Will Go Another Time

Day trips usually provide me a needed respite.  I do not schedule them as rewards for tackling more onerous tasks, though perhaps I should.  No, they stand alone as needed recreation.  I'm fortunate to have the resources to leave home for short periods of time.  My car gets me to where I want to go.  My age enables senior discounts, including free use of the SEPTA system within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  My finances are stable.  Spending $100 for a day's recreation will not set my financial position back in a meaningful way.  I enjoy good, or at least fully functional, health as a senior.  No work obligations in retirement, though there are things I have committed myself to accomplish that these days away from home postpone.

I am also fortunate to live close enough to places I might want to visit, which allows me to depart and return on the same day.  New York metro three hours counting either driving or using public transit. A recent trip there went well.   Amish country and Poconos closer than that. I visit Lancaster a few times a year.  NJ across a bridge, one that I mostly cross when my destination requires me to drive through the Garden State.  Downstate Delaware resorts easily accessible by car.  Baltimore sits less than two hours by interstate.  Each has museums, sights to see, local wines or brews to sip, places to experience.  No excuse for not setting aside a day to travel to one of these.

Some contingencies exist.  I dislike driving in downtown traffic or paying through the nose to park my car.  Public transit from where I live to NYC can be some combination of inconvenient if economical and expensive if more user friendly, as I recently learned.  Weather usually gets checked as far in advance as reports become reliable, usually two days.  If I am visiting a place indoors, the rain matters little, unless I have a seven block walk to get from the parking garage or transit stop to get the place I intended to visit.  My wardrobe includes sufficient warm and layering items, so the cold is less of a deterrent.  Seasonal closure of where I'd like to go will change my plans, as it did for a short multiday outing to Long Island a few winters ago.

My default has become Philadelphia, that blend of activity, price, and attractions.  The Pennsylvania Lottery profits had been designated for senior services, including free use of the regional transit system.  Residency in Pennsylvania was not required but travel within it is.  As a result, I drive to the Pennsylvania station nearest my home, about a ten-minute drive, pay $2 parking at the kiosk next to the station, flash my Senior card on a screen outside the loading area, and show it to the conductor after the train has pulled toward the big city.  Not a luxurious ride, nor a scenic one, as residents littered much of the length of this suburban and city track.  Depending on time of travel, unrestricted for seniors, the cars can get crowded.  But I've not encountered any overtly unfriendly conduct from the passengers.  In 45 minutes or so, depending on the chosen destination within the city, I can exit to usually some vast expanse of an indoor mall, then onto the sidewalk.  Transfer to a city subway or bus, also free, mostly goes smoothly, though with one misadventure averted.

I decided last week, a day free of appointments, would be a good day to go.  Onto the station.  Parked car.  Could not get the parking kiosk to accept my credit card.  No matter.  I have their app on my phone.  That did not allow me to pay my $2 either.  By then, the train had pulled within sight of the station.  I gave up and drove home.  My only unsuccessful attempt.

Considering the minimal cost and usually minimal inconvenience, my use of the system has fallen short of what I anticipated when I got my Senior Card.  I should give it another go.  Or maybe drive someplace else.  Getting away for a day periodically still has its personal attraction.

It Shut Down

The New York Times once ran a highly publicized motto.  "You don't have to read it all, but it's nice to know it's all there."  I regarded our local Kosher offerings from my principal grocer much the same way.  I bought most of my meat there, though as empty nesters we eat meat and its leftovers mostly for Shabbos.  Their deli I found too expensive in recent years to make meaningful purchases, though I much appreciated the efforts of its anchor volunteer and supervising rabbi who ensured that real shankbones could be purchased for our Seders each spring.  I once purchased more from their bakery than I do now.  Under the agreement with the local Vaad HaKashrut, all baked products in the store would adhere to direct or indirect rabbinical supervision and carry their logo next to the ingredients on the price labels.  Prices rose, probably not because of the Kosher certification but because paying skilled bakers added to supermarket overhead. This chain has dozens if not hundreds of locations in my region.  When I read their weekly circular, the prices of their baked goods nationwide match the labels that I find at my local branch.

A notice came in my email a week ago.  The supermarket and the Vaad HaKashrut have parted ways, a decision initiated by the supermarket.  Needing some meat for Shabbos dinner, I headed over to purchase it, along with a few other items that this week's newsprint ad brought to my attention.  They still had a section of fresh Kosher meat, though not much selection.  All is processed, packaged, and labeled by major processors, so these do not require local supervision.  I buy what they discount most times, including this.  My choice:  chicken thighs or whole unboned breasts.  Based on price and utility, I now have two chicken breast halves with skin and bones, items of great kitchen versatility to supply two Shabbatot.  My unwillingness to pay full price, and my household's simple meat needs probably contributed to this store's decision to stock their Kosher meat shelves in a minimal way. 

On all errands there I look for my good friend who makes this deli function.  We exchange notes since the last time we chatted, usually a few weeks between personal greetings.  Not only was he not present, the case that contained the Kosher meat and salad products stood empty.  The shelves remained, glass fronts still transparent, but illumination off.  The sign on the countertop announcing that locally certified corned beef and lox could be acquired there had been removed.  While that represented the most obvious change, we still have Kosher consumers in my part of town.  Packaged Jewish products still appeared on adjacent shelving and in the self-serve refrigerator to the right of the deli case.  We would not have to go without commercial herring, lox, kugel, or certified cheese.  Being a sucker for baked products, and a reasonably experienced amateur baker at home, I gravitate to their bakery section.  I will buy donuts and danish and cakes from any bakery, if I know that animal products did not appear in the ingredients or preparation, but I eat those at restaurants or in my car.  At home I like to see the hechsher.

As a routine on my grocery excursions, typically weekly, I search the bakery for bargains.  The market places a wooden slatted shelf near the registers, the last thing a shopper sees before accessing the checkout, with bakery items discounted for clearance.  I can expect six-packs of intermediate sized danish in two varieties, or slices of their high end cakes clear polystyrene clamshell packaging, or day old rye bread in its plastic sleeve.  The local Kosher certification logo no longer appeared on any of those items.

Twenty-one years of partnership between that supermarket and Kosher consumers had reached a partial conclusion, though pre-packaged products of Ashkenazi cuisine still appeared in their expected locations.  History matters.  This relationship started as a personal friendship.  My town had stable enterprises when my wife and I arrived forty-five years ago.  The butcher sold fresh meat, two Kosher delis had served diners for decades, though the patrons had long since moved to different parts of town.  An arrangement had been made with a local Jewish entrepreneur for baked goods, half his diner served non-kosher, but a designated Kosher case enabled fresh challot, bread, and bagels, though not donuts.  Somebody from the Vaad made frequent on-site visits to ensure adequate separation.  Family-owned businesses have life cycles.  Owners retire.  Their children become lawyers and dentists.  As demand for Kosher meat waned, the butcher gave up his shop, changing it to a source of non-Kosher catering, but not before providing dairy platters for my son's bris.  The restaurants closed.  The owner of the challah bakery, always with a line out the door every Friday morning, cashed out.  His suburban location became a Starbucks, while his in-town shop found a pizza chain to take over.  

My own need with a young family was to provide meat.  Our nearest major city's Jewish enclave stood a 45-minute drive northeast.  At the time, it contained a few dedicated Kosher markets offering every variety of Kosher meat.  Locally people debated over which offered the best value.  People tried to pool their orders together to make periodic delivery arrangements economically viable for some of the stores.  I maintained my independence, along with a preference to see what I was purchasing, as well as special sales items.  At six week intervals, I would make the trip.  Often my grade school son joined me for a two hour father-son bond.  I had a sense of what fits in my freezer and how long it will take to use it up.  My wife could expect me to return with a roast, London broil, stew cubes, a slice of beef liver, sometimes a raw tongue, chicken parts of various types, a duck if my daughter's birthday approached.  I found some treasure hunt elements, sweetbreads, pastrami, and premade items already frozen that just needed reheating in the oven.  I did not mind the travel especially with targeted child time.  We ate well in exchange for some inconvenience.

Others cut down their meat consumption or altered their diets to less beef and more Empire frozen poultry. available at some of the supermarkets where many of us shopped.  Perhaps a healthier alternative for many, even if more default than voluntary.  At about the same time, towns with smaller Jewish populations had taken their own initiatives to secure Kosher meat, amid the closure of their local butchers.  Fewer families seemed committed to Kosher.  My Rabbi took such a measure.

He counted among his personal friends the CEO of one of the local markets, a four-store franchise of a larger regional chain.  This parent distributor already served much of metropolitan New York and Philadelphia, offering considerable experience with supplying consumers who maintained Kosher homes.  Rabbi and friend, a stocky fellow of Irish heritage, devised a workable plan.  His individual store in the area of densest local Jewish population, already a megamart, would add three sections for the Kosher folks.  They would begin carrying fresh Kosher meat, with dedicated facilities to make custom cuts and to order special products from approved distributors.  A deli section would be established, one closed on Shabbos, with a single individual to serve the customers at a designated counter.  The bakery would carry only Kosher items including anything prepared on-site.  The Vaad,  the agency that assures Kosher standards are maintained, would offer its seal to any baked goods prepared on site and to any meat processed in the store.  In addition, the distributor would expand the array of prepackaged Kosher meat, cheese, and specialty delicatessen.  In exchange, the Rabbi would promote that store as the place his congregants should designate as their primary grocery store.

I worked magnificently.  The shleps to the Orthodox neighborhood of the next city ended, with only a small sacrifice of meat selection.  Orders for specialty items became available, though my request for a goat for Seder, for which I have a recipe, could not be fulfilled.  Their bakery expanded.  I could get corned beef and sometimes pastrami by the quarter or half pound.  Sliced lox was priced beyond my willingness to purchase, but lox pieces became a common addition to my cart.  This hummed along past the Rabbi's retirement and into the tenure of his successor.  The deli man, an affable Holocaust survivor, became a popular fixture there.  The new Rabbi made provisions to maintain the deli during Passover.

Projects like this depend on dedicated champions, a certain amount of goodwill, and a measure of luck.  It also needs to be profitable for the grocer.  

The first disruption came nationally, not locally.  The largest Kosher distributor, known as Rubashkin, processed Kosher beef from their Iowa facility on a commercial scale.  As a shopper, I could count on a wide selection of cuts at an acceptable price, something I put into my cart on the majority of visits.  They were able to offer this economy through some very questionable business practices, from mistreating immigrants, often illegal labor, cutting safety standards, and improper transfer of funds, leading to the conviction of its CEO.  The operation shut down.  Its replacement could not duplicate variety or price.  As a result, most of my beef purchases required the store to discount by 25% to get it sold before expiration.  The cuts became largely hamburger, stew cubes, and minute steaks, with an occasional brisket for a special occasion.  Poultry fared a little better.  Empire Poultry has been a staple Kosher brand.  Fresh selection usually has skinless, boneless breast halves, whole cut chicken, often uncut whole chicken, often leg quarters.  I can get any of these, make half that week, freeze the other half.  Empire has a frozen basket in the meat section.  Not seen duck in years.  Mostly whole frozen chickens and turkeys. While I've made capon in the days I traveled to the large dedicated butcher, I do not miss not having it.  As a result, the selection enables meals, often quite good meals as basic chicken serves as a culinary blank canvas to be filled in.  No need yet to return to the drivable population center, though perhaps once or twice a year, I'd like to create a deli platter.  Perhaps worth an infrequent drive for that.

While notice of the grocer's disaffiliation with the local Kosher agency appeared abruptly, hints of discontent floated subtly.  Projects of this type depend on champions to make it go, people who avoid discord, people commited to the project's success.  It started just that way.  The founding Rabbi and grocery CEO worked well together.  The employee assigned as manager had an extensive presence in our Jewish community.  Nobody was more likable than that Holocaust survivor who sliced the cold cuts and made Kosher rotisserie chickens for the Shabbos tables every Friday.  The CEO retired.  The elderly deli man had to step down.  The Vaad had a Rabbinical transition that did not affect operations, in fact, it made them more solid in some ways.  Their successors did not do as well.  The on-site anchor, volunteer, was a trusted friend of the certifying rabbi.  A man of autonomy, expertise, and commitment for sure.  Some movers and shakers, including office holders of the Vaad, had their objections.  With the next rabbinical transition, the departing rabbi stayed on as the person offering certification, largely in absentia.  The new Rabbi and People of Influence opted to do their end runs when they could have resolved grievances.  Without an Orthodox Rabbi as the on-site director of Kosher, and with the children of the retired CEO lacking personal friendships other than the man who made the deli and bakery go, the commitment to serving the local Kosher consumers would eventually swoon.

Judaism is ultimately about how you treat people and how you promote cohesion.  That's how it began.  Two men, personal friends, acting as friends, achieving a win-win.  As people transition, some are not treated in the most dignified way.  They carve out their territories.  Supermarket Kosher, less strong than its start, but with exclusions of key people driven by understandable, though often harmful, antagonisms.  Judaism requires that dignified treatment as its core message because outcome depends on it.  When the new deli man, the person who made it go, stepped down for unannounced reasons, the current CEO no longer had loyalty to the local Kosher Committee.  She opted to empty the cases, remove the signs, and change the label makers to remove the local Kosher symbols from the baked goods.

Will another Kosher arrangement return?  It could, but the people who could make it happen may not have the fundamental admiration or trustworthiness needed to achieve this.  Many are scripted by Jewish Leadership Development programs, which promote unity by authority at the expense of autonomy.  They presumptuously label subordinates as people who owe them obedience. Some will be though the best talents often place a high value on their independence. 

Many places have had delivery arrangements for years.  The Kosher butcher of Rochester takes periodic orders to deliver to Syracuse to the east and Buffalo to the west on a schedule.  That could happen.  Our Chabad obtains its meat not from our nearest city, but from an Orthodox center more than twice as far.  Their arrangement works well for them.  The people in my town can expect less convenience.  We will still have Kosher food, even if the periodic schleps to fill freezers resume.  We know how to do this.  But our community will zip along Jewishly as less than it once was or could have remained with less entitled people leading it.

Has Not Gone Well

My first disappointing semester at OLLI. Course selection started in a constrained circumstance. Yom Tovim constituted most of the Tuesdays and Wednesday's for the semester's first half.  Still, acceptance in two attendance restricted classes was greeting with a satisfying nod.  I'd only taken one class in the past to learn a new skill, watercolor.  This had been presented online, which limited personal attention.  At least everyone else sharing the screen also had not done this before, or at least since Art Class as youngsters. Ir lacked the coaching that I would have expected in a live low enrollment class.  This time around, I enrolled in live sessions.  Cartooning and Crocheting/Knitting.

My course selections included a science class, or so I thought.  The world of physical science, my college major, had long since passed me by.  An online course on Thermodynamics entertained me when the DVD professor did his experiments, left me befuddled when the two retired, highly accomplished DuPont scientists did their own explanations.  A live course on The Universe engaged me more, though I could tell that if I had taken this in college, I would be doing a lot of studying in my dorm most evenings.  No exams, the standard for the University's Seniors Program, made this unnecessary but also limited the mental yield to a small fraction of what our expert professor had presented.  Biology seemed more my rightful place, having made a career from what is largely medical applications of biological science.  Evolutionary expressions of modern biology seemed worth a weekly session each Monday afternoon.  Moreover, this would allow me a break between morning and afternoon classes to do other activities on-site, from lunch from my kitchen toted in an insulated bag to a portable office in the form of a cross chest carrier purchased for a previous European vacation.  My fourth live course taught me about National Parks.  The professor prepares the presentations well, has previous series on this very favorably received by me, and engages my mind enough at each session to provoke a question to him.

I selected two online courses as well, each on a Thursday, each running a different half-semester. These reflect a fundamental shift in my state's OLLI program.  Pre-pandemic, the available courses nearly always took place near my home, on the state's northern campus.  The building would crowd with seniors who would stayed for lunch and enrichment lectures.  Quarantine by Covid brought Zoom into the program.  My state's experts on assorted topics had either retired from one of the international conglomerates or from the medical center.  As this was happening, a demographic shift also took place.  People of great accomplishment began retiring in big numbers to the beach towns of my state.  Once sleepy places where I took my kids for four days some summers became the home of retired lawyers, broadcasters, diplomats, some medical experts.  Expertise and willingness to share it relocated a hundred miles from my home.  All available on Zoom.  Much of it in past semesters outstanding.  Thursdays would go to a series of five weeks on my state's contribution to the American Revolution the first half and to an analysis of Justice System snafus the second half.

My initial enthusiasm got mugged by reality quickly.  By the end of Rosh Hashana, just a few sessions into the semester, I wondered what great learning I had sacrificed to attend shul on each Yontif.  My selections left a lot hanging.  Sure, I could count on the National Parks series on Friday mornings. Absolutely worth doing my scheduled treadmill sections a half hour earlier than other days, even at the price of some soreness to follow, not to mention a feeling that I had put myself off schedule.  Biology instructor more than qualified, a retired professor from the State University.  He assigned us a book, which I purchased as a Kindle.   No electronics for me on shabbos or yontif, so I quickly got behind.  Not that it mattered.  He envisioned this class as the free-form senior seminar he used to offer his PhD students.  For a class of senior citizens of diverse backgrounds, many with little science education or experience, the discussions became quickly unstructured.  The sessions lacked a beginning, middle, and end.  My attendance became optional.  The cartooning class has the opportunity to excel.  I have no art background.  As much as I like visiting the grand museums, and I've taken an OLLI art appreciation course, I still depend on my left cerebral hemisphere.  Art classes ended in 8th grade for lack of talent that screamed public disclosure.  I could never draw a cat or a realistic person.  That should have made cartooning attractive, as there are no artistic musts.  In class I like taking my pencils to a sketch book that I purchased for the course.  But people do cartooning professionally.  We delight in the funnies, the wit of what The New Yorker selects for publication, political cartoons that meet or repel our personal notions.  Lecture segments include this history.  They also touch the different landmarks that students must master to get proficient.  Faces, bodies, animals, motion representations, anthropomorphism.  All pertinent, all contributing to the delight that readers feels.  But none of these elements acquire mastery from one week to the next.  I am still toying with faces when the class slides and exercises have moved along to depictions of characters in different types of weather or getting electrocuted, or falling off a cliff. The published cartoonists we seek out spent years honing their craft, mostly with professional instruction and feedback of their work from other masters or editors who decide publication.  I will do what I can from week to week.  Maybe I would find the class sessions more gratifying if I practiced one or two nights at home.

Knitting/crocheting went less well.  Nearly everyone who occupies the assigned room at the assigned a time already has a personal portfolio.  I purchased some yarn and a crochet needle set.  With the help of YouTube, I got the hang of a slip knot to start and a basic crochet loop stitch.  This creates a linear length of loops.  To go from one dimension to two, I needed help.  A substitute instructor got me on track, at least transiently.  The regular instructor seemed too occupied tending to the experience knitters who use this assigned time and place as protected time to allot to their work. Not a place for novices.  Enough of a disappointment to stop attending.  YouTube will get me started when I am ready.

The online sessions served their purpose.  The Revolutionary War class invited guests, who I found mediocre.  In fairness, Yom Kippur fell on Thursday and I drove to a destination three hundred miles west on another Thursday.  So I only signed on to half the classes.  Justice gone wrong just had its first session.  I left after 15 minutes, judging it a woke echo chamber.  I try again in fairness to the instructor who seems to have worked hard assembling a complex subject, though probably missing some key points, which I could question if the second session resembles the first.

So, halfway through, the enthusiasm for acceptance into courses of limited attendance soon gave way to the disappointment of being there.  As a real University student, I would have taken my obligation for studying content and practicing skills more seriously.  I still can with half the semester remaining.  But impressions of content and experience come quickly.  It seems hard to reverse initial impressions.  And my own receptiveness to what comes my way needs a tweak, perhaps.  Other than knitting, which I'm convinced is a lost cause, I'll do my best to get more out of the semester's second half.

Formats

Mixed review from last fall's Jewish education series sponsored by the local JCC but really the creation of my congregational Rabbi.  They offered a few short series, usually conducted by a Rabbi of each congregation.  Typically, a student could choose one of two sessions occurring simultaneously.  I enrolled in three classes, each Rabbi giving two sessions on his topic.  I knew all, but only two as lecturers.  They did not disappoint.  The third reminded me more like sitting through Hebrew School.  I attended the first class but not the second.  To the community's credit, people chose their classes based on the topic.  The attendance did not seem top-heavy with each Rabbi's own congregants.  The alternative classes taught by non-rabbis each came from my own congregation.  Decent topics. 

The fall roster just appeared. I will pass on this session.  They offer two sessions each night, one early, one late.  Each person gives only one session.  The student has virtually no choice of what to attend in any session.  There are no serial classes where a topic is broken down over several weeks.  Again, the three lay presenters, one with cooking, one with dance, the third with Yiddish, all come from my shul.  All present one session.  The format reminds me of a medical grand rounds series with a different speaker and topic each week, largely chosen by the availability of a speaker.  Some things are better taught as a series.

As much as I might enjoy watching two dear ladies make strudel, I can and have followed a recipe for this, doing reasonably well.  It would be better to have five consecutive cooking sessions with a different theme each week.  In single class the capable Yiddish instructor could teach me what a Shmuck is.  I think I can identify them. Language needs more repetition.  And Dance as a single class does not do well if attended by people of different skill levels.  More importantly, my community has the good fortune to possess knowledgeable, capable people who have allegiance to each of our local congregations.  My own congregation seems very inbred.  This is one more example.  It would have been better for our rabbi to ask each of his colleagues to nominate a congregant to give 3-5 sessions.

For the rabbis, each doing a stand-alone hour, the curriculum has no identifiable theme.  A variety of topics to be heard one time.  Seven of them spread over five weeks.  I'm sure each will give his or her full preparation to the assigned topic.   But as a project, it has no unity, nor does it offer alternatives that students can select for their session.

It was not always that way.  Many years ago, the JCC sponsored an extraordinary weekly or biweekly educational night.  Each speaker prepared four or five classes on a variety of topics.  I developed a fondness for Jewish demography taught by a state university professor.  I learned about the Apocrypha from the Rabbi of a different congregation, attended a fascinating course by an assistant rabbi on how various authors or public officials related to Jews in their official capacity.  A lawyer gave a class comparing Jewish and American law.  The talent floats around.  It has to be captured.

Education has been central to Jewish culture.  I follow three weekly Parsha series each cycle.  The Torah goes in sequence.  That's the right format.  There is a place for a series of stand-alone presentations, much like Grand Rounds or Case of the Week had established a revered place in my medical world.  But over the course of a year or two, all major topics have their assigned time.  This Jewish series seems more random, based on showcasing people more than upgrading students.

It's only $18 to enroll, a bargain even if only one or two sessions get attended.  But even at that nominal sum, the deficiencies of format capture more of my attention than any of its content.  While I'll pass on this program this fall, I can and should and likely will allocate every Thursday evening for which sessions are scheduled, to upgrade my Jewish mind in my own way.

Failed Reunion

Cancelled.  Not enough subscribers.

A few folks thought 55 years from high school graduation would make a good occasion to assemble once more.  An event, which I did not attend, took place in Florida five years earlier.  Fifty years often reflects a milestone for many things.  I attended my fiftieth college reunion with my wife, a member of the same class.  I hardly knew anyone in attendance, though a class of 1800 students studying programs that often did not intersect leaves friendships a mere fraction of the total.  Lecture classes of 150, a dorm of five dozen that changes each fall, and shared renewable activities with twenty not all graduating the same year leaves little enduring friendships.

High school created a much different exposure.  Our school buses ran the same neighborhood route for twelve years, mostly with the same neighbors.  The New York State Regents set class requirements that would keep us in the same English, Math, Shop, and Art classes for consecutive years.  Homerooms reflected the surname alphabet.  That remained constant.  Eventually, we would disperse by more stratified AP courses, math levels, and renewable extracurriculars, only to reassemble as a cohesive group on the school bus and homeroom each morning.  When reunions came, 15, 25, 30, 40, 50, you recognized everyone by name irrespective of the career paths and geographic destinies that we each had.  While I could drive to each, I attended with an overnight stay, others would fly significant distances and reserve hotel space at considerable expense.

#50 which materialized and #55 which did not required travel to Florida, home of the principal organizers and many others, perhaps outnumbering those who still lived in proximity to the school building we attended.  If a crossover point occurred, I think it #40.  That year, indeed a few months preceding our gathering, the Sunday NY Times, then more widely respected than it has since become, ran a feature on the growing popularity of Facebook.  Within weeks, many of us acquired accounts, invited classmates to become Facebook Friends, and updated with each other where our adult lives had taken us.  Familiarity generated curiosity.  I'd like to see my reacquainted Friends in person one more time.  The event, held a short drive from where we all once lived, attracted considerable attendance.  Nostalgia Meter measurements varied.  Curiosity about what became of the people I once knew seemed more pervasive.  In fact, at the event, I sat at a table with people I only knew tangentially as a teen, much like I gravitate to tables of strangers when I attend banquets professionally or for my Jewish community.  Mingling, though, at buffet or bar or hallway, directed my curiosity to the new FB Friends.  The organizers had engaged a professional firm to seek out our whereabouts, something done halfway well, and arrange the buffet, music, and event space.  

I had a decent time meeting people, but recognized myself as the outlier I was then.   It served me adequately my mostly productive adult years.  I drove to the area early to attend Sabbath services at a Conservative synagogue in the area the enduring successor to my Bar Mitzvah congregation.  That one, where many classmates also had Bnai Mitzvah, had closed due to membership attrition a few years earlier.  I was never into popular music or disco dance.  A hora or other Bar Mitzvah music with a dance circle would have added to my experience.  I was too timid to request this of the DJ.  My kosher diet, affirmed my last two years of high school, had me nibbling very selectively from the buffet.  But I had pleasant updates with many people.  It's the last I attended.

Fifty years arrived.  A usual landmark.  Many of us had retired.  A fair number had passed away before their three score and ten, which remained two years off.  Instead of hiring a consulting firm, the organizers, those people more memorable as cheerleaders than as analytical scholars, thought they could identify enough people through Facebook contacts.  They thought they could get better attendance in Florida than where we had attended school.  I asked a FB friend, an organizer of this, about his committee's budget.  They had no budget.  I took out my old graduation program and did an individual search for one column of names.  Google retrieved most of them.  When I suggested to an organizer that they divide the list and do this to identify whereabouts, I got a snarky reply that they didn't want my input.  And my intellect which very likely exceeds hers was not valued by that crowd then either.  They had an event, attendance list posted, far from representative of our 431 grads than it could have been.  Feedback from a real friend from Florida who attended.  She thought the In Memoriam list was the highlight.  I did not ask if they supplemented Rolling Stones and Beach Boys of our era with Bar Mitzvah music, also of that era if we had younger brothers.

Year 55 proposal came as a grassroots effort from a couple of women, now grandmothers, who thought we should relive old times once more.  Again Florida, as that's where the organizers live.  I briefly considered going.  The best flight would come from Avelo Airlines, the only commercial carrier from my nearest regional airport.  Good fare.  To keep it a good fare, they engaged in a more lucrative contract with ICE to deport captives to wherever the administration thinks they should be transported to.  Needless to say, I have misgivings about funding this, even if indirectly.  My personal deal breaker came later.  I asked an organizer about options for observing shabbos and kosher.  I got the platform version of shoulder shrug.  When I host guests, which I have, I default to inconveniencing myself to being helpful to them.  My guess is that Boca Raton has shuls and kosher sources of food for a weekend.  Others in my loop, which is not the organizer's loop then or now, opted out for a variety of reasons.  Insufficient down payments ended the project.

Might it have succeeded?  A FB Friend, one I was close to since Cub Scouts who succeeded grandly in several phases of his adult life, offered a FB suggestion that got traction from others.  He noted that while many if not most of us have migrated from our Rockland County origins, the incentive to return includes the environment along with the people of decades past.  I would also challenge the grassroots nature of the event.  High School divided us in a serious way.  We rode school buses with the same neighbors long before that.  Those on the bus route began to find our way, the paths to our adulthoods.  Some prioritized their grades and which college would accept them.  Others liked sports or music.  The two who joined the circus had their origins there.  Most were Jewish, at least on my bus route and classes, but we expressed this identity very differently.  A choral group had appeared on national TV.  Those members became another cohort.  Our class had ethnic minority representation and a geographic catchment that was less prosperous.  I did not see those kids at any of the reunions that I attended, though as I looked up people in my random list, at least one had achieved an honorable military career that took him around the world.  Every successful project needs a champion or two.  People imaging what they might like to pursue is an honorable undertaking.  They also need a committee that is representative of our class' composition.  An event created in an Echo Chamber, whether a reunion or too many of my synagogue happenings, performs less well than they could have, even if the organizers congratulate each other the day after.  We should know that by our senior years.  We've all had to make decisions on children's weddings, Christmas gatherings at work, whose input is needed to make a  committee sparkle.  Our disagreeable Uncle Loouie still gets invited.  The nebish at work gets escorted to the bar by the CEO at the holiday party.  That annoying INTJ who we can count on thinking of something nobody else can has a place on the committee.  Fifty years into our adult lives, that is how the most successful of us lived.  The classmate who cannot afford the reunion hotel at $160 a night can be found a guest room with a local empty nester for a night or two. I viewed the promotions on FB more as an event to be implemented than one of scattered relations or memories to be reassembled.

While this event did not materialize, we still have the people.  Facebook, which reconnected us in 2009, no longer serves that purpose effectively.  In its place, now as 70-somethings, we have fewer attachments despite the emergence of technology that once promised to expand that.  We no longer host bar mitzvahs and weddings to invite those friends from the past.  We do have more unassigned time and efficient transportation that has taken many, if not most of us, across the USA and beyond.  The organizers were too selective in who they tried to capture for what should have been a less selective net.  But our lifelong friends are not like that.  They are particular for a reason.  And we have the ability to keep those personal attachments afloat.

Electronics Off

For Yom Kippur, I kept the electronics off, as I usually do.  No cell phone.  No laptop.  Not even big screen TV where by now I watch mostly YouTube with a small diversion for selected football, college and Eagles.  YK came out Wednesday to Thursday nights this year.  I had made a commitment to myself to leave the social media off through Sukkot, beginning a few days before.  Due to a glitch I had to return to FB momentarily, only to learn of the passing of friend's mother, a former neighbor and good friend of my mother, who had lived to advanced years.  I made a comment, sent a donation, then turned it off.  Rarely, postings from FB have significance.  They come randomly enough to make me reconsider my absolute hiatus.  Shofar blown, quick snack at synagogue to break the fast, then a more substantial feeding at home.  I opted not to check the electronics other than TV until the next morning.  After more consideration, FB, Reddit, and Twitter to stay fallow.

The following morning, I caught up on email.  Zero messages that needed attention.  Some notices from entities that I subscribe to, a single non-urgent message directed at me personally.  A lot of deletes from places trying to sell me something.  A few from places wanting donations.  Those organizations all had merit.  Some will get a share of my mandatory IRA withdrawal when I do it next month.  A few that should have been forwarded to phishing or spam, but not knowing for sure, they just got deleted.

Not looking at my email for Shabbos and yontif should resume as usual practice, as it once was.  By the afternoon past Yom Kippur, FB was already sending me notices of why I ought to sign back on.  All of it A Friend Posted.  Nada notification of a response to something I posted.  I understand that their financial fortunes depend on subscribers or other forms of suckers reading their personal feeds.  Almost none have the importance of a death notice.  People who really need to reach me have email.  Some think they have texting, though not true.  My text feeds are cluttered with Friends of Obama needing another $50.  Bringing their party, my party in a much more selected form, to even more profound ignominy does not benefit from my financial support.  I have doctors' offices texting me even though I asked on their intake forms not to be notified that way.  The only legitimate purpose for texting me seems to be to my confirm identity when dealing with one of my financial or government institutions, those where I have initiated the contact.

A number of prominent people have given themselves a weekly Sabbath from their smartphones.  Catherine Price wrote about this in her book on controlling omnivailability.  The late Charlie Kirk, for all the divergence of world view that I have with him, though I had not heard of him prior to his assassination, understood the value of a weekly cell phone break.  He chose the Jewish Sabbath.  I don't know why.  I do know why I would choose my Shabbos to set the electronics aside.  And our Festivals last two days.  When they span Thursday-Friday or Sunday-Monday, those electronics-free days extend to three days.  I've done this before.  FOMO never a social media concern.  When I turn email back on, I can expect enticements from FB in my messages.  Three day suspension is not long enough.  Better to commit to weeks.  At least on Reddit r/judaism I am helpful to people and on r/Jewish Cooking I learn things.  FB still has friends that I value sharing some element of their lives.  Twitter in its current form only has destructive value.

Now Jewish year 5786.  I do not do resolutions, either Jewish or secular calendar transitions.  Never more cheerful or tolerant, despite my best intent.  Some things I can do, including control of the electronics.  As yom tovim cluster, keeping the cell phone and email dormant seems part of the observance, along with shabbos.  Social media needs a broader assessment of control, probably in the form of rationing.  Leaving these platforms without access to respect the Jewish Holy Days seems easy.  Fitting them in appropriate places in a setting of limited but not zero merit takes a little more thought.

My YK experience, though, affirms the benefits of defined shut-downs.

Driving Through Neighborhoods

My town doesn't really have neighborhoods.  There are areas with expensive homes, others with marginal housing and crime.  We have a shell of a downtown.  But homogeneity rules.  At one time Jews lived in one place, Italians in another, African Americans of all incomes largely together.  We have largely dispersed, with enclaves notable primarily for housing prices.  Our major employers have succeeded in creating ethnically diverse payrolls.  We do not even have a dominant university where young adults cluster.

Visiting family in Pittsburgh a few times, taking a tour by bus, and now driving around to get to different places around town, my impression is very different.  My family lives in a once run down area being revitalized, but still with a ways to go. The main street, where I have walked and driven, contains small businesses.  After a meal out, I counted places to eat over each of three blocks we walked returning to the house.  The tally:  5-8-4.  All these places are small, no chain franchises.  Each restaurateur must have a dream of creating something from scratch.  None seemed to be magnet eateries attracting guests citywide.

Pittsburgh has lots of schools.  The closest to where I stay is Duquesne, a Jesuit university which I visited by walking tour.  Not an enormous number of kids out.  I went to the bookstore where I purchased a souvenir mug.  Then I walked past classrooms, their relatively new Osteopathic Medical School and affiliated hospitals, probably some dorms and an athletic complex.  Squeezed in were a city fire station and an aging red brick church of uncertain denomination.

After returning to my hosts, I had an event to attend in Squirrel Hill.  This section remains predominantly Jewish, both by residents and by institutions.  My route took me past three large synagogues, including the Tree of Life Building, where a massacre during worship occurred in 2018.  It had construction fencing around it.  The other two congregations have massive buildings, cramped grounds.  In Squirrel Hill, I drove past two Jewish Day Schools, a Mikvah, two start-up Orthodox synagogues, but no hangouts.  Housing appeared mostly single-family with two-story masonry, many fewer driveways than I would have expected, and some light shopping at its perimeter.  I encountered almost no pedestrians.

My hosts recommended lunch in a section known as Shadyside.  Restaurants and specialty shops without national franchises re-emerged.  Few driveways but a city parking facility nearby, as street parking took me a few blocks to find.  The place we visited for lunch has a specialty cuisine.  At noontime most tables were filled by young adults.  I found the housing more mixed.  Apartment buildings and houses subdivided for tenants seemed to dominate.  The buildings seemed worn but rehabbed.  Few yards.  Essentially no litter.  And no pedestrians until arriving near the two business streets.

Driving to my host's house took us through a few more places.  Carlow University I'd not heard of before but we drove past an impressive campus center.  The University of Pittsburgh is well-known.  They have a spiring tower at its center but hoards of young people in hurried transit at noontime on a Friday.  Big football game there the next day.  A little farther took us past the synagogue we would attend on Sabbath, the current home of Tree of Life.  It had a cathedral appearance.  As a Reform Temple, its members had no reason to walk from home on the Sabbath but those living within easily walking distance occupied mansions.

For Sunday, my hosts wanted to shop for baby clothes at a thrift store.  Getting there from their South Side neighborhood brought us through two tunnels and up hills with tricky driving curves.  The housing seems more spread out, likely a place where members of the United Steelworkers lived.

Downtown I saw only from the car, but tall buildings marked its place.

No doubt, places I did not drive past would house people like my wife and me.  House with two-car garage and driveway.  They must be there, maybe outside the city limits.

Pittsburgh's leaders seem to have thought their future through a little better than most city officials.  I don't even know where the steelworks once stood.  Perhaps even a few still do.  Yet in the absence of a primary industry, I saw elements of commerce, hi-tech, a food industry, medical centers to match others across America.  Places seemed crowded, some quite worn, but with little neglect.  A Jewish enclave remains recognizably Jewish.  A major and secondary universities teem with students.  Big Box stores did not clutter the city landscape.  A city of character attracting people of character.