shekinahcancook

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

[Next day] OK, going to add a bit more before Shabbat...

21/??

"It is easier to train oneself to go without in times of abundance, voluntarily, than in scarce times, through necessity. What one does freely of one's own accord is always more soundly based and longer lasting than what has been forced upon one."

Don't let the formality of the translation here interfere with the message, because Etty is right about this.

Like any motivational guru will tell you, feeling like you "have" to do something causes psychic resentment, leading to failure. You have to want to do something, for yourself, to really be motivated to do it and maintain it.

This is why Americans are failing miserably at lots of things, but especially at adapting to climate collapse.

They don't want to get in shape to ride bikes instead of driving, much less walk. They don't want to stop buying things packaged in plastic. How hard is it, really, to shun 2 liter bottles or cans with plastic bands that choke wildlife?

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

12/??

March of 1942: "There are few illusions left to us. Life is going to be very hard. We shall be torn apart, all who are dear to one another. I don't think the time is very far off now. We shall have to steel ourselves inwardly more and more."

The laws get more onerous.

"We [Jews] are not allowed to walk along the Promenade any longer, and every miserable little clump of 2 or 3 trees has been pronounced a 'wood' with a board nailed up: No admittance to Jews. More and more of these boards are appearing all over the place."

The war comes in earnest to the Amsterdam area, planes overhead, bombs and the sound of gunfire in the distance.

"Any minute now a piece of shrapnel could come through that window. It's quite possible. And it's equally possible that there would be a lot of pain. ...All disasters stem from us. Why is there a war? Because [everyone does] not have enough love."

Like the legislator who, televised, said that ISIS hates gays "even more than we do." Republicans.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

6/??

The introduction was written by Eva Hoffman. Now the book goes into the diaries. The volumes that were found begin in March of 1941.

I'm going to skip over most of her self-psycho-analysis and her love life, sorry. You'll have to read it yourself. She's an aspiring writer who has terrible self-doubt and anxiety about her talent, and accomplishes pretty much nothing in creating any artistic works. But bits and pieces about the war elsewhere in Europe creep in.

[At times] "You must make a stand, wax indignant at time, try to get to the bottom of things. But indiscriminate hatred is the worst thing there is. It is a sickness of the soul...I used to believe that my inner conflicts were due to a particular cause...I thought that they simply reflected a clash between my primitive instinct as a Jew threatened with destruction [by the Germans] and my acquired, rationalist and socialist belief that no nation is an undifferentiated mob...Life cannot be forced into pre-set molds."

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

5/??

"Westerbrok (the transit camp) would be the last stop before Auschwitz for more than 100,000 Dutch Jews."

Not much attention is being paid to the detention of immigrants on the border in red states, but you should. Because this is what the republicans have in mind for anybody who won't bow to their false god, and anybody who isn't white.

[In September of 1943] "No one in Westerbork had heard about the gas chambers, but many suspected that their fate was sealed."

Etty's diaries and letters were published finally about 40 years after her death, in the 1980s. I'm guessing that's probably due to all the, umm, fun she had before the occupation. Just like republicans can't deal with the fact of Anne Frank's sexual thoughts, or anybody's for that matter, the idea of a woman living a very modern life back in the 1930s and early 40s gives lie to their claims that our current culture is somehow new - and aberrant.

In fact, it's quite normal for humanity. They're the oddballs.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

20/??

"More & more we must learn to do without those of our physical necessities that are not absolutely vital...especially when it comes to food, for it looks as though we are going to face some very lean times."

Middle class America has no idea what's coming. The poor have always had to make things stretch, do without, or find under the radar ways of getting what they need. Middle class America has only brushed the edges of a real economic collapse, the kind the republicans want to inflict on the nation to force their religious laws to be imposed on people who are not members of their cult.

Middle America has no idea what losing the dollar as the reserve currency means. Has no idea what climate collapse will do to the economy. Has no idea what it's like with ZERO social safety net.

But if they don't get off their duffs and vote, boycott, divest, strike, and create real mutual aid societies, they're going to find out.

*[originally] This is all I'm going to do tonight, class. Sleep well.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

8/??

"We are always in search of the redeeming formula, the crystalizing thought. ...Perhaps I am making everything much too complicated because I don't want to face the sober facts."

Yep. We say to ourselves this court or this case or this election will fix things. Hope is good. False hope is fatal.

"Perhaps the true, the essential emancipation of women still has to come. We are not yet full human beings. We are the 'weaker sex.' We are still tied down and enmeshed in centuries-old traditions. We still have to be born as human beings, that is the great task that lies before us."

Someone could have penned this thought yesterday, so little has changed in the patriarchal expectations women face. The problem, of course, is that republicans intend to force women with state coercion back into a mold that didn't work back in the bronze age when it was first articulated - women as property, as livestock.

Nobody really loves their enslaver, guys.

It's not going to work now, either.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

24/??

"A good lunch, which we used to take for granted, is now a special treat. As life becomes harder and more threatening, it also becomes richer."

I am guilty, we are all guilty, most likely, of gulping down our food in order to run out the door and do some interesting activity. We don't appreciate it when have it. We should slow down and savor everything, not just food. Enjoy life, knowing each bit is sacred spacetime.

"You're in a poor state, Etty. Your body is completely unfit and has no resistance. In a labor camp you'd break down inside three days."

Hard to think about, isn't it? To imagine how long we'd last if it came to that.

"Many who are indignant about injustices are only indignant because the injustices are being inflicted on them[selves]. Their indignation is skin-deep."

Bingo!

Those who ignore the news, ignore politics, don't care about those "other" people - who will help them when there's nobody left to help?

It affects everyone, everywhere, at some point.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

25/??

Then she reverts back to baseline, saying, "We must count neither on being preserved nor on being destroyed. These are the extreme possibilities, but neither is a certainty."

Oh, Etty. Your mental shields are so impressive. I don't see how she does it - but she's hardly alone.

Eventually, though, she allows a crack of reality back in. "Perhaps I shall be able to stay here for another month, but by that time any loophole in the regulations will surely have been closed. Every day I shall put my papers in order, and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day."

How noble our intentions - to call friends and family, to get around to that long-planned outing with so-and-so, to send those nice birthday cards you bought, to bake a cake for the old couple down the street... Yet we let these opportunities pass by, because we think we have plenty of time.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

15/??

April 1942. Her friend says, "Well, are you coming over here with your yellow star?"

Such a short question, packed with so much meaning it's hard to parse.

Labels. Othering. Hatred. Supremacy. Stereotyping. On & on & on. It's all intellectual laziness by people who have already made an irrational and barbaric decision, and look for ways to justify it after the fact.

"Only a few months ago I still believed that politics did not touch me and wondered if that was 'unworldliness,' a lack of real understanding. Now I don't ask questions anymore."

So many people today think the things in the news, the crisis du jour, has nothing to do with them.

And they're so, so wrong.

She fools herself, saying "You can't tell how things will turn out in the long run."

There is some truth to that. But in Judaism we are taught that relying on a miracle is not acceptable. The universe has no obligation to serve up a special fix just for you. That's not the way it works. Never has been.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

11/??

"What is it in human beings that makes them want to destroy others? ...Pitiful young men [with unhappy childhoods] are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in mankind, not people themselves." [Paraphrasing]

It is too easy to make excuses - bad upbringing, mental illness, poverty, or what have you - for evil actions.

"All the appalling things that happen are no mysterious threats from afar, but arise from fellow beings very close to us. ...The terrifying thing is that systems grow too big [to control] and hold them in a satanic grip, the builders no less than the victims of the system..."

There is some truth to that, of course. But such excuses and such social structures cannot remove mankind's agency in what is happening in the environment, in the economy, in the community - we are all responsible for what we do, and don't do.

There is no excuse.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

4/??

"The Jewish Council...was formed at the instigation of the Germans to mediate between the Nazis and the mass of Jews. The Nazis gave orders to the Council and then let it decide how to implement them."

Plausible deniability.

"The Council was under the illusion that by negotiations it could save the Jews from the worst. Its declared purpose was to decide who was fit to be sent away for 'labor service' and who was indispensable at home. Its real purpose was to calm the fears of the panic stricken Jews. In this way the Council became a subtle weapon in the hands of the Nazis."

The leadership of the German Reich told them lies, the same way the Republicans tell us lies about what they're doing. Lies like abortion restrictions won't kill women. Lies that all lgbtq people are groomers. Lies that putting prayer to their hateful god in schools and public will somehow solve gun violence caused by their hateful teachings. Lies that the poor are just lazy, not oppressed and underpaid.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

17/??

"And now Jews may no longer visit green grocers' shops, they will soon have to hand in their bicycles, they may no longer travel by tram, and they must be off the streets by [8pm]. ...Food is getting increasingly scarce, we shall have less resistance to the cold."

Like christian business owners who refuse to provide services to immigrants or lgbtq people, like laws are passed preventing lgbtq kids from participating in sports, or requiring girls to let men "inspect" them & report their periods in order to play, those types of restrictions will spread out like a cancer to other areas of life. Even now we see it's not enough to just (supposedly) protect kids - now they have to regulate adults too, to conform to their false religious beliefs.

Just like before.

It won't stop with lgbtq people, either. Ask the women in Iran before the revolution. Ask the women in Afghanistan how #TheNewInquisition is working out for them. Republicans are chomping at the bit to bring that here.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

16/??

"In the years to come, children will be taught about ghettos and yellow stars and terror at school and it will make their hair stand on end."

Not in red states they won't, because republicans don't want people to know how racism and bigotry and hatred and intolerance work and affect people, even the "in-group."

They want their hideous teachings and beliefs to be perceived as normal and necessary, acceptable and even laudable.

They're garbage, actually. And should be treated as such.

June 1942. "I know how very nervous people are, I know about the mounting human suffering. I know the persecution & oppression & despotism & the impotent fury & the terrible sadism. I know it all. ...I fear that I might not be able to pass that test." Her companion replies, "The test is something all of us will have to face."

We're facing it now, already. If you ever wondered what you'd do in 1930s Europe, you're doing it now.

And if you're doing nothing to fight it, well, there you are.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

23/??

July 1942. "I was cast into alarm and despondency brought on by the new [anti-Jewish] regulations. ...What is at stake is our impending destruction & annihilation. We can have no more illusions about that. They are out to destroy us completely. We must accept that and go on from there."

Etty has moments of clarity like this, then goes right back to her self-imposed optimism. She blames her mood on "a blister on her foot." Really. The lengths that some people will go to hide the truth from themselves is astonishing.

How many of us are guilty of that now, knowing what we know about the christo-fascist plans for America?

She then tries to rationalize being ok with being murdered, as if she were a cancer patient stuck down randomly by something the world cannot control - instead of a victim of intentional violence by a regime hellbent on murder. "By admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it. ...I greet death as an old acquaintance."

Cancer? Sure.
Murder? No.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

9/??

October 1941, more intrusive laws begin to be enacted against the Dutch Jewish community. In November she writes, "Mortal fear in every fiber. Complete collapse. Lack of self-confidence. Aversion. Panic...." They start hearing bad news, rumors, and stories.

But she sweeps it all aside, rather like Scarlet O'Hara who said, "I'll think about that tomorrow," over and over. Etty starts to have physical symptoms of stress, like rashes, headaches, nausea, etc but somehow convinces herself it has nothing to do with what's going on around her.

A lot of us do that.

"Oh well, which of us knows anything, all is chaos within and without. And it is that very chaos that also threatens me, that I must make it my life's task to shake off instead of reverting to it time and time again."

She's telling herself to stop over-reacting, when instead she should be listening hard to the message her body and spirit are trying to get through her thick head.

I can relate to that, too, lol....

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

13/??

But she clings to her optimism even as these morbid thoughts flash by. "Even if the whole of this world is bombed to bits, we shall build a new world, and that one too will pass, and still life will be beautiful, always beautiful...Only if we...rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it. [Until then] we will find ways of adapting ourselves, and the horrors will continue."

Those who stand by and do nothing, who acclimate themselves to the situation, afraid to do anything to draw attention to themselves, are understandable. But still wrong. The text essentially says, if someone knows about it, and says nothing, does nothing, the blood is on their own hands.

Republicans don't like being reminded of that one, now, do they? No need to ask why.

"That cup of coffee...must nowadays be drunk with reverence, for each day it may be our last."

Climate collapse is killing coffee plants, you know. So savor your java, too. It's going to be too rare to afford very soon.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

10/??

One of her companions who lived through WWI tells her, "So much rebelliousness, so much hatred, the passion, the arguments, the call for social justice, the class struggle, etc - we have been through it all. ...It's happening all over again...the same old slogans..."

The women of the boomer generation thought they had won the war against women, overall. Not entirely - a few straggling issues like equal pay lingered still, but for the most part, women were now adult human beings with rights. Occasionally grumblings would be heard about some right wing nonsense, but nothing serious.

The attitude was that all that had been defeated, and in time would fade away entirely.

And about antisemitism, too. The old farts will die off & the younger generation will never know what being hated for your faith looks like.

We were so wrong. Like this guy. He thinks it's the same old thing in new clothes. Yes, people die in war, but honorable rules of war apply.

RWNJs recognize no rules.

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

3/??

"She could not bear the ugliness that was flooding the world," the introduction says.

"The position into which she and her fellow Jews were forced was horribly, hopelessly, twisted...The meaning of staying alive had become utterly perverted, and perhaps the only way for her to save meaning was by accepting death."

There are many of you out there who have never been at the edge of that precipice. And in truth we can't know how we will react until something that terrible is happening to us, or our children.

"The macrocosm of historical events almost completely crushed the microcosm of individual lives."

In Texas, the state is taking away the children of lgbtq people, especially trans children, not to mention separating immigrant children from their parents. It's an abhorrent system, created by disgusting people. I will say that with conviction.

"Mysticism must rest on crystal clear honesty, and can only come after things have been stripped down to their naked reality..."

shekinahcancook, 11 months ago

18/??

"I must persevere and remain productive. I should be preparing myself even now for physical handicaps [sic] so that I don't come to a complete standstill every time I encounter some unexpected obstacle. I shall have to adapt myself in advance, make incapacity part of my daily life, of my whole self, the better to control and then dismiss it."

As a modern writer put it, "Collapse now and avoid the rush." We know climate collapse is going to upend the consumerist lifestyle. We know we are going to have to take in climate refugees - friends and family in coastal and desert areas. We know crops are going to fail. We know the electricity is not going to be reliable. We know antibiotic resistance is rising.

We too need to take an honest look at ourselves, our home, our work, our lives, and make changes in advance of the necessity. Once the crisis hits, it's too late to prepare.

"We could be ordered at any minute to go to those barracks [at the transport camp]."

Ah, there it is.