Playin Catch

My darling, sending you the biggest hug across the universe today 💕 You are not alone.

Christi!!! ;___; (sorry for having a mental breakdown on main because I've apparently hit oversaturation with the things I have seen on here)

my sweetheart 💗 thank you very much, I send that hug back so tightly through all the stars, and you're such a blessing amongst them.

what’s really bizarre, being from a mixed religious family background, is i recognize that i have the privilege of “passing,” for lack of a better word, of hiding and easily assimilating and blending. it’s not even that it’s a mask, because it’s something true. i grew up that way, it’s like code switching. sometimes it feels like impostor syndrome, but usually it's just all the facets of my person.

the man who drove us home today started talking about church. i could easily have engaged with that because, of course, we used to go to church with my grandparents on one side, and to the synagogue on the other. i’m versed in all the holidays, since throughout my childhood, we celebrated both. but as he was talking, perfectly nicely, this pit formed in my stomach - what if i voiced my identity? would that change the tenor of the conversation? (it would have, unavoidably, one way or the other.) would that put me, us, at risk? am i forced now to pretend to not be who i am? so i said nothing, and let my mom talk about my grandpa, and his devoted love of (and masters in) theology, and silently wondered if the man behind the wheel, talking about his faith, which i respect, would want to harm me if he knew who i was. this is not something i used to actively worry about, which perhaps was naïveté despite past experiences, blissful belief that it wasn’t “that bad.” it was safe enough. and now it’s a dark presence in my mind, a rustling anxiety. former “friends” on my dash would celebrate my murder if i had been born in the wrong (according to them) place, if they could get away with dehumanizing me with impunity as i have witnessed them doing to others undeserving of that treatment, with buzzwords and epithets. or maybe just for existing. and this isn’t paranoia or overreaction because i saw it with my own eyes. i saw it happen over and over, with people i used to regularly communicate with in frivolous little fandom conversations, which seem pointless to anything now. it is like living in a different world than the one that existed three weeks ago, one where the normal trajectory was abruptly thrown off course. and there’s nothing to be done about it, to fix it, to mitigate any of the hatred or any of the death, to offer succor to anyone affected or hurt or lost in all of this. there’s just the sorrow and the nagging buzz of fear. and it’s unknowable when that will abate. and how many more people will be harmed in the meantime. and if anyone will ever feel entirely safe amongst strangers again.

i always identified myself as a spiritual, but not religious person. both sides of my family were deeply faithful and i experienced and held reverence for that, cherished a lot of it, especially in ritual and holidays, but emerged on a less devout level, and that’s fine. ethnically i am jewish and always have said so. halves hardly matter, that is my heritage, it’s in my bones, it’s in the links of the chain to the past. i used to always observe shabbat (shabbos, how we say it) and lapsed, i lapsed in a lot of things when i became chronically ill and wasn’t directly involved with any sort of community anymore. it was just me being me, that was okay too. we put up our inter-holiday winter decorations, and it’s all traditions of memory and family and love, even as for many years those celebrations have only been my mom and me. it’s all there, inextricable from who i am.

i never learned hebrew properly but picked up all the prayers (which sadly i remember less now). i had an aliyah rather than a bat mitzvah (which we couldn’t afford anyway). i had to sing in front of the congregation and still remember the melody, my dad’s voice on tape teaching it to me. i still remember my grandma visiting and giving me the gold bracelet i loved directly off of her own arm for me to wear and to keep. i still remember the elderly man who came up to me after the service in tears and told me my voice was given from g-d and that he was so moved because i sang in the “soft” hebrew, words ending in “s” instead of “t,” and that was what his mother had always used from the old country, and he hadn’t heard it in so long (we always said the prayers this way, honestly i am not sure why, i guess it just carried over as ashkenazim, the way yiddish phrases did. it holds true with my hebrew name too, that version of sarah. my hebrew name, which is so familiar to me and part of me that i use it as email addresses and screen names and urls, that i would always tell people what it means because, growing up, i thought it was the greatest ever. princess leia as recognized in the book of life. that name probably being why i am attached to “s” urls here). i talked about this once, a long time ago (two blogs ago), but i've been told i look jewish, and told i don't look jewish, both in tones of derision and tones meant as compliment, you never quite know how that's going to be expressed. i treasured and held close to and was formatively influenced by and grew through countless pieces of jewish american art, jewish pop culture, characters, creators. the reverence in my heart for sondheim (or, like, name ANY 20th century broadway composer. i wish this was still online in full because it was beautiful), for the source of my url, for [insert name of artist here] is not idle, it is soul deep. i am not as engaged with the community or the religion as countless others, not nearly as directly tied or impacted, but the philosophy was always this - if they’d kill you for it, then you have the right to rejoice in and claim it too.

still. there’s a mezuzah on my bedroom door and a hamsa on my wall. they have flowers and birds and lavender and pink.

still. i say the shema in hebrew every day. just in case there’s a reason for it to be heard. just in case there’s a light there. it is the most sacred prayer, so it felt like something to keep close. (do you know how it starts? its opening line?)

i don’t think i consciously realized how deep that spiritual tie went until it was imbued with this much grief. it ceases to matter that maybe by percentages it’s only half of what i am. tell me where it’s written what it is i’m meant to be. perhaps i am no more than a blade of grass, but i am.

RC: Everything I do and teach has to do with education about the irrational nature of prejudice and how destructive it is and how all of the causes are very clear. Prejudice is an evil in this world and is also part of human nature, but it is something that we can diminish — to a certain extent — through education.

HVS: You have written before about deeply frightening times in our nation’s history; the publication of this book, in today’s deeply divided America, feels particularly timely. Could you have anticipated this when you first began researching your topic?

RC: It’s unsettling beyond words. I can’t even describe my rage and my anger about human nature, really. So number one, I’m not surprised. Anyone who has studied the Holocaust, and the causes of the Holocaust, understands it is part of human nature; we used to teach about the different philosophies of human nature, and Thomas Hobbes was my favorite philosopher: He basically identified the fact that humans have a very negative side to them — a very aggressive, selfish side — and when they are frustrated and when they feel weak, as if they failed, they lash out; they use that aggression. Gordon Allport, a Harvard psychologist, came up with a very beautiful, simple explanation of prejudice: F (failure) yields to A (aggression, anger) yields to D (displacement); in other words, scapegoating: laying the blame on innocent people. That was his explanation of prejudice, and that’s my explanation of what human nature can be characterized by. It is very, very frightening. So the fact that what’s happening right now is not, to me, surprising, because I know that, throughout history, this is how humans have behaved. What is frightening to me is that it is never going to change. But, as I’ve said to my students, any change always comes incrementally. If we can, through education or whatever other means, educate people about why they are acting that way, then maybe we can change. In my doctoral dissertation, among other things, I asked a question: “Can we change attitudes through education?” The outcome of [the complicated process] revealed that while those who were somewhat prejudiced before learning about the Holocaust no longer held those prejudices after, those students who were very prejudiced at the beginning, you couldn’t get them over the line through education. I think we are dealing with this population right now…so I am not surprised. I am angry, but I’m not surprised.

The Berkshire Edge

‘The Jewish World of Elvis Presley’ (November 2020) by Roselle Kline Chartock

"As I discovered, Elvis is the least prejudiced of people; considering his background — coming from the deep South, from a deeply religious

Resisting the urge to make even more bitter posts about people I expected to be better

Elvis Presley in “Jailhouse Rock” (1957)

Vince Everett has me flippin’, I’m telling you.

the brutality is incomparable. i don’t want to even acknowledge the details just released. this was done not by hamas, but by palestinian civilians. they strangled BABIES to death and threw rocks at them to stimulate an air strike. no trigger warnings. you don’t get that privilege. you all must read this and absorb this barbarity, for yarden bibas — for shiri, who is still missing. read it and understand the evil israel and the jewish people are up against.

happy halloween

This is Stephan. He just wants to help

“Perfume? You shouldn’t ask that. It’s a girl’s secret. But I have two, one for daytime, one for evening. No girl should buy her own perfume. It’s the one thing you should get from a beau. But ever since I’ve been able to afford it I’ve bought my own. Dreary, isn’t it?"

-Audrey Hepburn, Photoplay magazine, January 1954

Debbie and Carrie.