Winter Solstice

Here’s a metaphor: to accompany the white wine, IPA, or single malt scotch at the 4:00pm cocktail hour I usually cut up a plate of vegetables to accompany our beverages, to have for what I like to refer to as our cocktail hour. The platter consists usually: celery, carrots, cucumbers, peppers of all colors, florets of broccoli and cauliflower, radishes and at times even a scallion or two. I like the bite of the latter. We usually accompany our crudités with a bowl of some variety of dip: salad dressings of a variety of flavors, French, Blue Cheese, Russian, Thousand Island, and America’s favorite, Ranch. We listen to music as we imbibe, converse and chomp: Folk Alley is our favorite choice and is one of the music streams to which I subscribe (which means I am a financially sustaining member), but sometimes a Baroque music station or an album of Adagios or Beethoven sonatas from Amazon Music pleases us for the calm they provide. I mean, we love the sound of the banjo but sometimes it becomes too driving and excited.
            Now, metaphor is an implied analogy linking imaginatively and emotionally two seemingly disparate objects in which the qualities of the first are ascribed to the second. So: sometimes at cocktail hour I might set out a small bowl of potato chips. I keep almost permanently a large bag of chips in the pantry. Here it comes, the metaphor! When I open the bag of chips at the top they are full sized and mostly unbroken. However, as we munch our way down the bag, I note that the chips are broken and reduced in size. Eventually and towards the bottom of the bag, the chips are so small that they are more bits than chips and each is barely capable of holding onto dip (see above for the variety we set out). And by the time we arrive at the bag’s bottom the chips are reduced to mere crumbs. Indeed, the bits have by become so crushed that I can simply lift the chip bag and pour the crumbs into my hand and pop those crumbs into my mouth.
            How can this metaphor be defined and explained? If a metaphor is a literary device where one thing directly stands for another, then my experience with the chips seemed to me similar to my understanding of the structures of this society: on the top of the potato chip bag rests the rich and their weight crushes those that are underneath them. The rich on top and the poor on the bottom suffering under the size and weight of those above them. In the middle are chips like myself: crushed by the rich and crushing those below. Oh, I read the news today, oh boy!
            Here is another metaphor: the Winter Solstice—the shortest day of the year and the longest night. The event is an astronomical fact: the solstice is the moment when the earth’s tilt is farthest from the sun. This year, 2023, the solstice occurs at 9:27pm CST. Interestingly, that moment astronomically lasts but an instant though the entire day itself is celebrated as the winter solstice and the first day of winter! The winter solstice marks the death and rebirth of the sun: from here on the days will get longer and the nights shorter until the summer solstice when the sun in an instant will begin to die again as the dark grows stronger. What makes the winter solstice a metaphor for me links to the moan of Daisy Fay Buchanan in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby. Daisy whines, “I always wait for the longest day of the year and then miss it.” The sentiment is a clue to her character and even to the novel as a whole. Gatsby, narrator Nick Carraway, Daisy, Jordan, Myrtle and even Tom are troubled by what they don’t have, what they have missed and what still they miss. Even the final lines, “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past” speak of mistaken hope and inevitable loss. Gatsby is a very sad novel. But as for myself, I don’t wait for the longest night of the year; I don’t even recognize most of it because I sleep through its moment, and except for those episodes when I have to make a wee, I sleep through the longest night. I do not see the darkness. I consider Fitzgerald again. He writes, “[I]n a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day. At that hour the tendency is to refuse to face things as long as possible by retirement into an infantile dream . . .” That long night of the Winter Solstice makes for much possibility for the dark night of the soul. Last night’s dreams, for example, in which everything I valued became lost. But in the next instant the sun was reborn and everything I valued began to return. The sun was resurrected in the instant following the solstice and that becomes a moment of hope. I am comforted. I do not suffer the dark night of the soul. I am aware that it will still be outside very cold and dark, though less so each day. I have hope.
            For Daisy the Summer solstice stands for loss. For me the winter solstice represents a time of gain.

Chastisement

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the word ‘chastisement’ appears first in 1340 where it referred to an “authoritative correction of one who is in fault; means of amendment, discipline, training.” An earlier definition, dating from 1303 defines ‘chastisement’ as “corrective or disciplinary punishment, corrective, chastening; also simply punishment.” I get it. Ironically however, the verb, ‘to chastise,’ dates only from 1330 when it meant “To correct (authoritatively) the faults of; to amend, reform improve (a person or thing).” Interestingly, an earlier definition defines chastise as “to inflict punishment or suffering upon, with a view to amendment.” This definition includes knowingly to inflict some physical or psychic pain. I mention these definitions because these days I seem beset by chastisements meant I suppose, too chastise. I am surrounded by those who would me chastise. Let me count the ways:

·      I walk every day for exercise. Once I was a distance runner, but, alas, I have aged. During my daily walk I carry my iPhone and listen to music (or on very, very rare occasions, tune it to the news: this is always a desperate measure and usually causes me pain. I chastise myself for tuning in). On my smartphone an Apple application would measure my steps and distance. How it did so exceeded my comprehension, but when I returned home from my walk I would check on my phone how I had done that day. The phone would recount to me the measurements of my walk: how many steps (I walk in the morning) I had thus far taken (today, 7,493 steps). It also measured how many flights (of stairs or hills?) I had thus so far climbed: today it reported only one flight had been scaled, but I know that wasn’t an accurate report because I had exited downstairs several times and returned home from various errands and missions an equal number of times: each time I had to climb the stairs. The phone told me that I walked less today than I usually do but that I was walking more this month than I did last month. It also told me that I was walking less this year than I did last year! The phone also reported other data: “You are walking less this week than you did last week,” it chastised, or “This year you are walking less steps than you did last year.” And I am aware that there are other statistics the phone compiles, but I am afraid to look further than my steps and stairs. But to keep my phone from chastising me I ended up walking not for the pleasure of the exercise and the out of doors but to please the phone and keep it from chastising me.

·      On my dentist’s recommendation I purchased (from my dentist’s office!) an electric toothbrush. In a variety of different colored alerts the toothbrush tells me whether the pressure is satisfactory: green is good and red is bad. And the device keeps carefully measured time of my brushing. If I can brush for two whole minutes the toothbrush smiles at me with starry eyes. If, however, I fail to reach this goal the toothbrush frowns at me and there are no stars in its eyes. 

·      I receive a great many emails during the expanse of any day. Some notices are solicitations to shop: I shop. Some messages are announcements that somewhere someone is attending to my academic work and for $90.00 wouldn’t I like to know who that might be. I’d like to know but not for $90.00. However, the vast majority of emails these days come from the Democrats asking for contributions to the campaign. The dire warnings of a Democratic loss are chastisements enough, but so many requests for money are first accompanied by rather pointed accusations that I am not paying attention, that I haven’t signed a circulated petition, that I haven’t attended to the threats posed by the loss of government control by the Democrats. You aren’t listening, Alan, the messages scream. If I don’t contribute now catastrophe will result. I suffer their scolding throughout the day whenever I too often check my email. Of course, I have contributed to a host of campaigns across the country, but I recognize that if I contributed to every chastising request I would daily expend more than $200.00 seven days a week.

·      The anti-Semites chastise me for being Jewish: they would discipline me even to death. And the Jews chastise me for not being Jewish enough. I remember the Mitzvah Wagon on the corner of Broadway and 96^th Street accosting me as I walked past and demanding to know if I was Jewish and if so, would you like to put on tefillin.

·      My smart speaker, Alexa, periodically announces that based on my order history I might be running low on this and that and that I should consider re-ordering such and such so as not to run low on supply. Would I like to order now, she warns?

·      My clothes censure me for being either too fat or too thin, too short or too tall. In fact, the clothes I purchased even just last year are no longer wearable because as the doctor informs me, I have shrunk in my aging. Ah, Sam, you made the pants too long. And though I do not anymore regularly wear neck ties, the last time I attempted to do so my shirt collar chastised my neck for its girth, and I opted to leave the collar unbuttoned.  

·      Of course, my children have chastised my parenting periodically and quite pointedly and these days relentlessly reprove my lack of social awareness and my failure to use Instagram or TikTok or any social media platforms that would keep me current. But yes, nonetheless, we do get along fairly well.

·      And then, there is always my ever-present superego that watches me severely and chastises me relentlessly! Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

  

Ducks and a Hawk

This past evening the first noteworthy snowfall left the tree branches coated in white sheets, and the sidewalks and streets are iced and slippery. Actually, I find it both beautiful and annoying. Too soon the snow will become brown and black with dirt and yellowed with the urine of dogs. Even now the temperature rests above freezing and the snow melts apace. Frost wrote that nothing gold can stay. But the earth is quiet. In the park where an immense housing development is under construction there exists areas of architecturally designed waterways and also a number of areas where water has collected from the melting winter’s snow and summer rains are now stilled and covered with a thin sheen of ice. This has made the locations unlivable for the ducks and even some geese, the latter of whom I am not fond because they defecate all over the walkways. No ducks were visible this morning as I walked. Though only two days ago I had seen a dozen ducks swimming and breakfasting rather contentedly, I might say, in one of the natural craters where the water had collected, today those places were inaccessible. When would the ducks feel cold, I wondered. Where do the ducks go in the winter, Holden Caulfield wondered.
            Yesterday as I walked down Montreal Avenue away from the park I observed a hawk in the side brush. The bird was sitting atop what I considered to be a No Trespassing sign, but the hawk didn’t seem disturbed or deterred from its perch in the brush. The hawk didn’t seem unsteady though I walked against the wind unsteadily on the icy sidewalk. I watched the bird for a minute or so: the hawk wore its dark feathers proudly on the dark cloudy morning, its white proud breast puffed out almost insolently, I thought. Then the hawk turned its head and noticed me, and then it turned away, lifted its tail feather and shot out a stream of urine or feces and took off into flight.  I didn’t take the hawk’s actions personally, but it did cross my mind that sometimes when I am going out for a jaunt or an errand I often go first to the bathroom. I know that the hawk will not migrate to warmer climates and that it will hunt for food throughout the winter: perhaps it was then headed to hunt out a meal. But this particular hawk evacuated so proudly I could not help but admire it. 

Antisemitism

Though I grew up Jewish, I did not experience antisemitism as a child. This might have been the result of living in a newly established suburban community on Long Island that was at that moment being populated by Jewish military veterans and their families leaving New York City and seeking Eden. All I knew growing up were Jews and I was maintained very insulated. My father helped serv the developing conservative shul both as an active member and as the shul’s religious chairman. At thirteen everyone that I knew had celebrated a Bar Mitzvah, some less willingly than others, and at sixteen the girls celebrated their Sweet Sixteens. They were also Jewish. I did not have to identify as Jewish because, well, on the one hand I didn’t identify as anything but also because being Jewish was an unquestioned part of existence. There was no alternative. At home we did not talk about the Holocaust nor mention the threat of antisemitism. My father celebrated the existence of Israel as the realization of Biblical promise, and once, when I had not yet celebrated my Bar Mitzvah, sought to enroll me in a yeshiva where perhaps I might train as a rabbi. He worked hard in the development of the Jericho Jewish Center and during the interviewing of Rabbis for the shul the candidates stayed in our home. My father went to work most Saturdays.
            I first experienced antisemitism in my freshman year of college. Then, my roommate having learned that I was Jewish applied in my name for membership to the American Nazi Party. My roommate was a Southern racist bigot and the first antisemite I was to know. But I understood racism: I watched the television and read the news in horror. I listened to the songs of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Judy Collins, Pete Seeger, Eric Andersen and many others. Dylan’s “With God On Our side,” was the first mention of the Holocaust that I remember. On the campus at Roanoke College there were fraternities that by charter and custom excluded Jews from membership, and for a brief moment as I sought some semblance of acceptance I even considered pledging my faith to Jesus and to join an antisemitic Greek organization. I was talked out of that decision by a Jewish brother of the only fraternity that welcomed Jews, physics majors, and other assorted social outliers.
            From that moment at Roanoke College I understood the meaning and effect of antisemitism, and that learning has never left me. I energetically supported Israel during the 1967 and 1973 wars. I studied the Holocaust: read books, fiction and history; viewed film, fiction and documentary. On the campus where I taught, I became the resident, visible Jew and was called upon rather often to sit on interfaith panels. On one memorable discussion I assailed the antisemitism of Martin Luther and the reference to the Jewish Bible as “Old Testament.” I remember my comments being not well received. When the few Jewish students enrolled sought a home for the holidays, they were directed to me and we took them in.  I was once questioned by a faculty member why it was that Jews became associated with Indian madras fabric. I was baffled and almost amused by the question. When I received tenure, I wore a kippah for a year. I became an identifiable public Jew. Over the years I have visited Israel, the last time while visiting my daughter who was studying abroad in residence there. During my fifties I became active in Jewish practice and attended weekly services on the Sabbath and holidays, taught enrichment classes to eighth graders, and learned to lead services and read Torah. I weekly transported Mr. and Mrs. Mastbaum, holocaust survivors, to shul every week. My two daughters celebrated their Bat Mitzvahs. I identified publicly and privately as a Jew.
            But this latest conflict in the region has unleashed what appears to me as blatant recognizable antisemitism. And here is how I know: during the 1980s and early 1990s I participated in the antiapartheid movement directed at South Africa where the white settlers had violently suppressed and oppressed the African native population. Eventually the movement succeeded and Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison and became the first African president of the country. But the antiapartheid movement never advocated for the elimination of South Africa. Rather, it called for the reform of its government and social and labor practices; the movement demanded justice. Ironically, the apartheid laws were established in 1948, the same year as the Nakhba, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes following the Israeli war of independence. In the years following the wars in 1967 and 1973, the continued occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and the settler movement that followed, I have opposed the actions of the Israeli government as I did that of South Africa. I still do object to the policies of the Israeli government. But the recent calls for the elimination of Israel is more than a demand for justice: it is the demand for the elimination of an established nation that has been settled by Jews. To eliminate Israel is a call to eliminate Jews. This call is nothing but blatant and dangerous antisemitism.