Tonight, I will gather with my family to celebrate and commemorate the Exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt to Israel the locus of our faith. It was a major link in the unbreakable chain that sustained us through millennia of dispersion and persecution and harassment and forced conversions and genocide. While mighty empires have fallen, we are still here.
We will hail the revelation of the Ten Commandments during the Jewish wandering in the Sinai- the first guide for decent behavior which has inspired people of all faiths for centuries.
We will recall how on Passover 1943 hungry, cold and wretched Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose up against the Nazis and with no military training, using stolen guns, iron rods, knives and crafted explosives they held off the Nazis for twenty-eight days.
But this year I am filled with rue and misgiving.
The youngest member will then ask the four questions. The first should be: “Why have so many of our faith violated the Second Commandment and worship the “graven images” and false idols of radical “progressive” and “woke” policies which threaten democracy the cornerstone of our religious freedom, continuity and protection?”
In Israel there is a civil war waged against a leader elected by the majority in a scrupulously monitored election. Protesters, like the Hellenist Jews of antiquity embrace partisan ideology and hypocritical virtue signaling at a time of greatest danger and threats from modern Pharaohs and their allies.
Conor Cruise O’Brien, the late Irish politician, writer, historian and academic lamented: “Antisemitism is a light sleeper.” Indeed! It has awakened with gale force throughout the world, and alas, in the corridors of power in America our beloved nation.
But hope, Tikvah in Hebrew, has sustained our faith and continues to do so.
So, we will eat and be merry and hope for better days. Happy and sweet Passover to all who observe.
When renewing my ballet subscription for 2023, after submitting the order this was sent online:
https://www.metopera.org/cart/confirmation/
Your purchase qualifies you to purchase single tickets to the 2023 ABT season. When purchasing through the website, you will be sat in the best available seats in your chosen section.
When trying to cancel my late daughter’s health coverage automatic payments, after an hour of listening to horrible music, the very polite agent told me:
“In order to expedite your request, I would have to speak to the deceased to confirm that you can speak on her behalf.!!!???
And the best of all from a subscriber to the newsletter:
“Is there a word in the dicktionary to describe Senator Schumer? “
The media’s obituaries have referenced the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal ad nauseam. Lucie and Drucie her long time friend and companion are among my dearest friends. We enjoyed countless lunches either at her home or mine or at Michael’s restaurant in New York or the River Palm in Edgewater, New Jersey. Her July 4th parties were the stuff of legend. In addition to great vittles and fruits of the vine, we watched the fireworks and sang patriotic songs. She was irreverent and witty and loyal to our coterie of good friends. Fred, Carol, Bonnie, Chris, Panchali, Mary, Lynn, and Janie will forever remember the good times and pleasure of her dazzling company. rsk
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/exclusive-women-of-iran-throw-down-your-headscarves Ruth King
When the French résistance was fighting the Nazis in 1940, the British and the Americans encouraged them with oratory but withheld any material help. This led the French to say “the British will fight the Nazis to the last drop of French blood.”
I hesitate to encourage the women to resist to the last drop of their blood, but I am dismayed by a number of stylish, well coiffed, décolleté and manicured “feminists” in America, including Iranian expatriates, who urge the courageous women of Iran to continue their bloody struggle against the regime in Iran without naming the real enemy….Sharia. It is like telling them to die in vain.
The poster-boy for the rebellion is Moussavi and he and his “reformist” wife, who dresses in hijab, utter not a single word of opposition to Sharia, the cruel, misogynist Islamic law that oppresses women and reduces them to the status of animal.
The women of Iran were led down this path before by their mothers and grandmothers who encouraged them to overthrow the Shah and plunged that nation into the repressive hell-hole ruled by the Ayatollahs.
Revolution cannot be successful if sacrifice brings more Islamic repression and degradation with another face and a new set of Ayatollahs. Their jail is Islam and changing the warden from one thug to another will not set them free.
Women of Iran:
Freedom is what I see daily in my supermarket…women in saris, in hijab, Orthodox Jewish women in wigs or headscarves, girls in miniskirts, girls with navel rings who live and play and love and pray without fear of “honor killings” or stoning or lashing or rape, or forced marriages even at the pre-puberty age of nine.
Freedom is not just the right to vote for candidates that are both sides of the same coin. It is the right to live without fear that your father or your brothers will murder you for committing adultery or apostasy or a perceived insult to the Prophet. It is the right to read books…porn if you choose….see movies from musicals to erotica….to dance and to kiss in public….to divorce or marry …to drive and to travel and to choose how and when and if you must wear that scarf, all with the protection of the state and not the religious dictates of the state.
This one is a great example:
Mike Lindell, the My Pillow boss distributed huge quantities of bedding to many families affected by Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers. Now, Lindell is openly a supporter of Donald Trump and a political Conservative and religious Christian.
This was the headline on AOL’s Welcome page:
“My Pillow Boss Promotes Products Outside Wrecked Florida Home “
The old cliche: “The more things change the more they remain the same.” Ronald Reagan won by a landslide in 1980. This debate was critical in making the case for conservatism and the need for change. Long but worth a read: rsk
“The candidates will debate questions on domestic, economic, foreign policy, and national security issues.
The ground rules for this, as agreed by you gentlemen, are these: Each panelist down here will ask a question, the same question, to each of the two candidates. After the two candidates have answered, a panelist will ask followup questions to try to sharpen the answers. The candidates will then have an opportunity each to make a rebuttal. That will constitute the first half of the debate, and I will state the rules for the second half later on.
Now, based on a toss of the coin, Governor Reagan will respond to the first question from Marvin Stone.
QUESTIONS
U.S. ARMED FORCES
Mr. Stone. Governor, as you’re well aware, the question of war and peace has emerged as a central issue in this campaign in the give-and-take of recent weeks. President Carter’s been criticized for responding late to aggressive Soviet impulses, for insufficient buildup of our Armed Forces, and a paralysis in dealing with Afghanistan and Iran. You have been criticized for being all too quick to advocate the use of lots of muscle, military action, to deal with foreign crises. Specifically, what are the differences between the two of you on the uses of American military power?
Governor Reagan. I don’t know what the differences might be, because I don’t know what Mr. Carter’s policies are. I do know what he has said about mine. And I’m only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security.
Now, I believe, also that this meeting, this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, which I believe is a responsibility peculiar to our country, that we cannot shirk our responsibility as the leader of the Free World, because we’re the only one that can do it. And therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong. We can get into a war by letting events get out of hand, as they have in the last 3 years under the foreign policies of this administration of Mr. Carter’s, until we’re faced each time with a crisis. And good management in preserving the peace requires that we control the events and try to intercept before they become a crisis.
Here in this most wonderful corner of the Diaspora, we are free to spend Yom Kippur as we wish. For me it is a day of reflection and introspection as a new year begins. As always, I reflect on Jewish survival and the memory of those martyrs of the Holocaust for whom it was to be the last Yom Kippur.
Here are excerpts from :
Observing Yom Kippur in the Valley of Death: Auschwitz/Birkenau 1944
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/observing-yom-kippur-in-the-valley-of-death-auschwitz-birkenau-1944/
“despite the most appalling conditions in the camps, where each day brought Jewish prisoners closer to dying of starvation, and despite the exhausting back-breaking labor that the Nazi guards forced Jews to do every day and doubly hard on the High Holy Days, so many still sought to get closer to G-d by fasting on Yom Kippur. ”
“The prisoners understood and knew full well the enormous consequences for observing Yom Kippur by praying and fasting. To quote one, “even if beaten, tortured, and put to death, my eternal life would be greatly strengthened for having ‘returned’ to a pure state.” Make no mistake, like us, they prayed to be put in the book of life, that “the hand of G-d would take them to the day of liberation.” Yet, they faced the probability of imminent death with courage and the strong conviction that “even if it was their last day on earth” they could not do otherwise. ”
They are forever inscribed in the Book of Life…..rsk
I’ll skip the requisite fulsome praise for Ken Burns. Yes, he has made some great documentaries. And yes, his documentary on the Holocaust has devastating information on our nation’s indifference to the plight of Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
However, he is a polemical dolt for the inference that there is moral equivalence between Jewish refugees seeking asylum before the Holocaust, and those undocumented pouring into our border states.
For elucidation: Jewish refugees desperate to flee Europe would gladly have gone to any and all of the nations that are the locus of the present border surge.
They would have welcomed any harbor and accepted political harassment and economic woes, shacks for homes, lack of potable water, deplorable hygiene, and political strife rather than Hitler’s plan for the Jews disclosed in Mein Kampf in 1925. By 1933 it was a best seller.
No such document or genocidal agenda exists in any single nation south of our broken Southern border. Rsk
On September 2, with the surrender of Japan World War 2 officially ended. For the Jewish people the harsh truth unfolded on Rosh Ha Shana in 1945. One third of our population was exterminated by the Nazis with the complicity of many nations whose policies and indifference trapped the Jews of Europe.
Three years later, in spite of the turpitude of those who opposed it-most notably Great Britain- Palestine was liberated on May 14th, 1948 and renamed with its historical and religious name “Israel”-the last words of the martyred who prayed “hear oh Israel.”
Fast forward to tomorrow night when we will gather to celebrate 5783 of Jewish survival now numbered at almost 15 million throughout the world with the largest population 6.9 million who live in Israel and speak, write, read and bicker in Hebrew, our restored ancient language.
Israel is the fount and the locus of Jewish survival and on this holiday we celebrate the unbroken chain which started in Hebron millennia ago and our privilege to live in America a most exceptional nation.
And then we eat and have a jolly time.
As we used to abbreviate in the Bronx, I wish everyone a “happy and healthy!” rsk
In the southern border states a humanitarian crisis involves 8,000 illegal immigrants crossing into their cities each day threatening infrastructure, safety and health of local citizens.
In Martha’s Vineyard it takes only fifty. rsk
