End of Sukkot: It Was All Good

This year, I seem to be talking about the Fall Holidays at the end of each. This has truly been an upside down year. I have been working very hard on New Mexico Patriot Alliance Retreat and the Continental Congress Elections. The Retreat was last weekend and the election took place over the past week for mail-in voting, and the in-person voting yesterday. So Sukkot, the Festival of the Ingathering Harvest, was also the first harvest of the NMPA efforts that began at Passover last March.



This Sukkot has also been cold and windy, foggy and even rainy! We did not get any snow, though, like we did last year. Between the retreat last week and the weather last week, we have not had much chance to enjoy our Sukkah this year.


On the first night of Sukkot, we did have the opportunity to spend time with a newlywed friend and his bride in our Sukkah. Last Sunday and Tuesday evening we had hurried dinners in the Sukkah (due to wind and weather), although the Boychick did not join us on Tuesday because he was sent home with the H1N1 flu.

This morning, the last day of the Festival (Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah), dawned foggy and very cool, and the Engineering Geek and I stayed in bed until after 7 AM for the first time in weeks and weeks. We took a long leisurely walk in the meadow and the woods. I took along my camera, and got some pictures: above is upper Sedillo Canyon in fog, and below, the EG with Lily and Shayna. (Shayna thought I wanted to play as she does when I aim the camera in her direction).








Breakfast was inside, as it was still foggy and windy, but later when the fog burned off and the wind died down, we were able to sit in the Sukkah. This year's Sukkah was very plain, but it was beautiful today in the sunshine.


We had a good Sukkot luncheon out there, Turkey Soup (from the Rosh Hashannah bird), fresh-baked French bread and butter, and sweet cider.








Of course we had a Lulov and Etrog (Arba Minim) for the holiday, pictured above on the table. We waved it everyday, as prescribed and sang songs from the Hallel (certain Psalms) as we did so.

But this afternoon, it was finally calm enough to take some pictures of the EG following the actual waving ritual. Today being Simchat Torah, we sang "Adonenu, Hoshianah" as well as about the Torah. We missed dancing with the Torah at the synagogue because of the Boychick's illness. So we made our own rejoicing here.

This afternoon we also went out and picked up my great buy of the year. I have been looking--for three years--for a sideboard that would blend with my Thomasville dining room, but that set is in the Louis Philipe style, which is not real popular right now. Yesterday, the Chem Geek Princess found a piece that would work at American Furniture. She was very excited when she pointed it out to me. And so was I. And I was even more excited about the price. It started at over $1300. But it was part of a set and the set had sold, so it was marked down to $799.99. But it also had some minor damage, and so was marked down further to $399.99. When I said I would buy it as it, the manager took another hundred bucks off, so this was a real steal!

It does not perfectly match my original set, but in the picture you can see it next to a dining room chair. It blends more beautifully than I had even imagined when I saw it at the store.

The Chem Geek Princess has always been good shopping Karma, but this is the best yet. I am really, really glad she is living in town and will still be there when she and her new husband move into their new home in December. I am glad for many reasons greater than the shopping Karma, but as you can see, yesterday was a lucky day for me!

All in all, this was one of the strangest High Holy day seasons I have ever had. But it was good, in a very different way. It's all good, as one of my friends likes to remind me. I need to be reminded. So I'll say it again. It is all good.

Continental Congress: 24 Hours to Vote!

If you are wondering what to do about a world gone completely insane . . .

Don't forget to vote for your state delegates to the Continental Congress.

Just go to your state page here for voting instructions. In person voting is tomorrow.Mail-in must be postmarked by tomorrow. It is now the last minute. Are you a patriot? Prove it.

Take action to restore the Constitution. For ourselves and our posterity . . .

Time Out for Books: The Demon Queen and the Locksmith

The last month has been so busy that I haven't even had time to update our reading lists.

This time of the year is crazy!
The High Holy Days have been upon us, and the Month of Tishrei (seventh Jewish month) is basically one long holiday. Rosh Hashanah (Tishrei 1-2), Fast of Gedaliah (Tishrei 3), Ten Days of Repentence (Tishrei 1-10), Yom Kippur (Tishrei 10), Sukkot Tishrei 15-21, Hoshanah Rabbah (Tishrei 21), Sh'mini Atzeret (Tishrei 22) and Simchat Torah (Tishrei 23). I get tired just listing them, let alone celebrating them all. Many Jews call the eighth month, Cheshvan, Marcheshvan (bitter Cheshvan) because it has no holidays except Shabbat. But it was not a Jewish baalboostah (mistress of the house) who made that up, let me tell you! I love the peace and quiet of Cheshvan.

And then there has been the additional duties that go with our involvment in the patriot movement. We've had the 9-11 commemoration, the 9-12 Rally, the Patriot Alliance Leadership Retreat, and now the Continental Congress Elections. (Have you voted yet? Here is voting information for this non-partisan, non-political citizen's congress).

And there's my work with Retake Congress. And the Engineering Geek's work that puts the bread and butter on the table. And the Boychick's education. And this week, to top it all off, on Tuesday I got a call from the school nurse. The Boychick had contracted H1N1. I brought him home to bed with his first real illness ever: chills, fever, cough and aches and pains. Well. We don't have to worry about the unproven vaccination. He'll be immune now.

Nevertheless, these past few weeks I have made a special point of taking time out for reading. Pictured above is an array of new books for the Guest Room/Library.

I just finished The Demon Queen and the Locksmith by local author Spencer Baum. Although it is a book written for young adults, I couldn't put it down! I got this book because Spencer is also a libertarian homeschooler and he wrote his book about an imaginary town called Turquoise that sounds a lot like Taos, NM. Complete with the mountain and the hum.
The book is an adventure story involving a high-school boy, Kevin Brown, and two homeschooling friends, and it involves the Ta--I mean the Turquoise Hum. It also features two radio personalities, one a lot like Art Bell, and of course, a Demon Queen. The underlying theme of the story is what happens when teens learn of truth that is unpopular and even considered "black helicopter" crazy by their peers and according to their previous understandings. However, this book does not lecture and it does not moralize; Baum allows the story to carry the theme with grace and humor. He's never preachy, and always maintains a sense of adventure and fun. I'd read it again, and right away, too; except that the Boychick has snapped it up.

I recommend The Demon Queen and the Locksmith for young adults and the young at heart! It can be found at Amazon here. I hope there will be continuing adventures from Spencer Baum.

I am now looking forward to dipping into Margaret Atwood's new novel, The Year of the Flood, as well as Karen Armstrong's The Case for God. And I have been reading The Anti-Federalist Papers in short bits and bites for a few weeks now. On my list is also a re-read of Nechama Tec's history, Defiance: The Story of the Beilski Partisans.

So many books, so little time! But truly, books keep me sane during this insanely busy time.

Continental Congress: The Voting Begins

CONTINENTAL CONGRESS 2009:
TO BE CONVENED TO ESTABLISH A CLEAR AND STRONG RECORD BY THE FREE PEOPLE OF AMERICA IN SUPPORT AND DEFENSE OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, THE
CONSTITUTION AND THE BILL OF RIGHTS, AS GIVEN BY THE FOUNDING FATHERS AND AS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE GOVERNING AND RULING LAW OF OUR LAND:

On October 10, 2009, The People of America, in each of the fifty states and the
District of Columbia, will be invited to choose representative delegates in the first true
Constitutionally-correct election held in America since machines began to count votes
in secret. The purpose of this election is to secure three upstanding citizens from
each state with a proven passion for the Constitution, in order to convene a national
assembly of The People on November 9, 2009 -- a modern-day Continental Congress.

On what basis can such an undertaking be necessary or even effective?

Since readers of this article may be inclined to jump to conclusions based on uncanny
parallels that exist between the events of our day and those that inspired our Founding
Fathers to convene in 1774, let us first say what Continental Congress 2009 is not:

CC2009 is convened on the directives clearly stated in our governing documents.
This is no attempt to take over our government, but rather a gigantic effort to present
the collective deliberations and voices of The People among us who know their Rights
and Desire Freedom for generations to come, who can speak loudly enough to awaken
and change the course of events which threaten to destroy our Nation now.

CC2009 is not about changing our Constitution. To the contrary, it will be an
impassioned plea for our citizens to awaken from our nightmarish detour, that we
might return to course, that the existing Constitution might no longer be ignored or
abused, but truly fulfilled. The facts put before viewers will show we are in dire straits
without It and we will suffer greatly until we return our obedience to It.

CC2009 has no underlying agenda, no secret or devious plan to take over a
government or spawn a revolution that breeds violence or further decay. In many
ways, this Congress will provide a constructive channel through which increasingly
angry and frustrated energies of our citizens can be focused towards a True Solution.

The energy back of CC2009 is simply the absolute knowing that things cannot
continue as they are without a determined, effective, meaningful, peaceful attempt to
reverse them. We are, after all, descendents of those for whom complacency or
hopelessness was not an option.

The combined energies of those who attend, coming from every state in brotherhood
and good will, will showcase the facts of the hour and make earnest appeals for
America to remain True to its Founding Principles via worldwide broadcast . . . [to read the rest, click through to Why Continental Congress 2009

In each state, there is walk-in and/or mail-in voting for delegates. The mail-in voting has already started. Walk-in voting will occur on October 10, 2009 between 10 AM and 4 PM local time. For information on voting, go to Continental Congress 2009 and click through to your state. Links for delegate nominee information and voting instructions can be found on each page. If your state has a mail-in option, be aware that the envelope must be post-marked on or before October 10, 2009.

The Constitution is the highest law of the land and it restricts and regulates the power of the federal government. Our system of goverment has been under attack for over 100 years, and the Constitution is mainly honored in the breech inside the Beltway of Washington, D.C. All of our public servants have taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. This includes our political leaders, our judges and attorneys at the bar, our military personnel, our sheriffs and peace officers. In the United States, we do not pledge fealty to any president, judge, or Congress. As citizens, we do not pledge our allegiance to a flag or a party or a place. We pledge our oath to the Constitution.

I am running for a delegate position from New Mexico. I am able to attend the whole Congress, and I am in a position to take care of myself and help fellow New Mexico delegates go to St. Charles for the event. I am a second generation libertarian, and have experience with a number of political causes and campaigns in New Mexico. I am also a scholar, and one who has brought my philosophy of liberty and individual rights to my work, which can make for a lonely stand on today's university campus. I am able to consider ideas thoughtfully, and although I am passionate about the cause of Liberty, I am able to temper that passion with considered logic and thought. I have asserted my liberty and exercised my rights in by making difficult decisions, including that of homeschooling of my son. I have a particular interest in working in my state to assert the tenth amendment, thus requiring to federal government to restrict itself to those powers enumerated in the Constitution.

If you are a resident of New Mexico, I humbly ask you to vote for me, along with two others, to represent you at the Continental Congress. If you have questions or concerns to discuss with me, please feel free to contact me through this blog or through the contact information given at our New Mexico state page.

If you live in another state, please go to your state's page at http://www.cc2009.com/ , read about your delegate nominees, contact them with your questions and concerns. There you will also find voting instructions for all options offered in your state.

Please vote. The mail-in ballots must be postmarked by Oct. 10, 2009. Please do not wait until the last minute! To vote you must be able to declare that you are an adult resident of your state. You do not have to be registered to vote with your county clerk. CC 2009 is not an election for any political public office. WTP has its own registration process.

This weekend, at the NMPA Fall Leadership retreat that I have been working so hard to arrange, I was asked to read the Declaration of Independence. In light of the times our country is facing today, I read these words with particular emphasis and emotion:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government.

Prudence indeed does dictate that it is NOT the purpose of the Continental Congress to alter our present form of government.

It is rather, the purpose of those who gather there and those who send them, to submit the facts that demonstrate that the Constitution has been ignored and trampled upon by those who wish to reduce the people of the United States to absolute despotism, and that this has been progressing for a great deal of time.

It is the purpose of the Continental Congress to submit to a candid world the documented appeals for Redress of Grievances, from 1994 until now, that have been brought to all three branches of our federal government. Petitions that all three branches of government have met with further injury to the People.

It is the purpose of the Continental Congress to consider the proper next step for a Free People in light of the repeated injury; next step(s) that will restore the Constitutional Republic and protect the Liberty and the individual rights that have been handed down to us and that we wish to bequeath to our children.

At the retreat, I also heard a defintion of the word "patriot" read. A Patriot, the speaker said, is someone who loves, supports and defends his/her country with devotion. Loves. supports and defends her country. Not her political party. Not a particular president. Not a particular policy.

Our founders loved their country--a country not even born yet--enough to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. And these were not just empty words. Consider what they gave up because nothing was worth more to them than their Liberty. They were Patriots. As were these men who died on the Green at Lexington, on April 19, 1775.

Are you a Patriot? Prove it.

Choose and support delegates who will represent you at CC 2009.

Yom Kippur: The Persistence of Memory

"Remember to blot out the name of Amalek

from under the heavens. Do not forget."

--Deuteronomy 25:19, my translation

"Without Jews there is no Jewish G-d.

If we leave this world

the light will go out in Your tent.

Since Abraham knew you in a cloud,

You have burned in every Jewish face,

You have glowed in every Jewish eye,

And we made You in our image."

--Gates of Repentence: The Reform Machzor, Martyrology,

from the Yom Kippur Afternoon Service, p.436-7

"And now survivors stammer, their words are haunted.

Behind their words: silence . . .

What pains were taken to save cathedrals,

museums, monuments from destruction . . .

and in the camps and streets of Europe,

mother and father and child lay dying,

and many looked away."

--ibid., p. 438

For the sin of silence,

For the sin of indifference,

For the secret complicity of the neutral.

For the closing of borders,

For the washing of hands . . .

For all that was done.

For all that was not done.

Let there be no forgetfulness before the Throne of Glory.

Let there be remembrance within the human heart . . .

--Gates of Repentence, Martyrology Vidui, p. 439

NOTE: This blog entry was written in response to a confluence of recent experience: Yom Kippur and the Afternoon Service, the reading of a book, Why Are Jews Liberal? by Norman Podhoretz, and most especially from difficult conversations regarding the book and far more, with The Assistant Village Idiot (AVI), who performed the mitzvah of being an Ezer K'negged (an oppositional helper), although I expect he does not know what that is, and he may not particularly like the role. This is a personal view, shaped by experience and the holiness of memory, and as such it may be difficult for my Christian readers to understand or accept. Understand that I am not talking about individuals here, but about how the intertwining of experience and memory of Europe shape the ideas and attitudes of Jews in North America.

Our Yom Kippur was quiet and peaceful, a day of welcome rest as well as reflection. I always enjoy the quiet hour under the sycamore trees by the religious school lawn, spent holding hands with the Engineering Geek, as the leaves dance in the slant of autumn sunlight. Yom Kippur is a Shabbat Shabbaton, a Sabbath of Sabbaths of rest and peace, when we put aside all of the distractions of doing in order to pause, to pray and to be.

After that hour, we move back to the Sanctuary, with that particular Yom Kippur honeyed slowness, the preserving of energy, that sense of time-out-of-time that pervades the fasting body and the quiet mind. Time moves differently as we move into that service of memory and mourning that starts with the singing of these words, the melody of which is a cry:

Elie Zion v'areha k'mo b'zirei-ah . . .

For Zion and her cities I mourn like a mother in her anguish,

like a woman who mourns the husband of her youth.

I mourn the exile of G-d's servants, makers of the sweet melody;

their blood poured out like Zion's streams.

For Jews, the persistence of memory is very powerful, for we do not have a heaven or a hell; death is the end of life and living, and the holiness of memory is how those we loved in life live on. For a little while, at least, "we are their earth."

And so we recall it all. And this is done during the Afternoon Service, when we remember it all: Yom Kippur at the time of the second temple; the depredations of the Romans who killed the Ten Rabbis, thinking they could extinguish nascent Judaism; the destruction of Askenaz during the Crusades and Sepharad during the Inquistion. We remember the battered synagogues, the arguments of scholars, the quiet joy of Jewish domestic life; we remember the expulsions, and the rack, the burning of the Talmud, and the burnings at the stake, in Paris, in Lincoln, in Italy and Spain, and even in Mexico City. And we remember the Shoah, where the bodies of six million Jews, the good and the bad, were turned to smoke over the skies of Christian Europe. And we remember those who did and those who did not do; and we remember the not insignificant number of those who tried to help.

This year, we remembered also the words of Bibi Netanyahu, said with quiet dignity before the United Nations:

"Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries. But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?
A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state. What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!"

--Text of Bibi Netanyahu Speech at the United Nations, New York, 24 September 2009. Retrieved from FLAME.

What is the purpose of this memory?

There are those who would like us to forget. Some out of desire for power over us, like the present illegal ruler of Iran. Some out of a desire to see themselves and their own as wholly good, even though they hang on to ideas that are capable of creating great evil. Or perhaps they do not yet know how to disentagle the good ideas from the bad. I understand this. For me too, memories of the bad deeds of others like me can bring up an illegitimate shame, making it hard to look at the deeds plainly and thus understand that they stem from the ideas that I must reconsider. And yet, if I do not do so, and admit that some of my ideas are wrong, then I will be party to the repetition of that evil. And the consequences are evil, regardless of my intentions.

There are those who love their own truth so passionately that they cannot bear to contemplate that some of the ideas it promulgated have have led directly to the destruction of European Jewry, and not once, but many times.

There are those who love their religion so much that they evade the reality that all human institutions can slide from a wrong belief to an evil action, from personal faith to public force. And in so doing, in refusing to root out the bad ideas,the mean characterizations, the movement from arrogance ("we have the truth and want only to save them") to destruction ("and therefore it is right and holy to 'persuade' them with force"), they set up the same drama of murder and suffering again and again.

Why do we remember?

Storing and retrieving memory takes a great deal of physical energy.

It takes even more psychic energy. But the payoff for all of that expensive energy is survival.

Animals remember and animals learn. They do this in order that they and their offspring might live.

Why do we remember?

Human beings have brought learning and memory to a very high level. We learn from experience in order to protect ourselves, and we pass on those memories in order to protect the lives and the happiness of our children. And for human beings, shared memory among a people and down the generations, leads to a diversity of identity. Experience shapes who we are, what we consider to be important; experience shapes our future choices.

What we choose to remember and what we choose to forget may also create misunderstandings between people with different histories.

This is particularly true when one person or group has decided to forget something that another is compelled to remember.

In the persistence of memory, certain sights, sounds, and even words bring to the surface different memories and ideas for one than for another, all due to the differential of experience between them.

An example: Here are some words from AVI:

"It is not only evangelicals who believe in persuasion in religion, of course, but we are particularly known for it. And particularly despised for it. The irritation, even deep insult, that people feel when we attempt to persuade, is not perceived as connected to the stunning newness of the American experience. Such reliance on persuasion rather than fiat is so natural to Americans now that they believe it is the natural state of affairs. They consider it some vast inconvenience and intrusion when others try to convince them. They no longer remember the alternatives were far worse." (From the blog entry Why Do You Side with Them Instead of Us?)

From AVI's point of view (as best as I can discern it--see below), the newness of the American experience, and the desire to persuade rather than force their viewpoints on others, gives Evangelicals the sanction to try to convert Jews. And just as I don't understand how he could not realize how this is an irritation and a deep insult to Jews (and others), so he does not understand why we should be irritated and deeply insulted. AVI himself points out that most Evangelicals skip over the middle of Christian history in Europe, and therefore they do not understand how perilously close European Jewry came to being exterminated, not once by many times. By Christians*. And I cannot imagine how it would be not to know this fact; and for this fact not to be a central motivation in my life. It is really, really hard to put oneself in the shoes of not knowing something that one knows. This, too, is the glory and the consequence of human memory.

So where AVI sees and loves the Evangelical Christian's desire to talk about their messiah to me, I see and hate the desire to cause the loss by conversion to an already decimated people. Where he sees a world of Christians, growing by leaps and bounds, I see a world without Jews, where "the light in [our] tent will go out." AVI says to me something like: I want to share what I consider to be a great gift with you. And I respond: Clean up your own house first before you tell me that I am doomed to hell because I'm a Jew. This idea is dangerous. (And it is from the perspective of Jewish history in Europe, which is not at all the same experience as Christian history in Europe). And so it goes. I remember things that AVI chooses to forget. He relies upon the American experience that Jews do not wholly trust*.

*I will not discuss AVI's argument here that these people were not Christians, nor the argument that the Nazis, many of whom were secular Christians--that is imbued with the cultural prejudices of European Christianity towards Jews even if not church goers--were not Christians. I consider this kind of hair-splitting to be an evasion of the power of those bad ideas to inform evil actions.

**I remember suggesting to my rabbi that in arguing on behalf of gays that they have the same contractual rights as any other individuals have, we should stand firmly on the individual rights claimed in the Declaration of Independence and protected by the Constitution. He did not think this was a good idea. He did not wholly trust those principles, precisely because the Evangelicals used the first document to claim that this is a "Christian" nation. He did not even trust the non-establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment. The argument he crafted was completely divorced from our founding documents and therefore incomprehensible to Evangelicals. They, in turn, could not understand the rabbi's concern about the individual rights of gays, nor that the rabbi despises their position because the idea promotes the persecution and murders of members of a despised minority, in the same way that Jews were persecuted and murdered in Europe.

Now consider that last line of AVIs again:

"They no longer remember the alternatives were far worse."

When I first read it, I "heard" it this way: Those Jews don't remember that if they don't allow us to persuade them, we will become frustrated enough to force them.

I read it that way because I know the history of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, and what Martin Luther did. At first, he urged his new Lutherans to be kind and loving and persuasive to the Jews of Germany. He was certain that this would naturally cause them to see his truth, and that they would convert. His disappointment when this did not happen led to persecution and murder of the Jewries in Lutheran areas. In his polemical study of the roots of Nazism, Freethinker Jim Walker writes:

"No apologist can claim that Martin Luther bore his anti-Jewishness out of youthful naivete', uneducation, or out of unfounded Christianity. On the contrary, Luther in his youth expressed a great optimism about Jewish conversion to Christianity. But in his later years, Luther began to realize that the Jews would not convert to his wishes. His anti-Jewishness grew slowly over time. His logic came not from science or reason, but rather from Scripture and his Faith. His "On the Jews and Their Lies" shows remarkable study into the Bible and fanatical biblical reasoning. Luther, at age 60 wrote this dangerous "little" book at the prime of his maturity, and in full knowledge in support of his beliefs and Christianity.
Few people today realize that Luther wrote 'On the Jews and Their Lies.' (He also wrote such works like "Against the Sabbatarians.") Freethinkers should become aware of the anti-Semitic influence that Luther has brought on the world. His vehement attack on Jews and his powerful influence on the believers of the Germans has brought a new hypothesis to mind: that the Jewish holocaust, and indeed, the eliminationist form of anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany may not have occurred without the influence from Luther's book "On the Jews and Their Lies."

--From Martin Luther's Dirty Little Book: On the Jews and their Lies, A Precusor to Nazism, by Jim Walker. Retrieved from Nobeliefs.com.

(It is important to realize that Luther did not invent Christian anti-Judaism, but that with this book, he proved it was not just a Roman Catholic problem in the West. There is also here and elsewhere a great deal of evidence for a direct line of thought between Luther and the Nazi eliminationist ideology. Roman Catholic thought had previously forbidden the destruction of European Jewry on the grounds that they should rather be kept in misery to demonstrate the consequences of not accepting the deity of Jesus, although Bishops often turned a blind eye to murder and mayhem against Jewish communities. But Luther, in his break from the Catholic Church, actively promulagated the outright elimination of Jews from Europe. This 'dirty little book" was quoted extensively in Nazi literature and propaganda).

Upon re-reading the whole of what AVI said, however, I believe that AVI did not intend that. Rather, the antecedent to the phrase "they don't remember . . ." implies that the "they" AVI is talking about is "Americans." Americans, not Jews. Perhaps what AVI meant was: "Americans don't remember that this idea of persuasion is unique to America and that the European version was force." Perhaps AVI doesn't even know about Martin Luther's rabid anti-Judaism and his contribution to Nazi ideology.

But I don't know that for sure, and cannot until it is confirmed by AVI one way or another. And I still hear the implied threat in those words. A threat whose implications come from the persistence of my memory. From the experience that has been handed down to me by my teachers. The experience that says "beware of Christians who befriend you in order to convert you. When you decline, they will force you or kill you."

And there are those who do not want us to remember.

Whether out of the desire to destroy us or out of love and the desire to make us over in the image of their own traditions, it does not really matter to us. The consequences are the same. A world without Jews.

Rather, through the persistence of memory, I see a world of diverse belief and tradition. A world in which all of us recognize that the initiation of force against others by individuals for any reason is immoral and will lead to great evil. Even the minimal force applied by Evangelicals in their sometimes overzealous attempts to publically persuade, in the schools and the military academies, and (as once happened to me), in a Starbucks--an inconsiderate interruption of a study session among Jewish women.

And at the very least, if Evangelicals want Jews to side with them on certain issues of mutual interest, it would help if they would educate themselves on who we are as Jews, and what our memory and experience call us to do and to refuse to do, and to be and refuse to be. They could stop the evasion, learn their own history, and develop compassion for those who have very bad memories about Christianity.

On Yom Kippur we remembered. Yesterday, in reading AVIs blog, I remember why we remember. Last night, I had my nightmare again. The one with the round-faced European Jewish children behind a veil of smoke and ashes; the sound of gunfire and rough commands in German. "Juden, raus!"

Such is the persistence of memory.

"Who will dream You?

Who will remember You?

Who deny You?

Who yearn for You?

Who, on a lonely bridge,

Will leave You--in order to return?"

--The Gates of Repentence, Yom Kippur Afternoon Service, p. 437.

The Philosophy of Liberty Video

I am going into an intense weekend and a full week after that. But here is something to think about until I post again: The Philosophy of Liberty from our own Retake Congress YouTube site. And the music is great, too!

"Everything you need to know about life, liberty, property, ethics, human interaction, commerce, trade, and government wrapped in one nice little 8 minute presentation."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." --Declaration of Independence, 1776

Jews with Guns II: IDF Psalm 121

L'Shanah Tova from the IDF and Carolyn Glick of the Jerusalem Post.
Glick says:

" . . .it occurred to me that the people of Israel don't really care about Goldstone and the UN and all their libels against our sons, and daughters, our brothers and sisters, husbands and wives in the IDF. We aren't seeking their approval or permission. We know who we are and we know who our soldiers are. "



Text of Psalm 121:

A Song of the Ascents:
I will lift my eyes to the mountains,
from whence cometh my help.
My help is from the Eternal,
maker of the heavens and the earth.
G-d will not allow your foot to slip,
your Guardian does not slumber;
Behold, the Guardian of Israel
neither slumbers nor sleeps.
G-d is your Guardian,
G-d is the shade at your right hand.
By day the sun will not harm you,
nor the moon by night.
G-d will protect you from every evil,
G-d will guard your soul.
G-d will guard your going out and your coming in.
From this time to forever.