E.B. White on freedom & stench. The Rep. from NM "persisted." How Golden Girls created Senior Power. Jack Black chants a bracha. Meet BYU's Jew QB. Gaza chef killed bringing food to starving kids.

Newsletter #164

POLITICS

*Thanks to Linda Stein, the activist artist and educator, for forwarding this painfully pertinent Turkish proverb: “The Forest was shrinking but the Trees kept voting for the Axe for the Axe was clever and convinced the Trees that because his handle was made of wood he was one of them.”

* Lots of political wisdom, and heed worthy warnings emanate from E.B. White’s 1940 essay, “Freedom,” written in response to Americans’ passivity in the face of Adolf Hitler’s increasingly tyrannical actions in Europe. White’s expository tone is both urgent and intimate: “I just want to tell, before I get slowed down, that I am in love with freedom and that it is an affair of long standing and that it is a fine state to be in, and that I am deeply suspicious of people who are beginning to adjust to fascism and dictators merely because they are succeeding in war. From such adaptable natures a smell arises. I pinch my nose.”

Like a twister viewed from afar, White’s essay demands our serious assessment of today’s darkening sky. Don’t pass up this uncannily timely piece.

* Incumbent Rep. Melanie Sansbury (D-NM), who beat her Republican challenger by 12 points on Nov. 5, has shown herself to be an eloquent and unflappable speaker. Watch her confident demeanor on the House floor as she exposes the true intent of a GOP bill which purports to encourage better qualified government employees but would actually expel federal workers lacking in blind loyalty to the Orange Emperor. (Shades of McCarthyism.) The young Congresswoman won’t let pass unnoticed the irony of a bill about job qualifications being introduced in tandem with the President-elect’s nomination of a clown car full of egregiously unqualified people for top cabinet posts. At 2:15-2:25 on the video, you’ll hear a GOP Congressman yell out twice, asking Sansbury to yield her time. Nevertheless, she persisted, talking over the interruptor until she was good and ready to conclude her remarks. A powerHouse peroration.

(Shades of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s stance in 2019).

BOOKS

* Need an escape from the stresses of the season? Listen on Audible or crack the covers of two of the most absorbing novels I’ve read in years: The Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner and All Fours by Miranda July.

Though unfurled in vastly different settings, both are supremely well-told stories about family dynamics, about disintegration and obsession, chaos, reinvention and revelation, every kind of sex and sexuality, bodies, biology, beauty, more sex, the tireless search for self, authenticity and acceptance, and, of course, love. Nuff said.

* Daniel Immerwahr begins his New Yorker review of James Chappel’s Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age, with a penetrating backward glance at the impact of “The Golden Girls” on the rise of the senior constituency, and how the showcasing of vibrant, sexy older women “created perhaps the most powerful interest group in twentieth-century America.” En passant, Immerwahr skewers geriatric anti-abortion crusaders: “Politicians today seem unsure whether life begins at conception or at 80” — a clever retool of Barney Frank’s scathing put-down of “pro-life” politicians: “Conservatives believe that from the standpoint of the federal government, life begins at conception and ends at birth.”

*Because this internet meme forefronts a girl’s voice not her physical features, it triggered my memory of Carol Gilligan’s groundbreaking 1982 classic, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development. “Gilligan believes that psychology has persistently and systematically misunderstood women--their motives, their moral commitments, the course of their psychological growth, and their special view of what is important in life.” If you have a daughter and you haven’t read this book, you must. Buy it here.

*I’m currently relishing an early proof of David Denby’s lively, eminently readable, Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer, a four-part biography which the author describes as “a fractured group portrait of unruly Jews living in freedom.” As opposed to its literary forbear, Eminent Victorians, Lytton Strachey’s classic group biography of 1918, which Denby calls “a skeptical, sometimes wicked book,” his self-appointed task “is to celebrate.” And that he does, offering generous assessments of his subjects’ outsized influence on their fields and on 20th Century American culture while at the same time casting new light on these public figures as human beings apart from their talent or fame. All four boldface names — Leonard Bernstein, Mel Brooks, Betty Friedan, and Norman Mailer —were among the Jewish titans of my youth. Though impressed by the richness and originality of Denby’s evocation of these inimitable eminences, I can’t vouch for the accuracy of the detailed portrayals of the three men, each of whom I’ve met only once. However, having known Betty Friedan for 35 years and worked with her on a number of feminist projects, I can attest to the biographer’s sensitivity and acumen at capturing her vulnerabilities and demons. Denby demonstrates compassion for Friedan’s often strained, sometimes toxic, interactions with other women, her sense of having been betrayed by the broader women’s movement, and her convoluted relationship with Judaism and the Jewish community. Preorder the book here. (Support Indie book shops. Don’t make Jeff Bezos richer.)

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

*Rather than let Israel’s incessant, excessive, unconscionable bombardment of Gaza shame us into silence or inure us to the suffering of innocent Palestinians, we need to humanize the numbing casualty statistics and focus on individual victims whose stories sear the heart. People like Mahmoud Almadhoun, father of seven, “full-time civilian,” educator, humanitarian worker, chef, and co-founder of the Gaza Soup Kitchen, who was killed by an Israeli drone attack while delivering flour, produce, canned goods, blankets, diapers, and baby formula to a hospital still standing amid the ruins. Here his brother Hani, a Palestinian-American, describes what happened.

JEWS

*Maybe you missed this but a rising college football star, the self-proclaimed “BY Jew,” Jake Retzlaff, Brigham Young University’s first-ever Jewish quarterback, recently signed a deal to promote Manischewitz products, which, he says, “growing up, were always in our pantry, especially around the holidays.” Bearing the same winning smile, strong jaw and broad shoulders as Jack Armstrong, the fictional All-American Boy, Retzlaff talks about his faith and autographs a matzah on Instagram. You can’t make this stuff up.

*Did you know Jack Black was Jewish? I didn’t until my son, David, sent me this video of the actor-comedian chanting the blessing we Jews say when lighting the Hanukkah candles. Rabbi Google informed me that Jack’s mom, Judith Love Cohen, was born a Jew, his dad, Thomas, converted to Judaism, and Jack attended Hebrew school and became a bar mitzvah. No wonder his liturgical pronunciation, albeit comically operatic, is so clear and confidant. According to The Jewish Chronicle, Judith (with Jack, above) is a “ballerina-turned-scientist, [who] worked on the nuclear missile guidance system Minuteman, the Apollo lunar module guidance system and the ground station for the Hubble Space Telescope. . . When she retired from science, she set up a publishing company with her third husband creating books to get young girls interested in science.” Sounds like Judith’s the real star in the family.

PURE PLEASURE

* This physical malady is a familiar affliction. I suffer it gladly whenever I dogsit for my daughter Robin’s canine, Georgie. One quibble with this otherwise adorable video: Why would the Instagramer choose as his background music, Pete Seeger singing “Wimweh”when that song is about a sleeping lion and this pup is tinier than a newborn cub? Just curious.

*I’m sure you’ve noticed that I’m a sucker for videos of fathers being gentle, caring, funny, and deeply focused on their kids. Recent favorites of mine include the dad who patiently endures getting made up by his little girl while she interviews him about his anxiety; and the dad who plays his baby to sleep in less than a minute; and the dad who delights in interacting with his amazingly responsive newborn. But, given the sentimentality around motherhood, isn’t it kinda odd that similarly endearing videos of moms are harder to come by? (Not counting the endless images of women breastfeeding babies.)

Pondering the imbalance I came up with a few theories of why that is: 1) Women may be too busy with the daily routines of child care and housework to stop, savor, and delight in their kids. 2) Gentle, caring, deeply involved dads are still considered heroic and remarkable so the grateful woman who has one of them around the house is more likely to immortalize his actions and reactions on film. 3) Single moms have no other adult on site to capture precious moments when they happen. 4) Compared to how closely moms pay attention to what dads do with their children, relatively few dads notice what moms are doing in the first place, so men are less alert to amazing mom-kid interactions that might be happening under their noses. (Ed. note: Admittedly, I’ve committed gross generalizations based mostly on anecdotes. But as the political scientist Ray Wolfinger famously said more than 50 years ago, “The plural of anecdote is data.”)

HOLIDAYS

*This year, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Christmas Day, not Eve, and ends on Jan. 2, 2025. Because Jewish time follows a lunar calendar, the last confluence of Hanukkah and Christmas happened nineteen years ago in 2005. Before that, the two holidays overlapped in 1959 and before that in 1921. After this year, it won’t occur again until 2035, then not until 2054. Cherish the fundamental message of both hallowed occasions: transformation, illumination, and rededication are possible even in the darkest times.

*Kwanzaa, the week-long celebration of African American and pan-African culture and heritage, is celebrated on the same dates every year, from Dec 26 to January 1st.

And Happy New Year everyone. Please keep the faith, stay strong, celebrate life and bring in the light.