Before I wrap up the month commemorating the fifth anniversary of my blog, I wanted to share one more entry from its earliest days. It bears the date January 13, 2020, which I found hard to believe, as I think you will because it captures so much of the darkness of our current moment.
Let me set some context. When I wrote this piece, Covid had already begun its attack on the world’s population, even though we didn’t become aware of its reach and its virulence for another two months. Trump was in the final year of his chaotic and disruptive term in office which many of us hoped would be his Last Hurrah. Although there had been several Gaza wars in the previous decade, the current Mother of All Gaza Wars was only a glimmer in Bibi’s eye. And yet, when I reread this piece, I had that Groundhog Day feeling that all our devices were set on Repeat. For that reason, I hope this entry will reflect your current struggles reconciling your feelings about your generally stable personal life on the one hand and the desperate state of the world at large. Join me in turning the clock back almost five years.
In one of our cherished conversations between Chicago and Jerusalem, I asked my daughter Adina how she was doing. “On the micro level our lives are great. On the macro-level they’re terrible.” She was alluding of course to her distress over the actions of her government whose policies she feels are leading her country to the edge of the abyss. Whether you agree or disagree with her politics, the important thing is the unsettling sense of a disconnect between the personal and the public in her universe, one that saps much of the pleasure from all the personal accomplishments and gratifications, which leave you, in fact, feeling guilty for feeling good about your micro world, when the rest of the world is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
This is exactly the disorienting imbalance so many of us have been feeling since Trump’s election. Many of us who are major benefactors of the cornucopia of privileges attached to our status in society – race, class, gender, sexual preference – are at the same time deeply committed to social justice and democracy. It is these values and beliefs that imbue our lives with meaning beyond the hedonistic and selfish aspects of what drives much of our micro worlds. It is these commitments that are being challenged by the actions of a dangerously demagogic administration. Every move by the White House is an insult to our devotion to kindness and justice, which in turn transform all the bright spots in our micro worlds to dark shadows across the larger universe we inhabit.
After many years of struggle with a novel more difficult to wrestle to the ground than any of her previous books, my wife received an incredibly generous and admiring letter of acceptance from the editor of a press for which she has great respect. Of course, we celebrated, but we were never able to shake entirely the specter of the ominous events that were playing out on the public landscape. I suspect that the intrusion of this dark macro world is going to cast shadows on our tiny micro worlds as long as this government is in power.
So, what are we to do? The unacceptable choice is to retreat into that micro world, pulling up around us all those blankets of privilege which can protect us from the depredations of outside invaders. The other choice is to step outside our safe space and engage in combat with the dark forces, as powerful as they may be. Rereading this, I realize that it begins to sound like those famous Dead Sea Scrolls about the battles between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, a very apocalyptic view of what lies ahead. I vacillate between concern about being too hysterical about what we are facing and not being hysterical enough.
