שתהיי לי הסכין

Today I finished listening to the audiobook of שתהיי לי הסכין (Be My Knife) by David Grossman. I do not know what to sayyyyy.

It is an extremely unique book, definitely worth reading, and I really really loved most of it; as always with his books I'm not sure about the ending (although I actually think it works better than the endings of some of his other novels).

For most of the book I strongly identified with Yair (unfortunately for me 😛); on the other hand, there are some things about him that are really non-OK, and it bothers me that the book is like one ginormous "woman performs emotional labor for man"-fest. I know it's a little more complicated than that but I think that's in there too, and I'm not sure whether the book itself is critical of that or not (although I guess it basically is). I mean I guess also, relationships are complicated and problematic and people can get a lot out of them and be strongly sucked into them even when the participants are seriously flawed -- and also, it's OK and important for stories to also show the ugly parts of being human. But in some sense, I feel like this is one of the least optimistic of his books that I've read (and the gender aspect is probably the most disturbing aspect).

I guess to some extent I'm also trying to think about what I personally can or want to learn from the book, considering how strongly I identified with one of the main characters... I guess I'm just hoping that I am on the way to becoming not-Yair (or, maybe, grownup-and-new-and-improved-Yair at least).

Trump is not Hitler

I was concerned about this before the election and my friend just pointed it out again too, and I still agree. Guys, Trump is not Hitler. ICE raids are not SS raids. I'm not saying this because I think the Holocaust was exceptional and has to be held up as the greatest genocide of all time, and I'm also not saying this because I don't think that what's happening now is bad (or because I'm not aware that part of what's happening now is a rise in anti-Semitism). I'm saying this because, until six months ago (apparently), there was a widespread awareness/principle that every social justice issue is different and analogies need to be used sparingly and with caution. Usually, the concern is about not appropriating other people's struggles, because bad things are already bad without being named as being "bad in the same way as some other bad thing." In this case, I think the issue is that white people need to be able to care about the fate of people of color without getting there via an analogy to a genocide directed against white people (people who in the American context can, in general, pass as / are considered to be white today). Trump is bad. ICE raids are bad. Can we just look at their inherent badness without trying to rev up our capacity for empathy by talking incessantly about the Holocaust?

Bonus:  A passage from דער בלוטיקער שפּאַס (by Sholem-Aleichem) in which he describes pre-revolutionary Russia's equivalent of an ICE raid (unfortunately I forgot to make a note of the page number):

On Knowledge, or the Lack Thereof, and Making History

Something I've been pondering: I switched from organizer-esque work to academia because I wanted to be sure (or at least a little more hopeful) that I know what the heck I'm talking about when I make claims about history. However, Trump is such a good reminder that history is all too often made by people who don't know anything about history. So, all you organizers out there, keep doing the right thing without worrying about if it's perfectly right, because there are plenty of people with plenty of power who are doing the very wrongest thing without caring at all about what rightness is.