#judaic new year

[homosexualhooligan]

trying to put all my jewish feelings into something sweet

1 month until Rosh Hashanah, one of my favorite holidays

[opencommunion]

"My father was born in 1905 in Bethlehem as an Ottoman citizen with Ottoman identification papers. As a teenager he witnessed the Ottomans being replaced by the British, and suddenly, almost overnight, he became a citizen of Mandate Palestine with a Palestinian passport issued by the British Mandate government. In 1949, when Bethlehem became part of Jordan, he became suddenly a citizen of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. And when he died in 1975, he died under Israeli occupation with an ID card issued by Israel. But he was the same person throughout those geo-political vicissitudes and had no choice but to adjust to changing political and imperial realities.

Throughout Palestinian history empires have occupied the land for a certain number of years but were then forced to leave. Most of the time an empire departed only to make space for another empire. The majority of the native people of the land seldom left. Throughout history and starting with the Assyrian Exile, only a small minority was deported, and only a small percentage decided to leave. The vast majority of the native people remained in the land of their forefathers (2 Kgs 25:11). They remained the Am Haaretz, the native 'People of the Land,' in spite of the diverse empires controlling that land. This is why in this book I choose the people of the land as the description for the native inhabitants throughout history, for it is they who are the enduring continuum.

Their identity, however, was forced to change and develop according to the new realities and empires in which they found themselves. They changed their language from Aramaic to Greek to Arabic, while their identity shifted from Canaanite, to Hittite, to Hivite, to Perizzite, to Girgashite, to Amorite, to Jebusite, to Philistine, Israelite, Judaic/Samaritan, to Hasmonaic, to Jewish, to Byzantine, to Arab, to Ottoman, and to Palestinian, to mention some. The name of the country also changed from Canaan to Philistia, to Israel, to Samaria and Juda, to Palestine. ... And yet they stayed, throughout the centuries, and remained the people of the land with a dynamic identity. In this sense Palestinians today stand in historic continuity with biblical Israel. The native people of the land are the Palestinians. The Palestinian people (Muslims, Christians, and Palestinian Jews) are a critical and dynamic continuum from Canaan to biblical times, from Greek, Roman, Arab, and Turkish eras up to the present day. They are the native peoples, who survived those empires and occupations, and they are also the remnant of those invading armies and settlers who decided to remain in the land to integrate rather than to return to their original homelands. The Palestinians are the accumulated outcome of this incredible dynamic history and these massive geo-political developments."

Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (2012)

[rotzaprachim]

Works written decades ago, often by female Jewish immigrants, were dismissed as insignificant or unmarketable. But in the past several years, translators devoted to the literature are making it available to a wider readership. -

By Joseph Berger

Feb. 6, 2022

In “Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love,” a sendup of the socialists, anarchists and intellectuals who populated New York’s Lower East Side in the early 20th century, Miriam Karpilove writes from the perspective of a sardonic young woman frustrated by the men’s advocacy of unrestrained sexuality and their lack of concern about the consequences for her.

When one young radical tells the narrator that the role of a woman in his life is to “help me achieve happiness,” she observes in an aside to the reader: “I did not feel like helping him achieve happiness. I felt that I’d feel a lot better if he were on the other side of the door.”

In a review for Tablet magazine, Dara Horn compared the book to “Sex and the City,” “Friends” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Though it was published by Syracuse University Press in English in 2020, Karpilove, who immigrated to New York from Minsk in 1905, wrote it about a century ago, and it was published serially in a Yiddish newspaper starting in 1916.

Jessica Kirzane, an assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago who translated the novel, said that her students are drawn to its contemporary echoes of men using their power for sexual advantage. “The students are often surprised that this is someone whose experiences are so relatable even though the writing was so long ago,” she said in an interview.

Yiddish novels written by women have remained largely unknown because they were never translated into English or never published as books. Unlike works translated from the language by such male writers as Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade, Yiddish fiction by women was long dismissed by publishers as insignificant or unmarketable to a wider audience.

But in the past several years, there has been a surge of translations of female writers by Yiddish scholars devoted to keeping the literature alive.

Madeleine Cohen, the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., said that counting translations published or under contract, there will have been eight Yiddish titles by women — including novels and story collections — translated into English over seven years, more than the number of translations in the previous two decades.

Yiddish professors like Kirzane and Anita Norich, who translated “A Jewish Refugee in New York,” by Kadya Molodovsky, have discovered works by scrolling through microfilms of long-extinct Yiddish newspapers and periodicals that serialized the novels. They have combed through yellowed card catalogs at archives like the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, searching for the names of women known for their poetry and diaries to see if they also wrote novels.

“This literature has been hiding in plain sight, but we all assumed it wasn’t there,” said Norich, a professor emeritus of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. “Novels were written by men while women wrote poetry or memoirs and diaries but didn’t have access to the broad worldview that men did. If you’ve always heard that women didn’t write novels in Yiddish, why go looking for it?”

But look for it Norich did. It has been painstaking, often tedious work but exciting as well, allowing Norich to feel, she said, “like a combination of sleuth, explorer, archaeologist and obsessive.”

“A Jewish Refugee in New York,” serialized in a Yiddish newspaper in 1941, centers on a 20-year-old from Nazi-occupied Poland, who escapes to America to live with her aunt and cousins on the Lower East Side. Instead of offering sympathy, the relatives mock her clothing and English malapropisms, pay scant attention to her fears about her European relatives’ fate and try to sabotage her budding romances.

Until Norich’s translation was published by Indiana University Press in 2019, there had been only one book of Yiddish fiction by an American woman — Blume Lempel — translated into English, Norich said. (Two non-American writers had been translated: Esther Singer Kreitman, the sister of Isaac Bashevis Singer, who settled in Britain, and Chava Rosenfarb, a Canadian who translated herself.)

The new translations are stirring a smidgen of optimism among Yiddish scholars and experts for a language whose extinction has long been fretted over but has never come to pass. Yiddish is the lingua franca of many Hasidic communities, but their adherents rarely read secular works. And it has faded away in everyday conversation among the descendants of the hundreds of thousands of East European immigrants who brought the language to the United States in the late 19th century.

The new translations are being read by people interested in everyday life in East European shtetls and immigrant ghettos in the United States as told from a woman’s perspective. They are also being read by students at the nation’s two dozen campuses with Yiddish programs. “Students were often surprised by how unsentimental these female novelists are, how wide-ranging are their themes, and how frank they are about female desire,” Norich said.

With a grant from the Yiddish Book Center, a 42-year-old nonprofit that seeks to revitalize Yiddish literature and culture, Norich is now translating a second novel: “Two Feelings,” by Celia Dropkin (1887-1956), a Russian immigrant who was admired for her erotically charged poems but never known as a novelist.

“Two Feelings” had been serialized in The Yiddish Forward in 1934 and then forgotten. It tells the story of a married woman who struggles to reconcile her feelings for, as Norich put it, a “husband she loves because he is a good man, and a lover she loves because he is a good lover though not a good man.”

One recent volume, “Oedipus in Brooklyn,” is a collection of stories by Blume Lempel (1907-99), the daughter of a Ukrainian kosher butcher. After spending a decade in Paris, she, her husband and their two children immigrated to New York in 1939, where she began writing for Yiddish newspapers.

In an introduction, her translators, Ellen Cassedy and Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, describe Lempel as “drawn to subjects seldom explored by other Yiddish writers in her time: abortion, prostitution, women’s erotic imaginings, incest.” Her sentences, they add, “often evoke an unsettling blend of splendor and menace.”

In promotional copy for the book, Cynthia Ozick called it “a splendid surprise” and asked: “Why should Isaac Bashevis Singer and Chaim Grade monopolize this rich literary lode?”

The recent books have mostly been published by academic presses in small runs, many of them financed by fellowships and stipends from the Yiddish Book Center. Despite the books’ contemporary themes, said Cohen, the center’s academic director, it has been an uphill battle to persuade mainstream trade publishers to acquire titles by women writers who are generally unknown and previously untranslated.

The scholars work independently, though they occasionally meet at conferences and panel discussions. Their life stories offer a window into the evolution of Yiddish.

Kirzane learned the language not in her childhood home but at the University of Virginia and in a doctoral program at Columbia University. Norich, the daughter of Yiddish-speaking Holocaust survivors from Poland, was born after the war in a displaced persons camp in Bavaria and was raised in the Bronx, continuing to speak Yiddish with her parents and brother.

When her daughter Sara was born, she made an effort to speak only Yiddish to her but gave up when Sara was 5. “You need a community to have a language grow,” she said.

These translators believe that the newly translated novels by women will enrich the teaching of Yiddish. Yiddish is, after all, called the mamaloshen — mother’s tongue — and a woman’s perspective, they said, has long been missing.

[mariacallous]

Imagine for a second, a group of Jews cooking a slightly different version of challah for Shabbat, matzah for Passover, and donuts for Hanukkah. A group of people whose ancestors were forced to convert to Catholicism against their will, yet continued to practice Jewish customs underground, even at the risk of being ostracized and tortured for doing so. Meet The Silent Jews.

Sometimes referred to as Crypto-Jews, anusim (Hebrew for coerced ones), or conversos, Silent Jews are descendants of Spanish Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492. Most left medieval Iberian territories for the Ottoman Empire or North Africa; others fled persecution and settled in new frontiers in the New World, where many found refuge. 

I come from one of those persecuted families who came to South America around 1532 and discreetly practiced Jewish rituals, living in fear of being hunted down by the Inquisition. I only found out that my family was actually Jewish as a teenager, that all our colorful, fragrant, crunchy dishes were deeply rooted in Judaic culinary traditions from 16th-century Spain. That the ingredients and aromas of my mom’s kitchen resembled dishes from the Sephardic gastronomy repertoire. 

When the pandemic struck, the combination of lockdown, curiosity, and melancholy led me to knead, mix, and eat plates from my mom’s Jewish inheritance passed on through several generations of women in our family. The kitchen was the right place to honor their sacrifices, bravery, and perseverance to maintain tradition, despite centuries of fear and persecution.

My locked-down days soon began to be filled with ingredients such as eggplants, spinach, leeks, and turnips, which mingled with the scents of cinnamon, anise, cardamom, and nutmeg, coming together with dried fruits and legumes.

Arroz con garbanzos (chickpea rice) was one of those dishes. With its characteristic aroma of bay leaf, caramelized onions, and raisins, it’s cooked with turmeric to give it its signature yellow color. As a kid, it was often mixed with a fried egg, with parsley sprinkled on top. In my search for Sephardic recipes, I became aware that this dish is very similar to pilaf with saffron, a Mediterranean spice my ancestors did not have access to since it didn’t grow in their new home.

Another delicious dish that also appears in the kitchens of Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Greece, and Morocco is estofado de berenjenas (eggplant stew). Made by sautéing eggplants in olive oil with garlic, onion, and cumin, this quick stew is served with smoked cheese or feta and an abundance of cilantro. My family pair it with homemade bread or corn arepas, an example of incorporating local ingredients.

On the most stressful days of the past year, comfort food became a necessity. A hearty dish of huevos con tomate (eggs with tomato) afforded me a sense of tranquility and a break from the chaos and uncertainty that surrounded me. This dish, which closely resembles shakshuka, was cooked at my house with ají dulce —the Caribbean’s colorful semi-spicy pepper— chili flakes, and smoked paprika. It’s so piquant and fragrant, I usually pair it with plain white rice or bread. However, my mother served it as a second course to complement her traditional pescado mermao, a hake fish stew cooked over a slow fire in an iron skillet with a mixture of garlic, peas, and eggplant, smothered in a sauce of chilies and tomatoes. The last touch included a bunch of fresh cilantro leaves and a hint of sour lime juice. It filled our entire house with a thick, citrusy aroma.

And the desserts! Buñuelos, small balls of fried dough with a sweet or salty filling; mine are usually made with raw cane sugar syrup, cloves, and nutmeg. There was always cake — plantain cake with cinnamon and smoked cheese, or traditional bizcochuelo, a sponge cake that was ever-present in my school lunchbox. Similar to pan d’Espana, which Sephardim took with them to the Diaspora, my mother put her own spin on this soft, light cake, using cornmeal instead of ground almonds, substituting orange blossom water with a few drops of rum, and swapping grated orange peel for the peel of a lemon, instead. 

Reconnecting with my roots through food during these difficult times has helped me to cope with stress, anxiety, and loneliness. There’s still so much to cook, eat, and share; I’ll continue paying homage to each and every one of the dishes that my family preserved with such dedication and courage. This is the only way I can celebrate — and always carry with me — their everlasting legacy.

[museofhestia]

Why is this New Moon & Eclipse so powerful??

The Moon & Sun conjunction in Libra happened in conjunction with both the South Node and Black Moon Lilith. Additionally, it is the last eclipse that will happen in the sign of Libra for another 10 years.

(See my previous post for more detail on the Libra energy of this New Moon)

Black Moon Lilith

The Eclipse happens with both sun and moon in conjunction with Black Moon Lilith.

The Moon is in the part of it's orbit that has it farthest from the earth - a "Micro Moon" that would appear smaller if we could see it, and it moves slower when it is close to BML. This is a Shadow Work point of the chart, relating to the part of the moon's orbit when it is smaller, distant, less bright. Rejected, Cast out of the Garden, or ostracized.

 In Hebrew-Judaic  lore, Lilith was created equal to Adam - a man and woman created together as equal partners.  Lilith knew her personal power, but Adam wanted Lilith to be subservient to him.  He did not see her as his equal - but as lesser than him.  His desire for power blinded him to the power of having an equal partner, and Lilith experienced deep rejection.  The denial of equality.  

How painful this must have been for her - to be told that the very essence of what she was - was somehow "less than" her partner's.  Lilith argued, stood up for herself, demanding equality - and she was kicked out of the garden.  Rejected, ostracized, demonized.  

 When have you had your own Lilith experiences?  How many times have you experienced rejection, or been ostracized?  Have you ever been painted as a villain after standing your ground?  Have you been kicked out of certain circles or groups simply because of being your true authentic self?  

How did you respond to those situations?  How did you deal with the emotions that those situations brought up in you - the shame, the rage, the pain, the spitefulness?  Would you respond differently now?

Lilith was demonized for centuries, but within the last few decades, she has been seen as a liberator.  Her story gives so many people hope - and empowerment to fight against oppression.  

Her story shows us that sometimes rage and anger are justified, and that it is within our right to stand up for ourselves and ask for equality.  It is powerful to know your worth, and worthwhile to ask others to see your worth as well.  In the end - you could say that Lilith being kicked out of the garden was the best thing to happen to her.... why would she want to stay with Adam and be a "lesser partner" when she could go out, forge her own path, and eventually be known as a GODDESS?

This Eclipse is the ideal time to connect with Lilith in your own way.  See her story reflected in your own life.  Acknowledge the pain of rejection that you have experienced, let yourself FEEL all the feelings that come with it.

 Decide which of those feelings can be released, and which ones can be used to fuel your forward motion in positive ways with the new moon.  Pull the weeds of the feelings that block you from growth, and take the feelings that can empower you and turn them into seeds to plant with the New Moon.  You know your power and worth.... let the story of Lilith remind you that rejection often has less to do with YOU and more to do with the other person's insecurities.  And that if you must leave a person or group behind - you can forge your own path and will find others who resonate with your power and choose to uplift you rather than oppress you.

 Acknowledge the pain or anger within yourself - resist the urge to label it as negative or bad.  Feelings are just feelings.  It is what we do with them that can create positive or negative results.

[divinemackerel]

Throughout the long scrapbook of humanity’s past, there is well documented evidence of Abrahamic Angels  (Islamic, Judaic, Christian) coming down to earth and mingling with us. 

This goes back as far as when we started to emerge, with new evidence now showing cave paintings that depict these bewinged and fanciful creatures. However, their notoriety peaked in the middle ages,  when their accidental power,  over both state and peasant,  was absolute.

It was at that point, that these simple messengers transcended to true holiness.

That fact crossed my mind as I saw a 2005 Porsche Carrera GT ram an angel that had been crossing the street,  and it stayed comfortably in the doorway as the creature readily spilled onto the asphalt,  its wings barely even twitching, as if it had been expecting this  and braced.

I watched from my window as the driver and passenger exited the car,  and both are limp at the joints with disinterest.

Royally blue ichor sinks into the pavement as they hover there,  it digging in like desperate fingertips,  useless against the ungiving stone.

“I am here,” it says.

The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will send someone to clean it up an hour after the inevitable call, and they will use a power hose to wash away the blood,  and bag the body of the angel,  now thoroughly mangled.

I’ve been seeing less and less of them each year, but maybe I’m just unlucky.

Less are dying on my road though,  less are eating my trash, less are coming to try to tear down my bird feeders, to sneak into my chicken pen,  to eat the eggs hidden there, brimming with honied yolk.

I live on the edge of suburbia, where I know they are most common,  and they are becoming almost elusive.

I live in fear that He is sending less.

When I was in first grade, an angel came to see my rabbi in the middle of our Shabbat services.

It was glowing,  and though it was not brighter than headlights, it was impossible to ignore its entrance.

Its body slowly reaching forward from the back, lead by the head into the posture of a sprawling lion, with its face and mane having been substituted for light. And after coming to the bimah at the front of the room,  it climbed the two steps not even the rowdiest children dared to, heeling like a dog,  before its mouth fell open, its tongue readily rolling out, long and yellowed as it was, and something was written on it, but in Hebrew I still can’t read.

Even I watched as our rabbi bent his head to do so for us,  his lips barely twitching as he silently tasted and swallowed each word.

When he was done, he simply turned away and continued our services, and everyone pretended not to watch as the angel left, walking close enough by me to almost touch.

We moved away the year after, and now I live faraway on an edge of suburbia, and I used to see angels all the time.

I don’t known my neighbors, I haven’t for eight years yet, but if any of them care, they do nothing.

I’m getting increasingly worried He is sending less each year. 

I’m getting increasingly worried that maybe I should do something. 

I’m getting increasingly worried that one day  He will send one for me,  and while it is eating out of my trashcan down by the road,  I will back up at full speed in my 2013 Subaru Forester  and hit it,

killing it instantly.

[girlactionfigure]

Opinion: I was the most senior Islamic leader to visit Auschwitz. Here’s what I know about peace

Sheikh Mohammed Al-Issa

Ours was the most senior Islamic delegation to visit the site during its sorrowful history.

Passing through the infamous gates was a visceral, emotionally-arresting experience that managed to both transport me back in time and sharpen my mind on the future. For it was here that 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were murdered during the Holocaust. And it was here that I reaffirmed my commitment to fight intolerance and hate in all its forms.

This visit was our moral obligation and an overdue sign of solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters, with whom we must tackle the many injustices and enmities there are in the world.

Indeed, all the world’s major faiths — Christian, Judaic, Hindu, Buddhist and Hindu — have at their core a commitment to peace and justice that starts with recognition of the struggles of our fellow travelers.

Now, on the cusp of the 78-year anniversary of the liberation of Majdanek (22-23 July, 1944), which was the first of the Nazi camps to be freed by the Allies, we must ask ourselves: does the truth of the Holocaust continue to set hearts and minds, once blinded by ignorance, fear and prejudice, free?

The honest answer is that while Muslim understanding of the Holocaust is important to bringing lasting peace to the Holy Lands, Holocaust ignorance and denial remains a worrisome trend that only worsens with the passage of time.

Trivializing the Holocaust, we know too well, opens pathways to denial and to antisemitism, which still persists in the world, for sure. But it is a cross-cultural, cross-ethnic, cross-national, cross-religion phenomena.

One poll, conducted earlier this year by the American Jewish Committee, found that only 53% of Americans over the age of 18 answered correctly that approximately six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, while 20% explicitly said they were not sure. In the poll, 2% said that less than one million were killed, 13% chose approximately three million, and 11% said more than 12 million.

The truth can set us free. And the truth of the Holocaust must continue to open our eyes to the horrors humankind is capable of inflicting — and help guide us to the truth of our common humanity and our shared destiny.

But we must live, practice, and teach this truth every day, to keep the shadow of lies and ignorance from again overtaking our world.

We can do this primarily through education and interfaith dialogue. There are ever more interfaith clubs and organizations sprouting across communities and college campuses, including the new Interfaith Research Lab at Columbia University, which I helped inaugurate with Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Rabbi Arthur Schneier.

We can also work to build bridges of peace between the diverse peoples of the world, and be a force for a new, faith-driven diplomacy that compliments the traditional efforts of governments to achieve peace.

This idea is already bearing fruit. Last year, The Muslim World League, together with Christian, Jewish, Shinto and other partners, took part in the G20 Summit of Nations in Bali, Indonesia as the “R20” (the Religion 20), an engagement group aiming to leverage the power of world religions to tackle pressing global challenges.

And just last month, we hosted a high-level interfaith summit of religious leaders and diplomats at United Nations Headquarters in New York, aimed at soothing over growing tensions between east and west.

These are not naïve exercises. Two historical facts are worth remembering. First, it was the Soviet Red Army – which was then allied with America and the West – that liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, as well as Majdanek, in the 1940s.

Second, while the overwhelming number of victims of Nazi barbarity were Jews, among the murdered at Auschwitz were dozens of Muslims. The lessons here are clear. The clash of peoples is not inevitable. Good can defeat evil. And hate is an all-consuming pyre.

We all rise or fall together. And as we remember the liberation of Majdanek, that is the truth that shall set us free.

Opinion by Dr. Sheikh Mohammed Al-Issa

H/T Imam of Peace

[the-torchwood-magician]

"Were you a gifted child or were you normal?"

No.

I was fine with learning (see: autism)

But I was repeatedly taken out of class because I can't say the letter S properly. I still struggle to say it properly and I usually sound like I have a lisp if I'm not consciously putting effort into saying it right.

I was in accelerated math in grade 9 but struggled so much. And when they put me in the same class again in grade 10, I begged them to put me in basic/remedial math, and they did.

In my second high school, in grade 11, was a mishmash of classes. Basic math, basic Hebrew (zionist school unfortunately), college prep history, judaics/talmud, honors English. (I wasn't confident with my hebrew skills that's why ig), and basic physics.

But a couple weeks into the year I asked to change my Hebrew class to accelerated because what they were teaching me what I learned in grade 1-3. Teacher tried to make up bs and not let me. In physics I studied hard because I suck at math but loved science. Turns out what the teacher thought was that his class wasn't difficult enough. My parents didn't want me to switch up and got upset I did it on my own. Especially cuz it was harder. But I was learning now. For judaics. They were teaching what I learned between grades 6-9 ish. I was bored. Kept telling me to not raise my hand because it wasn't fair to the others who didn't know the answer. My reward for already knowing? Given more work to do. I wanted to switch up to honors, even if it would be all in Hebrew (it wasn't). I was bored out of my mind. After some time, my talmud teacher held me back after class, and essentially said I was too smart for his class and he's having me switched up to honors. Which was funny cuz the concepts they were teaching in the college prep of Talmud I hadn't learned in depth in my old school tho I did the concepts ("girls can't learn the Talmud") but at least now I was learning new things. With judaics, even in grade 12, I wasn't learning anything new. But at least it was a faster pace, open to more in depth questions, and I wasn't told to not participate.

In grade 12 they switched me up to college prep for math, and I nearly panicked multiple times through the year when it came to tests because it was harder. I didn't ask to be switched up, pretty sure it was the teacher's call, because I did really well (and was the only one to get 100 on the midterm. No final cuz of covid). Math was my weak spot. I failed quizzes, didn't do the best on tests no matter how much I studied. I pushed through. Ended up needing to take the math final and surprised myself by somehow getting a 90. (See: audhd)

History was also a weak spot. I hated it. But somehow with the strength of audhd, I passed with an 85 something average. Not bad imo but my parents weren't too happy.

When it came to my electives, one was AP psychology. If you don't know what AP is, it stands for advanced placement, and teaches you what you'd learn in your first semester of uni/college. I struggled so badly in the beginning. It was a new way of learning I wasn't used to, a barrage of information much faster than my other classes. I was failing tests. I wanted to switch electives to a non-AP one. My parents wouldn't let me. I needed to "study harder" and "push through" and "ask for more help" - but me asking to switch courses wasn't getting myself help??? I ended up with a 4 on the midterm (three points shy of a 5 😭) and with a 4 on the final (maybe 10 points shy of a 5) which translated to regular scoring is somewhere around 80-88). It was hard as fuck.

School was hard on me. I had a mental breakdown senior year closer to when we were ending classes because it was so much already after all these years and then being expected to go to university straight after (the September after I graduated). I had trouble learning. The problem was, no one seemed to pick up on it because if I studied hard, and pushed myself really fucking hard, I did passably well. The fact that in high school I started to fail tests wasn't a "hey are you struggling? Is something wrong?" it was a "hey stupid, stop failing and study harder. Stupid. We're revoking x item until you get better grades. Stupid." is very telling of how much support I had. I was doing my homework for at least 5 hours every evening. My parents didn't ask if I was struggling. If I needed help. No. It's "you're in high school now, you need to study harder or colleges won't accept you." Tf.

Anyway. All that to say I wasn't a gifted kid or a normal kid. I was a burnt out struggling kid who instead of getting help was told to stop being stupid and study harder.

[route22ny]

Life as a 21st-Century Trucker

Technology, corporate greed, and supply-chain chaos are transforming life behind the wheel of a big rig. I went on the road to find exactly how.

by Andrew Kay

1 When Jay LeRette preaches the Word, he transforms from a mild Midwesterner—one who loves country gospel, rides a horse he has trained to roll over and grin, and has, himself, a whinnying laugh—into a human incandescence. Sixty-four, 5' 5", and dressed like a cowboy, he increases in stature; his voice crescendos to cracking. “The devil’s learned to use us and abuse us, to beat the snot out of us,” he says, then uppercuts the air. “Amen, Chuck?” A man in the second row with a great, ZZ Top–like beard croaks amen. “The devil mopped the floor with me,” LeRette continues, and mimes a janitorial sweep. “But God—but God!—” he shrieks, pounding the lectern and leaping, “—had compassion on you and I.”

It’s a weeknight in December 2021, getting toward Christmas, and I’m sitting in the trailer of an 18-wheeler that’s been repurposed into LeRette’s chapel. It’s parked, permanently, at the Petro Travel Center, a truck stop off Interstate 39 in northern Illinois. All around it are acres of commercial trucks, stopped for the night and carrying every kind of cargo: cows, weed, pro-wrestling rings, grain, petroleum. One side of LeRette’s trailer reads “Transport for Christ"; beside it, a neon cross gleams in the dark. John 3:16 adorns the back end: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Next to the scripture are two godly hands cradling a truck.

All across Illinois there are tornado warnings. Menacing gales rip through the parking lot, making the trailer shift and groan; we are beyond the reach of any siren. Yet every minute, the door opens and a new trucker walks in. Each takes his place in one of about 20 chairs arranged in rows toward the middle of the chapel, which is pretty minimalist: framed Bible verses along wood-paneled walls, a lectern at the front, an office and bed in back.

The drivers—all men tonight—have come straight from the road, and their bodies suggest the slow entropy wrought by bad food and decades of sitting. All but one appear over 50. Some know each other: When LeRette kicked off the service by belting out hymns and strumming his guitar, a straggler entered, and several men called out, “Rip!” Rip hustled in and high-fived or hugged them.

LeRette hands out copies of the King James Bible and asks us to open to Luke 10:25. Chuck seems to be back in Exodus, and when LeRette repeats “the Gospel of Luke,” Chuck responds, “Oh, I thought you said Mötley Crüe.” They are irrepressibly funny like this, suddenly schoolboys.

LeRette asks John, a small, older man in a hoodie, to read the verse. “A certain lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, ‘Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’” He struggles to sound out “eternal,” but the men nod along, supportive, patient.

Then LeRette interprets: A skeptic is trying to trick Jesus into contradicting Judaic law, into uttering a heresy. “Now how many know he ain’t gonna do that? Jesus is the living word of God, amen? There ain’t no trapping our savior.” Chuck calls out, “They tried to trap him for three years,” and LeRette answers, “C’mon, that’s right!” The quickness with which he beckons these road-weary men into call-and-response is extraordinary. He stamps and claps, sidesteps and kicks till his lungs falter. “Jesus carries our load, amen?”

After the sermon, John says meekly, “I have a pain in my shoulder. Would you try healing it?” LeRette agrees and hurries past us to his office, returning with a vial of frankincense. He approaches John and daubs his forehead, then places a hand on his ailing shoulder and calls out: “Father, we pray against whatever it is that’s trying to come against John.” The other drivers rise, surrounding and placing their hands on John or kneeling before him where he sits, eyes closed with one hand lifted upward. He awakens under their touch, smiling serenely.

Each trucker gets a turn at the center of the group. Then they turn toward me.

“Andrew, may I anoint you?” LeRette asks. There’s no time to think, so I say,

“You may,” and straightaway he applies the oil to my forehead.

“Just flood through him, oh God, like liquid fire,” he intones.

Then he starts speaking in tongues, a tumble of manic syllables he lets fly while the long-haulers encircle and lay hands on me.

“Father, I commit Andrew to your care,” LeRette concludes.

2

I have come here on a strange sort of mission: I want to find out what’s gone awry in American trucking. For more than a decade, freight-haulers have been held up as the poster children of a supposedly inexorable fate: 2 to 3 million drivers out of a workforce of 3.5 million—one of the largest in the US—are slated to be sidelined by AI. Yet recent years have hardly borne out that doomy prophecy: The self-driving industry has been humbled by fatal crashes, scandals, a federal investigation, a pedestrian death, negligent homicide charges, and stillborn business promises. Meanwhile the pandemic has wreaked havoc on our supply chains and made us more dependent on truckers than ever—more beholden to an industry that, for all its hugeness, still can’t keep pace with our needs. It’s an industry that dwarfs all other forms of domestic freight transport: 72.2 percent of the total tonnage of goods shipped within the US is moved by truck (air transport moves less than one-tenth of 1 percent). Investors—inspired, doubtless, by the shipping delays and logistical breakdowns that threaten to upend the economy—have sought furiously to augment or outright replace that workforce, pouring money with redoubled fervor into automation since 2020. But they have found scant success: What we have, ironically, is a nationwide shortage of the very workers alleged to face obsolescence.

What’s behind that shortage? And how exactly is technology altering life inside the cab? I want to know why 90 percent of the people who enter this profession quit within the first year; why a red-pilled faction of its members—affronted by a vaccine mandate that was, one senses, only the last in a litany of grievances—formed the Freedom Convoy and People’s Convoy last winter and spring, blocking border crossings between the US and Canada. I hope to understand, too, how the relatively few truckers who stick around sustain themselves: the myths they live on and the shrines to which they come, parched, to be replenished and raised up.

Shadowing LeRette, a holy therapist whose vantage point on this world is at once intimate and panoramic, I hope to glimpse some answers. Then, because I need to see the road for myself—need to be in a truck—I’ve arranged to ride shotgun with a person named Jason Childs, a 41-year-old trucker and adventurer I’ve never met but with whom I’ve very sensibly agreed to share a cab on a two-day route to Boston.

The day after my anointing, LeRette and I head to the main building of the truck stop, where showers, slot machines, and a diner are. He’s decked out in a big parabola of a cowboy hat, a custom black Carhartt jacket that reads “Victory in Jesus,” Wrangler-ish denim, and dark-brown cowboy boots. He approaches the PA system to advertise tonight’s service, which begins at 7 pm, then we grab a booth at the Iron Skillet, where he runs through his personal history over lunch.

As a young man, LeRette was such a wayward punk that he lowers his voice recounting it all. He stole things (“I liked motorcycles”), fist-fought, and assaulted police; he drifted from detention hall to drug ward to psychiatric hospital. At last, he went to prison for theft. One night toward the end of his yearlong sentence, he sat alone in his cell, thumbing through a Bible and crying; he wanted to be delivered, wanted to climb clear of the devilry that had devoured his early life. In the darkness, he became aware of something—a preternatural light. Some being or intelligence that he instantly identified as the Holy Ghost had come to dwell with him. He stopped struggling, felt clean and clear-headed, drained of the defiant energy that had twisted him crosswise with the world. At 6 am, he showed up for breakfast looking serene. “What’s got into you, LeRette?” other inmates asked. “I found Jesus,” he said. They responded: “Brother, you need him!”

He started converting other prisoners, and upon release, began evangelizing in the prisons, jails, and detention centers he knew so well. He made a name for himself bringing the gospel to the most hostile of places, a perilous early ministry that he recalls with what sometimes seems like preacherly embellishment. In Chicago one night, he claims, someone held a gun to his forehead and pulled the trigger. He raised his arms to the sky and cried, “Jesus!” only to discover that the chamber had been empty. Another time, LeRette says, leaning in, while he was witnessing to a crowd of bikers at a Hell’s Angels bar in Rockford, he saw they were getting blow jobs as he spoke. He lifted his eyes and went on preaching.

LeRette supported himself as a mechanic at a Del Monte Foods factory, where he met his wife, Karen. One day in 1991 he got a call from an investor who was planning to build a new truck stop in Rochelle. He wanted to install a chapel there and appoint LeRette as its preacher. LeRette was dubious. He thought his calling was to be a prison chaplain—and besides, the lot was little more than an expanse of corn at the time. But the investor convinced him that if they built on this blankness of prairie, the truckers would come.

The chapel was furnished by a nondenominational ministry—Transport for Christ, now TFC Global—founded in 1951 to serve an industry that was booming thanks to the highway system. The name, like so much about LeRette’s world—its mingled grotesquerie and humor, its wild manifestations of grace amid grimness—seems drawn from Flannery O’Connor. Today, the ministry’s sanctified semis are stationed across the country. The souls LeRette encounters—thousands of truckers come to him each year—include regulars who pass through weekly, plus others he sees once and never again. They provide LeRette’s income in the form of donations, slipped into a box at the chapel or sent by mail. Some truckers have been donating monthly since the chapel opened.

LeRette lives with his wife in a farmhouse half an hour south of Rochelle. “I could never be a truck driver,” he concedes. “Too much of a homeboy.” But some nights he crashes on a couch in the chapel office. Once, he was rocketed from sleep at 4 am by a pounding at the door. “Get up, preacher,” said a voice. “You’re going to meet your maker.” LeRette opened the door and saw an enormous man who’d come to the chapel the night before. “I hate everything about you,” the guy said. “Your voice, your looks.” He seemed poised to murder LeRette when another driver entered—a jacked ex-bouncer who perceived the emergency and rushed forth, demanding the intruder back off. The three talked of Jesus until sunup, when the first guy broke down, agreeing to be born again.

This, LeRette says, is common: A trucker will come at him with a rage that turns out to conceal a desperate desire for forgiveness and love. “I think if there’s one word to describe the trucking industry and the drivers, it would be lonely,” he tells me. They are on the road for weeks, sometimes months, at a time. If they have partners or children, they carry the guilt of missing date nights and soccer games. If they fight with their spouses, they relive the spat numberless times on the road, the work itself becoming a brute metaphor for the emotional freight they carry.

In this sense, LeRette has become the prison chaplain he felt called to be. If trucking was once a lifestyle of freedom, it is increasingly one of deranging captivity and surveillance. During the week I spent at the Petro stop, drivers fumed to me about the electronic logs they must now use—tablet-shaped devices mounted on their dashboards that monitor everything they do: all their driving time, their fueling up, their loading and unloading, their napping. This particular digital intrusion is the result of federal legislation. A law passed in 2012 dictates that truckers work a maximum 14-hour workday, spending no more than 11 hours behind the wheel with three hours of rest time. If they violate this law, they risk being yanked from the road and fined, and might mess up their carrier’s safety rating, which could deter customers, creditors, and insurers. Many drivers concede that the time restrictions arose in response to reckless behavior. “Back in the day they used to do lines of coke off the freakin’ dashboard,” one Illinois-based driver recalled. That, he explained, is how one got to New Jersey overnight. Still, the truckers I spoke to would rather decide for themselves when they’re tired.

The newer trucks are so computerized that they provide what might be termed “AI helicopter parenting”: a development supposedly meant to increase safety and fuel efficiency, but also, I’ll come to suspect, a compensation for fast-tracking newcomers through training and into driver’s seats before they’re ready. Each state-of-the-art Peterbilt in the Petro lot is equipped with at least 10 computers that govern everything from steering to braking, reducing many truckers to what are known in the industry as zombified “steering-wheel holders.” The AI alerts a dispatcher if anything aberrant happens—an abrupt stop, a missed turn—and if a driver changes lanes suddenly, the truck will defy him, jerking itself back. (The driver can override this function, but many truckers say it remains disruptive, even dangerous.)

Then there are the cameras. Ascending the cabin of one semi, I see a black gadget affixed to the windshield like an old-school GPS, its lens trained on the driver’s seat. Such cameras protect companies from liability in the event of an accident—they can prove that a driver wasn’t acting irresponsibly and thus isn’t at fault—but truckers deplore them. “Some drivers,” LeRette says, “tell me they’ve got cameras pointed back in the sleeper.”

On a thriving Reddit community called r/Truckers, which hosts more than 100,000 members, one popular post begins, “Hello, fellow piss jug enthusiasts,” and goes on to complain that its author’s employer has announced it will start implementing driver-facing cameras. Hundreds of users chime in to say that they’ve quit for this reason. “I’ll only accept a driver-facing camera,” one comments, “if the company owner gives me a 24/7 unrestricted stream into his house.”

3

LeRette pays the bill and I follow him to the door. We pass a towering driver at the buffet. LeRette stops, invites him to the evening service, and asks where he stands with Jesus. “I tried to read the Bible cover to cover last year,” the man says. “But I got this phone in my pocket—it got a demon in it. Takes me to sites I don’t wanna go.” He claps me on the shoulder and bursts out laughing, and LeRette hurries off.

I decide to stick around, turning back toward the duskily lit dining room. The clientele is a microcosm of the workforce to which it belongs: older, racially diverse, overwhelmingly male. Of the 3.5 million people who work as truck drivers in the US, 75 percent are over 40, roughly 40 percent are not white, and at most 10 percent are women.

An ambient antisocial quiet hangs in the air: The e-logs and Covid, I’ll learn, have strangled the camaraderie that once flourished at these places where truckers would hobnob heedless of mandated resting and driving intervals. Most drivers sit alone, scrolling on their phones or glancing at the Fox News that drones on the TVs. Vacant booths are marked with a libertarian poutiness: “Due to the IL governor’s orders, this booth is closed.”

At one table, though, three men sit together laughing. I blunder up, introducing myself, and they invite me to sit. Their names are Junius (“JuJu”) Silas, Eric Brown, and Nick Rains; they haul equipment for big touring acts. They’re the drivers of the WWE trucks parked beside the chapel: Throughout my visit, because of the trailers’ adjacent rear ends, André the Giant’s likeness sits beside John 3:16.

I ask them why the industry has a 90 percent attrition rate within the first year. All instantly respond: “No money.” They describe a predatory apprenticeship system that conspires against new drivers seeking to enter the profession. The industry is made up of thousands of mostly small-fleet owners—95 percent of them with 20 trucks or fewer—but dominated by about two dozen giant companies that serve as its gatekeepers. These megacarriers often house schools where some 400,000 new truckers receive commercial driver’s licenses annually. The companies entice people with promises of financial plenty, even as they ensnare them in “training contracts”—binding agreements that require them to drive for the company at below-market wages for a year in exchange for training or else be hit with an exorbitant fee for that training, to be paid off at high interest. Many drivers stick around for the full year to avoid those fees, enduring what amounts to debt peonage.

Silas, a slyly charismatic man with graying dreadlocks, tells me: “The average pay per mile for a fresh driver—your shoes still on? 26 cents.” Actually, he notes, you make half that, “because you’ve got a split seat”—meaning it’s common for companies to pair new drivers in a truck, where they take turns at the wheel and split their earnings. “It don’t make child support,” Silas says. “It don’t make electric bill,” Brown says. “You don’t have a girlfriend,” Silas adds.

To make matters worse, drivers who leave their training contracts early risk being blackballed by the carriers. This past summer and fall, the US Department of Justice oversaw a high-profile antitrust lawsuit in which several truckers sued nine megacarriers for colluding with one another not to hire them. In November, they reached a $2.1 million preliminary settlement.

Freight companies have been warning lately about a trucker shortage so dire that it’s causing supply-chain and delivery delays nationwide. But drivers like Rains see such warnings as disingenuous, given the way megacarriers treat new drivers: “Like cattle.” What’s more, the DOJ has said that the blackballing of drivers who break training contracts may be contributing to the shortage. According to the American Trucking Associations’ 2019 driver shortage report, there are now nearly three commercial driver’s license holders for every job that requires one in the US: strange stats to square with a shortage.

All day I ambush drivers who greet me with an annoyed suspicion that gives way to a thirst for talk so desperate that within minutes I couldn’t shut them up if I tried. I buy them coffee, soon finding myself at the center of small congregations of truckers who’ve shifted seats to join. They want me to understand that freight companies talk up the shortage because they’re angling for federal and state grant money to subsidize the cost of training new drivers. They say that taxpayers are unwittingly funding the turnover that enables this deception to continue—providing what Todd Spencer from the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association calls “corporate welfare” to companies that can seem ripe for treatment by Upton Sinclair. Last year, Rains received a payout from the carrier CRST, where he got his commercial license, after it had reached a settlement with drivers who’d filed a multimillion-dollar class action against it for lying about “free” training, overcharging them for schooling, and failing to pay them minimum wage. The same company saw 150 to 200 sexual harassment claims filed by student drivers against their trainers in 2018 and 2019; one woman alleged her trainer raped her, only to be told by CRST that without video footage they could do nothing. They charged her $9,000 for her training and effectively fired her in retaliation. She sued the carrier and received a $5 million settlement in 2021.

LeRette’s sermon the night before (“The devil’s learned to use us and abuse us!”) starts to strike me as an allegory about a more worldly, if faceless, kind of fiend. “The trucker shortage is propaganda,” insists 62-year-old Jerry Adams, who hauls flour, records country music, and claims to have dated one of Dolly Parton’s sisters. (Adams says she once called the chapel mid-service and sang to the truckers on speaker.) For him, the politicians who keep rewarding the megacarriers bear ultimate responsibility. Many drivers agree, blaming their mistreatment not just on corporate avarice but also on Washington. In 1980, the Motor Carrier Act deregulated trucking, making it easier to get a commercial driver’s license but also making the job far less remunerative. “The worst thing they ever did was deregulate it,” says Dean Martin, who began driving in 1994. “What I made when I started … I make less now.”

Adding insult to injury, truckers are barred from overtime pay by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, even though most of them work at least 70 hours a week—especially when you figure in the obligatory rest periods imposed by Congress in 2012. (A bill called the Guaranteeing Overtime for Truckers Act, sponsored by several senior Democratic US senators, is making its way through Congress.) The average US trucker salary in 1980, adjusting for inflation, was $110,000; today the median is $48,310. This despite research by industry experts like Daniel Rodríguez showing that the probability of truck crashes indirectly correlates with pay and experience, plummeting among long-standing, well-compensated drivers.

According to the American Trucking Associations, though, the trucker shortage is quite real—the product of an aging workforce, the industry’s struggle to recruit women, and the ballooning of freight volumes thanks to our rapacity as consumers. All this, exacerbated by Covid, has created a tight labor market in which fleet owners—primarily small outfits with a handful of trucks—are fiercely competing for the same limited pool of drivers. They are doing so by increasing their pay rates (up by as much as 25 percent since 2019) and enticing truckers with five-figure signing bonuses. Jeremy Kirkpatrick, a spokesperson for the ATA, stressed to me that many truckers are now regularly moving from one signing bonus to the next in a game of musical chairs that leaves fleet owners frustrated. “This churn, or poaching, is what really inflates the turnover rate,” he said.

It’s possible to reconcile these rival accounts: Scummy treatment of apprentice drivers is leading to massive hemorrhaging at the entry level and thus to a shrunken labor force that innumerable fleet owners must strenuously fight over. It’s a landscape akin to academia, the world I came from, where a great share of grubby work is done by an insecure class of entry-level laborers—grad students, adjuncts—striving desperately to join a small, cosseted class—the tenured—who enjoy clout, protections, and a lifelong career trajectory.

While the pandemic’s supply chain woes raged, venture capitalists funneled more investments into autonomous-truck startups—$11 billion from 2019 through 2021—adding fresh precariousness to a trade already beset with uncertainty. These investments have coincided with a rush of optimism among engineers and lawmakers alike. In August, US House representatives, fired by a conviction that “this technology is moving so quickly,” formed a bipartisan “autonomous vehicle caucus” aimed at “establishing the right policy conditions to increase the use of AVs.” “It’s closer than you might think,” Dmitri Dolgov, the co-CEO of leading AV company Waymo, wrote of a self-driving future last month. “Freight volumes will increase, demonstrating how AVs could help untangle supply chains and backfill the immense shortage of truck drivers.”

And yet when one looks closely, this boldness is everywhere haunted by doubt—a rooster-strutting that never quite convinces. One leading autonomous-truck startup, TuSimple, executed its first entirely driverless truck run in Arizona while I was at the Petro stop. An 80-mile nocturnal drive from Tucson to Phoenix, it was hailed as a success—but tellingly, a lead vehicle drove five miles ahead of the truck, scouting for obstacles, while an escort, ready to intervene, trailed it closely, and law enforcement vehicles stalked it from half a mile behind. In 2020, TuSimple struck a deal with Navistar to engineer autonomous trucks; the companies secured about 7,000 orders, and the trucks were scheduled to enter production in 2024. Last December, though, they severed their partnership. A rival, Aurora Innovation, told me in March 2022 that it was aiming for the end of 2023; it has since pushed this date to the end of 2024 and even mulled the possibility of a sale to Apple or Microsoft. In fact, there is little consensus about not just when but whether self-driving trucks will actually come. Truckers tend to bristle at the suggestion that an unmanned digitized truck could perform their job; they point to the dexterity involved in backing into a tight space, even as engineers maintain that this is what autonomous trucks do best—a mere matter of physics and geometry. For their part, researchers like Maury Gittleman and Kristen Monaco at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics stress how truckers’ jobs include more than just driving; they’re tasked with loading and unloading, customer service, and addressing the manifold safety concerns that arise on the road—all duties that “are less susceptible to automation.” Even among engineers, there’s little agreement about the viability of autonomous trucks. Anthony Levandowski, the cofounder of Google’s self-driving vehicle division and now CEO of the autonomous-truck company Pronto, told me he thinks the technology has reached an impasse owing to the trucks’ inability to “understand the world”—to anticipate and react to sudden, spontaneous occurrences such as a driver cutting them off. So the timeline remains uncertain: “Is it five years or 50?” Levandowski asks without an answer. Meanwhile, companies like TuSimple (which refused to talk to me) depict themselves as motivated by a noble desire to devise a solution to the punishment and peril of trucking. The logic, apparently, is that they will relieve an immiserated workforce by rendering it obsolete.

Afternoon at the Skillet bleeds into evening. Every so often a robot voice issues through a loudspeaker: The shower is vacant, the next ticket number is up.

A portrait sharpens into focus of a job that entails both mortal danger and wilting tedium. On one hand, truckers navigate vehicles that weigh up to 80,000 pounds down an interstate system swarming with civilian drivers cutting trucks off and fooling around with phones—and they do so knowing it will take them three football fields to stop should the need arise. From an accident investigator on Reddit, I learn of a trucker who was cut off on a wet road by a driver going 80 mph. The car lost control and skidded sideways into the truck’s path. The trucker could only watch as the car’s driver looked up at him aghast while his wife covered her head, and he barreled straight into them, killing the man instantly and leaving his wife a quadriplegic. The trucker never recovered psychologically: “I just couldn’t get the truck to stop.”

On the other hand, US truckers spend great swaths of their lives waiting at warehouses for their trailers to be loaded and unloaded. Of the 11 hours they’re allotted each day for driving, they spend an average of four and a half idling in line. “They talk about a truck-driver shortage,” one driver tells me. “Yet there are drivers sitting in warehouses two miles from here with an appointment from six or seven hours ago,” he says bitterly. “If they can tell me when I can eat and when I can take a nap, how come they can’t tell these people loading and unloading these trucks that they have a set amount of time to do it?”

Such bitterness helped ignite the Freedom Convoy and People’s Convoy. Ostensibly a transnational uprising against pandemic restrictions—one bolstered by money from far-right groups—the convoys were also an outcry against the perceived collusion of Big Tech and the government against blue-collar workers. Some of the convoys’ participants have passed through LeRette’s chapel. “They’re not against vaccination,” he tells me. “They’re against the government taking complete control over them.” Which sounds like a generic right-wing rallying cry, but it holds special significance for truckers, who feel they’re regulated in all the wrong ways: forsaken where they need help, oppressively monitored where they yearn for liberty.

4

Ascending the chapel steps around 7:15, I open the door and find a seventysomething man seated across from LeRette, mid-narrative. Haggard, cadaverous in color, he has a raving giddiness about him and takes no notice of me. “I got home, walked into the kitchen, and there she was, waving a gun in my face,” he’s saying.

I piece together his story: He came home from a trucking route and found his girlfriend, Norma, demanding at gunpoint to be done with him. He turned and ran downstairs, intending to flee the house. “I got halfway down the steps,” he says, “and she shot a hole in the wall above my head.” When he finally crept back upstairs, “She was on her hands and knees crying.”

The man’s name is Don, and it’s clear he’s likely withholding details. She filed a restraining order; he pressed charges. They’re awaiting a court date.

One by one, truckers file in for the service, and, grasping that something is underway, stay hushed and sit, watching. “Are you a born-again Christian?” LeRette asks.

Don instantly grows defensive. He’s a lapsed Catholic. “I could pull quotes out of the Bible that would put down any preacher if you contradict what I say,” he dares LeRette. “Over half the Bible wasn’t inspired by God; it was influenced by man.”

They clash on this at length, and LeRette finally bursts. “You know what you’re doing, sir? Hey! You’re living an ungodly lifestyle. You’re fornicating with this woman. You come in here with a filthy mouth and you say, ‘Where’s God in my life?’ Man, you need to repent and say, ‘God, I’m in the wrong! Forgive me and fill me with your Holy Spirit!’” LeRette stares at him beseechingly.

Don stands his ground, battling tears: “Her and I stood on a hill and looked at each other as the sun rose! That’s the way we were married! We are married in the eyes of God.”

More argument. Then LeRette says: “Jesus wept. You know that, right?” Don nods. “All of a sudden I’m experiencing feelings, and I never did before.” Later, he adds: “I don’t want to be alone.”

LeRette, seizing the opportunity, jumps up, fetches a Bible, and thrusts it into Don’s hands. He implores him to read aloud a verse from Ezekiel. Don fishes trifocals out of his jacket. “‘A new heart also will I give you,’” he pronounces, “‘and a new spirit will I put within you.’”

“Do you want that?” asks LeRette, standing before him. “Do you want God to take away that stony heart of yours and set His spirit inside you?”

He wants Don to consent to being born again here, now, and implores him to “Yoke up with Jesus!” But Don won’t submit. He keeps dodging, refusing, changing the subject.

A driver from Louisiana named Tony, bass-voiced and built like a bullfrog, pipes in, telling of his own divorce, how he lived out of his pickup in a Walmart parking lot during the worst of it. “I had to concentrate on me,” he realized.

A group therapy session materializes: The other drivers, pivoting toward the secular vocabulary of Oprah and Dr. Phil, urge Don to prioritize self-care, while LeRette sits by, looking sidelined and a little glum.

At last LeRette intervenes. “Don, I have no greater desire in my heart tonight than to see you say, ‘Lord Jesus, I need you. I want to be born again. I want you to renew me.’”

“No.”

Instead, Don joins hands with the other drivers and leads them in prayer. “Lord, I’m asking that we can find a peaceful solution to this situation I’m in. That I can get a lot of help from the people that have listened to me. That we can get help for Norma and bring her back to the woman I fell in love with. Bring her back to the light.”

5

I stay late in the chapel, talking to the truckers. They recall driving during the earliest days of Covid—the apocalyptic emptiness of the roads. “Everything shut down but us,” says Tony. “It felt like we were in a movie. Five o’clock, rush hour in Atlanta, and I’m running 65. I got chill-bumps on my arms talking about it.” A suddenly homebound public relied on them more than ever, yet they themselves remained unprovided for; truck stops, restaurants—all were closed. “They locked it down, man. You’d be lucky if you got a honeybun.”

“Back when Covid started we were heroes,” one driver says. “Now it’s right back to pre-Covid; we’re just POSes.” Another calls out, “Boy, it sure was nice while it lasted!”

An intimacy takes shape in the trailer among drivers who, as early as 2 am, will be back on the road, scattered to their separate lives. It’s as if we’re drovers gathered around a campfire—a metaphor with a powerful gravitational pull here. LeRette doesn’t just dress like a cowboy. His office is laden with cowboy paraphernalia: a cowboy kneeling before a cross, a holster, a rodeo poster, photos of LeRette on horseback shooting at targets, and an ornamental cowboy boot beside the vial of frankincense, a juxtaposition that neatly captures LeRette and the faith he’s plying—call it Cowboy Pentecostalism. Cowboyism, it turns out, is an essential piece of the trucker mythos, for many drivers a life-giving faith unto itself. As Jane Stern showed in her 1975 book on the industry, Trucker: A Portrait of the Last American Cowboy, the conviction that they’re heirs to the cattle-drivers of the frontier, peripatetic dudes who answer to no one, is their central animating story.

This is a core reason why truckers find the cameras and computers so galling: More than any projected future of self-driving trucks, these technologies threaten not just their livelihoods but their innermost sense of self. To watch LeRette in action is to see a ritualized resistance to that threat—a refusal through sacrament, through touch, of what many see as a coordinated push by Silicon Valley, government, and their employers to wring trucking of its human element.

I spend my last day talking to more truckers, conversations that range from damning to poignant. There’s the African American woman, a long-hauler who declines to share her name, who tells me: “Companies are treating drivers like meat in the seat. It’s all about them. They’re not concerned about what the drivers need.” By which she means, especially, time off, but also pay. There’s Janet, perhaps 70 years old, who talks to me from high up in her truck while her three spaniels peer around her at me. She drove for decades with her husband; a year ago he died. “It’s tested my faith,” she admits, and clutches my hand.

That night I have a last dinner with LeRette, thanking him for everything. I tell him, feigning poise, that in the morning I’ll catch that ride to Boston with Jason Childs. I share what little I’ve heard about him: Though recently engaged, Childs has 11 kids by 10 different women scattered about the country. “Oh, mercy!” LeRette shrieks, and prays for me over his pilaf.

When I get back to my hotel room, I see that Childs has texted me. “Well they changed my trip,” he wrote. “Going to the Everglades.”

6

In the morning I make my way south, by Greyhound, to a lot outside Springfield where I’ve arranged to meet Childs. In time a truck pulls up; out of it hops a middle-aged man in a hoodie—medium height, bearded, with a lone earring and a faintly roguish air. He holds out a hand, smiling: “Welcome to central fuckin’ Illinois.”

We embark on the route—me, Childs, and his 11-year-old soon-to-be stepson J. D., who wants to be a trucker himself and, in his spare time, plays a trucking video game on Xbox whose object is to make sensational deliveries in brutal weather. I’m in the passenger seat, J. D.’s in the sleeper cabin, divided from the main cab by a curtain through which he peers happily. Childs’ truck is a flatbed with a removable tarp that protects our cargo: 38,000 pounds of cornmeal destined for a tortilla-chip factory in LaBelle, Florida. It’s the first of three deliveries that Childs—who works for an independent contractor with 50 trucks—will make, a journey of five days, 120 hours, for which he’ll get 31 percent of the total cut: $1,100 for the first drop, plus smaller sums for the next two.

The e-log ticking, we head down Route 24 toward Kentucky. It’s arresting, being up here: To be lifeguard-high in a 35-ton machine screaming down the highway at 80 mph, to see so plainly every driver’s phone-fiddling, their eating and knee-steering, is a sensation of godlike omniscience. But it is also terrifying.

There is a moment-to-moment proximity to death, not just your own but everyone else’s around you, that gives fresh clarity to all I witnessed at the chapel—the reconciling with God of people forced into a daily awareness of endings. “I’ll die in a truck,” Childs says casually, explaining that this is every trucker’s deepest fear. “A buddy of mine had a heart attack in a semi, right up here at that last exit. His heart exploded and he lost control of his truck, and he went right into a hotel.”

At one point we find ourselves on a county road, where a truck passes us on a double line. A moment of dread ensues: There’s oncoming traffic, and since it’s far too late for us to stop, we can only watch as the driver lays on the throttle, hurtling forward and, just in time, merging back over to avert disaster.

At times, Childs’ anxiety crests in moments of rage so over the top they teeter into black comedy. “I have panic attacks,” he says. “That’s why I drink.” Sure enough, when we cross into Kentucky, daylight wanes and we get stuck behind a semi doing 50 in the fast lane. Childs seethes—we’re on the clock—and when the driver finally changes lanes he speeds up alongside him, flips on the cab light and lowers my window. “Stupid-ass Ichabod Crane-looking motherfucker!” he yells. I glance over and see a gangly man at the wheel, his own window down, utterly bewildered. “This is why I love him!” J. D. cries.

Childs is a Byronic character, a bruised antihero whose story is harrowing enough to merit a trigger warning. “I was sexually molested by a lady,” he tells me once J. D. has fallen asleep. “She beat me with a taser. You can see my shoulders are all fried.” He peels down his hoodie, baring a cartography of scars. “I’ve never been genuinely loved.” Abandoned by his biological parents, he cycled through foster homes and psychiatric hospitals, quickly developing the sex addiction that has shaped his life. He’s had north of 300 partners, many encountered on the road—in whose arms, he tells me, blithely Freudian, he has found the semblance of maternal love. Nearly a dozen kids have come into the world, and with them mountains of child support that dwarf his earnings. Of late he has found stability with his fiancée, Stephanie. He smirks: “I’m retired.”

Jason Childs may be an unreformed Jay LeRette—the preacher minus the jail-cell epiphany, still adrift in a tumult of rages, unhelped by grace. And yet Childs, too, is ignited by faith—that same mythic cowboyism that forms the other half of LeRette’s creed. “We’re the guys that go in the saloon and play cards back in the Old West. And these,” he says, gesturing at his truck, “are our horses.” In keeping with that mythos, he insists on driving a manual transmission—“It gives me greater control, and it saves lives every day”—and has elected to work for a boss who doesn’t use driver-facing cameras. He despises the new generation of drivers who have everything done for them by computers, including the teenage truckers who, thanks to a controversial new federal apprenticeship program aimed at combating the shortage, may soon be eligible to do interstate hauling. All the same, he angrily, defensively waves away my suggestion that the job may be automated out of existence: “You’re never going to get rid of the real truck driver.”

As evening deepens, we advance into southern Tennessee, past mountain silhouettes that in darkness loom like cenotaphs. “Automation will be the death of the cowboy,” Childs suddenly says, a different authority in his voice. “All truck drivers fear it, because we know it’s going to take our jobs away. We’ve heard this for years … But it can’t be,” he insists.

“I know safety is key to this,” he concedes, and in his tone there’s a curious fatalism at odds with his earlier indignant dismissal of a driverless future. “The American truck driver—think about how many songs, stories. ‘Smokey and the Bandit.’ All the country songs. Legends were born out here.” He searches for the right word. “The folklore of a trucker—it’s the cowboy culture, the outlaw. The big, long beards and the big bellies. Disheveled. Stinky. Then there’s me,” he laughs, “who looks like I’m going to rob a bank.”

“Now the actual truck driver is going to go extinct. And it’s all about saving money. That’s all it’s about.”

7

We barrel through Georgia, crossing into Florida around 2 am, when the e-log mandates that we stop for 10 hours. An odd suspense follows: The 14-hour workday is running out, so we scan the highway for a truck stop with both vacant space and a restaurant, but the combination proves elusive. We settle for a travel station with available parking but only a convenience mart. Childs clambers into the sleeper cabin with J. D., and crashes.

I shut my eyes briefly, but by dawn I’m awake and get out to stretch. My lower back is throbbing, my right sacroiliac staging a violent coup that’s spreading down my leg. I think of Childs’ frenzied philandering through the years and find it impossible to imagine any amount of sensuality surviving this life. I feel the least attractive, and furthest from horny, I’ve ever been.

I hobble across the road onto what’s almost certainly someone’s property, entering a different world of palmettos, steroidal pinecones, and migrated cranes that swim the air. After Rochelle, this feels like my own stolen sabbath. I stoop and photograph. When I amble back to the truck, I pass Childs and J. D., who are headed to the mart to get breakfast. Childs nods slightly.

I crawl into the sleeper and draw the curtain, and after a time hear them return; Childs is on the phone with Stephanie. “He’s finally asleep, thank Christ. I saw him walking back to the lot from some random fucking field. Like, y’all know this is serial killer central, right?” He switches to what I can only describe as some kind of strangled Big Bird voice: “Deh, I’m gonna get myself killed by Jeffrey Dahmer!” J. D. squeals.

All that day we scud southward, the sky sunless and menacing. Florida is a hallucination of Confederate flags and Waffle Houses. “Worst state in the union,” Childs says. He’s chain-smoking now, five an hour; I watch him distance-parent on the phone half the day while operating the rig. “She’s testing you, Maddy, she’s testing you!” he shouts into the Bluetooth speaker at one point.

At nightfall we hit LaBelle. The tortilla-chip factory is desolate; there’s no sign they’re expecting us—no instructions, not a soul about, and, it turns out, no clear way to the loading dock in the back. Cars are parked carelessly about the building, their noses impinging on the path to the dock. There are no overhead lights, so Childs must slalom backward in the dark, maneuvering this mastodon with utmost delicacy around parked cars, some 100 yards in all: a double black diamond.

He scopes out the route, returns, and revs the truck. Then he guides it glacially backward, threading it past car after car and somehow nicking none—a kind of calligraphy—and nearly makes it when the truck’s antenna catches on a low overhang and snaps clean off. Childs stops, snarls profanities, then resumes and reaches the dock, emptying the tonnage of cornmeal in the night.

I stay with them just half a day longer. We pick up a load of steel piping in the morning and drive north toward Tampa, through Sunkist groves and into a gathering storm. Stop signs jerk spasmodically in the winds; lightning severs the sky. It starts to pour. I watch other trucks wade through pooled water in the road, feeling our own slosh and sway. “Tornado sky,” Childs mutters. My journey is ending as it began.

We drive on in silence, at noon reaching Plant City, near Tampa, and pulling up before the gate of the factory that ordered the piping. No one emerges. Childs calls the foreman, who says the crew won’t come out until it stops raining; they don’t feel like getting wet. “Why can’t the foreman just make them?” I ask, incredulous. “Because he’s a tender-footed sack of shit,” Childs spits.

Hours pass, and no one appears, a waiting that starts to seem existential, starts to stand in for the long-deferred deliverance of a workforce, a way of life. More trucks collect behind us, a convoy stretching to the street, and when I get out to survey them I see that their drivers too are on the phone and pissed, calling the foreman, presumably. But nothing moves—nothing except the winds that start rising, vengeful gusts that pummel and lash like a scourge out of scripture.

I look up at the sky and decide all at once that I need to get out. So I hustle back to the truck and page a ride to the Tampa airport, and when it comes I turn to Childs. “Gotta run, man. Thanks so much for having me.” But he’s taking frantic drags off a cigarette, distance-parenting again—a daughter keeps peeing her pants, the store is out of pull-ups—and in the speakerphone’s background a child is screaming. He hardly notices me; J. D. is asleep. I leave them like that, rushing toward my ride past a line of trucks that sit, in a rain half-diluvian now, aimed at the shut gate and poised, I imagine, to blow it apart.

[denimbex1986]

'Let's be fair, right off the bat: Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer," based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book "American Prometheus" by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is a remarkably accurate look into the life of American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy). It explores both his experiences working as the director of the Manhattan Project, fighting to build an atomic weapon before the Germans could manufacture their own, as well as the character assassination he endured at the hands of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) as a result of the left-wing ties he cultivated in his youth. Christopher Nolan brings his reliably detail-oriented vision to the project, endeavoring to get as close to the real version of history as possible.

But even with a three-hour runtime, it's inevitable that some historical facts are left by the wayside, whether timelines are consolidated to account for narrative flow, the roles of certain characters are shifted slightly, or elements of the overarching story are neglected. We expect this from most biopics because, at the end of the day, a movie is its own take on the story. But today, we're putting on our pedantic hats and taking a look at the spots where "Oppenheimer" and history diverge.

1. The J in J. Robert Oppenheimer

Early in the film, one of Oppenheimer's colleagues makes a comment about how the "J" in "J. Robert Oppenheimer" doesn't stand for anything. (This would not be particularly unusual for the time — famously, the "S" in "Harry S. Truman" doesn't stand for anything either.) But according to "American Prometheus," Oppenheimer's birth certificate confirms that the J stands for Julius, which was the name of his German Jewish immigrant father. It is perhaps likely that he never went by Julius or any derivative of that name because it's an uncommon practice in most Jewish communities to name babies after living relatives, at least in the Ashkenazi tradition, as it's considered to be bad luck.

That Oppenheimer's family didn't follow this particular superstition demonstrates their somewhat fractured relationship with Judaism. Raised by parents of a generation and class in which the primary goal was to assimilate to American culture, Robert Oppenheimer was Jewish by birth, but observed few religious practices. He was in fact educated primarily within the Ethical Cultural Society, a non-religious group founded by Jewish-born Felix Adler, who wanted to incorporate the elements of humanitarianism he considered cornerstones to Jewish culture without necessarily embracing Judaic faith.

2. The infamous apple incident

It's no secret to anyone familiar with Robert Oppenheimer's life that he had a hard time when he first left home for Cambridge to study physics in the prestigious Cavendish lab. He was considered by many contemporaries to be a little emotionally stunted and not quite mature enough for life on his own. Adding to these difficulties were the fact that he was training in a lab that focused on experimentation rather than theory, an environment in which the notoriously clumsy Oppenheimer did not thrive. Struggling to cope with stress and mental health issues, Oppenheimer impulsively poisoned an apple on the desk of his supervisor, Patrick Blackett. 

In the film, he manages to discard the apple and it appears that no one is any the wiser, but in real life (although no one was actually hurt by his stunt) the school found out about what could be interpreted as attempted murder, and it was only with the swift intervention of Oppenheimer's parents that he avoided being expelled or even arrested. He was allowed to stay at Cambridge only under the condition that he met with a London psychiatrist on a regular basis.

3. The ranch in New Mexico

Ever since his teen years, Oppenheimer had a special affinity for New Mexico, a place where he felt more at home than anywhere else in the world. In the film, he mentions to his European colleagues that he misses New Mexico, and that he and his brother have a ranch there. But actually, although Oppenheimer had visited New Mexico several times before attending university in Germany, he and his brother did not own property there until much later. 

Robert and Frank — with the financial support of their father — began leasing a ranch there in 1928, the year after Robert returned to the United States upon receiving his PhD, and Robert didn't actually purchase their small western estate, affectionately referred to as "Perro Caliente," until 1947. Still, the Oppenheimer brothers spent many happy months there, and it was Robert's knowledge of New Mexico that led him to suggest Los Alamos as the eventual site of the Manhattan Project.

4. Oppenheimer's teaching skills

Oppenheimer was by all accounts a unique personality in that social skills did not necessarily come easily to him, but like everything else in his life, he was a quick learner. After receiving his PhD and several offers to teach at various universities, he landed at Berkeley as an extremely green professor with little experience in teaching. "Oppenheimer" shows him connecting with students pretty much immediately, standing at the center of an engaged group of young physicists hanging on his every word. But that wasn't quite the experience that his very first advisees remember. 

In "American Prometheus," Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin describe his teaching style as "largely incomprehensible to most students" and "more like a liturgy than a physics lecture." Even Oppenheimer admitted how much he had yet to learn about the art of lecturing. After describing some kindly advice given to him from a fellow professor at the time, he wryly said, "So you can see how bad it must have been." 

Nevertheless, Oppenheimer eventually developed an ability to support and educate his students, which made the members of his physics department incredibly loyal to him, a skill that naturally complemented his role as director of the Manhattan Project. It was the strong relationships that he had cultivated as a faculty advisor that helped him recruit so many promising scientists to Los Alamos.

5. Running Los Alamos

Similarly, although Oppenheimer was a good choice to lead Los Alamos as a scientist — he intuitively understood how to assess problems in research and help his colleagues find new paths forward — he had little experience as an administrator. When Colonel Groves (Matt Damon) discusses the potential role with Oppenheimer, they mention the fact that none of his former associates considered him adept at the kind of logistical support such a massive project would require. (According to The Harvard Gazette, one commented that "he couldn't run a hamburger stand."). Still, in the movie Oppenheimer seems to have an innate grasp of how to compartmentalize the research in a way that would expedite the process and keep them ahead of the Germans, who had already embarked upon a similar project. 

In reality, Oppenheimer had no clue how to run Los Alamos. John Manley, who worked under Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, remembered that he "bugged Oppie for I don't know how many months about an organization chart — who was going to be responsible for this and who was going to be responsible for that," a request that was dodged seemingly until Oppenheimer could avoid it no longer (via Science Madness). But again, the physicist proved to be endlessly adaptable, acquiring the skills and temperament required to head one of the most ambitious scientific endeavors in American history.

6. Opinions on Kitty Oppenheimer

Robert Oppenheimer's wife Kitty (Emily Blunt) is represented as a complicated woman in "Oppenheimer." She drinks too much, has trouble connecting with her children, and has a turbulent yet committed relationship with her husband (no small wonder, considering his affairs). But the film doesn't really address how Kitty was viewed within the Oppenheimer circle, which is that ... well, she wasn't very well-liked.

Their romance came about suddenly, when most of Oppenheimer's friends were still quite attached to Jean Tatlock, with whom he had been in a long-term on-again, off-again relationship. Upon learning that Oppenheimer was engaged to be married, his long-time friend and colleague Bob Serber reportedly wasn't sure if he had proposed to Kitty, or to Jean.

Robert's sister-in-law Jackie did not mince words about her feelings towards his new wife. She allegedly called her "one of the few really evil people I've ever known in my life" (per The Decadent Review). While most of his other friends and family members likely wouldn't have gone that far, many in their circle found her difficult, and were open with their opinion that Robert likely wouldn't have married her if she hadn't become pregnant with their son, Peter.

7. Do you want to adopt him?

In "Oppenheimer," Kitty makes a joke to their family friends, asking if they want to adopt Peter to take him off her hands. (This is after already relying upon the Chevaliers to watch him for a month or two when he was just a toddler.) Kitty's lack of attachment to her two children was well-documented, and the throwaway quip depicted in this scene actually had a much more serious grounding in reality. The only difference is that it wasn't Peter who the Oppenheimers offered up to another family, but his younger sister Toni.

Toni was born in the midst of Robert's work on the Manhattan Project, when he barely had time to sleep, let alone be a father. When Kitty suffered from what was likely postpartum depression and left Los Alamos to spend some time away to recuperate, she had one of her friends, Pat Sherr, take care of her infant daughter. "American Prometheus" recounts a moment when, upon visiting Toni at the Sherrs' home, Robert was struck by the feeling that he could not provide the same amount of love and attention as they could, and Sherr remembers him asking, "Would you like to adopt her?" Although the Oppenheimers maintained custody of both of their children, their home was not particularly emotionally warm, although friends and acquaintances spoke of memories in which both Kitty and Robert expressed great affection for Peter and Toni.

8. Einstein and Oppenheimer's relationship

Although Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer were two of the most important scientific minds of the early 20th century, they weren't necessarily the best of friends. Oppenheimer considered Einstein's contributions, though valuable, entirely of the past by the time he was making his name in physics, and Einstein went on the record as being extremely skeptical about the entire field of quantum physics. Despite this, when they worked together at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, they developed a cordial rapport that was based largely on mutual admiration for each other as men and not as physicists.

The scenes in the film that depict Einstein and Oppenheimer conversing at the Institute largely reflect what their actual relationship probably looked like. However, there's little evidence to suggest that Oppenheimer would have approached Einstein during his work on the Manhattan Project to double-check his math on the probability of the atomic bomb accidentally exploding the world. This is partially because they hadn't gotten a chance to get to know each other as individuals at this point — still several years away from working together at the Institute — and also because they were fairly open with the fact that they considered themselves on very different pages when it came to physics.

9. Wire-tapping Oppenheimer A significant portion of "Oppenheimer" takes place during the closed-door hearing in which Robert Oppenheimer appeals the denial of his top-secret security clearance that would allow him to continue working as a government advisor. During this time, we learn that despite efforts to maintain high levels of security at Los Alamos, there was a German-born scientist employed on the Manhattan Project, Klaus Fuchs, who was reporting directly to the Soviets on their research. The film implies that Oppenheimer's inability to have identified espionage within his ranks was the precipitating factor in his being placed under increased scrutiny from the FBI, with surveillance that included wiretaps on all his phones.

But Oppenheimer ran in a very left-wing crowd before the war, and had been under strict surveillance since he was in his late 20s. The film makes reference to thousands of pages of documents on his past and various audio recordings of his conversations, which is why it seems odd that they choose to focus on this moment with Fuchs as a turning point in the government surveillance of Oppenheimer.

10. Oppenheimer's influence in Washington

The part of "Oppenheimer" that takes place after World War II emphasizes Robert Oppenheimer's inability to get the United States government to deal more openly with atomic energy, sharing their research with other countries and engaging in disarmament talks. It also casts him as a naive victim of Lewis Strauss' political machinations to discredit him, through confidential meetings that drag his name through the mud and prevented him from playing a more active role in the atomic conversation throughout the Cold War. And of course, it features the disastrous real-life interaction between Oppenheimer and Harry S. Truman, with the president of the United States calling the scientist a crybaby. None of this is necessarily untrue: In fact, that's pretty much what happened to Oppenheimer.

But by focusing on these elements of his post-WWII career, the film doesn't do credit to the influence that Oppenheimer actually wielded in Washington after the war. A greatly respected physicist, he had the ear of the most important men in government, even if he wasn't always able to convince them to act in ways counter to their fears about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities. He was an invaluable government advisor and was on a first-name basis with the U.S. Secretary of State — that's not nothing.

11. Strauss' nomination hearing

When we see Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss in the framing story of "Oppenheimer," he might look like he's on trial, but he's cool as a cucumber. The generally accepted wisdom during these scenes, in which Strauss is taking part in a nomination hearing to become the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, is that he's got the cabinet job in the bag. A Senate aide played by Alden Ehrenreich expresses no doubt that this is all just routine, that they have to go through the motions of a hearing, but that he'll eventually be granted the position is never in doubt. It's only when David Hill testifies against Strauss that the Senate reconsiders, narrowly preventing him from being awarded the prestigious role.

In fact, there was a contingent in the Senate that was determined to see him voted down. Strauss had an enemy in Senator Clint Anderson, and their relationship was so acrimonious that it was described in a 1959 Time article as a "blood feud." The result was a prolonged political battle that saw Eisenhower become just the fifth president to suffer the embarrassment of having a cabinet nomination rejected. And although Strauss' treatment of Oppenheimer was one reason why he wasn't confirmed, it was far from the lynchpin in the case.

12. David Hill's testimony

Towards the end of "Oppenheimer," it begins to feel like Lewis Strauss is a Scooby-Doo villain who's just gotten away with his dastardly deeds. His confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Commerce seems all but assured, granting him greater power and prestige in Washington. But then David Hill (Rami Malek) gives a damning character testimonial, accusing him of destroying Robert Oppenheimer's career for personal reasons and therefore lacking the temperament required for such a privileged role. The effect is immediate: Senators, including a young John F. Kennedy, switch their vote, delivering Strauss the comeuppance he desperately deserves.

David Hill did in fact speak out against Strauss during his cabinet hearing, saying that there was "a kind of madness and irrationality which went through the whole case" in Strauss' efforts to have Oppenheimer's security clearance revoked (per CQ Almanac). But Hill was not actually the only scientist who testified against Strauss at this hearing, railing dramatically against his treatment of Oppenheimer. There was another Los Alamos scientist, David R. Inglis, who was then the chairman of the Federation of American Scientists. Inglis spoke critically of Strauss a week earlier at the hearings, referring to his "substantial defects of character" and the "personal vindictiveness" with which he conducted his dealings with Oppenheimer. This stirred senators to doubt Strauss' fitness for the role long before Hill joined the hearing.'

[rojinsart]

“Lady Lilith”

Painter: Dante Gabriel Rossetti Style: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Aestheticism, Oil Year: 1866-73 Themes: Beauty, Youth, Mythology Notes: Lady Lilith is an oil painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti first painted in 1866–1868 using his mistress Fanny-Cornforth as the model, then altered in 1872–73 to show the face of Alexa Wilding. The subject is Lilith, who was, according to ancient Judaic myth, "the first wife of Adam" and is associated with the seduction of men and the murder of children. She is shown as a "powerful and evil temptress" and as "an iconic, Amazon-like female with long, flowing hair."

Rossetti overpainted Cornforth's face, perhaps at the suggestion of his client, shipping magnate Frederick Richards Leyland, who displayed the painting in his drawing room with five other Rossetti "stunners." After Leyland's death, the painting was purchased by Samuel Bancroft and Bancroft's estate donated it in 1935 to the Delaware Art Museum where it is now displayed.

The painting forms a pair with Sibylla Palmifera, painted 1866–1870, also with Wilding as the model.  Lady Lilithrepresents the body's beauty, according to Rossetti's sonnet inscribed on the frame.  Sibylla Palmifera represents the soul's beauty, according to the Rossetti sonnet on its frame.

A large 1867 replica of Lady Lilith, painted by Rossetti in watercolor, which shows the face of Cornforth, is now owned by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It has a verse from Goethe’s Faust as translated by Shelley on a label attached by Rossetti to its frame:

"Beware of her fair hair, for she excells All women in the magic of her locks, And when she twines them round a young man's neck she will not ever set him free again."

More: Lady Lilith

[naradreamscape]

I don't know. I'm just. tired. I'm tired of seeing how there are so many snakes in the grass of the western Judaic community. People I know who would normally be screaming about genocide, now picking and choosing the news they follow in hopes that all the fake news will be correct, and they'll really get to go live in the magical manufactured world of Israel for free. Islamophobia and racism from people who should understand what hate leads us to. It's already led us to a senseless slaughter over land and natural gas. I and thousands of other activists have spent YEARS trying to disprove claims that Israel represents us or is in ANY way our "home base", and yet, so many of my people - or, those I thought were my people - have let their fear curdle into a victim complex that has thoroughly convinced them that our lives and personal comfort are worth more than the mere existence of Palestinian people.

The moment Israel stops benefiting the US/UK - likely sometime after as many Judaic peoples immigrate there - the US/UK will turn on Israel. They've already given Israel more than enough means to commit condemnable atrocities, and they'll push the blame off themselves and onto the entire Israeli population. Maybe this Israel will get invaded, too. Maybe they'll have weapons tested weapons on them. Who knows anymore? This slaughter is being fostered by boardrooms full of shortsighted oligarchs (of a wide range of nationalities and creeds, might I add) who have no long term planning skills, and they will continue to not care about the worlds they're destroying for fun and profit. I hope all the traitorous Jews of the world really appreciate their stolen vacation homes, because they've only gotten them by completely incinerating the goyische respect and dignity we've fought so hard for.

[asherlockstudy]

On Rhett’s tattoo and deconstruction update

To the Rhett!tattoo Anon, I had not forgotten my promise to write about it but I intentionally waited for his deconstruction update because it was clear those two would be correlated and together provide more information. Besides, Rhett sort of explained the symbolism behind the tattoo pretty thoroughly and honestly.

The update episode confirmed what has always been clear and even more emphasized by the new tattoo; Rhett has always remained spiritual. I would take it a notch further and consider that he also remains religious in the sense that he actively seeks for a religion, dogma or belief that appears solid enough for him to believe in. In any case, it was a joy to listen to him. We are in a very similar place regarding spirituality, even though the way we landed there couldn’t be more different.

The tattoo is a reminder of where he’s been and where he is going. It has this Judaic / Biblical interpretation of the world as well as heaven and hell, things he factually knows are wrong. He reminds to himself that he started from a wrong place. However, where heaven is supposed to be is the little open door 👀 The little door can take so many meanings but ultimately, like he implied, it is the realisation that all those years of his youth, even when he was wrong, all the circumstances led to his life as it is now, to the changes and choices he has done now. Most things in his life, including his family and his relationship with Link and its evolution to whatever it is now exist because of all this time he was being wrong. Rhett realised the irony that this very religious system he was part of led him to paths and situations and choices and feelings that it itself condemns and ostracises. That religious world opened to him a little door to the unknown, which Rhett implied very cautiously that it might be his own paradise or an opportunity to explore further the ultimate truth.

The deconstruction update was thus not surprising. It wasn’t the main core that I found intriguing (although all the content was interesting) but rather the small details, the hints. Here are some notes:

* Rhett explained how he realised after leaving the faith that he had not changed. He still wanted to love his wife, his kids, his friends. I watched this twice and to be totally honest the second time it didn’t seem to me as strong as the first but I will mention it nonetheless; Link was a little frozen when Rhett said this and responded with a weak “yes” specifically when Rhett said “the loving his friends” part. He remained pensive throughout, I almost thought he was fighting to not look bored or tired but at the same time there was something in his dead / droopy expression that made me feel like he was trying to not get emotional, sad.

* Rhett implied that he was the target of disbelief from his immediate circle when he decided to leave the faith, specifically saying that those close or relatively close people to him that are still Christians accused him that he did not leave the church for the intellectual reasons he has mentioned but for actually ulterior “selfish desires he had” and that “deep inside they always knew Rhett was never genuinely following the spirit of the doctrine, he never belonged”. Now, that’s heavy and prior to that I think Rhett had never made such implications, he only talked about his scepticism. It’s interesting that “some people” said this when at the same time Rhett explains how earnestly absorbed he was by the doctrine. It makes you wonder (not really) what it is those people saw in young Rhett that made them question that Rhett could be a “true Christian” at heart and what “selfish desires” they are talking about. This kind of unpleasant exchanges he may have had with close people could be after all what inspired the song “I think I am supposed to like this”.

* Rhett created a thorough analogy in order to explain his experience leaving the faith and what he encountered in and out of the church, which was not all that different. But the way he phrases everything in this analogy is interesting, including that he equates leaving the faith as “getting out of a house”. And be in the open and free. To accept and love others. And to seek the truth still but without his former conviction that he is the right one.

PS. Link said his deconstruction update will be shorter and that he has found the answer to all of Rhett’s concerns and it’s very easy. I am willing to bet that his answer is love, unconditional love and living in the moment. And that this is the only truth that matters, to him. Link hasn’t healed from the trauma he gradually realised the church left to him and he is still uncomfortable in these discussions.

[fairfieldthinkspace]

The Days of Awe

Rabbi James Prosnit

Jewish Chaplain and Religious Studies Lecturer

The Jewish High Holy Days begin this year on Friday evening, September 15th with the observance of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. At that time Jews around the world enter into a ten-day period of introspection leading up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement on Monday September 25th.  

We call this period the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe.  

While reflection and repentance are encouraged at all times, it is during this period that the urging is greatest. The shofar blasts serve as an alarm clock awakening us to the possibilities that await. This is a time of reverie not revelry.

A central teaching is that on Rosh Hashanah the “Gates of Heaven” open, only to close on Yom Kippur. During these ten days we have the chance to consider the fabric of our lives. We assess the past year and consider the gap between who we are, and what in our higher moments we know we can be. 

Human frailty is a given. But during these days if we are committed to an honest appraisal, in Hebrew we call that chesbon hanefesh, (literally an “accounting of the soul”), God will accept our prayers and grant forgiveness.

One of my favorite teachings is that even before the first human being was created, God established Yom Kippur as a day of repentance. In other words, God knew that these earthlings would have flaws, so God saw the need to create a day and time when we could reflect on our behaviors, seek forgiveness and be granted a fresh start. Of course, we are also taught that these days provide forgiveness for transgressions in our relationship with God. If we’ve wronged someone specifically, we’d better take that up with that person, before we turn our attention to the Divine.

The wish during this season is Shanah tovah u'metukah; not necessarily a Happy New Year, but a good and sweet year filled with blessings, wholeness and peace. 

The Fairfield community is invited to attend a Rosh Hashanah reception and celebration on September 24 at 4:45 in front of Egan Chapel, sponsored by Campus Ministry and the Bennett Center for Judaic Studies. It’s a chance to hear the sounding of the shofar (ram’s horn), learn a little more about the festival and taste some of the sweetness of this time of year.

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Jews of Early America and the Wild West: Bringing the Forgotten from the Grave and Rethinking Their Lives

Back in 1660, the Puritan Minister Thomas Thorowgood speculated that certain Native Americans and Mexican Indigenous Groups, because they practised circumcision, cannibalism (as mentioned in Ezekiel) at times, used certain literary devices (parables) to communicate ideas and some seemingly Judaic rights, descended from Jewish stock(9). How did Jews find themselves in the Americas? It’s supposedly the fulfillment of Ezekiel 5.10, where as punishment for idol worship, the tribes of Israel were to be “scattered to the wind.” It’s all hokum based on conjecture and aspects of culture that are shared across the human experience, except circumcision and cannibalism of course.

Jewish Voices from the Past

Unsurprisingly, many years later, Jews were among those who settled America and the Wild West as well as peopled Ferdinand II’s expeditions to the New World. The West represented a land of hope and new beginnings for many disenfranchised Jews. This experiment in the birth of a new country based on equality was a place “where everything was just beginning and in the process of becoming and, to a certain extent, still is in that condition, where it is still possible to plant the seed of civilization in virgin soil, where the foundation of the structure of the new state of necessity implied the acknowledgment of the common origin of all men and their common right to equality (Israel Joseph Benjamin, My Year in California and the West (6)).” The New World had an allure, despite the potential dangers, it beckoned to those who were Zionists and those who sought a simpler life or merely freedom from persecution alike. In fact, In the earliest days of the American experiment, Isaac Isaacs can be found in Virginia’s public records. By the late 1800’s, Jews could be found as far west as California.

At the offset of the American experiment, conditions looked favorable for Jewish immigrants. In fact, Jews voted if no one challenged them to take a Christian oath and conducted public worship. And, in 1718 Jews won the privilege of naturalization through special acts of the Assembly, a privilege that enabled them to own land (3). However, life on this new frontier wasn’t easy for anyone, especially those Jews who came to the New World in pursuit of religious and economic freedoms. For instance, to obtain the same rights that other immigrants enjoyed, in 1706, Jews of New York City resorted to writing a kind of constitution for their own regulation (3). The years between 1906 and 1718 were hard for even those Jews living in metropolitan centers, business disregarded the rights that were granted by special assembly. In rural areas, the situation was even worse.

Rights aside, there’s a certain pain to becoming American, a loss of identity that only the immigrant understands. In less populated regions hardships were worsened by the lack of a Jewish community and antisemitic ideals forcing those who newly arrived in the New World to take on Gentile customs. For instance, Rebecca Samuels, a polish immigrant living in Petersburg Virginia, a small and isolated town, wrote this in a letter to her family during 1791:

Dear Parents,

I know quite well you will not want me to bring up my children like Gentiles. Here they cannot become anything else. Jewishness is pushed aside here. There are here [in Petersburg] ten or twelve Jews, and they are not worthy of being called Jews. We have a shochet here who goes to market and buys trefah [nonkosher] meat and then brings it home. On Rosh Hashanah and on Yom Kippur the people worshipped here without one sefer torah and not one of them wore the talit or abra kanfot [the small fringes worn on the body], except Hyman and my Sammy’s godfather. The latter is an old man of sixty, a man from Holland. He has been in America for thirty years already, for twenty years he was in Charleston, and he has been living here for four years. He does not want to remain here any longer and will go with us to Charleston. In that place there is a blessed community of three hundred Jews.

You can believe me that I crave to see a synagogue to which I can go. The way we live now is no life at all. We do not know what the Sabbath and holidays are. On the Sabbath all the Jewish shops are open, and they do business on that day as they do throughout the week. But ours we do not allow to open. With us there is still some Sabbath. You must believe me that in our house we all live as Jews as much as we can.

All the people who hear that we are leaving give us their blessings. They say that it is sinful that such blessed children should be brought up here in Petersburg. My children cannot learn anything here, nothing Jewish, nothing of general culture. My Schoene [my daughter], God bless her, is already three years old, I think it is time that she should learn something, and she has a good head to learn. I have taught her the bedtime prayers and grace after meals…(5)

As early as 1759, Newport Rhode Island had a vibrant Jewish community and synagogue, but places like Richmond Virginia didn’t get a place of worship until 1789, Temple Beth Shalom (5).Despite writing the letter in 1791 and the Thomas Jefferson have written the Bill to Establish Religious Freedom in 1779 church and state hadn’t been fully pulled. Besides, Rebecca would’ve still been pressured to live and raise her children like a Gentile.

In contrast, Abigail Minis is, in my opinion, one of the most heart warming biographies herein, she was the embodiment of the spirit of the western frontier. She was a 70 year old widow at the time of the Revolutionary War who made kosher meals for the revolutionary army and fled British occupied Savannah for Charleston. She wrote this to Mordacai Sheftall Esquire, the highest ranking Jewish officer in the colonial forces:

Dear Sir,

Enclosed I have sent you a copy of certificates given me for sundry Articles provision, [?] delivered the Allied Army When before the lines of Savannah in September 1779 immediately after the Surrender of this Town to the British I gave the Original Certificate to General Lincoln. Who promised to have settled and paid, but the communication between Philadelphia [the US capital at the time] and this place being totally stopt [I] have not heard from him(5).

If Jews had few rights at the time, even in metropolitan centers rights were granted and revoked or granted and dismissed by businessmen (3) Jewish women of the Frontier had even fewer rights and freedoms. Most women of this period made a name for themselves by proxy, Betsy Ross, for example, only became the seamstress of the flag through marriage. Early American women lived through their husband’s accomplishments. Yet, Abigail Minis bumped elbow’s with the elite and even ran her own inn. She broke the rules, where Rebecca lived the life of the Jew who was broken by Gentile society, Abigail made her own rules. Minis is the embodiment of the American experiment and the westward expansion.

It wasn’t just Abigail and Rebecca who had to buck the system and carve their own path. Michael Allen was a chaplain for Northern Jewish soldiers during the Civil War. “Although Allen had never been ordained, he was allowed to act in place of an ordained Rabbi because there were so many Jewish soldiers in the Cameron Dragoons, who were mounted soldiers with heavy arms.” Interestingly, a special act of Congress had to be passed in order for Allen to perform his duties, because he wasn’t a Christian(4). This incident occurred well past it was declared that the “free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be.” In New York, Jews had won the right to bury their dead within city limits(5), but on the battlefields, where the dangers of both being scalped and killed by the Confederate Army prevailed, a special act was required for a Rabbi to say the Kaddish with mourners.

Between 1848 and 1888 the Gold Rush drew people from all walks of life out west. The promise of financial freedom and overall freedom was alluring to Jewish pioneers. You may be surprised to find that Jews “constituted on of the more prominent ethnic groups of the California Gold Rush (10).” A modern, hands-on approach was used to determine if individuals of the Gold Rush era or any period in American history were Jews. To find the forgotten Jews of the Gold Rush the writers of The Jews in the California Gold Rush used the inscriptions of gravestones, public documents in county courthouses, probate records, newspaper and Jewish organizations. It’s said that “the Gold Rush was a significant event in Jewish history because it placed Jews side by side with a large and diverse group of races, religions, and nationalities. At first, the Jews were strangers who made their homes among strangers, but they became friendly with their Gentile neighbours and were soon important figures in the communities in which they lived. They established themselves in business, and they also remained true to their ancestral faith by forming benevolent societies, establishing separate cemeteries, and conducting worship services (10).” Too bad these histories were largely forgotten until recently, not to mention, this is a somewhat optimistic notion of living among less than accepting Gentiles.

Why were early American Jewish contributions to the Wild West and Frontier left out of history books? This is because, the chronicles of Jews in America had always focused on “the metropolitan centers of the East and Middle West(6).” Accounts of Jews in the American West had long been considered “peripheral to mainstream Jewish America, at best and tributary and derivative and of no serious interest(6).” But there were Jewish pioneers wearing kippah under their ten gallon hats. It just took 100 years to discover this. In the 1960’s, among Social Scientists, methods of research became more hands-on, as earlier noted, and historians and the like scoured dusty genealogies left to rot in old west courthouses and microfiche to unearth the forgotten, or never known, legacies of Jews of early America and the Wild West(6). Most Jews of this American era disguised themselves as Gentiles to escape persecution and fit into the society at large. Jewish rights in the old west were tentative at best, granted and revoked or just ignored. For example, during the election of 1737 Jews were disallowed to vote for assemblymen or give testimony in a court of law(3). Those rights that were granted in 1718 suddenly evaporated. In the end, those rights that the Jews of New York made a “constitution of their own ‘’ to protect had been taken away again. It was best to fiend the life of a Gentile on the new Frontier.

Despite the tentative status of Jewish rights in the New World, Jewish communities in America were established in New York as early as 1654, followed by communities in

A few small communities in the original colonies withstanding, Jews didn’t begin to see America as a possible place to recreate Zion, a new land to prosper without persecution until much later. In fact, the first attempts to create communes didn’t happen until in the 1820’s in Florida. Later, in 1881 Jews attempted to make a colony on Sicily Island Louisiana. In 1882 there were several attempts to establish Jewish colonies in S. Dakota but all 6 colonies failed due to crops and malaria. And, in 1904 a colony was established in Colorado but it too failed. Some of the most notable examples of the American Kibbutz are the New Odessa and Clarion colonies. To make forge this community, JACA and The Jewish Agricultural Aid Society purchased 6,085 acres of public land in Sanpete County, Utah. The initial plan was to settle roughly 200 families on the colony, with the number eventually growing to 1,000 families(6). The New Odessa Community was a land where Russians could escape persecution from the Russian Czar.

Biographies of Early American Jews

To Carvalho’s dismay, the expedition already had a photographer, a man who I can only find his last name, Bomar. Bomar used the wax method but Carvalho championed the daguerreotype method for processing film. Fremont held a contest between the two men, speed was the deciding factor. In the end, Bomar’s wax process required more time and would have caused delays(4).

So, Carvalho became the expedition’s official photographer. Along this voyage, Carvalho met Brigham Young, the founder of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Governor. It was in Utah, in the midst of a massacre, with Brigham Young that Carvalho met the Ute Chief, Wakara. He said of the Ute Indians:

“The first principle among them was life for life; it made no difference whether, in their wrath they massacred an innocent, or an unoffending man; a white man slew my brother, my duty is to avenge his death, by killing a white man. Their first Open demonstration was the massacre of Gunnison; and the allied troops of Utahs, Pahutes, Parvains, and Payedes determined to continue in open hostility, both to the Mormons, and Americans(1).”

When Young’s cavalcade arrived at the Ute camp he sent the message that he was ready to meet with Wakara. Wakara responded with “If Gov. Young wanted to see him, he must come to him at his camp, as he did not intend to leave it to see any body.” When this message was delivered to Young, he gave orders for the whole cavalcade to proceed to [the] camp. If the mountain will not come to Muhomet, Muhomet must go to the mountain(1).” When the cavalcade entered the camp, they found Wakara surrounded by 15 old chiefs.

Carvalho noted that “[Wakara] stood upon the dignity of his position, and feeling himself the representative of an aggrieved and much injured people, acted as though a cessation of hostilities by the Indians was to be solicited on the part of the Whites, and he felt great indifference about the result.” Negations for a peace treaty went on and Carvalho remained in camp, near Wakara’s Village until next day, he was able to get Wakara agree to sit for his portrait as well as Chief Squaeh-head, Baptiste, Grosepine, Petetnit and Kanoehe, the Chief of the Parvain Indians(1). Of Carvalho’s work, portrait of an Ute Chief, 1854, is the most striking.

Later, accompanied by two interpreters and several other gentlemen, “we proceeded to the Indian’s camp, to see their celebrated Chieftain, Kanoshe, whose portrait I was anxious to obtain. I found him well armed with a rifle and pistols, and mounted on a noble horse. He immediately consented to my request that he would sit for his portrait; and on the spot, after an hour’s labor, I produced a strong likeness of him, which he was very curious to see. I opened my portfolio and displayed the portraits of a number of other Ute chiefs, among which he selected Wakara, the celebrated Terror of Travellers, anglicised Walker, (since dead). He took hold of it and wanted to retain it(1).” Throughout this article, I’ve given my interpretation of the scene, but this needs none. I don’t know if one might say that Carvalho found the best of all possible worlds in Utah, living among Indians and in constant danger, or if life would’ve been better for him in the relative safety of New York. The painting now resides in the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Rather than give a single biography of a Gold Rush era Jew, I believe that the reader is aware of life during the period, if was wrought with hardship, it was a time of physical labor and a time of feast and famine for the average panhandler, I’d rather include excerpts from newspapers that describe the general attitude towards those who ventured to California to unearth what lay beneath the ground.

A Jew of our acquaintance came in to his neighbor’s place of business, yesterday morning, bringing an intolerable smell with him, and, “fast as a little wagon,” made the announcement that he had killed a “vesel [weasel],” in his “schicken house.” He said the animal was “black, mit a vite tail, and schtinks like de tuyvel [with a little tale and stinks like a turtle].” A wicked wag, next door, persuaded the victor to bring in his trophy, as he wanted to buy the skin. The Jew soon appeared and drew from his pocket a half grown pole cat(10).”

The Wild West wasn’t Zion, nor a land of dignity where “acknowledgment of the common origin of all men and their common right to equality” existed. In fact, The Grass Valley Union posted this:

Dead at Last… We had almost forgotten to say that it undertook to run all the disloyal Irish and Jews out of the State…. It is now thoroughly dead, we are assured — dead beyond the power of resurrection — and the general opinion is that it lived too long. Sorrowers over its death are found only among the poor printers who were swindled out of their wages(10).

Gold Rush California was yet another land of antisemitism. On the few occasions when local Jews battled Gentiles, the newspaper editor was likely to report the event in as much detail and as humorously as he was able.

Volcano Items. The Spring Fights Commenced. — What the boys call the “spring fights,” in Volcano, commenced on Sunday last. On the forenoon of that day, a son of Isreal [tit], whose proportions are not gigantic, desired and insisted that a portly Gentile, of robust dimentions [ski, should pay to him, the said son of Israel, a sum of money due for a rig of “store clothse” [sk]. Hard words ensued, whereupon the Gentile seized the Jew by the capillary substance that vegetates upon the summit of the cranium. The Jew seized a hatchet, and cut the Gentile on the hand. So ended the first heat. — In the afternoon, they again met at the store of the Israelite. Big Gentile seized little Jew by the aforesaid capilary [sic] substance; this time, the latter had a “sticker” that horses are bled with, and the Gentile was cut in divers and sundry places, insomuch that blood flowed profusely. The Gentile was cared for by a physician, and the Jew was terribly frightened lest the populace should become excited and hang him and all his friends(10).

Sadly, exaggeration and biased media existed during the Gold Rush too. Where the first example was merely supposed to be humorous, the last may be perceived as an incitement of violence. Something that was common in Gold Rush era California. In fact, because Jews were upright citizens and posed a threat to General Grant’s election, it was stated that:

For alleged trading infractions along Union and Confederate lines during the Civil War, General Grant had issued General Order №11 from Holly Spring, Mississippi, December 17, 1862, concerning the military department of Tennessee: The jews, as a class violating every regulation of trade established by the Treasury Department and also department orders, are hereby expelled from the department within twenty-four hours from the receipt of this order(10).

You may have strongly mixed emotions about this but the hero of The Battle of Beecher Island, 1868, was Sigmund Schlesinger, there he fought off 1,000 Cheyenne, Oglala Sioux, Arapahos, Kiowas and Comanches over 9 days. The band of Indians was led by the great Cheyenne warrior, Chief Roman. Schlesinger was a darkhorse. General B. Fry had this to say about Schlesinger: “[he] seemed to be inferior, in all respects unfit for service; a Jew, small with narrow shoulders, sunken chest, quiet manner and pipey voice, and little knowledge of firearms or horsemanship; he was indeed unpromising(4).” Yet, this Hungarian immigrant, despite seeming unfit for battle, was victorious.

Later, in 1895, there was much disbelief about Schlesinger’s role in the battle, to clear this up Colonel Forsysth recounted the story to Harper’s Magazine: “as for the little Jew…! Well, the Indian that from dawn to dusk was incautious enough to expose any part of his person within the range of his rifle had no cause to complain of a want of marked attention on the part of that brave and active young Israelite…in fact, he most worthily, proved himself a gallant soldier among brave men(4).”

This is one of the most interesting tales of Jews in the Wild West. During 1885 Solomon Bibo was married to an Acoma Indian, a Pueblo native group who inhabited New Mexico, named Juana Valle. Valle was the daughter of the Acoma Governor. Because he bought the rights to the Pueblo land and married a Acoma Governess, Bibo eventually became the Jewish Indian Chief.

Song of Manuel the Navajo Chief, sung by Sol Bibo : Bibo, Sol, singer : Free Borrow & Streaming …

Sol Bibo sings Song of Manuel the Navajo chief, recorded by Charles Lummis in Los Angeles, 1904.Lummis announces that…

archive.org

During 1846, the United States acquired New Mexico. At that time, Indians lost their land. In 1848, in accordance with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Acoma were no longer considered Indians and eligible to get their land back. But, “when a survey of Acoma lands was finally taken in 1858 the Indians could offer little proof of their original boundaries, since they had no maps or stakes before the arrival of the first explorers. Even though additional surveys were made in 1876 and 1877, the outcome for their claims were unfavorable. In 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes agreed with the survey of 1858 and [the] Acoma received its share of 94,196 acres, which was far less than the residents believed themselves entitled to(4).” In April. 1884. a year before Solomon’s marriage to Juana, the Acoma tribe leased the entire 94.196 acres to Solomon Bibo. A period of thirty years the Indians signed away their rights to Bibo. On October 1888 it was declared that:

That’s how Solomon Bibo became Don Solomono, the Jewish Indian Chief. Many believe his motivations to have been nefarious, they believe that he simply wanted the right to trade with this indigenous population, something he had applied for and was rejected for several times.

In his defense, reports from the Bureau of Ethnology substantiates by inference that Solomon Bibo could not have persuaded the Acomas to do what they did not desire to do. In fact, Solomon Bibo was accepted and trusted by the Acomas. Or as stated by Leslie A White:

Acoma’s early reputation for vigorous unfriendliness to the whites has been maintained to this day [1929] … Government officials and employees, representatives of religious organizations, and tourists well know the difficulties which confront a white man or woman at Acoma. The Acoma people are suspicious, distrustful and unfriendly. In addition to their constant fears that they may have their land taken away from them … they are even on guard to prevent any information concerning their ceremonies from becoming known lest they be suppressed (or ridiculed) by the whites(8).

Moreover, friend of Juana and Solomon, the historian and archaeologist Charles Lummis, dedicated one of his books to Solomon and Juana. It rend:

To Sol and Juana Bibo. whom I have known and loved for forty years. since the dear old days in New Mexico, when they were beginning that married life which has been, to this day, so beautiful an example and so rare an inspiration. Dona Juana. of the oldest aristocracy in this country. worthy daughter of the First Americans, whose noble grandfather first told me the story of the Enchanted Mesa. is a much finer type than the storied Pocahontas. and of hatter blood. Don Solomon has; left his mark all across New Mexico as one of the wisest. shrewdest, high-minded, most just and most generous of men that ever dealt with the natives of the Southwest(4).

Wrapping Up and Reinterpreting a Stereotype

Ending at the beginning much like the Torah, a 2000 year old tefflin was supposedly found in Pittsfield, Massachusetts in 1815(2). It is said to have ancient Hebrew on the scroll it contained. However, it was likely, if not a hoax or misinterpretation of the Paleo-Hebrew script for any text that originated by carving into stone or bone (constructed of straight lines), dropped by a Jewish Settler In 1851, Elkehah Watson wrote:

“I am more inclined to believe that [the tefflin] belonged to the well-known Connecticut family of that name which was early settled in Greenwich, Stamford, and Norwalk. But whether lost by an early settler or dropped by some pioneer traveler, the finding of the phylacteries at Pittsfield affords only another indication of the ubiquity of the Jew in early colonial America(2).”

There’s no evidence that Native Americans descend from Jews or that the exodus from Israel was G-D casting the Jews to the 4 corners of the earth as prophesied in Ezekiel, however, not surprisingly, there were Jews who settled America, lived among the Indians and herded cattle. There’s a ubiquity to it, Jews needed a home, a place to regroup and start again, America offered that. As Jews, we are tenacious as the Olive Tree’s root, resourceful and full of fortitude, both emotional and physical. Like the rest of Jewish history, our history on the American Frontier is turbulent, human, filled with ups and downs… Yet, we’ve survived and some of us will be recalled as pioneers of the Wild West.

Finally, I would like to leave you with this poem written by Colonel Forsyth about Sigmund Schlesinger but it refers to all Jews in the Wild West and those brave souls who reclaimed Israel and continue to fight today in the face of another wave of antisemitism:

When the fee charged on the breastworks,

With madness and despair,

And the bravest souls were tested,

The little Jew was there.

When the weary dozed on duty

And the wounded needed care,

When another shot was called for,

The little Jew was there.

With the festering dead around them,

Shedding poison in the air,

When the crippled chieftan ordered,

The little Jew was there.

In the mind’s of many, we may be little, but we are there, America, leading in innovation and working towards the greater good of humanity, despite a cultural climate that sometimes despises us or uses us as a scapegoat. As an endnote, I’ve neglected to mention many pioneering Jews of early America, like the man who transported the Liberty Bell on a voyage from the West Indies, the man who saved Mote Cello… There’s just not enough room to mention everyone who contributed to what we now know as America.

Works Cited

1 Billington, R. A. (1956). The Far Western frontier, 1830–1860. http://ci.nii.ac.jp/ncid/BA84415206

2 Friedman, L. M. (1917). The Phylacteries Found at Pittsfield, Mass.

3 Hirschman, E. C., & Yates, D. N. (2012). Jews and Muslims in British Colonial America: A Genealogical History. McFarland.

4 Maidens, M., & Marks, M. (1997). Jewish Heroes of the Wild West. Bloch Publishing Company.

5 Malamed, S. C. (2003). The Jews in Early America: A Chronicle of Good Taste and Good Deeds. Daniel & Daniel Publishers.

6 Rischin, M., & Livingston, J. (1991). Jews of the American West. Wayne State University Press.

7 Song of Manuel the Navajo Chief, sung by Sol Bibo : Bibo, Sol, singer : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive. (1904, July 20). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/WC.A.41

8 The Impact of the Frontier On a Jewish Family: The Bibos | Southwest Jewish Archives. (n.d.). https://swja.library.arizona.edu/content/impact-frontier-jewish-family-bibos

9 Thorowgood, T. (1660). Jews in America, Or, Probabilities, that Those Indians are Judaical, Made More Probable by Some Additionals to the Former Conjectures: An Accurate Discourse is Premised of Mr. John Elliot, (who First Preached the Gospel to the Natives in Their Own Langua.

10 Gartner, L. P., & Levinson, R. (1980). The Jews in the California Gold Rush. The American Historical Review, 85(1), 211. https://doi.org/10.2307/1853609

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What an amazing performance by the Immersive Theater Ensemble last night! Bravo! 🙌🏼👏🏼🙌🏼👏🏼 • “Golem: Storms of the South” written/directed by @labadabbado and produced by @vonschmals transported visitors into an immersive 19th-century New York marketplace where Jewish immigrants are busy selling their wares on the last day of Hanukkah. We shared incredible real-life stories of how they escaped the “Storms of the South:” ten years of persecution in Western Russia. Upon reaching America, they discovered freedom but brought with them something they could never have imagined. The Golem. • I was very nervous that I wasn’t going to deliver an authentic Russian Jewish Rabbi. I wanted to honor the role and the respect the Judaic religion. I was humbled when I was told by someone from Israel if I was Russian and also Israeli!?! Those words make it all worth while. Spending hours working on the accent, the dialect, learning Yiddish and mannerisms. Along with extensive dialogue. Oy Vey! Thank you! Means a lot! 🙏🏼🙏🏼 • #themitchlemos #immersivetheaterensemble #actor #thespian #singer #dancer #immersivetheater #experience #rabbi #jewish #golem #kaballah #mystic #blessed #grateful #trusttheprocess #godisgood #instagram #instaactor #instatheater #instagood (at Distillery of Modern Art) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmhQLxfr3u2/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=