ReportingThem

For all the rise in Anti-Semitism that has emerged over a few years gradually and over a few months more rapidly, I had not personally encountered any other than more honorable people retweeting a comment made somewhere on their Twitter screens for the purpose of criticizing what they had seen.  I got my first two yesterday.  They occurred on Reddit's r/Judaism, each just a phrase or a sentence.  Neither had any comments.  I selected the Report option, clicked the Hate icon, then submit.  My email contained two messages from u/reddit that the umpire, which I assume is what u/ designates, agreed that company posting policy had been violated.

Neither of these posts had received any comments from the users who engage in r/judaism.  And since the platform provides neutral names to its users to minimize any personal identification, I could not know anything about the poster.  Could be Islamic, could be American Nazi, could just be a conflict entrepreneur.

In the early days of AOL chat, there were Jewish virtual conversations that I would enter.  We would type about our synagogue, what we are making for Seder, where we are from.  Invariably Abdul would sign in, deface our screens with some anti-Israel or even anti-Jewish slogan, likely for the purpose of disruption.  AOL provided an Ignore option which any of us could click to exclude Abdul, but we would all have to exercise that choice.  If anyone wanted to retort Abdul, where invariably some of the people connected to that chat room at the time would, he would stay and post more slogans or individual demeaning comments.  We had no mechanism for AOL to deny him access.

Reddit, and some of the other platforms, can deny access.  But to do that requires another consumer of the service taking the initiative to make a report, then a process from which an employee of the platform makes a decision on whether company standards have been violated.  Not a lot different than our highways where people can drive in all sorts of hazardous ways, limited only by getting caught, something that happens a relatively small fraction of the time.  Our police have tried to randomize this with sobriety check roadblocks, radar traps, red light photo cameras.  The IRS monitors tax cheats with random audits.  But our electronic platforms really don't seem to have a better mechanism than depending on annoyed legitimate users turning in troublesome posters as individuals.  It's not a good way to clean up the enjoyment these platforms are intended to generate.  Or maybe they do have automated screening devices.  Or maybe they pay people to log onto places that have hateful posters for their version of the random audit.  Whatever the mechanism, it does not seem to be as sophisticated as it should be.

Planning for Guests

Each half year I try to host guests for dinner three times.  Some are easy:  Seder, sukkah, Thanksgiving.  Since Seder and Thanksgiving are for my household, I do not count them, but still work on traditional menus and elegant presentation.  Some occasions are semi-random:  Shabbat Pesach, Shavuot.  Others truly random.  For Festivals, the occasion dictates much of the menu.  Thanksgiving turkey, something with sweet potato, something with cranberries.  Seder has its ritual requirements, shabbos Pesach dietary limitations that invite ingenuity, or at least variations from other shabbos dinners.  Shavuot dairy

Shabbos gives complete flexibility.

I start with a nine square grid:

1. Motzi, generally challah for a Jewish occasion
2. First course: can be either an appetizer or soup.  Both for Thanksgiving and Seder, one on other occasions
3. Salad: avoid bean and potato salads, usually fresh vegetable based
4. Dressing if not integral to the salad recipe
5. Entrée: Meat mostly.  And something I wouldn't ordinarily make for myself
6. Starch:  I happen to have a fondness for kugel
7. Vegetable: what's on sale that week, simply prepared
8. Dessert:  Most often baked
9. Beverage:  wine more often than not

Challah recipes are mostly variants of each other.  They will vary by number of eggs and by sweetness.  The kneading also drives the final product.  I start early in the morning, so the first rise is underway by the time I need to leave the house.

Wine is most often white, purchased from a place with an enormous selection.  I set a price limit, then choose the one with the most intriguing name or label design.  Never, or almost never, buy the same brand more than once.

All else needs exploration.  I've collected cookbooks of various types for decades, creating a large collection.  And I used to browse the public library collection in advance of guests.  The internet has made much of this obsolete.  I can search by course, by ingredient, by individual food mavens.  For dessert I can make something with phyllo, though it has gotten unreasonably expensive.  More often a nut torte or an apple cake or maybe a honey cake.  Lots of variations.  

The entrée is almost always poultry, chicken for its versatility, turkey for its simplicity.  Kosher beef has gotten expensive and choice rarely goes beyond beef cubes or ground beef.  Whole chicken can be roasted.  Chicken parts can be prepared all sorts of ways.  Kugel can have rice, matzoh, noodles, or potatoes as its base.  These are all held together by eggs and liquid.  Some can be made sweet, others better left a bit tangy.  Salads are usually simple:  Cucumbers with onion, tomato based salads, pepper based salads.  I stay away from those potato or bean based.  And dressing is a blend of acid and oil.

Soups have great versatility.  Many are of regional origin with adds to the menu.  They keep for subsequent meals.  I've made fish soups, vegetable soups, cold gazpacho in tomato season, chicken soup with the requisite matzoh balls, grain based soups.  All work well as starters.

Over about two weeks I get the grid filled out.  Then I write all the ingredients on loose-leaf paper one dish at a time.  Then on another piece of loose-leaf paper, I write down all the individual ingredients and amounts as some items appear on more than one recipe.  I print each recipe if not already in one of my books.  Then I go through my pantry, marking what I already have in sufficient amount and what needs a purchase.  Non-perishables are added a few days before, perishables two days before.  The day before, all recipes displayed on dining room table and all non-refrigerated ingredients placed adjacent to their recipe.

The morning of arrival begins at about 7AM with creating and kneading the challah dough.  I find that hand kneading yields a better final texture than a dough hook.  It then goes into an oiled bowl to be placed on the dining room table for its first rise.  Next, treadmill, then OLLI classes or steer clear of kitchen until noon.  Dessert next, as this keeps all day, and there will be competition for the oven later with the kugel, chicken, and challah.  The afternoon anticipates a completion time.  Salads keep, so that gets made while other things cook.  A vegetable, other than roast beets, takes minutes.  When I get home from class, I punch down the dough, take a small ceremonial challah portion, braid two loaves and let them rise for about 45 minutes, then into the oven.  And assemble the kugel, chop what is needed for the soup, cut the salad ingredients, and prepare the chicken for either oven or stovetop.

All made about an hour before invitation time.  Set table to look like shabbos.  Clean table cloth.  Kiddush cups, stemmed wine cups, five piece utensils at each plate, cloth napkins.  Challah board with cover, sterling challah knife obtained years ago from a Hasidic shop on an infrequent visit to my hometown.  Usually four places, occasionally one or two more.  Always ample food.  And all served in dishes intended for serving.  A Challah tray with dedicated cover, soup in a white porcelain tureen, kugel unmolded onto a plate as is cake, entrée and vegetable on a platter.  A hint of elegance that people would not otherwise do for themselves.

It's an effort.  A protracted effort.  A gratifying effort.  It taps my imagination.  It exercises my executive skills:  planning, organizing, following through on individual steps, coordinating competing uses for oven, stovetop, and appliances, acquisition of ingredients, selecting utensils.  It challenges my energy.  In the end, it alleviates some of my post-retirement loneliness.  People come for conversation and enjoyment.  My efforts fulfill that.

Blocks of Time

What might I be doing right now?  And for how long before something gives?  That might be attention span if I am reading, legs if I am exercising, competition from something else that I should be doing or might prefer to do.  

If I not only commit myself to rising from bed at 7AM and not return to bed until 10PM, but really keep those hours, there should be more than enough hours to complete all but one of my SMART goals for this semi-annual project cycle.  My Space should sparkle.  Closets should serve their optimal purposes.  I can write and submit for others to read what my mind processes.  I can entertain guests.  Reading quotas can get done.  Fifteen hours every day should enable that.

It once did.  Except it is not really fifteen hours of focus on the twelve initiatives.  It is a measure of fatigue that arises before 10PM.  If I want to work on something at a coffee shop, I need to get there and back and order the coffee.  None of my twelve SMART goals other than some travel destinations really require me to leave my house.  But I do leave my house, as my car is my freedom.  None of the twelve projects make any significant progress while I am in transit.

Instead, I think a better approach would be to allocate specific blocks of those fifteen daily hours, with priority going to the ones I will make excuses not to do, primarily matching the contents of my mind and imagination with my keyboard sessions.  Or my efforts to upgrade my house or my relationships with a timer.

And start today.

Valentine's Dinner

My half anniversary falls on Valentine's Day.  I've always treated it as a special day, despite who it is named after.  Its foundation is universal.

I make a special dinner.  Never go out.  This is my time to do something special for my wife.  There is always a card, sometimes with a cat theme, sometimes one discounted of little special meaning.  I buy wine for dinner, this year a Spanish red.  Menu planning starts a week or two in advance.  Some years milchig, which affords me flexibility with dessert.  My wife would choose tiramisu, but commercial kosher tiramisu can be hard to find.  For some reason, lady fingers rarely have kosher certification so I would have to make my own. Mascarpone cheese does carry a hechsher.  I have tried to make it, but this is one of those efforts where the commercial sources have a big advantage over the home baker.  This year, I made fleishig.  Honeycake for dessert, a simple recipe.  I had three mostly used plastic jars of crystallized honey which I gently simmered until I could pour it.  The total came just shy of what the recipe called for so I topped it off.  Honeycake can have all sorts of additives:  raisins and nuts are the most common.  I used chopped walnuts.  And the spices vary a lot.  Some have orange in the form of juice or zest.  Mine uses coffee, freshly brewed in my fleishig cone.

I found a vegan vegetable soup recipe worth trying.  Chopped vegetables.  sauté some.  Add others.  Will use bullion instead of broth.  It gets an immersion blender session.  Had some coconut milk that I can add.  Not much in the way of spices, though.  Had a corned beef in a vacuum package that's been in the freezer forever.  I thought it was precooked, so all I had to do was steam the slices.  Not so.  It is raw corned beef.  I've made my own from flat brisket and curing salt many times.  At the end it gets boiled a few hours in a pot with an onion, carrot, celery, and some peppercorns.  I have sourdough bread and pita.  Roasting a beet is easy.  It takes about an hour and a half.  And since I found kasha on sale, I'll make kasha varnishkes.  Making it takes a few steps:  coating the grains with an egg, then cooking the egg, boiling seasoned water to which the coated grains are added, sautéing half an onion to add at the end, boiling a handful of bow tie pasta to add at the end.  Only the beet requires an oven, but I may have to juggle some stove burners. Or cook things in shifts.  

In the end, it's one of those days when my organizing skills get challenged to the joy of somebody else.

Inclement Weather

My area is part of a storm sandwich.  Schools closed, or at least officials very concerned to the south.  Closures already announced to the north and real concern along the coastal cities to the northeast.  I never revived my snow blower, hand shoveling two minor accumulations last month.  And this time I can expect a lot of rain, or so the official prediction.  I looked out the window, however, to find a coating of snow.  Not a lot, but more than the zero the weather radar anticipated.  I've not heard from OLLI.  It must be a dilemma for them, as they function on-site in three locations, all part of that sandwich pattern, and conduct a lot of remote courses.  And the people who attend, and teach, are all seniors, some with mobility or steadiness concerns.  Parking lots need to be cleared, surfaces coated to make them less slippery irrespective of the accumulation.  The campus has an enormous number of handicap designated parking spaces to reflect the needs of those in attendance.  The main parking lot requires a minor uphill walk to get to the classes and the secondary lot a longer, steeper return from classes.  It makes for a difficult decision by the people who run the place.  No word yet.  

It's a treadmill day.  One with the time shifted earlier to allow me to make it to my 9AM class.  I will exercise like I need to, then reassess this morning's travel.

New Schedule

First week of this semester's Osher Institute.  Have been off about 7 weeks. Previous semester only one in-person 9AM class.  I requested seven classes this semester, all 7 first half, 5 second half. Despite overwhelming registration, the computer algorithm found a place for me in all seven.  And six meet in person.  Every day except Wednesday, I have a 9AM on-site starting time.  On Thursday afternoon I have a gap followed by a second class from 12:45 to 2PM the first five weeks.  That makes for some adaptations on my part.  Allowing for traffic, the drive in each direction plus parking and walking to the entrance comes to about 25 minutes, so it does not pay to add another full round trip between classes on Thursdays.  And my scheduled exercise times run 8:15-8:45 two days of three.

Some decisions needed to be made.  I moved exercise to 7:35 on the scheduled mornings of 9AM classes.  Did that on Monday and Thursday, cutting speed and duration a little on Monday, keeping speed but cutting three minutes of duration on Thursday.  I performed adequately, but definitely not my customary rhythm.  It made my legs sore.  It made me eager for an afternoon snooze that morning coffee could not offset.  And it put me to bed earlier than Sleep Hygiene standards would recommend.

And there are nutritional concerns.  While off, I made myself coffee in the Keurig machine each morning, took my morning pills, typed on the computer, made some more coffee, made a calorie decision on the second trip downstairs.  With 9AM classes, the second trip downstairs is out the door.  Some quick first downstairs initiatives still squeeze in easily.  Water plants on Tuesdays and Fridays, retrieve the newspaper from the end of the driveway, finish as many dishes as will fit in the rack.  Then bring coffee upstairs.  The treadmill days impose an uncomfortable deadline.  If I start the session at 7:35 or so, I can go back upstairs in time to get dressed for class, then make a second cup of coffee in a travel mug to sip during my first class.

On Thursdays, I also need to make lunch, as I am on site from arrival a little before 9 until just after 2PM.  Sandwich, some vegetables, a dessert of some type, an herb tea bag. The University contracted with a caterer to sell lunch. While I think it is important that those in attendance support the project, my kosher limitations and the prices of what I am willing to eat are sufficient deterrents.  I found a backpack from a previous Endocrine Society Annual Meeting that accommodates my plastic writing portfolio, laptop, earphones, a pocket for a tape recorder, and an insulated lunch kit, while I carry the insulated mug separately to sip coffee in the morning.  

A week's experience with this has created a needed learning curve.  Morning adaptations seem about right, but I pay a price in fatigue and productivity by late afternoon.  I am optimistic that this is ordinary adaptation, much like would happen at the end of intercession or on returning from a two-week work vacation in the past.  I need to be a more rigid at not taking advantage of the proximity of my bed when I am tired.  I have a recliner in My Space.  And I need to use a timer to keep me on focus for projects that I undertake despite fatigue.  Things seem to fall into place when I do.

There is a one week spring intercession after six weeks of classes.  I have some travel plans that also entail some morning attention to exercise and nutrition, with some recreation thrown in.  It would help to have this guided by a successfully implemented class schedule that can continue during vacation and resume seamlessly when classes resume the following week.

Redirecting

In anticipation of my monthly meeting of my Representative District's monthly Committee Meeting, I sent the chairman a message of withdrawal.  The activity wasn't me, it never achieved what I hoped it would.

My involvement began with a different district whose activities I greatly enjoyed being a part of.  I got to meet my legislative representatives, finding each thoughtful and personable.  When I commented to them, they commented back.  Scheduled meetings were electronic, as the pandemic was still in its active stage, but with precautions, we were able to meet in person on occasion in a reception type setting.  And the officials were always there.  They were invariably gregarious in their own ways, interactive with me.  I got to chat with other members of the group, finding out a little about them.  Nobody gathered to pitch their personal agendas.

Our Constitution requires a formal census every ten years, which has become the Zero Year of each decade.  So in 2020, the inhabitants of America were counted with reasonable accuracy given the enormity of the project.  People were assigned to their categories, primarily by principal residence.  From that, our state legislators created new districts for US Congress and state legislators.  My district's boundaries were shifted in the process.  That delightful man who displaced my own personal friend in the last primary would no longer be my state representative but the state senator would continue.  Party Committees were by representative district.  The path of least resistance would be to shift my neighborhood's committee representatives to the district of their new representative.  Nobody contested my seat, making me a presence on Zoom the first Monday night of each month when the Committee met.  A year or so later, I had occasion to meet a few at a backyard reception that one of the other people also displaced from my committee hosted, but it wasn't the same as the gatherings of our prior district.  No elected officials.  No restriction of guests to Committee members and their households.  There were some interesting people, most notable to me, a teenager doing her Mormon missionary assignment.  She told me a bit about what they do and how they do it.

The Zoom sessions, however, lacked anything creative and next to nothing interactive, until the end.  Our state rep, around whom the committee was created, appeared on Zoom one time to defend votes he had taken that his district's voters would likely disapprove.  This district spans two senatorial districts.  The Senator from the other district attended a few times.  I found her capable and likable.  My Senator, who I already knew was even more capable, came only one time, and that at my suggestion to the Chair that she be invited, as the majority of our Representative District is in her Senatorial District.  We had some statewide elected officials take their turn.  The State Treasurer made the best impression.  The Attorney General I'd wonder about.  And the County Rep came regularly to update us on things that, if they matter at all, never really change from one monthly Zoom screen to the next.  And I got placed on a phone squad, where I lasted ten minutes of my two hour assignment.

Eventually, as we begin a year with real primaries, two guys on Zoom basically tanked any interest I had on staying on.  A newcomer, a progressive, the kind that made the other party have a real chance at taking over as an enduring national majority, submitted a resolution asking our Representative Committee to endorse his resolution sponsored by a Rep. I politically abhor, one sponsored by scripted anti-Semites know as The Squad, that we as a Committee call for a cease fire in Gaza whose militants thought it would bring them cheer and kavod to massacre whoever they could bring into their path. Despite the large number of Israelis killed, I did not personally know any of them, but I do personally know citizens called up abruptly by the Israeli Defense Forces to show that raids of this type will have some very negative consequences.  And I did know personally the Doctor killed in the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre.  Expressions of any type that we can intimidate Jews with anticipation of violence against them is not at all OK.  It is transformative.  Irving Kristol, a convert from New Deal and 1950s Democrat to the forefront of neo-conservatism, once quipped that a neocon was a liberal who had been mugged by reality.  I became an October 8 Democrat, fully in conformity with all of my statewide officials and the President, who I met many times as Senator.  Policy is run by our elected officials and the experts they appoint.  Our own Washington contingent did not sign on with this.  It is just not a Committee agenda item.  Moreover, Tel Aviv and my Representative District are pretty nice places for people to live.  North St. Louis, the district of this guy's legislative hero, a district adjacent to one where I, and a generation later my son, once lived, and Gaza are not.  Neither has the kind of diligent, tolerant, productive community that our Committee should identify with and preserve. Too many casualties in Gaza, agreed, but a predictable consequence of the leadership.  And North St. Louis could use its own cease-fire, the gun violence center that has decimated the city where I once lived.  And as I discuss my views and my experience on this, it is clear that he and his supporter have zippo knowledge of history, zippo appreciation of who his preferred legislator actually is, and zippo appreciation of what our Committee's purpose is.

I'm still a Democrat, though an October 8 Jewish democrat whose synagogue now has a police officer in a marked city police van situated in the parking lot to chase these guys away when they come by.  The prominent neocons of public stature are no longer Democrats, but still decent people who keep their distance from the MAGA rot that we see on TV.  But the Democrats have their own rot, and I saw some of it at my committee, though not by men of the neocon's intellect.  

George Packer of The Atlantic divided the American electorate into quadrants.  Voting Republican:  Free America, those libertarians who want less regulation, and Real America, those working people who should be democrats, and maybe once were, flipped to the GOP as their livelihoods were made less secure by people who wore ties to work who gave too much of the rewards of their labor to people of entitlement who didn't work.  And on my side, the Democrats.  Smart America, which is me and the statewide officials in my state, indeed my part of America.  We live in places like I live, or in a nice place in Paris, Vancouver, or Jerusalem if we ever decided we wanted to live someplace else.  We spent our time with our homework, took our lumps with equanimity, went to college, got experiences living with people we didn't like, so as doctors and lawyers we understood that we had a certain amount of obligation to people who annoyed us.  We are probably the last of those four quadrants not intent on squashing our enemies, let alone being the slave to our enemy who forces a response.  We have it good, and would like people who don't have it as well to have their chance to elevate their own position.  In that sense, we may be the last descendants of FDR, or maybe even Henry Ford, who made his fortune by also wanting everyone to have their chance at a consumer upgrade.  That's a long way from Gaza or North St. Louis.  The final quadrant also votes Democratic, is and should be represented on our Committee and in our legislators.  Packer labels them Just America.  No question, there are people who struggle as much as because of who they are as because of their own choices when their opportunities come and go.  But resentment dominates over correction.  That is where the two Democratic quadrants separate.  Their enemy is anyone to be blamed for their circumstances and the response is a Gazan response, get even with all those people who made Tel Aviv or Beverly Hills sparkle because they left me out.  

The Jewish lens on this, and at one time the Democratic Party lens was very different.  At the end of our Sabbath morning prayers, there is a short section that does a play on words of the Hebrew Text.  Al tikrah banaich ela bonaich.  Don't read it as your Sons but as your Builders.  It is the builders who create peace.  Smart America and Free America, though we vote differently, are your builders.  Between these groups we generate philanthropy for all to benefit, create commerce, advance science, derive benefit from the educational options available to us, enable communication and travel.  It is the world we aspire to.  While war is destructive, it is probably subordinate to aggression as the uppermost evil.  And impeding a response to aggression, to say nothing of celebrating it, diminishes the world.

And groups really do flip.  When I lived in St. Louis, the Speaker of the State House, a Democrat, lived across the street from me.  Their legislature will never be Democratic again in my actuarial lifetime.  My Congressman was a Democrat as was one Senator and not long after my departure a Governor.  That entire state has flipped.  So has my current one, though in the other direction.  We had one or more statewide elected Republican officials just a few years ago.  I do not anticipate that happening again.  Working people, that Real America, changed parties.  Might we Jews, over-represented as elected officials of the Democratic Party across America, also migrate to a different part of the ballot.  A couple of state would certainly notice if that were to become a reality.  And as I address these Progressive ideologues of my own Committee, I can see some very honorable Jewish people concluding that they need to escape them.

So my role on my Committee.  I live in a good place that elects good people.  Not MAGAs.  Not anti-Semites.  Not people who use their elected office to intimidate but to address challenges.  Some of them seek a new office with more responsibility this year.  They are the people who share my fondness for advancing people.  It makes much more sense to me to pick one or two of the several who have convinced me of their worthiness and join their team to reinforce the decency that the majority of our voters value.  It will take more effort than showing up on Zoom the first Monday evening of each month, but I anticipate the effort a good deal more satisfying than trying to sidestep or placate, or maybe even respect, alliances of convenience whose views reverse decency in some way.