I made a promise to myself last spring that I would celebrate Firgun (fear-goon; accent on the second syllable) Day at the appropriate time. The day has come: July 17, and I am working to acknowledge the good people in my world. The key to the celebration is clean hands and a pure heart. Invented by Israelis and rooted in the Yiddish word for joy, the day is supposed to be overflowing with compliments and admiration, and entirely free of envy or ambivalence. For me, it’s a way of listing human blessings: people who have touched my mind and heart and contributed to the goodness of life on earth. Living or dead, it doesn’t matter to me. I love and respect them with all my heart.

Hegseth’s Pentagon is on the way down, and not even God will be able to save it.

Like so many offenses of the current administration, Peter Hegseth’s PrayerFest slipped quickly out of sight. It was there for a moment at the end of May and was swamped almost immediately by other developments. When a venal regime commits wrongdoing almost daily, it’s hard to keep anything in focus.

The administration has us right where it wants us.

You may be horrified by the footage of ICE apprehensions, their evident brutality, the grotesque use of force, but Stephen Miller wants to accustom us to the look of savagery. He figures that a few more rounds of Kristallnacht-style glass breaking will soften us up for the still-worse-to-come. That’s standard operations for fascist regimes. You have to prepare a populace for ultimate force by testing the limits with sub-ultimate force.

“Let It Be Morning” is the saddest film I have ever seen. Only one person dies, one person is wounded, and no child is harmed in the making of this movie. It is still an essay in soul-sickness and despair.

One of the best things that’s happened since I stepped down from our synagogue is that I can now say pretty much what I want. I have always sharply criticized politicians and offered shrill opinions on the issues of the day. But the rules prevented me from advocating for candidates. If we gave a platform to somebody running for office, we had to do the same for his or her opponent. It made for a blander political program than I would have liked.

Familiarity may not breed contempt, but it certainly dulls our capacity for surprise. I have seen “Starry Nights” a thousand times—in person, in print, on posters and screens.

Surely you remember Chef Justice John Roberts. He was the one who taught us about stare decisis. That’s the doctrine that protects us against spasm. It means that the law itself deserves deference and humility, that it is not, at heart, a revolutionary enterprise, but needs to be shielded against sudden upset.

Our dog Keisha died this week. It happened in a cozy dog bed in Tahlequah, where she nested with her longtime sitter, Steven. Keisha stayed with Steven every time we traveled. The truth is that she loved him best. When he came to the door, she made happy circles and went to his truck without a backward glance. He had a gift for observing her need for space and moving toward her when she felt the need to be touched. I think that she also liked the sound his voice, which has the reedy buzz and range of an oboe.

One of the most important moments in last summer’s campaign was a single utterance by Kamala Harris. I can usually recall a strike of lightning, but I can’t remember whether it was at the convention or the debate. Coulda been one. Coulda been the other.

In the American imagination, all Jews are New Yorkers. That’s especially true about the codes of anti-Semitism. New Yorkers are brash, loud, and disrespectful. They presume intimacy and take up too much space. They’re clever, but conniving and breathe through their mouths. It’s a way of talking about Jews without saying the word

A new subscriber recently wrote to ask what I really want from the Democratic Party. Fair question, for sure, and I’m glad to try again.

What I originally wrote was hardly enough. I said that I was waiting for “a vision that was grand and transporting. A message about restoring dignity to labor, embracing difference, and finding national purpose. It also has to be tough and grounded.”

If you look hard enough in the great pile of his presidency, there might be something that you find attractive about Trump. For me it has been an aversion to warmaking. It’s not exactly a form of pacificism. Trump’s natural default is bellicose threats, a promise to deploy his considerable bulk to crush whatever opposition he encounters.

What’s the deal with Donald Trump and immigrants? On Mondays and Wednesday he wants to deport them all. It was the first thing he said to the American People: every immigrant without legal credentials is either a rapist, a murderer, or criminally insane. He promised to deport at least a million by December. His minions immediately fell to the floor, licked his boots, and got to work. For Steven Miller, it was a gift from God: all that pain with an imminent deadline!

My family is nothing if not brutally honest. “Don’t get us wrong, Dad. We love the blog, but we think that you may be flooding the zone. People have other things to do. They have to mow the lawn and get their colonoscopies. They don’t have time for five posts a week.”

I think I’ve mentioned that James Carville is wrong. Wrong about everything. Wrong all the time. His predictions are terrible, and his advice is worse. When Kamala Harris lost the election, he told the Democratic Party to sit in the dark while MAGA Republicans destroyed themselves. Anything we did would just draw attention to our weakness and give the triumphant Trumpists more to crow about.

If you came to Tulsa, you would change your mind. You’d get off the plane expecting a red-state circus. You’d leave wondering why you didn’t live here yourself, and how you could survive without the onion strings at Wild Fork. Or root beer at Weber’s or the trout at White River Fish Market. We are the Midwesterners who will revive your soul.

Once again, the world has turned. In the days ahead, let calm prevail and bloodshed be turned to stability and accord. Let the sharp pains of warfare abate and grow fainter as they are replaced with a return to quiet and understanding…

If you don’t believe me, check the Washington Post: RFK, Jr. clearly has issues.

This wouldn’t matter if he weren’t a public person. He would be entitled to slurp up road kill without limit. He would be entitled to eat the eyeballs of the dead. My God, he could even lick the plate. People do crazy things all the time.

My father-in-law once told me with the certainty of a survivor that he did not value my work as a rabbi. He was certain that I would end up victimized by my congregants and that I had set myself up for a life of suffering. There were certainly episodes that confirmed his judgment, but his disapproval eased with the passage of time. My life has been marked by a surfeitof blessings, and he eventually sensed that I was an exception to his rule.

Surely you’ve heard of the World Zionist Congress.

Joking!

One of the most interesting ideas generated by Theodor Herzl was that the Jewish world needed a representative body. He seemed to understand that many Jews would make aliya to Palestine.