- K-Cups; House Brand #36
- Stovetop Espresso Maker
- #2 Pencils which I buy each year
- Papermate stick pens, which did not write last year
- Spiral Notebook purchased each year
- Chex Mix
- Tastykakes
We got a mixed message from Torah this summer in the story of Pinchas. He engaged in a very questionable act of vigilante violence at the end of one of the few weekly Torah portions left as a cliff hanger. We return the following shabbos, or really the following Monday, to learn the consequences. He gets rewarded. His reward confirms the merit of his boldeness or of his violence. Good outcome=Good Decision that caused it. We get another message on Mitzvot. We do them irrespective of reward. Performance is worthy in its own right. Outcome=Luck. We can do good deeds for the right reason, but no reward comes our way.
As my recent spate of unfavorable decisions, over which I think I have little control, reaches my mail or email, or synagogue experience, my mind shifts between bad luck and performance lapses. It's hard to tell. When I am successful, which I have been more often than not, I give myself credit for my diligence, forgetting that decisions in my favor by Admissions Committees and employers and my fiance all had their element of luck, though never pure luck. And my disappointments, if chalked up to ill fortune, lose their chance at reversal. In many ways, failure now becomes the foundation for immense success. It all depends on how it gets pursued.
His Op-Ed; My Thoughts
https://forward.com/opinion/756508/what-democrats-fighting-trump-should-learn-from-germany-hitler/
In the final years of the Weimar Republic, the German left was paralyzed by ideological divisions, by a failure to persuade broad swathes of the populace that it was capable of guiding the country out of its economic and domestic turmoil, and to neutralize the snowballing popular appeal of a budding despot — Adolf Hitler.
Weimar had power. If Germany was not functioning, they owned that non-function.
Today, the American left faces a similarly perilous moment. Since Donald Trump began his second term in office, the Democratic Party — shut out of power in both chambers of Congress — has been flailing around in search of ways to thwart his dismantling of the country’s democratic norms. And with the MAGA-fied Congressional Republicans marching in lock-step with Trump, he has repeatedly outmaneuvered the fractured Democrats.
The real problem, though, is they were voted out nationally for cause. Donald Trump was not an unknown, as Hitler was by comparison in 1933. American voters replace failing leaders with some frequency in our history. We have had states seceed to protect their cultural norm of slavery. We could have elected at that time a President who would compromise on this or a President who would say Good Riddance and salvage some of the prosperity of cotton diplomatically with a prototype of two two-state solution. Lincoln and Roosevelt could only sell virtue if they could also sell competence. Bill Clinton sold competence. Trump's message, right or wrong, is that of a problem solver in a time when problems are large.
We’ve seen a version of this movie before, in a different setting, with different players, and with different social, economic and cultural conditions. Parallels are inexact, of course. But there are so many similarities that they warrant an examination of why the German left — and in particular the Social Democratic Party — failed to stop Hitler.Let’s go back to November 1918, with Germany losing World War I, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicating, revolutionary upheaval erupting across the land, the leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD) taking over governance and trying to launch Germany’s first democracy under tumultuous circumstances.
From the founding of the Weimar Republic until its death in 1933, the German left was fatally divided over the nation’s direction. The SPD was the strongest force on the German left. The German Communist Party also had mass appeal, but favored revolution and a Bolshevist-style regime over cooperating with the SPD.
The SPD itself was riddled with dissension — torn between pragmatic reformism and revolutionary Marxism. A faction called the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) split from the mainstream Social Democrats over ideological disagreements.a
And today we have a party divide nationally, though not state by state. AOC is not a statewide official. The Berne and Sen. Warren are, but they function as two of a hundred. Neither occupies their Governor's Mansion. Democratic Governors, functioning in states where people have graduate degrees, work at the forefront of commerce, medical care, and technology, have to sell competence and stability. They fix roads, make sure there are enough insured patients to get their doctors paid, have adequate public transit. And they have predictable failures that generate resentment, the DEI, their campuses, the decline of institutions of social engagement.
In early November, 1918, Independent Socialist Kurt Eisner led a revolution in Munich, overthrowing the Bavarian monarchy and proclaiming the People’s State of Bavaria. Eisner was assassinated on Feb. 21, 1919 by a far-right nationalist. Radical left-wing factions, including anarchists and communists, seized the moment and proclaimed the Bavarian Soviet Republic. This regime was short-lived, crushed within weeks by radical-right Freikorps paramilitaries and forces loyal to the central government in Berlin.
We have a certain failure of Democratic Presidents to restore order, even when public sentiment runs in that direction. It takes a lot of forms from Vietnam/Racial violent gatherings, torching cars after a sports event, going to the Walgreens for cough syrup and finding it locked and the first two scarce salespeople do not have the key. This year, Jewish students chased across the college quad with bullhorns while College Deans and the invariably Democratic elected officials of those states and municipalities let it happen. People fundamentally want to live peacefully. It is the other folks who are troublemakers.
The chaos, bloodshed and terror during the brief reign of the Bavarian Soviet Republic traumatized many Germans, weakened the left, and strengthened conservatives, monarchists, and far-right extremists like the German Workers’ Party, soon to become the National Socialist German Workers’ Party — the Nazis.
They sold themselves as problem solvers. And people with the strength to bring order and prosperity about.
Although Germany’s political landscape was badly splintered, the mainstream Social Democrats — backed by trade unions — were a prominent player through most of the life of the Weimar Republic, leading, or being a part of coalition governments. Their power began to wane as the Communists gained traction on the left, while nationalist and conservative factions surged on the right. The Social Democrats’ decision to support Centrist Chancellor Heinrich BrĂ¼ning — despite his use of emergency decrees — was seen by many as a betrayal of democratic principles, further eroding their credibility. By the time Hitler was appointed chancellor in January 1933, the SPD was politically isolated, morally exhausted, and institutionally sidelined.
Nearly a century later, the echoes of Weimar reverberate in Washington. Since Trump began his second term, America has witnessed a spree of executive overreach that has undermined democracy: mass pardons for convicted insurrectionists, an assault on birthright citizenship, extortionist tactics against higher education, law firms and the press, and a gutting of civil protections.
The question remains, can you sell virtue when competence lags?
Democrats, still reeling from Kamala Harris’s narrow defeat and locked out of Congressional power, have struggled to mount a coherent resistance. There have been bright moments: Sen. Cory Booker’s marathon floor speech galvanized activists, however briefly, and state attorneys general have eked out temporary restraining orders against some of Trump’s more brazen orders. But the party’s broader response has lacked urgency and imagination. Sometimes the Democrats’ flailing for relevance produces moments too easy to lampoon, like Chuck Schumer’s boast that he had used a Senate rule to strip the title “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” from Trump’s $3.3 trillion spending package.
It really wasn't a narrow defeat. The margin was small in each swing state and nationally. However, that small margin was maintained very consistently in each jurisdiction. A plurality of 50% + 1 is an electoral approval for the majority to implement what they proposed. My Jewish world conveys many illusions of its success. I get newsletters from local Chabad, some of the dearest people around, showing photos of their events. The pictures look like SRO crowds. When I attend a few, there are maybe a dozen participants. My shul, a non-egal place, promotes women's participation. Women read four verse aliyot, men read the others, but they create a promotional illusion of parity that isn't accurate but reinforces belief in gender equality. Nor does it advance the capacity of some very talented women. Cory Booker and Schumer had their fifteen minutes, or 24h of fame, but were fundamentally ineffectual people who put themselves on display.
Much like their Weimar counterparts, many of today’s Democrats appear trapped in the belief that the system’s norms will somehow correct themselves. But Trump flouts the norms on a daily basis, leaving the Democrats clutching a rulebook that has already been shredded by America’s 47th president.
One can argue that many norms were shredded before that. Moreover, they are replaced with new norms. One need only read an etiquette book from the 1960s and one from the 1990's, often revisions of the same code by the same author. Early etiquette books did not have chapters on safe sex, which partner supplies the condom, or when female or minority employees should be assertive. The emergence of anti-Semitism from the Sewer might be Trump 45, it's eruption on elite campuses certainly is not. New taboos of microagressions correlate a lot more with social media and phone technology than they do with who holds office. Abe Foxman, probably my favorite Jewish advocate, used to insist on taking advantage of the rules, whatever they happened to be.
The Democratic Party needs to restore its connection with the masses, shed its aura of elitism, learn how to speak in a language that resonates beyond Beltway bubbles. An anti-Trump resistance movement has spread across the land over the past few months. Why aren’t prominent Democratic politicians at the front of these marches? Of course, there could be security concerns. So why not come up with some novel, creative ways to embed leading Democrats directly in the beating heart of resistance?
This one I almost agree with, though they may be handicapped. I think one historical element that needs an answer is why the Red Wave predicted in 2022 did not happen, but came with consistency, if not a vengeance, two years later. The elected officials were already in place. The culture of identity politics, many would say pandering, had been established. Closure of hourly earners from the American Dream had been settled. Yet in 2020, Americans voted a Democratic majority and largely held it amid the culture wars already in place. What changed is that they didn't own the problems once they were given their governing mandate. They didn't just have elites, not that it mattered. There is no greater collection of elitists than the current Cabinet. What the voters said, I think, is that they botched their chance to govern fairly. They protected a President, who I met many times as my Senator and admired personally, even though he wasn't up to the task. By 2024, Harvard and Columbia where my parents wanted to send me and where I wanted to direct my kids, had corrupted liberal education outside the quantitative sciences. Their supporters sought vengeance for petty verbal comments they perceived as infractions, such as saying there were only two genders or equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. In short, my party governed poorly when given the chance. Neither side has virtue to promote. Instead, they are asking voters to judge who can bring us closer to the life we'd like to have. A few human sacrifices along the way? The pro-Hamas and pro-Ayatollah crowd, part of a Democratic base as the primary voters in NYC exposed, don't seem put off by the concept of Human Sacrifice to meet desired ends.
Here’s an idea: a rebirth of whistlestop tours. Recruit fifteen or so Democrats — potential presidential candidates plus a roster of other politicians and even non-politicians who are admired by Americans and have shown an ability to connect with people on a gut level. Have them board a train that would be christened the “Democracy Express.”
All depends on who gets a ticket to ride. Needless to say, every losing candidate had high profile endorsements.
Just imagine this list of passengers aboard the “Democracy Express,” going from city to city, town to town across the land, talking about issues that resonate with all Americans: JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, Cory Booker plus proven crowd draws like Bernie Sanders and AOC. Add a couple of fresh faces, like Jon Ossoff, the young senator from Georgia, and Becca Balint, Vermont’s representative in the U.S. House. Make a show of a united front — with baseball caps and T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Democracy Express” handed out at every stop.
What this exaggerates is the reality of how few statesmen we have in the public arena. Princess Di engaged the world, in large part because the future King, or his shadchan, opted for a charming lady too young to have a searchable past. All the people on that train carry their assailable, searchable baggage. I think the public abhors entitlement, as the 2016 results reflected. The Dems have done much better with people like Princess Di, who come as unknown talents. Jimmy Who, that nice Senator from Illinois. I'd replace a couple of People of Entitlement with people of widespread respect. Gov. Schwartznegger, Abe Foxman, NIH director Collins, maybe my own Senator Coons, Sen. Kelly, Gov. Stein, David Brooks or Bret Stephens from the NYT. They need to restore respectability and sell wisdom, which still has a market to replace the illusion of virtue, which does not.
And as head of this delegation, why not Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington who made Trump squirm in the front row of a church service by asking that he “have mercy” on LGBTQ+ communities, undocumented immigrants, and others who felt threatened by his policies. In a way, Budde was a founder of the anti-Trump resistance. So she would deserve her own compartment on the “Democracy Express.”
Maybe she would. But so would Rabbi Buchdal or Rabbi Wolpe. Or the Dalai Lama who cannot vote. But you also need people who build their congregations, not just inherit what somebody else created.
Defending democracy requires more than integrity—it demands strategy, daring, imagination, a unity of spirit, and the courage to call authoritarianism by its name.
I'll end my commentary on The Forward's op-ed with something I keep on my whiteboard in my line of sight from my desk chair. It comes from an anthology called Jewish Megatrends. Its editor, Rabbi Sid Schwarz of Clal, distilled his vision of Judaism into four core elements.
At the risk of second guessing educational experts who probably had our interests in mind though with a element of groupthink, I never owned electric tools other than a soldering kit, sander, and a hand drill. Everything else in my basement and garage runs by hand. Saws, hammers, tape measures. I created nothing from its elements, not wood, not metal. I assembled many things that others made: bicycles with instructions written by people of a different native language than mine. A lot of shelves and bookcases. Painting. Quite a lot of that in my young parental, new homeowner years. I glued broken things together, mostly with superglue that also caused fingers to adhere to each other. And to be fair to the Regents, I did master staining and varnishing items I bought with unfinished wood.
Big projects got pros. They never taught us tweens how to fix a faucet that dripped, let alone how to install a disposal unit. Even the smallest electronic installation was worth the electrician's fee to me. Extermination of pests never made it to the NY State curriculum. My guess is the principals objected to bringing experimental roaches into their classrooms, not even live mice for biology labs. It wouldn't even cross my mind to replace a broken window myself.
Meanwhile, those kitchen skills the girls learned, I more than mastered. I can do hand sewing. While I once bought a used sewing machine at a moving sale, I never used it. Yet if I had committed myself to sewing from a pattern using a machine, I'm confident that I could teach myself how to do it. Clothing alterations, even hems, still go to a local tailor.
Now I find myself with a nudgy repair that I should be able to do but don't know how. My house, approaching sixty years of age, lived in by my wife and me for 44 of those years, has held up rather well. A few plumbing leaks, new siding, some mice, replacement of the air conditioner and roof on predictable life spans. Now I find bathroom tiles separating from the floor where it abuts the wall. Not a lot of tiles. Only seven, and I've lost two. One inch tiles. We have cleaners mopping those two floors on alternate weeks. I fear that they will start losing some of the loose tiles.
Like modern handymen, I looked up what to do online, then went to a tile store. Replacements for the two missing tiles will require a larger purchase. Not an exact match but close enough. I looked at my collection of adhesives which I keep together in a first floor closet in a bin. Nothing specifically marked for replacing tile. Internet said apply with Thin Mortar. I went to the tile store to inquire about adhesives. For floor replacement, thin mortar is what the tilers use. This emporium deals with contractors. They sell Thin Mortar in forty pound powder bags. Online tells me that other adhesives may suffice, some in small quantities at Home Depot.
For now, I lifted up the loose ones, seven tiles from one bathroom with two squares unaccounted for, one beige tile from the main bathroom with none unaccounted for. They now sit in a fold-lock sandwich bag in a safe place. Let the cleaners do their next mopping. Glue what I can easily glue back. Try to find a small sheet of off-white one inch tiles to replace the missing two. Perhaps just replace the floor tiling in the smaller bathroom. I have two other floor projects worth doing, so maybe do this one as well.
For now I want it quickly patched. Significant skill not yet needed.
Despite this, as I scroll through the messages that the algorithm concludes might keep me preferentially on their screens instead of Twitter's, I can expect to come across a banner of a couple dozen suggestions to initiate new Facebook friends a few times a day. I scrolled through them. No doubt, others get their banners with my picture, scrolling past without action, much as I do with my list.
If we have a lot of mutual friends, indicated under the photos, they are probably people from HS, as that is where my FB Friends derive. If only one or two, which is most of them, they could be anyone's acquaintance or relative. And many indicated no mutual Friends. Occasionally a public figure appears. My own posts early in the FB longevity, included occasional Likes, even verbal responses, from a few men of professional fame, though not recently. Still, public figures pop up. One recent one, a sleaze of political notoriety, listed a mutual friend. She shares that man's political opinions, but I can attest that she is not personally deplorable.
FB gives the viewer the option of deleting suggested people so that they do not reappear as suggestions, and hopefully my photo gets blocked from their suggested people. This public blight was one of the few that got my deep six. He's not appeared since. There are a few others along the way, people I know locally who I regret forcing to share a communal space. They get the FB request to make their profile disappear from my suggested contacts. There aren't very many of those. It wouldn't really matter, as neither of us would initiate contact with the other.
That leaves me with my ten or so. All fondly remembered from decades past, though for most I am probably closer to them on Social Media than I was in the Ramapo Senior High School building or school bus. And there's a secondary ten, people who used to show up more frequently, people of amiable presence and nimble mind worthy of a few sentences exchange. The FB algorithm has done me a disservice, reducing their frequency on my screen.
While their business model depends on my staring preferentially at their screens, FB has rightly become rationed time. None of my current Semi-Annual initiatives require any Social Media. More accurately, it is destructive to all these intermediate goals. So putting an array of potential Friends expansions that nobody wants really doesn't keep me glued to the screen or the sponsors for any significant duration. I'm content with my hundred or so reconnections from fifteen years back. The ten active, the ten less frequent, and the eighty dormant.
The evening's agenda has two mandated items. Our members must formally approve a slate of officers and the coming year's budget by a majority vote, which usually approaches a unanimous vote. A Nominating Committee recycles the VPs each year since a by-laws amendment eliminated term limits for all officers but the President. Some have twelve years experience. Some have two years experience repeated six times. No new individuals added, though minor shuffling of titles. The budget has become predictable. Figures presented, trends noted. As our membership and dues base declined over maybe twenty years, we live off our accumulated wealth much as the seniors who comprise nearly all our membership do. Mostly an evening for the people who occupy many committees to tell the people either not on committees or blackballed from them how wonderful the past year's experience has been for them and therefore should have been for us. Not all of us agree, and each year there are about five fewer of us.
It starts with a welcome from the President, who has led diligently for his three years. The Rabbi offers some words of Scripture and Talmud. Then a list of activities that he did in his official capacity. Then the President speaks. Then we vote on budget and Board Members. For an organization that declines a little each year since I arrived there in 1997, a defector from someplace else, it would have been better to have the VPs each issue a page of what happened under their watch, attach these statements to the email notice of the meeting, and adjourn for pareve cookies. Instead, we heard recycled projects. A list of Torah and Haftarah readers. We have quite a few. A list of people who performed one or more aliyot or haftarot for the first time would have abbreviated that list considerably. I would still be on it. Education Committee. Ample projects. None created by the VP, who still thinks people will flock to signup sheets. Some things do much better when you invite people. A High Holy Day committee. This is rather complex, but it hasn't changed in either format or participants other than our Rabbi's relative newness. We still have designated women's chairs with signs on them usurped by our all-male choir during their break.
I like numbers. Seeing them. Toying with patterns. Playing with them. Imagining how they might be different. What I saw were committees with names of people attached. Mostly the same people on every committee. One VP had the temerity to tell everyone not on them to step to the plate and get on them. First guy I poked in the ribs, having been blocked from two that interested me by the Dominant Influencers who really don't want smart inquisitive types challenging their agenda or process. They don't need or want no help. One of the roles of titled people, one by which folks in my medical world are judged, is the ability to seek out people who can bring knowledge and insight to make each committee more effective. Two Committees have done that, Security and arguably Ritual, with the Rabbi infusing it with imagination and technical knowledge. The rest of what I witnessed registers as Group Think, that invitation to nod last year's activity with nary a what if we did this instead. Nobody challenges anything. Ways & Means, External Communications: No committee, just honcho delegating, and often less than that.
They expressed a desire to reverse our annual membership decline. You do that best by engaging the people you already have. I think I would ask every chairman who they sought out in the last two years to make their portion of our Congregational programming more effective. It's mostly none. Make them each seek out and invite two. Then have the Rabbi and Membership VP get a list of every man, woman, and child, putting a checkmark next to each committee or organization each contributes to. Some will have so many that they should be asked to choose which ones they want. More will have too few. They were never invited, and a few shooed away. Invite them. And then give the VP who chastised those with too few checks next to their name another deserved poke in the ribs to broaden his understanding.