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Margot Neuhaus's avatar

Thank you for sharing your insights. It’s meaningful to read them. Then there’s beauty, generosity, altruism, creativity, kindness, friendship, flowers, trees, etc. Shana Tova 🌷🌈

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Esther Goodman's avatar

Well pontificated. Gut yontif, pontiff.

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Nina K Gordon's avatar

My dad said that every year at Yom Kippur, and I was thinking about that while reading Larry's post. Your comment made me smile. Gut yontif to you too!

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Jane Alex Mendelson's avatar

Dear Lawrence, excatly!

Isolation, me v. we, no we.

You have succinctly laid out the realities of today that eat away at me daily...

I haven't the energy or focus, desire?

I can't care. If No one else does why can't I let it all go?

In my lifespan I have been sensitive to all the worst elements of humanity you noted. There's a cyclicality in our history.

I examined this in detail in 1976.

Since then, technological and scientifical advances, have done wonders!

But they've also sent us here... I, me, mine...

It's dark, ugly, gut wrenching... I'm not sure I want to see where it goes.

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Rebecca Kalin's avatar

Generosity and grace, an example of...

https://rebeccakalin.substack.com/p/the-triptych

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Marilyn Kallet's avatar

Well-said! Thank you.

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Hillel Schenker's avatar

Mוuch truth in what you write Larry, but given that it's Yom Kippur, how come no comment on what's happening in Israel and the Middle East? Personally I almost never go to Yom Kippur services, only twice in 1974/75 after the Yom Kippur War when I wondered what the fuss was all about. Tonight I'm going to the nearby Reform Yom Kippur service in Tel Aviv run by Rabbi Rodrigo from Brazil who loves the samba, and will be interested to see how he relates to today. He's a great believer in reflection and meditation, and in finding elements of joy within the dismal reality. When I told him I felt there was too much God in his service, he said place whatever you want in its place.

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Roni Fuller's avatar

Let's forgive each other this year. And on to the next holiday.

Madness

Breezes, sun, late summer,

flowing into the brightness of autumn,

the presence of birds to remind us,

life is good, people are good,

humanity is a condition for good.

Madness intervenes.

Nuclear armaments increase.

Well-meaning turns to nonsense,

as we add to existing arsenals,

more and still more deadly arms,

ignoring plain fact.

It is nonsense, but real,

the ignorance of a thinking species.

Hollywood reminded us years ago.

Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove,

madness in terror and comedy,

or the terror of comedy.

Religious rituals continue.

We Jews celebrate Sukkot again,

recalling forty years of wandering,

across the desert of deliverance.

Now we shake the lulav,

blessing our freedom,

thanking a god who might not exist.

Many who should remember

now forget the hated past,

the Holocaust of death,

as another holocaust appears,

one of global significance,

to destroy life as we know it,

perhaps all life on the planet.

Meanwhile the sun shines,

birds sing, people are good.

In madness we approach our doom.

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Bernard Greenwald's avatar

I din finish reading your piece Larry. Maybe next year.

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