I hope that all of the people who keep expressing themselves on the subject of Israel realize that there are currently two options facing Jews:

1. Forget Jewishness, abandon it as a project that failed to succeed, and just move on completely.

2. Keep pressing for a mono-ethnic Jewish state (or a state where Jews are an absolute majority), no matter the cost to anybody.

That’s it, there are no other options. Only a completely deranged person would expect Jews happily to embrace the idea of being an ethnic minority everywhere they live after seeing how that plan turned out for them during the last 2,000 years. Since the Holocaust, there has been absolutely no possibility whatsoever that Jews would joyously accept putting themselves in a position where the Holocaust would happen again. One really should be a complete weirdo to say, “Yeah, well, whatever, let’s keep doing exactly what we were doing and hope it leads to an entirely different result this time around.” In order to achieve a different result, Jews had to abandon the 2,000-year old practice of being a permanent ethnic minority. 

The 60% of Jews who currently reside in diaspora live in the condition of a temporary ethnic minority. Their co-existence with the host societies is made possible only by the knowledge that, at any moment, they can pick up and leave for a place where they will not be a minority. If you know any Jews in your country, you must be aware that they are donating enormous amounts of money to Israel. The point of doing that is precisely to guarantee their own status as a temporary ethnic minority in their host countries. They are donating the money to Israel “just in case.” And the case in question is the next Holocaust. If this surprises you in any way, do read something on historic memory and collective trauma.

We all know that out of the two options I listed at the beginning of this article I chose the first one for myself. What bothers me, however, is that nobody seems to want to discuss the actual costs of these options openly and honestly.

Option 1 means the destruction of an entire culture. It also requires Jews to carry out the goals of the Holocaust of their own volition. 

Option 2 means constant and increasing loss of life, deaths of people, human beings, each of whom only has a single life to live.

There is a lot of stupid blabber going on and on about Israel, yet most of it is along the lines of “let everything be good and nothing be bad.” And that is simply not possible. 

My sister is coming over to give a talk on the job search process to my students. I had to warn her to drop that entire part of her talk that she always employs with students in Montreal where she exhorts them to try working while they are in college.

One of the reasons why I like my students more than any of my previous ones is because nobody needs to beg them to work and acquire at least some work experience before the age of 24.

Here is an interesting cultural phenomenon I have observed now that I live in suburban America. People spend a lot of time in their garages. A LOT of time. The garage doors always stay open and there are people pottering inside.

The strangest thing people do is roll up the garage door, put some folding chairs facing the door, place a cooler between the chairs, and just sit there, people-watching.

This wouldn’t be a surprising thing to do if it weren’t for one thing: all of the houses here have porches. Good shaded porches that often have some really cool porch furniture (cushioned arm-chairs, etcetera) on them.

So what I don’t get is why people choose to sit in an open garage that smells of gas and has an ugly concrete floor and is filled with all sorts of junk instead of doing the same thing on the porch.

Does anybody know the answer? Is this a regional thing?

I want to share an instance of a really egregious cosmic unfairness, people. As you are well-aware, I keep posting with the speed of an unhinged bunny here. Posting and posting, posting and posting.

And then my sister – who has zero interest in writing, blogging, being in the public eye, etc. – writes something on her LinkedIn page and immediately goes viral with that very first article when she never even wanted to become famous. The article gets so much attention that it is even picked up by a very major magazine. It just also happens to be a magazine I love and read all of the time.

I have never felt envy and resentment of my sister, never. She is younger, thinner, richer, more psychologically healthy and has much better clothes than I do. She can wear heels when I’m doomed to flats. She has her own company and a beautiful daughter. And even our mother just told me that she passionately wanted my sister to be born in a way she never felt about me.

And I never felt envy of any of this.

But now she has to go viral? That makes me envious. Of course, I informed her of my feelings immediately and asked if she were about to come out with a ground-breaking study in the field of Spanish literature, which is not in the least impossible.

Cosmic unfairness, people, cosmic.

Here is an example of a very strong, very important insight that stops at the threshold of a really life-changing realization and refuses to arrive at the logical conclusion:

My parents loved ascribing intent to my behavior, and they were wrong so much of the time. . . . it’s just too easy to infer intent that isn’t there when your kid does something irritating. And that destroys relationships. I always thought my parents hated me precisely because . . . [t]hey always inferred this terrible destructive intent that I simply didn’t have. There were even some instances where they assumed I was trying to be obnoxious when I was in fact trying to be helpful, which hurt immensely.

The reason parents ascribe “this terrible destructive intent” to a child is simple projection. The terrible destructive intent is theirs. And the linked blogger found a very precise and important turn of phrase to describe what is happening.

The terrible destruction is what this kind of parents are trying (and invariably succeeding) to wreak on the child. Of course, most people find the very thought that they are trying to visit a terrible destruction on their children to be unacceptable. And this is why they turn around and accuse the children of this horrible thing.

A terrible destructive intent within a relationship cannot be completely hidden from view. It is always present, as a huge monster lurking in the corner. And the best way to deflect an accusation is, as we all know, accuse others of our crime.

Such children end up completely interiorizing the message. The go through life doubting themselves at every turn, suffering from all kinds of impostor syndrome (“Why isn’t everybody seeing what a monster I am? Are they about to see the real me and discard me?”), and punishing themselves with self-destructive behaviors for somebody else’s terrible destructive intent.

If you look at the quote I placed at the beginning of the post, you will see how hard the author tries to avoid what is staring her right in the face. “They were wrong,” “it’s just too easy,” “your kid” instead of “their kid who is me,” “destroys relationships” instead of “destroys me.”

Realizing this truth is very difficult. Every social taboo, every instance of abuse one has undergone screams to the skies at the merest whiff of this insight. But it is the only way to healing.

In order to accomplish everything I need to get done tomorrow, I should be setting out for work now. The beginning of the semester just wouldn’t end.

If you are translating a text from English into Russian and are charging per word, does it make more sense for you financially to base the word count on the source text or on the translation? Explain your answer.

A battalion of Russian troops was captured by the Ukrainian army in Ukraine. When presented with this incontrovertible evidence of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the Russian government explained that the soldiers ended up in Ukraine by mistake. They just lost their way, the Russian military officials say.

I rarely agree with Russian officials but this statement rings very true. Russians have really lost their way.

I’m at a loss about what to do for my Housewarming Party. I will have a house full of hungry academics, and I have no idea what to serve them. We are in the midst of an overpowering, tropical, extremely humid heat wave. And I can’t think of any dishes that won’t be too heavy in this weather. I do best with frosty-weather dishes.

Does anybody have any suggestions? But please don’t say gazpacho because I hate cold soups. And I don’t want to serve anything people might splash all over my new furniture.