A Lesson Unfit for Children

This past spring I attended a bat mitzvah at Brooklyn’s Congregation Beth Elohim, CBE for short. Constructed in the very early 20th Century, the building’s beautiful retro-design draws the individual closer to Judaic history, writ long and timeless in a mostly hostile world. On the corner of Garland Place and Eighth Avenue, the synagogue stands defiant, a guardian protecting the children of the House of Israel.

Then the rabbi delivered her Shabbat sermon. CBE, for all its Jewish spirit and strength, threw off its camouflage and revealed itself as occupied territory, run by sympathizers aiding and abetting the enemies of its people and homeland. A Jewish sanctuary had always been sacred for the Hebrew descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Ruth and Esther, either a safe haven when left undisturbed, or a last refuge to chant the Shema one final time when enemies arrived with sword and gun, fire and lust, madness and hate. 

Sadly, she is not alone in her misguided preaching. If you must know what she said during her sermon, just pluck any other rabbi’s talk from the national socialist democrats’ far-left gaggle, all squawking the same shrill notes of their species. John Milton called such leaders “blind mouths”,

She did mention Oct 7, lipserving the lugubrious solemnity the day infamously deserves, with what amounted to revelations evincing the notorious “some people did something” remark when a certain Minnesota Congresswoman illuminated the world with her amazing insight into the Sept 11 attack.

Thanks to aggressive and relentless overkill by hostile populations and self-aggrandizing leaders, Judaic civilization has been added to the endangered species list, as Jews are still poached and preyed upon, killed for their skins and their souls. World population numbers estimate Muslims at 1.5 billion, Christians 1.5 billion, Jews, 15 million, sort of. You want genocide, there it is. Despite the fight for Jewish existence, some Jews and clergy share an animus to the foundational concept of L’dor vador—for the generations. They will deny such a deathwish, but their words and actions betray the truth. Blind mouths, indeed.

 The rabbi’s most stunning, memorable line reminded me of a character in Bridge Over the River Kwai. An English colonel in a Japanese prison camp in Burma during WWII, one Col Nicholson dedicated himself and his British POWS to build his enemy a vital bridge, jeopardizing British troops, allies, and victory in the Asian theatre. An Allied commando force, arriving to blow up the bridge, fought with Japanese soldiers. After desperately interfering on behalf of the enemy, but seeing his comrades-in-arms-dying, Nicholson’s epiphanous ”What have I done? What have I done?” were his last words before falling on a plunger that detonated the explosives, destroying the bridge.

The rabbi spews damaging, jihadist talking points against Israel, then says, sotte voce, to the assembly, “I am a Zionist.,” a Freudian admission that most of her sermon vitiated. Just as Nicholson recognized his bridge was treason for a British officer, one day she might view the carnage inflicted on her people and ask, “What have I done? What have I done?” What these Jewish 5th columnist clergy and acolytes need is a Col. Nicholson moment. Maybe then they would be believed, if not trusted.

Greene Gone Blue-ish

Marjorie Taylor Greene harassed David Hogg, a Stoneman Douglas HS shooting survivor turned anti-gun activist, by menacing him with comments and questions while he walked near the Capitol. She also opined on a social media post that a Rothschild-led Jewish business conspiracy to build a high speed rail in California fired a space laser to ignite the wildfires. Her claim that she never said the word Jewish nor knew Rothschild was Jewish doesn’t necessarily exculpate her from the obvious antisemitic tropes, nor does it reflect well on her erudition or lack thereof.

There are more examples of bizarro episodes from the idiosyncratic Georgia rep. She also does anything and everything to cozy up to Pres, Trump, vying for the title as most fervent supplicant to the Donald.

But something happened. MTG broke from the Trump herd like a rogue buffalo on a stampede. She stood up to him on the shutdown and criticized him and his his party’s injurious position to end ACA tax credits, thereby prohibitively driving up premiums—including her own children's.

Greene has parted ways on GOP policy on other issues as well. While TGBL doesn’t necessarily agree with her on all her points—she sides with the fascist left and Christian Nationals on the PalArab war on Israel.

This is not about the right or wrong of her opinions. While virtually all Republicans are scared shitless to break in any way with Trump, this fervent Southerner has risked her future in the party by standing up and alone. Agree or not with Ms. Greene, for having the spine so lacking in Trumpworld, The Green B Letter gives her credit and a honey dollop.

Hello Measles My Old Friend, I’ve Come to Talk With You Again

  Death and Human Services Secretary RFK, Jr. relentlessly soldiers on against all enemies. His search-and-destroy hit list includes life-saving vaccines, disease-eradicating research, inoculations, medical breakthroughs, affordable health care, all kinds of programs making life better, healthier, longer.  He has traded renowned health professionals for toadies yearning to bask in RFK’s dark, Trump-reflected light. With a vast array of harpoons thrown at defenseless targets, he leaves the waters covered in human and scientific debris, victims of this Captain Ahab out of New England, armed and dangerous, a fraught mind sailing the ship into an uncertain ocean. .  

The Kennedys. American royalty. A family of men and women from whom America could never get enough. Jackie. Rose. Ethel. Caroline and John Jr. ,How his uncles and father captivated the country: a  young, handsome, charismatic king and his Guinivere, Jackie the Beautiful. Brothers Galahad and Lancelot.

Privileged sons of Hyannisport who bore their oath of noblesse oblige as solemnly as any hand-to-Bible vow. Spellbinding, gifted speakers—JFK’s inauguration speech and “Ich bin ein Berliner” are in the Hall of Fame of American oratory. Uncle Teddy, a voice less silvery but of strong timbre and a confident, rich baritone. His finest hour was his never-to-be-forgotten eulogy for brother Robert, the secretary’s father. Camelot resonated a cadence enriched by Boston accents and a larger-than-life presence in the glamorized fairy tale of the 60’s Kennedys.

 Sen. Robert Kennedy, whose Bob Dylan-esque persona transcended his somewhat nasal, squeaky voice, drew the disaffected and disillusioned to him like a savior.  His lament “Some men see things as they are, and ask why; I dream things that never were, and ask, why not?” attested to his compassionate liberal idealism and lives on as the era’s zeitgeist.  

Percy Shelley called poets “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”; RFK was the unacknowledged poet laureate of the political world. Destiny was speeding him toward the 1968 Dem presidential nomination and the White House. Until a Palestinian bullet killed him. Camelot indeed.

But RFK, Jr, scion to the mighty court was no knight in shining armor. The assassinations of his uncle and father scarred him. He ran around with a rich brat pack, vandalizing, stealing, drugging--doing what good antisocial delinquents do, even getting expelled. But he grew up, went to school and crossed to the other side of the road, becoming a lawyer.

But fate threw another gut punch. His spasmatic dysphonia manifested itself for all to hear, at about the same age his uncle became president. With such an imperfect instrument he would never live up to the aura of the Kennedy brothers. Once again, the call of the wild howled in his soul. The bete-noir of the aristocratic Cape Cod Kennedys resurrected by a cruel blow of biological science, the prodigal son’s destiny as heir to the family legacy taken away. 

Now he sits atop Health and Human Services, the guardian of the nation’s health, commander of a vast fleet of institutional powers once filled with experienced, battle-hardened officers to lead the fight. It was the model and envy of the world. His tenure so far has been more Blackbeard than Hornblower. Every slash, every termination, every cut in funds a bitter blow for revenge on the world of biology, nature, science that dealt him cruel blows.

Children are now far more vulnerable; adults stand at much higher risk, as Kennedy wars on healing, curing, and preventing disease. As medical, scientific, and health experts try desperately to call him back to shore, Ahab’s sociopathic, personal campaign sails further on, as the rest of us swim desperately to stay afloat in his deadly wake.  ©2020 The Green B Letter. All rights reserved

Robert F Kennedy Jr, Health and Human Services, anti-vaccines