CHECKED IN AND AWARE

  Where have these people been my whole life? Yesterday I posted an entire article addressed, actually, in reality, to all good people, those who have set aside their normal standards in order to maintain and justify their support of Trump, of the GOP as it has turned rotten and acidic, turned a blind eye to the manifestly vicious newbies such as Greene and Boebert, Gaetz, etc. who should be pushed off to the side, but instead are granted plum chairmanships as of January. Not good for the country and not good for the Jews. Just being aware and checked in. 

So, this morning I open the computer and lo and behold, yet another voice speaking my very own thoughts, those which I have voiced over and over again. Those thoughts which are part of any Jew's life, any that are truly aware of our history and the rapid turn on a dime of supposed friends and neighbors as they threw people away and stole belongings, businesses, houses, rights, and lives. To this very day there are survivors and their descendants trying to have stolen art works and properties returned to them. Not with much cooperation either. Nor restoration of lives brutally cut short.

To the very end there was their hope. Until we Jews outlasted this frighteningly almost undefeatable plan to exterminate us, wipe us off the face of the earth - yet again - and always. Always. The old commercial wherein there was a deep voice intoning that the Hebrew National products answered to a 'higher authority', well, we Jews know, via history, via bones and sinews, via every blood cell, that the same 'higher authority' will never desert us. Check history for that. We might be smacked down, undergo terrible things that should never be, but at the end, when the smoke clears - there we are. Battered, bruised, but there again, to rebuild, not only our lives but to also help build a better society for all.

I have long been a fan of the old 'joke' - not so much a joke, that the smart Jew has his papers up to date and in order. The wise Jew carries them in his pocket, always. While I do not carry them, I do know where they are, and check several times a year to keep tabs on deadlines and due dates. And hound my kids to do the same. I am always wondering, thinking, evaluating, that though America is my country, five generations born here, there is always that little thought, that incessant worm of fright, of uncertainty. Fact of life. Even when we deny that concern, as do many American Jews, wishful thinking, always, there is the truth of history in the back of the mind and foremost in the heart. Always there is the history of how we came here due to incessant wholesale slaughter of our people, the impossibility of building any kind of future should we remain there. German Jews thought they were okay. So did Austrians. So did most Jews of the West. Fools all. So yes, I am American, born and bred, as were my parents, as are the younger generations, as were my grandparents, thrilled with the freedom to live and breathe as compared to what they had fled, brave, alone, as teenagers. And thank G-d they did. 

Following is the essay piece written by a deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Good position. A successful family. An American through and through. Totally woven into the fabric of this country. And yet, and yet.... there are those same thoughts, persistent, and always aware. And in this country, at least to the present point, uneasy though it is, free to write of them. G-d bless! Read and understand what would happen if another reality stepped in. The horrors repeated, and that is for all, for no one is immune to the effects of hatred and intolerance. No one - not even the instigators, for all are fodder to feed the constant incessant vicious hunger of hate.

"Donald Trump Had Dinner With a Bunch of Antisemites, and I Feel Fine | Opinion

Former President Donald Trump had dinner with antisemites and I'm having trouble getting worked up about it.

You know why?

Because I'm Jewish.

How does that work, you ask?

Well, first Trump is a really, really bad guy. He has repeatedly shown himself antisemitic by conviction or convenience, and we have learned nothing new from this particular meal. If you're saying that the former president is mainstreaming antisemitism for the first time, I have no idea where you've been since 2015.

Second, antisemitism isn't new in this country—even though it's getting worse—and my family is always somewhat on edge, anyway. We came to this country with experience of pogroms in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia... We came to this country having survived the genocide of the Holocaust.

Our synagogue has security guards. The other synagogues around have security guards. Often the hired guards are accompanied by police officers, either on- or off-duty.

We have a kid that goes to a Jewish school. Guards there, too, long before they became standard in the age of school shootings. We're not worried about the threat from within so much as the threat from outside the community.

We're aware of who and what we are much of the time and I have yet to meet someone who is Jewish who can't give an exhaustive history of their family background and the antisemitism that played a huge role in the creation in their present. The past lives with us.

As we're taught about the Holocaust, the lesson is never that it can't happen here, but rather that it can. Sometimes, growing up, I felt it was simply a matter of time before "they" came for me and my family.

Many Jewish homes have a little case, ornate or not, attached to the front doorframe of their homes. The case is filled with a prayer, handwritten on parchment, and the more religious of us kiss the "mezuzah" when we walk in.

Mezuzot are typically bolted to the frame, but in my family, we've joked that we should use Velcro instead of nails or screws. That it should be "pogrom-ready," to be snatched off in case of either hiding or flight.

Ha-ha.

I grew up in New York City. When I was a kid, in the 1970s, nearly 20 percent of the city was Jewish, but it felt like more.

It seemed about as safe and far away from antisemitism as could be. There were Jewish delis, Jewish bakeries. Sometimes it felt like our public schools were Jewish schools because so many of us were Jewish in my neighborhood.

You would think that if people were to let down their guard, it would be under these circumstances. But that's not the way it was.

My grandmother, with her thick German/Yiddish accent thought America was the best place to be. It was the place that had taken her in when she was thrown out of Belgium with her 6-week-old daughter as World War II began.

But it was clear from her, and from her sister and the others who had made it from Europe, that America would be wonderful until it was not. Never for a second did they think—or want—to be anything but Jews, and they expected to be reminded of it. They knew neighbors who had turned on neighbors. They knew how a welcoming, cosmopolitan place could become something else.

Is it OK to grow up this way, on tenterhooks? Is it OK to live this way?

No, it is not.

But it does mean very little can surprise you.

So, when Trump has dinner with fascist Nick Fuentes and an antisemitic mentally ill moron, I refuse to get upset. Or should I say any more upset than I have been? Than I always am?

I'll continue to do what I've always done and be ready to yank that mezuzah right off the door."

 Now the alternative: Brittney Griner.

32 years old; 

a mother; 

a wife;

an athlete;

 a person;

persecuted for being American, Black, Gay, woman;

Condemned to a hellish freezing penal prison;

known eyewitness reports of:

torture;

slave labor;

starvation;

 no medical care;

little food;

inadequate clothing;

inadequate shelter;

zero life expectancy;

a plaything caught in a maelstrom of other's creation.

TIME TO BRING HER HOME.

WAY PAST TIME

IT IS UPON US - 

RESCUE THE CAPTIVE

SAVE A LIFE

BRITTNEY GRINER CALLS OUT TO US.

HEAR HER CRIES.

FEEL HER PAIN.

SHE IS US, YOU AND ME 

AND WE ARE HER.