The Friday Jewtopia

An interesting and rough hour on the treadmill yesterday. We were just dying till we realized that the incline was up a couple points. What the what? We toughed it out though.

We had plans. God laughed at those plans. Then he turned to Thor and said, 'Get a load of this.' Thor drank his mead, nodded and said, 'Fool'. At the next table over the Lords of Kobol all laughed. 

It's time to face reality after another day of frustration with The Final Storm. At the moment there's no there there. Meanwhile we read through a good chunk of Salvation '76's Alaska Pipeline chapter and came away pleased. Discipline is one thing, common sense is another. It comes down to the best use of time and right now time is best used with '76.

So right now we'll push on through '76. We can probbaly read through what we have by 1 May.

[Jesus Christ do you ever learn?-Ed]

And we'll make a decision on what to do next then.

An interesting review:

To be honest we wince when we think of that 'Oley five one stuff'. We knew we would when we wrote it. But it worked on its own level and we wanted to do it. When you see a review like that, it makes it worthwhile. Anyone else remember the Haka chanting Kiwis in ANZACs?

This article by Dov Fischer is about the Anti-Defamation League, but there's long background about the Jewish experience in America. Here's an interesting bit about older, Western European Jews and new arrivals from Eastern Europe:  'On a deeper level, the landed and assimilated German-American Jews desperately raced to rid the immigrants of their religious beliefs and values that made them seem so “different.” So they worked feverishly to assimilate the East European arrivals. Julia Richman, the superintendent of the New York City public schools in the Lower East Side, gave teachers orders to grab any child heard speaking Yiddish in the school hallways and to wash the child’s mouth out with soap. Minnie Lewis stood on street corners, offering children free cookies if they would let her cut their extended sideburns. Efforts were made to convert the young immigrant generation from their parents’ religious Orthodoxy to Reform Judaism, a theology akin to Unitarianism, where pork is eaten and intermarriage is boasted....It really was quite love-hate. The German Jews built Jewish hospitals like Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City because Jewish doctors still were being barred from practicing elsewhere. And yet those same Jews then initially barred the children of East European immigrants from practicing at Mount Sinai.'

We can personally vouch for this. Our grandfather's grandfather (Jacob F. Loeb)* used to stand at the door of his synagogue and turn away attendees with Eastern European names. And if a Jewish girl brought a date with a name like Lipshitz or Krasovksy... I hate Yiddish. Stroocks are nice, respectable German Jews, financiers, lawyers**, linen manufactures and the like. Mrs. Stroock is Lithuanian Jew. We're talking real Fiddler on the Roof type Jews. Jacob Loeb would not have approved.

Here's the synagogue, Temple Emanu-El, Midtown, Manhattan, across the street from Central Park. Our great, great Grandfather  helped build the thing. Later our grandfather bought the old pews. Jesus, Holy Moses and Holy Cow, we don't know what that cost, but we assure reader(s) it wasn't cheap. Have a look around. We attended some High Holy Day services with our grandfather there. It's a grand old sanctuary. 

Below, your Friday Flags, in the mail:

*Were there a boy he may very well have been named Jake.

**A dear lawyer friend used to work there when we were youths. We delighted in calling his secretary and saying, 'Carlos [Redacted], please. This is Will Stroock....'