Art is 80

One of the Nationals’ young pitchers is a fellow named Mackenzie Gore. We saw him when we were in Florida during Spring Training pitch against the Cardinals; he looked very good. He made his first start in the regular season this afternoon, and held the Braves to one run in, I think it was, 5 or 6 innings. The Nationals won 4-1.

The biggest event of the day was our friend George Johnson’s funeral. His two sons spoke, mainly about his role as a father. A very close long time friend spoke about a number of his interests and accomplishments. And Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, George’s friend and rabbi, talked about George’s intense interest in, and studying of, Judaism. It was a sad day. As recently as less than a week ago – George looked good in spite of his cancer treatment, and was going on with his life with his usual optimism.

Of course, everything I said in this blog yesterday was untrue – it was my not very successful attempt at April 1 humor. One thing was not untrue, however, and that is that we did go to a forum with the four Adas Israel rabbis, who each gave a 10 minute presentation on Passover seders, each focusing on a different aspect. One did talk about Elijah, who comes to the door late in the seder, and who always has a cup of wine waiting for him, and particularly why it is Elijah, a not always successful prophet in the Bible, who was chosen to make his appearance. Another talked about the concept of “order”. The word “seder” even means “order”, and the seder itself begins with a listing of the various parts of the seder starting with the first, and ending with the last. Yet, the seder often descends into chaos, and in fact you can look at part of the typical Haggadah as fostering that chaos. What do we make of this?

The third rabbi talked about how every seder participant is to look at the exodus from Egypt as if he himself (she herself) were present at the exodus. Just like every Jew is said to have been present when God gave the Jews the Torah at Sinai. But, he asked, what does this mean and what can you do to bring this feeling about? And the fourth talked about the famous Hillel sandwich, eaten just before the full meal – generally bitter herbs (usually horseradish) and sweet charoset (in the Ashkenazic tradition, typically made from apples, walnuts and wine), and sandwiched between two pieces of matzah. But when described in the Haggadah and the Talmud, charoset is not mentioned, only the bitter herbs and matzah. How did this change?

I should add that we heard from a 5th rabbi, this one not employed by Adas Israel, but a congregational member who, during the service, talked about the Passover sacrifice of a lamb during the time of the Second Temple (before its destruction by the Romans in 70 C.E.), and why the rabbis, immediately after the destruction of the Temple, forbade the sacrifice of a lamb. Or did they?

But it was April Fools Day yesterday. Did Adas Israel just ignore this important day? The answer is “no”. When we went into the room for the forum with the rabbis, there were no rabbis. There were about 8 chairs set up facing the congregation, each with a rabbinic child on it. Perhaps average age was about 8. In a less than organized way, they announced that they wanted to ask all of us some questions. Like “who can tell us what Passover is?” and similar questions. None of us (at least not I) were sure what was going on. Until one of the children shouted out “APRIL FOOLS”, the kids left the stage and the four rabbis came in.

I had the privilege of attending a program after Shabbat services this afternoon where the four rabbis from Adas Israel spoke, and took questions, about Passover. I learned so much I had not known before. I wonder how I could have missed all of these things for so long. But, you know, you have to keep learning. Learning is so important.

What did I learn today?

Most interesting is how different seders are in different parts of the world. For example, in China, did you know that, instead of hiding the afikoman, there is an age old tradition of hiding an egg roll? It’s true. And, in Macedonia, you hide the afikoman every year, but there is no tradition in finding it, and that some Jewish families have hundreds of afikomans hidden in their houses that may never be found (until the house is sold to another family)? I had no idea.

I had long wondered about how Jews in Egypt celebrate the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt, since they are still there. It turns out that there have been books and books written about this conundrum, and no one knows. This is because the Jews of Egypt have an age-old tradition. They do not start their seders by saying that all who are hungry can join them and eat. In fact, the Egyptian Jews have a practice of having their seders in secret with no guests at all. This explains why no one knows the answer to this age-old question.

Have you wondered why the holiday of Passover lasts 8 days? I always thought that it was because there was only supposed to be one day of oil, but in fact the oil lasted 8 days. I mentioned this to someone a year or so ago, and they laughed telling me that I was mixing up Hanukkah with Pesach. I felt so ashamed. But it turns out I was right. The long lasting oil is an important facet of both holidays. In fact, it appears that in the ancient Galilee they combined both holidays for several centuries, starting Hanukkach with two nights of seders, but lighting a hanukkia each night and giving kids presents of Hanukkach geld. I had absolutely no idea.

There was a lot more, but I will just give you one more example of these pearls of wisdom. Elijah’s glass of wine, which now sits somewhere on the table awaiting the arrival of the prophet Elijah towards the end, and which generally is still full at the end of the seder, has its own interesting history. It turns out that, for the first thousand of years of Judaism, Elijah did come to everyone’s seder and did drink the wine. But at some point, his doctor advised him to stop, he was getting too old and his liver was not in great shape. Elijah didn’t know what to do; he was not going to ignore his doctor’s advice. So, he asked his old friend Santa Claus what he thought. Santa suggested milk and cookies instead. But, for reasons unknown, no one ever substituted milk and cookies for wine at a seder. So the wine cup remains full. But don’t think that means that Elijah doesn’t come. He always does.

One further thing: APRIL FOOL’S

Last week, I reported on the death of Rabbi Bill Rudolph, whose funeral took place on Tuesday. Yesterday, another friend passed away. George Johnson had been battling a rare form of blood cancer for several years, at one point thought he had it beat, and then it came back. He died of pneumonia brought on by a lowered immune system. We still are not sure if the funeral will be Sunday or Monday.

George and his wife Ayah have been friends of ours for many years. George, like myself, had a career as a lawyer, who left it behind when he retired. He was very devoted to Judaism, religiously, culturally and historically. He belonged to an Orthodox synagogue, took classes continually, wrote for (and was an editor on) MOMENT Magazine, and was a fellow board member on the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies. He was a creative intellectual and will be missed.

In other news……we were awakened at about 5:45 this morning as a coyote strolled by and howled several times. That’s a first. I know there are coyotes in Rock Creek Park, but I don’t remember them coming this far out of the park (one of the entrances to Rock Creek Park is about one half mile from our house).

Finally (for today), an incident at Gregory’s coffee shop yesterday. As I was sipping my coffee and writing yesterday’s blog, there was a young woman (maybe she was 20, maybe at a stretch 25), who was sitting down busily typing on her tablet, with a notebook on the table, and a large purse next to her where she was sitting.

After a while, she shuts the tablet, stands up, leaves her table, and goes to the ladies’ room. Well, OK, but she leaves her tablet on the table, and her large purse open on the bench next to where she was sitting. She is gone close to 5 minutes.

Now years ago, Hannah and Michelle took a sisters’ trip to London and went to a coffee shop. Hannah hung her purse on the back of her chair and when her name was called walked up to the counter to get her order. When she came back to her seat, her purse was gone. In it was cash, credit cards, passport, I-Phone and a ring that had belonged to my grandmother which Hannah worse almost all the time, and which my grandmother had brought from Europe. Luckily, someone turned the purse with the passport into the American embassy and insurance covered the loss of everything but the ring (get insurance when you travel!).

I told my coffee shop neighbor about Hannah’s experience. She responded with “You know, I never thought about that. You’re right, I won’t do that again.” Now, I don’t know if she will or she won’t. But she didn’t seem unintelligent, and I’m sure she would have been unhappy if someone had taken her computer and her purse. I would think some things should be obvious.

I would think.

Sitting at Gregory’s Coffee after the Opening Day game, rating Gregory’s dark roast and blueberry muffin A+. Both of them.

The game not so much. Patrick Corbin is still Patrick Corbin, and C.J. Abrams is not yet C.J. Abrams. But three cheers for Joey Mineses and four for Victor Robles. Final score was Braves 7. Nats 2. But the game itself was a bit more even than that. The Braves’ 3 in the 9th was the killer. And Kyle Finnegan sure didn’t shine as our closer. We’ll see how long he stays there.

One other thing. Baseball when it’s in the 40s does lack something. Comfort. And Nats Park still lacks somthing. Edible, affordable food. Why is that so hard?

Let me add to the A+ section of this post. Last night, we had dinner at Bistro Lepic on Wisconsin Ave for the first time since pre-pandemic. How do you say A+ in French?

Our guest last night was an old friend from NYC down here for an international law conference. Always a pleasure to see him. Next time, maybe his wife will join him. We last saw them in New York in October. But that was a quickie.

Final thing for today. It’s Thursday, and that means someone gave an excellent presentation at my breakfast group. Today, it was about Harvard professor Henrich and his book on how Western personalities differ from those of the rest of the world, and how that relates to material and scientific advanced in the West. His book, whose name I don’t recall but which has WEIRD in it, runs 900 pages. Among other things, he appears to credit/blame the Catholic Church for much of the Western differences, and interestingly, finds that Jews in America are different in some respects from other Americans, sharing some qualities with people in other parts of the world. Apparently, he doesn’t specify, and I didn’t get that he was making a value statement. But some of the concentration on “clan”, that you find in other places, you find here, he concludes, among American Jews.

Quite a day yesterday. Lunch with an old friend who started our conversation with the news that his wife has just been diagnosed with breast cancer and is having surgery next week. Her prognosis seems to be good, but – as they say – who needs this?

From there, I went to the funeral of Rabbi Bill Rudolph at Beth El in Bethesda. I was one of maybe 500 (maybe more?) in attendance. It was a two hour funeral, and if it had gone on for three hours, I don’t think anyone would have complained. I have known Bill for more than ten years and we worked closely together on the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee, but there was so much more about him that I did not know. Yes, I knew his basic career – his education at Hebrew Union College, his work at Hillel both on campus and nationally, his decades at Beth El, and his post-retirement work, but that was only a part of who he was. One of the rabbis who spoke shorthanded it by saying that he was giving a eulogy for two people – for Rabbi Rudolph and for Bill. And then there were his two sons and his daughter who spoke – not only with love and appreciation for their father, but with humor that he would have appreciated and that he fostered in them. And to top it off, a eulogy given by his wife of almost 40 years. It was an A+ funeral. And I know that Bill took an active role in planning it. My immediate reaction was to send him an email to tell him how well his planning had worked out.

As a glutton for punishment, I couldn’t let the day stop there. After we picked up 2 year old Izzy from pre-school and had a quick supper, Edie and I went back to Adas Israel and joined about 20 other congregants listening to Joshua Kulp (not someone I had heard of before) speak about shiva (the Jewish 7 day mourning period) and why, when the mourning period is interrupted by a Jewish holiday, you normally cut the mourning period, not observing the customs either during the holiday or after the holiday is over. It was a talk about history, as evidenced in Talmudic writing.

Perhaps this is not a topic of great interest to most, and in fact I thought the session was a bit helter skelter, but I did pick up a few tidbits. For those rabbis and families who have shortened traditional shiva from 7 to 3 days, I learned that there was at least historical precedent for treating the first 3 days of a 7 day shiva differently from the last 4. When I heard that, for Rabbi Rudolph, the first night of shiva was to be for family only, I was surprised; last night I heard there was historical precedent for that, as well. And I also learned that funeral services in synagogues were a relatively recent phenomenon, that for centuries there were no such funerals held, except for perhaps individuals of great accomplishment and esteem. This brought me back to my father’s 1979 funeral, when my mother wanted it to be in the United Hebrew sanctuary in St. Louis, and was told that was impossible and it was held instead in the common room of the temple’s education center. And later when my mother passed away in 1987, and my sister wanted my mother’s funeral in the synagogue and put up quite a stink, finally reaching an agreement that the funeral could be held there, but the casket would be placed in a side aisle, and not in front of the ark. I remember not understanding why United Hebrew and its rabbi (who was close to my mother) objected so consistently. Maybe, this was also because of some historical precedent and synagogue ritual committee standards. Hard to credit this position to such precedents for a quite Reform institution, but…..maybe so.

Yesterday did not go as I had planned. I woke up to hear that Bill Rudolph, my friend, co-board member, and retired rabbi from Congregation Beth El in Bethesda had passed away after a years long battle with pancreatic cancer. His funeral is this afternoon; I spent part of yesterday at the funeral home, helping guard his body as part of the ancient Jewish custom of shmira.

Last night, though, I did get to American University to hear the annual Amos Perlmutter lecture given by Professor Menachem Ben-Sasson of The Hebrew University. He talked about the history of Israel’s lack of a constitution. He should know because, during his short time as a member of the Knesset, he was in charge of the Constitution committee and worked on the development of a written constitution that never got a formal vote in the Knesset. That was 15-20 years ago. He went on to become President of The Hebrew University, where he now teaches.

I am not going to try to summarize his talk. But, as I gave a talk just the week before comparing the judiciaries of two countries (the United States with its constitution and Israel without one), I was particularly interested in what he had to say. And he certainly had details that I had no idea about. I thought it was a tremendous talk – those in the large audience who were only familiar with looking at headlines through their American eyes may have had a hard time following some of it. It was filled with detail.

I saw a lot of people I know at the talk, some of whom I have seen now and then and some of whom I really had not seen since pre-pandemic. That included an old friend, about to turn 94, who is a financial supporter of American U’s Israel program, and who was going to take an Uber home until I offered her a cheaper ride. She is still active (with limitations) and lives in her large house all by herself. Pretty amazing.

I also got home in time to read the third Euripides play – “Alcestis”. This one is very short and (I think) quite silly. A man is told by Death that his time is up, unless he can find someone to take his place. He asks his elderly parents; they refuse. He asks his wife and mother of his three young children; she, as a matter of loyalty to her husband, agrees. She dies. Our anti-hero is visited by his old friend Hercules, who finds it absurd that Alcestis has died for this reason, and he goes to the underworld and brings her back to life. Exeunt omnes (as they never said in Athens). I think it’s a comedy.

Busy day today. Need to send a book to Toronto by Fedex, should take laundry to Zips, having lunch with a friend at Blue 44, going to the funeral, picking up grandson from pre-school.

See you tomorrow.

That is perhaps the worst pun in the history of the English language. It is probably not politically correct (ask Chico Marx?), and is geographically in error, as Euripides lived in Athens (at least until he was kicked out of town), not Rome. But there you go…..you heard it here.

Yes, Euripides was kicked out of Athens, apparently because he, like Socrates, not only liked to make fun of his home town and the people who lived there, but he liked to make fun of the gods. Euripides, it appears, believed the gods as irrational as men and women. And for this, Athens could not forgive him.

My next Penguin book turned out to be a book of three of Euripides’ nineteen surviving plays, Hippolytus, Iphigenia in Tauris and Alcestis. Yesterday, I read two of three three short plays (the entire book is only 164 pages, and that includes a generous introduction and notes in the back), and I assume will read the third, Alcestis, today.

I thought Hippolytus a little light – the king’s young second wife falls hopefully in love with the king’s son, and decides the only way out is suicide. But she leaves a note blaming her death on the son, angering the king, who then kills his son. But it turns out that the son didn’t even know about his stepmother’s obsession until after her death, but is able to forgive his royal father before he takes his final breath. Meh.

I thought Iphigenia in Tauris, on the other hand, a terrific story with a happy ending. Iphigenia is Orestes’ sister, daughter of Agamemnon, condemned to death by her father (as the god ordained cost of being able to retrieve Helen from Troy), but she escapes to Tauris. Meanwhile, her brother Orestes is sent on a search for a relic of the goddess Artemis to Tauris. Iphigenia’s job in Tauris is to prepare any Athenians who wind up there to be sacrificed to Artemis. But she learns her brother’s identity, helps him secure the relic he came for, and escapes with him on his ship, heading back to her homeland. Great adventure, Great story.

Enough classics lessons for today? Wonder what’s going on in Israel? From this morning’s Forward:

“After massive protests overnight, a national strike gripped Israel Monday morning: No flights departed Ben Gurion airport, schools and universities canceled classes, non-emergency care at hospitals were suspended, shopping malls closed their doors and hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets. Some mayors called for a hunger strike. McDonald’s closed its 200 stores in Israel in solidarity.”

This is the result of the latest Netanyahu outrage, the axing of Defense Minister Gallant, who dared to oppose the rapid movement towards a judicial overhaul as threatening Israeli security, as reservists and some active duty military troops are refusing to serve until the coalition’s plans to change the way justices are appointed are dropped. It is really quite something – estimates have yesterday’s protesters exceeding 500,000.

President Herzog of Israel has proposed some sensible compromises that the ruling coalition have discounted, but don’t call them dead yet. It is not clear what will happen. I assume that Netanyahu would be happy to compromise, but not at the expense of losing his job as prime minister and forcing another election (which he would now undoubtedly not win). But failure to compromise might also result in some parties dropping out of the coalition, forcing another election anyway. And the hardliners – the religious Zionists and Shas (let’s call them territorialists) – are not ready to compromise; their agendas depend on the current coalition staying in power.

As Euripides might have said (but didn’t), “Oh, what tangled webs we weave.”

Let’s start with the film. We watched All Quiet on the Western Front last night. I usually don’t watch war films, but after all, this one was based on a classic anti-war book, and just won four (that’s a lot) Oscars. It’s the story of a young German soldier in World War I, anxious to support his Vaterland and join the army, caught in the long, long Flanders stalemate, watching his friends, one by one, fall, saving himself through the undertaking of what even (or especially) he knew were evil acts, only to die minutes before the effect of the armistice at 11 a.m, on the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918.

The film is primarily in German (with subtitles, of course), and is well acted, and wonderfully made. I think it was worthy of its Academy Awards recognition. I recommend it with the following caveat: It was by far the most uncomfortable film I have watched.

Yes, it’s about the First World War. But all I could think as we watched it: Ukraine.

And, by the way, if you watch it on Netflix, be sure to stay for the “Making of…..”, a 20 minute piece that will make you appreciate the film even more.

OK, the books.

Having struggled for weeks with Dostoevsky, I read two other books over the past few days. First was “All the Horses of Iceland”, by Sarah Tolmie, a medievalist scholar who wrote a nice mini-saga about a young Icelandic teenager, maybe 1000 years ago, who goes to Scandinavia where he meets a Jewish Khazar trader and goes with him through the steppes to Mongolia, where he is deemed to be a magician and is awarded with a herd of horses to bring back to Iceland, trekking through country ravaged by tribal warfare. It is nicely written, and accompanied by a little magical thinking, but is it great literature? Probably not. But it did remind me of “Njall’s Story”, a true 12th century Icelandic saga, which I read early in my Penguin reading, and which tells the story of pagan Iceland in about the 9th century. Iceland back then certainly was a dangerous place to live, but also a surprisingly sophisticated place, with formalized relationships between tribes, with clear practices of both respect and revenge, and with the annual Althing, the gathering for both politics and trade. I opened “Njall’s Story” certain that I would find it a waste of time. But quite the opposite.

The same was the case with the other book I just read, titled “England in the 19th Century” by David Thomson. It turned out that this was a wonderfully written book, a pleasure to read, not organized chronologically, but by subject. The divide between rural and urban England and the various parliamentary reforms, the adoption of a free trade strategy when England was supreme and the change to a form of protectionism, when it not longer was. The development of the empire in competition with much of Europe, the rivalry with Germany with respect to naval strength, the importance of Victoria who made the queen personally more important than the idea of the monarchy, the development of loyal self rule in Australia and Canada, the Irish question, and more.

Not sure what is next.

But of course, I don’t only read books. I buy them. Usually, I look for books that have been signed by the author (you know that), or that are old or hold particular interest.

This week I made an exception and bought (at a used book store downtown) two books that I have just wanted to read. First, Charles King’s book, “Odessa”, and second Bill Taubman’s “Gorbachev: His Life and Times”. When will I get to them?

I also, of course, found some special signatures, and bought for $2.50 each: “The Annotated and Illustrated Double Helix”, signed by James D. Watson, “No Dream is Too High”, signed by Buzz Aldrin, and “This Child Will be Great”, signed by Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Don’t recognize Sirleaf? She was the first (and I think only) female president of Liberia.

What led me to writing this post? A couple of things:

1. I just heard a House Republican press conference touting their great success in passing a Parents Bill of Rights (with no Democratic votes), knowing full well that it won’t even get to a vote in the Senate.
2. Reading articles yesterday about a teacher in Tallahassee who was fired for showing her 5th grade class Michelangelo’s David, after which a parent complained that the statue is pornographic.
3. How Glenn Youngkin won his election for governor of Virginia after his opponent Terry McCauliffe said that parents had no role to play in school curricula, and Youngkin jumped on that.
4. Knowing that the US never winds up near the top on international educational rankings.
5. Reading continually about the elimination of certain books from school curricula or libraries
6. Hearing accusations, without any basis, that Critical Race Theory is being taught in schools, and that the result is to divide students from each other, and make white students hate themselves.
7. All the issues about gay, non-binary and trans kids, how they are treated and how they should be treated.

And so on.

So those are some of the problems. There are also a few obvious facts.

1. Each child learns differently, and that won’t change.
2. Each teacher teaches differently, and that can’t change.
3. Every school district is different, as is every school board and every school’s administration.
4. Every school classroom is different, with children from all sorts of backgrounds and belief systems.

Now, as usual, I am going to attack the Republicans (but only because they deserve it). As I understand the parents’ bill of rights (and I have not paid a lot of attention to it), it would, among other things, guarantee that parents would receive a lot of information about school curricula for their children, including lists of books that would be read in their classes. Listening to the several Republican House members who spoke at the press conference, they wanted to stress that the Democratic Party’s lunatic left (that was Kevin McCarthy’s phrase) was the cause of all of these problems, and the fact that no Democrats voted for this bill is evidence that the Democrats are simply beholden to evil teachers’ unions. In addition, they attacked the Democrats for everything else in the world, all because of the weakness of the Biden administration.

What gets me is that the Republicans just cannot talk about education without talking about politics. They cannot write an education bill whose basic purpose is educational, not political. And this is true not only with regard to education, but with regard to many other things as well.

Just like Republicans have created doubt in scientists and health care professionals for political purposes, they now want to sow doubt in educators for the same reason. Don’t let them tell you what to do, they say, you tell them what they should do. You know more than they do, so you can tell them how to treat your health, and you can tell them how to educate your children. You know best. But guess what? You don’t.

Take the issue of slavery, or more broadly the issue of how Blacks have been (and are) treated in our country. Let’s say that a teacher tells the kids that Blacks were kidnapped in Africa, sold into slavery in the United States, worked unmercifully, split from their families. That they were kept from voting even after the Civil War, not allowed to marry Whites, not allowed to buy property in or live in certain neighborhoods, not allowed into certain jobs, or to eat in restaurants or sit in theaters. And that all of that was bad, wrong.

What would be wrong with that teaching? How would that divide children, or make White children hate themselves? And, from another perspective, how can you education American children if they don’t know that? I think Republican leaders know there is no reason to oppose this instruction, except that they have political reasons for trying to make a big stink about and cast blame on Democrats.

The issues surrounding gender are admittedly more complicated and more sensitive. Isn’t it obvious that children should not be encouraged to think of themselves as gay if they are not, and should not be encouraged to think of themselves as having been born into the wrong gender? Isn’t it also obvious that children who are gay, or who have inbred gender issues, have to be treated with compassion, so that they can succeed without being targets of hate and bullying? I think the answers to both questions are yes. But the two political parties have set their own positions (and the positions of their opposite) in stone, seeming making such attempts doomed to failure, and maybe even impossible to start.

It appears that there is no way to separate health care from politics (and it’s because of the politicians who belittle the professionals), and there is no way to separate education from politics (and it’s because of the politicians who belittle the professionals).

Well, if I ran the zoo…….

It’s odd, because I used to spend the majority of my waking hours downtown, that I rarely seem to be there now. Not since the pandemic first locked us down, and then changed all of our daily practices. But I did go downtown a few weeks ago. It was a gray and dismal day, and everything looked pretty dismal. The streets were not jammed with traffic, the sidewalks were fairly empty, there were a number of empty store fronts, and generally the place did not look well cared for. I knew of course that downtown activity had been lessened by the pandemic, but I hadn’t thought about how an emptier downtown changed the entire atmosphere of the place. Well, I thought, maybe it really hadn’t. After all, it is a dismal day.

Yesterday, I was downtown again, pretty much in the same neighborhood. The sky was blue, the temperature was in the 70s, a nice breeze was blowing – the weather could not have been better. The feel of downtown, however, was still as dismal as it was on that very dismal day.

I have seen the statistics. Over half of the people who worked downtown pre-COVID have not returned. This includes federal government workers, as well as private sector workers. Washington is a city where working from home caught on, and hasn’t let go. I have also seen the Metro figures which show ridership also down almost 50% (this is par for big city transit, and is apparently a smaller drop than in some cities, like San Francisco and Atlanta).

There are other factors at play, as well. One of the industries that seems to have been little affected by the pandemic is real estate development and construction. And over the past several years, there has been a lot of commercial development in the area, just not in downtown. Those familiar with this area know of the tremendous amount of construction activity in the Navy Yard area and at The Wharf. I have read the Bethesda still has 21 new high rise projects on the boards. And development is still occurring in a number of suburban areas in both Virginia and Maryland. But not so much downtown.

It appears now that employers are assuming that there will continue to be a lot of work from home for the foreseeable future. And a lot of split work – part time from home, and part time at the office. But this means a reconfiguration of office layouts – offices are getting smaller (by a lot), some offices are being shared by two or more employees, etc. This means that as office leases expire, companies are renewing for considerably less space. Vacancy rates are high, and it appears may even climb more.

Mayor Bowser has a plan. Her plan, beyond convincing employers (including the federal government) that they should go back to their downtown workspace, is to have excess commercial capacity reconfigured as residential space. The city would help through tax incentives that would last 20 years. There is at least one such conversion underway now – the building that used to house the Peace Corps offices on L Street is being redone as a multifamily unit building (not sure if it will be rental or condo). We will see how this works.

I do have my doubts. There has been a tremendous amount of high rise or mid-rise residential development in the area, in the neighborhoods mentioned above and many more. I am not sure how much more of this type of development the area can absorb. At least right now, the area’s population, which has increased greatly over the past decade, has been fairly stagnant. The mayor’s goal is to have 15,000 units converted downtown and ready for occupancy by 2028. And for this to be a continuing program after that.

Downtown DC is a large area. By my definition (I do not know if the city has set boundaries for this initiative), it runs from the Capitol on the east, to 25th Street on the west, and from about D Street on the south, to at least M (and some places, maybe P) Street on the north. That’s over 250 square blocks.

The area has a lot of hotels, a few movies theaters (fewer than before), many “fine dining” type restaurants (but fewer lunch places than it had), and a number of museums and tourist spots. But groceries, dry cleaners and the like are harder to find. And, yes, there is some existing residential development, most of which is very high end, especially in the Penn Quarter and City Center neighborhoods, but these are not for the type of “ordinary people” (my term) that the mayor would like to see live downtown. They, at least today, have too many other attractive, and probably more affordable, options.

“Just listen to the music of the traffic of the city, Linger on the sidewalk where the neon lights are pretty……..Things will be great when you are ….. downtown, No finer place for sure…..downtown, Everything is waiting for you…..downtown, downtown, downtown.”

I should add: downtowns are crucial for all sorts of reasons. Anything that the city can do to support downtown development, I support.

I gave my presentation this morning on the constitutional crisis in Israel to my Thursday morning breakfast group. I thought it went well. Gave myself a B+.

I started from the premise that Americans protesting the pending changes in Israel do so from an American perspective, without sufficient understanding of the Israeli situation. I purposely did not express my political positions in my talk – I just wanted to provide context that those protesting so loudly would have a better understanding of what they are protesting.

The areas of concern are (1) how Supreme Court justices are selected, (2) should a Supreme Court have the right to nullify legislation passed by a parliament or Congress, and (3) should the legislative body have a right to overrule the Supreme Court?

I pointed out that the Israeli and American governmental systems are very different. We have 50 states and DC; they have one unified country – no states or provinces, only one court system. We have a separately elected president; their prime minister is selected by their parliament.

In the US, the appointment of Supreme Court justices is inherently political. The president nominates; the Senate approves. In Israel, up until now, the 9 member judicial selection committee is made up of 4 representatives of the governmental majority, and 5 representatives of the Court itself and the Israel Bar Association.

The current proposal is now to have an 11 member selection committee in Israel with 6 members appointed by the governmental majority, and requiring the approval of at least one minority member of the parliament or Court for the third and subsequent nominations within one parliamentary term. During such a term, there are, on average, 2.6 justices selected, so that the ruling coalition would in theory (over a period of 2 terms, or 8 years, have selected 4 of the 5 justices).

The argument of the proponents is that this would make things more democratic, and that justices would no longer be chosen by non-elected individuals. The opposition responds that, without this check, there would be no balance and the majority could select any politicos who would support their cause.

By the way, another difference between the two countries. In our country, a justice serves for life. In Israel, it is a 9 year term (no second term allowed) and there is a mandatory retirement at 70.

The other debate is about the ability of the Supreme Court to have judicial review. Nothing is said in the US constitution about the Supreme Court having the right to nullify a law passed by Congress. But in practice, this has been permitted time and time again since 1802, when a unanimous Court in an opinion written by Chief Justice Marshall (Marbury v Madison) stated that portions of a law passed by Congress in 1799, which gave the Supreme Court the right to hear certain cases as the first court of facts, was unconstitutional because the Constitution stated that the Court was to be primarily an appellate court (I am paraphrasing, obviously).

In Israel, where there is no written constitution, there was no judicial review until 1992, when the parliament then passed a revision to the judicial code which permitted it (again, I am simplifying). It is this 1992 law (or at least its interpretation by the Supreme Court) that is now seemingly being rewritten. Again, the proponents say that parliament, not unelected judges operating without a constitution should be able to pass what it wants (there are a few exceptions in the newly proposed legislation), and that that is what democracy is all about. And the opposition is saying that you need checks and balances, not an unlimied parliamentary right.

Interestingly, for those who are unaware, in places like Canada and Australia, the Courts are limited as to what laws they can overturn, and the Parliaments have a way to revoke the Court’s nullification. In Britain, courts have no right to overturn any laws, to my understanding.

At any event, the point is (a) we in the US do not have the perfect system and (b) powers of Supreme Courts across the world vary a great deal, and (c) no system is perfect. The Israeli system today may be imperfect and fragile, and the proposal by the new right wing governing coalition may make things worse, not better.

We see polarization everywhere, certainly in this country, and certainly in Israel. Legislators of good faith and with practical sense seem to be sorely lacking. We don’t know yet how the Israeli situation will play out, and it may be very proper and appropriate to protest against the proposed changes, but when we do it, we should do with sufficient background and context.

This post describes some, but not all, of the thoughts I brought up this morning. and there are many thoughts that I was not able to bring up in a 40 minute presentation. For example, do you know that many countries have two Supreme Courts – one to handle disputes, and one to handle only constitutional questions. In France, for example, the constitutional court has to look at and pass on all legislation before it is signed into law and becomes effective. And that is just one example.

Israel can learn much from other models. But guess what? Maybe we could, too.

Well, I had just been zipping through my Penguin paperbacks, reading between one and three every week for over a year. And my reading included some rather lengthy Russian novels, like “Crime and Punishment”, and “Oblomov”. But when I got to “The Possessed” (sometimes known as “The Demons”) by Dostoevsky, I was slowed down into first gear, sometimes as if I was climbing a too steep hill, and sometime as if I was just stopped, waiting for the train to pass. I am happy to say that my ordeal is over.

Over the past few years, I have read both “Crime and Punishment”, which I consider one great book, and “The Brothers Karamazov”, which I consider a bit too dense and spotty. “Crime” is the psychological story of a university student who is so alienated from the world that all he can think to do is to plan and execute the perfect crime. And he does so (event though to the reader, the crime doesn’t seem so perfect) in such a way that not only is he able to avoid detection, but even when he wants to confess nobody believes him. Of course, he finally does get his comeuppance, but it isn’t easy.

“The Brothers” on the other hand is an overdrawn and bizarre family saga about a boorish man and his three sons, each of whom has a different view of life and different sense of entitlement. Yes, there is a crime in this one, too, and then punishment and what to do about it. Except for some few chapters, “The Brothers” does nothing for me.

Now we get to “The Demons”. Frankly, I think it is a spoof. But not a quick and cutesy spoof, but one which is so detailed and seemingly so meaningful that you really have to concentrate on it seriously to believe it is a spoof. Yes, there is a story line, and there is an extraordinary collection of characters. And that’s what they are – characters.

If “Crime and Punishment” is Dostoevsky’s psychological novel and “The Brothers Karamazov” his philosophical one, “The Demons” is his political novel. It is 1850 or so, the serfs have been freed, and reform is in the air. But what kind of reform, and how are the Russians, used to living under an absolute czar, supposed to define it and cope with it.

The younger generation, of course, has its ideas – socialism, freedom, religious toleration, equality. All these things that most older Russians (I am speaking here of the aristocratic class) cannot understand, and certainly of which they don’t approve. But it’s in the air.

And when the son of the very wealthy widow and the son of her longtime friend and teacher return to town with progressive ideas, you can be certain that everything will fall apart, and that this small and close community will never be the same. And you can be certain that chaos will lead to embarrassing situations, murder, suicide and mayhem.

This would be a great novel if it was half the size it is. The Penguin version is 648 pages long, with very small print.

Why did Dostoevsky make this book as long as he did? Perhaps, he was paid by the word? Could be. Like Dickens, this novel was first issued as a magazine series over, I think, a few years. But the primary reason is that this is a book filled with diversions. It’s written in the first person, by a character who is never named and rather minor, except that he is always around. And he is telling us this story. And every now and again, he stops in his tracks and says something like: “Before I tell you what happened next, I better give you some background.” And we are off on a multi-page digression. Or he says, when a new character is introduced, “I must tell you about him first”, and again we are sent down a different road.

One other point. As we know, Russian novels can be hard to follow because they do have a lot of characters, and each character tends to have a long three-part name. In “The Demons”, though, Dostoevsky goes one step further. He gives the characters names that are so close to one another that you cannot keep them straight, even if “War and Peace” gave you no problem.

There are two Verhovenskys (father and son), two Stavrogins (mother and son), two Shatovs (brother and sister), but also a Liputin, two Lebyadkins (brother and sister), a Lyamashin, two Lembkes (husband and wife), a Kirillov and a Karmazinov. It’s the L’s that get ya.

OK, enough of that.

Onward. I should switch to some very short Penguins – 200 pages or less for the next, say, 6. I have lost time to make up. But if I go by the pile I have been working on, it’ll be “Life in Shakespeare’s England” (365 pages), Isaac Babel’s “Collected Stories” (333), “The Canterbury Tales” (512), “The Magic Mountain” (716), two books on English History in the 18th and 19th centuries (total of 475). And one short one: “Requiem for a Nun” by Faulkner (only 232, but it’s Faulkner).

I think I need a new strategy.

First, my heartiest congratulations to Saint Rupert Murdoch, who has once again decided that the single life is not for him. And that 92 is the perfect age for marrying. Yes, the patron saint of Disinformation is tying the knot with a young maiden about 25 years younger than he. Should be a crime, I thought until I realized that some 25 years younger than St. Rupert is still Medicare eligible. I hope they invite me to one of their many houses, including the California house. Speaking of houses, did you know that the Prime Minister of the Somewhat United Kingdom has a house in Santa Monica? I sure didn’t. But then About to be Arrested Trump has two golf courses in the S.U.K. So, there. Last night, continuing our Oscar chase, we watched The Whale. You may recall (if your memory is still sharp) that Brendon Fraser won the Best Actor Oscar for The Whale and that someone else won for Best Makeup. OK, let’s put aside the raging controversy as to whether the lead should have been played by someone who really weighs 450 pounds, and let me give you the skinny on this film. I was almost 100% certain I wouldn’t like it. But guess what? I do so like it, Sam I Am. Yes, the plot and all the characters are totally exaggerated, and I am pretty sure that Tom, Tom the preacher’s son, who is sure that Jesus is already in the neighborhood adds much to the story. But all the emotions seem real, and the tangle that everyone seems to find themself in does pull on all the empathy strings. See it when you get a chance. One more thing to mention. According to some group that seems to know such things, Israel has been determined to be the 4th happiest country in the world. My take? This is so …… 2022.

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So, I wanted to see how two year old Izzy was coming along with learning nursery rhymes. First – Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating his…….”popcorn”. Then – Little Boy Blue, come blow your……”nose”. I think he is coming along fine.

Then, I talked to seven year old Joan about the turtle recovery center that Edie and I had visited in Florida. Joan had all sorts of questions and thoughts about the turtles, but really has no idea about Florida, except that it’s warm. She doesn’t know the geography – I guess they don’t teach that in second grade. And of course no one has maps any more. This will be my next task.

I should say that, after we talked about Florida and sea turtles, we talked about Hawaii and volcanoes. I think she knows more about that than I do. She told me she learned much of it watching a video on volcanoes in Hawaii.

Next subject: When an 80 year old looks at his horoscope. I looked at the horoscope in the Sunday Post (why, I don’t know) today and saw that it suggested that a conversation with an older family member would be helpful. OK, I thought, I should do that. But then I was stumped. My aunts, uncles and older first cousins are all gone. But then I realized that my mother has four living first cousins, all older than me (although one just by five years) – one in Florida, one in California, one in Tennessee and one in Texas. Three in their 90s, one in her 80s. On my father’s side? I really don’t know, since I know so few of his family personally.

Last subject: We watched “Everything, Everywhere, Everyone” or whatever its exact name is this evening. First, I have to say that Edie liked the film – if she had a blog, she’d tell you why. I thought it was one of the worst films I have ever seen, and the thought that it won the Oscar for best picture puts it in the same category as when Bob Dylan won a Nobel for Literature. I thought the acting was quite good – I could see why they were all in the running (I am not sure that each of them should have won, but maybe). But James Hong – my golly. He is 94 years old, and looks younger than me. And, they say, he has made over 600 films over the last 70 years. I saw him in the Oscars audience. He looked good there, too.

But, again, as to the film – and I am not going to give much away. You probably know it involves people who were able to travel between various verses, like the universe, and the alphaverse, and the bagelverse. No, “able to travel” is not correct. Who were, often unwillingly tranported between verses would be better.

That’s it from AlphaArthur. Time to push my green button.

I really didn’t go anywhere yesterday, except to take a short walk to get an espresso at the Italian Bar (I didn’t know if my goal was the walk or the espresso). I hadn’t looked at a clock and I thought that it was probably about 3 p.m., but it was really after 5 p.m., and I think the double espresso kept me up last night. I didn’t fall asleep until about 2 a.m. That’s the second time I had a double espresso in the late afternoon or early evening and couldn’t fall asleep. Having a cup of coffee after dinner doesn’t bother my sleep pattern, and I have read that there is less caffeine in espresso, so how do you explain it? If there is something explain. But it has recently happened twice, so…….

Well, all is well that ends well. We did watch the second half of RRR, and it ended with the British out of India, our two heroes reconciled, the beautiful Seetha and Jenny joining the men in the dancing finale, and they all presumably lived happily ever after, no longer the slaves of an evil international empire. What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out (reading a bit after the end of the film) that the two main characters shared the names of two real life anti-British Indian revolutionaries, who never in real life met each other or Seetha or Jenny, and certainly never had the adventures these folks had on screen. And the film also depicted them as two Hindu gods who shared their names. This explains the flaming arrows that accompanied the final battle with the Brits, among other things.

How many died in this film? Hundreds, at least. But it’s all in fun, right?

On to other things:

I have now the watched three episodes of Criminal: France while on my stationary bicycle. As expensive a film as RRR was to make, that’s how inexpensive Criminal: France must have been. It all takes place in a police station interrogation room in Paris, and in the hallway outside the room. Each episode shows the interrogation of a suspect of a crime: a young woman who allegedly collected a victim payment after a terrorist attack on a venue where she had not been present, a woman construction executive who was having an affair with a younger construction worker who fell to his death, and a hidden gay man who witnessed a murder at a gay bar and whose wife and children knew nothing about his hidden life. I think that’s it for Paris, and the show now goes to three more countries Whether the other versions will be done in the same way, I don’t know yet. I liked the three episodes I saw – all conversation, no action, like reading a who-done-it.

In my work as president of the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee of Greater Washington and the work I have done as part of the Adas Israel Bereavement Committee, I have worked closely with Hines Rinaldi Funeral Home of Silver Spring, and with one of their top Funeral Directors, Gary Gise. Sadly, Gary passed away last night after a two year long battle with esophageal cancer at the very young age of 60. A very friendly and competent fellow, he put up a tremendous fight, and held his head up throughout his battle. May his memory be a blessing.

Maybe my title today is not the right one.

The headline in yesterday’s Washington Post says: “The FBI’s new headquarters should be in Springfield”. It does not tell you that the article was written by Virginia’s two senators and its governor. For those who only read headlines, this is misleading.

Same with the headline of this post above. It may surprise you to know that I wrote the headline, not one of my millions of anonymous readers. But I probably fooled you, right?

Enough with just the headlines. Let’s go to text: I rarely read about March Madness, because I care absolutely nothing about college basketball. At all. But I happened to read the top first page article on today’s Washington Post sports page, about sixteenth seeded Fairleigh Dickinson beating first seeded Purdue, something that hadn’t happened since the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, beat Virginia sometime in the 16th century.

Here are some quotes from the article: “Alongside Virginia in all future references and winces will mope Purdue”, Purdue had an “emphatic Big Ten regular season”, this is a rare event “since this seeding construct in this delirious annual event began”, Purdue “croaked in disarray”, and Purdue underwent “a gathering disintegration as the Lilliputian opponent kept gathering mustard”. I did not follow the article onto page D5 for its continuation. Well, OK, I did go to the very last paragraph where I saw that “doom looked nigh for Purdue”.

The article was written by Chuck Culpepper. You think this is really what he wrote? Or do you think someone on the editing staff was playing a prank on him? Or are all college basketball columns written like this?

A couple of other things.

First, my reading is really suffering. Having read about 70 Penguin paperbacks last year, and getting off to a good start this year (remember, I have about 700 to read), I got stuck. My next book, one I never read before, was Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed” or “The Devils” (depending on the edition). The books has about 650 pages; the print is very small, as are the margins. When we went on our Florida/SC trip, I took it along, figuring over 12 days I had a chance to get through it. Of course, I never picked it up. We have now been home about 2 weeks, and I am only half way through it. Sure, other things have come up, and it’s true that I don’t much care what happens to any of the characters, but it isn’t a bad book (I realize this every time I open it). Maybe this weekend – where we have relatively little scheduled – I will get through it and go back to my regular reading habits.

Finally, we do want to see some of the movies who won Oscars, or were nominated. This year, we had only seen The Fablemans, Tar, and The Quiet Girl. So we have a ways to go. We started last night with RRR, the Indian film whose frenetic dance song won it an Oscar. We started rather late, and didn’t realize that the film is over 3 hours long, so we decided to watch half last night and will finish it this evening. It’s been a while since we watched any Indian film (I know there are thousands of them – maybe thousands produced every year), and this one is a kick and a half.

All I will tell you today is that it takes place in India during the Raj, and the castes of society seem to be the Beyond Awful British (except for one very pretty young lady), and the Indigenous People of the Indian Subcontinent. A Beyond Awful British Lady decides to kidnap a cute young Indigenous girl, who is an expert henna artist, taking her away from (and perhaps killing) her mother, and bringing her to a heavily secured palace in Delhi. Now we have a super-human Indigenous guy from the village who travels to Delhi to save her, and another super-human Indigenous guy (who has sold out to the Beyond Awful British) who is hell bent on making sure that the girl is not saved. Halfway through the film, and we don’t know which of the two Indigenous guys will prevail.

In addition to Beyond Awful British and Indigenous major actors, there are thousands of residents of Delhi who appear in various scenes. Are they real people, or are they computer constructs? That I don’t know, although the wild animals (and there are many, each with their roles to play) are created through AI (so says the information statement at the beginning of the film, where we are assured that no real animals are suffering).

It’s on Netflix. See if you like it.

So how many of us know Louisiana Republican Congressman Clay Higgins? All I know (from a two second Wikipedia scan) is that he has been a police officer or its equivalent with four Louisiana police departments, that he has been married four times, and that he hob nobs with the nobility of the crazy far right.

But this morning, I learned something else. I was listening to a House committee hearing regarding the control of the southern border. I heard little of it, because it was only during a short drive to the bakery that I was listening. The two witnesses were DHS officials. I don’t even know who the chair was – obviously a Republican who only wanted to know whether Secretary Mayorkas, when he said the border was under control, was lying or stupid. Which one? It’s an easy question.

At any rate, what I learned is that Clay Higgins has absorbed the plots of Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad and become convinced that the shows are historically accurate non-fiction. He asked one of the witnesses (I paraphrase with regard to words, but not intent) the following: “I have been led to understand that there have been an increasing number of Chinese being smuggled across the border with the help of the Mexican cartels who control our border, and that many of these Chinese are scientists, who then hook up with cartel members inside the United States and are using their expertise to create hidden fentanyl labs within the United States. Can you comment on that?”

The official responded (again I paraphrase): “Huh? No, that’s not happening.”

Higgins also asked why everything changed at border on (exact date) January 21, 2021. Again, I paraphrase: “Don’t you just think that everybody is trying to get into the country now, because they know that in 2024 the Republicans will take over the country again, shut the border down completely, and if they don’t get in now, they know they never will?”

Oh, you Republicans.

I don’t want to let Joe Biden off the hook, though. I don’t know whether the recent approval of drilling in the Arctic (the “Willow” project) is good or bad. My guess is that it’s both, and that perhaps it was inevitable (that I don’t know). But, on MSNBC this morning, there was a clip played of Biden in 2020, stating categorically and maybe six times, that there will no drilling on federal land anywhere, and maybe another six times, “especially in the Arctic”. Now a direct quote: “No, no, no, no, no.” (I remember that one.)

Oh, you politicians.

Random thoughts:

1. At Breads Unlimited this morning, I was told that they were almost out of green St. Patrick’s Day cookies, because “we had a run of grandfathers come in early this morning”. But I also noted that the green bagels looked untouched. I wondered if I should get one or two – then I looked at them more carefully and realized why they were untouched. Ugh.
2. I also stopped in at Staples. The Bethesda store. Big store. Maybe there was one other customer at 10 a.m. That’s the way it always seems to be there. I assume everyone but me buys on-line from Staples, and no one comes into the stores any more. The clerk gave me my receipt, which was quite lengthy. He said to me: “You can see we are trying to compete with CVS, but don’t have it quite down yet.”

Now, I am looking at my desk. What a mess. I have a program to organize for the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies, a lot of work for both Haberman and the Jewish Funeral Practices Committee to try to find new board members, my presentation on the Israel Supreme Court situation, bank statements and credit card bills to reconcile, new insurance policies to review, etc., etc. I think I’ll take a walk.

Every Thursday morning, I join about 30 of my friends for a breakfast meeting (sometimes live and sometimes on Zoom) where one of us makes a presentation on a topic of our own choice. This morning, my friend Ed Kopf talked about Chicago, where he and his wife, who live here in Washington, also maintain a Lake Shore Drive apartment. The presentations are always good, but sometimes – like this morning – they are better than that.

Today, Ed concentrated on the development of Chicago through the 19th century. He is going to give the second part of his presentation sometime in April. Will there be a third part? Perhaps. Ed, who started his life as a professor of American history, knows just how to organize a talk of this type. It couldn’t have been better.

So, what did he concentrate on today? He started with Frank Sinatra’s My Kind of Town, and then went into Carl Sandberg’s poetry. He told how the population of the city, which was founded in the 1830s, increased by almost 10 fold from the Civil War to the turn of the century, eclipsing Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, Baltimore and St. Louis, which were larger cities at the start of that period. He talked about Chicago’s geographic position, how the Great Lakes and canal development enabled Chicago to transport goods to the east, how the inventions by entrepreneurs headquartered in Chicago enabled the vast increase in agricultural efficiency throughout the mid-west, how the development of the railroads further enabled goods to be delivered east, including meat products which were produced at the city’s slaughterhouses.

What will come next? Architecture? Culture? Baseball? Education? We will wait and see. Ed made it clear that Chicago has its share of problems, but they aren’t going to be addressed in this series of talks. He is clearly going to accentuate the positive, and eliminate the negative. We will see about Mr. In-between.

It’s too bad that last night’s Haberman Institute program on the Jews of North Africa during World War II is one of the few Haberman programs that, for copyright reasons was unable to be recorded. Professor Sarah Abrevaya Stein of UCLA, author of books on the subject, did an excellent job covering a lot of ground. The Italian administration in Libya, the French Vichy administration of Algeria and Morocco, the brief German occupation of Tunisia. Work camps and prison camps all throughout the area (no death camps, but plenty of death) and the overall effect of the war on the 500,000 Jews of the southern Mediterranean countries was discussed in some detail. Egypt, never Fascist occupied, was not part of her lecture.

There has been much more concentration on the Jews of Europe than the Jews of North Africa during this period, but there are now a number of scholars working on various aspects of the North African experience, and there have been a number of memoirs written (some published, some not) by those who lived through this period. A very good presentation enjoyed about most of the approximately 200 people who registered for the talk.

By the way (did I say this before), Rabbi Lauren Tuchman’s excellent talk about how the Jewish texts deal with persons with disabilities, and how Jews with disabilities fare today, is now available on the Haberman website under Program Recordings. (www.habermaninstitute.org.) Rabbi Tuchman, who lives here in Washington, is, she believes, the first blind woman ordained into the rabbinate.

Today for me will be devoted to working on my presentation for next Thursday on the Israeli Supreme Court conflict, from an (not always well informed) American perspective.

If this advice had been followed in the year 44 B.C.E., things might be different today. We might have even avoided Donald Trump. Who is to say?

What a week! Pi Day, where we celebrate the St. Louis area code. The Ides of March, which I think is a book by George Eliot. And then Friday is St. Patrick’s Day, when we all get together and honor the Englishman who drove the potatoes out of Ireland.

Friend Tom leaves this morning to head back to snowy Hartford. Last night, the three of us had dinner at Corazon DC, a Mexican restaurant on 14th Street NW near Randolph, with a somewhat quirky and interesting menu, where Edie and I eat fairly often (read that as about two or three times a year). I ordered chicken enchiladas mole verde. They came, but weren’t quite warm enough. So I asked the server if she could put it in the microwave for 30 seconds.

She graciously took it and about five minutes later (not 30 seconds) brought it back to me. The owner (a very nice lady) came over and asked me if I wanted to take the original enchilada order home with me in a box. I was flabbergasted. She told me that they never would just reheat something; they would start from scratch. I was very apologetic. She told me not to be. I told her “I insist”. Then it occurred to me that maybe the restaurant didn’t even have a microwave. That might be too tempting.

She was disappointed when I told her that any chicken in our house had to be kosher, and I was disappointed as well. The second order of enchiladas was the right temperature. I made sure to lick my plate clean.

Earlier in the day, Tom and I went out to Second Story Books’ warehouse, where we perused the 500,000 or so books. I was able to double my Felix Frankfurter collection, by purchasing a book of essays on Judaism, published in the 1920s, which had Felix Frankfurter’s book plate inside. My other Frankfurter piece is a copy of Richard Neustadt’s “Presidential Power”, with a piece of U.S. Supreme Court notepaper taped inside with a note from Frankfurter to U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, thanking him for a loan of the book and for calling his attention to the book. It also has a gracious note from Neustadt to Acheson. I think I may put photos on both later today either here, or on Facebook.

Tom and I stopped at Pike Kitchen for lunch. Do you know that place? On Rockville Pike, although it’s name gives you no clue, it is a pan-Asian (well, not quite pan, it is Chinese, Japanese and Korean) restaurant. I have stopped there several times, and it seems there have been some changes made. It’s a place where you go up to the counter to order, and then to pick up your food. It has a number of different stations and you used to order at each station. Now there is a central station to order and pick up, but the various stations still seem to do the preparation. This might be more efficient. They also have now a list of about ten dishes that are lunch “specials”, and they only cost $10. Maybe it includes a drink, too. I ordered a Japanese noodle dish, and a coke, and the bill with tax, was $12.61. Quite a bargain. Food is pretty good.

That’s about it for yesterday. We watched the first episode of the new season of HBO’s Perry Mason last night, and vowed not to watch the second, third or any other. And we had a quick visit from grandchildren Joan and Izzy, and their father.

Today’s factoid? Do you know that Hastings Law School is no longer Hastings Law School, but is now the University of California Law School, San Francisco? The reason? It turns out that Serranus Hasting (the only man to be Chief Justice both of Iowa and California) in his spare time participated in or helped fund the massacre of Yuki Indians in the 1850s. So the school, or the State, voted to rename the institution.

Hastings la via.

My old college and law school friend Tom Morawetz is visiting for a few days. He teaches (and has for over 40 years) at the UConn Law School in Hartford. Most of yesterday was spent in conversation. We covered much of the 62+ years we have known each other.

But there were some highlights involving more than conversation. Tom, Edie and I had dinner last night at I’m Eddie Cano, our neighborhood Italian restaurant and one of our standard carry-out places. The food was great, as usual. Their house red wine was smooth and, as they say, fruity with a hint of chocolate. The perfect after-dinner double espresso was probably a mistake, though, as I spent much of last night staring at the ceiling. (That’s an exaggeration – it was too dark to see the ceiling, but I knew where it was.)

That one block, just two blocks up Connecticut Avenue, now has how many restaurants? Let’s count: I’m Eddie Cano, Rosemary, Italian Bar, Politics and Prose’s cafe, Call Your Mother, Comet Pizza, Muchas Gracias, and Buck’s Camping and Fishing. I count 8. Oh, yeah, and there’s the ice cream place.

After we got home, we watched the extraordinary show “Remember This”, the one man rendition of the life of Jan Karski, the Polish diplomat who visited the Warsaw Ghetto and Auschwitz in 1942, and reported what he saw to Felix Frankfurter (“I don’t believe you.”) and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (“Poland was an agricultural country before the war, right? ……. Do you need more horses?”). Performed by David Strathairn, it premiered last year (I think) at Georgetown University, where Karski taught in the Foreign Service School for about 40 years. It was on MPT, Channel 22 (522 on DC Fios), PBS Masterpiece Theater. You can probably access it somewhere, and should.

By the way, Rabbi Lauren Tuchman’s textual presentation on Jews with Disabilities is now up on the Haberman website (www.habermaninstitute.org) under Program Recordings. I recommend it highly.

Glossary:

1. I’m Eddie Cano. Pronounce it quickly and it should sound like an Italian saying Americano.
2. David Strathairn. Veteran actor who is always cast in biopics (or their equivalent) playing tall, skinny guys. I wish he had a different name. Even looking at it, I can’t remember it. You probably can.

Finally: Today is Pi Day. Does the Pi Pizza place still exist downtown? It closed in Bethesda pre-pandemic, but I have no idea about the original DC location. Of course, the original original Pi Pizza was located not here, but in St. Louis. Why? Pi. Pizza Pie. Area code 314.

That is all for today, thank you.

We watched the Oscars last night, start to finish. I think they did a decent enough job with the show. I didn’t miss the drama. The one improvement that could be made would be to display the names of the presenters who are called up to the bima. Most of them (read: virtually all of them) are not known to me, and it would have helped if I could put names to faces. Often, when they are announced, their names are slurred through and I miss them completely.

Why don’t I know them? In part, because they act in shows that I haven’t seen, and are featured in magazines and on websites that I don’t look at. In part, because unless a name is George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, I have trouble remembering them any way. In part, because most of these people look identical to each other to me, and have for a long time.

But some I recognize. Take Morgan Freeman, for example. He looked older than the last time I saw him. I guess that isn’t surprising, because he is 85. Jeez. And I remember when he was just 5 years older than I am.

I particularly enjoyed the music. The winning song from RRR was a five star treat. And I enjoyed, as always, Lady Gaga, but found Rihanna disappointing after what I thought was a great (I know it’s controversial) Super Bowl halftime show. The singer who sang the first song (name ?) also has a beautiful voice, I thought.

Other than that? Some of the women were dressed in particularly unflattering clothes, as usual, and some in the audience had head pieces that blocked the view of anyone sitting within three rows behind them. And what about animation? After the award was announced, one of the winners talked about taking animation to the next level. That made it clear to me for the first time. With AI progressing as it is, who needs real actors any more? Film stars will become as obsolete as linotype operators.

Moving on…….I read the NYT pretty much cover to cover this morning. A few things worthy of thought:

1. It’s really true that in Indigenous settlements in Northern Territory of Australia, native peoples are not permitted to buy alchohol? Really?
2. The dilemma of what to do about Prof. Amy Wax of the U. Penn law school is something to ponder. A tenured professor who has taught at Penn for over 20 years, she is an avowed racist, having belittled the capabilities and accomplishments of Blacks, the selfishness of gays, the lack of assimilation tendencies in Hispanics, and the built in left wing biases of Asians. She says (I paraphrase) she is speaking truth to culture. She is certainly sowing dissent at the law school. Do you let her go on, because she is tenured and, besides that, she should have the right to free speech as an academician? Or do you fire her or limit her activities because her speech is deemed destructive to society? And if you discipline her for being to “conservative” (that may not be the right word here), do you distinguish this from disciplining left wing teachers for what they might be saying about American society and its members? A dilemma.
3. And did you know that pharmacies are having a difficult time obtaining drugs to fill legitimate prescriptions for non-opiates that may be deemed habit forming, including drugs to treat depression, anxiety, cancer and ADHD? The article starting on the front page of the Times is eye-opening.

Finally, Mexico beat the U.S. in the World Baseball Classic yesterday. That’s OK with me. Because Major League Baseball players now come from all over, it is hard to identify with them when they are member of a team you support, and then root against them in the WBC. So congratulations to Joey Meneses of the Nationals and the Mexican WBC team for his two home runs yesterday. As the designated, designated hitter for next year, may you do the same for the Nats.

Actually, I don’t really know. It was earlier today when I went out, and my phone told me that it was not going to get above 39 today (that is about 15 degrees below average for March 12), but my guess is that it did. I will find out later when I roll the trash into the street for Monday pickup.

In the meantime, let’s talk baseball a bit. The Nats/Mets game was televised last night and the Nats came from behind to win 10-7. (Today, the Nats are playing the Cardinals and are behind in the 8th.) The poor Nats are still in a rebuilding mode, as you must know. But they don’t look hapless, and much will depend on how the pitching staff works out. But their young guys (some of whom will made the opening day roster and most of whom won’t) do look pretty good, and performed well last night. In addition to the, however, in the late innings, the Nats played two even younger guys (one had just turned 19). Their names are Trey Lipscomb and Armando Cruz. Write their names down – you will see them in a couple of years, and it seems they may be the future of the team after the current future of the team matures.

The Nats game is not being televised today, but I did get to watch most of the Israel/Nicaragua game in the World Baseball Classic series. Played in Miami, Israel came from behind in the 8th to win 3-1. We will see how they do. I can’t say I have devoted a lot of energy to the WBC, but the concept is sure interesting – 20 teams playing in four venues across the world. Many games are being televised on Fox Sports 1 and 2, and a number of major leaguers have joined their national teams. I read the qualifications today – you have to hold the country’s passport, or be eligible for a passport, or have a parent from the country, etc. It’s an interesting way to have some control over the rosters, yet give so many teams the ability to come up with strong lineups. By the way, the U.S. plays Mexico tonight, but the game doesn’t start until 10 p.m. EDT (it’s played in Phoenix). But not to worry – since we didn’t fall back last night, but fell forward (luckily escaping serious injury), it’s really on 9.

Other than that, what am I doing today? I am working on a presentation I have to give to my Thursday breakfast group on the 23rd. I am going to talk about the current battle over the Supreme Court in Israel – the selection of justices, the authority of the Court to review and strike down legislation passed by the Knesset, and whether the Knesset should have the right to overrule the decision of the Court. I will contrast that with our experience here, where the Court system has been functioning for the past 200 years, but probably does not, in many respects, evidence best practices. Our justices are selected politically, and are given life time tenure. They gave themselves the right to review the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress in the case of Marbury v Madison in 1803, and thus have taken on the role of ultimate decider. This is the heart of what is being debated so loudly in Israel today. Who should be the ultimate decider – the courts or the legislature? If the courts, then is that a compromise of democracy since only the legislators are elected? If the legislature, what is to keep a legislature from passing whatever laws it wants, whether or not it violates constitutional or similar provisions, or compromises the rights of minorities who voted for the opposition? The issues are not as simple as they may appear at first.

Finally, has anyone here stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong? I was reading about this luxury hotel this morning. It isn’t housed in a free standing building, but instead occupies 16 floors of an office building. But the office building is 108 stories tall, and the Ritz occupies the top floors, starting with the 92nd. I went to bookings.com, to see how much I would have to pay if I stayed their tonight. I could get a room for about $650 (I assume that is plus taxes, etc.), but that price would not get me a sea view. In case you are wondering, the Ritz is not the world’s highest hotel. There are hotels in Shanghai and Guangzhou which are even higher. The J Hotel in Shanghai is the highest in the world, it seems, and its restaurant is on the 120th floor, making it the highest restaurant in the world. I will say, though, that the reviews of the J are not nearly as good as the reviews of the Ritz. Prices are comparable.

With all of the difficulties in getting a fix on why so many have so much trouble accessing this site, I feel like the tree falling in the empty forest, not knowing whether no one is hearing the noise I am making, or if perhaps I am just not making any noise at all. And my next question is: did I mix metaphors in the last sentence, or having hanging gerunds or participles or chads or something? It doesn’t read right to me. Oh, well, we will all just have to deal with it.

It’s a chilly March Saturday in Washington, not one for many outside activities. The next week will be the same, it appears.

We started off the morning by going to the opening of the annual used book sale at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School. (As an aside, I saw that BCC first opened in 1926. My mother graduated high school as part of the first graduating class at University City High School in MO in 1930. I assume the two were opened at the same time. More or less.)

How many books do they have on sale there? Really a lot. Perhaps even more than usual. I wanted to be selective, and I think I was. I only bought seven books. But (G-d willing, as they say), I think I may go back tomorrow to see if I missed anything important.

What am I looking for? My usual search is for books signed or inscribed by authors which, at the same time, hold some interest for me. Some I will hold on to; some I will put up for sale. (Most of you know we sell books under the name of A. Richard Books and More, on the abebooks.com website) The cost of the books at BCC is $3 each. You can’t go wrong.

I think, of the seven, the book I like the most is “No Dream too High”, inscribed by the author, Buzz Aldrin, who of course walked on the moon. On a clear night in a deserted part of the planet, with the right equipment, do you think you can see his footprints? (Interestingly, I wrote this last sentence before opening the book. Now, having opened it, I see that the first chapter is called “The Sky is not the Limit….There are Footprints on the Moon”. Hmmm.)

In fact, the titles of all thirteen chapters ring true to me (this is a book of “life lessons”) – including (for me) “Keep a Young Mind-set at Every Age”, for my grandchildren “Show Me Your Friends, and I will Show You Your Future”, and for everyone “Practice Respect for all People” (this goes along with my last two posts, on people with disabilities). So this book wins “Best of the Show”.

Next, winner of the “Most Unlikely” category is “The Accidental President of Brazil” by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who led Brazil from 1995-2002. I wasn’t expecting to see this book, inscribed by the author. But I have a lot of books by leaders of other countries – Britain, France, Israel, Germany, Cambodia, the USSR and Russia, to name a few that come to my mind.

“Most Popular” goes to Bob Woodward for his book “The Secret Man: The Story of Watergate’s Deep Throat”, inscribed by Woodward. It gets this title because this is the third copy of this book that I have owned, and the first two were sold very quickly.

I do like books written by politicians, and I picked up a signed copy of Mitch McConnell’s “The Long Game”, one that I had not found before. I don’t know how to categorize it, especially as McConnell is still hospitalized after his fall. Let’s just leave it at that.

In the “Best Foreign Book” category, the award goes to the 5th book, “On the Wrong Side: My Life in the KGB”, inscribed by the writer, Stanislav Levchenko. I think I have another copy lying around downstairs, but I can’t pass up a signed book by a Russian spy. Don’t know why.

The other two are more ordinary: “Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America” by Elizabeth Drew, a signed copy of a 1997 book about the Clinton/Gingrich struggle, and “Leadership in Turbulent Times” by Doris Kearns Goodwin, about the two Roosevelts, Lincoln and Johnson.

We took a break after the book sale (lunch and down time), and then went to the Avalon (our neighborhood non-profit theater) to see “The Quiet Girl”, the Irish film nominated for best foreign film at this weekend’s Oscars. It’s an unusual film, slow moving with minimal dialogue (and what dialogue there is primarily consists of sentences of 1-3 words, not harangues or diatribes). The ending, especially, is touching, and the 12 year old lead, Catherine Clinch, does a fine job.

Tonight I already know what dinner is (because it’s a repeat of last night’s) and I believe that the Nats Spring Training game is being televised, which will mark the first game we have seen since we have returned from seeing two in person in Florida.

Then will come the big question. Do we turn our clocks back tonight or in the morning? Either works, as long as we don’t do both. (Ha! A quick reading subscriber thinks that when I said “turn our clocks back”, I am turning them back counterclockwise, and he has pointed out that this would probably not work out well for us, but I say to him the following: when I say “turn our clocks back”, I really meant “back to the future”, which is another way of saying “turn our clocks forward”, but who would want to say that?)