You'd better listen because this is how it starts

At the National press conference held earlier today to announce the release of the Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents, CEO, Frank Dimant (noted spokesperson for grassroots Jewry) commented that many of the tactics we are seeing today are reminiscent of the antisemitism experienced in the 1930's. He called the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) a recycled Nazi-era strategy - then used against Jews, now being used to target the Jewish State.

For the video of Frank Dimant's opening  remarks visit www.bnaibrith.ca

APRIL 11, 2014, TORONTO -- On the eve of the Jewish festival of Passover during which Jews around the world will join together to recall their ongoing struggle for freedom and national Jewish liberation, the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada, is announcing the results of its Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents.

Canada-wide incidents of vandalism and violence increased by 21.6% and 7.7% respectively over the previous year. Only incidents categorized as harassment showed a decrease, dropping by 13.9%. Overall, there were 1274 cases recorded, a 5.3% decrease from the previous year's Audit. Reporting of harassment may well be down as Jews have expressed apprehension regarding possible social repercussions and retaliation in the workforce such as losing one's job.

"The sustained level of antisemitism in Canada when taking a ten year view which shows a 49 % jump should be of great concern to all Canadians" stated Frank Dimant, CEO of B'nai Brith Canada. "Jews of all ages are being targeted at home, work, school, and even at play. Notwithstanding Canada's national and international efforts to counter antisemitism, a strong pattern of this prejudice continues to prevail across this country.

"The numbers are only part of the story. What we are hearing from callers is a growing sense of dread among Canadians," said Frank Dimant, CEO, B'nai Brith Canada. "Although the numbers for this year are down slightly, hatred of Jews has veered so far into normative discourse that it is no longer seen as wrong.

"Antisemitism was seen by many in the Jewish community as a thing of the past. However, the de facto replacement of 'The Jew' with Israel, combined with the constant barrage of Holocaust imagery in relation to the Jewish state and Jews and its supporters create a visceral sense of apprehension. The fact that Europe with its Western society and similar socio-economic status to Canada is seeing dramatic increases in Jew-hatred and intolerance cannot help but awaken a tremendous feeling of communal unease.

"On campus, the problem is further exacerbated by unending streams of anti-Israel resolutions by student governments creating a situation where the once week-long Israeli Apartheid Week now spans the entire school year. At the same time, Jewish and pro-Israel students are derided as racists, Nazis and baby killers. This kind of harassment has marginalized and silenced their voice . That this type of imagery is so prevalent as we get set to mark the 66th anniversary of the birth of the Jewish state and 69 years since the liberation of the death camps is disconcerting to say the least.

"While Government officials have strongly condemned antisemitism including the rise of the new-antisemitism, Police and Attorney Generals have shown a reluctance to resolve complaints such that it is easy to see why Canadian Jews have resigned themselves not to report all incidents.

"We will embark on an educational campaign to encourage members of the Jewish community to stand against apathy with a renewed fortitude to directly confront bigotry in their midst while working with B'nai Brith Canada and its League for Human Rights."

A message in a botttle

This is a message in a bottle that I hope you'll find one day.

This is a love note of the deepest kind that I know you'll stumble onto by accident when you'll need it most.

I'm putting it out here because I can and because I don't know how else to leave it.

First, I love you. I've always loved you. I've always known you would exist and be incredible and that is exactly who you are.

You are amazing and beautiful and talented and fragile and wonderful.

You are the most delicate of flowers and the strongest of people.

You are an iridescent precious gem and only ever need to compete against one person. Love whom you love and be who you are and know that you always have a home and are never alone.

Second, of fear I need you to know that nothing is yours to punish yourself for. If somebody (especially me) says that you are hurting them, that you are going to cause them to be in pain or anything like that, or worse, it only means please stop. But you are not responsible for anything beyond that...even if you didn't stop because you didn't want to or you couldn't. You are not God. You are not destiny or the angle of death or anything insanely crazy like that.

Be responsible but do not carry guilt.

You are a good person and have a fire inside you that is beautiful and you are wonderful and I love you always.

You existed long before you were born and will exist long after I die. You were meant to be exactly who you are and yours is to love those who deserve your love. You know who they are. For all the rest, as hard as it may be to turn and walk away: once is their fault, twice is yours. 

Remember that the right answer when anybody asks you "who do you love" is first and always "me" because without loving yourself how can you ever truly love anybody else? I love me and that is why I love you because you are all the best of me that is within my power to give you. But I am not you. You are greater than the people who made you. 

I am by far not your only fan but I can tell you that I have been in awe of you for longer than anybody else. You are amazing and I am grateful that you chose me. Thank you, baby.

l.f.e.

y.g.m.

Here we go again

We're heading into the busy time again. Hopefully this time will be different but it is hard to know where the time goes and harder to know where to find the money. Just spend way too much on something but you can't find it in Canada so you have to pay three times what it is worth to order it from the States. Not sure exactly what they mean by 'free trade' when they try to skin you alive every chance they get just to get it over the border. ... isn't so much the governments as it is the couriers. I sort of wish I it was even half practical to go drive to Texas and get it myself.

... argh I never know how this thing is humanly possible but it comes out each time so we'll see if we can pull another rabbit out.

Bullies need victims and I am nobody's victim

As a child I never got bullied. I got teased, tormented and ostracized. Large groups of kids would surround me and pick on me and tell me that they would kick the crap out of me after school. Once, a girl in my class opened to door to the change room while I was half naked so that the boys could see me. Another time this girl who supposedly had a part-time job as a wrestler followed me to the bus as I went home and smacked me on the head as I got on.

For years some guy used to crank call my house whenever I got home and say obscene things to me. We thought he must have known me because when I wasn’t home he wouldn’t call. Then there were rumors about guys from my school who had been arrested because they had gotten caught stealing or something like that and the calls stopped. When they came back, so did the calls.

I didn’t go to dances or have anybody to talk to at lunch except for one or two close friends who were quick to turn their backs on me when they realized that it was causing damage to their reputations to hang around with me. Some days it was really hard being alone. Usually I just threw my head in a book and read, read, read. Not to escape but for something to do.

I joined clubs at school but everybody seemed to belong and I never really did. I didn’t know what it was like to go to parties or experience that dreaded peer pressure. I watched a lot of TV and Nancy Reagan kept telling kids to say no to drugs and there were all kinds of warnings about condoms and so on. I kept waiting to put those teachings into practice but there were never any opportunities. It’s not that I was an overly good kid. It’s just that nobody bothered.

Then I started to feel like there was something wrong with me. Everybody had boyfriends and went out on dates and the one guy I met at art camp at 12, going on 13, went to school in Ottawa. Technically he was my boyfriend but even though we never broke up we never saw each other and I can’t remember more than two or three letters. We did go out once or twice when he came back but it was really nothing worth remembering. All I remember the first time he insisted on kissing me was saying “great, now that we have gotten that out of the way, can we get on with the rest of the relationship” and him laughing like I was a silly little girl and saying that no, we were supposed to keep kissing. He was 16 and back then seemed so much older.

Truth be told, I never felt all that attracted to anybody in any sort of sexual way until my early 20s but felt like I should have been because everybody else seemed to be. So I did stuff that I shouldn’t have because I was trying to be normal and wanted to do more than fit in. I wanted to be the kind of cool that didn’t care. Inside I called myself a whore and kept waiting for somebody else to call me that but nobody ever did. 

According to everybody else I always got the hottest, coolest guy in school but I never noticed that. As soon as I would end up in a relationship I would try to make it THE relationship, knowing that it wasn’t. I tried to play house because I wanted things to be normal. But I always knew they weren’t.

Have I ever been in love? Absolutely! I fell in love completely when I picked up my baby girl and she, still and infant, patted my back as I hugged her. That was the first time I felt anything close to the sort of zing that you hear about and read about and see in movies. 

But have I ever been bullied? Where I come from you don’t get bullied. You get persecuted. My people have been hated for years and the whole world is usually trying to get us. We are fighters and each time the mob of she-women descended on me in the school halls and outside, I fought back. I never just took it. One time I looked up and actually saw a teacher full body on top of one of them holding her off to try and break up the fight. 

Sure my knees shook but they shook after. They still shake after. But during a fight, I fight. I fight with fists and feet and knees and words. Sometimes I fight thin air because of fear and pure adrenaline and then I get in trouble. Because now I am fighting nobody or people who don’t deserve it.  I’m still going. Liking the Engergizer Bunny I’m still going. 

Then I crumble. This morning I woke up at 2 a.m. because I dreamt that my house was on fire. We weren’t in our actual house but it felt like some sort of home of mine, one that was new to me but mine, almost like the way you feel when you go stay at your parents place after you have already settled into a family of your own. My husband was in a room and he had that guilty look on his face that he has when he comes in after a shmig. He never smokes inside but I smelled smoke and asked him if he started smoking inside now and we had a little moment. I pinched his nose and was about to ruffle his hair and kiss him but looked up and saw smoke coming through the ceiling. We freaked and he ran to take care of it. I ran to get my stacks of papers and computer. 

It’s not that I didn’t care about the kids. I just knew we had time and that they would be safe but the papers I had to protect: our passports; our identity; then my taxes and all the business stuff, and then my laptop and camera. I could smell the smoke. I didn’t think you could smell smoke in a dream. I woke up and knew it was a dream, only peripherally double checking there was no actual smoke anywhere.

In the dream I remember starting to feel like I’m choking so I dropped everything and went looking for the kids. It felt good to drop everything and not care about anything except for the kids. It always feels good to do that.

Right away I google the meaning of a house burning down in your dream and guess what I get: it means that I feel like my external world is crumbling. How true. For the first time in my life, I had found a home to call a home. Everything felt right and now it doesn’t. Everything I was doing was for something and now that something has been taken away and I’m stuck with all the stuff I was doing and in the mean time there are people out there who think I care. I don’t care but now I am obligated.

So now I am angry. I need a way out and a way to escape and it feels like the world is burning down in a way that it never has before and do you know why? Because of all the things that somebody could say to me to hurt me there is really only one little phrase that I can’t seem to let go: nobody likes you. You are unprofessional and nobody wants to deal with you anymore. 

Three people have said this to me lately. Why? I know their reasons and who (or what) they are. I know that they are doing this to try and intimidate me and to control me and because they know they can’t. I know. But I still feel raw. I hate them for making me feel this way and the stress, at my age, is showing my age. It is coming out in physical manifestations and for that I hate them more. Because then I get scared. I get scared that I won’t be there for people who do matter; who do care; WHO DO LIKE ME.

But my, this is a personal letter to be posting in such a public forum and let me tell you why: because I am not a victim of bullying. Bullies need victims like fire needs oxygen. I am not a victim. I am your nemesis. Now, you go worry about me because I will not let my world go down in smoke.

Sometimes I feel like crying

It's been a while
I have something to say
Sometimes I feel like crying

Apologize, move on, keep doing
But nothing feels quite right

I feel so trapped
So indisposed

So used and trampled and abused

It's my own fault
The blame is mine
I don't know how to stop

The spiral is unwinding

Today was hard because I'm scared
Nobody cares what stress
Has done to my imagination

The more I try
The more I die
Inside and on the outside

I feel like all the fates conspired to give and then to take
Away from me the talents they
Instilled and then distilled from me

In the grand scheme
Of life and being
I know that all good

But my small fragile mind and ego
Have more than they can handle

For all my life I have been there
Inside and on the outskirts

Watching the friends and actors play
The strings of social interaction

They make it look so easy
Smooth

I think there's something wrong

Inside my head
The music plays
But not to anybody else's strings

My nerves are tattered
Frayed and snapped

I don't know if its over

The problem is that haters yell
And lovers watch from sidelines
So should I vanish
Dig a hole
Stick all of me inside

And then the more
Obsession strives
To choke my breath from me
Of little babes who truly need
What I am not delivering

It's time I stop
But I can't stop

I need to cry
I think

Social media etiquette

Social media users are a bit of a delicate lot. On the one hand they love it because it allows them to stay in touch and share of themselves, their thoughts, their hopes, their dreams, their annoyances. On the other, they demand a hands-off approach.

If you comment it has to be a maximum of four words, and that's a stretch and should stay within the lines of:

:)
:(
LOL
OMG, LMAOF
I can't stop laughing
So true

... and so on. It really isn't a medium for any sort of true interaction even if you know the people, and used to consider them friends. Plus, you can't see their reaction and they can't see the spirit in which you wrote whatever it was that you posted.

The result is this detached society that is oppressed by self-imposed isolation. All these screens behind which we hide are creating a void and you are not allowed to cross it because it is not socially acceptable. Period.

And it's addictive. Such a time waster but once you get sucked in you can't loosen its grip. It's like a lover with an axe to grind. There is the real interaction: between user and machine, even if the machine is the length of a pointer finger and pointer finger.

I have to ask, is it too late? Are we permanently disjointed? Or am I only now waking up to the fine art of social interaction and it has always been this way? After all, nobody really cared how your day was even before the handheld and now nobody asks because presumably, they are always in touch.

Madonna rocks

I never used to realize how tiny Madonna is. But I always admired her. She isn't particularly talented at music, or dancing, or acting but she knows how to put on a show and she is a brilliant business woman.

She's tiny but packs a mean punch and if I could even master a portion of her talent, as lacking as it is, I'd still be better off.