It’s Friday
once again!
Not a lot of
plans for this weekend, really. My daughter has her first playdate since March
2020. The house is in pretty good shape. I do need to sit down and write out my
Thanksgiving menu, but otherwise, I plan on spending a lot of time reading,
which is really the best kind of weekend.
Here’s what I
found interesting online this week:
Georgetown
Study: “To succeed in America, it’s better to be born rich than smart.”
The headline
kind of says it all, but the article is worth a read. Americans who are born
rich wind up more successful in life than Americans who are born into poor
families but who score better on tests than the rich kids. And yet so many
people find it acceptable to sneer at the poor and accuse them of being lazy,
not working hard enough, not being smart enough. It’s pretty depressing. We’re
not quite the land of opportunity that we like to imagine ourselves being.
Beware of
what you read online, folks. I saw someone repost a meme that quoted George Washington,
and with all that I’ve read of American history, it sounded suspicious, so I dug
around a little, and yeah, there’s no evidence in Washington’s writings that he
ever stated anything like that. Not everything shared on Facebook is legit.
Check your sources.
Antivax
Racists Are Trying to Repurpose the Yellow Star of David
Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
boy.
I’ve seen SO
much of this. People who don’t want the Covid-19 vaccine comparing themselves
to Jews in the Holocaust. People at anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests
sticking a yellow Magen David on themselves and fake-crying about how persecuted
they are.
Do. Not. Do. This.
As a Jewish
woman, this infuriates me. You know what persecution looks like these days? It’s
attending a service at your synagogue with a weeping family because that family’s
relatives were murdered at the Tree of Life Shooting in Pittsburgh. It’s dancing
with the Torah with complete and utter joy on Simchat Torah, or having your rabbi
wish you a peaceful Shabbat, and then exiting the synagogue and walking by the
massive security system and the two police cars that are stationed outside our
every service because there are people who want us dead. It’s picking out a new
pair of dress shoes to wear to synagogue and having to consider if you can run
to safety in them if necessary before you consider if you can afford them or if
you like how they look or if they fit well. It’s constantly seeing hateful,
antisemitic posts on social media and knowing those people could be waiting in
the shadows for you, or plotting to harm your friends or the place you worship.
A
synagogue in Austin was the site of an arson attack recently; someone
also threatened to blow up a St. Louis synagogue. My synagogue has been the
site of a vandalism attack; another local one I attended classes at had a pipe
bomb threat. This is what Jews today go through every day of our lives.
Persecution
is not being asked to participate in public health measures against the virus
that has killed almost 750,000 of our fellow Americans in less than two years. It’s
insulting to us as Jews that so many people want to cosplay our persecution but
have zero idea of what living as a member of a targeted group actually looks
and feels like. Don’t do this. Don’t compare yourself to Jews, and for the love
of all that is holy, don’t repost memes that compare not wanting to be
vaccinated to what we suffered in the Holocaust, unless you want your Jewish
friends to never, ever consider you a friend again.
For
many ICU survivors and their families, life is never the same.
This is yet another tragedy of Covid-19, which is and has been a mass-disabling event from the
beginning. Lungs are not forgiving organs, and Covid is also neurological in
nature. We’re going to be living with the consequences of this for a very, very
long time, and I worry for the people who have survived it and the lifelong
damage they’re going to live with- for what I suspect for many will be a
shortened life. People who spend 30, 40, 50 or more days on a ventilator don’t
bounce back easily; sometimes they never do, and the damage caused by both the
virus and the effects of the machinery needed to sustain their lives may leave
their bodies susceptible to even minor infections. I worry deeply what this
upcoming cold and flu season is going to look like for survivors, especially
those who aren’t taking the best precautions to keep themselves safe.
Thousands
of Military Families Struggle with Food Insecurity
This is not a
new problem. My ex-husband was in the military when we were married, and there
were many times we went without food because we had no money. We qualified for
food baskets most years during the holidays. It does look as though there are
members of Congress taking steps to fix this problem, which is good, but it
should never, ever have been a problem in the first place. For all the
blustering so many people like to do about THANK YOU MILITARY MEMBERS AND
VETERANS!!11!1!!, you think they’d put their money where their mouth is, but I
suppose it’s just easier to thank someone than work to ensure those people’s
actual physical needs are met. Think about that next time you thank a veteran
or a military member, and instead of just thanking them, do something- make a
donation to a charity, write to your member of congress- to make sure they have
things like food and access to adequate mental health care. Thanking them is nice,
but it really does little more than make you feel good about yourself. No one
should ever go hungry.
And something
a little more uplifting…
“Seventy
Faces to the Torah”- and Grateful for All of Them.
Just a nice
little article on how Jews view the Hebrew Bible. We’re not literalists; a good
Torah study is more akin to a debate you might see at a book club. People
disagree with each other, they argue, and that’s all part of it! There are so
many different and beautiful meanings to be found, and we all bring our own
diverse lenses to view it, resulting in different points of view and different
interpretations. If you weren’t aware there was a difference between how Jews
and Christians approach biblical texts, this might shed some light on the
subject. Rabbi Elliot Dorff is a wonderful writer; I’ve encountered his
writings before, and he’s always insightful.
And that’s it
for this week! I hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing weekend full of all the
things you love. Shalom, friends. :)
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