I've Seen This Movie Before

      

    As some of you know, I’m engaged to a Jewish girl. 

    While she doesn’t hold to kosher dietary restrictions (thank goodness…because bacon) and encourages me to decorate for Christmas (hell, she’d even let me put up my Nativity scene if I wanted, but I won’t.  Because, you know, little Baby Jesus), she is very faithful to all other tenets of Judaism.

    For as long as I can remember, being Jewish didn’t seem potentially hazardous.

    Until savage monsters murdered over a thousand innocent people.

    Full Disclosure:  my first wife was Jewish.  She isn’t anymore, although it had nothing to do with me.  My SECOND wife was Presbyterian.  Still is.  Now, either the three of them have horrendous taste in men or…I’m a player.  I don’t think I like either option.  Anyway, that’s a whole ‘nother story.

    A couple weeks ago, while getting ready to go out for our Sunday breakfast, she asked if it would be safe to wear one of her necklaces with a Star of David on it.

    Last week, she teared up a little, saying she was afraid to mention that she’s Jewish.  She's also of Argentinian descent and would speak nothing but Spanish everywhere we went.  Plus, she said she was glad she would have my last name when we married.

    NOTE:  Many of you also know that my last name is “Lynch.”  I hesitated to tell her that, in today’s day and age of BLM, that may not be such a bargain anymore.  I kept quiet.

    Then, this week she told me that she is worried about going to temple (not Temple University in Philadelphia.  Although she should be.  That place is a war zone).  She asked me to explain why, for the first time in her life, she would feel this way.

    I could not.  Neither did I pooh-pooh the unease she feels.

    Because, I understand.

    The anti-Semitic unrest sweeping our nation, especially among nitwits on college campuses, would do that to a person.

    I also worry (haven’t told her and, since she probably doesn’t read these hideous things, will never know) that the United States may be headed toward a modern-day version of Kristallnacht.

    But, boy howdy, like a second Biden Administration (or return of Trump), I sorely hope that doesn't happen.

    If you don’t know what that is, Google it.  I can’t do everything, you know.  I’m only one man.  A little old man.

    While I abhor the brutal violence being visited upon innocent Gazans, I sadly shake my head.  Because I realize that the people they voted for brought the thunder down on them.  Hamas is a cancer which must be thoroughly excised, or the world will continue to witness the savagery visited upon innocent Israelis on October 7^th.

    While a simplistic, and clumsy, analogy, if you have an infestation of cockroaches, you don’t step on a few and call it good.  You wipe out every single last one of them.  If you don’t, you’ll eventually see their brothers, sons, or cousins running foot races in the pantry.

    As far as the hopelessly utopian numbskulls calling for a ceasefire….how do you think a Japanese call for a ceasefire would have been received if they called for one after the Doolittle raid?

    Of course, Americans had bigger nutsacks in 1942.

    Far more innocent people were killed at Hiroshima and Dresden than at Pearl Harbor.  Incidentally, have Germany and Japan been up to much mischief since 1945?  Yeah, didn’t think so.

    Absolutely horrifying, but that is what happens in war.  I so wish we would all get along on the only home we have in the universe, but that's not how it works.  Bring the fire, you may get burned. 

    Besides, while it’s something you’d hear most often in a schoolyard, who started it?

    There’s much more I can discuss, but it’s Sunday.  You may already be taking a nap before watching the New York Giants lose to a Pop Warner team.  Or the Raiders.

    But, I share her worry and will do what I can to protect her, if necessary.  Even if I am a little old man.  Because, even though the United States in 2023 isn’t exactly the same as Germany in 1933, I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve seen this movie before. 

    Hannukah starts December 7^th.  I still have every intention of decorating for it.