Shabbat shalom! A tip of the kipah this week to the Queen of Rock and Roll, Tina Turner, who passed away at the ripe age of 83. There have been many obits honoring her impact and life story, so I won’t even try to do her justice here, but I will provide a link to one of her great performances of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together”. I chose this performance due to its 80’s vibe and choreography. And those legs!
And a happy Shavuot to all! What the hell is Shavuot? According to Wikipedia, the word Shavuot means “weeks”, and it marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer (don’t even ask). It’s considered the Jewish Pentecost, since it occurs on the 50th day after the first day of Passover, and marks the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses and the Israelis at Mount Sinai. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot, they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God. For some strange reason, it is celebrated by eating dairy, so, show your commitment to serving God by indulging in a Crescent Ridge Sundae, or head over to The Butcherie or Barry’s Villiage Deli in Waban for the best cheese blintz in Boston. Mmmmmmmm good!
I celebrated Shavuot by indulging in one of my favorite pastimes – Power washing. Like Huck Finn whitewashing the fence, I think I would pay money for the privilege of magically removing crud from any surface using the power of jet propelled water from my SunJoe machine. The instant gratification is addictive and the results generally exceed expectations. And this project, the deck railing at my daughter and son-in-laws new home in Sharon, was no exception. This was time well spent.
And speaking of time well spent, I am reminded of a story I read this week in The Free Press regarding the concept of Time Billionaires. The idea was surfaced in 2019 by Graham Duncan, the cofounder of East Rock Capital, who during an appearance on an episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, noted the following:
A million seconds is 11 days. A billion seconds is slightly over 31 years. . . . I feel like in our culture, we’re so obsessed, as a culture, with money. And we deify dollar billionaires in a way. . . . And I was thinking of time billionaires that when I see, sometimes, 20-year-olds—the thought I had was they probably have two billion seconds left. But they aren’t relating to themselves as time billionaires.
The main point here is that time is our most precious asset, but many of us don’t realize that until it’s too late, or the best power washing opportunities are behind us.
Key Lessons from charts:
- The “magic years” with your children will fly by if you let them
- Time with your family is limited
- Put down your phone, embrace life, be present in the moment
- Slow down, do more power washing!
Given that I am currently over 2 billion seconds old, I am not likely in the Billionaire club any more. But, with whatever millions I have remaining, I will do my best to power wash my ass off. Got a project for me?
Now what about the news for Jews you ask? Well, ask and ye shall receive. Here forthwith is your weekly wrap-up of Jewy news stuff curated by me and cut and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Times of Israel, Kveller, Jewish Boston, JTA, and other Jewy journals. Enjoy!
- Biden plan to combat antisemitism demands reforms across the executive branch and beyond – President Joe Biden unveiled a multifaceted and broad strategy to combat antisemitism in the United States that reaches from basketball courts to farming communities, from college campuses to police departments.“We must say clearly and forcefully that antisemitism and all forms of hate and violence have no place in America,” Biden said in a prerecorded video. “Silence is complicity.” The sixty page document and its list of more than 100 recommendations stretches across the government, requiring reforms in virtually every sector of the executive branch within a year. It was formulated after consultations with over a thousand experts, and covers a range of tactics, from increased security funding to a range of educational efforts.
- Kissinger at 100: “If it were not for the accident of my birth, I would be anti-semitic” – War criminal or diplomatic genius? The former secretary of state is remarkable for his longevity — his policy record is another matter. Those who appreciated Niall Ferguson’s hagiographical two-volume biography will applaud Kissinger’s role as the first Jewish secretary of state and his success in helping to achieve détente with Communist China and the Soviet Union. By contrast, political writers Seymour Hersh and especially Christopher Hitchens have pointed to a series of alleged war crimes by Kissinger in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Chile, Cyprus and East Timor marked by decisions made with apparent blithe unconcern for human suffering and loss of life. Click here for more.
- The Florida mom who got Amanda Gorman’s poem restricted says she’s sorry for promoting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – (JTA) – Months before a Miami-area mother persuaded a local school to remove an Amanda Gorman poem from its elementary-aged library, she was posting antisemitic memes on her Facebook page. Now, Daily Salinas is apologizing for one of those things — and unrepentant about the other. The jackass claims she “has Jewish friends” and watched Fauda. “I want to apologize to the Jewish community,” Salinas told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Wednesday. She was saying sorry for a Facebook post she shared in March offering a summary of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” a notorious antisemitic forgery written more than a century ago in Russia. She also mistakenly identified the author as “Oprah Winfrey”, and admits that she doesn’t read books. Oy.
- 🇮🇱 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will restart the push to radically change Israel’s judiciary after his government successfully passed the state budget early this morning. Benny Gantz, the National Unity party chairman, said Netanyahu is “once again drunk with power.” (Haaretz)
- 🤷 None of this was on my Bingo card for today: Woody Allen saved a friend with the Heimlich maneuver while out to dinner with Alan Dershowitz. The friend, former Manhattan Borough President Andrew Stein, was choking on a piece of pork. In a recent op-ed co-authored with Dershowitz titled “Why Biden might be the Dems’ last pro-Israel president,” Stein wrote that he will now be voting Republican because of the Democratic Party’s stance on Israel. (Dershowitz wrote that he “is planning to remain a Democrat and vote for Biden while seeking to marginalize the radical anti-Israel elements in that party.”)As the Post reported, Allen has saved another person with the Heimlich maneuver at an Upper East Side Italian restaurant: In 1992, he sprang to the rescue of Jean Doumanian, a former “Saturday Night Live” producer, at Primola on 2nd Avenue. (JTA)
- 🇮🇱 The U.S. State Department condemned the Sunday visit to the Temple Mount by Itamar Ben Gvir, the far-right Israeli minister, who declared “we are in charge.” The site in the Old City of Jerusalem, believed to be where the biblical temples stood, is also the third-holiest site in Islam, known as Al Aqsa. The rightwing nut job is deliberately poking the bear and will be responsible for whatever violence he precipitates. (Haaretz, AP)
- On this week in history (1954): Bob Dylan, nee Robert Allen Zimmerman, was called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah. The Nobel Prize-winning singer-songwriter, whose Hebrew name is Shabtai Zisel ben Avraham, is best known for his poetic, folk-influenced hits like “The Times They Are a-Changin’” and “Tangled Up in Blue.” Here’s Dylan’s 10 most Jewish songs.
That’s all folks! Enjoy the long weekend, be present and embrace life! And do some power washing! And be careful out there.
Brad out.
Jew News Review 