My cousin Gerry died this Shabbat, in the home she shared with her daughter Susie. My brother bore the news of her death, catching me on my way to the synagogue. I always thought I would be the point of connection for births and deaths and everything in between, but at some point Todd stepped into the role. He reminded me to call David, Gerry’s son, and convey our love to both of his siblings. He turns out to be more familial than I am, even though I am officially older.

The history of denigration is long and sordid, a necessary corrective to theories of progress. I wish I could believe in Martin Luther King, Jr., and his famous notion about the arc of justice, but then I’d have to account for the twentieth century, the bloodiest, most murderous in human history. All I see is the circularity of suffering. If it’s not the homosexuals, then it’s the Armenians. If it’s not the Armenians, then it’s the Jews, and dozens of other persecuted minorities.

Or perhaps I should say “this Shabbat.”

I don’t like to get in a car on the Sabbath. It’s contrary to my understanding of the halacha, Jewish law, and I try to make as few exceptions as possible. The idea here is to stay close to home, and nurture our experience of intimacy and interiority. A car can make a hash of that. More on all of this in an upcoming post.

Thank God, Almighty, they are free at last.

I never really expected it to happen, but I saw the faces of the hostages this morning. One by one, they came off the helicopters. One by one, they encountered their families. We will see much more of them in the days ahead, but I feel the relief of a father at a healthy birth. Some, at least, came through alive. Perhaps they will be reborn into life, free of the stench in which they were held for years.

Here’s a guess: you’re probably not worried about Venezuelan drug runners. If a few of them are incinerated by American authorities, that’s the price they pay for running drugs. After all, they were in American waters. They were also official enemy combatants. And the president has been empowered since forever to kill anyone the hell he wants. Would a president as scrupulous as Donald Trump summarily execute off-limits foreigners? Not the Donald Trump I know.

October 7 is now behind us, but it will never truly fade from view. Despite the fact that it came this past Tuesday, the first day of Sukkot on this year’s calendar, it was widely observed in quiet gatherings, both in the cities of Israel and the world Jewish community. This, despite the fact that the tradition forbids it. When mourning coincides with a Jewish holiday, it is mourning that must give way to joy. Not this time. Not this year. The trauma of 2023 is still too fresh.

Some of you know that this is not my first rodeo. Before I starting posting to this blog, I wrote a daily letter to public officials trying to get under the skin of my targets. This was at the beginning of Trump 1.0, when I thought that people were still sensitive to ridicule.

I’m teaching a course about Israel and the world, especially the communities that make up the Diaspora. That’s not a word I especially treasure. It carries with it an undercurrent of negativism that does not match my feelings about my homeland. If exile means lunch at Utica Square, I don’t consider that a disabling experience. I like the onion strings on the menu at Wild Fork. If that’s the nature of exile, I’d call myself agnostic.

There is a scene toward the end of One Battle after Another that somehow manages to capture the whole. Three cars roar across a western landscape, driven by characters armed to the teeth. One is the daughter of a charismatic revolutionary. The second is a sinister white supremacist. The third is Leonardo DiCaprio, addled by decades of drugs and alcohol, but determined to save his mixed-race daughter.

Rosa Tarloveky de Roisinblit died this month, right on the cusp of the High Holiday season. In many ways she was a familiar figure. Born in a Jewish settlement in Argentina, she grew into a career as an obstetrician. Eventually she moved to Buenos Aires and married, raising one daughter, Patricia, with her husband, Benjamin. The chronology of her life tracks my own. If Patricia had lived, she would have been my age today.

Ryan Walters is again in the news, but there hasn’t been a day when he was far from Page 1. Our departing Superintendent was very thirsty, sipping notoriety even when it was shameful. Nothing could slake his appetite for coverage. He craved it as a baby craves the breast.

Jimmy Kimmel is back, and not a moment too soon. He returned to his desk on Tuesday night, as millions tuned in to welcome him home.

I frankly never thought that it would happen at all, without prolonged protests and boycotts against Disney. Stephen Colbert is still broadcasting nightly, but his days are numbered, as if awaiting execution.

The Jewish new year begins tonight. Under normal circumstances, I would be keyed-up and mobilized. This year is 5786, a count that begins with the creation of the universe. I love the idea that I can live in many worlds at once, including one that is just under 6,000 years old. It opens the windows inside old assumptions and lets you see the universe from a different angle. According to this count, everything is new, certainly not old enough for capitulation or despair.

The most photographed American in the nineteenth century—more than Lincoln, more than Whitman—was Frederick Douglas, the orator and abolitionist. His life will be written about until the end of time. He lived as an enslaved person for much of his early adulthood and then engineered his own emancipation. Not content to be a tool in the drama of others, he exercised his agency in thrilling ways. One of those strategies was promotional images that illustrated his dignity, his intelligence, and his good looks. When people thought about American Black people, he wanted them to imagine…Frederick Douglas.

A couple of years ago, I started a quilt. It was supposed to be a Zaydie (Grandfather) Project with a beloved granddaughter in California. It had all the makings of a long-distance winner. We would do some things in Los Angeles, some things in Tulsa, and the result would be a reminder of my love: a soft, enfolding, flannel-backed quilt for chilly nights when we could not be together. It was so long ago, I can’t remember whether we started in on her birthday or in time for Chanukah.

Sara Jacobs, Jewish Democrat from California, has a perfectly beautiful Jewish nose. I don’t know whether it’s a “Jewish nose,” other than the fact that it is on her face. She also has a very beautiful face, with that vital, sparkly look of intelligence that some of us associate with Jewish “types.” She looks as if she knows the federal budget and also memorized her grandmother’s recipe for rugelach. That combination is irresistible to me, like sitting next to Einstein at your niece’s bat mitzvah.

The news is on for a couple of hours each day, whether or not I’m in the kitchen. Alice and I bounce back and forth between CNN and MSNBC. Since I can’t remember which is which, it’s either the Rachel Station or the Anderson Station. I actually prefer the Rachel Station, but the other will do just fine in a pinch.

Here We Are, by director Nir Bergman, is a film of almost suffocating intensity. The plot is a sequence of familiar elements: an isolated father, an autistic son, and the labor of love that sustains their lives. Aharon (Shai Avivi) knows his son’s wants as well as his own, from a fetishistic taste for little star-shaped pasta to the color of the shirts he puts on in the morning. One of the most touching aspects of this intimate relationship is that Aharon functions as a kind of encyclopedia for Uri (Noam Imber), who relies on him to confirm what he likes. “Do I like yellow,” Uri asks his father. “Yes, Uri, you like yellow.”

Would-be dictators love an emergency. It allows them to claim that in a state of chaos, only extraordinary measures will save us. Everything is suddenly on the table, including illegal force, the suspension of civil liberties, and the translation of democracy into unitary rule. Nothing is too extreme in such a moment. Everything is represented as an existential threat.

Yotam Vilk is now the name to remember.

Many people have written—some fiercely, some not—about the moral crisis of war in Gaza. I just read a sermon by a friend of mine intended for delivery over the holidays ahead. She’s a big ol’ Zionist from the Pleistocene era forward, who has always taken issue with my occasional crotchets. She is the real thing, a true believer, but her words were full of grief and alarm. Where is the Israel I thought I knew? Why has it descended into ethnic erasure? Are “we” really going to keep killing Palestinian children? I don’t think I’ve written anything as fierce, but he will not be alone this year in the pulpit. Many American rabbis will echo her thoughts, and I fault myself for having been tentative and measured.