I just thought I'd whine instead of rant today. Actually, I've been thinking of saying this for a while, but now's the time. It's about the sad tendency of American Jews to obsess over wealth. Now, wait a minute---I know what you're thinking, but hear me out.
Synogogue membership is perhaps the biggest headache for most of us "average Jews"; we're the ones who aren't doctors, lawyers, or married to one, and our incomes just can't take that $900-a-year whallop to belong to a shul. Fortunately for some of us, there's a Reform congregation nearby that kindly "overlooks" our lack of money, but not always. I'm one of the lucky ones, and for that I'm grateful, yet for years my husband and I could not join because he was out of work on Compensation, so my son never finished Hebrew School. Worse yet, the president of the shul(not the one we currently belong to)insisted we remove our son IMMEDIATELY when he learned of our circumstances, then was awarded the "Mensch Of The Year" award! Mensch, shmensh, as we say. At any rate, to be cut off from the Jewish community out here in "the boonies", so to speak, was devastating. My son only managed to attain his Bar Mitzvah through the kindness of our local Lubavitcher rabbi. To have hosted this event in the shul would have cost around a THOUSAND dollars, no less. How can people like us afford that?
This is what I mean by "obsession" with wealth. In America, Jews seem to have fallen into the goyische attitude that Jews HAVE to be rich, that all Jews MUST go to prestigious colleges, and that anything less is apikorsus(heresy). How sad.
Does no one care to know how many of us have LESS than genius-level children, or that thousands of Jews like us struggle to keep family intact through such crises as unemployment, death of a spouse, or divorce? I guess not. Here in America, that just DOESN'T HAPPEN to Jews, they seem to think. Proper Jews, that is. We, unfortunately, don't qualify as "proper", and you'd be surprised to know how many of us are shunned by our fellow Jews as "embarrassing", sometimes even as "lazy". Thank God, I never experienced that here in NH; many of our former congregants expressed outrage when they learned why we had "left". Still, it happens elsewhere, and it shouldn't.
Maybe, it being so close to Yom Kippur, some high-ranking shul member will read this, feel ashamed and outraged, and finally DO something about it, but I doubt it. Far too many of us have had it far too good for far too long to understand (or even WANT to comprehend) the plight of , I would estimate, a good 60% of us, if not more. And every year around this time the rabbis moan and groan about the Jewish "defectors". Well, hey, do you know how much cheaper a CHURCH membership is? Think about it.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Me Again
Monday, September 13, 2004
Mrs. D, May You Always Succeed & Prosper
In 1967, when I was a senior at PHS and not happy at ALL about having to take a boring class on CIVICS(yuck), in waltzed a 22yr old neophyte teacher who proceeded to turn our world upside-down---by teaching us how government REALLY works, and conducting her classes as though we were in LAW school. Tough? Let me tell you, she came at us with questions we had to answer, not from rote, but by THINKING LOGICALLY. Her tests were even WORSE, because she included a 40pt essay question on them that made us demonstrate how well we knew our lessons ,too. We used to joke that not only were her tests IMPOSSIBLE but imPASSIBLE as well. She told us she was going to make us think, and she did! If you were absent for a test, she made you take an ORAL make-up, which insured almost a 90% attendance on test days, as NO one wanted to face down HER after school. She commanded respect and got it, even taking on the school ADMINISTRATION when they told her she couldn't assign 1984 and Brave New World(oddly, not because of the politics so much as for the sex scenes), when those books were assigned anyway by the English teachers. She held her head high and walked like a queen; I can still visualize her ramrod-straight back as she breezed through the halls like Miss America. I wanted sooo much to be like her, believe me. We all were a bit overawed by her complete self-confidence and no-nonsense style. In the parlance of the time, we spoke of her as "thinking like a man", which was a high compliment indeed. She never deferred to the male teachers, either, as woman are wont to do. She was the equal of any man and KNEW it, which sometimes got her labeled as "unlady-like", "opinionated", and just plain "bitchy", too. I worshipped her, myself. Unfortunately, I made a terrible pest of myself by constantly following her about the school(think "Walter Denton" from the old "Our Miss Brooks" TV show). Her dept. head dubbed me her "shadow", and I guess she got ribbed about it by the faculty. I'm sorry for all the trouble I may have given her. She was one of those teachers who turn up once in a lifetime and you're never the same afterwards. I learned so much from her, and not only from the lessons she actually taught but the "lessons" she "taught" by the way she comported herself, spoke with authority, and expected nothing less than success---from us as well as SHE. When I entered my freshman year of college and faced all-essay exams in every subject, her tests stood me in good stead; her tough questions in class taught me how to think "on my feet", as it were, and without her I would never have made it through college. I even took along the notes I'd taken in her classes when(for some stupid reason) the college required us to take American Government, and those notes and what I'd been taught gave me a B, easy, although the prof I had was a hard grader. I often wonder just how many of her students went on to become lawyers(as she did), simply from the way her classes were conducted. I'd be willing to bet a good 40% or more went into Law because of her. I almost did, and even now keep abreast of Supreme Court decisions. A good teacher is a GIFT. As Christa Macauliff so memorably said before the shuttle tragedy: "I am a teacher, I touch the future." The photo here is how Mrs.D looks today, and though she's aged a lot, she's still beautiful to me, and always will be. Thank you, Mrs.D, for all you never knew you did for me. Ironically, it's the smallest gestures that mean so much, and what you no doubt considered to be only "doing your job" taught an immature kid how to be a responsible citizen and an adult. Hazak! May you go "from strength to strength"! (I hate to archive this, as I'm shamelessly hoping she'll stumble across my blog. It's no fun if your idol doesn't notice these things. Sigh)
Thursday, September 09, 2004
Thanks, Leah! -Or- Oopsimath Shows How NOT To Blog
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
HUBRIS-It's All About Us
Sorry, but I'm sick of this we-know-what's-best-for-the-world attitude. I'm old enough to remember JFK's famous "Ask Not..." Speech, and how we failed at being "world policemen" the FIRST time around. We at least had the TROOP strength back then to back up that rhetoric, but now? And American news is a disgrace. It's not just Fox, cheering on Dubya mindlessly, but ALL our "news" outlets, I'm afraid. How much of our news is devoted to NON-American events? Not much at all, and when it is the events are at least RELATED to American concerns. I would guess that a good 80% of world news is simply IGNORED by American reporters and their editors, simply because they assume we'd get bored with it. And you know what? They're probably right. We, for the most part, DON'T want to know what's going on elsewhere, because we believe IT'S ALL ABOUT US! Are we brain-washed or just brain-DEAD? Sigh.
Okay, so Tocqueville warned about this shortly after the Revolutionary War, so what? Up until WWI we pretty much hadn't the means to do a lot of global damage, and even by WWII we lagged behind many of the other industrialized nations, but after we emerged unscathed (remember, almost all of Europe was destroyed by bombing, and Japan as well) we suddenly "saw the light". God WAS our "co-pilot", Americans seemed to conclude, and WE had to protect the world against "God-less Communism", ad nauseum. So began almost 60 years of what was dubbed The Cold War, when we embarked on an insane campaign to "contain" Communism and we and the USSR nearly nuked the planet. Under Reagan, it got suicidal; nuclear war was not only declared "do-able" but downright respectable, with the morally repugnant doctrine of "strike first" being embraced enthusiastically by Pentagon and Congress alike. Thank God the USSR fell apart before our Hollywood Warrior (already showing the first signs of incipient Alzheimers) had a chance to push "that little red button". And then? Remember that "Peace Dividend" we were all supposed to enjoy now that "God-less Communism" would become capitalist and democratic? Uh huh, we did our "father knows best" arm-twisting routine on the former Soviet bloc, and did more harm than good. Some of the former Soviet states succeeded, but most did not. Russia became "democratic", for a while, then elected Putin, who's reputed to be curtailing these "democratic" tendencies quite well.
So go ahead---accuse me of hating America. It's the usual response when any of us questions the current political dogma, especially when the Republicans are running the country, it seems. Unfortunately, I'm not. If you'll recall the Bill of Rights, we still have Freedom of Speech---not much anymore, but some, thank God. And I DO thank God, too. Of course, HE seems to have been appropriated by the GOP (dubbed "God's Own Party) since Reagan, along with morality in general. But then, when you have God as your co-pilot, I guess it means He not only forgives you in advance but APPROVES of everything you do, regardless. Must be a nice feeling, knowing that--- sort of like what those Muslim fanatics must feel as they blow themselves up.
And that, my friend, is hubris-in-a-nutshell. Think about it.