Last week a friend and I met for coffee. We haven’t seen each other for a couple of weeks and we talked about the recent killings of black men by police and brought up the 73 year old insurance executive who mistook his gun for a Taser and killed Eric Harris a 44 year old black man on April 2. I said to my friend that I wanted to understand the allure of guns for white men who at that age choose to join a police chase that unnecessarily ended with killing Eric Harris.

The coffee place where we sat was humming with patrons and a man who sat at the next table must have been paying close attention to our conversation since we talked quietly. The man, who was large and looked in his 60s got up came over to us, leaned into our table and said, “You should look at the NFL.” Given that both of us are rather small women this was clearly an intimidating invasion of our space. We were both stunned. We frequently meet at that establishment and it was the first time that anyone invaded our conversation. read more

So, how to describe Dilley? It is a small town, whose main industry is prison. Very few people live there, but Corrections Officers on contract come for 3 and 4 months stints to work in the correctional facilities in and around town, generating a surprising number of motels in the area. About 1.5 hours from San Antonio, it has a number of small, folksy restaurants (The ‘Swamp Shack’ and it’s vaunted ‘crawdad coffee’ come to mind), and one large General store.

How to describe the South Texas Family Residential Facility? A place where desperate, hopeless, women are incarcerated, despite having committed no crime, or the minor regulatory infraction of entering the country outside of a border checkpoint. read more

“Woman in Gold” is an important motion picture, which some reviewers are selling short. A plot driven movie that brings to life aspects of the holocaust ought to survive, to be seen by future generations. Documentaries don’t get much attention when first released, and don’t attract viewers generations later. Creating a movie that will have broad appeal decades from now assures today’s remaining survivors that future generations world-wide will grasp the magnitude of what European Jewry experienced. Directorial skill requires incorporating not only top acting talent but fidelity to the documented history, great visuals of important places not commonly seen, dramatic archival footage skillfully interwoven, and a window into deeply felt emotions by believable protagonists of heroic stature. These are the cinematic elements that create a great movie with broad appeal: an artistic creation. read more

The two greatest American popular singers of the 20th century, Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, were both born in 1915. Billie is up first. This week, on April 7th, she would have turned 100. Of course, she got nowhere near that, dying in 1959, aged 44, her body worn out after a life of hard living, and dying miserably, in police custody for a narcotics arrest. There are so many Billie Holidays; the young singer, all effervescence and charm, plucked from obscurity from an already hard life, who before she was twenty was recording with many of the greatest jazz musicians of her time; the tough but incredibly vulnerable Lady Day, with the gardenia in her hair and her lousy choice in men, her addictions, and multiple run-ins with the law; and the singer in her last years, her voice reduced to whispers and shards, her singing haunted and on the outermost limits of sublimity; the woman who has, in many legends, has become as mythological as Zeus. read more

What was the most important thing to happen in the world in the last 50 years or so? There’s a case to be made that it was the Iranian revolution of 1979, a violent and unexpected swerve from which the world has yet to recover.

It is hard to remember back when Iran was America’s closest ally in the Middle East (and the US government was helping Iran build nuclear reactors for the peaceful use of atomic energy.) But the change of Iran from US’s fast friend to its fierce foe set in motion a chain of events that include the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the rise of Al Queda, the rise of Hizbullah, the Iran-Iraq War, the first Gulf War, 9/11, the US Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Arab Spring and its failures, the collapse of Syria, the war in Yemen, and a major reason for the lack of progress in Israel Palestinian peace efforts, and starting with the election of Ronald Reagan, a major boon to the success of right-wing politicians worldwide. read more

This year we add to our Seder Harriet Tubman who joins the six women who shaped the history of the Exodus. The women belong at the Passover table because all seven emerge as consequential political catalysts. All are remarkably brave, amitzot, all are women who at great risk take bold actions in the political/religious arena of their time and speak directly to contemporary concerns of justice.

Tubman joins six agentive women in the Exodus story who are connected across ethnic and class differences. read more

You may remember that back in the ’70s and ’80s, we added a fourth matzah to the three required for the Seder and called it the Matzah of Hope. It was a symbol of the three million Soviet Jews who had no freedom to be Jews. Some twenty or thirty years later, our united voices had changed the situation. I propose that this year we once again add a fourth matzah to our Seder table and read the following. What do you think? Maybe together we can change the situation for the Agunot, women anchored to men who neither want them as wives nor are willing to free them to lead their own lives. read more

I always look forward to the plagues. That part of the Haggadah recited in a singsong ritualistic manner is accompanied by the small thrill of putting my finger into the wine cup and marking my plate. It carries with it a memory that despite the power and might and Technicolor special effects accompanying our redemption, we need to be mindful that the Egyptians suffered. In the exquisite theatre of the Seder, every participant has an active role in this custom. To make out seders lively and fun for the children, we often decorate our table with frogs and beasts and lice- a real table top menagerie. read more

When you murder 149 people, and yourself as well, should this be considered suicide? If there have been more important news stories this week (Yemen, Iran, Syria, and Indianapolis) the story that has garnered the most attention is the horrific and deliberate crash of a Lufthansa jet in the French Alps by the plane’s co-pilot. I will confess to a grim fascination in following the story, in large part because of a family tragedy, suicide is a deeply personal and emotional subject for me.

Suicide remains the least discussed major cause of death in the United States, with annually, about twice as many deaths from suicide as from homicide. The vast, vast majority of suicides, over 97%, only involve self-murder, but unless someone is famous, the only types of suicide that make the news are so-called murder-suicides, like the Lufthansa incident. I have never liked the term “murder-suicide.” They are really just homicides in which the perpetrator is determined to suffer no consequences for his action (this is overwhelmingly a crime committed by males.) I don’t know what term could replace it, “homicide–self-murder” perhaps, but it is so unlike other suicides it deserves its own category. I can’t see how anyone could kill 149 strangers and condemn them to horrifying deaths without an all-consuming rage against others. Suicidal rage is typically only directed at oneself. I don’t know what to call what happened on the jetliner, but to me, it isn’t suicide, its just mass murder. read more