Art is 80

Yesterday morning, we were part of a group of about thirty who heard a presentation by retired Israeli Brigadier General Yoni Shimshoni on the current state of the State of Israel. Yoni spoke as a representative of a group called The Commanders (not a football team), made up of approximately 600 former high ranking Israeli security officials, from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), the Shin Bet, Mossad, and elsewhere. They have been operating as an informal non-partisan “think tank”, providing advice and expertise to whomever will listen (which apparently does not include Benjamin Netanyahu) on the current situation in which Israel finds itself trapped. Yoni (“call me Yoni”) was born in Israel to American-born parents, is completely fluent in English, has a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Princeton, and served in the active and reserve IDF for 45 years. I did not take notes during his presentation, so even my usual attempt for, say, 80% accuracy may fall apart here. But let me try to give you some of what he said.

Perhaps most importantly, he said that Israel today (and by Israel, he means Israel under its current government) has changed the definition of security on its head, to the consternation of The Commanders. For 75 years or so, Israel has concentrated on its defensive security – warding off large and small scale attacks from its Middle East neighbors, keeping its borders secure, engaging in “short wars” (his term) where necessary. Now, on the other hand, Israel is no longer engaged in defensive security, but in aggressive security, and this is obviously a result of the October 7, 2023 attack from Hamas in Gaza. Now, Israel is not trying to keep its borders secure, but is trying to destroy any potential attackers or scare them out of its immediate neighborhood. This means that Israel is no longer only engaging in “short wars”, but is engaging (with Iran, in Lebanon, etc.) is “forever wars”, and engaging in them aggressively and ferociously. This is a major change – from border protection to a search for ultimate victory.

In the process of doing this, he says, Israel, which has always striven (sometimes more successfully than other times) to have allies (allies in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, and the United States), has decided that allies are not necessary at all. It has alienated virtually the entire world, and does not seem to care. The attitude is: they all hate us and always will, so why pretend otherwise? Even, he says, the United States is no longer a reliable ally – just look at all of the anti-Israel sentiment showing up on both the left and the right in the United States. And, yes, he says, it is the right as well as the left – just as there is a debate about Israel going on within the Democratic Party, there is a similar debate going on in the Republican Party (much quieter, I assume), where there is a growing split among the Evangelicals about how Israel is now using its power.

Israel, says Yoni, has only one ally left. And that ally is Donald Trump. Period. No country, no government. Just Donald Trump.

Digression: after Yoni’s presentation, there has been news of a very harsh conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, where Trump yelled at Netanayhu and told him, were it not for Trump himself, Bibi would be in prison now. And, as a result of that conversation, Israel cancelled or postponed its planned attack on southern Beirut in order for conversations between Washington and Tehran to restart. End of digression.

But what are the goals of Netanyahu and his coalition? Yoni said that, within Israel, there is real talk about annexing the entire West Bank (the Commanders think that would be a big mistake, for all sorts of reasons), but little talk about annexing Gaza (although a minority of Israelis would like to put some settlements in the north of Gaza), the reasons being that Gaza has more people than land and the West Bank more land than people (although there are a lot of people there).

Yoni does not purport to say what will happen if Israel goes ahead with the dismissal of the current Knesset and a new election in the late summer or fall. He says that none of the issues regarding war or annexation are uppermost in the minds of the electorate right now, and there is in fact more focus on domestic issues, and on issues involving the structure of the government (role of the Supreme Court, powers of various governmental positions, drafting religious Haredi into the military, and so forth), and I don’t think he expects that to change.

In response to a question about a two-state solution, he said that, while he thinks (not sure he was talking for the group here, but perhaps he was) the time is not right to lobby for a two-state solution today, but eventually that time will hopefully come. Clearly, in addition to everything else going on, there is a perceived lack of Palestinian leadership that could bring about a viable state; he has no confidence in the Palestinian Authority, not that they don’t have members who mean well and think well, but they simply do not appear to have any influence or following among the Palestinian people.

There were many things that were not discussed (how much can you do in about 90 minutes?), including antisemitism and the effect of Israel’s current activities on antisemitism abroad, Iran, Jordan and Egypt, the Abraham Accords, and so forth. And we did not talk about failure of Israel’s traditional security systems that permitted the Oct 7 attack (think how different everything would be today if that attack had been nipped in the bud).

I found Yoni’s presentation depressing (as I am sure does Yoni), but informative, and it gave me a few new angles from which to view the situation. My take has been that Netanyahu and his guys are doing what they are doing because (a) they believe Israel is militarily at its strongest (and Yoni does say that technically, the IDF now is extraordinarily ahead of the times), and (b) its neighbors (largely the Iran proxies) at what might be their weakest (although Hezbollah seems anything but overly weak), and (c) now is the time to take advantage of that big difference and try to end threats to Israel now and forever. I believe that Netanyahu does this with confidence (of course, perhaps misplaced – time will tell), and that if he is successful, he will be a hero forever, and if he isn’t, he will be dead and won’t care. I believe that my theory and Yoni’s analysis complement each other, although I did not bring this up in the discussion.

What I did ask is: with all the support for what the IDF is doing within the Israel population, and the growing concern for what Israel is doing among the diaspora, what has happened to the world Jewish community? Have Israeli Jews changed so much that they are radically different now from Jews outside of Israel? (Okay, so this isn’t really the way I asked the question; this is the way that I should have asked the question.) I didn’t really get an answer to my question (obviously not, since I didn’t ask it the way I should have), but got an answer that kinda, sorta said that the overall Israeli mentality is not as one-sided as I have posited it to be, and that with change, there will be changes. (Okay, so this isn’t really the way he answered the question, either. But he could have.)

The rest of the day was spent with friends Ken and Larry preparing a Thursday presentation on the US elections, and then watching a really good Haberman Zoom talk by Geraldine Gudefin on the history of the “right of return” in Israel. (www.habermaninstitute.org)

I read the NYT obituary of Colombian folk singer Totó la Momposina this morning. She was 85. I have never heard of her. I have never heard her music. But already she is my favorite Colombian folk singer. By far.

My relationship with Colombia is weak at best. My old friend MJB (I use his initials because I don’t know if he would want to be associated with me in print. We have only been friends for 80 years. Yes, you read that correctly.) and I went on an Amazon River trip 50+ years ago that started in Colombia, took a quick look at a town in Brazil, and wound up in Peru. We flew from Miami to Bogota, and through Cali (or was in Medellin?) to Leticia, a small town in southernmost Colombia on the river.

The trip was arranged through a company that had placed a small ad in a periodical, and it worked out pretty well, as long as you weren’t expecting too much in creature comfort.

Digression. I flew to Miami from DC, MJB from St. Louis. His plane was delayed, and I remember sitting on the plane waiting to take off to Bogota wondering where he was. We had no Plan B, and no cell phones. I don’t think we had any pre-arrangements in Bogota. If he missed the plane to Bogota, there was a chance he would miss the plane to Leticia, which I believe was scheduled only a few times a week. Just before the plane to Bogota was about to leave Miami, he appeared, worn out from running from the St. Louis arrival gate. End of digression.

I don’t remember what I expected Bogota to look like. I remember being surprised at tall buildings, and visible tall mountains. I remember the flight from Bogota to Leticia as being uneventful, but I remember thinking that Colombia was clearly one big beautiful country.

Here is Bogota today.

And here is Leticia

Yes, Leticia was small 50 years ago, and looks like it has not grown much since then. Wikipedia says there are about 30,000 people today, and it is an “eco-tourist” hub. In the 1970s, tourism there in the upper Amazon was just beginning.

Digression #2. To get to Leticia, you have to fly or arrive by boat. There is no road connection to the rest of Colombia, even today. End of Digression #2.

We stayed several days at a “resort”. The resort had a number of white frame cabins (a small number), a building where meals were served (not that I remember them), and a rather simple swimming pool. It was in walking distance to the river and to a simple residential area with small frame houses that looked similar to the cabins.

When we flew into Leticia, we were met by two young Americans. We were about 30. They were probably in their twenties, one male, on female. The female was very cute, and I remember thinking that the resort we were staying at was going to be more pleasant than I had assumed. It turned out, I think, that airport pickups were the extent of their jobs at the resort.

But what were they doing there? It took naive me a few days to get suspicious, but it became clear to me that they were there because of drugs. Were they only consumers, or something else? That I don’t know, but I later learned that Leticia was the heart of Colombia’s cocaine industry in the 1970s. And I think our pickup crew sensed immediately that we were not there to get high, so they stayed as far away from us as possible.

The Amazon, by the way, was extraordinarily beautiful and the excursions on the river to various indigenous villages eye-opening. There was a lot of village craft work for sale and I decided to buy 80 Tikuna Indian animal bark paintings for $100. I brought them back and sold them, mainly to friends, for $15 each. It paid for my trip.

Enough for this morning. I am going to sit back, close my eyes, and listen to a little Totó la Mompasino. And await an email from MJB telling me that I don’t remember any of this correctly.

I have run into the name Deborah Tannen many times over the years. She has written several well known books about interpersonal connections – mothers and daughters, husbands and wives. That sort of thing. Her academic field is linguistics, and obviously linguistics and interpersonal connections and communications are closely related. She has written 10 books and many articles, and she has been on the faculty of Georgetown University for 47 years as a Professor of Linguistics. She is only a few years younger than I am. I have never met her, or seen her.

And I have never been interested in any of her books, which always seemed to me to be self-help books. This may be a good characterization of them, or it may not be. But that is what I always figured them to be. So I ignored them, and I ignored her.

But a few weeks ago, when I was wandering through books at a library sale, I came across her most recent book, Finding My Father: His Century-long Journey From World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow. That sounded interesting and I decided to read it. I just finished it.

I can’t say that I would recommend it wholeheartedly. The writing style and the organization of the book are, to me, a bit clumsy. But, on the other hand, there are some very interesting things in the book. I will tell you what they are, so you don’t have to read it yourself.

Her parents were both immigrants, her father from Poland, her mother from today’s Belarus. They were married for 71 years, and both lived long lives. Her father died at 97. For the majority of her life, she was much closer to her father than to her mother. In addition, her father was constantly putting thoughts (often autobiographical thoughts) on paper; her mother, on the other hand, did not like talking about the past at all.

She was raised in New York, and has two older sisters. Her father had a night school law degree, which he received during depression years, but needed to take other jobs (over 60 of them throughout his life) to make enough money to help his widowed mother and, eventually, his own family. They were never wealthy.

Her father was born in Warsaw into a family of Gerer Hasids. The Gerer Hasids. Gerer Hasidism was the largest branch of Hasidism in Poland and is today the largest branch in Israel. His American name was Eli Tannen, and he was raised by his mother; his father had left the family when Eli was only two and had died of tuberculosis when Eli was only 6. Eli’s mother had been a Kornblit, the daughter Chaziel Kornblit. If Deborah can be believed (and I assume she can be) her mother had 13 siblings who lived to adulthood, and at least four more who died at birth or as a child. For the most part, this large family split from their parents’ hasidism, and set out to pursue modern, often quite secular lives in early 20th century Warsaw. The idea that there was such a break from tradition in what clearly a very traditional and religious family surprised me.

Deborah’s grandmother, Sarah, for example, was the founder and the head of school at a Jewish school for Hasidic girls, the very first such school in Warsaw, where daughters in Hasidic families were generally given very limited education. Her sister Eva became the first female dentist and periodontist in Newark New Jersey. Her sister Dora became a Swiss educated physicist, who was a student in Switzerland of Einstein’s and had a close relationship with him both there and the United States (whether that relationship was an intimate one, and whether Dora aborted Einstein’s baby, is subject to speculation, but Deborah likes to believe that this, indeed, was the case).

As far as I know, Eva’s dentistry practice was a successful one. Other than that, in spite of their education and their modernization, things did not usually workout the best for the Kornblit kids. Eva was not a physicist in the US and Dora did not run a school. Ruchcia had 5 children of her own, but died in the 1918 flu epidemic. Bronka died of TB in the Caucasus. Rivka committed suicide, jumping off a balcony. Dina died at 14 in a kitchen fire. Joshua and his family were killed at Auschwitz. The three male Kornblits made it to the U.S. Two worked for HIAS, and one worked in a bank in Philadelphia. Magda, the youngest sister, became a communist, was jailed because of her political beliefs, and after her release and the communist takeover of Poland became a high ranking Polish government official.

Deborah’s father, as I said, went to law school at night. Because he was very bright, very verbal, always writing, and because he was working full time while attending law school, Deborah assumed he was a very good and very serious student, and was surprised to find out this was not true. One year, he almost flunked out of the school, he often did not read the assigned cases, and sometimes opted for a movie instead of a class. This really surprised her, it seems.

Maybe so, but what surprised me is what she wrote about her surprise: “…..But I assumed he studied hard, too. Then I think of how surprised people are when I tell them that I got C’s and D’s in college. It was a point of pride. I wouldn’t memorize anything, because I believed, with the hubris of youth, that memorization is not education, and I didn’t want to waste time learning anything I was not interested in. I wanted to get A’s in courses that I cared about, but was happy to get D’s in those I didn’t — or in those in which grades depended upon memorization.” Tannen went to what is now the University of New York at Binghamton for her undergraduate degree.

Tannen’s relationship with her mother (until her mother’s last years) was different. Her mother was depressive and, in Tannen’s words, manipulative. She cried and cried when young Deborah was about to join the Peace Corps, and young Deborah reacted by withdrawing from her Peace Corps assignment in Thailand the day before she was to get on the plane. She told 22 or 23 year old Deborah that it was okay if she moved in with her Greek boyfriend, as long as they told everyone she was engaged; otherwise it would be embarrassing, and they could always at some point announce that the engagement was called off, as this happened all the time. But after a few months, her mother told her that she had been engaged long enough. When was she going to get married? And Deborah and boy friend got married, although they didn’t stay married very long.

Her sources in writing this book were a combination of long talks (some recorded) which she had with her father in his later years, and access to all of his writings and journals and letters, which enabled her to put a lot together (although there are gaps that she tries to fill in by speculation). These includes the story of her parents’ courtship (which really wasn’t a courtship; her mother was the younger sister of her father’s best friend and they were just always together, and as her mother outgrew her early teens, she began to fixate on her father and, again, her mother’s apparently ability to manipulate showed up in Tannen’s narrative).

In fact, Eli had another girlfriend up until virtually the time that he got married, whom Deborah calls Helen, although is a made up name to protect the innocent. Eli had kept letters he received from Helen and copies of those he sent her, and they are laid out in some detail in the book. In addition, Deborah speculates about her parents’ pre-marriage sexual relationship, and her father’s relationship to his real girl friend Helen. I found all of this a bit over-the-top and a bit rude. Whether or not her father wanted Deborah to write this book (which she says he did), I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that he wanted Deborah to write this part of the book.

There is no question but that Eli Tannen led an interesting life, and came from an interesting Old World family, and that it worth recording and preserving. Whether it had to be presented in the way Deborah Tannen presented it is a question that I won’t try to answer, except to say: It didn’t.

It used to be that most news was bad. Now, it is just bizarre.

I say that as a resident of Washington DC, where the president of the United States:

1. Is building a ballroom with room to host almost 1000 people on the grounds of the White House.
2. Is painting the bottom of the Reflecting Pool “U.S.flag blue” and eliminating any relection.
3. Is going to build a victory arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery which will be 25 stories tall, taller than any building in DC.
4. Has plastered North Korea-size pictures of himself on government buildings throughout the city.
5. Is conflating his 80th birthday with the 250th birthday of the country.
6. Is building a platform on the White House grounds to celebrate with a UFC fight.
7. Wants to hold a celebratory concert on the White House grounds featuring musicians who do not want to perform.
8. Who wants American military troops to attend all these events, providing they are neither too short or too heavy.
9. Has determined that Dulles International Airport should be renamed after himself.
10. Who wants to rebuild Washington’s three public golf courses to be tournament worthy, rather than friendly public courses.
11. Who wants to take one of D.C.’s large parks and turn it into a sculpture garden with statues of 250  “American heroes”.

Now, it turns out there was a 14th item on the list – renaming the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center as the Donald Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center, shutting it down for two years and rebuilding it into the greatest arts venue in the history of the world. Yesterday, a federal judge told him he can not do that on his own, and all Trump name references must be removed within two weeks.

Trump’s reaction surprised me. He didn’t say he would ignore or appeal the ruling. He said he would simply take his ball home and disappear. Now, Trump had fired everyone on the board of directors than ran the center, made himself chair, and hired toadies as board members. The regular KenCen performing groups, including the National Symphony, Washington Opera, Washington Performing Arts Society and others have made alternative plans and no performances have been booked for the next two years. What is going to happen next? The president does not care, it seems. Not his problem.

Washington has been badly hurt by COVID and then by Trump, with significant job losses and corresponding office, retail and restaurant vacancies downtown. Recovery will be slow and await Trump’s departure. I think our current three term mayor, Muriel Bowser, has done a very good job coordinating with an eccentric president in leading a city so dependent on the federal government. Her term will end in January and we are now wittnessing a campaign to succeed her. The two leading candidates (the primary is in a little over two weeks) are, in my view, both rather week. One is a progressive, and one more business oriented. The progressive is favored to win, and I think, at 38, she is too young for the job and her views too pre-determined. In addition, they are both engaged in an unfortunate bash-the-opponent campaign that I find disheartening. And, also unfortunately, they both engage in “Trump will not tell us what to do” rhetoric, which I think may hurt the city more when they take office.

So, yes, the news is all bizarre. But let me rephrase my starting statement. The news is also mostly bad as well.

1. As usual, on a Friday, I start my day by going to Breads Unlimited. I buy a challah, a danish, and a cup of coffee. The challah is $8.95, the danish just under $4, and the coffee $3. I don’t begrudge the shop a profit, but those prices are on the high side and have increased twice over the past year or so. They also have started to add a 3% credit card fee. When I go to pay with my card, I get another option. I can give the clerk (whose tasks were to put my choices in a bag, pour my coffee into a cup, and ring up my bill) a 20% or a 30% tip or a different tip that I have to determine and then input, or “no tip”. To me, “no tip” seems like I am insulting the clerks (whom I see every week). And of course, the clerks are staring at me (smiling in the friendliest of manners) as I am checking out.

Dear Ethicist: what should one do in this circumstance?

2. Do you know this man?

He is Taras Shevchenko, and was a major Ukrainian poet, painter, patriot, and cultural figure during the first half of the 19th century. He stands prominently on P Street NW, between 22nd and 23rd.

I decided to learn a little more about him. He was born a serf, was obviously both bright and creative, was freed as a teenager, studied art in St. Petersburg, where he met many cultural figures, got in trouble with the authorities, was exiled, got out of trouble, allowed back, etc. Just like a lot of cultural figures in 19th century Russia. He was a champion of the poor and of equal rights for all. He was not a full blown rebel, but was later idealized by the Communists.  He believed in pan-Slavic unification. He was well thought of by contemporary Russian-Jewish writers and he was against minority descrimination of any kind.

His earliest writings pegged Polish landlords and their Jewish agents as being enemies of the common people, but anti-Jewish sentiment seemed to vanish from later writing.

The statue was dedicated in 1964 as a tribute to growing ethnic patriotism in eastern Europe. Believe it or not, Wikipedia says 100,000 people, many of Ukrainian ancestry were involved in dedication day ceremonies. The head of the commission who pushed for the statue was Georgetown Professor Lev Dobriansky, whom I knew a little because he was a colonel in my Army Reserve unit.

Dobriansky was strongly and vocally opposed to everything about the Soviet Union and a patriotic ethnic Ukrainian. It is ironic that anti-Soviets lauded Shevchenko as a Ukrainian, while the USSR praised him as a champion of a classless society.

By the way, does anyone ever read anything Shevchenko wrote?

3. This will be qiick. I listened to Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Society on C-Span this morning. I think I disagreed with everything he said. The core of Roberts’ Heritage message is that the non-profit is simply upholding  and trying to restore American values. I understand that about half of Americans share many of Roberts’ positions. But another half share my positions, which constitute American values as much as his do. Can we just stop saying that those Americans we disagree with do not have American values?

Haven’t you always wanted a president bold enough to threaten obliteration to Oman? Yes, if they won’t do what we tell them to, Donald is going to huff and puff and blow them up. We win by numbers. Oman has an army of 45,000 and we have a military of approximately 1,300,000. We have over 300,000,000 citizens and Oman has just over 3,000,000 citizens. Almost 90 percent of Oman’s population is urbanized (the rest is, I guess, mostly desert), which should make it relatively easy to blow them up. After we blow them up, we can build resorts like the ones we were going to put in Gaza. Gaza turned out to be a little too complicated.

Now, as I understand it, the Omanis do not want to be blown up, and wondered if there was away to avoid their destruction. The answer is “yes, there is”, and Donald just told them how to do it. All they have to do is “behave like everybody else”.

Now pretend you are the Sultan of Oman. You don’t want to see your country blown up. You want to placate Big Don. You see his instructions and you order your citizens (and non-citizen residents, too, I guess) to start behaving like everyone else. Immediately, an important question arises. How does everyone else behave?

I asked ChatGPT. ChatGPT tells me: “There isn’t one way “everyone” behaves. Human behavor varies enormously by culture, personality, age, situation, incentives, stress, and biology……” Not much help.

Well, perhaps Donald simply means that Omanis should behave just exactly as he wants them, too, and perhaps he thinks that everyone else is behaving in that manner, with the sole objection of the Iranians, and, like potentially the Omanis, Donald is planning on blowing the Iranians up. Their entire civilization. Poof.

I read a really interesting article recently, based on an interview with psychologist and former Johns Hopkins assistant professor John Gartner, who seems to be clear that Donald is suffering from a particular kind of dementia, called “frontotemporal dementia” or, as the TV commercials would say, “FTD” (a term also used in connection with the delivery of flowers; you can, for example, send flowers to a person with FTD through FTD). I read the article carefully (not really), but John Gartner is only one guy, and it turns out that he has been talking about Donald Trump since 2015 and so far has failed to convince anybody that he is correct in his diagnosis of Trump. At least there seems to be no record that he has convinced anyone who didn’t think that something has been wrong with Trump from the beginning. So, I decided to put ex-Prof Gartner to the side, and go back to ChatGPT.’

After briefly describing FTD, Chat (I am going to call him Chat; he says it’s okay) describes the “Common Symptoms” of the disease:

BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

Acting inappropriately or impulsively

Loss of empathy

Poor judgement

Repetitive behaviors

LANGUAGE PROBLEMS

Trouble speaking or finding words

Difficulty understanding language

EMOTIONAL CHANGES

Apathy

Mood Changes”

The severity of these symptoms continue and worsen over time. While most people survive 6 to 10 years after diagnosis, some people have a much slower moving dementia and can live much longer.

In addition to observing behavior, neurologists look to the results of MRIs to look at brain activity. We of course remember that Donald did (or maybe did not) get an MRI at Walter Reed last year. He said he did, the realizing maybe he should not have said that, he said he didn’t remember what part of his body had the MRI, and then his medical team (or maybe his White House team) said it wasn’t an MRI after all, but at CT Scan. Who knows? He had another physical at Walter Reed this week. Did he have another MRI? Who knows?

I also read an interview with a nephew of Donald’s, Fred Trump (named after Donald’s father, perhaps,  or maybe just a coincidence), who said that there was quite a bit of dementia in the Trump family, naming a number of Trumps who had to deal with it, and said that, from his perspective, much of Donald’s behavior mirrors that of his father and other relatives. His father, I should say, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, not FTD, but I read that FTD diagnosis was first developed in Sweden in 1994 and, although Trump died in 1999, his dementia was diagnosed well before that.

At any rate, Chat told me that I had asked all the questions tonight that it was going to answer, but that it would reset at 2:55 a.m. if I had more. I am not planning on reconnecting, but if insomnia hits, I might ask Chat one more question, which is: is there any evidence that wanting to blow up Oman is a sign of FTD. (You may think you know the answer to that, but….you never can tell.)

In any event, we know that wishing to destroy Oman is a bad omen. Oh, man! (You can do better than that.)

On the other side of the world, things do look good in Texas.

Going through Facebook yesterday, I came upon a random post (maybe from an individual, maybe an organization, maybe a bot – who knows?) which had a typical anti-Israel message. I am used to seeing those, and looking at some of the comments, which vary from strong agreement to strong disagreement. I usually take them in stride. But one comment yesterday did bother me. It was a graphic comment, without narrative. A Jewish star, and equal sign, a swastika. Mind you, it was not the flag of Israel on the left. Simply a Jewish star.

I clicked the appropriate buttons to report this to Meta as a comment that should be deleted. I don’t remember which of their arbitrary reasons for objection I chose. Possible “hate”. An hour or so later, I received a response to my complaint. The response said that they would not delete that comment because it did not violate their “community standards”. I don’t know if I was disappointed, or surprised, or what. I shook my head (without moving my head) and moved on.

What are Facebook’s “community standards”? I suppose I could find out. And what kind of a standard is “community standards” anyway. Let’s say that 50% of “the community” (and that raises a separate definitional question) believes that a Jewish star (and what that represents raises a third question) does equal a swastika (we know what that represents). Would that mean that this post does not violate community standards? What if 50% of a community believes it is okay to kill all the first born? Does that make it conforming to community standards? If there is some other measure than whether a post is in cormance with what a set percentage of the community finds acceptable, what is it?

Putting community standards aside, how does “free speech” come into this? Does someone have any sort of “free speech” right when they put something on a platform such as Facebook? In developing its “community standards”, does Facebook have to take into account the First Amendment right of commenters? Or can they develop any means of censorship that they want? Or no means of censorship if that is what they want? Is there even a legal requirement that they adopt a set of “community standards” or are they doing that to try to tamp down criticism from governmental regulators or others?

And, of course, we have to remember that these companies do not just operate in the United States. In European countries where, for example, antisemitism is actually against the law, do they have different community standards, either for what they allow to be published for users in those countries, or for whether they allow comments which are illegal in the commenters’ countries to be published in other countries where the legality is not an issue?

The questions go on and on, we know. And they are not new questions. We have had these questions since Facebook and the other social media platforms were first created, and now they affect not only those platforms, but the many AI sites, albeit from a somewhat different approach.

And in fact, we even have similar questions when it comes to network or cable television, in this country. And I am thinking of this in connection with Maureen Galindo, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress who lost in the Democratic runoff yesterday, but whose campaign included a proposal to “put billionaire American Zionists who are funding the genocidal prison systems involved in trafficking into prison”. I don’t even understand that sentence, and I am sure she has explained it, but I did see that she denied that there was anything antisemitic about these comments because she said it would apply to all billionaire American Zionists who met these criteria, not only those who were Jewish.

Gallindo lost her race yesterday by a 60-40 margin, but that means that she did get more than 10,000 voters in Houston to cast their ballots for her. But here is my question. If a platform or a cable channel decides that their “community standards” do not permit someone with Galindo’s positions to be broadcast or published under their name, does that standard change if the speaker is running for public office? At what point should, can, or must an outlet say to a candidate: “Sorry, you are violating our community standards”?

Because these questions are so difficult to answer……

Strike that. Because these questions are impossible to answer, it puts more and more responsibility on our political and moral leaders to exhibit some sense of moral or ethical control over their own comments. One more place this is, of course, that Don John has failed us.

Onward.

The Macro Topic:

The New York Times just reported that the United States today bombed a missle launch site in Southern Iran. My “bold prediction” of Saturday morning has come true.

I say that with regret, because it does not seem necessary to start active warfare as negotiations are actively ongoing. But it was inevitable.

How did I conclude that? Well, I have been watching a German Netflix series Murder Mindfully, an odd comic noire series, featuring the adventures of a young Berlin lawyer, Björn Diemel, whose only client is an emotionally challenged mob boss named Dragan Sergowicz. Early in the series, Björn actually murders his client, but needs to pretend he is still alive, but off the grid, and that he has empowered Björn to follow his orders and act in his stead. Otherwise, how would he get paid (or stay alive)? Their ways of negotiating are very Trumpian. I will give you an example.

Björn and his wife are having trouble finding a pre-school which will accept their daughter Emily. No one wants the child of a Mafioso attorney in a class.

So what does Björn do? He, and one of Dragan’s henchmen, visit the school, and tell the head of school and two teachers that they are fired because Dragan is taking over the ownership of the entire school. They make them a generous financial offer, but three hesitate, so they break a couple of noses, and plant false material on the school website showing that the three are affiliated with several Nazi organizations. They also drastically cut the proposed financial terms. An offer that can’t be refused? Well, if it is, there is still one nose to break and worse things possible. And if, instead, they say “Okay”, that still might not be enough to curtail further punishment.

Trump has said Iran must completely surrender, but he has also said that if they open Hormuz, other issues may be settled later. Issues like the ones he went to war for – nuclear program, missle delivery systems, funding proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen, regime change. Only Hormuz may be solved, and the only reason there is a problem at the Strait in the first place is Trump’s war. Status quo ante, indeed.

But today, with each of his goals out of apparent sight, Iran wants nuclear freedom, military weapon development freedom, the right to control and levy tolls on ships passing through the Strait, $25 billion in withheld funds released, sanctions released, and more. Trump does not seem on the cusp of resolving any of this. And what does he do now? He wants no more Israeli fighting in Lebanon (except for clear defense), and he wants Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to join the Abraham Accords. Apples? Oranges?

Remember Yassir Arafat? He would negotiate a deal, but could never finalize it. Always walking away, one way or another, at the last minute. Trump may be our Arafat.

The great negotiator has met his match.

The Micro Topic:

A random walk around a random block. What are the signs of our time?

Also seen were a some bicyclists and a studious resident with big ears, and one more sign either with great meaning or no meaning at all (take your pick).

Yesterday was the Sunday before Memorial Day, and it actually stopped raining in the late morning, and the temperature was supposed to rise to a tropical 65 degrees. After lunch, we decided we should go to a museum, and I suggested our neighborhood museum (about a mile from the house), American University’s Katzen Center. But because it is a holiday weekend, and classes are over, I thought I should check to see if it was open. Google was it usual “the times may change for Memorial Day” helpful self, and the museum’s website equally informative. The phone number given for the Museum is the AU phone number (they transfer you to the museum), so I called it, and got a deep baritone voice telling me that the AU Information Center was open Monday through Friday from 9 to 5, but that I had a few options, the most seemingly useful being the university’s Operating Information Center. I pushed the correct key and this time got an alto voice telling me the following: “Thank you for calling the Operating Information Center. Everything at the University has been operating on schedule. Good-bye.”

We decided to go anyway, but it became clear when we pulled into the large parking garage and saw exactly three cars parked there. Onward.

This time, we thought we would go to the Kreeger Museum, in the Kreegers’ house on Foxhall Road, not far from American. David Kreeger was not only an art collector, but the founder and long time head of Geico Insurance. Their large house was designed by Philip Johnson, and easily adapted to a museum. But guess what? The gates in front of the house were shut tight; no Kreeger Memorial Day Weekend. Onward once more.

We had to travel to get to another museum. I knew that the Daughters of the American Revolution, down near the White House, had an exhibition geared to the 250th anniversary of the country, so that seemed like an obvious choice, providing we could find a parking space on 17th Street. Which we did. But……guess what? (I bet you can.) The DAR was locked tight, and there was a sign saying that it would be closed all next week because the building (which includes Constitution Hall, a 3700 seat venue) is hosting the Scripp’s National Spelling Bee next week. And there was a lot of activity at the Constitution Hall entrance, and media vans surrounding the building. Once more…must go elsewhere.

Because the weather was pleasant, rather than getting back in the car, we decided to take a short walk down 17th Street toward Constitution Avenue, past the headquarters of the Organization of American States. Our thought was to turn back at the corner, but we decided first to look at some of the sculpture on the lawn of the OAS. It’s a rather large collection, with three types of sculpture: modern sculpture and folk sculpture, which we ignored, and busts of Latin American literary and political figures (and a few others), which we explored. So the question for this post is: how many of these literary figures do you know?

Romulo Gallegos was the author of 13 novels, including Dona Barbara and Cantaclaro, and Canaima, his best known three. Only two of his books have been translated into English. He was also a politician, who served briefly as the first elected president of Venezuela in 1948 before being ousted by a military coup.

Teresa de la Parra, born to a wealthy Venezuelan family, was a rare feminist writer for her time and place. Her life was cut short at 46, when she died of tuberculosis, from which she had suffered for many years. Her book Iphigenia: Diary of a Young Lady Who Wrote Because She Was Bored has been translated into English.

Ruben Dario was a Nicaraguan poet and short story writer, known as the founder of Latin American “modernism”. I have no idea what that means. I think only one book of his poetry is available in English. Dario, too, died young of pneumonia, and in poverty.

Gabriela Mistral was the first Latin American poet to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1945. She spent much of her life in Europe, working as a journalist and for the League of Nations, and was a well known international personality. Much of her work has been translated.

Pablo Neruda, like Gabriela Mistral, was a Latin American poet who won a Nobel Prize, his in 1971. He was also a Chilean Senator, a member of the Communist Party, and the winner of the Stalin Prize in 1953.

Cesar Vallejo, from Peru, wrote only two books of poetry, but to great acclaim. He was an activist and journalist during the Spanish Civil War, and a member of the Peruvian Communist Party.

How many did you know? And how many of you have wandered the grounds of the OAS?

This picture popped up this morning on Facebook, posted by someone on a St. Louis history platform. Intriguing, I found it, with unpaved streets, horse drawn carriages, and brick buildings (which may still exist) and gaps between them. A different world, to be sure. How did we get from there to today?

But then I realized that my grandmother and grandfather were both living in St. Louis when this photo was taken. My grandmother about 5, my grandfather about 9.

My grandfather died in 1953. I looked for a photo from the city then.

And my grandmother in 1969.

Okay, this is 1965, not 1969, but I like the picture.

And then there is the city today.

For those who might be interested, the view looks east toward the Arch, which is on the Mississippi. In the left foreground, you see the relatively new soccer stadium. On the right with the orange roof, it’s the former Union Station, now a hotel, an amusement park, an aqarium and a bunch of restaurants. Closer to downtown on the right, you see a concert venue, and where the ice hockey Blues play.

Why am I showing you this? I am not sure, except that St. Louis is about 6800 miles from Tehran, and I was looking for distance.

Metropolitan Tehran is, by the way, over 5 times the size of Metropolitan St. Louis, and looks it.

Tehran has changed since 1895, too.

Hopefully, it will never look like Gaza City does in 2026.

End of story.

It’s the perfect storm. And I am not talking about the weather (which is bad enough – high of 53 degrees on May 23, with constant rain). I am talking about the renewal of bombing in Iran, brought to you by the one and only Donald Trump (thank God, one and only).

1. The negotiations in Pakistan seem to be gaining little, if any, progress.
2. The raining weather in Washington means Donald can not play golf.
3. Nevertheless, Donald has decided not only to stay in Washington, but to spend the weekend at the White House, something rarely done, rather than at Bedminister, where he was planning to be.
4. His son, Donald Jr. is getting married today in Palm Beach, and Donald decided not to go because of the continuation of the Iran War (he said).
5. Congress was about to pass a War Powers resolution and had to recess for over a week to avoid it coming to a vote; the resolution could have limited Donald’s ability to play soldier.
6. When Congress comes back on June 1, the War Powers resolution might actually come to a vote, so Donald wants to act before that happens.
7. Netanyahu clearly wants to restart the bombing, and has been pressuring Donald to go ahead.
8. Iran says that it has “rebuilt its military”, and American intelligence says that Iran still has retained a lot of military capacity. Donald is afraid that time is not on his side.
9. It is Memorial Day weekend, and what better way to spend it than to show the power of America’s military.
10. The stock market is closed for the long weekend, so there will be time for it to regulate itself rather than suffer a rapid fall due to the resumption of hostilities.
11. Tulsi Gabbard “resigned”. She is a known opponent of the war.

For all of these reasons, and more, I think it is likely that the bombs will fall on Iran this weekend.

Or, on the other hand, maybe Cuba.

Books can be surprising things. Sometimes, you pick one up for no good reason, look at it with low expectations, and wind up enjoying the read, and absorbing something that can change your thinking, or can enlarge your worldview. This is the history of the book I finished yesterday, A Jewish Chaplain in France by Rabbi Lee Levinger.

Levinger was born in Burke, Idaho (yes, Burke, Idaho) in 1890 and died in 1966. He was a Reform rabbi, a graduate of Hebrew Union College, and a longtime Hillel director and employee of the Jewish Welfare Board. He also wrote a number of books.

But we can start with Burke, Idaho. Burke, Idaho, is a ghost town. According to Atlas Obscura, it was founded in 1887 (Levinger born only 3 years later), and was basically abandoned by the 1950s. You can visit it today. It is apparently quite picturesque, being situated in a very narrow canyon, which makes it rather unique. As we are planning to drive from Seattle to Glacier National Park in July, it looks like our route will be quite near Burke. Hopefully, we can visit and take a few pictures.

(I read a 1952 article that Levinger wrote in Commentary magazine about Jews in small town America. It was a very interesting article, talking about the spread of Jews throughout the country in small towns, where they started out as merchants, and where many of the next generation became professionals. Had he written the article today, he would have gone on and talked about the generation after that abandoning the small towns. He would not have been critical. Looking at all of this today, it seems inevitable. But his description of Jewish life in these towns, where a minyan might be unavailable, potential Jewish spouses lacking, and traditional Jewish learning minimal, was very interesting. You can find the article by Googling (as I did) “Levinger small towns”.)

But this has little to do with what I want to say today. Today, I want to recommend Levinger’s book about chaplaincy, which was published in 1922, and dealt with his experience in France during the first world war.

The first Jewish chaplains in the military were appointed during the Civil War, both by the Union and by the Confederacy. After the Civil War, it appears there were no Jewish chaplains until the United States entered World War I in April of 1917, and that the first chaplains went overseas in the summer of 1918, just about a half year before the armistice ended that war, and that there were chaplains who stayed in Europe after the armistice until the American forces could all be brought home. Levinger was sent to France in July 1918 and stayed for nine months.

According to the book, there were something over 100,000 Jewish military personnel sent overseas during World War I, out of about 225,000 Jews in the U.S. military. About 3000 were killed, and about 12,000 injured. There were, at the highest, 12 Jewish chaplains with the army in France.

What I learned from this book included the following:

1. Many of the gentiles in the army had never met a Jew, and many of the Jews, particularly those from New York, who made up perhaps 40% of the Jews in the military then, had really never had contact with gentiles.
2. At least 1/3 of the Jewish soldiers in World War I were immigrants, and for most of them English was not their first language. Sometimes, there English was rudimentary.
3. He witnessed virtually no antisemitism in the military during the time he was in France. Jews and gentiles at every level seemed to realize that they were much more the same than different, and came to respect each other.
4. In this regard, the chaplain’s job then, as it is now, is to conduct religious services according to their own religions, but to serve, as chaplains, soldiers of all religions who are looking for guidance or assistance. And in fact, when it is time for a religious service, and no chaplain of a particular religion is available, chaplains will often conduct services for soldiers of different religions.
5. In addition, those who attended religious service often were of different religions. There could be Jewish services where there were more Christians than Jews in attendance.
6. There was enormous amounts of cooperation between chaplains of different religions, as well as with the Jewish Welfare Board, the Y.M.C.A., and the Salvation Army during the war.
7. The Jewish services were most often abbreviated and followed the abridged prayer books sent out by the U.S. government. They were mainly conducted in English, rather than Hebrew, and all Jewish chaplains were generally in agreement on this.
8. The majority of the Jewish soldiers had Orthodox backgrounds, but that same majority were largely not Orthodox themselves. Many, whose parents were as observant as they had been in Europe before coming to America, had not accompanied their fathers to the religious services he attended, and many could not read or understand Hebrew. This was clearly a transition time for many now-American Jewish families.
9. Services conducted by Jewish chaplains often were done in cooperation with local Jewish families or clergy in France, and this, too, was helpful, especially for Jewish families in small-town France, whose structure and lives had been so disrupted by the war.
10. Sermons to soldiers and sermons a rabbi would give to a civilian congregation back in the United States were very different; all chaplains soon realized this. Sermons given to the soldiers often involved back and forth with the soldiers themselves; something that rarely would happen in a synagogue at home.
11. The Jewish Welfare Board did an extraordinary job organizing everything in France at short notice.
12. The general responsibilities of chaplains were what you would think – services, funerals, religious ceremonies such as Pesach seders, visiting the sick, counseling, taking complaints and trying to resolve them. The soldiers were by and large very young. Communications with family back home was often non-existent for months at a time.

All in all, this book has a lot to offer. I found it at a library book sale and bought it for, I think, $2. But it isn’t an unknown book; you can read a lot about it on line. And it seems to be a book very well known to the National Museum of Jewish Military History, here in Washington. It is well written, and it will expand your thinking of the evolution of the American Jewish community in the United States at the time when Jewish immigration into the country remained at its height, but near the end of that time.

Anything missing from the book? Yes. Women. Except for local French Jewish women helping out here and there…..this was clearly a man’s world. If there were any women in the American military in France during the first World War, they never made it into Levinger’s book. Oh, and by the way, this book was not published by a small Jewish press. It was published by Macmillan; I found this also of interest.

The last two sessions of my Thursday morning breakfast group have been devoted to the Nuremberg trials, following the end of World War II, and the precedents they set for international criminal responsibility. It’s a complicated subject, and one that I have a hard time grappling with beyond thinking that winners or those with power have the ability to try and convict their enemies, whether or not they actually have the authority to do so. “Authority”, in this case, may be no more than a result of legal constructs created by those seeking to bring others to their sense of justice for bad actions committed (whether these bad actions constitute actual crimes is of course just another aspect of the same question). In Nuremberg, the four most powerful winning allied Nations (U.S., U.S.S.R., Britain and France) created the forum, the jurisdiction, and the trial rules, and gave themselves the authority both to conduct the trials and to dole out punishments.

There have been other trials following the general parameters of Nuremberg, often conducted through the International Criminal Court in The Hague, whose website states: “The International Criminal Court (ICC) investigates and, where warranted, tries individuals charged with the greatest crimes of concern to the international community: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. As a court of last resort, it seeks to complement, not replace, national Courts.” Most countries have signed the Rome Statute that created and governs the Court, but the United States, Russia and Israel are among the few that have not. The Court has indicted Putin and Netanyahu, among others, but these potential defendants have not submitted to its jurisdiction and avoid travel to those countries where there is a risk of arrest.

As of yet, the ICC has not indicted any American officials. Perhaps, they could. They could, for example, determine that Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran were against international law or his attacks on fishing boats in the Caribbean or Pacific, but the risks to the Court in doing so would be high, even if the risks did not go beyond having to defend itself from financial and editorial attacks from Trump and his cronies. And interestingly, even those the U.S. does not submit to the jurisdiction of the Court, it does not oppose the jurisdiction of the Court over residents and leaders of other countries.

But the United States has, of course, its own concept of international legal authority. It thought nothing, for example, of bombing small Venezuelan boats or sending a team of secret agents into Venezuela to arrest President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, charging them with various crimes involving exporting cocaine into the United States. In order to effectuate these arrests, a team was sent into a foreign country without invitation and through a quasi-military invasion, the headquarters of the Venezuelan government was attacked, and the President and his wife were arrested through kidnapping, and dragged (not extradited) out of the country into the United States. At the same time, the United States  threatened Venezuela and its remaining leadership with dire consequences if they did not cooperate with the United States in various ways, including providing the U.S. with certain commercial rights that had nothing to do with the arrest.

Yesterday, an indictment was issued against former Cuban leader Raul Castro (President of Cuba from 2008-2018, and brother of former leader Fidel Castro) for his participation in 1996 in in the killing of four Americans when Cuban planes shot down two planes operated by an American non-profit, Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro organization. Assuming Donald Trump is not just going to let this indictment languish, it seems that another invasive operation, like the one in January in Caracas, will take place in Havana (unless Castro, now warned, will be able to be hidden away).

If Trump does try to grab Castro and bring him to the United States, you can also assume that there will be further repercussions with Cuba, as there were with Venezuela. In Venezuela, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez (perhaps somewhat surprisingly) decided to cooperate with the Trump government to avoid further military action by the United States. In Cuba, the outcome of an arrest might be different. We shall see.

But once these individuals become subject to the American judicial system in the United States (the Maduros are being held in a detention center in Brooklyn; no clue where they might take Castro), we are no longer in the strange realm of international law, where the victors and the power can set whatever rules they want. In the U.S. courts, questions will be raised about the jurisdiction of the Courts, about the legality of the arrests, and of course about the facts of the case. It may be that the facts of the case against the Maduros is the stronger, although corroborating witnesses may be hard to find or to extradite for testimony. As to Castro, I have seen nothing that implicates him directly in this 30 year old event, and even if there were such evidence, 30 year old cases are hard to try. Witnesses have died, and others have less than perfect memories.

One of the legacies of Nuremberg is that proving that you were “just following orders” is not sufficient to get you off the hook, if you committed a crime. This has become obvious in the years following 1945, although the Trump folks appear to want this lesson to be forgotten, as their attacks on Senator Mark Kelly demonstrate. In the Castro case at least, the situation may be reversed. Here there may be no evidence that Raul Castro ordered the strike on the American planes (the strike itself may or may not have been illegal, under American, Cuban or international law – which one applies?), but he was both Minister of Defense and First Vice President of Cuba at the time. Will a potentially criminal act of a subordinate now become the responsibility of his superior? Under what authority? American agency law? How would this even apply?

So, the topic is complicated. The Trump administration will do what it can to simplify everything. But, if the Courts take their responsibility seriously, the Trump prosecutors may find that holding the Maduros or Castro responsible for their actions, and penalizing them here in the United States, may not be as easy as they wish.

There is one question we have been asking ourselves since Donald Trump (1) pardoned some of his friends who were indicted and convicted of crimes connected to their friendship to him, (2) since Donald Trump pardoned 1500 (or whatever the number was) of January 6 demonstrators including those who violently assaulted law enforcement officers, and (3) since Donald Trump has suggested that he is going to issue pardons to all of those sycophants working for him during his second term as president. That question is: can Donald Trump pardon himself?

Donald Trump apparently does not know the answer to that question (how could he?), but Donald Trump thinks that there are other ways to skin that cat, and he has decided to try to use one of them. You know what I am talking about? Here me out.

Donald Trump alleges that some information from his tax returns and the tax returns of the Trump Organization were improperly “leaked” to the public, and that this leak caused untold heartache, etc., and that he deserves reparations from the government. The apparent leaks occurred during the Biden years, and Trump claims he was being selectively targeted by a weaponized Department of Justice.

In order to obtain reparations, Donald Trump,  plaintiff, sued the same Donald Trump, defendant, asking for $10 billion of government money to be given him to compensate him for his losses and embarrassment. In other words, he is suing himself for an arbitrary amount that he pulled out of the air (and cannot corroborate in any normal fashion), and wants to be paid this sum out of government funds through a check from Donald Trump, as president, to Donald Trump, as, I guess, grifter.

But because they are not dumb, both Donald Trumps were afraid that any federal judge, even in Florida where the case was filed (and other than Judge Cannon, who was not chosen for this one) would throw the case out on Day 1, and because neither of the Donald Trumps wanted that result, they decided, perhaps by talking to themselves while taking a morning shower, that they should settle the case (albeit for a smaller amount) by coming up with an agreement to be signed both by the party of the first part and the party of the second part, in this case being the parties of the same part.

But the two Trumps realized that they probably weren’t going to get this arbitrary and outlandish amount of money no matter what they attempted to do, but thought they could look like they were being generous by (1) lowering the amount and (2) using the money to reward those January 6 rioters (excuse me, I mean followers) who had been convicted of a crime and whom they had previously pardoned by dividing the money among them. Basically, it seems that they want to give $1,000,000 to every pardoned criminal rioter and have a little left over for a few hundred other friends who can “prove” they were unfairly targeted by the weaponized Biden  government.

But, wait, there’s more. Should the Trumps receive some rewards for foregoing the cash themselves, for generously rewarding their criminal followers, and saving the Treasury $8,2 billion? Of course, they should! Just ask them.

How about saying that all the Trumps (including their wonderful children) and the Trump Organization be freed from the possibility of income tax audits (with any pending audits being closed) and how about those same Trumps being relieved of any possibility of being found responsible of any malfeasance or misfeasance whatsoever. In other words, you say, a presidential self-pardon and presidential family pardon?

Actually, it looks like a presidential super-pardon, because it looks like they will try to make it cover state as well as federal mattters, and civil as well as criminal matters?

Would this hold up, if agreed to by the two Trumps (who by the way share the same lawyer)? Maybe not. But maybe so. Sure worth a try.

Well, we all know that one day Donald is going to slip on the ice, crack his head and never get up in the morning. Or he is going to be hit by a golf ball, or a tree will fall on his head, or Iran will find him and zap him.

But until that happens, what Donald wants, Donald apparently gets.

Of course, both the Attorney General and the Vice President pooh-poohed any criticism of this, with Blanche saying that a three appointee panel would have to approve each payment, and that anyone, not just rioters, coukd apply. Vance agreed with that and with a straight face said “even Hunter Biden can apply”. So there you have it.

And, by the way, have you been following his insider trading scandal? His investments in companies which are subject to large government contracts or regulation, like Boeing and Intel. Keep your eyes on that one, too.

There was a lot of interest in my ideas expressed this morning in the post titled “Just This One Time!”

If you want to share that post, especially to people involved in Democratic politics at any level, please feel free to do so.

Two things are clear to those of us who think clearly. First, is that this country is in big trouble thanks to our current president. Second, barring death or the 25th Amendment, we are going to be with him for the next two and a half years.

We also know that we have mid-terms coming up in less than six months, and that the outcome of those elections have been made uncertain by the chaos into which the not-so-Supreme Court has thrown us with its decisions on Congressional redistricting (among many other reasons).

There are a few other things we know. We know that (speaking very broadly) this country is fairly equally divided into Democrats, Republicans and Independents. We know that virtually all of the Democrats, and perhaps three quarters of the Independents (at last polling) are anti-Trump, but that about 70 percent of the Republicans are still smitten by him.

We also know that the Democrats have at least two internal problems (actually three, but the third one will come later). First, the Democrats are still using Shumer and Jeffries as their spokesmen, paying no attention to me that two New Yorkers will funny accents and whining dispositions are not the right guys for the task. Second, the Democrats have not found their equivalent of Make America Great Again. It is this second problem that I want to address today.

To me, this is simple. The Democrats should campaign on “Just This One Time!”.

And it should basically be a plea to the 25 to 30 percent of registered Republicans who do not like Trump, and to a number of center-right leaning Independents who tend to vote Republican. And it is a slogan that should be used only in 2026. Not even in 2028.

The premise is that the anti-Trump Republicans and Independents share an important point of view with those of us who tend to vote Democratic. That is that we have a corrupt, dangerous, out-of-control president, who can, over the next two and half years, hurt this country even more than he has to date. Therefore, it is important, in the 2026 midterms, to make sure that the Republican Party, whose political leaders are virtually all scared to death to do anything but kowtow to Trump’s every whim, does not control either house of Congress for the last two years of Trump’s presidency. Therefore, these anti-Trump voters, who tend to vote Republican, need to vote Democratic in November. Just This One Time!

They can do what they want in 2028, when their party will no longer have Trump at its head. Every seat in the House will be up for grabs then. But for the remainder of the Trump term, there must be an opposition controlled Congress. It is as simple as that.

There are those who say that the Democrats need to be something more than anti-Trump. I agree with that, starting in 2028. But for 2026, anti-Trump is the way to go.

Clearly each of these Republican voters will disagree with many things that Democratic candidates stand for. That’s okay. For the next two years, without the presidency, none of those things will come to pass. For the next two years, the priority is blunting Trump.

On the normally Democratic side, this slogan will serve its purpose, too, especially among many Jewish Democrats who are concerned that the Democratic Party is changing its stance on supporting Israel, with some progressives wanting to cut back on military assistance and others even suggesting that the State of Israel is an illegitimate “settler” state. To those one-cause Democrats who might want to support Republicans who are more supportive of Israel, I say (just as I say to the Republicans), forget it. For the next two years, the important point is that Trump’s destruction of this country be stopped. Israel will be just fine, and if these voters think Israel requires a vote for the GOP in 2028, that is fine. But not in 2026.

Just This One Time! should be a national slogan, widely spread by national voices. But there is no national election in 2026, but separate state elections, and this slogan, to be effective, must be used in every state. And now that the primary season is winding down, the time is at hand.

How do we do this?

Last night, I finished reading A Difficult Woman, a biography of author Lillian Heller by Alice Kessler-Harris. It is an interesting book about an always interesting, if not always pleasant, woman. The book is somewhat unique in that it does not simply go from birth to death, but rather each chapter deals with a specific aspect of Hellman’s life. This makes the chronology sometimes confusing, but each chapter quite interesting in and of itself.

One of the chapters deals with Hellman’s final works, her three “memoirs”, An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time. I have not read any of them, and probably won’t, but it was interesting in that, although they are called memoirs, they may be as much fictional as factual. Hellman herself did not deny this, I don’t think, and claimed that she was always the victim of a poor memory, and always a dramatist and story teller. Many of the individuals named in these three books viewed Hellman differently, and simply called her a liar, telling stories about them that simply were not true. Litigation resulted and was continuing at the time Hellman died at age 79.

I was thinking about this earlier this morning when I had breakfast at Politics and Prose (just coffee and a bagel, if you are interested) with a friend and we were comparing memorable (hmmm…..) moments from the early days of our two law practices. How much is truth, and how much has been imagined as truth to make the story telling better.

For example, take Father John, who appeared in my office one day and introduced himself as the Archimandrite of the Eastern Bulgarian Orthodox Church of America, and said he was looking for legal counsel to help him acquire some property in the name of the church in the D.C. area. I can’t tell you exactly when this happened, but I would guess it was sometime during the late 1980s. I wish I had taken a photo of Father John, but I didn’t. He did look something like this, although he had more gray in his hair and wore an even larger cross.

He told me was the head of the St. John of Rila Monastery in East Setauket, New York.

We agreed to have dinner that night (I don’t remember who paid) at I Ricchi, a trendy (still trendy today) restaurant in downtown Washington, when he could tell me his plans. He was a charismatic guy, tall, robust looking, with long gray hair and twinkly blue eyes (just like Santa Claus and the Lubavitcher Rebbe), and was clearly American born…..no Bulgarian accent. As he told me his plans, I was agog. His idea was to make money for his church (take that with a grain of salt) by buying cheap residential property, cutting off utilities (gas, electricity and water) on a definite schedule, forcing all of the residents out (without alarming authorities, if possible), and then selling the empty properties to high scale developers who would work their magic and create new neighborhoods, more upscale.

(The “monastery” that Father John ran, by the way, seems more modest than its name would imply.

I am told by my phone that Father John’s monastery closed in about 1990 and was turned over to another group and is now the Monastery of the Holy Cross, run by the Russian Orthodox Church.)

I told him his plans were illegal and immoral, and asked him if he was being serious. He was. I told him that I couldn’t represent him, and I think sent him elsewhere, giving him some names of lawyers I knew, so that they could be as astounded as I was. His plans never came to fruition.

But back to I Ricchi. He didn’t seem overly surprised at my reaction, our dinner continued and as we left, we passed a large bowl of fresh strawberries and a large bowl of whipped cream that the restaurant had set out for those who wanted to end their meals these two delicacies, either with or without shortcake. Father John walked by the bowls, raised the index finger of the his right hand and scooped out a dollop of whipped cream, licked it off his finger, and turned to me saying, “When you dress like this, you can get away with almost anything’.

I remember (or do I?) shortly after this researching Father John, and discovering that he was a defrocked Episcopal priest who had sat on the Philadelphia Zoning Board of Adjustment, who had been accused of, and/or convicted of, bribery. Today, even with the help of AI, I have not been able to find him.

Back to Lillian Hellman, and her “memoirs” and her being accused of being a “liar”. What is important, Hellman said, is not whether something was true or not, it was the point being made, that is what made something true, not whether the particular points were “fact” or “fiction”. So here we are with Father John, to me he is and always will be a crook kicked off the Philadelphia zoning board for accepting bribes and a former Episcopal priest who converted to Eastern Bulgarian Orthodoxy and continued his crooked ways.

I think I am right on the facts, but if it turns out I am not, I can hear Father John kissing his cross and saying now from his grave:

Lillian would not agree.

Dyke Marsh is a large wetland on the Potomac River south of Alexandria, Virginia, managed by the National Park Service. You approach off the George Washington Parkway, and can walk the 1.5 mile round trip trail to a boardwalk on the river. Some photos from yesterday.

Then a late lunch at The Haven, a pizzeria plus very near Dyke Marsh. Google gives The Haven a 4.5, and tells you the pizza is less reliable than everything else. Edie had a Greek salad and I had a smoked turkey sandwich. Both excellent. I got a side with my sandwich and our very pleasant waiter suggested, of all things, the green beans. He was right.

On the way back, we stopped at Alexandria’s small Black History Museum, one of a number of Black history cites in the city. The museum is low on “things”, but good on explanatory signage. You are reminded that there were once two slave markets on Duke Street, that by the 1840s there were more free Blacks than enslaved Blacks, and that the city library did not permit Blacks in, leading to a 1939 sit-in (one of the first in history) which in turn led to the construction of a library for Blacks. There is a cute “doll house” reconstruction of that library.

There a number of artifacts found in the homes of former slaves and free Blacks. What interested me was a damaged china cup containing sayings from Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.

An interesting day.

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and we are going to go out and try to take advantage of it. But before we do, I better post something or you will have to have your coffee with MSNBC or the New York Times.

Here is what I am thinking about right now. And I will admit that my thoughts aren’t particularly well formed.

During the buildup to World War II, when Hitler had taken power in Germany and began to grab other parts of Europe that he felt were part of the God-given German world, the Jews in those countries were being marginalized – they were denied certain jobs, kept out of educational institutions, limited in their ability to use public facilities, and so forth. When the war itself began, and before the United States got involved directly, things obviously got much worse for the Jews.

It must be remembered that, before about 1930, it appeared that Jews were being welcomed into mainstream society throughout Europe, that historic barriers to Jewish participation in almost everything had been knocked down, and that the future looked good for the millions of Jewish Europeans, even in those eastern parts of Europe which were still poverty stricken and which World War I had treated so savagely.

During this entire period, there was a great debate among the American Jewish community as to how to react to growing restrictions on the Jews of central Europe. There was a strong difference of opinion as to how strongly American Jews should publicly protest what was going on in Europe. Should they hold rallies, and stage parades? Should they write op-eds or magazine articles? Should there be petitions? Or should they be quiet and lay low, or try to influence politicians without public clamor?

Today, one wonders if louder protests might have increased opposition to Hitler and changed the course of history. In the 1930s, the fear was that increased public protests of any kind might (1) not do any good, and (2) stoke American antisemitism and become not only self-defeating, but downright dangerous. So most of American mainstream Jewry stayed quiet. Of course, no one foresaw the Holocaust as it turned out, but still……

When you look at what is happening in the United States today, it seems to me that much of the same phenomenon is occurring. Just a few years ago, it seemed that Black Americans, just to name one group out of many, was on its way to much better days. There had been so much progress in every aspect of American society regarding Black participation, and much of this progress had been the result of legal protections, stemming from the civil right and fair housing acts of the 1960s, to the more recent DEI movements, to foster (as they say) diversity, equality and inclusion in all aspects of American life.

Of course, every time someone was chosen for some position where there were more than one person who would like to have been chosen, there were to be losers. And if the person chosen was chosen to foster the goals of DEI, the loser was, at least much of the time, to be someone who was not a beneficiary of DEI. And that was a balance that needed to be dealt with, that required some sensitivity.

But like in Germany, where Hitler stirred up the masses to think that Jews were taking their rightful places, Trump and his white supremacist followers stirred up white Americans to think that Blacks, and other DEI beneficiaries, were taking their rightful places. They were invaders, he implied, in a land not fully their own. And we have seen the results.

In fact, we are still seeing the results as DEI, once a positive aspect of American life, was turned into what is almost a treasonous set of letters, what was good became evil or (analogy or pun obviously intended) what was black is now white (or maybe it is what was white is now black).

But where are the Black voices opposing the downfall and destruction of DEI and everything it stood for? Where is Ibram X. Kendi, who in his book on anti-racism, took such an extreme pro-DEI position, saying basically that if Blacks are 15 percent of American citizens, Blacks should not be satisfied until they hold 15% of the positions of every job description in America? Why do we see Black journalists, educators, and pundits on TV giving the “news” without the great emotion that you might expect they would have seeing DEI, which helped many of them obtain their positions, be decimated?

Is this a replay of the America of the 1930s and early 1940s, where now it is the Blacks who are saying, “this too will pass”, and “let’s keep the rhetoric down, or we will make it worse than it is”?

We now see that, with the redistricting going on in the solid South, up to 1/3 of Black members of Congress may not return in the next session. We see the number of Blacks admitted to many universities dropping, and hiring practices across the country changing. But where is the Black outrage? We know it is there, but we don’t really hear it.

It obviously did not help the Jews to remain quiet almost 100 years ago. Will the same reticence and silence help the Blacks now?

We are scheduled to go on an Alaska cruise in July. After the one week cruise, which starts and ends in Seattle, we decided to take another week and see some things we haven’t seen before, so I made return reservations not from Seattle, but from Missoula, Montana. To wander between Seattle and Missoula, of course, we will need a car. I contacted Budget for a car rental, because they have a decent discount arrangement for AARP members. I called their 800 number, and wound up talking with a man who sounded very sure of himself. So the conversation started off somewhat like this:

Me: I want to rent a car in Seattle. I am coming off a cruise ship, and I don’t know where your closest office is to the piers where the ships arrive.

Him: Are you sure?

Me: Sorry, am I sure of what?

Him: Are you coming off a cruise?

Me: Yes.

Him: Well, are you sure you aren’t coming into Florida. I think that almost all cruise ships land in Florida.

Me: Excuse me??

It went on for a while, but we finally got everything straight and then it was time for him to take my credit card and contact information. He asked for my email. I told him, and asked him to spell it back to me, so I was sure he had it correctly. He repeated my name accurately, and then started with A-U-T-H-O-R. Hold on, I told him, it’s A-R-T-H-U-R. I figured he was confusing me with Shakespeare.

Now that we have that all straight, hopefully we will have a car waiting for us in Seattle. Of course, I remember times when we have landed places, expecting to have a car waiting for us, and being surprised and disappointed. I remember once landing late at night in Albuquerque, and being told: sorry, we have no cars left (in spite of our having a reservation). I remember landing in Vilnius, having a reservation for an automatic car, being given a stick shift car (luckily we know how to drive that). This time, I am confident we will be fine.

I should say that, as we didn’t want a luxury car, that he told us we had a choice between a Corona and a Jetta. It went like this:

Me: I don’t really care.

Him: Oh, there is a difference in price.

Me: What are the differences?

Him: One of them is $1 more expensive a day.

Me: Okay, I will take the more expensive one because I know you get what you pay for.

Him: I think you ought to take the Jetta. You know, it’s the one with German engineering.

Thank God, I have a Budget registration agent who wants to make sure we wind up with German engineering.

Next, I have to figure out how we are going to spend that week. I know we will see mountains, and nice farm land, and Grand Coulee Dam. I hope we will get to Glacier National Park, although I know that is the heart of tourist season there. Anyone with ideas, let me know.

That’s it for today. Short. Giving you a break.

We are rarely on Capitol Hill at sundown, but last night we were, and I took this photo as we walked from the Library of Congress to our car. We had been to a concert of Sephardic music by Lily Henley.

Hopefully, today will be quiet. It started with a presentation for my Thursday morning breakfast group on the Nuremberg Trials, always an engaging topic and one I will never fully understand. The day will end with a Haberman  presentation by Rabbi Donald Berlin titled “Judaism and Sports: Conflict, Change and Cultural Integration”. Sounds interesting (www.habermaninstitute.org). Register and watch for free at 7:30 EDT.

In the meantime, the air outside is very fresh today in Washington. It always is when Donald T. is out of town, and when he is almost 7000 miles away in Beijing, it seems especially fresh. I think the clarity of my photo of Capital last night is because he is so far away.

I haven’t heard much about the trip so far, except that Donald made it clear that Xi is an extraordinary leader and an extraordinary friend, and that Xi made it clear to Trump that he should keep his cotton picking hands out of Taiwan. I also heard that Trump said that Xi agreed not to send any more munitions to Iran, so one thing you can be sure of is that China is going to be sending more munitions to Iran. And what does Donald care about that, anyway, since we “have already won the war”?

Xi really didn’t tell Trump anything about his cotton picking hands, but some radio news commentator did tell Hakeem Jeffries to keep his cotton picking hands out of Virginia, and a Republican Congresswoman agreed with him, generating a lot of comment. She said that she did not think the language was appropriate and I guess I give her the benefit of the doubt. And I, for one, no longer equate “cotton picking” (the adjective) with “cotton picking” the noun. But of course there are those who don’t equate “jew” the verb (as in “jew down”) with “Jew” the ethnic/religious noun, and am not sure I give them the same benefit of the doubt. Is that inconsistent of me? Perhaps.

I guess what interested me, and worried me, most yesterday was the report that Senator Rand Paul’s son William, accosted New York Congressman Michael Lawler, at a bar and, apparently inebriated, accused Lawler’s “people”, which he meant as “the Jews” of potentially causing the defeat of Congressman Thomas Massie in Kentucky. Of course, Lawler is not Jewish, and Paul apologized immediately for calling him a Jew. That, of course, is not – in my mind – an appropriate apology, but there you go……

Paul didn’t stop with that and went on accusing the Jews of being more for Israel than for the U.S. From the article I saw on VINnews: “Lawler said Paul also expressed hatred for Jewish and LGBTQ people and did not care if they died.”

Yes, William Paul was drunk, and yes, he has now more fully apologized, and yes, he says he is now going to seek treatment for his use of alcohol, and that is all to the good, I guess, but the worry is that there are a lot of people who, with the help of a little alcohol, would agree with Paul’s statements about Jews, LGBTQ people and other groups. And with antisemitism being permitted to go a bit mainstream these days, with encouragement, perhaps subliminal, from Trump and Netanyahu, anything seems possible.

While Trump seems to countenance antisemitism from the right, Netanyahu is contributing to the increase of antisemitism on the left.

Of course, Netanyahu would either deny this, or say he doesn’t care, that “this too will pass”. He would say that those who are antisemitic because of Israel would be antisemitic no matter what Israel does, because they don’t think Israel should exist, and therefore they should be ignored, while Israel is doing what it has to in order to guarantee its future security. And he certainly would not try to separate anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli feelings because he wants them to be conflated, even though this conflation endangers Jews everywhere.

It creates a conundrum for American Jews for sure. As many Democratic politicians, and Democratic voters, have soured on Israel, does this threaten Democratic victories in some close elections? And, in fact, is this one of the goals of Netanyahu? He has made no secret of his admiration for Donald Trump. Is Netanyahu purposely endangering the position of American Jews by encouraging American antisemitism in order to convince Jewish American Democrats to stay home or vote Republican? I would not put it past him.

It is also true that it is more and more difficult for American Jews to support Israel “right or wrong”. With daily reports of outrages on the West Bank, and continued controversy about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the number and depth of Jewish critics of Israel will grow. I received the following photo of Gaza City, before and after, on Facebook this morning. Assuming its accuracy, it does raise more questions, right?

Talking to a friend this morning, I remarked at how remarkable it is that day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, decade by decade, and even century by century, so much seems to revolve around the Jews. He agreed, but he added something that I hadn’t thought about. The Trump regime, as we know, blames everything on Biden.

Putting aside the choice of Biden, what this tells you, my friend says, is that it is possible to cast the blame for everything in just one direction. Blaming everything on the Jews, in this thinking, is just another version of blaming everything on Biden. At first it seems stupid (which, of course, it is), but then before you know it, it becomes both mainstream and respectable.

Yesterday was one of those picture perfect days in Washington. Yes, we do get four or five of those each year. Edie and I decided to take a stroll, went to Georgetown, and wound up on R Street, near Dumbarton Oaks. We walked east on R Street, and before long wound up at Oak Hill Cemetery.

Oak Hill is a beautiful cemetery which winds down a steep hill into Rock Creek Park, and has been the resting place of Washingtonians since its creation in 1849. It is open to the public, and you could spend all day wandering its trails, but we were not so ambitious, and pretty much stuck to the loop around the James Renwick-designed chapel near the entrance.

But even this short loop enabled us to see much, starting (arbitrarily) with the tomb of Edward Stanton, President Lincoln’s Secretary of War (what? not Secretary of Defense?), who died at only 55, after he was nominated for the Supreme Court, but before he could be installed.

Then we saw the mausoleum built for Ben Bradlee, who served as managing editor of the Post during the Watergate investigation and was a close friend of John F. Kennedy. The mausoleum is quite controversial, I understand, because it was placed in a very central part of the cemetery, with opponents claiming it was wrong aesthetically and historically to place it there.

By the way, Bradlee’s bosses, Katharine and Philip Graham, are also in Oak Hill, and also have a central location, but they took a very different approach to their grave sites.

Of course, not all about the Grahams was so modest. Their house is just down R Street from Oak Hill.

Oak Hill is not without its sense of humor. The photos didn’t turn out but there is a stone for journalist Mark Shields that says “he loved his family, his friends, his country and ice cream”. And there is another stone for a married couple, which says: “We finally found a parking place in Georgetown”.

It is a non-denominational cemetery, and there are a number of Jewish burial sites, including that of our old friend Judy Falk, wife of my friend and ex-law partner David. Weirdly, as we were passing Judy, I received an email from David. Go figure.

And, although I am not sure who the Merricks were, their elaborate monument contains both a cross and a star of David. Again, go figure.

There also a few very modern designs, such as this one, honoring long-time DC architect Arthur Cotton Moore.

Finally, the R Street side of Oak Hill is bordered by a large wrought iron fence. I don’t know if the fence was part of the original 1849 design, but it is very old, and is now being restored to its original condition, piece by piece. It is an extraordinarily slow process, with the fence being dismantled section by section. As a section is dismantled, it is shipped to Baltimore where it is restored and then sent back and re-installed on site. Then another section is sent to go through the same process. Each section takes several months to restore.

The fence, pre-restoration, is black and rusty. Post restoration, it is the original green color (something discovered from looking at paint chips). Before the restoration process began, there was an attempt by the not-for-profit corporation to see what the public would prefer. They solicited opinions as to whether the fence should remain black after it was repaired, or go back to the original green. The result of the solicitation? 50% (exactly) for each. The board of directors then opted for the green.

Good choice.

We get the Washington Post and the New York Times delivered every day. Except for today. There are no newspapers outside.

When this happens, we call the two newspapers and they take our information and tell us that we will get their paper by 10:30. Except for today. Today they tell us (and when I say “they”, I am speaking of the automated “they”) that “delivery today is impossible. Goodbye!”

What are we to make of that? I assume there is a problem with the carrier (same carrier delivers both papers), and that no one in this part of DC is getting a delivery today. Or it could be a problem with the delivery of the newspapers to the carrier, or that when the carrier went to pick up the newspapers, none were there. We will never know the answer.

I will add this to the other questions, whose answers remain unknown to us. Like, what is the meaning of life? Or will the rain ruin the rhubarb, or is this just an old saying? Or who decided to name Finn, Huckleberry? And why hasn’t Huckleberry become a more popular name?

I saw a comic this morning talk about a question he had. His question was “where does the sun go at night?” You might think this is a silly question to be stuck on. After all, there is a scientific answer to this one. But he said he pondered the question all night. Until it dawned upon him.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there, does it make a sound? That is another question that may have no answer. And speaking of answers and sound, why were there helicopters whirring overhead last night at about midnight? That’s a tough one.

Here is another tough one. If the Supreme Court lets all of the states re-district their districts, so that Democrats don’t have a chance, do Democrats still have a chance?

And another. If Donald Trump goes to China this week, does he have to come back?

From what I have written so far, you might have already guessed that I got up about 5 a.m. today and could not fall back asleep. You may have also guessed that I have not yet had my morning coffee. And here is one that you don’t have to guess, because you already know it: I have not looked at the morning newspapers.

What else? Geraldine Gudefin, a young French born historian, is giving a series of four lectures on Zoom for the Haberman Institute (you remember I am president of Haberman) on how Jews gained citizenship or the rights of citizenship in various countries across the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. In her first talk, she concentrated on countries in western and central Europe, and in her second (last night) on Russia and the Ottoman Empire. They can be found in the archives on the Haberman website (www.habermaninstitute.org), along with a few hundred other presentations. I recommend them; you might want to look. Each (with q and a) runs about 90 minutes.

I say this because she ended her talk last night by showing a painting by Marc Chagall called “Onward”. We may not know where we are, and we may not know where we are going, but we go. Onward.

We drove to Baltimore yesterday to see the Washington National Opera’s production of West Side Story. First, a matter of introduction. We have not been regulars to WNO productions over the years. But when Donald Trump announced the name change for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and announced a potential two year closure for a total rebuild of the facility, the WNO, which had been housed in the Kennedy Center for about 50 years, was one of the first organizations to announce that they were leaving, even though they had yet to find a new venue. This made attending, and supporting, Washington Opera performances an act of political necessity, and we responded first by going to see its version of Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha, and then buying tickets to see West Side Story.

Treemonisha was performed at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, which seats about 1500, considerably less than the opera house at the performing arts center formerly known as Kennedy, which seats about 2400. But Baltimore’s historic/modern Lyric Theater seats, according to my smart phone, an audience of 2434, virtually the same number as the opera house. West Side Story is being performed at two venues, the Lyric in Baltimore and then the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda. And perhaps this will be the WNO venue for the next several years, splitting their shows between these three venues.

We had never been in the Lyric, which first opened in 1894. While the theater itself has been basically kept the same, everything else has been modified several times, so from the outside the theater looks like it was built in, I think, the 1980s when it was last remodeled, but the theater itself has not changed.

West Side Story has not changed, either. At least it has not changed since it was first staged in 1957. And, as you probably know, it is the story of star-crossed lovers (a la Romeo and Juliet) who come not only from separate families, but from different ethnic groups, Tony and Maria. Tony is a member of The Jets, an “American” street gang fighting for a bit of turf in New York City’s west side. Maria’s brother is a leader of The Sharks, a “Puerto Rican” street gang, fighting for the same turf. They fall in love at a dance sponsored by a “let’s all be friends” organization, but within 24 hours, there is a “rumble”, and Tony, although trying at first to keep the peace, winds up in a fight and kills Maria’s brother, Bernardo. This leads to vengeance by the PR’s, and Tony is shot and killed towards the end of the show.

The story is a familiar one, as you can see, and perhaps is supposed to have a moral attached, that hate does not pay. On the other hand, it is a brutal musical, even if you know how it will end so that the suspense is gone, and, 60 years after it was written, it is in fact dated. This does not take away from Leonard Bernstein’s music or from the original choreography of Jerome Robbins, but truth be known, I think it does take away from Arthur Laurent’s book and Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics, filled with “I dig”s, and “daddy-o”s. And, yes, “rumble”s.

And the dating does not only come from the vocabulary, but from the concept of New York City turf-craving street gangs, and from one of those gangs being “Puerto Rican” and the other “American”. Politically correct, it is not.

But the music and the performances were great, especially Ryan McCartan as Tony, but really everyone. The dancers made no mistakes, nor did the 50+ musicians in the pit.

Orihinally, the quartet was going to call it East Side Story, and set the play on that side of Manhattan, not near Gracie Mansion, but on the Lower East Side. There were still going to be two rival street gangs, but neither would be “American” nor “Puerto Rican”. One gang was going to be Jewish, and other gang was going to be Catholic, and their “rumble” was to be exacerbated by competing holidays of Passover and Easter. It is hard for me to conceive of a more dangerous, politically incorrect, and hard to justify, concept. And (maybe this is why it seemed okay to the creative quartet at this time, each of whom was of course Jewish) I don’t think there were Jewish/Catholic street gangs in New York in the 1950s, battling each other. It was clearly a rough time in New York for Puerto Ricans, so maybe the change over brought something closer to reality for the New York City audiences. But maybe, it has never been politically correct, irrespective of the time or the location.

I wonder, in the original, which side was which. I would assume (if I had to guess) that the Jewish Tony would fall in love with the Catholic Maria. After all, from Broadway’s Abie’s Irish Rose to Broadway’s Ragtime, that has been the pattern. Yes, those male Jewish writers/composers never write about the gentile boy and the Jewish girl. Somehow, I guess, that feels uncomfortable.

One other thing. As I said, West Side Story is a brutal play. Turf wars, two murders, knife fights, a gun shot, and more. Movies have ratings based on what are deemed appropriate ages for viewing. Stage plays and musicals do not. Leonard Bernstein’s daughter Jamie, who wrote a very nice piece which was published in the WNO program, said that she was 5 when the play opened its first preview (by the way, at the National Theater in Washington), and she was not allowed to attend. In fact, although she knew all the songs by heart, she was not allowed to attend the show for years after that. But there were a number (not a huge number, but a number) of young children in the audience. In fact, in front of us there was a husband and wife and their two kids, aged 4 and 6. I don’t know what the kids (very well behaved, by the way) understood from the play, but there certainly were many “this is just a play” explanations from the parents as the show went on.

Anything else I want to say about this? Yes…..do you know that you can take popcorn to your seats at the Lyric Theater?