Author: frankisemptiness

December 11th, 2023

I gave a ride to a friend of mine, an elderly man from the synagogue. At the end of the Shabbat service, I drove him and his wife back to their apartment building. The old guy immigrated to the United States many years ago from Ukraine, right after the Soviet Union imploded. He’s had a very interesting life, and he has a large number of strong opinions. He decided to express some of them during the drive to his home.

He had heard somewhere that an Australian politician, maybe the assistant to the prime minister, had spoken out about Muslims residing in his country. Apparently, the minister had complained about Muslims not fully integrating into Australian society. According to my friend, the political figure had stated that Muslims need to assimilate. If they can’t, then they should voluntarily leave the country. If they won’t, they should be deported.

My elderly friend heartily agreed with that viewpoint, and he thought the same thing should apply to Muslims living in the United States. Especially since the start of the war in Gaza, he has condemned Palestinians living in our country who are demanding the destruction of Israel. He expanded his disapproval of the Palestinians to Muslims in general as I drove him home. He said,

“When I go now to the grocery store, to the self-checkout, all I see is women wearing the hijab. They are from Pakistan and Somalia. Milwaukee is full of Muslims now. This whole country is full of Muslims now.”

I don’t know how he knew the women in the hijabs were from Pakistan or Somalia, unless he took the time to ask them. He probably didn’t. I doubt that he ever talks to a Muslim.

I don’t agree with my friend, but I didn’t argue with him. I could have told him about my Syrian friends. I don’t think that would have made a positive impact. The conversation would have gone nowhere. Confronting prejudice sometimes requires subtlety. Maybe I shouldn’t have let his comments slide, but I understand why he thinks the way he does.

The old man and his family lived in an environment of rabid antisemitism in the Soviet Union. He was a little boy during the Holocaust. He views Israel as the last and best refuge for the Jews. This being the case, he takes any attack on Israel as an attack on the Jewish people, his people. For him, the Palestinians, in particular Hamas, are the enemies of Israel, and therefore his enemies. He won’t socialize with his enemies.

My friend had a son who served as an officer of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan. That was back in 1983. His son, Illya, was the sole survivor of an IED explosion during that war. Illya was severely wounded, and he never really recovered from that experience. He suffered from PTSD for forty years. The mine that wounded him was planted by the Afghan mujahedeen, the Muslim warriors fighting to drive out the Soviets. The old man buried his boy during the spring of this year. I was at the funeral. In my friend’s mind, the Muslims killed his son. In truth, a few of them did, but not the women working in the local grocery store.

My friend is not alone in his feelings. My oldest son, Hans, fought in Iraq. He got shot there, and he killed people there. Sometimes, he still thinks of those people as “Hajjis”. I don’t know if Hans ever interacts with Muslims. I think that he actively avoids them. Intellectually, he knows that they aren’t his enemy. How he feels emotionally is a whole different story.

How does a person get past this? Some people don’t, they can’t. The trauma is too deep. The wound just won’t heal.

There are people from certain groups that I avoid. I have my own deep-seated prejudices. The only way I have found to deal with these feelings is to force myself to get to know a specific person from one of those groups as an individual, as a unique person. I may or may not become friends with that person. That isn’t the point. It is more important that I recognize the man or woman as somebody who is more than just a member of a tribe. To do that takes time and patience. It requires humility. It is work.

It is worth it.

December 8th, 2023

She’s back.

My wife, Karin, got a call last night at about 8:30. I was lying in bed, holding our little grandson, Asher, and trying to get him to go to sleep. I could hear Karin speaking excitedly on the phone to someone. She sounded agitated. I just waited for her to burst into the bedroom.

She did. She told me,

“I have to pick her up! They released her from jail! Is Asher awake? I’ll take him along with me.”

Asher was awake. We got him dressed and I helped Karin to get him into the child seat in the RAV4. Then she took off like a bat out of hell. It was a cold, windy night, about 38 degrees, and the young woman was standing in the dark just outside of the county jail in downtown Milwaukee. She had not been dressed for cold weather when the cops busted her a week ago, and I was sure that she was shivering as she waited for Karin to rescue her.

Karin’s last comment to me before she burned rubber out of the driveway was,

“This seems really weird.”

Indeed. But then everything involving this young woman seems that way.

It took an hour for Karin to make the round trip from home to the jail and then back again. I was wide awake, and I had time to think. I wondered why the people who run jails tend to release people in the middle of the night. I had picked up this very same young lady from the Kenosha County jail at 5:00 AM one time. Back in 2017, when I got arrested for civil disobedience at a protest in Nevada, the cops cut me loose from jail at 9:00 PM. There seems to be a desire to cast the forgiven offender into the outer darkness.

Karin came back home and tucked the car into the garage for the night. The young woman was beaming with joy, mostly because she was reunited with Asher. Apparently, the powers-that-be had dropped the drunk driving charge against her. The assault on a police officer charge is still pending, but I suspect that will be dropped eventually too. If the prosecutor really wanted to burn her for assault, she would not be out on the street. She would be rotting in her cell.

The young woman related to us the story of six days in jail. Most of the time, she was in “administrative segregation”, which is a nice way of saying “solitary”. Because she was accused of a violent crime (assault), the staff at the county jail kept her by herself. They also kept her shackled whenever she left her cell. She told us that showering in shackles is less than pleasant. I can only imagine. The woman got a minimal amount of sleep, partly because a woman in another cell was continually moaning 24/7. That will put a person on edge.

On her last day in jail, she was placed in with the general population. On the evening of this last day, she was told over the loudspeaker to get dressed. It was at 8:00 PM. There was no explanation as to why she needed to be dressed, but that it pretty typical. Guards don’t explain their orders to inmates. They don’t have to.

Shortly after dressing, a guard came to her cell and told her brusquely to pack up her belongings. She did. Then she and a few other prisoners (note: inmates at this jail are referred to as “occupants”, as if they were renting a room) were told to deposit their blankets in a big yellow bin and put their trash into another one. The woman thought that she was being transferred to a prison. She asked a guard where they were going.

The guard replied, “You’re getting released.”

That confused the young woman. She said, “I’m not getting released.”

The guard told her, “Really? Do you want to go back to your cell?”

The woman quickly replied, “No, I’m good.”

I spent a mercifully short period of time in jail. I learned that, if somebody in authority tells you that you are being released, you do not question that statement. You do everything in your power to cooperate and expedite the process. Once you go out that last door, you keep going and never look back.

The woman is now free, at least temporarily. We can get back to a sort of normal lifestyle.

I asked her what she learned from this experience.

She replied, “Don’t drink and drive, and then drink again.”

I told her that the only way I could view her sudden release was as being divine intervention. Nothing else makes sense to me.

Will she be alright now? I have no idea. The underlying causes of her arrest have not been addressed. She needs help that was not provided in the jail, and that probably would not be provided in a prison environment. Prisons and jails are not about rehabilitation. They are simply storage facilities for human beings who have run afoul of society’s rules. If she gets healthy, it will have to be on the outside.

In the Bible is the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is curious that once Lazarus is raised, he is hardly ever mentioned again. We don’t know if he had the same problems after his raising that he had before his death. Nikos Kazantzakis, in his novel “The Last Temptation of Christ”, fills in the blanks about the post-resurrection life of Lazarus. It’s not a pleasant description. The point is that being released from jail or prison is a type of resurrection. The person getting out has a new lease on life. However, this new life does not mean that everything is okay. It just means there is a chance to start over.

November 27th, 2023

I remember, years ago, talking to a middle-aged lady about our daughter. Our girl was in trouble, and she seemed unable to avoid risky and destructive situations. The woman with whom I was speaking nodded her head sagely and said,

“Well, she just needs to learn to make good decisions.”

That comment was profoundly naive. I can only imagine that the lady had never been in a situation where all choices are bad choices. The only real decision is to select the choice that causes the least amount of damage.

Let’s look at a hypothetical situation. Let’s say that there is a young woman with an alcohol addiction. No amount of encouragement or cajoling or threatening seems to make any difference in her behavior. She has four drunk driving convictions under her belt. She has a little boy who is being raised by her parents because she can’t stay clean. Her relapses are becoming more severe and more frequent as time goes on. The woman has a monkey on her back, and it refuses to let her go.

The young woman has been in a car accident recently. The accident was not at all her fault. Her father, for reasons that seemed good at the time, bought her a replacement vehicle. The young woman is only supposed to drive a car equipped with a breathalyzer. The “new” car does not have one yet. It is possible for her to operate this car while under the influence of alcohol. She knows that she should not do that. She knows that the consequences of that act could be horrendous. She knows the risks.

The young woman is living temporarily in her parents’ house. On a snowy Sunday morning, her parents take the woman’s toddler son to church while the young woman stays at home. Upon their return, they see the woman’s car stuck in a deep ditch in front of the house, the rear of the vehicle in the snow and the hood pointed up toward the sky.

The little boy is asleep in the car. The grandmother takes the boy inside the house and lies down with him. The father of the young woman checks on the car in the ditch. The young woman is in the driver’s seat, using her phone. The dad opens the car door and asks,

“Are you drunk?”

The woman glares back at him and says, “No.”

That is a lie. She’s hammered. After years of experience, the father knows how she looks and talks when she is drunk. He also knows from experience not to get into an argument with her while she is in that state. Emotions have in the past escalated quickly and unpredictably. He decides to call 911. He’s done that many times before. He figures that it is time for a professional to handle the situation.

A few minutes later, a police car arrives. The officer (who happens to be male) gets out of the black-and-white and talks with the young woman. The father observes the conversation from a safe distance. The young woman is surly and uncooperative. The police office keeps his cool, but tempers are rising.

A second squad car shows up. A female officer comes over to the car. Both cops are trying to convince the young woman to get out of the car. She refuses. She swears at them.

Now, a third police vehicle comes on the scene. Another male officer approaches the car in the ditch. The manage to muscle the woman out of the disabled car. She falls down, and they pick her back up. She is belligerent. They cuff her.

The female officer attempts to escort the young woman to a squad car. The woman causes both of them to fall to the pavement hard. The two other cops get them back on their feet. The female police officer yells at the woman,

“Don’t DO that.”

At this point, the young woman is screaming,

“I WILL FUCKING KILL YOU!”

The three officers wrestle her into the squad car. The first cop stays behind to ask the father a few questions. Both of them are flustered. The episode has been extremely intense for everyone involved.

The young woman calls her parents later from jail. She is being charged with her fifth drunk driving violation, and with assaulting a police officer. By any objective standard, this is bad, really bad. She is looking at serious prison time.

Later, while lying awake in bed, the father replays his mental recording of the event and wonders what he could have done differently. It is a pointless exercise, but one that needs to be done anyway.

What would have happened if he had not called 911? Somehow, without violence, he would have had to get the young woman out of the car and out of the way. He would have had to get her vehicle winched out. Those are the easy tasks. Would the young woman attempt to drive drunk again if the police had not intervened? Yes. Would she possibly hit and kill an innocent person? Yes. Was the intervention necessary? Yes.

Is there fallout and collateral damage? Oh yeah, lots of it. Foremost is the fact that the young woman’s son will not have his mother actively in his life for years. That will hurt. It hurts already. She will go to prison. That means she will leave a lot of loose ends. She has been in prison before, and that is like a small death. She will be unavailable, for years.

Were there any good choices in this scenario? The father doesn’t know. He only knows that he made a choice and now he has to live with it.

November 25th, 2023

Several years ago, my wife and I attended a talk by some addiction counselors regarding how to deal with a family member who is an addict. Although there are numerous types of addiction, the focus of the meeting was on the population addicted to drugs and/or alcohol. One of the counselors, Danielo, gave a short spiel about the neurological effects of drugs on the brains of young persons. He focused on what drugs do to the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that develops during the teen years and the early twenties. It is the portion of the brain that allows for decision making and predicting the consequences of future actions. He kind of dumbed it down for us, but the gist of his lecture was that drugs/alcohol physically change the structure of the prefrontal cortex. Heavy use of drugs changes the wiring, and the cortex operates in a very different way.

Now, let’s take a hypothetical situation. Let’s say that a young woman who is an addict has a traffic accident. She is sober at the time and is in no way at fault. Somebody else ran a stop sign and t-boned her car. The young woman’s car is totaled. This is a problem. She needs transportation, and a car is the best choice for that. Unfortunately, she has no money to buy one.

Now, the woman’s father, realizing that she needs to go places, and not wanting to be her chauffeur, decides to purchase a used car for her. He takes her to a dealer, and several thousand dollars later, the young woman is the proud owner of a vehicle with 130, 000 miles on it. Legally, she is supposed to only drive a car with a breathalyzer installed in it. The newly purchased vehicle obviously does not have one. She tells her dad that it will be okay for her to drive it straight home, since that is only a few miles away. This is in the father’s interest since he has to drive his own car there. It seems like a simple solution for getting two cars to where they need to go.

The young woman does not drive straight home.

The father waits impatiently for over an hour for the young woman to arrive at their home. During that time, he both calls and texts her. Her response consistently is, “I’m on my way!” When she tells her dad that she is stopping at a grocery store to buy some chips, he is a bit uneasy. That isn’t all she is buying.

Upon her arrival, she is friendly and helpful, and obviously a little tipsy. She decided to have some drinks on the way home from the dealership. The father has been scared while waiting for her to come. Now, he’s more than a little pissed off.

Let’s take a brief look at the young woman’s history. She has four, count ’em, four drunk driving convictions. Now, even in Wisconsin, the drunkest state in the Union, that’s a serious matter. In this state, the first three convictions are misdemeanors. The fourth drunk driving bust is a felony with prison time.

By slamming a few shots on the way home from the car dealer, the woman is risking being busted for a fifth time. A fifth drunk driving conviction really gets the attention of a judge. At that point, the idea of rehabilitation is moot, and the judge’s main concern is getting the person off the road for a long time. Time in prison ensures the public safety.

I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the young woman is endangering the lives of other drivers. The decision to drink is bad on a number of levels.

Why would a person do this? Why take enormous risks for a quick buzz?

To most people that behavior makes no sense. To an addict it is completely logical. The desire for the drug trumps any and all other possible considerations. Go back to my first paragraph about the prefrontal cortex. The wiring is all messed up.

The young woman makes it home safe. She avoids the most severe consequences of her act. However, there are still consequences, some subtle and hidden. Some are quite obvious, even to the young woman.

November 20th, 2023

We got a phone call on Saturday evening. I looked at the caller ID and immediately cringed. It was her. When she calls at that time of the night, it often means that there is a crisis. My heart raced as I picked up the receiver expecting to hear a panicked voice. I wasn’t disappointed.

She had just been in a car accident. She sounded extremely upset, but she was thinking clearly. She told me that somebody had come out of nowhere and hit her on the left side just ahead of the front wheel. She didn’t think that her car was drivable, and she was waiting for the cops to arrive. Before I could ask anything else, the police showed up and she hung up.

Timing is everything. When the young woman called us, I had been just getting ready to turn in for the night. Our toddler grandson, Asher, was also tired. He had been yawning. Well, nobody was going to bed for a while. Everybody was too wired. We had to wait to find out how the story was going to end. We were now part of a cliff hanger.

She called again. She asked if the car could be towed to our house. The young woman is staying in a halfway house, and there is no place for the auto there. The cops want the car to be towed somewhere, and it might as well rest comfortably in our yard for a while. I asked her if the towing service could make sure not to block the entrance to the garage when they brought her disabled vehicle here.

She answered, “I don’t know! I haven’t even called the tow truck yet!”

I mumbled something, and she hung up again.

Okaaaay. We’ll just wait and see.

There was a pause in the action. Asher was restless. My wife, Karin, and I were waiting to hear the phone ring again. My mind raced. I had lots of questions, and no good answers.

Honestly, it was a wonder that her beater had lasted this long. Her 2008 Ford Focus had originally belonged to our youngest son, Stefan, who had been working in a body shop and rebuilt it from salvage wreck. After a few years, he sold it to me, and I finally gave it to the young woman. We all knew that eventually it would die, and she would need a different ride. Well, that day had come, rather suddenly.

I was already trying to figure out how to get her transportation. Did she really need a car? Yeah. Could she afford a car? No. Public transportation in the Milwaukee metro area is wretched. There are many locations that cannot be reached without a car, and this young woman needed to go to a number of them on a regular basis. To visit Asher, she probably had to have a car of her own. If she did not have her own vehicle, then she would have to Uber, or she would depend on my wife and me for frequent rides. There are no simple solutions to this problem, nor are there any inexpensive ones.

She finally called to inform us that she and the tow truck were on their way to our address. A few minutes later, with lights flashing, the truck arrived. Asher demanded to go outside on the front porch to watch the show. I showed the driver where I wanted him to plant the car. With an ease earned from years of practice, he slid the car off the truck into exactly the place I had indicated. I was impressed.

The young woman held Asher in her arms as her mangled machine found its new home. She seemed calm and alert. She hugged the little boy tightly. He hugged her back. It was cold and windy in the night air, and she kept him warm.

Karin got ready to take the young woman to her home. The woman gave the boy to me. She looked at Asher and said,

“I love you.”

He smiled up at her and said, “I wuv you.”

Her face broke into a smile, and her face glowed with joy. Asher almost never tells anyone that he loves them. When he does, it’s something to savor.

Karin and the young woman left. Asher and I were in the living room. Asher looked at me and said,

“Sit in the rocking chair.”

I did.

Then he said, “Hold me.”

I did.

He climbed up into my lap and settled down. Asher rested his head on my right bicep. He clutched my left forearm with his chubby right hand. We were both silent. I was wound up and worried. He wasn’t. He slowly relaxed. I could feel his body conform to the shape of my arms. Almost imperceptibly, he fell asleep.

I thought for a moment about how much he trusted me, how safe he felt in my arms. That was a blessing for both of us, because I calmed down too.

Who holds an adult in their arms? Who can I trust like Asher trusts me?

November 16th, 2023

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” – William Faulkner

Last week, I took an old man to a gun shop. He is my friend. I know the guy from the synagogue. He’s an immigrant from Ukraine. He came to the United States from the ruins of the old Soviet Union in the 1990’s as a political refugee. Back in the old country, he experienced antisemitism, the old school variety. Now, with the fighting in Gaza and the pro-Palestinian demonstrations in our country, he is afraid.

My friend wants to buy a gun.

I am not convinced that buying a pistol is a good idea, at least not for my friend. For a man his age, he is in remarkably good shape. He is mind is sharp as a razor, and his body is intact. My friend is a stubborn old man. So am I, so understand him. Once he latches onto to an idea, he hangs on to it like a bulldog. He has convinced himself that he needs a pistol (specifically, a SIG Sauer P365), and he wants to get a concealed carry license. I’m not going to change his mind, but he might change it on his own.

I drive my friend to Shooters, a gun store north of Racine, Wisconsin. the old guy doesn’t have a driver’s license anymore. It seems odd to me that the State of Wisconsin won’t let him operate a motor vehicle, but it will gladly issue him a concealed carry permit. Go figure.

Shooters is a basically a bunker. there is a sign outside the place that proudly proclaims the business to be veteran-owned. Inside, there is a small gun shop and an indoor shooting range. There are no windows in the building. To enter, a person has to go through a set of heavy steel doors. The interior is well lit but claustrophobic. There is a smell in the place that can only be found around freshly cleaned firearms. I could also detect a whiff of gunpowder smoke from the firing range. That scent is impossible to mistake.

We walked up to a young man working behind the counter. He tall and thin with a tattoo above his right eyebrow. He was friendly. I let my friend do the talking. He’s the one who wants the gun. The old man asked the young one about getting a compact pistol for concealed carry. The vendor pulled up his shirt to show my friend the SIG Sauer in the holster on his belt. The young guy walked over to the show case to bring out a couple different models for my friend to handle. My friend asked the gun dealer about how many rounds the magazine held. The smaller model had an eight-round magazine, but the young man assured my friend that they could order him a magazine with a larger capacity.

At this point, it might be worthwhile to note that the old guy has in fact fired a weapon. His father was an officer in the Soviet Army during World War II. My friend’s dad showed him how to shoot the standard issue Soviet Army pistol. That was over seventy years ago. The man hasn’t shot a round since then. He’s out of practice.

My friend held the gun in his hand. He struggled to move the slide. The young guy told him that the slide was probably a bit stiff because it was a brand-new pistol. He gave my friend one of the weapons they rent and told him that the slide should be easier to move. It wasn’t. My friend had a tremor in his left hand as he worked to move the slide.

The conversation shifted to the subject of getting a concealed carry license. The old man somehow had the idea that he needed 36 hours of practice with the weapon before he could qualify for the permit. The dealer explained to him that was not the case, and that the gun shop held regular classes for concealed carry. Each class lasted three hours and cost $75. After the class, my friend would get a form to fill out and send to the state. That was the whole deal.

My friend kept asking the young guy questions in his thick Slavic accent. The old man couldn’t quite accept the idea that getting the license was that simple. My friend also asked the young man how much everything would cost: the pistol, the hostler, the ammo, cleaning equipment, targets for the range, etc. The old guy tallied up the numbers in his head and sighed. He said,

“I think for everything, it is maybe $1000.”

The dealer nodded.

I told my friend, “That’s about right. Owning and shooting a gun is expensive.”

We left the gun shop without buying the SIG. My friend needed more time think about it. I drove him to my house. We had coffee with my wife as our little grandson, Asher, ran wild. The old man started telling us stories from his life. That’s what old men do.

He was only a child when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. He and his grandfather were evacuated to the east as the Nazis advanced. Both of my friend’s parents were Soviet officers, and the children of some military personnel sent out of harm’s way, or at least that was the plan.

My friend told us, “We were in the train heading to a town on the Volga. The German fighters, the Stukas, fired on the train. We all got out and ran for cover. My grandfather, he threw himself over me when the planes were shooting. I looked from under his arm, and I saw the bullets tearing up the ground. When the planes left, I saw dead bodies around us, and blood on the ground. I was just an eight-year-old boy, and those things I saw!”

My wife, Karin, listened silently. Her father had also fought in Russia during World War II, but her father had been on the German side. Karin’s dad had been an enlisted man in the Luftwaffe. My friend knows this.

My friend told me a story once about what happened when he was a teenager. A few says before Stalin died, he issued a decree that the Soviet Jews should be deported to the labor camps in Siberia. My friend’s father knew about the order. One day, my friend saw his father carefully cleaning his parabellum (Lugar). My friend asked his father,

“Daddy, what are you doing?’

His dad explained that men from military intelligence would be coming for him. He told his boy,

“I will kill them all before they take me.”

Stalin died, and the order was never carried out. Twenty years later, my friend’s father told his boy that he not only intended to kill the soldiers coming to take him away. He had also expected to shoot his wife and son before they were deported to the labor camps.

My friend told us other stories. He told us about how his son was not allowed to become an aviation engineer in the Soviet Union because he was a Jew. He told us how, after the USSR collapsed, ultranationalist Ukrainian militiamen came to his home to threaten the lives of him and his family because they were Jews.

After my friend was done talking, I drove him home. He talked about the Palestinians. He talked about threats. He told me,

“Nobody will protect us. We Jews have to protect ourselves.”

I parked on the street in front of his apartment building. He grasped my arm as we sat in the car. He asked me,

“You will be at the shul on Saturday?”

“Yes.”

He squeezed arm a bit tighter. He said,

“You are a good friend. I will see you on Saturday.” Then he got out of the car and left.

I don’t know if he will ever buy the gun.

November 8th, 2023

I was waiting for Hussein to arrive. It was sunny and windy outside the door to the mosque. The door was locked, which honestly wasn’t a shock to me. I would have been more surprised if it hadn’t been secured. A few people walked past me as I waited. They didn’t greet me, but then they did not know either. I used to come to this mosque quite often, just to sit in the quiet and clear my mind. I don’t come to the place much anymore. I am busy with other things.

When I had initially driven into the parking lot, I noticed some Muslim girls in their robes and hijabs doing some kind of outdoor activity. They were from the school that is attached to the mosque. There was a security car parked next to them with the lights flashing. The lights gave the unspoken but clear message to keep away from the young women.

After a while, the security guard got out of his car and sauntered over to me. This too was no surprise. He was a big guy. I assumed he was armed, but I didn’t check closely for a weapon. He looked at me and asked,

“Can I help you?”

That basically translates to, “Who are you and why the fuck are you here?”

I told him, “I’m waiting to meet a friend.”

“Who?”

“The guy’s name is Hussein, He’s a young man, a college student.”

The guard thought to himself and said, “Tall guy?”

“Yeah.”

I told the guard, “My name is Frank.”

He smiled a bit and said, “Mine is Iyad.”

Then the guard asked, “You want to go in?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

The guard unlocked the door and asked, “Is the guy Turkish?”

“No. He’s Syrian. He comes from a refugee family. I used to tutor his siblings.”

He let me into the foyer of the mosque. A couple Black guys came in after me. They might have been Somalis. They were there for the dhuhr prayer, the first prayer of the afternoon. Because it was the day right after the end of daylight savings time, the times for the five daily prayers were a little skewed, and these men were early. They walked back out again.

Hussein showed up shortly after. Hussein is a tall and very fit. He’s very busy with school and work. I asked him to meet me at the mosque. We could have met somewhere else, but I felt like I wanted to be in that space. The war in Gaza has been upsetting to me, and I wanted a sense of balance. I go regularly to a synagogue, and I needed be with different folks.

Hussein asked me if the door had been locked. I told him that it had been. That bothered Hussein. He said,

“The door should always be open, anytime. People should always be able to come in and pray.”

We sat on the floor in the mosque, and we talked about locked doors. Hussein asked me,

“Your church is open for people, isn’t it?”

I replied, “No, hardly ever. When I was a kid, most churches were open all the time. A person could just walk in to pray and meditate. Then some churches got vandalized, and they locked most of them down except for religious services. The only church I know that is always open is the Cathedral of St. John downtown. I used to go there a lot to just sit. There are usually homeless people in the back pews during the winter. It’s a place where they can keep warm.”

I went on, “The synagogue is almost never open. When it is, we always have an armed guard at the door.”

Hussein thought to himself, and then said, “We have security here too. With the school, we need it.”

I nodded. I thought about the Sikh temple not far from where I live. A decade ago, a white racist stormed the place and shot down six people. The Sikhs have had guards ever since then. I knew one of the Sikhs who was murdered. I didn’t know the man well, but I remember talking with him.

Hussein is an immigrant success story. He will graduate from the university next summer. He is the first person from his family to ever graduate from college. His parents were farmers in Syria until the civil war started there. Then they fled to Turkey. They got into the United States just before Trump slammed the brakes on allowing refugees into this country. Hussein goes to school and works a fulltime job. He has a lot going for him.

I talked with Hussein about my son, Hans, the one who fought in Iraq. I told Hussein that Hans still suffers from the effects of the war. Hussein told me about Syria, which was odd, because he almost never talks about what it was like there. He said,

“I was in the war in Syria, when I was a kid. I saw dead bodies, lots of them. I saw a guy with his head, you know…”, and he made a motion with his hand to indicate the man had part of his head shot off.

I had to think about that. How does a little boy in Syria deal with the sight of a man’s body on the ground with the top of his head blown away? How does a little kid I Gaza deal with that? Or a little kid in Israel? What does that do to a person? What did it do to Hussein?

It was time for the service. Hussein got up and joined a number of other men for the dhuhr prayer. I sat back and watched. I don’t know the words and I don’t know the movements. I observed.

There were probably thirty guys standing in a line. They prayed together and did the prostrations together. They seemed to be mostly working-class people. Somebody else might have looked at these men and saw Hamas or ISIS. I saw ordinary men, just taking a few minutes to get some solace from their faith tradition. I saw guys like me, men with hopes and fears and struggles. I saw men who are probably trying to raise families and make the lives of their children better. I saw myself.

The prayer ended. People slowly wandered out of the mosque. Hussein and I went to the parking lot. We said goodbye. We hugged.

I love the guy.

November 12th, 2023

I was at the synagogue yesterday. When the Shacharit service ended, everyone went to the dining room for kiddush, a time to snack and socialize. I asked Neil what he was doing. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks. He gave me a vague reply, and then he asked me,

“So, what are you doing?’

I had just spent four hours watching over my little grandson, Asher, so I said,

“I am caring for a toddler.”

Neil told me, “But you’re not doing that now.”

That was true. I was at a gathering with a few friends. However, my mind was still at home with a three-year-old who needs constant surveillance. Even when I am taking a break from the boy, I am not taking a break.

At this point in my life, I would like a certain degree of peace and quiet. Well, that’s not going to happen. Granted, at this particular moment in time, I have some serenity, but that can end any minute now. As soon as Asher rouses himself from slumber, I will be on duty, and it is likely that this essay will be completed hours from now, if at all.

I suppose it sounds like I am bitching. I am. On the other hand, my wife and I freely took on the responsibility of raising our grandson. We didn’t exactly volunteer for the job, but shortly after Asher was born, we made an open-ended commitment to care for him. If we had not agreed to do that, Asher would have fallen into the foster care system, and that would have been an unmitigated disaster with lifelong consequences for the boy, and for us. We did the right thing, and now every day we are dealing with it.

What bothers sometimes is the chaos. I never know what will happen at any given moment. Of course, nobody knows what will happen, but most people can kind of guess at the future and make plans. Karin and I don’t make plans, or if we do, they are always tentative. Every statement of intent is followed by “if God wills”, or “inshallah”, or a heartfelt “min ezrat Hashem”. With a small child in the house, nothing is for sure.

Was it like this when we were raising our own children? No doubt it was, but one forgets the craziness after a while. Now, the memories of caring for little people come flooding back. It is a bit strange to be taking Asher to story time at the library or spending hours with him at the playground. Karin and I discuss where to send him to kindergarten (we are leaning heavily toward putting him in the Waldorf school). When he is sick or upset, I hold the boy in my arms until he calms down. That can take an hour or more. Some of things we do with Asher are familiar to us, and we just slip back into who we were as parents thirty years ago. It’s like riding a bicycle. A person doesn’t really forget these things.

Chaos has its upside. It is impossible for me to be bored. I have to be alert and aware at all times. Raising a little boy has to be good for my mental acuity. Chasing after the lad keeps me physically active. As much as I would like to be sedentary, I can’t. If he is moving, I am moving.

This level of chaos is manageable. My wife and I can stumble through the day, and in the end, the two of us and Asher are alright. I can’t imagine what real chaos must be like. I can’t fathom how parents in Gaza or Ukraine can deal with their circumstances. Karin and I have resources available to us. We have food, water, shelter, and medical care. Other people in other places don’t. We don’t have to worry about bombs and bullets. Other caregivers have those concerns every day.

How do these people care for their children?

I think I know the answer.

They just do it.

November 1st, 2023

I went to the synagogue yesterday morning. It was my first time there in over a month. Between our family’s long trip to Texas and then all of us getting slammed with COVID, I hadn’t been able to go to a service on Shabbat. There was a tiny congregation gathered in the sanctuary. The shul community is small to begin with, and the attendance was remarkably lean yesterday. There was no possibility of rounding up a minyan, so there was no Torah reading, just the recitation of the prayers that could be said without ten male Jews.

I got to the shul late. My wife, Karin, had slept in, so I had been watching our grandson, Asher, all morning. He’s going to be three years old a month from now, and he’s a handful. Once Karin was awake and ready to take over with the little boy, I left home to go to Shacharit.

When I got there, a rabbi was trying to explain what to do when Jews are being held hostage. I only caught the last portion of his presentation. The rabbi was wrestling with passages from the Talmud and the Midrash to come up with ideas as to what can or should be done by the Israelis with the hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza. He wasn’t really giving a sermon. It was more of an interactive discussion with members of the community. The gist of the conversation was that the classic Jewish texts can’t serve as an exact template for the current situation in Gaza. The centuries-old opinions are sadly still relevant to the fate of the Israeli hostages, but they don’t provide clear guidance.

The events in the Gaza war overshadowed everything at the synagogue. Nothing else really mattered. Everybody’s minds were focused on the fighting in Gaza and the political spillover here in the United States. At every Shabbat prayer service in the synagogue there is a special prayer for wellbeing of the soldiers of the United States and for that of the soldiers in the IDF. Yesterday, another prayer was added for the safety of the hostages. It was rather poignant. Some prayers are simply recited out of habit. These prayers came from the heart.

I sat in the back row with a friend of mine. He’s an old man, old enough to be my father. The man grew up in Stalinist Russia and immigrated to America with his family after the fall of the Soviet Union. Both he and I have sons who went to war. His boy recently died from alcoholism. The man is in remarkably good shape for a guy who is pushing ninety. He asked me right away about our grandson.

He grasped my hand and asked in a heavy Slavic accent, “How is the beautiful little boy?”

“He’s feisty. Very willful.”

The old man smiled, “You must bring him to us, so we can see how he has grown.”

I sighed, “Yeah, I will. Not today.”

He nodded, “Not today, but soon? When you have time. You call us before you come.”

I agreed to do that.

The president of the synagogue gave a what she thought would be a short presentation on a security meeting she had attended with members of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation. She handed everyone a copy of the meeting’s minutes. That type of document is usually bloodless and boring. This one was not. After her initial comments, the room erupted with questions.

My friend grabbed my right arm and pulled me close to him. He asked me quietly, “You will help to buy a Gyock?”

“A Gyock?”

“Yes, yes, a Gyock. you know, a pistol.”

“Oh, a Glock?”

“Yes, you can help me to get one?”

I was initially stunned by that request. Here we were in a house of prayer and study, and I was talking with a close friend about buying a handgun.

The synagogue president fielding a number of questions concerning the security of the shul (we have had an armed guard at the door for months already). She also answered questions about potential threats from ne0-nazis and from Hamas supporters. There were questions about staging counter demonstrations in support of Israel. The president told us how to report an antisemitic incident. Oddly enough, I already know how to do that. Last December, some Jew-haters threw antisemitic propaganda in my driveway. I was upset about that.

My friend talked to me about his worries. He grew up surrounded by antisemitism. Its effects are in his history, and they are in his blood. He hears the alarms in his head.

My friend stood up and loudly asked, “And what are the FBI and the local police doing to protect us? Where are they? The people need protection! They have to protect themselves! Nobody else will protect them!”

Another congregant, an immigrant from Russian, asked my friend,

“How long have you been in this country? Thirty, forty years? And you still don’t own a gun?”

My friend told him that he planned to get one.

The Russian told my friend, “You can’t just buy a gun. You need to go to the shooting range and practice. You need to know the laws for guns in Wisconsin. Some of them are very interesting.”

The discussion went on for a while. I sat back and listened. I thought to myself,

“Holy fuck. This is nuts. But it is real. This is happening.”

When the service was done, I told my friend,

“I will drive you to the gun shop, but I can’t buy it for you.”

He nodded and said, “Yes, of course, I know. I will buy the Gyock. You just take me there.”

Then he said, “Maybe you buy one too. You have to protect your little boy.”

That’s true. I do need to protect Asher, but maybe not with a handgun in the house.

Later that day, I got a call from my son, Hans, the combat vet and gun enthusiast. I told Hans about my friend’s strong desire to buy a Glock. Hans suggested that he buy a Canik TP9SFx instead. A Canik is a Turkish firearm, similar to a Glock but less expensive. Hans also strongly suggested that my friend take a concealed carry class. Hans had been to one, and they taught him all about the pertinent state laws. They also made damn sure that Hans knew how to handle his weapon. That sounded like a great idea to me.

I will talk with my friend about the gun soon. He might change his mind about buying a firearm, although knowing his stubbornness, he will probably still want to get one. At least, I can guide him in a way to be safe about owning one. If we have to do this, we might as well do it right.

It just amazes me that we are doing this at all.