What if Trump is convicted? Book ban lifted. Trump advisor blames Jews for dying. Ken Burns. Righteous Gentiles. Treedom in Palestine. Is Bradley Cooper's nose antisemitic? Quirky funny.
Newsletter #145
POLITICS
*Finally an outfit that matches his complexion.
*What happens if he’s convicted? Can he run for president from prison? Can he vote? What if he’s elected while behind bars? Maggie Astor’s Times piece unspools these and other mindbending hypotheticals.
WOMEN
*Behold, the first feminist. [Reprinted with permission from The All Jewish Cartoon Collection by Mort Gerberg]
*News Flash! Neal deGrasse Tyson locates Barbie Land in the U.S. Catch the astrophysicist on The Today Show or read his X post pinpointing it on the map. Love the doll or hate it, fault the movie or not for its neoliberal capitalist subtext and consumerist tie-ins, you still gotta see “Barbie,” the movie, to experience Greta Gerwig’s brilliantly clever, hilariously unsubtle take-down of patriarchy.
*I confessed to have missed the “deep parallels” between the Barbie movie and Paradise Lost but Orlando Reade makes the case convincingly on Lithub. “That Gerwig is thinking about Milton’s radical retelling of the Book of Genesis should come as no surprise. In an interview for Vogue, she pointed out that Barbie dolls are ‘the opposite of the creation myth in Genesis.’ Eve was created after Adam, to be his companion, but Ken was made for Barbie. If this film offers a new Book of Genesis, its echoes of Paradise Lost help to explain this shiny new myth.”
JEWS
* The ADL and American Jewish Committee each issued statements assuring us that the lasrge prosthetic nose worn by Bradley Cooper, who plays Leonard Bernstein in the biopic, Maestro, is not antisemitic. See for yourself here. Responding to claims that the character’s schnoz was exaggerated, Bernstein’s grown children weighed in: “It happens to be true that Leonard Bernstein had a nice, big nose. Bradley chose to use makeup to amplify his resemblance, and we’re perfectly fine with that. We’re also certain that our dad would have been fine with it as well.”
*Last night’s debate is perceived here through a Jewish lens (which, admit it people, is how many of us see the world.)
CENSORSHIP
* One small step for literature. It won a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize for Fiction yet The Fixer, Bernard Malamud’s haunting, freshly relevant novel about a Jew falsely accused of blood libel during the last years of the Russian Empire, was on the list of banned books in a SC school district until a committee (none of whose members were Jewish) actually read and was captivated by it. Recognizing the novel’s “power to offer students a valuable perspective on bigotry — and on Judaism,” the committee voted to return it to the shelves. One member (her notes above) said their discussion “felt like book club.” Duh.! That’s what happens in English classes when kids are exposed to quality literature and teachers are free to teach undeterred by Puritanical no-nothings. How ‘bout we require all would-be censors to pass a test on the plot, characters, and message of the volumes they deem objectionable. At minimum, they’ll actually crack open a book or two.
ISRAEL-PALESTINE
*Nikki and Vivek spar over US policy toward Israel-Palestine on last night’s GOP debate.
*Anyone following the news has seen fundamentalist chickens come home to roost on both sides of the conflict. Militant Palestinians on one hand, fascist Israelis on the other, are now doing what extremists have always done when a people’s hopes for peace are extinguished and tit-for-tat violence takes over the stage. I don’t want to add to the cacophony, only to showcase below one of many heart-healing grass roots efforts to build rather than destroy.
* “Treedom for Palestine.” We Jews spent many years and dollars planting trees in Israel to “make the desert bloom.” I, for one, have a stack of certificates attesting to the number of trees planted in my name in honor of my bat mitzvah, wedding, birthdays and holidays. Why not help the Palestinians do something similar? Watch this moving video about “Treedom” and how trees can become agents of change. Then donate here.
*We Jews were also commanded to spare our enemies’ orchards: “When you lead a siege … you may not destroy any tree of hers … you must not cut it off!” [Deut 20:19–20]. Yet marauding settlers who blithely ax and torch Palestinians’ hundred year old olive trees still call themselves “observant Torah Jews.” I call them thugs & hypocrites.
THE HOLOCAUST
*Next month marks a year since the release of Ken Burns’ 3-part PBS series, “The U.S. and the Holocaust.” If you’ve been avoiding it, thinking you’ve seen enough Jewish suffering to last a lifetime, please reconsider. This superb documentary zeroes in on Americans’ culpability during WWII (isolationism, willful disbelief, antisemitic inclinations, naked self-interest, and home-grown Nazis). It also surfaces eery parallels between then and now. To paraphrase Emily Dickinson, Burns tells the truth but tells it “slant.” Trailer here.
Don’t let fascism creep up on us. Remember the lessons of the Shoah.
*One way to teach Holocaust deniers the history they missed in school is to beat them up. But unless you’re an Ultimate Fighting Champion like Natan Levy, AKA “JewJitsu” (above), I doubt you’ll change a neoNazi’s views as easily as he seems to have changed this one’s. Instead, arm yourself with factual evidence from The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
*Soon all the survivors will be gone. But some are still alive and able to speak to your school or group about what it was like to live through the horror. Unless you and I become witnesses to the witnesses and carry their stories into the future, Holocaust deniers will seize the narrative and bury the truth. This website will connect you with a survivor in person or via the museum’s video library.
*To memorialize the Six Million Jews and five million homosexuals, Communists and others who perished under Hitler’s boot, your group could sponsor an evening of compositions written by prisoners in concentration camps and ghettos.
*Or create a musical tribute to those who were lost and the few who tried to save them. For instance, Chiune Sugihara, the late Japanese diplomat who was honored last April at a concert in Carnegie Hall.
*Or Gino Bartali, the world-class cyclist, who risked his life to save 800 Italian Jews by transporting forged papers in his bicycle frame, using his bike to pull wagonloads of Jews to safety, and hiding a Jewish family during the Nazi occupation. Bartali is among the courageous gentiles paid national tribute at “The Righteous Among The Nations” exhibit at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. Guess which countries spawned the most nonJewish rescuers of Jews.
QUIRKY FUNNY
*Who knew cows love music? Or should I say moosic. For laughs, see this, this & this.
* Religious Jews in the Western diaspora pray facing East (toward Jerusalem), no matter what’s in the line of sight.
* Over 5 million people viewed this video, which garnered comments that valorized the woman who helped the seagull get out of the store with a sandwich in its beak but demonized the woman (dubbed a“Karen”) who chased after the bird. I’m not sure the second woman was trying to grab the sandwich and return it to the store; she could have been trying stop the gull from ingesting the plastic wrap. For me, the bigger question is, would those who so passionately sided with the avian shoplifter assist a hungry human to steal food they’re too poor to pay for?
* Puzzling Instagram. I get their beautiful bond but why would a man chose to read I Carried You in My Belly to his dog?
SHABBAT SHALOM and HAPPY WEEKEND TO ALL.
Good post Letty, bring a ton of usual pause! However, the music loving cow looks very much like my dog, who is a music lover as well... he sings (howls) or squeaks his toys and dances along with all music... haven’t tried him with Bernstein yet, but he loves violin, cello and percussion!