When you have a near death experience and you’re repeatedly told how close you came to dying you might ask a series of questions.
Some are the obvious ones in which you engage in introspection about your own life. You wonder if you’re living where you want to live and working where you want to work. You think about the trips you haven’t taken and all the items on your bucket list.
You think about the people you aren’t in touch with and ask yourself do you leave things as they are or do you reach out. Maybe they read your stuff cuz they are still madly in love with you and wish to have crazy middle age sex.
Maybe the the Dodgers will agree to sign you to a one day contract or maybe you can convince Ringling Brothers to let you be the ringmaster. Maybe you can ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
Or maybe you just shrug your shoulders and laugh because you beat the Angel of Death and you figure you probably have decades of life left.
Maybe you start thinking about untapped skills you can use to push back against the Jew hate.
If you are me then you have thought about all of those things and so much more. You have an endless stream of ideas and you start thinking about whether your communication skills can have an impact.
Are They Listening?
I sometimes wonder if we’re communicating with the right people about the right things. Let’s talk about the Jew hate.
I can refer to it as antisemitism and when the Jew haters claim it applies to all semites push back against that. They don’t care about facts, they push nonsense with no regard for truth.
There are groups of us out here writing posts about all that is going on in which we provide context and historical facts.
But I wonder if we are communicating with the right people.
Are those who don’t know these things reading our posts? Are those with open minds and interest in learning more listening or are we “preaching to the choir.”
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We live in age of absurdity in which people wonder if the Babylon Bee is engaged in honest reporting or satire.
Granted I know multiple people who probably don’t want to be described as refugees from Cleveland. Some have fond memories of it but they’ll never live there again.
One or two have accused me of being too sentimental about the past but all I have to do is point out their own reminiscing of the place by the river and they acknowledge they do it too.
Some even think I have nice shoes and or tell their friends about it.
We live in a time in which we ask questions that in a post Holocaust world once seemed like something we’d never have to discuss.
I find myself shaking my head in agreement repeatedly:
“An open revolt for Jewish rights and protections is going to have to come from Jews finally making demands and fighting back—or not at all.”
“It is fair to ask whether Mamdani suffers from an acute case of Israel Derangement Syndrome (IDS).”
“One of Hollywood’s leading Jew-haters, Mark Ruffalo, announced this week that he no longer speaks with Jewish actors who support Israel—some of whom may have once been among his friends. Given his longstanding antagonism toward the Jewish state and complete lack of sympathy for Jewish lives lost to Palestinian terrorism, why are Jewish actors and industry types still talking to and doing business with him?”
Sometimes I roam behind enemy lines and engage with commenters who push ridiculous ideas and spout conspiracy theories with reckless abandon.
The idea isn’t to convert the people pushing those but to reach the lurkers and the aforementioned folks who may have open minds.
But I sometimes wonder about whether that is good or bad. Take a look at Does Facebook Want You to See Antisemitism?
The entire post is worth reading but let’s focus here for a moment:
So, arguing with antisemitic content or hitting the angry emoji is counterproductive. It feeds the algorithm and will increase the comment or post’s relevance, pushing it out to more people.
Do we leave the conspiracy theory alone where it is available for general consumption or do we feed the algorithm because it is better to not leave such remarks unopposed by truth.
Estimates show the Jewish population is a bit under 16 million now which depending on what numbers you’re looking at means 81 years after the Holocaust we’re about where we were.
Demographic estimates say if the Holocaust hadn’t happened we might have a population of around 25 million though I have seen some that suggest it could be 30 million.
Even if there were 25 million of us we’d make a tiny percentage of the 8 billion people in the world today.
So in concept bad actors and ignorant fools could overwhelm our voices online and some might argue they are.
The push to twist and turn Zionist/Zionism into a pejorative is in full effect though many have no idea they’re repeating Zionist and or Nazi propaganda.
Some are so thoroughly indoctrinated they’re unwilling to challenge their own beliefs. They are too arrogant to recognize they live in an echo chamber of ignorance.
It doesn’t occur to them they might be wrong and some of them are so self righteous about it they get militant about closing their eyes and plugging their ears.
It’s part of they engage in cognitive dissonance of protecting some groups while making excuses for Jewish restaurants being burned down, Jews attacked on streets or Jewish authors being canceled.
Time to build our own Wakanda. Time to do what our grandparents and great-grandparents did and build our own institutions again.
We have to be our own cavalry & to an extent I am seeing that of thing happening. There are more October 8 Jews out there than people realize and more are coming.
I shake my head at the people who tell me that Zionism is dying and that Israel is on its last legs.
Look at history and tell me what happened to the empires that tried to crush us. Look around and see Jewish community growing in strength. Partnerships are being forged and arms are being wrapped around each other.
We’re a small people but a very large family.
What To Expect Here
Some of the newer folks don’t know what this place is about and are wondering what to expect.
The answer is you’ll find random thoughts, stories about a talking penis and germophobes. You’ll see thoughts about life, parenting, death and assorted odds and ends.
Some of you have been around for the almost 25 years of my putting pen to paper and some for far less. Some come and go, some never return.
How people feel about writing is subjective. It is no different than music or art, taste is a funny thing.
That headline above is as as much a comment as it is a question I ask myself. Is there a need for another entrant into the marketplace of ideas.
The answer for now is I write because I enjoy it and I’ll keep rolling along as I am until I no longer do so or have a reason to change.
Do with that what you will.
For now that is all you get on a Sunday afternoon. It’s 2 PM and the gym is calling. This will be updated with a new post(s) but as to whether that is later today or tomorrow remains to be seen.
P.S. you can find the substack here. I am clearly still playing with it.
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