys of life. The train is leaving. Which cargo will be left behind for us to find? Time is running out to find out and do the right thing. Now.