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I’ve gone from being on
the board of directors of two different synagogues and a Jewish Community
Center to just buying a pound of scallops (good sale at Sprouts). I cleaned
earnestly, even the car and symbolically sold all of our leavened food in
preparation for Pesach and threw lavish Seders. Last year I eat
sandwiches at my school desk for much of Passover. I don’t even know when it is this year.
The current state of our
nation has very much exacerbated my fomenting disdain for organized religion.
Himself and I give a presentation about the artist Stanley Spencer at my
college reunion. Spencer’s paintings, the
artist said, were aimed to make him feel the way that he did in church.
For years, we attended Shabbat services at the tiny neighborhood shul
almost weekly. It comforted me that Jews
all over the world were reciting the same ancient prayers. The community of a small group of people,
that I’d grown to know, singing and praying as one was transporting. I
know the folly of saying “never,” so there is certainly a chance that at some
point in my life I will return to a religious community of some sort. It’s unlikely to be very soon however.
Transcendence these days
comes from traipsing around the hills near my home and teaching a big class of
hard-working immigrants and piecing together their stories as they become more
and more fluent in English. The one nod, albeit one that’s very important
to me, to my previous religiosity is lighting Shabbat candles every
Friday. With my current work schedule, I
cook dinner at home only three nights a week, so the Friday meal is even more significant.
I try for a better than average meal, bake a challah that is never really
good and a dessert that usually is. We
rush through the prayers and often beer replaces sacramental wine. Both kids,
when they are here, make it a point to be home for Shabbat and often bring
their friends. Like any family, we have
little beefs and slights, but Shabbat is almost always stress free and filled
with snappy patter.
I am easing into work
from home. I often stay in sweats all day, until it’s time to leave from
school. I receive documentary photos of moving boxes ordered by our nightmare
tenant which is evidence at least of her intention to move so I’m in a
state of cautious optimism. I find though that I am still on edge and
flipping back and forth from MSNBC and CNN for most of the hours that I am not
sleeping or teaching.
My intention is to try
to accomplish some work while having the Michael Cohen hearing on in the
background, but I am mesmerized. Cohen reminds me of many of my relatives
and family friends. Most interpret it as
a mob mentality but to me it seems almost more like a cultural inheritance.
To the best of my knowledge, not Cohen, nor any member of my family, was
ever been complicit in murder. I was
raised, much like my parents before me, to believe that only family merited
loyalty. Only happening upon a more rarefied environment, than from whence I
came, served to disabuse me of this ethos. Cohen seems to have lied when he
characterized his lack of desire for a White House position and it is likely
that other of his statements will be disproven.
But, when he spoke about visiting his daughter during her college
semester abroad, I decide that he is either one of the world’s great actors, or
truly a proud and loving father. Perhaps because I so want him to be
remorseful, he seems to me genuinely full of regret for getting caught up in felonious
business practices. I want him to be our
John Dean. I want, at the end of this kakistrophy,
to be able to forgive at least someone. And
I do not envision bearing any sympathy to the handful of those, including
Individual 1, who have yet to be indicted.
I meet up with two girlfriends that I haven’t
seen for a couple of months. We debrief
on the week in Trumpland for an hour before we even begin to get caught up on
our lives and our children. After
committing time and effort into attaining a good mid-term outcome, I am
reminded how much more salubrious it is to actually do something about the
problem rather than sit and wallow in indignance as it becomes increasingly
malignant. My goal therefore, is to
better spend my non-working time. There
is a floating group of fellow travelers who assemble for grassroots political
activities on what is called Civic Sundays.
Am open to carpool, so hit me up.
I know it’s a cliché but somehow the lyric from one of my favorite
Springsteen songs, “Rosalita,” resonates.
“Someday we’ll look back on all on all this and it will all seem funny.”
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