Deadly Clash of Cultures: the Sad History of the Native American

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The Z Bar Motel in Buffalo, Wyoming, is a great place for a family vacation. Yes, it’s in the middle of nowhere, but very convenient for our travels, halfway between Mt. Rushmore and the Battlefield of Little Bighorn. It’s a motel made up of small (and larger) cabins. The two men in the cabin next to ours were from North Carolina. They come every year to escape the heat. Very friendly, they sat on their front porch schmoozing for large parts of the day, happy to chat with other guests of the motel as they pass by.

Our cabin had a fridge and everything else we needed. Unfortunately, it also had a flooded bathroom later in the evening. Luckily, the water didn’t escape into the room proper. We debated whether we should ask for a discount upon check-out the next morning but decided against it. It can’t be easy trying to make a living from tourists there. There’s really not much around there for many miles in every direction.

The decision was taken out of our hands the next day when the owner told my partner that he would be refunding our payment in full. (I checked later and he had, indeed, issued a full refund) Only three cabins were affected by the plumbing problem, ours being one of them. When traveling – and in life in general – we’ve learned that the best attitude is one of kindness and flexibility. We also benefit – not always financially – but always in our hearts.

An hour and a half up the road we pulled into the Battle of Little Bighorn memorial.

Many years ago, on a whim, I purchased a $10 senior pass for life to all US National Parks for myself which included other passengers in my car. At the time one of our sons still lived in the States and I figured we might even get some use out of a lifetime pass. It was the ranger’s idea in the John Muir forest in California. It came in handy on this trip. We saved ourselves over $100 and had a feeling of satisfaction. It included the Little Bighorn memorial, though not Crazy Horse since that’s a private endeavor. It would be just too cynical for a monument to a warrior betrayed fatally by the US government to be a national park.

We’d been listening to Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown, anticipating our visit to Little Bighorn. The book is written primarily from the point of view of and in sympathy with the Native American Nation. Having been brought up on the opposite perspective, it was interesting to learn the history of Native American/settler relations from this point of view. What became clear was that aside from the excitement, enthusiasm, and greed of the settlers, and the often apparent disregard for Native Americans as human beings by the US Army, it was a tragic clash of cultures that led to cruelty on both sides and horrendous misunderstandings with terrible consequences.

Before the explorers and settlers invaded Native American lands, the primary conflict was between Mexicans and Native Americans. Mexicans often kidnapped Native American children for use as slaves and Native Americans retaliated by stealing horses. Odd perhaps but with none of the butchery and cruelty that was eventually representative of the settlers, the army, and the Native Americans. The Mexican and Native American cultures, while different from each other, had more in common.

It took years for Native Americans to grasp the concept of hunger for ownership of land that precluded the use of that land by others. They’d always had free access to vast tracts of land – virtually any land they wanted or needed for hunting or growing food for their needs – and considered all of the land as their home, belonging only to the holy spirits. They saw no reason not to share it with the settlers, though they were certainly territorial between tribes and there were consequences when tribes didn’t respect the non-verbal, non-contractual rights of one tribe to the land on which they hunted. The White settlers and army utilized these tribal conflicts to their advantage by allying themselves with one or more tribes against others. It would be years before Native Americans realized that the rules of the game had changed. As a result, they were slow in reacting.

Once they caught up they were no less cruel than their White counterparts. Taking the worst from their experience with the Mexicans, they kidnapped women and children. Taking the worst from their experience with US troops, they butchered their enemy with vehemence and carried out indiscriminate atrocities.

Beginning in the 17th century, settlers and soldiers came well-equipped with the weapons of their time; sidearms, shotguns, rifles, muskets, and infectious disease. The Native Americans initially had bows and arrows, tomahawks, and little resistance to the diseases of the Europeans. It would be years before Native Americans obtained rifles to arm themselves. By that time their numbers had been decimated by disease and warfare. It is estimated that 80% of Native Americans were dead by the 1he middle of the 19th century as a result of White colonization. It is estimated that no more than 2000 colonists, settlers, and US soldiers were killed during the so-called Indian Wars.

(As an aside, the so-called Vietnam War is known as the American War in Vietnam. I have no idea what Native Americans call the Indian Wars. I couldn’t find such a reference. But surely they have a different name for that part of their history.)

This violent and tragic history of Native American-European relations is littered with misunderstanding of cultural differences, broken promises and treaties, and the racism of those centuries when many Whites simply did not regard people of color as human beings. Whoever does not recognize that fact cannot possibly understand the murder of unarmed Native American women and children such as the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre, ostensibly in retaliation for the murder of a family of White settlers. Verbal and written descriptions of Native Americans as being like savage dogs (Andrew Jackson), savage as the wolf (George Washington), and calls for the total extermination of all Native Americans abound (too many to list).

History has shown that the inability to see an entire population group, in this case Native Americans, as human beings, is always the precursor to insensitivity at the least and unspeakable cruelty at worst.

Which brings us to The Battlefield of Little Bighorn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.

In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the U.S. Army ignored treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal, one of many, led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Chief Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered in a camp along the Little Bighorn River.

In mid-June, three columns of U.S. soldiers lined up against the army. A force of 1200 Native Americans turned back the first column. Five days later, General Alfred Terry ordered George Custer’s 7th Calvary to scout ahead for enemy troops. On June 25, in arrogant and reckless disregard for opposing opinions, including his Indigenous guide, Mitch Bouyer, Custer decided to press ahead rather than wait for reinforcements. Many historians believe he was more interested in increasing his reputation for a run for President of the United States than in the cautious advancement of his troops.

In any case, by mid-day on June 25, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Word had quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head-on. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3000 Native Americans. Within an hour, Custer and all of his soldiers were dead. According to Cheyenne oral history, Custer himself was killed by Buffalo Calf Road Woman.

Standing at the many marked locations above the Little Bighorn Valley, reading descriptions of the battle that happened 50-100 meters away was an intense experience for me. I could smell the blood, feel the sweat, hear the war cries, sense the exuberance of the Native American warriors and the terror of the soldiers. I don’t know why it affected me so strongly, just that it was one of the fiercest reactions I’ve ever had in a historical location. Standing on the steep bluffs, I could feel the thrill of the Native American warriors – finally, finally, reigning victorious. After just one hour, 268 US soldiers lay dead, and no more than 100 Native Americans.

The feeling of accomplishment, justified revenge, and taking back control, was short-lived.

The battle at Little Bighorn reinforced popular opinion as to the savagery of the Native American Nation and served as a rallying point for the United States to increase the efforts to force native peoples onto the reservation lands. Within one year of the battle, most Native Americans surrendered and the Black Hills were taken by the US government without compensation to the Lakota.

Sitting Bull was later killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement. He was 58 or 59 at his death.

Crazy Horse was killed by a bayonet-wielding military guard after surrendering to U.S. troops at Camp Robinson in northwestern Nebraska. He was 37 when killed.

A trail of broken treaties and US government promises, Christianity meeting Spiritualism, tribal life and nomadic life versus settlement life, differing social structure, and visions of authority all led to the tragedy of Native American/settler clashes. It might have served as a cautionary tale for other disastrous clashes of culture in far-flung locations but as George Santayana wrote, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Humankind has shown repeatedly that we do not learn from history.

Today there are approximately 326 Native American land areas in the U.S. administered as federal Indian reservations (i.e. reservations, pueblos, rancherias, missions, villages, communities, and others). The largest is the 16 million-acre Navajo Nation Reservation located in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. While there are an estimated 9.7 million Native Americans, only about a quarter live on reservations or other trust lands. The others are scattered to the winds.

On to new adventures in Cody, Wyoming.

And So It Begins – America Summer of ’24

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After seven and a half months of planning and reserving flights, cars, hotels, and activities, we were on our way to our month-long road trip in America. Ten-month-long war in Israel notwithstanding, flight cancellations all around us, our El Al reservations held firm, and we woke up in Boston at a hotel near the airport on July 16th.

We reserved Premium Economy seats for every flight; something we never would’ve done even as little as five years ago. With age comes compromise. We arrived in Boston well-rested and likewise in Rapid City, South Dakota, after two flights; Premium Economy on all. Worth every penny. Of course, if you don’t have it, you can survive Economy, even in your 70s, and if you’re addicted to travel as we are, it becomes a moot point. But the extra comfort meant starting our vacation without needing a rest day after each flight. In fact, minutes after we landed in Rapid City we were at the Alamo Rental Car counter to pick up our comfy Hyundai Elantra and hit the road.

The Rapid City airport is tiny compared to most of the mega airports we’re used to. Delhi, Chicago, Houston, Miami, Rome, Tel Aviv. The two men staffing the Alamo Rental Car desk provided foreshadowing for our entire trip. They received us with smiles and kind words. They offered us maps, listened to our plans, and made helpful, gentle suggestions. They offered basically all the cars on the lot (not all that many) at no extra charge and only reluctantly waved goodbye when we drove off.

I’m always a little surprised that there is such a thing as rental cars. Mostly brand new cars in perfect condition. I get it that insurance will cover any damage we manage to do but they don’t know us. At all. Maybe we’re the worst drivers EVER. If they’d spent a few days driving the highways in Israel they’d probably charge a lot extra for Israeli drivers. But, no, they happily waved goodbye and we were on our way.

Our first Walmart experience had me laughing at my partner. He’d actually never in his life been in a Walmart. Yes, he was born and raised in the United States. He lived there until he was twenty-eight and has been back for visits many times over the past decades. And, yet, he’d never been to Walmart. He was in shoppers’ heaven. Despite having been on two flights that day, he wandered the aisles in amazement. We stopped in to buy a cooler, ice, and basic food for the next week. We ended up checking out every aisle, from appliances to clothing, to shoes, to over-the-counter medications. Of course, being a man, we walked out with only a cooler, ice, and food for the next week, but he also walked out with a new-found respect for that American icon, Walmart. We were to visit Walmarts in several cities over the next month.

An hour later we arrived at our hotel which boasted a view of Mount Rushmore from our room Unh hunh. You know how that goes. If you walked to the end of the outside balcony and stood on tiptoe, craning your neck around a corner, you could vaguely make out the famous foursome in the distance.

No matter. We were psyched.

At the front desk, we learned that in half an hour there would be a nightly flag ceremony. Half an hour. Yikes! We’d been traveling since about ten o’clock a.m. and it was seven-thirty p.m. My partner wanted nothing more than a shower, food, and sleep. But – a flag ceremony! – come on, dude. We’d be leaving the next morning after seeing as much of Mount Rushmore as we could absorb. He’s nothing if not a great traveling companion. We were in the car quick as a flash and on our way.

If you’ve never been to Mount Rushmore: it’s in the middle of absolutely nowhere. It’s not on the way to any place you want to be unless your Great Aunt Martha lives in South Dakota. And nobody’s Tante Shoshana lives in South Dakota or any state within three states of South Dakota. For some reason, it found its way onto my bucket list decades ago so here we were.

And if you ever do find yourself there for some very mysterious reason, DO NOT MISS THE FLAG CEREMONY!!!

It was amazing. Moving is too small a word. Thousands of people every night during the tourist season, and they are all – each and every one – patriots. They’re proud Americans. They stand for the National Anthem (and seem to know all the words) and even for America the Beautiful, with hand on heart. When there’s a call for anyone who’s served in the military or has a family member who’s served in the military to come down to the stage, the stage is filled to overcrowding with people.

This is Trump Country. It’s the other America. It’s an America with which my partner and I are not familiar.

It’s an America where a teenager offered me her hand (unasked) to help me rise from the stone wall seating. Where children behave and sit or stand quietly while adults speak. Two things, sad to say, we didn’t see in Boston or Florida, later during our trip.

We both learned new information about Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, and, especially, Teddy Roosevelt.

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The next day at breakfast at a diner one of the owners suggested we drive the back way into Mount Rushmore. He was as friendly, without being intrusive, as the Alamo Rental Car staff, and we took him up on his recommendation. It was one of the most beautiful, impressive pieces of road we traveled. Beautiful forest on either side of us. A quiet, windy road through the Black Hills with two short tunnels. One of the tunnels framed Mount Rushmore in the distance.

Breathtaking.

We spent another hour or so wandering around Mount Rushmore and then headed to our next stop – the nearby Crazy Horse Memorial.

A short half-hour away, we parked and climbed on a mini-bus to go up the gravel road to see Crazy Horse chiseled into the mountain. Only the head of the famous (or infamous) Oglata Lakota warrior and one of his arms – pointing ahead – is finished. Commissioned by Henry Standing Bear to be sculpted by Korczak Ziokowski in 1948, the Native American Nation refuses any financial support from the United States government on principle. Not hard to understand given their history. The constant lack of funding has made it challenging to employ enough workers to make serious progress over the decades.

Considerably larger than each of the heads of the four presidents depicted in Mount Rushmore, perhaps 4-5 times as large. It is an impressive undertaking.

Crazy Horse fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn – Custer’s Last Stand – and surrendered to US troops the following year. In yet another broken promise by the US government, he was killed by the military guard after surrendering.

It seemed only fitting to continue on from there to the Battlefield of Little Bighorn. But it was time to rest a bit so we slept overnight at a motel with little cabins in the town of Buffalo,

So far the trip had been everything I’d hoped…and more.

An Alternate Reality – And Not a Good One

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Beginning in the 2010s the mid-20th century term “woke” has gained popularity as connected to matters beyond race such as gender and identities perceived as marginalized. It became popular with millennials and members of Generation Z, and by 2020 became a sarcastic pejorative among many on the political right and many centrists in Western countries. Writer and activist Chloe Valdary, essayist Maya Binyam, and others have written that the new usage of the woke concept is a double-edged sword, being used for “Woker-than-Thou-Itis” which leads to canceling people for a potpourri of opinions – societal, economic, political, educational – and worse.

Being woke has become, for a very vocal and powerful minority, a raison d’etre; the social group to which they belong, indiscriminately adopting every element shouted most loudly by the woke in-crowd. Because this includes most of the Western media, it sometimes seems that it is representative of the entire Western world. And since cancelation can mean not only a loss of acceptability but a loss of status, job, and income, the majority of people, those who see that the emperor is, indeed, naked, are reluctant to speak out against the increasing lunacy.

There are comedians like Ricky Gervais who unabashedly refer to “The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs.” or “Oh, they want to use our toilets. Why shouldn’t they? They are ladies – look at their pronouns! What about this person isn’t a lady? ‘Well, his penis.’ “Her penis, you fxxking bigot!” But the bad boy of comedy can certainly court cancelation. He’s already a multi-millionaire. And, even so, he was condemned by LGBTQ groups, and his Netflix special SuperNature was criticized as ‘dangerous’.

What’s dangerous is this entire alternate reality we’ve witnessed come into being. A reality that exists only in the minds of the woke, but has been attracting Generation Z. You know the ones – zoomers – university students who do not yet have real knowledge about anything much and are wont to invest time or energy in learning about an issue before they join earnest activists and their paid counterparts on the front lines of protest.

When it was mostly about pronouns, we could smile at the annoying reminders. Perhaps many of us balked at the plural ‘them’ being used for a single person, but generally, we made the crossover gracefully. When we got over the surprise at the audacity and absurdity of portraying the Queen of England as Black in Bridgerton, many of us could even accept the importance of opening a wider range of roles for people of color (although note that the sanctimonious woke are not so accepting of actors with no physical disability portraying characters with physical disabilities or for a Jewish Israeli actor portraying Cleopatra).

Critical Thinking Theory, originally introduced by Watson Glaser in his Critical Thinking Appraisal (WGCTA) used to be a process of using and assessing reasons to evaluate statements, assumptions, and arguments. This approach, based on thinkers such as Bayle, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Diderot, is not to be confused with the new, woke-lauded Critical Theory which is an attempt to disprove and discredit widely held or influential ideas or ways of thinking in society, also perhaps commendable if used without the current agenda of rewriting, or as gentler souls than I refer to it, reframing history. This includes taking people respected in the context of their time and condemning them with the eyes of 21st-century North America.

And if it weren’t enough to turn already-confusing adolescence into a morass of further gender identity crisis on steroids and with suicidal tendencies, demand that everyone change biology and grammar to accommodate the 10% (I’m being generous – some put it as low as 3.8%) who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and to force commendable, often heroic personalities of a past long dead (as are they, of course) to retroactively conform to the woke standards of 2024, the alternate reality today is most conspicuous in the war against the terrorist organization, Hamas.

Why have I waited until now to come out against the “Alternate Reality of Woke”? Because in this most recent mutilation of reality, brave young people are sacrificing their lives and my own country’s existence is at stake. We must not cast a benevolent forgiving eye on the misinformation accepted blindly by those protesting as “Pro-Palestine” or claiming that the atrocities of October 7th never happened.

The world’s blatant ignorance of the history of the Jewish People in their homeland of Israel fosters the claim that “Israel popped up in 1948 as the creation of the British colonizers”, a statement presented as fact in a question-and-answer forum in one of United States’ most respected universities. It allows people who have never experienced modern-day Israel to state with confidence that Israel is an apartheid state. It encourages people to call the casualties of war in Gaza genocide.

Support for the Hamas cause should not be surprising.

For decades, perhaps as many as five, the United Nations has been controlled by anti-Israel interests. Since the creation of the UNHRC in 2006 over half of the country-specific resolutions passed were those condemning Israel. The sitting UN Commissioner for Human Rights, an Austrian, has been vocal in condemning Israeli airstrikes on Hamas in Gaza but to my knowledge has made no comment about the 1300 Israeli civilians murdered in their homes, dismembered, or about the over 200 Israeli civilians taken hostage of which only an estimated 100 remain alive. UNWRA workers were filmed participating in that horror.

In the alternate reality over 35,000 Arab civilians have been killed during the war in Gaza, all as a result of genocide. In reality, Israel has gone to lengths never before seen in the history of warfare to evacuate civilians from the areas of conflict. And clearly, a large number of those killed were Hamas fighters, inserted into residential areas to use civilians as human shields.

In the alternate reality, the people of Gaza are starving. In reality, the markets are open and functioning in addition to the huge amounts of humanitarian aid received. Gaza has been given foreign aid to the tune of literally billions of dollars since Israel left the area in August 2005. Sufficient funds to develop Gaza into a Garden of Eden for residents and the development of a thriving tourism industry. Sadly, over 75% of the population is considered to be living in poverty as the aid has been used primarily for Hamas weapons and the building of hundreds of kilometers of underground tunnels large enough for truck traffic in which to store weapons and house the military arm of Hamas

In the alternate reality, hospitals and schools have been bombed by Israel. In reality, yes, they have, but only after careful investigation showed that they were serving as storage for Hamas weapons, and Hamas camps. They received ample notice to evacuate and IDF soldiers helped evacuate patients from hospitals, sometimes at great risk to their own lives.

In the alternate reality, Israel is villanized and constantly pressured to stop fighting in Gaza by countries and organizations posing as humanitarians. In reality, Hamas has remained uncensured for refusing to give a list of hostages still in captivity, alive or dead, or for refusing to allow The Red Cross to visit the hostages or provide medical care for those in need. Those organizations also ignore the fact that Hamas has changed the terms of agreement to a ceasefire significantly at the last minute every time – and then blamed Israel publicly for not signing.

In the alternate reality, the LGBTQ community has come out full force as Pro-Palestine, in some cases Pro-Hamas (which is beyond comprehension on every level). In reality, Hamas indiscriminately and without compunction murders anyone known to be LGBTQ, while Tel Aviv has been listed as the No. 1 LBGTQ-friendly city in the world.

Israel has had a Jewish presence for 3000 years. From time to time during those 3 millennia, Israel has been controlled by Jews. The Jewish People, as a recognized People, has existed for between 3000-4300 years, depending on the source of information.

There has never been an entity called Palestine, other than in Yasir Arafat’s mind, Arab propaganda, and the alternate reality. As a People, those considered ‘Palestinian’ today are a collection of tribes bound together for political purposes.

There are so many lies, so much misinformation, and lack of information, that it’s virtually impossible to debunk them one by one here. And, of course, if unwilling to invest the time and energy to research them adequately, one can never know who to believe. Why believe me? Easier to just decide blindly, choosing the worldview that best serves you in your preferred social group.

I could present hundreds of photos of Arabs, Asians, Blacks, Whites, Jewish, and non-Jewish meandering freely in Israel’s malls, on Israel’s streets, working as pharmacists, doctors, nurses, store owners, teachers, or sitting in Israeli coffee shops and restaurants. Anyone who visits Israel knows how ludicrous the claims of apartheid are. But you could prefer to believe that the photos are as photo-shopped as the horrendous photos and clips of the October 7th atrocities.

The Muslim world began planning for this day in the early 70s when they began filling American universities with their young people. They have increased funding and investment in American universities, institutions, and commercial interests to the point of dependency. They have an extensive and extremely talented public relations arm that has created an alternate reality that builds on the naivete and laziness of the Western psyche as well as an Israel lulled into complacency.

Make no mistake – October 7th was the culmination of decades of planning, strategizing, coordinating, and enlisting. It was an excellent plan. If it had gone as planned they would have seen their dream of a new Middle East realized.

Israel didn’t get one plane or helicopter into the air for 8 full hours. Israeli civilians were left to the mercy of barbaric murderers, with only sparse, ridiculously small groups of IDF soldiers trying to stem the tide of thousands of Hamas terrorists and Gaza civilians who stormed the flimsy fence. Only their own bloodthirsty culture, which focuses on death and the extinction of Jews, ruined their plan. If they had not been stalled by the joy of seeing several thousand Israeli young people running for their lives from the Nova Music Festival of Peace and Love, or the thrill of decapitating people, burning babies alive in front of their mothers or gang-raping young women while forcing their boyfriends to watch before murdering them, they could’ve been all the way to Tel Aviv and northward before Israel recovered from the shock and lack of preparedness.

Hezbollah was caught off guard. Apparently, the original plan had been for a two-pronged attack; Hamas from the South and Hezbollah from the North. But the Nova Music Festival was too tempting for Hamas and Hezbollah was not yet ready to join in.

One of my pet peeves is people who use the language of the Holocaust in political argument about our 21st world. However, we are in a war for the very continuation of the State of Israel – nothing less – in a world that is showing itself to be unfriendly to Jews at best and anti-Semitic altogether at worst. Israel is our homeland and only safe refuge in this topsy-turvy world. The Holocaust proved unequivocally that we can never again allow ourselves to be dependent on other police, army, government, or people. In the mere 79 years since 6 million Jews were murdered while others stood by or collaborated, it seems that much of the world – many of them Jewish – have forgotten or convinced themselves that it could never happen again.

October 7th should have destroyed that alternate reality.

Hamas must be wiped out totally and irrevocably. Anyone who doesn’t understand that is living in an alternate reality; one that doesn’t bode well for the world.

Like Father; Like Daughter

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I was looking for something in an old file the other day and came across a letter my father sent me 33 years ago. It was the day he found out that his cancer had returned and the prognosis was not good. In fact, within six months he would be dead.

When I showed it to my partner, he said that it looked exactly like something I might have written. The sentiment is mine, Even the language is mine. And it’s very 2024, even though it was written in 1991.

My Dad. What a special person. A complicated man. A man never quite at home with his emotions. Quick to smile; slow to hug. A very active inner life. A very active public life. But most often not emotionally present for those of us he shared a house with.

I like to think things would be different today.

So here’s that very special letter, with those very special thoughts, lessons for us all, from that very special man who was my father.

  It was an idyllic morning in sunny Sarasota.

  I stepped outside the hospital, blinking in the sunlight. The everyday sights and sounds were different; they were as never before. The deep blue sky, the gently moving leaves, the traffic flow, the people — all seen in a new light.

  I reflected on how casual I had been, before my traumatic experience, to such common phenomena and to so much else in life — indeed, to life itself. And so I resolved to spend wisely whatever of life was yet to be mine; not to squander it. For life, I saw with stark clarity, is an incalculable gift. It should be held close, made the most of, constantly enriched, and cherished.

  That is one half of the lesson I learned there, standing in the sun. There was another.

  The wondrous sunlight enveloping me, could I retain it? Could I keep that sun from setting? Had I tried to halt its slipping away, and inevitably failed, how frustrated and saddened I could have been. But if that were my reaction I’d have transformed the glorious moment into one of regret and sorrow.

  But it is not only the sunlight which must slip away. Our youth and our years, our senses and our lives, these must go also. And we must accept their inevitable departure; be ever ready to let go.

  That is the other half of the lesson.

  This, then, is the paradoxical conclusion. Hold fast, hold close the precious gift of life, but with arms so loose as to be ever ready to release it; with arms virtually open.

  Is this an impossible challenge? Physically, yes; mentally, emotionally, of course not. We do it repeatedly throughout our lives. We give away our hearts in love, and we have more heart to give. We wear out our minds in deep thought, and we have a better, sharper mind. We are smitten by pity for the deprived, and we are the stronger for it.

  The key word in the conclusion about life is ‘inevitability’.

  Aware that life must and will inevitably end, each of life’s moments becomes all the more cherishable. The sole unknowns are the when and the how; when and how these moments will end. The choice is between succumbing to fruitless agonizing — fear and dread of the when and how — or living those moments richly, fully, gratifyingly; savoring them and saying, in effect, “I’ll relish this as long as I may, and whenever it ends I’ll be grateful for having had it — and hope there are some others who will be grateful that I had it also.”

  I imagine nodding heads. It does seem logical. But is it unduly difficult to transfer from the thought process to one’s inner being? To transplant the idea into actual, living reality? To live by it?

  It is not difficult. We do it again and again in our daily lives.

  Look. We are enthralled by a spectacular sunset. We are immersed in passionate expression of our love. We are transported by a rapturous violin concerto. Do we destroy such moments by dwelling upon their transitory nature? Our minds tell us these moments will pass. We know it. But do we permit that knowledge to suck out our enjoyment? How infinitely sad that would be. And in truth, we don’t, do we?

  So it is, or so it should be, with life.

  Life, that wonder-filled possession, is ours to keep for a while. Think of it as the wise sage Bruriah, wife of the Tanna Rabbi Meir, did, as a divine loan. How wholesome, how sensible, to make the most of the temporary gift while accepting that one day, any day, it will be taken back; that one day, as in Joshua Leibman’s lovely Day in the Park fable, the Great Nurse will beckon, “It’s time to go home now.”

  And, so, hold life close, with open arms.

  Of course, I have had frequent occasions in my life to recognize life’s precious worth — in peak moments of joy, or when escaping serious dangers. And, of course, I have long known that being mortal, my life must end at some time. But my acceptance of both of these truths was tucked away inside me somewhere. They were concepts I did not question. They were “givens”. I was never challenged to affirm them. I was never tested. How, then, could I be certain? When the Angel of Death confronted me, how would I really react?

  I have been tested now.

  And I thank God that I found, find, myself in total accord with the balance; with the synthesis of holding life close and readiness to let it go — of holding life with open arms. And in cognizance that I really believe this, that it has penetrated my inner being, I am warmed, strengthened, grateful, at peace.

  For you who may read or hear this, I pray that you find the wisdom to enjoy life, to cherish it, to make the very most of it for yourself and for those with whom your life is entwined; to hold it close — all the while accepting its inevitable departure without fear, frustration, or dread; prepared to let it go.

  And if you do that, if you really make that belief your innermost conviction, you will be among the most fortunate of mortals. For you will not only rob death of its anticipatory fright, replacing that with inner peace, but your life will be enriched beyond measure.

Amran Prero, March 1991

Addendum: I was with my father for the last few days of his life. We watched television together, chatted about my kids and about Israel, and he told me about a series of dreams he had on the nights leading up to his death. He was calm, at peace, happy, and in good spirits. He laughed at Tom Selleck’s Magnum P.I. as usual, giving him a constant barrage of advice.

He truly held life close with open arms.

Before and After

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Thirty-two years ago, on one of those magnificent autumn days when the sun is out and the air is crisp, I sat on the small hill at the back of our property which overlooks the road. I don’t remember what I was doing; just that it had something to do with the garden. I heard our thirteen-year-old son calling out a greeting to me and looked up to see him crossing to our side of the road on his way home. I remember smiling and thinking that seeing him made the day perfect.

Then a shot rang out – or what sounded like a shot – and I heard our son let out a yelp. He grabbed one hand with the other and blood began streaming between his fingers.

It took me a few seconds to grasp that somehow there was a connection between the sound I’d heard and my son’s bleeding hand. But very quickly I tumbled down the hill to him, looking around furtively to assess any danger that might still be lurking. His face was white; his mouth slack. I grabbed him to me and pulled him into a dead run back to the house.

After a harrowing drive to the nearest hospital emergency room, x-rays, a very kind doctor extracting what was left of a small part of a bullet I don’t remember the name of, we checked into a nearby hotel because it was too close to Shabbat to drive home. Miraculously the bullet hadn’t damaged a nerve. The wound was painful but that would pass.

You may be familiar with that odd phenomenon of a parent being scared to death because of a danger a child has been in and the anger that comes with the relief of the passing of the danger. Like when a small child goes missing in a mall and then suddenly appears. That’s how I remember the time we spent in that hotel. Miserable for both of us.

Though there was no long-lasting damage to my son’s hand, there was definitely long-lasting damage to me.

I lost something very essential and dear to me – my basic innocent and naive belief that I could keep my children safe.

He’d been so close to me – maybe 20 yards away – and, yet, a nearby teenager’s wreckless play, putting fire to a bullet from his father’s personal weapon, wounded, and could’ve permanently damaged, or even killed, my son before my eyes.

In the thirty-two years from that day to this, I’ve made peace with that reality. Our five kids have made it into middle age, surviving whatever craziness they got themselves into. (And there was a bit.) These days I worry sometimes about our grandchildren, but I realize that they, too, will live their lives without my being able to control the dangers through which they’ll pass, hopefully successfully.

Life has been good to us.

We live in a house we love. We have a garden with gloriously large trees we’ve nurtured for over thirty-five years and a back porch on which we eat breakfast when weather permits, looking out at flowers, birds who come to eat and bathe in our yard, and the occasional fox. We travel to amazing places, celebrate many happy family occasions, cherish thirty-year-old friendships, do things we love, enjoy our relationship with each other, and are in relatively good health.

And then October 7th happened.

On another peaceful autumn day, the sun shining and the air crisp, thousands of Arabs – Hamas soldiers and regular residents of Gaza – men, women, and teenagers – stormed the flimsy gate separating Gaza from the Jewish kibbutzes, moshavs, and other small communities close by. They carried out the worst, cruelest atrocities perpetuated on Jews since the Holocaust.

Parents were brutally murdered in front of their children’s eyes, Women were violently and repeatedly raped while their incapacitated husbands and young children witnessed their degradation and murder. Babies were burned in microwave ovens. Adults and children were dismembered and beheaded. At an international music festival, over 250 young people were slaughtered, some shot to death as they ran for their lives, and others (not so lucky) caught and tortured before being killed.

For six and seven hours, or longer, people hid in their “safe rooms” or, in the case of the music festival, under bushes, behind trees, or under cars, praying for rescue. A few were able to hold out until family members from far away or army forces were able to reach them. Many were murdered or kidnapped into Gaza before help could reach them.

By the end the October 7th massacre over 1200 Jews had been brutally raped, tortured, mutilated, and/or killed. Over 200 Jews had been dragged into captivity in Gaza.

Since that day, when the true face of evil was revealed, my reality has once again shifted.

It took a couple of weeks for Jews around the world to come out in active support of Israel. At first we heard mostly of their fear for themselves – taking mezuzahs down and taking Jewish star necklaces off.

It took anti-semites of every order and in every country only hours to begin to demonstrate in the streets around the world in loud support of Hamas and against Israel.

University professors and administrators defended the anti-Israel, anti-semitic protests and posters as being protected by freedom of speech. One university professor even declared from a loudspeaker to a group of pro-Hamas supporters that she felt “empowered” by the events of October 7th. Administrators at Cornell, Harvard, and Penn shamelessly defended the call for the genocide of Jews as not being against campus rules, depending on the context.

I still remember well the United States of my childhood and young adulthood when no one could express anti-semitism out loud, no matter what they thought or felt in their hearts.

Women’s groups were totally silent concerning the gang rapes of Jewish women, the mutilation of women’s breasts, and the humiliation of parading Jewish women’s naked bodies through the streets of Gaza as residents there – men, women, and children – spat on them.

“#MeToo Unless You’re a Jew” went viral.

Those of us who were active in the women’s rights movement of the 60s and 70s were angry and ashamed.

Today I often catch myself looking at a beautiful young woman crossing the street in front of my car with the words of witnesses of gang rapes echoing in my head and thinking – “It could have been this young woman.”

It was so random. It could have been any woman.

I’m torn between reading yet another witness’s account and clicking on by without stopping. How many stories of such brutality can a soul bear? But what right do I have, as one who was spared the atrocities on that day, to ignore the testimony of those who lived through it?

I don’t know how anyone who survived the evil carried out so joyfully on October 7th will be able to find happiness in their life. To be able to trust other people again. To have a happy relationship with a partner. To fall asleep at night and find peace in slumber. How can they listen to people around the world defending their attackers and feel safe in this world? What effect does the deafening silence of women’s organizations have on their feeling of solidarity with other women?

I live my life in a pastoral setting, far removed from rockets and Gaza. And yet I wake up every morning and read the names of the fallen soldiers from the previous day and look at the photos of their beautiful, young, smiling faces. I believe fiercely that we must keep fighting until the evil has been wiped out, at the same time my heart aches for the loss of the lives of Israelis fighting for our right to live peacefully within our borders.

My hope of peaceful co-existence with Arabs in my Homeland has been shattered. I’m suspect of all.

Most of the communities in which the atrocities were carried out were politically left-wing; their residents believed in co-existence to the point of driving their Gazan neighbors to Jewish hospitals when they were ill, and to work inside Israel. In a shocking turn of events, the specific Gazan Arabs who were helped by their Jewish neighbors were exactly those who carried out their murder and directed others to the more vulnerable homes.

I look back on the unbounded optimism and basic joyfulness of my pre-October 7th life and wish I could have all that back. Maybe someday I’ll make peace with the reality of horrific evil in the world and be able to move on.

For now, there is a background of sadness omnipresent within me. A constant low-level mourning for those murdered, for the orphans, those who lost the most loved person or people in their lives – what a euphemism “lost” is for what happened to them – for those whose memories and dreams are forever tainted by horror.

I don’t forgive the world for its insensitivity to what happened to us on October 7th; for the minuscule attention span, the insistence on proclaiming moral equivalency, the legitimization of the rape, torture, dismemberment, and murder of Jews in any way, and for any reason, the silence of women’s organizations all over the world – they are no longer my sisters!.

If before October 7th I found the whole “Woke Movement” a bit ridiculous but temporary and basically harmless, today I know better.

My entire view of the world has changed.

We recently spent several days in Rome. One of those days was spent on a tour of The Colosseum and The Forum with an excellent guide. We had a basic, sketchy knowledge of both places but our eyes were opened that day. During those three hours, we learned of the cruelty of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. Far from romantic, people were pitted against each other, exotic animals against each other, and criminals were executed during the intermissions, as 50,000-80,000 spectators watched: men women, and children – yes, families came to “enjoy” the bloody battles to the death. For four hundred years this form of entertainment went on. Citizens of Rome were gifted with free tickets twice a year.

While shocked at this knowledge of the Rome we’d thought of as bestowing great culture and development upon the world, we found ourselves thinking that not much has changed since then. Hamas and the general population of Gaza, have proven humanity is still cruel, violent, jealous, and hateful. The residents of Gaza, have shown that simple citizens still get pleasure out of watching other human beings humiliated, tortured, raped, and murdered.

Where do we go from here? You tell me.

The Insidious Stress of Evil

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Trigger Warning: War is not for the faint of heart. Atrocities even less so. There will be no photos or clips in this post of the Arab atrocities perpetrated against Israeli civilians. Yes, Arab atrocities. Thousands of regular Gaza residents rushed through the fence alongside Hamas terrorists on October 7th; not Palestinians as that’s a political statement and not based on historical reality and not only Hamas militants. Regular Arab residents of Gaza. There will be, however, heartwrenching stories. The world needs to know these stories. You need to know these stories. Please don’t turn away.

It’s been over two weeks since we all woke up to a different world than the one in which we went to sleep on October 6th.

A world where thousands of young people, whose only crimes were being Jewish and wanting to join each other in dance and music, ran for their lives, chased by gunfire, many of them falling dead or, worse, alive, to be raped and dismembered or taken captive.

A world where entire families crouched in terror in a locked room in their homes, listening to terrorists inside their homes destroying all their belongings and trying to get into the locked rooms. Some succeeded. They went on to torture, and burn alive, fathers, mothers, grandparents, and children of all ages.

A world where boyfriends threw themselves on grenades to save their girlfriends.

Where grandparents jumped into their private vehicles to drive into the line of fire to rescue their grandchildren.

Where middle-aged lawyers and other non-combatants drove back and forth through the fields where the Nova music festival took place, under fire, in order to rescue wounded young people.

A world where Arabs joked, laughed, and ate a family’s Shabbat meal in front of them as the family, including young children, sat with their hands tied behind their backs and were repeatedly beaten by other Arabs.

Where infants were beheaded in front of their mothers’ eyes.

Where a heavily pregnant woman’s belly was torn open, and the fully formed fetus stabbed to death before the woman was shot and killed.

To call the perpetrators of such atrocities animals is a grave insult to animals. The word ‘inhuman’ falls way short of this reality.

At least 1400 people were murdered on October 7th, most of them Jews, but also foreign workers from Thailand, India, and other countries. Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been mercilessly and horrifically killed in one day.

A five-year-old boy buried his parents and all his siblings. A fifteen-year-old boy, the grandson of Holocaust survivors, who went out for an early morning run that day, buried his entire family. Many entire families were buried side by side with no one left alive to say Kaddish (the Jewish prayer of mourning) for them or to sit shiva for them. Parents buried two daughters, their only children, and others their two sons.

And then there are those held captive by Hamas inside Gaza – over two hundred of them; men, women, children, babies, the elderly, those with special needs. One can only imagine the conditions they are enduring. It literally keeps me up at night. It should keep us all up at night.

Shockingly we are seeing demonstrations in the United States and other places supporting Hamas. It’s unfathomable but true.

The biggest difference between the Arab atrocities carried out on October 7th and the evil carried out by the Nazis is that today Jews have a strong army and a country of our own.

Yes, our army was caught unaware.

We were fooled into complacency by our own hope for co-existence and the belief that the Arabs could abandon their age-old hatred and join us in creating a utopia in the Middle East. But the army has rallied and reorganized in dedication to put an end to Hamas once and for all.

We’re already seeing cries of sympathy for the “innocent Palestinians” and warnings to Israel not to carry out the incursion into Gaza which is necessary to uproot and destroy the Hamas. Social media has begun to tip from shock at the atrocities perpetrated on Jewish civilians to crocodile tears for the Arab residents of Gaza who have sheltered Hamas rockets in their basements and on their roofs, in their schools, hospitals, and mosques. celebrated the murder of Jews in the streets, and trained their children in summer camps and schools to kill Jews.

What other army in the world has given adequate time for civilians to evacuate the area to be decimated by bombs? Did the Allies exhibit such humanity to the citizens of Dresden? Were British civilians treated so humanly before the blitz?

What other country delivered humanitarian aid to their enemy in time of war?

As Golda Meir said, “If we have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have a bad image.”

Every person living In Israel today carries huge sadness, immense anger, deep grief, and destructive stress around every day. Every single person wants to be useful to others. Wonderful initiatives crop up daily and immediately there are more volunteers than each project can handle. We each cope with the horror and tragedy in our own ways – mostly in positive ways.

Our people are so strong. Even the evil to which we have been witness cannot defeat us.

You have an important choice. To stand on the side of Western values – human values – or to stand on the side of atrocities and terror.

It’s never been clearer.

Where will you stand?

Resilience: Rising fom the Ashes of Disillusionment

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This morning, as I prepare food for guests who will join us for a Shabbat meal, I listen to the wistful optimistic music of one of my favorite Israeli performance artists, Idan Reichel, and feel a choking sadness rise in my throat.

I’m constantly reminded these days of the deep belief of the primarily Left-wing residents of the communities near Gazan in the desire for peace shared by the Arabs living close by. In the face of years of rockets flying overhead from Gaza into Israel, voices of terrorists coming from below their floorboards, and violent demonstrations along the fence separating them from Gaza, still they remained steadfast in their conviction that ultimately, at the depths of their souls, if left alone to express their true selves, their neighbors would show their humanity and good hearts.

On Saturday, October 7, just one day after the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Hamas terrorists infiltrated into Southern Israel after hacking into the observation equipment in the army bases closest to the border with Gaza and slaughtering the young women soldiers in the observation room.

Thousands of Gaza residents joined Hamas forces in a concerted attack from the air with hang gliders, from the sea, and on land with jeeps, small trucks, and on foot.

They caught Israel mostly unaware and unprepared.

Inexplicably, residents of the infiltrated communities called repeatedly for help from the army and police while locked in their safe rooms, but the first troops started to arrive only six-seven hours later.

By then it was too late for many people who were literally slaughtered – men, women, and children – many as they fought with whatever they had at hand to save their children.

Homes were burned to the ground, burning those inside alive.

Over two hundred people were taken captive into Gaza, including many infants, young children, Holocaust survivors, and other elderly.

The stories of the atrocities committed continue to surface, some with photos, videos, or heartwrenching phone recordings of those begging their relatives to come save them.

Scenes of thousands of young people, whose crimes were being Jewish and wanting to dance at a music festival, running for their lives, being chased by gunfire, caught by laughing terrorists who did unspeakable things to many of them.

Scenes burned into the memories of all who saw them.

Entire families in those communities, many of whom adopted a lifestyle combining John Lennon’s Imagine philosophy with the back to the earth movement of the late 60s, were wiped out. Many were slaughtered as they hugged each other on beds, on couches, or on the floor.

I never understood how they could believe in the basic goodness of people who sheltered murderers, celebrated terror in the streets, and expressed pride and joy in the deaths of their suicide bomber family members. I never agreed with their political views, believing them to be naive and with no foundation.

And yet for the past ten days every time I think of them, when I can see past the horrific pictures in my head, I mostly feel a sadness so deep that it knows no limits. The bursting of their dream, the disillusionment of people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who have spent their lives committed to building a peaceful future with their neighbors.

I so wish they had been right.

Grief for 1300 people brutally murdered in one terrifying day. Grief for a way of life. Grief for a dream destroyed. Grief for humanity that we share our world with people who revel in cruelty beyond words and those who glorify them.

There’s a story told about a small African Blackwood tree uprooted by strong winds in Senegal which, separated from its family, fell to the ground on a rocky mountainside in Eritrea.

Somehow, over time, it managed to force roots into the rocks and began to grow. A pair of birds flying by noticed the little tree struggling to survive on its own and decided to make their nest on the fragile limbs of the tree. Over several years they raised several families of birds on the growing limbs which grew progressively stronger.

One day, the Blackwood asked the birds if, in their travels, they saw others of her kind, and was told that they had, indeed, seen a small forest of Blackwoods but it was several thousands of miles away.

One day a huge storm came to the Simien Mountains and once again the tree was uprooted. She fell to the depths of the valley beneath her mountain peak.

When the birds saw what had happened, they rescued their friend the African Blackwood. But before they could return her to her spot, she asked that they take her to her family in far away Senegal. They told her how hard the trip would be and how long it would take. They told her there was little chance she would survive such an undertaking.

The trip was in fact grueling. Though the birds made every effort to accommodate their friend’s needs, her roots began to dry out, her leaves to wither, and her spirit to falter. But after many days and weeks, they saw the African Blackwood forest below.

The birds lay her down gently on the forest floor. As they flew off, they looked down to see her embraced by several of the large Blackwoods and knew she would flourish.

I’m Not Your Son: You’re Not My Father

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Four years ago James Blunt released a single called Monsters about his father’s life-threatening illness and his own relation to his father’s situation. A beautiful song with haunting lyrics, for some reason it escaped my attention until a young man named Iam Tongi performed it, struggling to sing through his tears, on America’s Got Talent earlier this year. Blunt’s father, Charles, diagnosed with stage 4 renal disease, received a transplant in response to the singer’s public plea for help and is doing well. Iam’s father, Rodney, Tongi’s musical mentor, died of kidney failure just months before the high schooler’s audition on AGT.

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx3u5ItnckHY_OfbO4WSGwkfpwL8ARPR-t

For me, the song reawakened feelings about my own experience many years ago with my father’s final illness and then death. It was shocking for me to realize that I was 39, a year younger than our youngest child, when my father died. I felt very grown up at that age, a mother of five, in a responsible position at work.

My father was a community rabbi, loved, admired, practically idolized by the people in his Texas congregation. Diminutive in height, maybe 5’6″ (167 centimeters), he was a giant in his personal stature of charisma, empathy, cleverness, and depth in his sermons and other teachings. Having grown up in Chicago in an ultra-Orthodox Satmar home, his ideological embrace of Conservative Judaism was anathema to his stern Satmar Rabbinical father. His adoption of Texas cowboy boots and, with time, a slight Texas twang belied his yeshiva background.

I was born the third daughter of three. It was a huge disappointment to my father that there would be no sons for him to sit and learn Torah with, in spite of his ambivalence, and a long love/hate relationship with traditional Judaism. He insisted for a while on giving me a boy’s name – back in the day when genderized names were the thing – but my mother’s wishes prevailed.

There was a period of time when he sat and learned Torah with me after school in the afternoons, time with him I cherished until family dramas of a different nature overcame us both.

I frequently accompanied him on shiva calls to grieving families in order to have more time with him. Our bonding during those drives stood us in good stead during the stormy years when my angry rebellion and his equally angry response drove us apart.

I left home just prior to my 17th birthday to join The Age of Aquarius in Haight Ashbury during the summer of peace and love in 1969. In the last minutes before my departure his final words to me were “If you walk out that door, I won’t have anything to do with you again.”

Five years later he danced at my wedding, a wedding he performed in my parents’ backyard. We took the opportunity to rekindle our mutual fan club of two, never actually talking about our estrangement, but expressing relief at reuniting.

Over the following years, he called on me many times to come take care of my mother so that he could visit his own mother in Israel or attend conferences or give lectures around the US.

We had ample time to share his regrets about his choice of vocation (he would’ve loved to be a political science professor at a top university) and his failure to make amends with his father before his death. We talked about my doubts about giving up a future in law in favor of moving to Israel, and my concerns about bringing children into a world of materialism and violence.

Two subjects we never discussed were his feelings about religion and his lack of skills as a father while we three daughters were growing up. I think we both sensed these topics to be too painful, possibly too divisive. to overcome.

Since his death, I’ve often wished we’d talked about both.

When he had his first surgery for lung cancer in the spring of 1991, I flew to Florida from Israel to be with him. Though my mother was often with him, he found excuses to her to leave us alone for quality time. We didn’t speak about heavy subjects. I remember him filling me in on his favorite television shows, mostly detective shows, and me sharing photos with him of my kids who were 9-16 years old at the time. We reminisced about their bar and bat mitzvahs he’d attended in Israel, talked about Gershon’s trials and tribulations in his orchards, about various people in his San Antonio congregation, and what was going on in their lives. I especially remember him talking about future trips he planned to make. He seemed optimistic that his illness was a blip in his life plan.

During the months between his first surgery and his final illness in the summer, we exchanged many letters. I’m so grateful today that this was before the age of emails and texting. My father was as eloquent in his correspondence as he was articulate as a speaker and teacher. In his beautiful cursive script, he shared his admiration for my life choices, his ultimate satisfaction with his own life, his worry about my mother’s life without him, and about my sisters. He wrote about being happy to have been able to say goodbye to people in Texas in a timely manner. He wrote sweet wishes for each of my children and expressed sorrow at not being able to watch them grow into adults and marry.

I flew in again, with a very heavy heart, when he was hospitalized for what would clearly be his final days.

Four days before his death he sent my mother on an errand and described a dream he’d had the previous night. In this dream, he was a very young child again, living in a railroad-type of apartment in Jerusalem. He could see from one end of the apartment to the other and described each room in great detail.

It was the first time he’d ever talked about his childhood to me. He related a simple, mundane memory of his mother scolding him for getting his shirt dirty outside.

On each of the three remaining days he again found an excuse for my mother to absent herself from the room and related another dream to me. In each dream he was older than the previous one. On Friday he described his wedding to my mother, where three rabbis – no less – performed the ceremony much to my maternal grandmother’s, an anti-religion atheist, chagrin.

I instinctively knew there would be no more dreams.

I recognized the process he’d been going through, as did he.

We spoke with my mother and the hospice team who were to help me care for my father in my parents’ home when we came home on Tuesday, but he and I exchanged understanding glances throughout.

When my mother and I left that afternoon I let my mother leave the room first and stayed behind to give my father, never a physically affectionate person, a hug. He gave me a squeeze with what energy he could summon.

We felt no need in those last days to discuss his mistakes and mine; we both understood them well enough. I felt no need to read him his rights and wrongs, felt so painfully as a child and then as an adolescent in a dysfunctional family with an emotionally detached father.

While I didn’t say to him that it was my turn to chase the monsters away, I think my reactions to his dreams said it as loud and clear as James Blunt and Iam Tongi.

When the phone rang that night, after the Sabbath had begun, though I don’t answer the phone on the Sabbath, I picked up.

Rabbi Amram Prero, 1915-1991

A complicated, magnificent life.

I miss you.