There is an empty Yahrzeit candle on the left upper corner of the range in my kitchen.
It has been there since just after Tisha B’Av, or around four days now.
I rubbed it like a talisman prior to a workout at the gym and had the best workout I have had since I tore the distal tendon in my left arm.
Had my father been with me at the gym the day of the tear he would have shaken his head because of how I tore it.
It happened during what I intended to be the last set of that workout. I felt the muscle failing and I threw myself into the curl the same way I had done a million times during the past 43 years of lifting weights.
Dad would have reminded me that sometimes we need to measure our strength more carefully or we’ll strip screws, over tighten, over torque and or break things.
I don’t have to close my eyes to hear his words or see his expression.
It reminds me of when he talked to me about not throwing the first punch in a fight but to make sure I threw the last.
The contradiction of being instructed to be gentle and told to unload has stayed with me.
Flashback to a conversation in October of 2023 with a group of friends about what changes we’d see because of the October 7 attack.
One says he is jealous that I have been in a fist fight and says he doesn’t know what he would do if he had to defend himself.
“What other choices do we have. You either fight back or you let people think they can pound on you with reckless abandon.
“P.S. I have been in more than one fight and I was scared every time until I got hit. The sting and or shock makes you forget to be afraid and you pull out your inner caveman.”
I would have liked to have had the photo above with me to have shared during that conversation. I would have told them about how Zion shared the story of the battle that led to that famous photograph memorialized in the poster he is holding.
Twenty-five year old me with the pink and black fanny pack and backwards baseball cap was entranced.
I was a kid in a kiosk in Jerusalem listening to one of the guys that worked there talk about a moment that was as substantive if not more so than of US Marines planting a flag on Iwo Jima.
Fifty-seven year old Josh has more questions about that moment. Fifty-seven year old Josh wants to talk about whether the chayalim (soldiers) had any idea how consequential that moment would become and what their thoughts are of it today.
Fifty-seven year old Josh thinks about a quote from Field of Dreams and how we don’t always recognize when a day moves from ordinary to extraordinary.
But let’s be honest any day in which people are shooting at you should never become ordinary or so speaks a man who hasn’t served in the military or seen that sort of combat.
I am walking through the gym when I see a group of younger men start walking en masse towards me.
They’re busy talking and smacking each other in the arm or shoulder so they don’t see me.
For a moment I consider stepping to the side but there are machines on either side of me so I choose to hold still and let them pass.
A moment before one is about to bump into me I growl “pick your head up” and watch as he manages to mostly avoid bumping into me.
They’re no older than I was in the photo from the kiosk and likely younger than that but I am not sure. They just look young to me.
Later on I’ll take the selfie in the car and confirm I don’t look anywhere close to 25 anymore.
For a moment I’ll consider not including it by my number one fan will want to stare at it some more. Perhaps from the Dallas location of Lurche’s underfed brother or maybe from wine country, who knows.
I figure my animal magnetism is the source of the attraction or maybe it is because I figured out how to walk the line again.
Can You Build A Community On Substack?
I wrote a post about almost 25 years of blogging and asked If I Build It Will They Come?
The question(s) was/are as much for me as for anyone else.
Could I replicate what I have done elsewhere and build a regular readership?
Could I build a community on Substack?
Would I have the time to create content that people would see as informational, educational and or entertaining?
When I first started this sort of gig around 2003 people didn’t have a dozen different places to spend their time online. The 24 hour news cycle wasn’t a thing and people weren’t overwhelmed with content.
Substack tools, resources and editors are so advanced to what I had access to back then I am certain I could have built a readership/community that is 10X as big as I once had.
Since I can’t go back in time the answer to whether I could or couldn’t have is one I won’t spend time wrestling with.
Instead I’ll focus on continuing to see how this particular place evolves. I suspect I’ll keep it as a combination of stories, thoughts and comments on Israel/Judaism, Jew hate and assorted odds and ends.
The goal will be to give myself a place to blow off steam while writing and somewhere that isn’t always filled with doom and gloom.
We’ll see how it all plays out. Life is an adventure, you never know what can happen while you ease on down that yellow brick road.
Got all sorts of good stories to tell and I might even share one or two of them here.
See you around.
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