Good Job, World (Not!)

Dear World

While you were pointing the fingers at Israel and making all sort of accusations, you were ignoring the real human rights abuses.

• Christians in certain Middle Eastern countries are facing an agonizing decision. Convert to Islam or die.
• The Yazidi’s, an ethnic minority have been forced out of their homes by ISIS. The lucky ones have escaped to the mountains, where they are receiving airdropped supplies from the United States. The rest have been kidnapped or killed.
• Lebanon continues to take in more Syrian refugees.
• The girls kidnapped in the spring by Boko Haram have not been returned to their families.
• The LGBT community in Uganda have seen an anti-gay ruling overturned, but that does not mean they are free to live as they wish.

Shall I go on?

Israel is not perfect and never will be. The government is run by human beings, as imperfect and susceptible to mistakes anyone else in the world is.  However, it is the only legitimate democracy in that region. All citizens have the same rights and are equal in the eyes of the law, regardless of the labels they use to define themselves .

To the celebrities  and journalists who mindlessly use their status and social media to spread the lies, I suggest you do your research. To my co-religionists who either remain silent or have supported the Palestinians, I would like to remind you that the Hamas charter clearly states that one of their objectives is to kill the Jews and destroy Israel. Not some Jews, but ALL Jews. Their goal is to complete what the Nazis started 70 years ago.

I’m going to end this post with the video below, because Joan Rivers, in her own Joan Rivers way, hit’s the nail on the head.

Sincerely

A concerned world citizen

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Fear Of Flying, 41 years Later

Warning: This post contain spoilers. If you have not read Fear Of Flying or you are planning to read in the future,  and do not want to be spoiled, do not read this post. I will understand.

Fear Of Flying, the classic (and sometimes controversial, depending on your point of view) novel by Erica Jong is 41 this year.

The central character is Isadora Wing, a 27 year old woman traveling with her second husband to a work conference. She dreams of the zipless f*ck, the ultimate sexual fantasy. That dream comes in the form of Adrian Goodlove, a man who will fulfill the fantasy and forces her to ask the tough questions she has been avoiding.

Fear Of Flying was published at the height of the second wave of the Feminist movement, when the old rules and the barriers that kept women confined were being torn down.  Jong and Isadora, her literary doppelganger are part of the generation who were born during World War II and came of age in the rigid 1950’s and early 1960’s.  We can look back now and see that the rules of that era were very straightforward and simple, but to the girls growing up in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, it was confusing time made even more confusing by the double standard. Fear Of Flying was a shock to the reading public, just as Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and The Single Girl and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique was during the early 1960’s.

Jong, borrowing from Charlotte Bronte, uses her main character to guide us through the story. We see the world through Isadora’s eyes.  Her life is complicated. She is on her second marriage to a man who was one of her many psychoanalysts, her first husband is confined in a mental institution. Her relationship with her family is awkward and full of drama. She has big goals, but the fear keeps her from working towards those goals.

I read this book when I was 27, the same age as Isadora.  I understood who she was within the first few pages. Isadora represents and speaks for many of us when we are in our late 20’s. We are adults, but we may still be mired in our pasts or our fears keep us from reaching for our dreams, whatever they maybe.

When it comes to books, I usually take it as a good sign that within the first chapter, I can dive in emotionally early to the story and connect with the characters. I understood Isadora within the first few pages, I was hooked by the time I completed the first chapter. Jong is a master storyteller, her years of writing, introspection and using that introspection to emotionally connect to the reader and bring them into the world of her characters.

I highly recommend this book.