Ghost Stickersheet For My October Patrons 👻

Elvis Presley performing the New Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, 1956.

@keuhkopussirotta / fleabag / jamie anderson / holly warburton / richard siken / mitski / aracelis girmay by @heavensghost / philip pullman

Hello friend!

Ahoy! You are now anonymous (because you asked so nicely and it's a valid question.)

G-d I wish I had a real answer for this. I think it depends on the person, but is this someone you feel like will be receptive to you approaching her with some vulnerability about how unsafe that makes you feel? Do you think she will listen to reason if you give her fact-based explanations for why that rhetoric is more antisemitic than it is helpful to the Palestinian cause? + your perspective and feelings on it? If so, it's worth a try if you are intent on maintaining a trust-based friendship.

If you don't think you'll be safe/you aren't really in a place to take the risk of vulnerability, I'd say you have a few choices:

Avoid her or at least talking about that with her for now, and talk to her later when some of the heat has died down on this issue. Admittedly, this is not optimal because it's way easier to apologize and backtrack when the stakes are low(er), but if you really work on it with her maybe you could rebuild some of that trust.

Stay friends but don't trust her with your safety (emotional or physical). Up to you about how you answer her if she notices and asks about this.

Cut ties at whatever speed you are comfortable with and don't tell her why. You can drift or just start avoiding her. That happens sometimes for non-political reasons.

Cut ties with her and tell her why you aren't interested in maintaining the relationship. That's obviously the most direct, confrontational version; if you go this route but don't want to have a fight about it, you could just say "hey - this really showed me that you do not value the lives and human rights of my people and therefore me, and so I no longer feel safe around you. I wish that was different, but it can't be fixed at this point because I can't trust you anymore." That's a tough lesson, but it's one some people need to learn.

Obviously none of that is ideal, but we're not working with ideal circumstances here unfortunately. Idk if other people have suggestions, but those are mine. I'm sorry you're in this position and hope that you have other supportive community no matter what you decide and how she responds.

Maybe it's time to have a little faith, Dean. ↳ Sam Winchester

Supernatural | S1 EP12 : Faith

A witch ought never be frightened in the darkest forest because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.

Will you take nothing from Sleepy Hollow that was worth the coming here?

CHRISTINA RICCI as KATRINA VAN TASSEL in SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999) dir. Tim Burton

Tomorrow, October 27th, marks the 5th anniversary of the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting. For any of those who may not remember or forgot a few details, especially outside of the US: in 2018, a man named Robert Bowers went into the Tree of Life Synagogue during their Shabbat morning services and opened fire. 11 Jews lost their lives. On August 3, 2023, Robert Bowers was sentenced to death for this antisemitic crime. This was the worst mass shooting of Jews in the US to date.

Yesterday, October 25th, Jewish students at Cooper Union, a college in New York had to barricade themselves in the library while 'protestors' banged on the doors and shouted 'Free Palestine'. Note that the students had done absolutely nothing to cause this and have absolutely no power to do anything about the situation in the Middle East. This was an antisemitic attack, not a protest. You don't trap people for a protest. That's basic protesting rules. Disrupting is NOT the same as trapping. Peaceful protesting is defined as not blocking doors. Even if the students had opened the doors the demonstrators were right there and threatening. Not peaceful. It took over 40 minutes for the students to be safely escorted out of the building.

Also yesterday, a 6-person family in LA was woken up at approximately 520am by a man who kicked in their door and was wielding a knife. Blessedly (somewhat) he had entered the master bedroom first where he confronted the husband and his pregnant wife (at 9 months which means any amount of stress could put her into labor and put her baby at risk). All four children were also at home. Luckily the husband was able to fend off the knife-wielding antisemite. Multiple reasons he knew they were Jewish range from the mezuzah on their door to the fact he is apparently a neighbor and had talked to them before a few months previous where he found out they are Israeli. He apparently was drunk but had the wherewithal to state his intentions: he was going to kill them because they are Jews.

October has not been kind to Jews in the past few years and especially not this week in particular. Please, we are not okay. We are very tired and hurt and scared.

Jewish Journal

Hersh and a Story of Love

He was everyone's Hersh.

He was everyone’s Hersh.

Hersh’s charismatic smile let you know he was, as his mother Rachel described, a “happy-go-lucky, laid back, good humored, respectful and curious person.” He was, as the death announcement put it, “a child of light, love and peace.” People were drawn to the story of a young man who loved soccer and music, had a passion for geography and travel, who had just gone to six music festivals in Europe over the span of nine weeks.

And then came October 7th. Hersh’s last messages to his family, at 8:11 AM on October 7th, were “I love you” and “I’m sorry.”

Hamas kidnapped 251 hostages that day. But a statistic doesn’t ignite the same passion as an actual person; and through Hersh, the world connected to all of the hostages. Heads of state spoke about Hersh. At the Democratic National convention many in the crowd openly wept for Hersh, and chanted “bring them home.” His image was posted everywhere; “Bring Hersh Home” was graffitied on walls and printed on posters. Tehillim groups prayed for Hersh, and a Sefer Torah was written in his merit.

And after Hamas murdered Hersh, millions of people cried; and they cried for all of the hostages, including [those] who remain in captivity.

Hersh’s story is one of love. His parents Rachel and Jon Goldberg Polin advocated for him 24/7. Despite their overwhelming pain, what Rachel called “our planet of beyond pain, our planet of no sleep, our planet of despair, our planet of tears,” they found the superhuman strength to advocate every single day, to remind the world how many days it was since Hersh was held captive. Rachel and Jon traveled everywhere to do everything and anything possible to bring him home.

Most of all they told the world how much they loved Hersh, and got the world to love Hersh as well. Even at the funeral, with an otherworldly expression of spiritual strength, Rachel declared that “I am so grateful to God, and I want to do hakarat hatov (offer gratitude) and thank God right now, for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh…. For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.”

The Rambam says that when you truly love someone “you will recount their praises and call on other people to love them.” And that is what Rachel and Jon did.

Love has its limits. At Hersh’s funeral, the speakers apologized to him for being unable to bring him home; sadly, this immense outpouring of love could not accomplish what everyone desperately wanted. But the Song of Songs says “love is as strong as death.” Jon declared at the end of his eulogy that Hersh’s memory “can begin a revolution.” And without question that is what love can do.

Love is belittled because it is bewildering. It is immaterial, a force that ought to be reckoned with but cannot be measured. Charles Darwin wondered whether altruism would disprove his theory of natural selection; to sacrifice oneself for others contradicts a theory based on a single-minded pursuit of survival. (A person of faith grappling with the same question would see the traces of a divine love tucked away in the DNA of the universe.) From a political standpoint, love is the frail runner up to raw power. Machiavelli wrote that “it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.” In a world about survival and strength, love is seen as the veneer that covers up far uglier forces.

Judaism sees love as the very center of the universe. There are commandments to love God and to love all of humanity, both one’s neighbor and the stranger. Hillel explained that the entire Torah can be reduced to the commandment of loving others; one first experiences the divine in interpersonal connections, and only from there does the rest of the Torah become comprehensible.

The world begins with love; the Book of Psalms (89:3) says “the world was created in kindness.” Rav Saadia Gaon and Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto see love as God’s very motivation in creating the universe. Love becomes the spiritual blueprint for all of existence.

The very human love we have for others reflects this larger divine love. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook offers a fascinating perspective on Shir HaShirim, the Song of Songs, a biblical book written in the style of a love song. In the Talmud, Rabbi Akiva already reinterprets Shir HaShirim as a metaphor of the love between man and God; ordinary love songs don’t belong in a holy text. Rabbi Kook offers a fascinating reinterpretation of Rabbi Akiva, and explains that the ordinary love songs in Shir HaShirim are actually a small-scale reflection of the greater love between man and God; and that is because our “ordinary” loves are not ordinary at all. All loves lead one to the divine.

It’s difficult to talk about love at a time of war. Love sometimes requires one to go into battle to protect one’s family, reluctantly but resolutely. But that is not at all the goal; Isaiah dreamt of a world where the swords are beaten into plowshares. War is our nightmare; the dream is peace, of each person sitting contentedly under their own vine and own fig tree.

And that is the love we continue to search for, an otherworldly force that will transform history. Rachel explained that Hersh had a unique ability to bring people together that he had “befriended… German (soccer) fans over the years when they visited Jerusalem to watch their team play soccer. Together they painted a peace mural with both Arab and Jewish residents near our home in Jerusalem…” One prays for the day when this will be more than a mural.

Judaism proudly asserts the power of love. Machiavelli’s approach is tempting; sometimes all that matters is pure strength. But the mistake is that brute force works for a generation or two, until there’s a crisis. Then the fear disappears, and the ruler is deposed. Power is as finite as those who wield it, grasped tightly by princes whose lives are short and temporary.

To survive for a generation or two, one needs power; to survive for millennia, one needs love. And that is the story of Jewish history. Jews are a people who never quit because they had a passion for God, Torah and the Jewish people. The love Jews around the world had for Hersh (who was named for a great-uncle who perished in the Holocaust) is part of this same never-ending story. The Jewish people are living proof that love can outlast power.

The day of Hersh’s funeral, several posts on social media reported about children being named Hersh in the memory of Hersh Goldberg Polin z”l. These were not relatives or even acquaintances of the family. Just ordinary Jews who cared, and wanted Hersh’s legacy to continue onward. They were naming their children after a man they loved but never knew.

They were sharing Rachel and Jon’s remarkable love for Hersh with their own family.

And in doing so, they were starting a revolution of love once again.

May Hersh’s memory be a blessing, and a revolution.

though this is from September, I had never read it until last night, and I think we need it this week.

“and they called it puppy love” 🐾

Take time for yourself 🧡