Samain Thanksgiving Moon
My journey on the fringe of Congregation Beth Evergreen continues to fascinate me. In our mussar class yesterday the conversation turned to postelection feelings. Jews are an interesting subgroup in these matters, mostly part of the educated elite, often part of the moneyed elite, yet vulnerable to shifts in public attitudes, very vulnerable, as all post-holocaust, post-pogrom Jews know. I know this intellectually, as I imagine you do, too.
It’s different up close and in person. One woman yesterday talked about her postelection reality. She couldn’t sleep. She had, very uncharacteristically, purchased a gun and headed off to a shooting range. She’s maybe 65-70. She’s getting her homes ready for sale and has looked into landed immigrancy in Canada and requirements for becoming an Israeli citizen.
She sees, she says, the signs of a pre-holocaust Germany. The holocaust devastated her family and left a deep imprint on her soul. Heads nodded around the table, no one dismissed her as hysterical. Her position was extreme for this group, but not at all off the spectrum of reactions.
Other reactions to the postelection time were offered in a round table discussion last Saturday morning. This was the service for that shabbat. The most common words, echoed yesterday in mussar, were afraid, sad, depressed, fearful, angry. I emphasize this because this is not a group lacking power, financial and political. And yet they still find this election disturbing at a primal level. The woman I mentioned senses her survival at stake.
My Beth Evergreen experience has put me in touch with the dread that must be filling African-Americans, Latinos, anyone here without documentation, LGBT folks, Native Americans, the disabled, the destitute, the homeless. This cannot be, must not be our nation. Whole subgroups should not live in fear of their lives or in fear of their lives being reduced from miserable to untenable.
The safety pin is not much, but it’s a start. Let’s at least do that while we get our heads and hearts around what must come next.
And, improbably, it will be Thanksgiving next week. There is no hint of over the river and through the woods weather to stimulate that Thanksgiving feeling. We may get a storm on Thursday. That would help.
He sits, early in the morning, while it is still dark outside, with his head in his hands. Orion, his longtime friend hangs in the sky visible to the southwest, Scorpio and Cassiopeia and the Drinking Gourd out there, too. A crescent Thanksgiving Moon, waxing toward its Super Moon event on November 25th, was visible last night.
In this case Trumpism is the monster, a living candidacy patched together from a body of populist resentment, the brain of a nativist bigot, the nervous system of fearful white males and the legs of second-amendment worshipping other-phobic citizens. The arms, though, the arms are Trump’s, dangling like the tentacles of a squid, ready to grab, squeeze, embrace. Force. Trump is Frankenstein to this political moment in the Republican Party. The GOP provided the lightning that brought this monster to life and has paraded it with pride through this mockery of a campaign.
Race relations are in a visibly violent phase. Police kill black folks with so steady a drumbeat that it has become like Trump’s long string of insults to America, dulling our capacity for outrage. Misogyny is at its peak in the Donald, powerful at the same time as our first serious female candidate.
At 12:30 we drove over to Evergreen for mussar at Beth Evergreen. It was Rabbi Jamie’s birthday and each woman brought a cooked or purchased offering of some kind. We had cranberry juice with tea and mint, apple juice, brie and a wonderful soft cheese, warm carrots, pistachios, cashews, strawberries, grapes, melon, crackers, chips, guacamole, a birthday cake, sea-salt caramel and chocolate brownies (Kate, see pic), with Halloween plates and napkins.
Pain. Can make you tired. Can make it difficult to focus. Just plain hurts. My left knee has gone from bad to very bad. Trying various meds as a way to make it from now until January. Some success. Pain is a peculiar phenomenon, so assertive, so real; yet totally individual. Inaccessible to another. A message that, once sent, it would be nice to be able to turn off.
I suppose it’s similar to coming to political consciousness during the Vietnam War, or, later, during the Watergate mess. Being young when the impeachment of Bill Clinton was the big news. Or, when 9/11 happened. These were big moments in our recent history, each one with a totalizing grip on the news when they occurred. A child of those years could be forgiven a cynical attitude toward public life, just as Ruth, if she develops one, could be.
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Beth Evergreen’s sanctuary has multiple clear glass windows that offer views of Bergen Mountain and Elk Meadows. The view next to the Torah Ark had a mountain side filled with lodgepole and Ponderosa pine. Almost to the peak of the mountain though there was a small stand of aspen, golden still, in a perfect heart shape. All through the service I had a symbol, an accident of nature, created by my view, my perspective that synched up remarkably well with the overall theme of Yom Kippur, atonement. Also, up and to my right, at the roof of the sanctuary, a square window framed the tip of a Ponderosa pine. It looked like a painting by a member of the Kano school of Japanese art.