Our nation's malignancy forces upon us existential questions: Would you lay down your life in the glorious conquest of Vancouver - to please a president who won't even welcome your corpse home?
Your essay on Presidential and personal cancer is moving, particularly the evocative section on the similar overweening paschal evils of Pharaoh and Herod. Fighting contemporary evil, though, is complicated by the fact that the Trumpian cancer has probably spread too far to be corrected by surgery that would depend on the hands of either a Supreme Court hobbled by a reliance on the thin reed of Presidential respect or Republicans in Congress crippled by fears of not being renominated.
As Trump’s permission-slip despotism has probably escaped the conventional limits of cancer metaphors, countering that despotism may depend less on domestic protest or resistance and more on retaliation by foreign allies and foes erecting countervailing tariffs and other restrictions on international trade and services. To riff on FDR, we may have come to the point where the only thing that Trump and his enablers will fear is when fear abroad is mobilized to build a wall against commerce with America.
Wow, a very powerful essay. Years ago, 1997 and 1999 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. On the Saturday after my first diagnosis before surgery on Tuesday, I was driving with a good friend to see a play at the Shakespeare Festival and I remember telling my friend that Wednesday I was cancer free and Thursday, I’d alway be a cancer survivor as long as I lived. I was so angry. And worried, too. Anyway, everything came out alright and I’m still a survivor. But getting back to your essay, how does one person cure a cancer on her country caused by a person she deeply hates who has her fate in his tiny evil hands? What can I do? How do I fight this cancer? What is the cure? This new cancer is spreading very fast. How don’t make it stop? Where do I go for the answer? All the odds seem stacked against us. It seems like craziness. Not a very positive “comment” ahead of the holy days in front of us. Sorry. But I’m glad that you are on the road to recovery. That’s a good thing.
Saying on Sunday the 20th. It will be our "Meditative moment" before introducing the speaker on april 20th. You should be able to find a recording of the service about a week later on our website <UUFSA.org> Please let me know if you find anything amiss. Easter Sunday and Passover holidays occur this weekend and I found Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s Substack post of April 8th particularly apropos to our country’s situation as both festivals are celebrated around the world. In his post titled “The “cancer within the presidency” - and within me,” he alludes to remarks made by Nixon Watergate lawyer John Dean about a “cancer within the Presidency” and his own bout with prostate cancer. He draws parallels with our current national malignancy with the cruel edicts of the Egyptian Pharaoh and King Herod when Jesus was born.
He writes,
Jews and Christians approach their most mortality-obsessed-yet-unwaveringly-joyous festivals this month, celebrating the triumph of life in the face of death. As we sit around our Seder tables and Easter dinners, we need to ask some hard questions. While none of us is facing a power-crazed, paranoid Idumean King or sadistic Egyptian pharaoh, what’s happening right now rivals those ancient narratives for its cruelty. We are witnessing abductions of young people in broad daylight that would make Pharoah and King Herod proud.8 Pharaoh, you know, was the originator of the Great Replacement Theory, (Exodus 1:22), opting to murder Hebrew babies so that “Jews will not replace us.” (In Ex. 1:10, he frets that they will “outnumber us”). King Herod (Matthew 2:16), fearing that a new king has been born, followed in kind.9 We’ve seen it before, but it seems worse now. And now, as then, courageous people will need to step forward to save the innocent. In the Exodus narratives, it was the midwives Shifra and Puah who defied Pharaoh and saved Hebrew baby boys. Now it needs to be all of us, saving our students who are being abducted in plain sight.
And Rabbi Hammerman notes that although he probably disagreed with views expressed by Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University who was snatched off the street for her expressed opposition to events in Gaza, he would be inclined to act in her defense.
“I believe that, in a world that is very messy, the purpose of politics is not typically to maximize good, but more often to minimize evil. Right now we all have lesser-of-evils decisions to make. I would never give up my life to serve up some Danish to Donald, but I will more likely be called upon to stand up for the hundreds of students now having their legal residency terminated for purely political reasons.
Powerful sermon on the moral and civic dilemma we face today in this country. I would like to quote 2 paragraphs from your awesome text (the Pharaoh and King Herod with credit of course in our next Sunday talk at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in St Augustine. I'm a volunteer leader in the Fellowship and we have no Minister. Would that be okay with you?
It’s All Bullshit! When We get down to it he’s just a man. NOT a God NOT a King! He has NO Power except the power he is given by people who Lie to him thinking he’s going to reward them. Poor dumb gullible souls! He wouldn’t spit on any of you if you were on fire. Meanwhile innocent people are losing everything and children are suffering! They don’t care because they never have had to want… in the end the Tables will be turned whether they think so or not… You Reap What You Sow!!!
Thank you for sharing your story in this service of the greater understanding of this radical imposition on our daily lives. And the potential for survival that exists simultaneously with the destruction. And the reminder that there will be both. This is a major assault on our individual selves and our country which has taken us by surprise despite the warning signs. We all, Americans, take comfort from examples of daily and long-term survival. All new to us as we encounter this new victim role, known to so many around the world.
What a heavy Notebook this time, actually as always, Rabbi Hammerman! With personal distress and uncertainty. Who can speak better about the cancer observed in our (and other) governments? AfD matching the level of the CDU, both agonizing and creating great fear among rational citizens in Germany. To that cancerous growth another time. Thank you for the videos - I listened to the lovely "Rooftops of Jerusalem" video and, as is usual, Youtube continued after that video was over with Franz Schubert´s Appagione for piano and cello, performed by my favorites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNcQuY1isEI And this returned my mind to an issue which I so often am confronted with in the music world - Franz Schubert, who graced our civilization with music that immediately grabs the emotions - only lived 31 years. Mozart, only 36. No cures for their ailments that eventually stopped them in their musical tracks. Strangely enough, when one hears their last works, an excrutiatingly beautiful string quintet (Schubert) and Mozart´s Requiem, they embody absolute perfection that could never be surpassed. Unimaginable anyway. OK, this is totally off the subject.Sorry. But it makes one wonder about one´s purpose on this earth as an individual Homo Sapien. And how important each individual is on this earth, or can be, to the rest of civilization. Even in a short span of a lifetime. Or a short life. Fortunately we will have you, Rabbi Hammerman, for a very long time, thanks to modern medicine and science. You have already created a force and energy for good on this earth. Blessings and thank you.
What an amazing commentary, Kim. Irinically, my YouTube feed sent me to clips from the film "Amadeus" the other day, reminding me of the precious balance between the earthy and the otherworldly, and how perfection can come in such flawed packages. Thank you for all your surpport - and your insights.
Your essay on Presidential and personal cancer is moving, particularly the evocative section on the similar overweening paschal evils of Pharaoh and Herod. Fighting contemporary evil, though, is complicated by the fact that the Trumpian cancer has probably spread too far to be corrected by surgery that would depend on the hands of either a Supreme Court hobbled by a reliance on the thin reed of Presidential respect or Republicans in Congress crippled by fears of not being renominated.
As Trump’s permission-slip despotism has probably escaped the conventional limits of cancer metaphors, countering that despotism may depend less on domestic protest or resistance and more on retaliation by foreign allies and foes erecting countervailing tariffs and other restrictions on international trade and services. To riff on FDR, we may have come to the point where the only thing that Trump and his enablers will fear is when fear abroad is mobilized to build a wall against commerce with America.
Wow, a very powerful essay. Years ago, 1997 and 1999 I was diagnosed with breast cancer. On the Saturday after my first diagnosis before surgery on Tuesday, I was driving with a good friend to see a play at the Shakespeare Festival and I remember telling my friend that Wednesday I was cancer free and Thursday, I’d alway be a cancer survivor as long as I lived. I was so angry. And worried, too. Anyway, everything came out alright and I’m still a survivor. But getting back to your essay, how does one person cure a cancer on her country caused by a person she deeply hates who has her fate in his tiny evil hands? What can I do? How do I fight this cancer? What is the cure? This new cancer is spreading very fast. How don’t make it stop? Where do I go for the answer? All the odds seem stacked against us. It seems like craziness. Not a very positive “comment” ahead of the holy days in front of us. Sorry. But I’m glad that you are on the road to recovery. That’s a good thing.
Saying on Sunday the 20th. It will be our "Meditative moment" before introducing the speaker on april 20th. You should be able to find a recording of the service about a week later on our website <UUFSA.org> Please let me know if you find anything amiss. Easter Sunday and Passover holidays occur this weekend and I found Rabbi Joshua Hammerman’s Substack post of April 8th particularly apropos to our country’s situation as both festivals are celebrated around the world. In his post titled “The “cancer within the presidency” - and within me,” he alludes to remarks made by Nixon Watergate lawyer John Dean about a “cancer within the Presidency” and his own bout with prostate cancer. He draws parallels with our current national malignancy with the cruel edicts of the Egyptian Pharaoh and King Herod when Jesus was born.
He writes,
Jews and Christians approach their most mortality-obsessed-yet-unwaveringly-joyous festivals this month, celebrating the triumph of life in the face of death. As we sit around our Seder tables and Easter dinners, we need to ask some hard questions. While none of us is facing a power-crazed, paranoid Idumean King or sadistic Egyptian pharaoh, what’s happening right now rivals those ancient narratives for its cruelty. We are witnessing abductions of young people in broad daylight that would make Pharoah and King Herod proud.8 Pharaoh, you know, was the originator of the Great Replacement Theory, (Exodus 1:22), opting to murder Hebrew babies so that “Jews will not replace us.” (In Ex. 1:10, he frets that they will “outnumber us”). King Herod (Matthew 2:16), fearing that a new king has been born, followed in kind.9 We’ve seen it before, but it seems worse now. And now, as then, courageous people will need to step forward to save the innocent. In the Exodus narratives, it was the midwives Shifra and Puah who defied Pharaoh and saved Hebrew baby boys. Now it needs to be all of us, saving our students who are being abducted in plain sight.
And Rabbi Hammerman notes that although he probably disagreed with views expressed by Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University who was snatched off the street for her expressed opposition to events in Gaza, he would be inclined to act in her defense.
“I believe that, in a world that is very messy, the purpose of politics is not typically to maximize good, but more often to minimize evil. Right now we all have lesser-of-evils decisions to make. I would never give up my life to serve up some Danish to Donald, but I will more likely be called upon to stand up for the hundreds of students now having their legal residency terminated for purely political reasons.
Powerful sermon on the moral and civic dilemma we face today in this country. I would like to quote 2 paragraphs from your awesome text (the Pharaoh and King Herod with credit of course in our next Sunday talk at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in St Augustine. I'm a volunteer leader in the Fellowship and we have no Minister. Would that be okay with you?
Absolutely. I'd be honored. If possible can you send me a link to it or the text afterwards? Have joyous holidays.
It’s All Bullshit! When We get down to it he’s just a man. NOT a God NOT a King! He has NO Power except the power he is given by people who Lie to him thinking he’s going to reward them. Poor dumb gullible souls! He wouldn’t spit on any of you if you were on fire. Meanwhile innocent people are losing everything and children are suffering! They don’t care because they never have had to want… in the end the Tables will be turned whether they think so or not… You Reap What You Sow!!!
P.S. Thank you too for the beautiful photos of Jerusalem.
Lacking your eloquence and clarity, I will say simply thank you. May your words give us the strength and courage we need now.
Thank you for sharing your story in this service of the greater understanding of this radical imposition on our daily lives. And the potential for survival that exists simultaneously with the destruction. And the reminder that there will be both. This is a major assault on our individual selves and our country which has taken us by surprise despite the warning signs. We all, Americans, take comfort from examples of daily and long-term survival. All new to us as we encounter this new victim role, known to so many around the world.
I really don’t know you to respond. @Jim Acosta
What a heavy Notebook this time, actually as always, Rabbi Hammerman! With personal distress and uncertainty. Who can speak better about the cancer observed in our (and other) governments? AfD matching the level of the CDU, both agonizing and creating great fear among rational citizens in Germany. To that cancerous growth another time. Thank you for the videos - I listened to the lovely "Rooftops of Jerusalem" video and, as is usual, Youtube continued after that video was over with Franz Schubert´s Appagione for piano and cello, performed by my favorites https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNcQuY1isEI And this returned my mind to an issue which I so often am confronted with in the music world - Franz Schubert, who graced our civilization with music that immediately grabs the emotions - only lived 31 years. Mozart, only 36. No cures for their ailments that eventually stopped them in their musical tracks. Strangely enough, when one hears their last works, an excrutiatingly beautiful string quintet (Schubert) and Mozart´s Requiem, they embody absolute perfection that could never be surpassed. Unimaginable anyway. OK, this is totally off the subject.Sorry. But it makes one wonder about one´s purpose on this earth as an individual Homo Sapien. And how important each individual is on this earth, or can be, to the rest of civilization. Even in a short span of a lifetime. Or a short life. Fortunately we will have you, Rabbi Hammerman, for a very long time, thanks to modern medicine and science. You have already created a force and energy for good on this earth. Blessings and thank you.
What an amazing commentary, Kim. Irinically, my YouTube feed sent me to clips from the film "Amadeus" the other day, reminding me of the precious balance between the earthy and the otherworldly, and how perfection can come in such flawed packages. Thank you for all your surpport - and your insights.