Purim 5783

 Tonight (March 6, 2023) is the beginning of Purim, a raucous holiday celebrating the victory of the Jews of Persia over Haman, an evil minister in the king's court who sought to annihilate the Jews. There may not be a lot of history to the story, but like most Bible stories, there are lessons for today. 5783 is the year on the Jewish calendar.

In the story, King Ahasuerus banishes his queen, Vashti, because she refused to dance for his friends at a drunken banquet. When I was a child, Vashti was evil, but today, she is a feminist icon. To replace her, the king holds a beauty contest, and chooses Esther, ward of her uncle, Mordechai, and a Jew. All of this is highly unlikely, and the names Esther and Mordechai are too close for comfort to Persian Goddess and God, Astarte and Marduk. Still, it's a holiday for fun,  near Mardi Gras in spirit and time of year.

My mother died on  Purim morning twenty years ago. That year, Purim was March 18. She was in hospice care in suburban Baltimore. I had been in town for her 75th birthday in February, and I suffered a heart attack at her house on February 9. The next day, her birthday, she spent much of the day visiting me in cardiac intensive care at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore. I  was supposed to go back to Los Angeles on the 11th, but I was delayed until the 22nd. I had to allow the airline to look at my medical records, because I had a special "short-term" fare.

I didn't expect, ever, to live this long, and the mystical side of me thinks that my Mom has somehow worked things from the next world to keep me going. I have lots of health problems, but my heart is still ticking along, better than the hearts of most men my age.

This August, I will be the age my mom was when she was diagnosed with the cancer that took her life. She lived fifteen months after that, which would make me that age in December 2024. Not that far away.

I told students last year during my campaign for U.S. Congress that this campaign was my "culmination project," something students work on to graduate. I meant at the time that I would be ready to leave this world after that. I've been wrong about predicting my imminent demise before, so maybe I'll just have to reinvent myself.

My husband, Rabbi Joe has been talking about moving away from here. He said "We have nothing left to prove here." That's true, and the current political climate in West Virginia makes me think it might be wise to leave. Joe, who was born in Buffalo, only wants live somewhere warm where we know people. Still, I've made friends throughout West Virginia in my run for Congress, and I feel some obligation to those people, and to the Democratic state delegates from Morgantown and other activists who are working to change the culture here. 

Seventy-three has been hard on me physically and emotionally, and I've had to step back from political and social events just from a lack of strength. I'm doing a little better now. I don't expect to be where I was twenty years ago, endurance-wise.

I have started back at the gym, and on days when I can, I run a bit in the neighborhood. Some days I can't do it. I'd like to get back on my bike, which I haven't been on since May when I had an accident and injured my leg. I'm also back to writing letters to the editor and resuming my travels to nearby cities.

We're supposed to go to Chabad, the Orthodox group in town, for dinner in the late afternoon tomorrow, and we had one of Joe's parody plays last Saturday night, where he rewrites some old Broadway musical to (almost) fit the story of Purim. This year it was a parody of The Pajama Game. It's both brilliant and crazy, but always fun. And we visited a nursing home today to sing Purim songs, visit with the people there and have hamantaschen, the triangular cookies associated with Purim. I used to dread seeing people in such bad shape, but now I enjoy talking to them, and don't see much difference between them and me. 

In the Purim story, we are saved from the evil Haman by Esther and Mordechai, and we celebrate our victory over our enemies. But in The Washington Post this past Sunday, there was a review of a book about diaries people kept in The Netherlands during World War II, most famously Anne Frank, but also diaries kept by Nazi leaders and other regular citizens. There is a picture of Jews in Amsterdam, the men in suits and the women in dresses, being led to a central point in Amsterdam, where they will be shipped to concentration camps and murdered. The people in the picture look shockingly modern, and this was only six years before I was born. We don't always win out over our enemies. 

In another part of the paper was an article about The Proud Boys, who are being investigated by the Federal Courts for organizing the January 6 events, probably egged on by the former President. One of the star witnesses has a last name that also belongs to cousins from the Italian side of my family. I looked up his picture to see if he could possibly be related, and sure enough, he's short, dark and bald-headed. If he is in that family, I wonder if his White supremacist friends know he had a Jewish great-grandmother. 

I'm just ranting now, so I'll stop. I wish everyone a happy and festive Purim, a reminder that we have to fight for our right to be who we really are, and confront the bigots who want to erase us.

5783, The Morgantown High Walk Out and "Bros."

 The Jewish year 5783 started September 25 with Rosh Hashana, and continues tomorrow night with Yom Kippur, a fast day, when God supposedly decides "who shall live and who shall die." The day after Yom Kippur, I will be at WVU Heart and Vascular Institute having a stress test to see if my heart is still working. It's inconvenient because I'm in the middle of a campaign for United States Congress. I am happy to be doing this, but not sleeping or relaxing enough and, yes, I'm stressed out. I never expected to work this hard at this age.

One thing I did, partly for the campaign, and partly just to show support, was go to Morgantown High School when there was a student walk-out last week. The issue was that the superintendent of Monongalia County School District said that, based on an opinion from an unnamed attorney, teachers could not put up gay pride flags in their classroom. I think only a few teachers had them, but those teachers and the students were angry that the flags disappeared, and the students staged a walkout after lunch.

Public schools have been attacked in the Legislature, by the Governor and right-wing pundits for teaching kids anything about racism or sex or anything that would make parents uncomfortable. I'm guessing this was a fear reaction on the part of the superintendent.

When I was in high school, more than fifty-five years ago, no one was gay. Many of us turned out to be gay years later, but not in school. Gay Pride flags didn't exist.I went to the demonstration without intending to speak, but a young woman got up and said "I'm tired of old, privileged, white cisgender men telling us how to live." When I had the chance, I grabbed the megaphone (which didn't work) and I said "I'm an old, privileged, cisgender white male... and I'm queer." I expressed my support for the students, and said that I had lost jobs because I was gay and that many of my close friends had died from AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. I then pointed out that I was the first openly gay City Councilor in Morgantown and that I'm now a candidate for United States Congress. I knew two of the high school students in the crowd, and a young woman working at a restaurant told me this week that she had seen me at the demonstration. 

But what I really want to say to the students is this: In my school, the daring people were couples where one was Jewish and one Christian. Our neighborhoods, and therefore our schools, were segregated and the most shocking person you could date was someone from another religion. Two couples like that in my class were told "it can't possibly work out." One of the couples was pregnant before we graduated. Both came to our 50th reunion in 2018 (a year late), and the pregnant one recently gloated on Facebook about a 56th anniversary, and how people told them they wouldn't stay together. So here's my message to the students at the demo: "Look around your school and see who you like and could live with. You are not too young to do this. I was attracted to a fellow student in high school and I think he was attracted to me also. We could never act on that and because he was Christian and I was Jewish and we lived in different neighborhoods, we couldn't really be close friends. I wish I could have gone to the 50th reunion with him, and said 'See, it did work out.' I didn't do that, but in more than 50 years, you could go to the reunion with your same-gender, trans or non-binary high school pal. I hope you would say 'That Barry Wendell told us we could do this, and he was right.' Don't be afraid to love."

My husband Joe is the rabbi at our local synagogue in Morgantown and he's stressed about the holidays, and a hundred other things he has to do. My stress is mostly about my Congressional campaign and my health. I've seen reviews of the movie "Bros," called a "gay rom-com," unusual because the gay characters are played by openly gay actors. Joe was washing dishes after dinner when I announced I was going to the 7 P.M. show at a local theater. I was surprised that it was playing in Morgantown, since edgy movies don't often get here. Joe dropped the sponge in the sink and ran to get a jacket and off we went. It was definitely entertaining and sexy. The lead actors weren't young, but certainly cute enough, and there were supporting actors who were different shades of gay and trans and different races. That was the P.C. part. 

Billy Eichner, who plays the lead and cowrote the script has a great speech about how he was always told to "tone it down" and appear "normal" and how it took him years to understand who he really was and be able to be that person. Joe started rabbinical school at 47. I started taking acting, singing and dance lessons at 36, started studying cantorial music at 43 and entered politics at 66. We both were held back in careers we didn't really like because we were gay and clearly not "normal" people. Now, late in life, we both understand who we really are, and while as clergy and politician we still have to hold back a bit, at least we are fully aware of our strengths and weaknesses. 

I've read that the box office for this movie was dismal, but we loved it. It's well acted, charming, sexy, good to look at and there were some laugh-out-loud bits, some of which might only be understood by gay audiences. Joe and I were the only ones in the theater at 7 P.M. on a Monday. If it's only a movie for certain gay people (I think it has universal appeal) it was still worthwhile, and I applaud everyone involved in it. I was moved and my thoughts were provoked.

It's well after 11 now, and I have to work on my campaign tomorrow and go to services in the evening tomorrow night and most of the day Wednesday. If I pass the stress test Thursday morning, I have three local events the rest of the day, and I'm to be in a parade out of town Saturday morning. Joe is teaching a class tomorrow afternoon at Life-Long Learning before services. I'm glad we took time out to go to a movie where we saw better-looking (and a generation younger) versions of ourselves. We needed to laugh and cry and be out of our regular life for a few hours. 

I hope everyone is sealed in the Book of Life for a healthy and fulfilling 5783.