Art is 80

Yesterday was a very normal Sunday, and much appreciated. It was so welcomed because we haven’t had a normal Sunday in such a long time. Between vacations and illnesses and simply conflicts, each of our Sundays has been – in its own way – far from normal.

But yesterday, my daughter Hannah and her family (her husband Andrew, her 8 year old daughter Joan, and her just about 3 year old son Izzy) came before lunch and stayed the day.

One of the good things about the day was that we had to turn off our television coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. We obviously didn’t want our grandchildren to be exposed to the cable news outlets we normally have on either in the background or the foreground. So we were without news for most of the day, and that was a minor blessing.

Not only that, but I spent a good part of the day watching the Washington Commanders beat the Atlanta Falcons, 24-16. A good game, with a number of memorable plays (for those who have memories), and the right amount of suspense. Izzy was taking a nap, and the only person in the house who paid any attention to the game with me was Joan, who was more concerned with what the cheerleaders were wearing and with the age old question as to why the referees always wear black and white stripes in all the sports, so that they look like prisoners. But she is a big Washington fan and let out an appropriate cheer every time I told her it was time to do so.

After the game was over, I told her she could watch her favorite cable station, PetTV. I doubt if any of you spend time watching PetTV, but it passes the time away and this afternoon, they had a show about the most popular dog breeds in the year 2017. Maybe you saw the show back then. Other than that, Joan spent her time with a selection of color pencils that she inherited from her great, great Aunt Hazel who died this year at 102. In fact, we had a number of things at the house from Aunt Hazel that we divided among the two kids, including a koala and a kangaroo. Joan also spent quite a bit of time making vehicles from Legos,each with a distinct purpose, and helping me answer a quiz on Halloween films. We were pretty even in our knowledge. I also asked her what she knew about Taylor Swift – turns out she knows a couple of her songs, and doesn’t pay much attention to her, but hears about her from some of the other third graders from time to time. Only from time to time.

Because Izzy took a long nap, he had less time to busy himself, and I am not sure what he was doing, but it involved a lot of cars and trucks, which found themselves driving around and about the house. And of course time jumping up and down on the trampoline outside and running on the treadmill inside. Of course the treadmill wasn’t turned on; the goal seems to be to make noise with your feet.

We will see him next on Friday, when he will be three years old. He wants a Mickey Mouse cake.

Other things on this normal Sunday? I actually had time to read through the entire Sunday Washington Post and New York Times, and do the Times, the Post and the L.A. Times crossword puzzles. I found both papers quite interesting, but could I tell you now what I learned, or what I read? Not a chance. There was a very interesting and said article in the Times about how Ben Gurion University (which I have devoted much time to) is faring during the war – classes closed for a couple of weeks at least, students, employees and faculty members dead or missing, dorms turned into temporary medical facilities. One day this will all be over, but that day is not here yet. And I pity poor Ukraine, fearing that their battle is getting lost with all attention on the Middle East. The Post had an interesting article about the effectiveness (or not) of our border wall – probably one that Republicans should read, but won’t.

A couple of other things – in addition to the news about the war this week, we also had news of the death of a friend – the mother of Hannah’s closest school friend – in Oregon, and the death of the husband of another friend yesterday, the husband of a woman who helped Edie as a mother’s helper when our daughters were very young. On the other hand, I saw that Edie’s cousin’s husband, a rabbi in Seattle, has a Substack blog to which I just subscribed (I don’t know how often he writes the blog, or if it original writing for the blog itself or a transcription of his sermons), and the Leonard Downie, who used to be managing editor (I think that was his title) of the Washington Post, who is my age, has also been writing a daily diary of his year after he turned 80. I don’t know if he publishes it every day – the Post, maybe on-line only, posted excerpts that dealt with his good, but not great, health – a lot of falling and dropping, which he seems to think everyone 80 must do from time to time.

In the evening, all I did was finish Daniel Finkelstein’s book, Two Roads Home, about his grandparents and their Nazi era and Stalin era adventures. They survived by determination and by chance – I’d say 10% determination and 90% chance. But they did. And the book, which I mentioned before, is very interesting.

That’s all, doc.

In six weeks, I will turn 81. I must say that most of my life has basically run along a straight line (sure, a few knots, some big, but not many) from when I was a child to now. And today’s world is similar to the world of the 1940s when I was growing up here in America, just more modern, with more people and more technology. But our country is still our country and the greater world, with all of its troubles, is not unlike the world we grew up in, which also had its share of troubles.

But the times, they are a changin’.

Over the last several years, we have seen and heard rumblings of CHANGE (yes, not “change”, but “CHANGE”). There was the COVID pandemic. It altered how we spend our daily lives, and not only the way we do things, but the way we think about illness and contagion and work and home. There has been a rupture in our way of thinking about our government – we elected a celebrity non-politician to the presidency, he turned out to be the most partisan president we ever had, he cared nothing for role modeling, or for decorum in the presidency, he refused to accept the results of the next presidential election, and he led an attempt to get the vice president to fail to approve the certification of electors by the states. All of a sudden, our government, and therefore our very country, seemed vulnerable, less secure. As a result, fear spread, and everything in this country became politicized, and some of our elected politicians turned out to be loony, and our government is in many ways not functioning (think House of Representatives). It is unclear when we will recover.

While this is going on, there has been an invasion of a sovereign European country, Ukraine, by another, Russia, leading to a war there has been going on for over a year with no end in sight. The strong opposition to Russia’s invasion from the American and European countries has kept Russia from winning the war, but now that alliance is tested. It feels like it might at some point break apart, leading who knows where. At the same time, China is threatening to invade Taiwan, and now Hamas, from Gaza, has led a massacre of almost 2000 Israeli citizens. Israel is preparing its strong response, and other Middle Eastern nations are threatening intervention on the side of Gaza. Big CHANGEs could be happening there sooner that we ever thought possible.

As if this is not enough, civil wars, autocratic governments and general anarchy in other parts of the world are leading to unprecedented numbers of refugees leaving their homes for greener pastures in countries that may not want them and may not have sufficient resources to care for them. This is compounded more and more by climate change, where we see parts of the world becoming increasingly uninhabitable, and which is bringing desertification and unbearable heat to parts of the world, rising seas and flooding world wide, stronger storms seemingly everywhere, drought conditions, uncontrollable fires and so forth, causing major loss of life and property.

But wait, there is more. How about never ending technological changes that are bringing a combination of threats and promises, including the threats being brought about by artificial intelligence? And then there is education that does not educate to today’s world, and unemployment and lack of sufficient candidates to fill jobs at the same time. And an increasing need for political correctness, with everyone over sensitive to normal human discourse. And guns and crime.

Yes, this is a time of CHANGE, with capital letters.

But again, I am about to turn 81. And I see CHANGE as a threat to the world I know. But if I could turn the number around and be 18, then what? Would I not notice CHANGE, and just see normality? Would I look at the threats I have listed and just see challenges and opportunities? I don’t know.

The old “Chinese curse” – May you live in interesting times! We are certainly doing that, and there is, for sure, one level on which I really appreciate it. The times are so interesting. There is so much to learn. I know so much more about our planet and the human condition than I did before. Yes, interesting times are a curse and, if they are not a blessing, they certainly keep your mind engaged.

I saw a Facebook post today that dealt with these changes in our society, but from a different perspective. It listed all these CHANGES and concluded that the “end days” are here, and the CHANGES are proof. Pretty soon, the post suggested, there would be the “rapture” followed by the coming of the “antichrist” and then…….nothing good at all.

I am not concerned about the antichrist (unless he’s elected to another term in 2024), but I look forward to the possibility of the rapture. The rapture might halt CHANGE in its tracks, or at least would alter its course. I wouldn’t miss those who would be raptured away, I don’t think, and wish them well. And they might leave a smaller and more manageable world behind. Just sayin’.

(Oh, Arthur, the last two paragraphs were not necessary at all. Don’t you think you should delete them? Until I got to these paragraphs, I was in agreement with everything you said. Sometimes, you just don’t know when to stop.)

One thing is clear from history, and that is that the victors get all the credit. But that’s history – it didn’t always seem that way to the victors at the time.

It’s another fact of history that the ends justify the means – there have been a lot of empires, for example, that were founded on unspeakable wars and horrors, but what is remembered are not the wars and horrors, but the empires. My guess is that, at the time, things did not seem so clear.

So it does appear that Israel is about to march into northern Gaza with the goals of destroying Hamas, destroying a network of tunnels, and (maybe) saving some of the hostages. It may be, in fact, that Israel only has the first two of these goals – Israel’s government may have already decided that saving the hostages will not be possible, and that they will be sacrificed for the greater good. We don’t know.

What is clear is that there will be hundreds (probably thousands) of additional casualties. Casualties on both sides, but more on the Palestinian side (unless Hezbollah enters the war and then all bets are off). Many of those killed or injured will be children (although many of those who stormed into Israel, and certainly those who throw stones even in times of cold peace, are children – i.e., under the age of 18). And there will not be a way to treat the injured Palestinians because the Gaza hospitals will be out of commission. Things will become very messy.

Much of the world will turn against Israel once again, the Abraham Accords will be under tremendous pressure, Joe Biden and his team will come under enormous criticism for supporting Israel’s incursion into Gaza, and antisemitism around the world may increase. Yes, these are the things that will happen even if (and perhaps even especially if), Israel’s tactics are successful and Israel “wins” the war.

But if this war ends the possibility of Israel being endangered by a criminal element in Gaza, Israel will be a safer place (at least from that direction) and other enemies of Israel may think long and hard before replicating the massacre which Hamas brought about. And one day, guess what? The Gaza incursion and all the casualties will be forgotten and Israel will be deemed once again to be a miracle nation. We may not see that time, but that does not mean that that time will not come.

It’s a long game. But this is the way history works. But in the meantime, there will be trauma both in Israel and in Gaza and among Israel’s supporters and enemies. Questions will be asked: was it worth it? Did they go too far? Could it have been done another way? If Israel hadn’t done what it did, would there have been even more carnage because its enemies would have been emboldened? And there will be no answers to these questions……ever.

Several days ago, I said that I was not a military strategist (or did I say military tactician)? And, several days later, nothing has changed. Maybe Israel now knows what it is doing. Maybe they have it all sussed out. Maybe civilian casualties would be eliminated for the most part if only the Gazans would evacuate the north and move south, as being instructed to by everyone but their own leaders. We will see.

But I doubt it. And I assume that, after the Israelis are finished with Gaza, Gaza City will be a history – flattened like so many other cities in history. What will the Gazans do then? Will the other Arab nations – Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and so forth, take them in and give them a new chance for a life? Will they drop their animosity towards Israel once their new life takes hold? Will peaceful relations between Israel and its Abraham Accord partners continue as if nothing happened. Will the destruction of the Gaza infrastructure allow for the building of something new and less crowded, filled with Palestinians who, along with the majority of West Bank Palestinians, be ready for a long term commitment to peace with Israel?

Hard to imagine, right? Almost impossible? And, unless this happens, what has Israel really accomplished?

I was going to post another diversionary piece today; in fact, it is pretty well complete. But I am going to save it, I guess, for another day. There is too much going on.

No analogy is perfect, as we all know. So you can read what comes next and respond with “that’s a bad analogy”. I would probably agree with you. But I proceed.

When someone tells me they are “pro-life”, I always ask if they are against capital punishment, if they are against war in general. If they tell me that they are for capital punishment, I tell them they are not “pro-life”.

Hamas attacks Israel. Kills over 1000, including families in their homes, young Israelis at an all-night concert and so forth. And they take 150 hostages. Obviously awful.

Israel responds with bombing attacks on Gaza, dropping (as I have heard) thousands of bombs. Pictures on TV make parts of Gaza look like an earthquake has hit, a very severe earthquake. Israel has apparently killed as many Palestinians at this point as Hamas has killed Israelis. Because Gaza is an area where half of its residents are under the age of 18 (enormous birthrate – what else is there to do?), many of those killed in Gaza have been children.

Israel has also cut off all supplies to Gaza which come through Israel as well as electricity and water. It has stated that this blockade would end as soon as the hostages are returned. Hamas has not returned any hostages (Hamas this morning said that 13 of the hostages have been killed by Israel’s bombs – we don’t know if this is true).

Over the last two days, preparation has begun for a land invasion (I wrote about this yesterday), with 300,000 Israeli troops at or near the border. Israel has told over 1,000,000 Gaza residents who live in the north of the Strip to move south, leaving Gaza City empty. Hamas has told Gaza residents to stay where they are.

Complicating all of this is Egypt. Egypt and Israel have had diplomatic relations for the past 50 years, since the end of the Yom Kippur War. Residents of Gaza can leave Gaza only through three “gates” – the two that go to Israel are understandably closed. So is the Rafah gate, that goes to Egypt. If Egypt opened the gates, refugees from Gaza would have somewhere to go….at least temporarily. But Egypt is not opening Rafah. I doubt that this is per an agreement with Israel. I assume that Egypt knows it would be very hard for it to take in so many refugees. But it makes things much harder. And don’t forget that Egypt controlled Gaza between 1948 and 1967, so it does bear some responsibility; it was offered control over Gaza in 1973 and said, politely, “no, thanks”.

So, I can ask Israel: if Hamas’ killing of children and innocent civilians in Israel is so awful (and it obviously is), is the killing of children and innocent civilians in response by Israel any less abhorrent? I am not looking here to answer this question (I don’t even think I have an answer), but to put it out there. If Israel could get at Hamas without harming many civilians, there would not be a question as to what Israel should do. But it doesn’t appear that this is possible. And it’s not even clear that they can destroy Hamas, even if there is so much collateral damage. So, the question it out there.

Now, though, I will turn it around. For those who think that Israel should stop where it is now, I ask: Should the U.S. have dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Should the Allied Forces in WWII have firebombed Dresden, or carpet bombed Berlin? Hundreds of thousands of innocent people were killed in these three actions alone – yet it ended with Western Europe prepared for a democracy which has lasted to this day.

So if it is possible to change the politics of Gaza drastically, can one say that the full out attack on Gaza is wrong? Or would that be hypocritical?

Of course, there are more complications. Let me mention two of them. First, there is Hezbollah and Iran – if a second front is begun in the North of Israel, not only will Hezbollah and Lebanon be drawn into the battle, it is likely that Iran, the United States and other countries (on both sides) will also become more intensely involved. Where this would end, no one can say. Is this possibility so frightening that Israel (and the United States) should tread more softly? It’s another question that I have no answer for.

Secondly, it’s the question of the population of Gaza itself. It’s too easy to say that the problem is Hamas, and that – in the most recent polling – less than 50% of Gaza residents support Hamas. But virtually all residents of Gaza were born after 1948, after the birth of the State of Israel. They have only known Israel as a powerful neighbor, and since 1967, 56 years ago, as a controlling neighbor. They have all grown up with schooling that teaches them that Israel and Jews are not only the enemy, but evil incarnate. This hasn’t been a side subject in Gaza schools, but it has been the core of the education of all Gaza children. It won’t be easy to find moderate political leaders to run a Gaza government.

Again, I have no answers. That isn’t a problem. No one cares if I have any answers. But there is a problem. The problem is that nobody has an answer. That is a real problem.

There are many things that I am not. One of the things that I am not is a professional military strategist. Come to think of it, I am not even an amateur military strategist. But I do have a degree of common sense.

The figures I have seen show that over the last five days, 1200 Israelis have been killed, thousands of others injured, and about 150 taken hostage. Since then, Israel has pounded – and continues to pound – Gaza from the air, and has stopped any deliveries of water, electricity or anything else into Gaza. At this point, it also appears that the death and injury totals in Gaza have exceeded those in Israel.

It has been reported that Israel now has 300,000 troops at or near the Gaza border and that a house to house land invasion is coming soon. My advice is to forget about any land invasion at this time.

Why? Because Israel already has 1200 dead and thousands more injured. I would assume that any land attack would most likely lead to the death of the hostages, and to the death and serious injuries of hundreds or thousands more Israeli soldiers. And to what end?

Now, because I am not a military strategist, I have no idea what is in the minds of Israel’s military leaders. They may know something that I don’t know (gee, I hope so), but what could it be that makes it worth putting so many more Israeli lives at risk? What do they hope to accomplish?

During the Vietnam War, the Vietcong had an entire network of tunnels throughout the country. A friend of mine who was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Army learned, decades after he was stationed in rural Vietnam at an American base dedicated to routing out the Vietcong, that the very Vietcong he was trying to find were, in fact, right under him in a group of tunnels, where they were listening to everything the Americans were saying. Who knew?

We are told that Hamas has built tunnels under much of Gaza, and especially under Gaza City. We are told that hostages may have been hidden throughout the Strip in various of those tunnels. If the hostages are hidden away in the tunnels, shouldn’t you assume that many Hamas leaders would be similarly out of sight in these tunnels? And if both the hostages and Hamas personnel are beneath the streets, you can quickly see that house to house combat won’t take you where you need to go. You need to go into the deep tunnels – and how do you do that? And do you really want your army in deep tunnels that are unknown to you, but perfectly known to your enemy? So why wouldn’t you think that Israeli soldiers entering tunnels would easily be ambushed and the hostages immediately murdered?

So what should the end game be in Gaza? No one seems interested in re-occupation. Starvation of 2,000,000 people from isolation doesn’t seem like the way to go. And you have 150 hostages to worry about.

Can the Gaza problem be solved militarily, or does it have to solved politically? And, if you need to solve it politically, how do you do that? How, as some Israeli officials have said, do you “destroy Hamas”? First, apparently some of the top Hamas officials aren’t in Gaza now, but are in places like Doha and Beirut. Is Israel going after them there? Second, even if these leaders could be neutralized, aren’t there people in Gaza ready to replace them?

In World War II, Germany’s Nazi government was ended when they admitted defeat and gave up. I don’t see Hamas doing that, do you? And, after they gave up, there was another group of Germans ready to form a new government on totally different terms. If that group exists in Gaza, I haven’t heard of them. So barring military occupation (whether by Israel or by some sort of coalition), how would you bring about a change of government? And especially, how could you bring about a change to a government which would be willing to work out a peace with Israel? Of course, one possibility would be to turn Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority, and unite its government with the West Bank government. But, in the opinion of almost everyone, the PA is very unpopular in the West Bank. And who is more popular in the West Bank? You guessed it – Hamas.

So, everything is beyond complicated. And the instability of the Israeli government makes things even harder. Yes, there has been an announcement of a limited “unity government”, but “unity” does not mean “unified”; it just means that additional voices have been added to the cacophony of an already motley crew.

So what do you think should happen next. Are any of you a military strategist? I didn’t think so.

There are so many unknowns that I don’t even know what to write about. So many questions. Israeli security debacle. Hamas’ violence. Palestinian rights. Israeli fear. Failure of Israeli government. Failure of the Republican Party. Russia in Ukraine. Iran. Too, too much.

So I divert. I chanced upon a poem yesterday, written by John Farrar. You may know of Farrar (more likely, you may not) as the founder of the publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux. But he was also a poet – and a clever one at that.

So, bear with me a minute. Sit back and relax and read this poem to the end. The, go about your day, and fix the world.

I am just going to quote his poem:

The Jealous Lover

“If I were an Arab

With a battle horse to ride,

I’d show you how I loved you,

I’d win you for my bride.

I’d ride across the desert

Like an untamed, unfixed star

Where the white moons fire the spear

And the ghosts of warriors are

I’d whirl my sword in golden gyres,

Till my enemy lay dead,

And where I held my gift for you,

The white horse would be red.

But I am not an Arab

So I must make you rhymes

And send you pale tea roses,

Oh! these are stupid times.

And if I were an Arab,

Bringing gifts to you

and found beneath your tent flap

Another Arab, too.

I’d choke him like a rabbit

I’d crack him rib and thigh

I’d throw his carcass to the night

And toss his wet head high.

I’d throw his head across the moon

Till all the sky was red,

I’d toss his trappings to the stars,

I’d dance upon him, dead!

I’d catch you with my dripping hands

I’d light you like a flame,

Till you forgot that Arab’s voice,

That Arab’s face and name.

But I am not an Arab,

And when I see him go

As I come up the stairs to you

I smile, and say “hello”.”

It’s not Shakespeare; I understand that.

In 1948, at the time the State of Israel came into existence, the Gaza strip was under the control of Egypt, and had an estimated 80,000 residents. At the time of the 1967 Six Day War, when Egypt was defeated, and Israel took over control of both Gaza and Sinai from Egypt, the population of the Gaza Strip was approximately 300,000. Today, 55 years later, it is over 2 million. It has grown to 2,000,000 as a result of, through the early 1990s, the average Gazan woman having over 8 children, and even today, having an average of more than 4 children, giving it one of the world’s highest fertility rates. This also means that, when you look at Gaza’s population, you see it is a very young population. The median age of a resident of Gaza is approximately 18. The median age in Israel is closer to 30, which is also close to the median age world wide. When your median age is only 18, one thing can be fairly certain. Your population will continue to expand at a rapid rate as years go on. Is it any wonder that Gaza is always ready to explode?

When Egypt and Israel signed a treaty for the first time in 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, in return for recognition and other benefits, Israel gave up the Sinai and returned it to Egypt. It would have given up Gaza as well, I am sure, but Egypt didn’t want it, one example of the greater Arab world shucking off responsibility for the Palestinian Arabs. Gaza remained under Israeli occupation until 2005, when Israel – under fiery prime minister Ariel Sharon – pulled its military out of Gaza, and, at some cost, required all Israeli Jews to leave Gaza, in the hope that peace would be the result. It was a complete pullout from the Gaza territory, but not from its connection to Gaza, because Gaza was dependent on Israel for a number of things, including its electric power, some of its food supply, some of its water supply, and more. And of course, Israel was concerned about its own security, controlling two of the three land entries into Gaza (the third is controlled by Egypt), and wanting to keep materiel that could be used for military purposes from entering Gaza, whether by land, sea or air. So, although not occupied, Gaza was still somewhat beholden to Israel, and to Egypt with whom Israel was cooperating.

From 1948 onward, Palestinian ideology has viewed Israel as an occupying power, occupying land rightfully belonging to Palestinians, not to Jews, who were viewed as European (or North African, or Asian) occupiers. Of course, as your high school math shows you, if the population of Gaza was only 80,000 in 1948 and is now over 2,000,000, virtually no one now alive in Gaza had any personal connection with land that is now Israel at any time. Yet, the ideology remains (as had the Jewish people’s belief in the “right of return” for millenia).

In 2006, less than two years after Israel gave up military occupation, after an election that may or may not have legitimate, and some intense internal battles, the ruling Palestinian Authority was replaced by Hamas as the government of Gaza. Today, there is no reason to think that the majority of Gaza does not support Hamas, a militant organization created in the late 1980s with the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, headquartered in Egypt.

Hamas makes no bones about it. It’s charter talks about the destruction or obliteration of the State of Israel (which is of course does not mention by name), and the creation of a Palestinian state throughout what is now Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. It rejects the continual existence of Israel, and certainly is not in favor of a two state solution. So, the idea of Israel (or anyone else) negotiating a settlement with Israel is fantasy.

I try to figure out what Hamas was thinking about when they launched this horrific attack on Israel. My guess is that even they were surprised at how successful it was, and that they have hopes that it will become more successful yet. What do I mean by that?

Clearly Hamas knows it cannot win a conventional war with Israel. It must also have known that the majority of its soldiers sent into Israel would die – that this would be a suicide mission for them. How much religious longing for martyrdom and dozens of virgins were in the mind of these pawns of Hamas, I don’t know. Obviously, for some it meant nothing, and for some it meant something.

I am assume that Hamas is ecstatic about having brought 150 Israelis back to Gaza as hostages. This clearly changes the dynamics of the conflict – unless Israel decides to proceed as if the hostages weren’t there. I think that’s a possibility, although an unlikely one.

I also assume that Hamas thought that Israel’s resistance would be weakened by its internal political dissension, especially as so many reservists seemed to suggest that they would stay at home in bed if called to active duty. This was a miscalculation.

But, at the end, I think that Hamas hoped (expected, knows) that other forces might join the battle – the large numbers of young men in the West Bank, the Iranian backed groups hanging out in Lebanon and Syria, maybe the Arabs living within Israel and maybe Iran itself. Yes, if that happens, all bets are off as to how things would end.

And, just as both Israeli and intelligence failed in Gaza (where it should have been relatively easy), it is probably even more weak in these other places, so it may be that – today – no one knows what likely steps third parties might take.

As Israel pummels Gaza, we will see what the reactions are. How will the hostages fare? And at what point will Iran or others say “enough, already”, we are entering the battle?

And what if no one joins in, and Hamas says “you win for now”? There will still be 2 million people in Gaza, and more as time goes on. All waiting for the opportunity to take revenge against those who are today doing the same.

More to come……unfortunately. Keep tuned.

We went to American University’s Katzen Museum to see the one woman show featuring the art of our old friend, Lilian Klein Abensohn. After a career as a biblical scholar and university teacher, Lilian decided to become an artist. And she succeeded, as you can see.

Covid kept us from the opening of the show several weeks ago, and we didn’t go until yesterday. We were impressed as I knew we would be, and you should see it if you are here in town. It only runs to this coming Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.

Lilian’s paintings in this exhibit are all still lifes. And, as you will tell as you read the explanations posted at the exhibit, each of these paintings has a biblical base, and each a clever erotic sense.

While you are at the Katzen, also look at the photographic exhibit, Lost Europe, a large exhibit of black and white photos of Ukraine, taken by three photographers over a number of years. This exhibit will be there until mid-December.

Before our museum trip, it was Simchat Torah services at Adas Israel, and after the museum, we were glued to our TV and our smart phones and the tragedy unfolding in Israel.

(By the way, I figured out how to illustrate my blog. Only took me 11 months.)

So, we were on our way to a used book sale (what else?) in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, but decided to stop for lunch on the way. Boonsboro, Maryland seemed like a likely spot. All we needed was a restaurant and a parking space. And, indeed, we saw a small sign that said “Mini-Mart and Diner”, and then we saw a parking place. Right in the middle of this charming, historic town.

We went in the door and saw that we were in a mini-mart that sorta looked like a second class truck stop on a highway. To the right, was an open door and a sign that said “Please Seat Yourself” and a room that had maybe six tables. One table had two men and a young child, perhaps a year old. One table had a young couple, he with a beard and a laptop, she who stood up the entire time, drinking a cup of coffee and doing things on her smartphone, while she was talking to him. A third table had a single tall man, and cup of coffee and a phone and some papers. A fourth table had a few dirty dishes. So we had two choices, a table right next to the door, and a table between the baby table and the young couple table. This is the one we chose.

A rather disheveled looking woman came and gave us each a regular menu (a lot on it) and a piece of paper with the specials. She only had one of the paper with the specials, which seemed to upset her – with what or with whom, we were not sure. She found it, or someone gave it to her, and she gave it to us.

While this was going on, the tall man at the back table got up, took a broom and started sweeping the floor under another table, where someone must have recently sat. Since I thought that he was a customer, it surprised me that he was sweeping, and it occurred to me that he must work at, or own, the mini-mart. It was generally hard to tell anyone’s position – for example, the young woman standing up with her phone and her coffee had a number of conversations with the tall man. Her boyfriend (that is what he looked like) said nothing and didn’t join into the conversations. I didn’t know if she was also an owner or family member, or maybe just a local who knew everyone…..or what? It all seemed confusing.

The tall man then asked us what we wanted to drink. We told him, and started to order, but he told us he was just going to get us the drinks and then get our order. He said that was because, to take the order, he needed a “machine”. In a few minutes, he came with my coffee, and a few minutes later, the disheveled woman brought Edie her ice tea.

A young man (maybe he was 16 – maybe) was asking the baby table what they wanted to eat. He seemed to be having trouble, and the disheveled woman was trying to help him out.

The tall man then asked us what we wanted. We told him that we each wanted a vegetable omelet, and he was about to take our order, when the disheveled woman came to him and said “Dom will do it.” He smiled and walked away. He told us that this was Dom’s second day, and we should be nice to him.

Dom came to us with the machine and asked what we wanted. We told him that we each wanted the vegetable omelet and hash browns, but that we didn’t want the “creamy jalapeno sauce” that the menu said would be on the omelet. This really puzzled poor Dom, because he couldn’t figure out how to tell the machine to leave out the sauce. But he called over the tall man, who showed him how to pull up something called “special comments” or something like that.

Dom was very nice, and very unsure of himself, and it was obviously difficult for him to take our order on this machine (it may be that just talking to anyone was hard for him; in fact we may have been the first people he ever talked with). But then there were other questions, each of which he had to ask each of us separately and input separately into the machine. Do we want hash browns, or tater tots? Since we don’t want the jalapeno sauce, do we not want any peppers in the omelet? Do we want toast or a muffin or a biscuit? What type of topping do you want on your biscuit – butter or nothing or ??? The ordering process took so much time that we could have already finished our omelets if the tall man had taken our order when he tried to. Dom apologized for how long it took.

About 6 hours later, the omelets were delivered. In the meantime, we watched the baby throw crayons on the floor, we watched two more people come in the “diner”, watched the girl with the coffee speak with the tall man, and tried to figure out the Keno and Horse Race screens flashing on the wall above the door. And we also talked to the disheveled lady, who told us that it was impossible to get anyone to work in the diner, that it was Dom’s first day (yes, it was his second, but on his first, he just watched) and he was wonderful, but the others just drove you nuts, and besides that no young people wanted to work. How do they money? What do they do all day? How can you not want to work? She told us she was even thinking of closing the diner at the end of the year.

Eventually, our omelets came. They were very attractive looking, moist and fluffy, with cheese on the top, and the hash browns looked just right. The biscuit was an English muffin, it was buttered, and that was fine. But as we ate into the omelet, we realized something was missing – vegetables.

The next time the disheveled woman was in our neighborhood I called her over and asked her why there were no vegetables. She was taken aback and asked us if we had ordered a cheese omelet or a vegetable omelet. I thought about asking her to ask her machine, but I didn’t. We told her that it was okay, that the omelet was very good and we were happy with it, but just wanted her to know. We didn’t even tell her that our biscuit turned into an English muffin. The muffin would have actually been a better choice.

The disheveled woman went and talked to the cook (we actually thought she was the cook and that she might have gone and talked to herself), and came back and said that the cook told her that he thought that he had made the most beautiful, fluffy omelets, that he was so proud of them and how they looked when he folded them over, that he just forgot to put the vegetables in. Mistakes happen, she said. It seemed like the tall man wanted to express his anger to the cook, but the disheveled woman told him not to. It was just one of those things, she said.

We paid, and we left. Everyone wished us a good day and a good weekend. They were all very nice. I felt we had been given a rare treat. Good food, coffee and tea. And an hour’s entertainment. All for about $20.

If you ever get hungry in Boonsboro, stop by the Mini-mart Diner and give our best to the disheveled lady, the tall man, Dominick, the mystery cook, and – if they are still there – the young man with the laptop who doesn’t talk and his girlfriend, who will be standing up. And remember, it doesn’t matter what you order. It’s just like the telephone game – the order goes from you to Dom to his machine to the disheveled lady to the cook (maybe) and by the time it gets to the cook, it will bear no relationship to what you ordered. But I think you will be very well satisfied because it will be very good.

I am watching MSNBC this morning, and am a bit surprised at the reporting. Hamas had executed this extraordinary attack on Israel, with over 40 people killed and almost 1000 injured in Israel, and the concentration on MSNBC is more focused on Israeli treatment of Palestinians recently and historically than on this attack itself, and more focused on the assumed Israeli response than on the chaotic scene in Israel today. The primary voices on MSNBC are two journalists who normally seem quite unbiased, Ali Velshi and Ayman Mohyeldin. Interesting, both are Moslem, Mohyeldin born in Egypt and Velshi, born in Kenya to Indian Ismaili Moslem parents. I am not sure what to make of this, so as of now I am just noting it. My guess is, though, that there will be repercussions of some sort. Keep tuned.

The big picture:

What I think is important to remember is that there has been a state of war in this area since the destruction of the Ottoman Empire in World War I and the creation of the British Mandate over Palestine by the League of Nations. Sometimes that war becomes very hot (1948, 1967, 1973, 2006 and now 2023), sometimes it is cold, and sometimes there are flares. Israel has been a country for the past 75 years (that’s all), and there still has not been any fully recognized borders. Although the United Nations had created a plan to partition the country between Moslem Arabs and Jews, the partition was only accepted by the Jews in 1948. The attack by Arab armies in 1948 was ended by an armistice, not by a treaty, and the armistice put Israel in control over somewhat more land than Israel would have received under the United Nations partition. The six day 1967 war ended with Israel occupying the West Bank of the Jordan River, which had been under Jordanian protection, and the Gaza Strip and Sinai, which had been governed by Egypt, the Golan Heights which had been part of Syria, and East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Temple Mount. Clearly, as we now know, both Jordan and Egypt were happy to relinquish their responsibilities for the West Bank and Gaza.

In Israel, following 1967, there were differing opinions as to how Israel should deal with the territories it was occupying. At first, the issues dealt with security, how to protect Israel itself, but eventually other forces took control. These forces included those who felt that Jerusalem should be united under Israeli control, allowing non-Jews religious freedom (under Jordanian control, Jews were excluded from East Jerusalem and many Jewish historic sites were destroyed). They also included those who thought the best way to secure Israel proper was to bring Jewish settlers into portions of the West Bank surrounding Jerusalem and elsewhere, and the number of settlers in 2023 is now approximately 600,000 Jews. And they included those Israelis known as Religious Zionists, who look to the Bible to determine what should be the considered the Jewish homeland, as the greatest part of biblical history deal with the history of the Jews in what is now the West Bank. They believe Israeli control of this area should be permanent.

Because Gaza does not have those biblical connotations, and in the hope of ending the conflict between Gaza and Israel, Israel, during the time that Ariel Sharon was Prime Minister, dropped its military occupation of Gaza and moved all Jewish settlers in Gaza out of Gaza. But it kept up its non-occupational control of Gaza, a territory which is unable to provide for itself on its own, and which could always become a danger to Israel.

The result of the departure of Israel’s military forces from Gaza changed some things, but not others. It certainly didn’t tamp down Gaza’s opposition to Israel and to Israel’s control of Gaza’s largest borders. And it eventually led to the failure of the Palestinian Authority to retain control over the government of Gaza and to its replacement by Hamas, an organization that the U.S. government has defined a terrorist organization. Hamas has a charter which denies the existence or legitimacy of the State of Israel, and claims Arab control over all of greater Palestine, including the territory known as Israel.

For this reason, there cannot be negotiations between Gaza and Israel – as Israel says “you can’t have a negotiation if there is no one with whom to negotiate”.

So, perhaps today was inevitable. And the time itself should not be a surprise. Look what is going on: (1) Israel now has its most right wing government in history, (2) the current Israeli government has been harder on Palestinian Arabs generally, and has made it clear that its goal is to annex most or all of the West Bank as a Jewish controlled area, (3) the Israeli population is hopelessly divided and diverted to other issues, as shown by the daily protests in the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and elsewhere, (4) the protests have clearly affected the Israeli military – reserves who say they won’t fight, governmental statements about members of the military who do not support the current coalition, etc., and (5) the Abraham Accords have not benefited the Palestinians and the Palestinians have been worried that Arab governments who have now recognized Israel and negotiated with it without requiring any changes in Israeli-Palestinian relations. It looks like this will continue as negotiations between Israel and Saudi Arabia continue and look fruitful.

And this doesn’t even go the question of how Israeli military intelligence didn’t know that this operation was in preparation? How is that possible? This was not planned two nights ago over coffee and baklava. Was the intelligence failure also a result of internal Israeli dissension?

So what will happen now? More war and casualties mostly on the Arab side (to me, the Gazans who entered Israel proper are a new kind of suicide bomber), with great destruction in Gaza? What will happen to Israel’s other Arab neighbors – will they hold back, will they feel the need to support Gaza, will they (especially the Iranian backed forces in Lebanon and Syria) use this as a time for their own incursions? Will it change the negotiations with Saudi Arabia, etc? Will it threaten the governing Israeli coalition and lead to the end of Netanyahu’s leadership?

So much to figure out. Beyond me.

There are a number of things on my mind this morning.

Thing no. 1: I recently received the invitation to my 60th college reunion in May of next year. I remember when I graduated, in 1964, and how old the 50th reunion class attendees looked that year, and how we are ten years older than they were. I also recently stumbled upon the class photo taken at our 40th reunion. I looked at the hundreds of folks in that photo and thought that they looked pretty old. We are now 20 years beyond the time that picture was taken. Do we look 20 years older? (Rhetorical question)

Thing no. 2: I had my annual physical exam last week, and everything looks pretty much OK. That’s good – at least nothing from my recent COVID experience showed up anywhere in all of the many, many statistics that I now get from the Johns Hopkins network. And there is something that really fascinates me. I have a “health” folder where I keep info I receive, and I saw that for the last four years, my weight has only varied by one pound. I don’t understand how that is even possible – it’s not that I try one way or the other, and I never step on a scale. I think the highest I have ever weighed is less than ten pounds higher than now – it happened two times. First, when I graduated from high school 63 years ago. Second, when I went on a strictly vegetarian diet for ten years, ending about 15 years ago, and my weight when up and all my indices went the wrong way. I also remember about 45 years ago, when I weighed almost 15 pounds less than I do today. I could eat as much as I wanted, and I stayed very very thin. I didn’t know why, until my then doctor figured out that I had picked up some sort of parasitic infection on a trip to the Amazon. Those were the days.

All right – neither of things are very important to you, or probably even of interest. So, let’s move on.

Thing no 3: We had a house guest this week. The son of friends, born in Israel, now 40 years old and living in Dallas. We had only met him twice before (we think). He and his family stayed with us when he was 7 years old (the last time he was in Washington), and we saw him on an Israel trip in 1999 when he was 16. He has changed a lot since 1999.

He now has his own cybersecurity firm, working with clients around the country and, I guess, to some extent internationally. He and I had an interesting talk last night (over 3 hours) about a bunch of things, including what a cybersecurity company does and how it does it. Not that I understood a lot of what he told me, although I tried to make it look like I understood everything, and think I succeeded.

But that’s not what I want to focus on right now. Nor do I want to talk about all the solutions to the problems in the Middle East that we came up with – I’ll save that for another day.

Arthur, quit wandering all over the place. Focus!

Our guest (I wish I could use his name, but it’s against my policy; should I make up a name? Nah.) told me that he has hired a number of “interns” (I am not sure how to define that – didn’t ask him), young folks in their early 20s, to help him investigate problems clients are having after being hacked or how their systems need to be modified so that they won’t be hacked. He said that, to a person, these young interns are very bright, and very able to gather data that is necessary to figure out the next steps. But, he says, once they gather the data, they don’t know what to do with it. They can’t figure out what the next steps are. That, he says, is because to process this data and make it useful, you need to know things about the client company, and that means they need to learn more about the company, where it has been and where it wants to go , and means communicating with company officials, asking them questions and listening to their answers. The interns, he said, have no idea how to do this. They do not know how to communicate – they don’t know how to develop or ask the questions, who to contact or talk to, and so forth. They obtain the basic data, and then they are paralyzed.

The day after he told me that, I went to a session of my Thursday morning breakfast group, where the presenter (a friend of mine) talked about his work running the “year in Washington” program of a major university. Bright kids (mainly undergraduates), he said, and interested in making the most of their year in Washington, which was a combination of class work and interning in government or non-profit offices. They needed to be taught, he said, how to communicate. How to talk to and relate to others in an office situation, how to write simple letters and memos, etc. The very same things.

Then, after that session, I drove home with another friend, who is active in an “increase the vote” type effort, and who is working with various young volunteers, whom he knows only through Zoom. He, too, said these were bright and interesting young people, but he said that they too don’t seem to know what to do, how to take initiative, and that he finds that he needs to continue to give them precise instructions. He didn’t think this would be as true in past years.

So, three consistent voices. And to what do they attribute this? Over reliance and dependence on technology exacerbated by the isolation of the pandemic years, so that the current younger generation (this is Gen-Z, right?) have not had the type of in person, oral or even one on one written communication skills that past generations take for granted.

Whew! I finally got out what I wanted to say. Good for me.

I have started to read a brand new book (very rare for me, I know), titled: “Two Roads Home: Hitler, Stalin and the Miraculous Survival of My Family” by Daniel Finkelstein. Finkelstein, the back of the book says, has been a member of the House of Lords since 2013, was an advisor to Prime Minister John Major, and writes a weekly political column in the Times of London. He is 61 years old.

The book is about 300 pages long, and I am only on page 43, so there is a lot I haven’t read yet. But what I have read is very interesting. Finkelstein’s mother’s family came from Berlin; his father’s family from Lviv. Both families were wealthy and prominent. Although I only know this from the title of the book, his grandparents survived Nazism and Communism and found a much better life in the UK.

The Lviv Finkelsteins made a tremendous amount of money in the iron and steel business. Finkelstein’s Berlin grandfather, Alfred Wiener, was a well educated Arab speaking Berlin Jew, who fought in the German Army in World War I, who became highly concerned about the incipient Nazi movement in Germany in the early 1920s, and who was an active leader in the CV, the Centralverein, an organization that represented the 600,000 German Jews until it was disbanded under Hitler. I admit to never remembering hearing about the CV, or about Alfred Wiener, and I was surprised to read about its activities in the early chapters of this book.

I raise this because it cast a new light on German Jewry through the Weimar years and the first part of Hitler’s 12 Year (not 1000 Year) Reich. What I didn’t know is that there were large Jewish organizations, during all this time, that invested time, energy and money in countering the Nazi antisemitic publicity and activities. Wiener and others gave speeches, wrote articles and pamphlets, organized meetings and did everything else you might imagine a Jewish group doing today in the United States to counter antisemitism. What they didn’t know during this time was that none of these activities would do any good.

Today in the United States, where there has been an increase in antisemitism, the ADL (and, I am sure, other less well known organizations) are doing the same thing that the CV did in Germany. Of course, here conditions are different. While there has been a marked increase in antisemitic activity in the U.S., we are not faced with a political party spewing an antisemitic program. But the responses of the various organizations are parallel.

In addition, as you might expect, one of the goals of the CV was to counter false information and disinformation. Today this is true of those who are responding to antisemitic literature, but it is also true to those who are responding to disinformation spread by the MAGA world, by Russian specialists and by so many others. Compared to what the CV was facing (and which it was so unsuccessfully trying to combat), the amount of fake news and disinformation circulating today, as well as the means of circulation, are so much more extensive. If the CV, led by individuals I am sure of the highest competence, could not combat disinformation in Germany during the 1920s, can we expect today that efforts to combat disinformation will be any more successful?

I am looking forward to the remainder of Finkelstein’s book. I think I will keep today’s post a little shorter than usual, so I can get back to it.

I am confused. If you aren’t, you haven’t been paying attention.

Going back to my remarks yesterday about Bill Ayers, I recall that he first felt success when the home made bomb went off in a bathroom at the Pentagon. But then he realized that it made little difference. A pipe bomb in a Pentagon bathroom was not going to end the war in Vietnam. So, there must be a better – and a very different – way.

Maybe Matt Gaetz will find out something similar to what Bill Ayers discovered. Yes, you can plant a pipe bomb in the House of Representatives and destroy the Speaker of the House, but soon you will realize that it makes little difference. Eight of two hundred twenty one Republicans can make a lot of noise, but they can’t change the course of this 118th Congress of the United States.

But you live by the rules, and you die by the rules. The current rule gives one person the authority to make a motion to vacate the Speakership, and the authority to force an immediate vote. My guess is now that the rule might be changed – but until then, it is what it is.

Similarly, the rule allowing the vacation of the Speaker’s position also says that there will be a Speaker pro tem until a new permanent Speaker is elected. I didn’t know how that provision would be implemented. And then I heard that Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina was being appointed as Speaker pro tem. I wondered how that happened. It certainly wasn’t part of the vote.

Then, I heard there was another House rule, a House rule that requires anyone elected Speaker to provide to the Clerk of the House the name of a number of persons who, in case of death, disability or removal of the Speaker, would act as Speaker pro tem until a new Speaker could be elected. And I heard that, upon his election in January, McCarthy gave the Clerk the name of Patrick McHenry, and others, and – to my real surprise – the names given were kept secret, released only yesterday. I wonder what the purpose of that secrecy is. And I wonder why there should be a rule that gives a Speaker the right to choose his successor, if his successor becomes third in line for the presidency.

That brings up a few things that I still don’t understand. If there is a Speaker pro tem, are there any limits on his authority? I don’t know if anyone knows this for sure. Yesterday, I heard (a) that the Speaker pro tem can do anything that the Speaker can do, and (b) that until there is a permanent Speaker, the House basically can do nothing. Which is correct? And – speaking of presidential succession – does a Speaker pro tem become third in line for the presidency, or does he not? Many people have opinions – but does anyone know?

Again, from what I heard last night, it seems that the House may not be in session for the next week. It may be that committee work and the like will continue (or not), but apparently the House itself will be in recess. Is this necessary? Is this the choice of the Republican caucus? Or is this the choice of Patrick McHenry?

Normally, who cares of the House is meeting or not for a week. But now, we are in the midst of a 45 day period during which the appropriations bill must be signed or another CR must be passed or the government will (you know what comes next) shut down.

You and I are not members of Congress, so I can’t quote Walt Kelly. But I can paraphrase him. “We have met the enemy, and they are them”.

Let’s leave Trump and McCarthy and Gaetz aside for the day. I have a few thoughts to share about the last three books I have read.

First, “Fugitive Days” by Bill Ayers. You know Bill Ayers? You might know him as a long time Professor of Education and the University of Illinois, Chicago (retired since 2010), or as the author of several books on education. Or, you might remember that, earlier, he was a member of the Weathermen, involved in anti-Vietnam War activities, including bombings (luckily no one killed or injured) both at the Capitol and at the Pentagon. You may remember that, in 2008, his name was brought up as a close associate of Barack Obama, thus tarring Obama as associating with a known radical.

“Fugitive Days” is the story of his “radical” years and the story of the formation of the Weathermen and their dissolution, following (as you may also remember) the explosion in a row house in Greenwich Village which killed three members of the Weathermen, including Diane Oughton, a close friend of Ayers. The explosion was an accident that occurred as some of the Weathermen were learning to make pipe bombs. (All charges against Ayers were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.)

But that isn’t why I mention this book today. I mention “Fugitive Days” because of Ayers’ discussion of Vietnam itself during the war years. He talks about how the United States had a half million troops in the country, how Vietnam and neighboring Cambodia were carpet bombed, and how – when it was difficult to tell the friends from the enemies – all Vietnamese, including the most innocent, became the enemy. But through all of this, the Vietnamese people were impossible to defeat and impossible to discourage, always maintaining that they would come out the winners. And so they did.

What struck me about this was the comparison that can be drawn between the Vietnamese in the 1960s and 1970s, and the Ukrainians during the 2020s. From what it appears, nothing will destroy the Ukrainians, nothing will discourage them. They will persevere. The Russians may not yet have realized this.

Next, “A Farewell to Arms” by Ernest Hemingway. Yes, I had read this years and years ago, but it was certainly worthwhile reading again (this time the Penguin edition). Although Hemingway is always in fashion, it seems that even more attention is being paid to him (books and films about him and his legacy) today. For example, we recently watched on PBS the first two hours of Ken Burns’ six hours of film about Hemingway.

In talking about Hemingway, the focus is often on his style. No wasted words. Short, stubby sentences. Nothing extraneous. I am far being a literary critic (very far), but I would like to add something more. One of the problems I find with some novels is that there are multiple plots going on – one or two main plots, and a number of subplots that are hard to keep in mind. You don’t have this problem with “A Farewell to Arms”.

You recall the story line? An American is in Italy when World War I starts and he decides to do his part, join the Italian army as a medical driver. He develops a relationship with an English nurse working in a military hospital and finds, when he gets badly hurt, that he is sent to the hospital where she is working. Their relationship develops, he recovers and is sent back into combat, and tragedy happens. It’s a very simple story, although it takes place in very complex times. There are no distractions. Sure, there are other characters in the book, but we really know little about them – we only know them in their relationship to the two main characters. It makes the book so much easier to read and follow.

The third book, another Penguin, is one that you have probably never heard of – “Invitation to the Waltz” by Rosamond Lehmann. It was published three years after “A Farewell to Arms” (1932/1929). Was Lehmann influenced at all by Hemingway? I have no idea. But I can see the similarities (and, equally as important, the differences).

The similarities are, as you might already have guessed, a very straightforward and simple writing style, and one plot, without any complicating subplots. The differences? “A Farewell to Arms” is, I think, a very masculine book – war, machismo, coarse conversations, brothels, sex, and sarcasm. “Invitation to the Waltz” is a feminine book.

Why am I talking about a feminine book? Because it is so well written, and flows right along so smoothly, that it is worth everyone reading. There is no war, there is no machismo, the conversations are purposely refined, no brothels, no sarcasm, and sex is dealt with very differently.

The plot (broadly speaking)? Two sisters, the younger one (and the focus of the book) is 17, and thinks of herself as a “plain Jane”, especially in relationship to her somewhat older sister, whom she thinks of as a natural “belle of the ball”. They live in rural England, their family is comfortable but not wealthy by any means, and their wealthy neighbors are having a party – a fancy ball. And, for the first time, 17 year old Olivia is invited.

The story line is simple. Olivia is nervous she will be a failure. She is concerned that her dress is the wrong style, the wrong color. She isn’t going to know anyone there, and so forth.

The night of the ball arrives. She walks through the door and is “introduced”. She is given a dance card for the 19 dances. Her sister’s dance card seems to fill up immediately. Hers? Not so fast. But there are those who want her to be a part of the party – so they cajole people to ask her to dance. And you meet these people – they don’t interact with each other; they only interact with her, during their dance. But each is a character; no two are the same, and some of them are as uncomfortable as she is.

The night is not a failure; it is also not a success. It’s just a night. Olivia lives through it – she likes part of it, she shudders at other parts. But when it’s over – Olivia is content, ready to go on with her life.

Yes, “Invitation to the Waltz” is very different from “A Farewell to Arms”, and it is very similar. You’d be happy reading each, or both.

Tomorrow? Back to the real world.

I must admit that I don’t understand the growing sentiment that Putin is OK, Russia is OK and Ukraine may just become collateral damage. Growing sentiment in parts of Europe; and growing sentiment here in the U.S. of A.

Here is my brief history. Once upon the time, the world knew conquest and empire and eventually, the tsarist Russian empire covered land that included today’s Ukraine. Then, the tsars were overthrown and a new “union” of separate soviet “republics” was formed. Boundaries for the various soviet republics were determined. Ukraine, like Russia, was one of those “republics”. Then the Soviet Union broke up, and each of the soviet republics became, one after another, independent. It was determined (for example, with the USSR’s United Nations seat, that Russia, the largest of the Republics would be the heir of the USSR.

(By the way, there was a wrinkle, as I recall it. At first, the Crimean peninsula, important to Russia because it was the home of the Soviet (now Russian) naval fleet, was important to Russia and remained in Russia. But, during the Khrushchev years, for reasons I assume of efficient administration, Crimea was turned over to Ukraine, and remained there after the two governments separated.)

But some things were not so easy. The Soviet Union had been a nuclear power, and a parts of its nuclear facilities, including its nuclear arsenal, were located in other republics, such as Ukraine and, I think, Belarus and Kazakhstan. A treaty was signed in 1994 (I am not sure of the details) by which Belarus and Ukraine would turn their portion of the Soviet nuclear arsenal over to Russia in return for certain security assurances regarding the sanctity of their territory, including the territory of Crimea, although Russia was given long term leases so that its naval fleet could remain. The United States and Great Britain were also signatories to that agreement.

But Vladimir Putin, former Communist, former KGB official, had other ideas. He views the Soviet Union as one country, blames Gorbachev for allowing it to disintegrate, and Yeltsin for selling off its assets to the highest bidders (or to his best friends), and he seems to believe that he can put Humptiskii Dumptiskii back together again.

The place to start would be Ukraine, which has had a really interesting, but difficult history since its independence was declared. Really interesting, because its urban and educated classes have made it clear that they wanted to be part of the West, while much of its rural and poorly educated classes seemed to care less and to be more stuck in their conventional ways. In addition, the Ukraine government has been riddled with corruption and its leaders have vacillated between those favoring Russia and those favoring the West. When it became clear, with the elevation of TV actor Vlodymyr Zelensky as prime minister, that Ukraine seemed to be tending West and might be lost to greater Russia forever (and even become part of the European Union or NATO), he felt he had to act.

In 2014, Putin moved in and took the industrial and quite impoverished east of Ukraine (the Don basin) and Crimea. There was mumbling in the West, but no more throughout the Obama and Trump years, so in 2022, the time seemed ripe to move into the rest of Ukraine. He never expected the reaction he got, either from Ukraine or from the West. And the rest is history.

I believe one can rationally be on either side of the intellectual argument as to whether Ukraine and Russia are bound together by common history, or whether Ukraine, if it wants to be a part of NATO and the West, should be welcomed into that alliance. But I don’t see how you can rationally support the actions of Putin and Russia – the invasion, the bombings, the kidnappings, the violation of its previous treaty obligations, and so forth.

The unfortunate thing, of course, is Russia is a major, nuclear power, and Ukraine (although it could have been) is not. And Ukraine needs help, which it has been getting. Why has it been getting all this help? Several reasons. The principal of state territorial integrity. The danger of a Russia which is too powerful. The fear that Ukraine may be first, but Lithuania and Poland may be next and so forth.

But now there is backsliding. Some of Russia’s European neighbors are beginning to be concerned about potential Russian invasion and the way to keep that possibility at bay is to become friends with Russia. Some of Ukraine’s main supporters are wondering about the cost of continual help, including some major elements within the United States. We will see how this plays out. To date, the U.S. has done quite a job uniting most of Europe in the defense of Ukraine. I saw over the weekend the amount of money and materiel Europe is contributing. A greater percentage of their individual GDP calculations than we are in many cases. Can this continue?

To me, it’s simple. We committed to the defense of Ukraine, and we keep our commitments. A too powerful Russia would destabilize much of the world, and pose dangers to much of Europe. Appeasement (and that it what it would be) has been shown to be failing policy when dealing with a totalitarian state. Territorial integrity is crucial in a complicated world. Other powerful countries see the possibility of moving into their own Ukraines (like China moving onto Taiwan) if the world let’s Russia march right into its neighbors.

I would hope that our President keeps his strong stance on this subject, and that Congress follows suit. We are about to see what will happen as a bill to increase support of Ukraine is about to hit Congress. We know that there is now a growing sentiment among right wing Republicans that we should let Ukraine worry about Ukraine, while we worry about our border and our budget. This is not a new kind of sentiment – we had major sections of our populace very much against our involvement either in World War I or World War II. This is a repeat.

I expect, for now, we will keep our commitment to support Ukraine. But for how long can we really afford to do this? At some point, if the war does not end (and the end is not now in sight), the arguments against future involvement will grow. I hope that, within government circles, there is a Plan B, Plan C and Plan D, ready to go if necessary.

But I can’t guess the future. Nor can anyone else. There can be all sorts of twists and turns.

So what have I accomplished by this post? Not sure – there is so much more to think about – short term, mid-term, long-term. Putin won’t last forever. Zelensky won’t last forever. Biden won’t last forever. Trump won’t last forever. This war won’t last forever – but it might outlast all of today’s political leaders. The end may be way, way, way down the road.

Several days ago, I wrote the following on Facebook: “How’s this? McCarthy puts the Senate’s CR to vote in the House, they take Ukraine out but deal with it separately, and House Dems vote McCarthy for Speaker.”

People ignored my prediction, but they should pay closer attention to me, I think, because it looks like I may have forecast it correctly. The CR which McCarthy put on was basically the CR that the Senate had passed without money for Ukraine. It did include additional money for disaster relief (this provision helped by the recent flooding in New York City), but McCarthy took out money for the southern border and took out the 8% across the board cut, both of which had been in the draft CR that the right wing of his party wanted to see. “Wanted to see” actually is a little too mild – without these provisions, a number of right wing Republicans said they wouldn’t vote for an extension at all. That they’d rather see the government shut down. And of course they were cheered on by the still favored, but increasingly irrelevant, nominee for the Republican position on the presidential ballot, Donald J. Whats-his-name.

When the vote on the modified CR came up for a vote in the House yesterday, every single Democrat, but for one, voted for it, and 90 Republicans (over 40% of the Republicans in the House) voted against it. When the same modified CR was brought to the Senate, the vote was 88-9, about as bipartisan as you can get, with 9 Republicans voting against it.

The president signed the bill last night, and so, yes, the United States continues to have a government for the next 45 (oops, make that 44) days.

Those who voted against the CR yesterday will, I am sure, explain their decisions to their constituents, many or most of whom will agree with them. But one thing must be remembered: in voting against the CRs, each of the naysayers (did you know that was one word?) knew that the CR was going to pass and that their vote was not going to shut down the government. So they were each “making a point” or “standing up to principle” or something. It will be interesting to see how they talk about this, and it will be interesting to see what D.J.What’s…. has to say about the vote. And what they have to say about Kevin McCarthy.

When I woke up this morning, I decided that Matt Gaetz would not move to vacate the Speakership (did you know that this is apparently not a word?) on Monday. But I heard this morning that he has said that he will follow through. He probably can’t succeed, but I guess we are back to “standing up to principle” and a guess that this will help him politically when he runs for his next term, or when he runs for the Senate, whichever it will be.

But the Democrats will most likely eventually support McCarthy and McCarthy’s election and potential tenure will therefore be bipartisan. This could have some unanticipated benefits. I would think that the Democrats will try to negotiate a bit with Speaker McCarthy before they cast their votes for him. For example, they will probably get a commitment from him to put a Ukraine supplemental bill on the floor quickly. And he will probably be willing to agree to that……provided that they can also add something for increased southern border security. Whether those will be stand alone bills or melded into the pending appropriations bills, I don’t know. But I think they are likely.

As to the appropriations bills for the next fiscal year, the House has now acted on the majority of them (with figures that Democrats can’t support), and the Senate committees have completed work on all of them – each of which is guaranteed passage when it comes to the Senate floor. Normal procedure would then require some sort of conference committee to come up with final bills. My guess is that, in order to support McCarthy as speaker, the Democrats will at least require a procedural agreement as to how to get the bills into conference quickly, so that as much can be taken care of as possible before November 17, the cut-off date for this CR. And remember, in their conversations on this, the Democrats will fall back on the budget agreement that McCarthy has already made.

These negotiations will be interesting, although most will probably be held out of the public eye. And 44 days are not many, and if there is pressure to remove McCarthy on Monday, we won’t even have anything approaching 44 days.

But what if all of this fails, and a sufficient number of Democrats will not be willing to support McCarthy as continuing Speaker? From what I see, there is a House rule that authorizes the vacating of the speaker’s position, and the election of a speaker pro-tem. Because this has never been done, I don’t think we know how it will work or its effects. One assumption is that such a motion would be a matter of privilege, and come to a vote without the necessity of committee actions, etc. And what happens if such a motion succeeds and there is no Speaker? At the start of each new Congress, the election of a Speaker is an essential first step; that if there is no Speaker, the House cannot do any business. So, is the House paralyzed if there is no Speaker in place because the position being vacated? The Rule I cited above (without attribution, because I don’t know how to attribute it) talks about a Speaker pro-tem. Does this mean that you can only vacate the position if, at the same time, a speaker pro-tem is appointed by House vote to take the position temporarily, so that the business of the House can continue until there is a new vote on a permanent Speaker? If so (and again there is no precedent either way), it makes Matt Gaetz’ job that much harder – it is doubtful that the House, divided as it is, will be able to approve a Speaker pro tem. And if the Speaker position is vacated and there is no interim Speaker elected – does that mean that the House cannot function and that Matt Gaetz has won his initial battle and shut down the government as of, say, next Monday?

Stay tuned……

Don’t tell me that everything isn’t falling apart. It’s bad enough that the government is going to shut down at midnight. What is even worse is that there is no obvious way to see how this shutdown is going to end. And, I would guess, every bit of confidence much of the rest of the world gained in the reliability of the United States after Donald Trump left power is going to be lost over the next few weeks.

It doesn’t have to be this way. And, perhaps if we could elect a one-party, rational government, things could change. What would such a rational all-powerful party support to insure that the government of the United States could function in sickness and in health? Try these things as starters:

1. I would abolish the 60 vote rule in the Senate for approving most pieces of legislation. I understand that there might be some concern that a 51-49 vote might not give sufficient protection to a Senate minority, so I would go to a 55 vote rule, and see how that works. All votes to end debate and bring a bill to the floor would be 51-49.
2. As to Senate filibusters, I would suggest that a filibuster only last as long as live Senators are on the floor (24/7) arguing their cause.
3. I would certainly abolish the rule that one Senator (such as the man from Alabama) could keep legislation from moving forward.
4. I would establish a minimal quorum (maybe 25 members) must be present for Senate business to continue – no more Senators speaking to TV cameras in an empty room, just for their own political media campaigns. Similar restrictions would be implemented by the House.
5. I would eliminate the requirement of Senate approval for most presidential appointments – keeping them for cabinet members, appellate judges and justices, and general officers in the military.
6. I would end the requirement that spending bills have to originate in the House.
7. Legislators could no longer pose amendments to bills which are extraneous to the main bill (the parliamentarian decides) – no abortion restrictions tied to a military appropriations bill, for example.
8. The Speaker of the House would no longer be a purely political appointment. No one could become speaker without a bipartisan vote, with at least 25% of the vote having to come from minority parties.
9. I would implement both term and age limits. No one could run for either the House or the Senate who is 80 or older. Senators would be limited to four terms (24 years) and House members to ten terms (20 years).
10. I would move the country to a three year budgeting and appropriations schedule, rather than on an annual cycle (with provisions for amendments at any time, of course).
11. The government would never shut down. At the end of a budget/appropriations period, until new appropriations were passed, the previous level of spending would automatically continue – an automatic equivalent of a Continuing Resolution, with no vote necessary.
12. No debt ceiling caps.
13. I would eliminate lifetime appointment of judges and Supreme Court justices. Terms for all would be 15 years, and all would have to retire (or take a form of senior status) at 80.
14. I would drastically restrict campaign spending, the length of political campaigns, and the ability to sitting members of either body to campaign while “on the job”.
15. I would implement rules against members of the Senate or the House badmouthing other members. It is one thing to argue against someone’s position; quite another to accuse them of treason or being anti-American.

Okay, that’s enough for today. I am sure I am missing something (in fact, many somethings). And I know that, while some of this could be implemented administratively, some of the items would need legislation, or even constitutional amendment. So be it. I think it all important.

Why? Because everything actually is falling apart and keeping things going under today’s rules and practices is equally impossible. That’s why.

We saw the new film “Golda” with Helen Mirren playing the role of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. I remember leaving the synagogue here in Washington on that day, and how beautiful a day it was. When I heard that Israel had been attacked by both Egypt and Syria, the day was no longer as beautiful.

(Quick digression: it was a beautiful day on September 11, 2001 when Al-Qaeda attacked the Trade Center and Pentagon, and it was a beautiful day in September 1939 when Nazi Germany entered Poland. Why always such beautiful days?)

The 1967 attack on Israel, as we know, was only a 6 day war and the end was never in doubt. In 1973, the war lasted about three times that long, and the end was in doubt through most of that period.

The Prime Minister was Golda Meir. As the first Israeli Prime Minister without any military experience, this was the last thing she was looking for. And although she had to rely on her military and intelligence advisors, she knew she was the final decision maker. As the old saying goes, the shekel stops here.

The film? I should say that Edie really liked the film. Not me.

It took a lot of makeup to turn Helen Mirren into Golda Meir, and it almost succeeded, but I never felt I was looking at the Israeli Prime Minister. And I think they really failed when they tried to turn Liev Schreiber into Henry Kissinger, or others into Moshe Dayan or Ariel Sharon. In the film, Sharon looked like he was 6’2″. In real life, he was about 5’3″.

Then they had Golda, who was born in Ukraine but raised in Milwaukee, talking in perfect English, while her advisors all spoke in Israel-accented English. This made no sense to me, and I decided that the only way this movie could possibly have worked for me is to have been filmed in Hebrew (Golda speaking with an American accent) with English subtitles.

In addition to this, there were a few homey scenes (Golda serving Kissinger borscht and insisting he eat it, for example) that I could have done without. And many of the other scenes were either repetitive, or too ordinary. After all, how many strategy discussions around a conference table with the same folks can you sit through? And how many cigarettes can you watch Helen Mirren smoke? How many maps can you watch on a screen.

I just didn’t think the film was very good. They took an important story and made it into a B-grade docudrama.

But that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn a lot. I didn’t know (nor did many people, I don’t think) that Meir was suffering from lymphoma during this period, that she had lymphedema, causing her ankles and legs to swell and was undergoing extensive radiation therapy. I didn’t know that Moshe Dayan, hero of previous wars and Minister of Defense through this one, almost had, or did have, a nervous breakdown, rendering him useless through the early days of the conflict, when among other things, he threatened to unleash Israel’s nuclear power.

Finally, I had always thought that this attack was totally a surprise to the Israelis. I didn’t know that there had been a general feeling among the Israeli leadership that an attack was coming, and the only question was when. I did not know that Meir had promised Kissinger that Israel would not strike preemptively. I didn’t know (nor apparently did many others at the time) that Israel had bugged President Sadat’s office, but that the bugging equipment was turned off, explaining why Israel did not know about the attack in advance. Apparently, Meir too did not know that their bugging had been disconnected. I didn’t know that the chief of military intelligence (I think that was his title) had actually received advance intelligence that an attack was imminent, but didn’t pass it along; I don’t think the film gave a reason for this, if there was a reason.

All of those failures of intelligence were kept secret, even after the war, and Golda simply took responsibility for all the casualties and for not mobilizing troops sooner without deflecting the blame on her intelligence services. This helped galvanize Israeli popular sentiment against her, and she was long felt to have been a failed Prime Minister, who permitted an attack that should not have occurred, causing much death and turmoil.

The American role was filled with ambiguity. The United States hesitated in giving aid because it was afraid of encouraging Soviet involvement (so what else is new?), and because it was afraid of antagonizing Saudi Arabia who would cut off its oil from the U.S. (again, so what else is new?). Kissinger had told Meir that, if Israel attacked first, no American help would be forthcoming. But finally, Nixon and Kissinger did come through. And it was in large part, if the film can be believed, that Golda Meir was very tough in her dealings with Kissinger, and he caved.

In 1973, I was a 30 year old lawyer who had a secretary who was a young Egyptian woman who had recently relocated to the United States. She had a younger brother, who was in the army in Egypt (her family was all in Cairo), and a member of the Third Army, stationed in Sinai. Towards the end of the war, when it was clear that Israel was on top, the Third Army was trapped, surrounded by Israeli troops, in a location where there was no water. No one knew what was going to happen, except that it was clear that the entrapped Egyptian Third Army was clearly going to be used by Israel to gain leverage over the Egyptians in ceasefire negotiations and over the United States in the negotiations for more aircraft. Had these negotiations not been successful, the entire Egyptian Third Army could have starved to death. I remember how worried and upset my secretary was. She was certainly not anti-Israel or antisemitic. But she was very worried about her brother.

He came out of the war just fine, as the treaty between Israel and Egypt, which included representation of Israel by Egypt and return of Sinai to Egypt ended the precarious position of Egypt’s trapped soldiers.

Do I recommend you see the film? Why not? It is instructive. But I don’t think it is good cinema. And, by the way, it is certainly not fun.

I watched the Republican debate last night. CHAOS!!

Now I am watching the first hearing on the proposed Biden impeachment. CHAOS!!

The government is likely to shut down this weekend. CHAOS!!

What more is there to say?

There is a lot of ranting going on this morning on Morning Joe. That isn’t unusual, since Joe himself is becoming more and more prone to ranting as time goes on, but what is different is that today (1) there are so many things to rant about, and (2) everybody is doing it.

Of course, one of the main targets of the rant is Donald Trump. You can rant about him every day, and the fact that 2/3 (or whatever it is) of Republicans idolize him and that no other Republican has a chance at the 2024 presidential nomination at this point remains mind-boggling. It’s the old story – about 1/3 of Germans wanted Hitler in 1933, and 1/3 of Russians wanted Lenin in 1917, 1/3 of Ugandans wanted Idi Amin before he became dictator and it’s the same here. OK, so I made up all of the 1/3’s – I have no idea of the real number – but you get my point. There is no such thing as American exceptionalism, and if Hillary Clinton was politically or otherwise wrong in defining these people as “deplorables”, let us admit that had she referred to them as “political deplorables”, she would have been right on target.

The latest Trump outrages include these two. First, accusing General Milley of treason and asking for his execution. It’s hard to believe, but there it is. General Milley, from everything I have read, was an exemplary Joint Chief of Staff leader, an intellectual and a thinking military officer. Even if he weren’t, Trump’s accusation would be well beyond the pale. Second, he accused Joe Biden of being a pawn of Nazis and Fascists. This may be ridiculous, but of course his troops believe him. His accusation also mirrors the accusation that his buddy Putin made regarding the Ukrainian government before he invaded Ukraine last year when he said Russia invaded Ukraine to save the Ukrainians from their Nazi leaders. It worked for Putin the closed society known as Russia. Will it work for Trump here?

I am paraphrasing, but in responding to Special Counsel Smith’s request for a partial gag order on Trump in his case about his actions on and before January 6, 2021, has suggested that no witness has yet refused to testify because they have been intimidated by Trump and that no rational individual would be influenced to do something illegal by Trump. It seems to be that Trump has made Smith’s point for him. We aren’t worried about the rational individuals, but about the irrational individuals who, as far as I am concerned, make up the vast majority of Trump’s supporters.

But let me continue to rant. The Congressional Republicans have shown they can’t govern or, perhaps, they have no interest in governing. That is now clear (actually has been clear for several years), and it seems likelier and likelier that a government shutdown will go into effect this weekend. It is hard to know what that means – but it will be bad, and expensive. I could go on and on about this, and about Donald Trump’s recent statement that, unless the Republicans (by whom he means his Republicans) get whatever they want, they should shut down the government, but I will stop here. It’s obvious.

But what wasn’t obvious was the reassuring remark made by the Republicans this morning: that even if the shutdown occurs, the hearings being conducted to lead to the impeachment of President Biden will continue. Since this is not a hearing to examine any high crime or misdemeanor that the President has been accused of, but rather hearings to look for any possible charges that could possibly be brought against the President, they are outrageous in concept and that the idea that they will continue while the government ceases to be able to operate, well…….

Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (Trump fired him of course because he was competent) was on Morning Joe this morning. He is someone who has impressed me from the first and now even more so every time I listen to him. In addition to the obvious issues, they discussed a few others. Fewer than 25% of young Americans now meet the qualifications required to join the military. It used to be that there was a draft that took everyone, except for those with physical or mental disabilities. Now, our military pool is too low, and – beyond that – our younger generation is in real trouble. And, in fact, the problem is even beyond that – none of the branches are meeting their recruitment goals. And that is not only because of the small number of Americans meeting the qualifications, but because fewer than 10% of Americans would even consider military service.

In the meantime, stores like Target are closing locations due to a massive increase in serious shoplifting, and many categories of crime, including homicides, are rising making life much more difficult and dangerous in virtually every city in the country. How can our cities be coming so out of control? One problem is drugs, another is the failure of the education system to control truancy after the lax attendance during much of the pandemic, and still another is the inability of cities and counties to attract sufficient qualified people to join police departments and other enforcement and assistance services. This problem is, of course, related to the problem of filling our military.

Who, if anyone, is to blame? The Republicans will, of course, point to the Democratic administration and the to the Democratic led cities. The Democrats will point to the Republicans’ continual attempts to eliminate dignity and politeness from society and to denigrate all governmental institutions. But it is clear that the less responsible elements of society have fewer and fewer public role models to look up to, and that the lack of sincerity of the Trump Republicans has disrupted American society in ways we are just beginning to fathom.

If a country does not have a government that can function, it will not have a functioning society, and if does not have a functioning society, it will not be able to elect and support a functioning government. If the goal of government is to accuse your political opponents of being Nazis and Fascists, if the goal of leading politicians is to select out public servants to be targets of death threats or worse, and if governmental leaders are incapable of meeting any of our internal problems, what will become of us?

I have to temper all of this by saying that the Democrats do have policy positions (mostly good, although I am sure some could be better), while the Republicans only want to destroy, and that only the Democrats appear capable of facing the failures of society and attempting to turn things around. This can be shown in part by the Biden economic program, which has been very successful in spite of the worldwide, post-pandemic dangers of inflation. But if the Republicans refuse to govern, but still get half of the vote of Americans, I am not sure how much more can be done.

One more thing – the southern border. Here, neither party has figured it out, and you need both parties working together to come up with the best solution for an insoluble problem. For all the reasons stated above, it’s not going to happen.

Of all of this, the most serious threat to our future is Donald Trump. Almost everything I have ranted about above can be laid at his doorstep. He has been indicted on 91 counts of criminal activity, he has been found to have committed civil business fraud, and sexual predation, and libelous action. Yet he still might be re-elected President?

Remember Back to the Future, Part II, and the dystopian future portrayed there? We might be living it before you know.

Yom Kippur is over. Whew! No more Jewish holidays until ……. Friday night, the first night of Sukkot. Back in the day, this meant that it was time to put up our sukkah, but that was back in the day. We still have the raw material in our basement, but the idea of bringing it all upstairs and putting it together now. I don’t think so. After all, yesterday, I changed two light bulbs upstairs. That took me a couple of weeks.

This year, as you might already know, we did the High Holidays from the comfort of our family room, watching Adas Israel streaming on our TV. As I am still coughing, I know that no one would want to see me sitting next to them. And I still just don’t feel myself ready for prime time. Why that is, I am not sure. But it clearly is. I think I am afraid of people (a weird sensation, to be sure).

But let’s move on (the readers say and I agree).

The Yom Kippur services are long. At Adas, they start at about 9 in the morning, and go without a break until almost 3 in the afternoon. Then there is a 2 hour break, and they pick up again and last from 5 to about 7:30. During that break, there is a tradition to have a guest speaker, and the guest speaker is always someone prominent, and often a congregant.

Yesterday’s speaker was Doug Emhoff, Vice President Harris’ husband, the Second Gentleman. So today, I want to give a major shout out to Doug.

I am going to call him Doug, even though I have never met him, as a token of what appears to be his overall down-to-earthness. His wife seems to call him Dougie (that’s pronounced Duggie, I have to say, for those of you who remember Dougie Martin of the St. Louis Hawks, pronounced Doogie).

I think Doug is a charming person. But more than that, I think, as the first man married to a Vice President, and as the first Jewish man in that position, he has so far been an absolute role model, and I hope that the way he has gone about his position will change not only individuals married to Vice Presidents, but individuals married to others with high government positions, as well.

He talked about his background yesterday. Not an unusual one for a 58 year old Jewish man. Born in Brooklyn, moved at an early to Matawan NJ, about 40 miles south. His family belonged to a Reform synagogue, he had a Bar Mitzvah, he attended a Jewish summer camp in Pennsylvania, and when he was 16, his family moved to Los Angeles. He went to California State at Northridge for college, and USC for law school. He was, I am sure, a good student, and he was a good athlete. Just an ordinary Jewish American kid.

He was successful in his career as a litigator and entertainment lawyer with two national law firms, he married, had two children, divorced, and five or six years later married Kamala Harris. And one day, his wife received a call from Joe Biden, and everything changed.

Here is where things get even more interesting. He could have kept up his law practice and simply joined thee Washington office of his law firm. We have seen example upon example of politician’s spouses who maintain, and even concentrate more on, their careers, often raising ethical issues as to whether or not they are making money off the position of their spouses, or whether their business interests in fact influence how their spouses handle their public service positions. We don’t have to go so far as to look at someone like Clarence Thomas’ wife to find examples of this.

But Doug didn’t do this. Doug quit his job (sure, there was a financial cost to this, although I am sure that they are not anywhere near financial distress), and decided to devote his time to supporting his wife and her new responsibilities. He made it clear that giving up his law practice, which he loved, was difficult. And he is staying connected with “the law” with a very part time position at the Georgetown Law School as a visiting professor.

He made other things clear, as well. He is not the power behind the throne; he does not tell his wife how to do her job, and there are many things she knows that she does not tell him. He is not her chief of staff. If anything, she is his boss. He goes out of his way to do more “husband stuff” (his words) and to make sure their relationship runs smoothly, so that she can concentrate on her job, and not worry about her house.

Besides this, he has a job, and an office in the West Wing of the White House. I assume it is a volunteer, unpaid job (this did not come up yesterday) and, through it, he is able to attend various functions around the world as his wife’s representative, or the country’s representative (and I am sure he does this well). But more than that, he has become a point person and spokesman for the Biden Administration’s campaign against antisemitism, often working with Deborah Lipstadt (the official U.S. Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism) on this essential, but difficult task, which he says keeps him very, very busy.

I think this is quite something for a Vice Presidential spouse, male or female. What, for example, did Lady Pence do during her four years? She wouldn’t even go out of her house, it appears, if there was a possibility that she might wind up in a room with a man other than Mike. What even did Jill Biden do during her years as the wife of a Vice President? A few things, to be sure, but mainly she concentrated on her own academic job. Lynne Cheney wrote books (good ones). Tipper Gore talked about family values (and then got divorced). No one has done what Doug Emhoff is doing.

I am not one to toot someone else’s horn. I am by nature cynical. I am sure there are things about Doug that, if I knew about them, I would temper my praise. But I don’t know about them. And I will stick to what I know.

Doug Emhoff is the model of what a spouse of a high level American politician should be. Period. Full stop.

Just because there’s no content, that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a post that counts.

First, the interesting fact of the day:

I used to know only two things about Joseph Seligman. Now I know three.

Thing one: Joseph Seligman was a very successful and well respected Jewish investment broker in 19th century New York.

Thing two: Joseph Seligman in 1877 was not allowed into the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs NY because of his religion, apparently the first example of antisemitism of this nature in this level of American society.

Thing three (NEW): Joseph Seligman had five sons, and hired a live-in tutor to teach his sons for a number of years. The tutor’s name? Horatio Alger, Jr.

Who knew?

Next, new joke of the day:

“My wife told me, when I went to the grocery store, to buy six cans of Sprite, but I picked seven up.”

Now, on to business:

Did anyone else see the Jonathan Capehart show on MSNBC this morning? He just had a great panel (sorry, I didn’t get the names of his guests) about predictions for the 2024 presidential election. Two of the panelists were Democrats, and one a Lincoln Project Republican (or ex-Republican, I am not sure).

The focus was on the continuing low approval ratings for President Biden (a very recent poll put approval at 41%) and continuing concerns about his age and health (over 50%).

The panelists had a number of responses (I list them as I remember them, no ranking or order intended):

1. Can you name one 2020 Biden supporter who now says “I am going to vote for Trump?”
2. Based on polling, there was no chance that Trump was going to win in 2020 – the anti-Trump sentiment was too strong.
3. The number of people with a favorable opinion of Trump is even lower than the number with a favorable opinion of Biden.
4. The Trump supporters tend to be older – many have died since 2020. If you look at the younger population and first time voters, they poll overwhelmingly Democratic.
5. Only 30% of younger voters went to the polls in 2020 – this is a challenge, but if this number can be increased……
6. The only way to look at polls is to compare them to what happened in previous elections…..but this election is like no other election, and such comparisons may be misleading.
7. The one-off local elections that have been held over the past couple of years have gone very strongly Democratic.
8. The abortion issue is going to be stronger than anyone now thinks, as the Republicans double down.
9. Two thirds of people polled oppose a government shut down.
10. Over 60% of Americans are very concerned about Trump’s legal problems.

Admittedly, this was a “biased” panel, but it was also a quite optimistic panel. I still wish the Democrats had an alternative candidate. But these three have tamped down my pessimism. I hope they are right.

Gmar tov (cough, cough)

This is the 310th straight day that I have published a blog post. Time to stand up and applaud.

It’s going to be a rainy weekend in Washington (they call it Tropical Storm Ophelia, but I see no rose petals), and it will end with Kol Nidre, which we will once again participate in virtually. I am feeling much better, but the lingering cough is still there and, although I am told I am clearly not contagious, no one wants to be sitting next to a lingering cough. Plus, not surprisingly, crowds scare me right now (for no good reason).

I was sorry to see that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and his wife have been indicted once again. I can’t quite figure it out.

By all accounts, Menendez, a self-made man and son of Cuban immigrants, has been a fine Senator, currently serving (or at least until yesterday serving) as chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. About a decade ago, he was indicted for the first time. I don’t remember the details, but it involved whether or not he was doing favors for a Puerto Rican businessman and long time friend, who had given him various types of financial assistance. Like Clarence Thomas, Menendez maintained that there was no quid pro quo, that he was just doing what Senators do, and that his friend was just doing what friends do. (At least, this is my take from memory.) It went all the way to trial, there was a hung jury, and then it was over. Menendez ran for reelection. He was reelected easily.

With that background, you would think that Menendez would have learned a lesson and would have been determined not to let anything like that happen again. Au contraire. Menendez decided to repeat his former ways, perhaps this time on steroids. While the details are yet not 100% clear, it seems that Menendez and his new wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars from New Jersey businessmen and people involved with the government of Egypt, again in return for what appear to be favors. Apparently, Menendez will maintain for a second time that he wasn’t doing anything special for any of these people – he was just performing normal constituent services. I don’t think he has, as of yet, commented on money and the gold ingots that were found in his house and his safe deposit box, and his Mercedes, and he has not commented on the various texts and emails which connect the funds with his “friends”.

I read brief bios of the three others who were indicted with Menendez and his wife. Two things seem clear – these are very bright and talented people whose businesses have not only been successful, but have added to this world (large scale, successful redevelopment activities in New Jersey, and production of halal meat in large quantity). But they are also all individuals who have been the targets of law enforcement in the past. I would really like to know more about their motivations. And about what the mutual attraction is between this type of person and Bob Menendez. BUT SEE JEFF DWYER’S COMMENT BELOW.

And why did they give him such lavish gifts if Menendez did not use his influence to help deflect criminal charges involving at least one of his benefactors, and did not provide information to the Egyptian government so that his friend could become the sole purveyor of halal meat imported into Egypt?

And, there is always, of course, collateral damage. I wonder what the future holds for Menendez’ daughter Alicia, who is an MSNBC weekend anchor and, to me, a talented and forthright media journalist. She is a Harvard graduate with years of journalistic experience and a wonderful reportorial and interviewing style. Remember that Chris Cuomo, another media journalist whom I greatly respected, was not able to hold onto his job after brother Andrew became involved in potential criminal charges involving alleged sexual predation. I hope Alicia Menendez does not meet the same fate, but it will be a difficult dance.

Now, to national politics. Will the Menendez indictment help the Democrats respond to allegations that the Justice Department is not operating as a tool of the Democratic party? You would think it might, although I have already heard some Republicans say that the Justice Department indicted Menendez only to try to show that they are not acting under bias, and that they have made Bob Menendez a target only to take the eyes of the world off their soft treatment of Hunter Biden. Oh, well, sometimes you just can’t win.

One more thing today. Hunter Biden. How can I say this succinctly? We have been brainwashed to think of Hunter Biden as a useless wastrel who, were it not for his father, would never have been able to make a living and who would probably be dead from drugs by now.

Let’s set the record at least halfway straight. Hunter Biden is a Yale Law School graduate, who had a successful career working for a New York investment company of which he was executive vice-president, who has been counsel to a major New York City law firm, who was a Bush-appointed member of the Amtrak board of directors and was vice-president of that board for a period of time, who ran a major charitable organization which worked with the U.N. to bring food to countries where food was in short supply, who with his uncle ran a hedge fund and a consulting company to aid businesses looking to expand overseas, and who – of course – was involved in a Chinese controlled venture capital fund, and a Ukrainian oil company named Burisma.

At the Jim Jordan hearing last week, Jordan said that even Hunter Biden himself had said he had no qualification to sit on the Burisma board. This is not true. In fact, Biden said he was at least as qualified as anyone else on that board, perhaps more so, but that – had he not been his father’s son – he probably would never have been asked to serve on the board. But it doesn’t appear that he was just a name on a board, doing nothing but trying to influence his father.

Okay, one final point about Senator Menendez. The name “Menendez” may be the most unnatural combination of letters to type quickly on a QWERTY keyboard. It’s just downright uncomfortable. Whether that helps him or hurts him, I don’t know. But it does not make him fun.