Jews have a myriad of ways to find out just who is also a Jew. One is to ask “MOT?” as in “Member of the Tribe?” Other means of recognition are typically Jewish names beginning with K or C, as inKahn or Cohen, indicating that the person is a kohane, a member of the priestly caste. The Napoleonic rule that everyone had to have a surname gave Austrians an excuse to give the Jews insulting names, like Tannenbaum (Christmas Tree), and names related to the Jewelry business like Diamond, or Glass are also clues. And of course, dropping a Yiddishism can be a clue, though lots of Yiddish words have come into the mainstream of American English. Klutz, kibbitz, and so on.
All those help us identify with our tribal group. Though many Jews are assimilated, may not be religious, or are Jewish only through the choice of ethnic foods, we are all members of a tribe. This is a powerful identification.
Though a secular Jew myself, I was brought back into the fold, so to speak, on a visit to Leningrad’s synagogue. There, though I knew no Russian and little Hebrew, I felt a deep kinship with my co-religionists, my fellow tribal members. The Leningrad Jews lived under the scrutiny of the Secret Police. Here in free America we still have hate groups that wish us all dead. In spite of our differences, there is a deep cultural connection.
Whether we were at a death camp or not, we are all Holocaust survivors. Most of us had relatives who were murdered in the Shoah. We remember the Crusades, the expulsions, the pogroms, and the 500 year Inquisition. We have a strong group identity as an oppressed people.
At times the hatred directed at us is bewildering. We do not force our religion or culture on anyone else. We are not missionaries. We mind our own business. As members of the tribe, we need to realize that the problem lies not within us, but in the minds of the oppressors. Why else would it take until this year for the Pope to declare that the Jews did not kill Jesus? No wonder we have to stick together.
We Jews are all survivors of a great calamity, bound not only by our religion but by our shared history. It is a long one, a great culture, a powerful religion. Awesome.
Being in your right brain isn’t the same as being in your right mind The left brain is supposed to be the part that deals with logic and language while the right brain deals with relationships, shapes, music, and intuition. To use an analogy, the left brain is the digital side, the right brain the analog.
As it happens, some people are mostly left brain, and a few others are right brain. What’s happening with public education today is that the right brain folks are being short changed. I’m referring to the wholesale cancellation of classes in art and music. This is a real travesty committed in the name of saving money.
With Michigan’s budget on the skids, threats against unions and tenure, cutbacks in state support for local schools, the first things cut are the analog right brain courses, the ones that nurture creativity and imagination.
To short change the right brained students is akin to not permitting Afghan girls to go to school.
What we should be cutting instead are expensive sports like football or swimming. We spent a million dollars to build a swimming pool for our HoughtonHigh School when the swim team consists of only about twenty students. When my daughter was on the team they practiced at at the university pool. It was a tough commute in the UP winter, but it worked. Recently the school had to build an equal access gymnasium for girls’ sports. Where is the academic achievement in that?
As for football, our school superintendent says that if it weren’t for school sports, lots of kids would simply drop out. Not that any of them could make careers in sports after graduation—if they graduated at all. If you must have a school sport, pick something cheap like soccer. All you need is a ball. No helmets, padding, or fancy uniforms. No swimming pool, either. That may be why soccer, known as football in the rest of the world, is played in the poorest countries.
This is not vocational training. We need plumbers and electricians more than football players. The odds of becoming a sports pro are about like the chances of winning the Powerball lottery. Not only are the numbers of sports professionals few, but those that play bone crushing sports like football die early deaths. Nobody ever died from music unless they swallowed a clarinet reed.
A quick check on Internet sources will bring on a discussion of the flaw in our public education. It favors left brain people with math, science, and language, the sort of courses that are the core of a college education. That curriculum should be no surprise since almost all public school teachers are college educated. They went through a left brain curriculum and think that’s the route to take.
That’s not fair to right brain people, and some of those students have a very difficult time in school. What’s a greater threat to those right brain kids is the tendency of school boards caught in a budget crunch to do away with music and art.
Those of us stuck in left brain activity are missing out.
Though few of us are exclusively locked into one side of the brain or the other, I realize that as an author and student of foreign languages I reside mostly in my left brain. Not entirely, though, for I don’t do sudoko or whatever that Japanese number puzzle is called, nor do I do crossword puzzles, having an inferiority complex because I don’t know many three letter words, horizontal or across other than “the” and “asp.”.
Though I sometimes doodle, my right brain was undernourished until I was faced with the challenge of illustrating one of my own books. The original illustrator was dead. I enrolled in an art class to switch on my right brain.
I wondered, “How the heck you switch on your right brain?”
The art teacher took an upside down line drawing and blocked off all but a small strip. All I got to see were a bunch of meaningless lines. The exercise was to copy that portion. By degrees, we progressed to more and more of the picture until it was clear what we were copying. The idea was to forget about what the picture was, but to concentrate on the shapes and the lines, right brain activity.
I was reminded that forgers are known to forge names by writing them upside down. That way they concentrate on the lines, not on the names.
Like a truck with a balky transmission, my brain clunked from left to right in very low gear. After two hours of this I was in a fog-like trance. It was a strange feeling, like being groggy after a heavy sleep, or recovering from an anesthetic after an endoscopic exam. Where was I?
The single lesson worked. Turns out I was never an exclusively left brain person after all. I often think in analogies, the comparisons similes and metaphors are made of. To be a whole brained-person you need to utilize both your left and right brain.
We need the creative abilities and imagination of right-brained students. If your school board is thinking of cutting art and music to save money, tell them to drop football instead. It costs many dollars per hour to maintain a swimming pool. Pencils, paper, paints and brushes are cheaper than helmets and padding, and though drawing shifted me into a temporary fog of right brain activity, it didn’t wreck my knees or cause a concussion.
Amazing! Patzi Gil has done a screen play adaptation of my novel "Betrayal." Now we have to flog the script to Hollywood. The book is available as a custom printed paperback from lulu.com and an ebook download frfom lulu, kindle, and nook lists.
What’s a Jewish mother to do? You struggle, you try to make a good life for your children and what do they do? We say small children small tzuris, big children, big tsuris. But back to the beginning I should go.
We’re a poor Jewish family living in a country under foreign occupation, those Romans, ptui, ptui, ptui, I should spit three times to ward off the evil eye. It’s not bad enough that we have to live under those arrogant, brutal legions, strutting around in their breastplates, helmets and short swords like they own the place. Which, in fact, they do.
Unfortunately this time there’s no Judah the Maccabe to throw them out like happened against the Assyrians. The Maccabes set up the Hasmonean government. True to form, power corrupts, and the Hasmoneans were a shande, a disgrace, so its no surprise that now we got the Romans, those Pagan goyim.
At least as long as we pay our taxes and don’t make trouble, they more or less leave us alone. You should hear them bragging about it, the pax romana, they call it, the Roman peace. Peace! Tyranny, I call it.
As if occupation weren’t enough, we have to deal with that Jewish traitor, that Herod, that megalomaniac. Mister big shot. He skims from the taxes and builds himself palaces, temples… there’s no end to it. You should see the fortress he built on Masada, as if putting himself up there would keep him safe in case we ever stood on our hind legs and revolted. This I would never do or even be a part of. Like I always say, don’t make trouble.
It’s not safe to stand out from the crowd. Just mind your own business and keep your head down, I always say. If anything, my husband Jossele, is too meek. Let me tell you how meek, that schlemiel. I was nine months pregnant, about to deliver, and Joseph says we have to go back to the old neighborhood and register for the census. At least he puts me on a donkey so I don’t have to walk the whole way, but you should try it, nine months pregnant and on a donkey. Oy, gevalt.
Not only that, but do you think Jossele, that schlemiel, at least would get us a room reservation so when we got to Bethlehem there’s be a decent place to stay? No such luck. The best he could do was gets us a bed of straw in the stables. What kind of a hotel accommodation is that for a dutiful Jewish wife?
So as luck has it, I deliver. It’s a nice baby, a boy. Shayne punim. You’d think a mother with a newborn should have some privacy, but no. Who shows up but three clowns dressed up like they’re going to a costume ball with crowns and the whole bit. Me, I think they’re like Harry, Mo, and what’s his name. They say they came to the stable following a star but what star? They argued the whole time, this star, that star, a vision. And they bring presents, frankinsence, myrr. What I needed was a decent bed to lie in, a clean blanket, decent food. Believe me, if I have to bring something to a baby shower it’s ain’t going be frankinsence. I’m alleregic.
It didn’t help that Herod, that Jewish despot who sold out to the Romans so he could be Mister Big Shot, also suffered from an unhealthy paranoia. Someone told him that a Jewish baby, a boy, would be a threat to his position. So what does he do? He says all the male newborns are to be killed. Jossele doesn’t have to be told twice to take the hint, so off we go, again with a donkey, to flee the country, go to Egypt, and hang out there until the heat blows off.
Fast forward a few years. We’re back in the homeland. Little Yeshua is learning carpentry, an honest profession, a good trade. With carpentry you can make a decent living. Naturally the Romans are still in charge, and Herod is lording it over everyone in his palaces and fortresses, the great defender of the status quo while he skims from the Roman tax coffers.
My Yeshua is a nice Jewish boy but he’s got big ideas, a rebel. The whole business of animal sacrifices at the TempleYeshua sees as little more than Roman paganism. What matters, Yeshua insists, is Torah, the five books of Moses who got our people out of Egyptian slavery. Maybe Yeshua thinks he’s going to be another Moses and get us outfrom under the Romans and Herod. What do I know? The Ten Commandments, Yeshua insists. Like the Torah says, love thy neighbor like yourself. Not love the Romans, of course, but your Jewish neighbor.
Yeshua went meshugga when he saw the temple functionaries insisting that Roman coins not be used in Jewidsh prayer. So they change the money for shekels, taking a nice commission into the bargain. But Yeshua makes a scene and drives them out. This is not a smart thing for a young man to do. You don’t want to draw attention to yourself.
But no, Yeshua is full of himself, like so many young people these days. He goes around preaching, neglects his carpentry work, takes up with a kurve, that whore Mary Magdeline. This is not the sort of girl a good Jewish mother wants her son to take up with. I warned him. Stay out of trouble, I said. Don’t get big ideas.
But you know how gullible people are. Someone gets up on a soap box, gives a few speeches, and that next thing you know he has a following.
For what? Jeshua ain’t going to be part of the Sanhedrin, the high Jewish court. That bunch of judges think they have authority, but it’s only over religious matters. They have no voice in politics. For that you got Herod, that arrogant figurehead—ptui , ptui, ptui—he should grow like an onion with his head in the ground, and the Romans, oy. From them we don’t even speak. It’s too dangerous.
No matter how much I kvetch, Yeshua doesn’t listen. He says he’s a reformer. He’s going to bring us Jews back to the law of Moses and to heck with that Temple cult business. Worse yet, he’d so intoxicated by the adoration his misbegotten, fawning followers lay on him that he’s beginning to believe it himself. That’s what a bit of fame and celebrity get you—a big head.
If he would only keep his head down, not make trouble, be a nice carpenter. It’s a good trade. But no. Jeshua starts bragging. He goes completely meshugga. He develops this messiah complex, like maybe he’s another Judah the Maccabe, tough guy. But the Romans aren’t Assyrians. They may hang around and get fat on our local figs, olives, and dates, and patronize the local Jewish whores, but you don’t want to mess with the Romans. They are plenty tough guys.
So you probably already heard. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. Yeshua goes around bragging that he is the king of the Jews. You think Herod, Mr. Big Shot, is going to take that lying down? The Sanhedrin know what side their bread’s buttered on. They rule that what Jeshua says is blasphemy, but blasphemy is nothing to the Romans. They already got a king they appointed, Herod. From the Romans point of view it ain’t blasphemy. It’s sedition.
No little Yid like Yeshua is going to overthrow the Roman government, Herod or not. I warned him. Yeshua, shut up. Be a nice carpenter. Find yourself a nice Jewish girl and make me a grandmother. If you keep up this nonsense they’ll crucify you.
