Greetings and welcome to a bit of fuzzy-headed blogging wrapped in the comforting arms of an open thread community diary. Just a bit of what's on my mind, a few photos, a couple of drawings. All are welcome here, raise any subject, promote any cause, highlight a diary, post a pic, share a tune … s’all good.
Last weekend, Mrs the Werelynx, Fabulous Mother-In-Law and I visited Josefov— Prague's old Jewish ghetto. This was a visit that FMIL had been talking about doing for well over a year. She’s been thinking about her friend Helena lately. As school girls, Helena took her to visit the cemetery and although the fog of time and perhaps a spot of Alzheimer’s has erased the reason they visited the cemetery, FMIL remembers placing pebbles on the gravestones.
We'd have probably been fine with just visiting the cemetery— but you can't buy an entry ticket just for the cemetery. We went through the Pinkas Synagogue and a couple other buildings. On the walls of the synagogue the names of nearly 80,000 Jewish victims of the Holocaust are written in black and red calligraphy.
I found my family's name on the wall.
Now, the tale from my father was that our Germanic farmer ancestors escaped the religious persecutions that accompanied all of the wars and general chaos of mid-nineteenth century Europe. Coming to America, they settled in rural communities in Ohio, then mostly moved on to Iowa. Supposedly, one of our family was the first Mennonite preacher west of the Mississippi.
By the time I came into the picture, my parents had dropped their Methodist faith. I suspect my mom was a bit of a beatnik. I was raised without religious indoctrination in a liberal, college city that didn't bother to ask me what my beliefs were. And I managed to remain fairly ignorant about religion for those early decades of my existence. I mean, there were little things, like Grandpa muttering Grace at the table at every meal during my visits. The goofy Catholic boy that we lived next door to, and who would become one of my best friends for many years, would yell, “God bless you!” instead of goodbye. My friend's Steve and Josh taught me a few words of Yiddish and at Steve's birthday party we all took turns spinning a dreidel. I remember watching The 700 Club on television and being amused by the earnestness of the faith healing.
I was quite clueless though, even in high school. I spent a lot of time with another Josh and somehow didn't make the connection between his family and Judaism even after I'd had meals with his family— in their kitchen with the two refrigerators. No prayers, just pizza. That was around the time I was attending a pottery summer camp run by my high school ceramic’s teacher on a hunk of beautiful forested land owned by the local Lutheran church. There was a bit of heads bowed and thanks to God spoken before meals there. That was also the period of my life when I was obsessed with a young woman who patiently and repeatedly pointed out to me that she didn't like me that way. Through her and other friends who had spent a summer or two working at a kibbutz in Israel I learned a bit more about Judaism, but I probably learned more from reading the Harry Kemelman Rabbi David Small detective fiction books. Most people not standing outside a subway station don't talk about their religion.
As an adult, I joined Street Prophets and began unloading some of my religious ignorance. And life itself has brought interesting people of various faiths into my sphere.
Once, while talking with a German friend, I asked him about my odd last name and he translated, but stumbled over the rather non-German "L” in there. Not sure how that changed the meaning. Much later, I encountered a scrap of internet fluff which indicated that the extra letter made the name a Jewish variation in spelling. Maybe the father of that young woman I was so obsessed with wouldn't have scowled at me so much if he knew.
Recently, #2 Son has taken an interest in genealogy and discovered that the greatest number of people sharing our odd last name live in Israel. It’s interesting for me to ponder all this. I wonder about this hint of Judaism and how the family chronicle that some distant relative put together only hints at religious persecution without mentioning a specific religion and my father's story of a Mennonite preacher. When I tried to look for connections between the Mennonites and the Jews there were a dozen or so interfaith marriages and a couple articles on a German speaking Mennonite community in Ukraine that was destroyed by the Nazis in World War Two. I mean, other than the people entirely lacking in imagination asking why austere black dress styles tend to be curiously similar, there's not much to explore in the way of similarities or connections.
But lately, I've been wondering about the religious history of my family. I wonder if my family has been swapping religions over the generations, escaping persecution into less persecuted religions. I suppose my lack of faith would in itself make me a target of persecution in some parts of the world. I'm lucky to never have lived in those parts of the world, but if I had, would my parents have just quietly taken us to church every Sunday? My eldest brother was baptized as a baby. They'd already given up on that by the time my other brother was born 2 years later.
I think there's a story there. And there are a lot of theres in this diary.
If you get the feeling that I've not been commenting much lately on Daily Kos, it's because you’re paying too much attention to how much I'm posting— heh. And yes, I ran into another stream of moronic froth that was only tangentially connected to the I/P diaries that I still wander though and it left a bad taste in my mouth. It was a particularly bizarre tangent that claimed that the Ferengi characters on the assorted later Star Trek television shows were somehow grossly racist Jewish caricatures. You know, despite the main recurring Ferengi character being played by a Jewish man, and the main Ferengi physical characteristic was their large ears— not exactly a common feature of gross Jewish caricature over the years. I laugh at it now, but I was triggered! Truly angered. So stupid. Taken back to a similarly stupefying conversation on Daily Kos that claimed a political cartoonist was drawing Obama to look like a chimp because we all know how enormous chimpanzee ears are. As a person who occasionally draws caricatures and portraits professionally, I take ears seriously. Some people just have a fervent blind faith in their own ideas of what should be regarded as racist— even if their opinion is self-contradictory— demonstrably false. This is uncomfortably similar to the way poor Donnie's devoted followers find kindness and warmth in him. Cognitive dissonance is alive and well in humans all along the whole of the political spectrum.
And when I was in the middle of moping over this latest unforgivable outrage and my failure (or perhaps better would be my unwillingness) to confront people on what I believe are entirely mistaken claims of racism, this video crossed my path. It's a bit of a harsh rant, but an insightful one in my opinion.
You know, I've been so busy posting diaries full of my summer vacation photos that I never got around to sharing the batch of pumpkins we carved with our friends a couple weekends ago.
Definitely past the peak of the fall colors here. I did have this one autumnal pic to share:
And it’s been awhile since I shared some of my drawings— drawings not of the outdoor sketch variety, that is.
Thanks for stopping by!
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