A giant ask

Because I have some time off from school and have been hanging around with family, my thoughts have been wonderfully bizarre. Today, I would like to address the elephant-sized mass in the room, elephantiasis.

As is well know, elephantiasis is a condition in which a human's pieces, and sometimes bits, swell to the side of an elephant and they insist on calling their teeth "tusks."

The classic case impacts a man's private areas, and is best represented by Da Vinci's "Vitruvian man with elephantiasis."

[that was my image -- this one was made by ChatGPT, while Gemini refused to cooperate

]

First, a question -- 

Would you say that this guy has humantiasis? How about this guy?

or even

The famous guy who had this condition was known as the Elephant Man. This was a stolen title, as that was already taken by Babar.

and this unretouched actual real life I mean it photo of Babar

And then there's this guy who clearly has elephantiasis of the heart

So please, won't you donate something to someone so that we don't have to worry about turning into elephants, part by part, and they won't have to worry about turning into people.

Bless.

Why Anti-Semitism annoys me

Weird that I feel it necessary to explain why I don't like the world's oldest obsession.

But anyway, I'd like to address a couple or few eternal stereotypes of Jews. I'm sure others have done this already and, heck, I'm not 100% sure I HAVEN'T but here we go (these are the ones that popped into my head as I wrote this):

1. Jews control the __________ industry.

fill in the blank -- banking, movies, political, educational etc.

This is why this claim is dangerous: it might as well be true. I haven't done the statistic-generating fieldwork and research to confirm it, but let's say that over 75% (I chose at random) of the businesses, entities, boards related to industry X is headed by/run by/owned by someone who, based on his maternal parentage was Jewish at birth, according to all sects of Judaism. So what? If we are picking a single demographic element, then pick others. How many are married? How many dye their hair? How many are lefties? How many are in some religion or another, or a political party?

Why is there an assumption that people who share a designation in the "religion" column share anything else? Why is there a baseline assumption that leadership immediately and exclusively provides to other members of our tribe certain advantages, or work together to control the minds of the rest of the world?

First of all, Jews never agree on things. The entire idea of a shadow group working to control things is laughable if you have ever been to a shul meeting. Then the idea of "Jew" is problematic. Many might not accept certain of your examples as Jewish. Doesn't that skew your results?

And of course, one would have to assume that being Jewish has an opinion and impact on your business decisions without any specific knowledge. This invents the conspiracy of Jewish collusion because all would be driven by precisely the same interpretation of Jewish teachings to agree on how to incorporate Jewish ideas in the mass consciousness.

Um, no.

Look at a sample: Mr. M (Jewish) controls Company M which is part of the ??? industry. He doesn't hire me (also Jewish) because I won't make him enough money. He is driven by an interest in making more money. Is there anything wrong about that in the U.S.?

2. Jews are good at ____________.

Don't start with me on this one. I'm no good at science and even less so at math. I don't know law, I'm not a doctor or in finance. I'm not even in real estate. Some Jews are good at. Same as "some Episcopalians." Same with "Jews are smart" (as supported by the Nobel prize lists). None of this is directly causally related so it does nothing but encourage people to think of the Jewish attitude as a superiority complex.

3. Jews are cheap.

Do you realize how dumb this sounds? Are you starting with the premise that spending money unwisely is to be admired? Do you speak with the privilege of always have been rich? This accusation only makes sense if it stems from a personal experience in which a Jew was stingy WITH HIM. So the behavior of one Jewish person became a collective trait through a process I like to call "laziness." Are there Jews who are thrifty? Sure. Are there some who spend more than they have? Yup. These are functions of being human and not robots. None of it comes from the religion.

Over time, Jews have had to be very careful about money because they never knew when they would be kicked out, taxed, rampaged or accused of treachery, locked in a tower and set on fire. Being limited in job choice also made earning a living tough. So people without a lot learned to be very careful with what they have. 

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Side note -- why do people feel comfortable assuming they know about "Judaism" because they read something somewhere? Are people that forward and arrogant when it comes to other ways of life? People never want to ask questions, and even less often want to listen to answers. But they want to speak with authority and tell me that when I object on the grounds that I live the life and she is wrong, I'm told I'm a liar.

New TV Show Idea!

Title: The Wandering Jew (negotiable -- studio wants "Black Hat"  or "Rabbi Bookman, Jewish Investigator")

The scene is somewhere in Mid-Europe in the 17th or so century. The time is difficult for Jews but one Jewish sage, who travels from town to town to hear questions and kill chickens, works tirelessly to protect his people, AND THE LAW.

Meet Rabbi Moses Jewowitzbergstein (check with legal; they'll know), known as Rabbi Magic. He goes to where there's trouble and sticks the long nose of Jewish law in to it. (guys -- is that offensive? Go ask 100 random teenagers, but if they don't get it, don't explain it; that's another vote for "not offensive") He works to defend the innocent and expose the guilty, regardless of race, creed, or ability to kill you if you don't help. And probably if you do, also. Following the 46 minute story arc model we get towards the end with the a-ha/reveal moment. The hook is that it is sourced in actual Jewish law and other canonical texts! He quotes the talmud when it makes a point about psychology or logic, he cites Maimonides when he wants a medical opinion and medrash to explain the origin of stories and beliefs. He uses verses from the Hebrew bibles (note -- find out about it; what's it called and where can we get one) and explains moral points with arcana from rabbinic, mystical works.

Once every few episodes he does some Talmud magic to whip up a solution. Often he sets a trap

Most of the people reject and attack him. but he uses his Jewish-folksy ways and a timely quote or two to win people over. Usually, anyone who is persuaded dies in some tragic but not quite exactly heroic way in the third act. Eventually, he threatens to leave and gets as far as 5 minutes out of town when he already hears sounds of gun shots, breaking glass, women screaming and general lawlessness settling in, so he sighs, turns around and returns.

 He takes from these textual sources (and he speaks of talmudic conversations as if they happened in front of him -- we will need some recuring Jewy looking actors and they should learn to speak Hebrew from that humus guy down the block. He's brown, right?) and assembles all those sources and then writes them all down, many times. He invites all the other cops, suspects and investigators, plus a number of hangers-on, and hands out the papers. He then proceeds to give a 35 minute speech going through all the sources and deriving from this the truth regarding the suspect at hand and a good lesson about how we need to be better people.

Here is an example of one potential outcome:

The truly guilty party will be the only one who doesn't fall asleep and is caught at the door by Mini Golem* and his pals who were opening up the door to see if the rabbi was finished talking and they happened to whack him in the head. One boy dropped his lollipop but his older sister rolled her eyes and took the one from her mouth and gave it to him to keep him quiet. Then she mumbled "I hate you, but in a good way" she smiles at the camera, and, scene.

* sorry -- forgot to tell you: suggestion from Bob that we have a feisty mini-Golem sidekick who gets into trouble but always stops the little altar boy (under orders from his evil and possibly abusive boss) from claiming a blood libel (I'm thinking more like a priestly Ren and the submissive-turned-sadistic altar boy, much more in the mold of Stimpy. Can the b plot be the A plot sometimes? Do Golems...is that the pl -- check. have girlfriends? Would she break her golem's heart if he had one (maybe longer arc -- Yosele Golem, he lovable and sweet, mute amnesiac who loves Jews but must remain forever alone as he is not Jewish and is really, really scared of knives+++alt idea, he can never become Jewish because when he was formed nothing was placed "there" and the rabbis are still arguing about it (once every few, he gets an update or letter or something about his case). 

Also, comic interludes while Rabbi Magic [NOTE -- idea for tagline -- each week a character says, "That rabbi's doing his magic again" or something like that] moves into town, meats locals, chants blessings (find out what rabbis did at that time) is killing chicken [note -- consider Turkey around thanksgiving**Marketing**) and looking at women's underwear (bloomers -- PG-13 for anti-chicken violence is as far as we can go). He explains ideas about Jews and Judaism (we will need some writers who know something about Jews so if we have any wikipedia editors on staff, lift him/her for this. Also for cred we should probably have a rabbi look things over so head over to Berkley and take the first one you see. They all think the same anyway. Bob suggests that we can just ask Chat GPT but on the prompt say "answering as if you are a rabbi..." and this could save the huge amount we otherwise would have to pay if we asked an actual rabbi to make a living teaching us about Judaism! Recurring joke -- the rabbi keeps missing a sale or a bargain.

a movie review

This is being dictated into my phone and I don't know how to do punctuation and back spaces and things like that so there's a lot of not that here. 

I sat down to watch karate Kid Legends this evening simply because it existed and I thought it was probably a good idea for me to have some idea of what's going on in the world. The movie what there was of it did not fail to disappoint to fail or vice versa I'm not sure which. the writers took the inherently complicated story which haunts the Karate Kid universe and stripped it down so that there were no confusing subplots or complicated, well, plots. It boiled down to two young men punching each other to the delight of the irresponsible quasi adults that are the hallmark of the millennial identity.

I made that last part up. Did that sound reasonable to you?

Anyway the movie is relatively short somewhat harmless and it has a few good cameos and it's also got some really horrible acting a lot of punching and foreshadowing and all the other things that make for a movie so this certainly qualifies as such the end.

High Holiday prayers - a question

Today we have the result of very little research but a mind wandering throughout synagogue services on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana.

In terms of the Jewish liturgy through the year, one thing that we don't do very much is repeat prayers. There are very few times when we are told "say this x number of times". Usually, when we pray, we say and we move on. There are exceptions through the year. Based on my zero research and doing this entirely from memory, our repetitions through the year are limited to two verses said when the Torah is taken out of the ark on a holiday which happens on a weekday, and a few statements made during the sanctification of the new moon. That's it. While there are prayers that we say more than once a day, each time we say it is a discrete instance, separate from the others.

Then we hit the high holidays and suddenly we are swamped with prayers that we repeat. Before we blow the shofar, we say a chapter of Psalms 7 times. When we do kaparot, we recite it 3 times. Yom Kippur is bookended by the repetitions (three times for Kol Nidrei and then the culminating repetition of the Sh'ma and other phrases 3 and 7 times at the end). Suddenly, we say things over and over.

What is it about the high holidays that makes repetition so essential?

twenty-four years later

 My experiences have become history. What I see when I close my eyes is now fodder for history textbooks. Students in high school hear my stories as if they happened in another country, in another lifetime.

As time passes, our memories bcome distilled down to the essence, the few and striking facts that stand out and which we enshrine in our long-term memory, rife with sensory details to make the scene complete. But it doesn't seem like that's fair.

Twenty-four years -- longer than a lifetime, almost a quarter century. How much are we allowed to keep hurting? When are we supposed to move on or forget, because in some ways, I can't do either. Look at video from the Hindenburg disaster; it looks like it was recorded at another time. Even video from Pearl Harber -- it still looks separated by years. But look at the video from 9/11. It could have been recorded yesterday. Cars look pretty much the same. Buildings? The same. The quality of the recording? It looks current. It is easier for the past to become part of the past if we can distance ourselves fom it and consider it archaic. This is why, when we recall religiously significant dates and events, we are driven to picture ourselves as being part of the event so it does not become an empty ritual recalling a distant and irrelevant past.

Do we want to keep living with 9/11 as current events? Isn't it, though? Aren't we still living in the shadow of 2001? But at the same time, High School students see the day in the same way that they look at any other ancient history. We have moved on so now the question is, how tdo we want to hold on to it and do we want to keep it fresh so that we feel the pain acutely, or should we let it become the dull throb that we get used to over time?

I look at the sad moments of my life (dating back to the religious ones) and I see that tere will always be this tension between embracing the now and living as part of a heritage and storied history.

I don't know if I want to remember, but I have been brought up to know the importance of not forgetting.

Hey Lifetime, you want this?

 Idea for a story --

grandfather, from the old country, constantly talks about going back "home" one more time to revisit his childhood etc and makes his kids promise to take him before he dies. Then he goes blind and the doctor says he doesn't have much time. His kids look at the bank account -- no way we can afford a trip to "home" but what if we just go to the "little X" neighborhood in [insert random American City here].

Then hilarity ensues as they try to keep the old man in one neighbor hood and when he wants to travel to the countryside to his childhood farm, they have to pay extra to rent a junky car because it makes the rental place look shlubby. Then they take the worst roads and hire actors to play roles in the country side, and also back in the city. Finally the "trip" has ended. Bonding has taken place and a the generations are reconciled. Redemption occurs and a heart is completed. Mysteries solved and there has been positive character growth all around. We discover at the end that the grandfather knew from the get go that it was a scam. The old country is not and hour and a half away bay plane, especially one which didn't require passports. But he wanted them all to feel useful and reconnect with their heritage. Maybe after learning about it and recreating it, they may want to go visit. The kids say that they knew he knew but that he, realizing how silly this all was, respected the effort and would not collapse the charade. Their goal hadn't been to trick him, but to get him to confront his childhood (trauma? mystery? Don't know, maybe to win a bet or meet with a person or a lawyer to resolve some legal, financial obligation -- wait, how about "they had earlier promised their late mother that they would get him to face up to...) by visiting so everyone gets what he wants.

It plays as a family friendly (possibly holiday) film. Mostly comedy but with a few emotionally stinging scenes so the adults will understand the depths and authenticity and the kids will see the broad and clear binaries of "happy and sad" flipped around in an innovative and educational way.