safety-lane.com 07105
chiropractic-lane.com
www.cbd-lane.com
NEWARK
http://www.healthy-lane.com/
Do not judge a people by a few individuals members
I am writing this a a Jewish American. I have never suffered prejudice in my life (as far as I know. I have suffered some mean stuff from my own people OTOH) but I do know that my father did. He changed our family name from “Lieberman” to “Lane” just to find employment and, from what I have been told, he did his job very well. The name of the credit union for the University of Buffalo (and other nearby institutions) is named after him. I am sorry to write that the people who knew him years ago are now old and soon many of them will die. This will leave few people who recall him as a man, a husband, or a friend.
I just returned from Germany, where I spent 2 weeks on vacation visiting my wife’s family. My wife’s sister moved from Colombia to Germany more than 2 decades ago. We had a very nice family reunion of all of them in Roschbach, Germany, where Lorena (my wife’s sister) and her husband, Harald, live.
As a Jew I am well-aware of the history of fate of Jews in Germany before and during the Second World War. I am not a ‘German apologist’ so I do not need to be reminded of what the Nazis did to us. For those who did not read that last sentence clearly, I will repeat it: I know. Please do not think that I am naïve or uninformed. Every day of my life from my earliest memories I was told, reminded, and I saw the remnants of the survivors of the Jewish Holocaust.
When I first met my very-German brother-in-law was when I visited my wife’s family in Colombia as I was preparing to start my life with my future wife, it was Harald who held up the sign that read “Jerry, welcome to Colombia”. It was always Harald who made our family’s plans and he was good and kind to me as well as my wife (his sister-in-law).
So, you may suspect that he was trying to apologize to me, as a Jew, for all that was done wrong to my people by the German people. That would make sense, right?
Except it is not true. Harald was not apologizing to me – it is just that German are very nice people. I learned this when I went to that country a few weeks ago. It wasn’t just my BIL being pleasant to me, it was a whole country of polite, (many) English-speaking, affable people. It is a country of respectable, America-loving, Israel-loving people with a long history of cultural greatness.
Just to be clear, my brother-in-law is a ‘true’ German who’s family has a coat-of-arms and a history that goes back to 1744. His family lineage has lived in the village we visited for at least 200 years. He has always welcomed us; this mélange of Colombians and a Jewish guy. [Just for the record you should know that his family suffered losses in the war. Some of the men never returned and their bodies were never found].
My conclusion is that Adolf Hitler disrupted the timeline of this fascinating country. He convinced a country of nice people to turn themselves into a country of monsters. He made the German people look the other way when confronted by evil in a pursuit of reclaiming prior glory and strength. For those he could not require silence he threatened with imprisonment or death.
I could be selfish and say that most of the country is sorry for what happened but that is not enough. Honestly, the worst thing the Hitler did was to change the public’s opinion of the German people; to turn a good and cooperative people into the most hated people on the earth. He killed Europe along with the Jewish people.
I know enough to write that anti-Semitism continues to be a problem today but it was worse in the 1930s and this BS was also present in the USA. It has never gone away.
As I wrote in the beginning of this piece, my father had to deal with prejudice against Jews and he had served in the Army at the Battle of the Bulge (and was included as one of the live historians in the official record of the event) but that was not enough to not face bigotry and that was the 1950s.
With this in mind, I want to tell you to watch “Ms Marvel” on the DISNEY channel. Yes, it is Marvel and it is about Muslims living in Jersey City, NJ (a town close to where I live). Honestly, you see a lot of the city in this show.
The show is the typical MARVEL universe of super-powers and fighting bad people but it is mostly about the life of a Pakistani-American girl who gains powers and dwells largely on her life in the Pakistani community. It does not hold back – we see the gossipy aunts and the overly restrictive parents, as well as the rudeness of the other kids in her high school towards her.
It did remind me of the life my mother had growing up in a world that did not like Jews. Today, we fear an Muslims because of what a few bad people have done to the people of the United States (and continue to threaten to still do to us).
Let’s be clear: most people want to succeed in the US and be good citizens. Did you read that last sentence too fast? Do you need me to make that clear to you? Do you have a group that bothers you because ‘those people’ aren’t like ‘your people’?
I work with men all day from every part of the US and all of them are decent good people. They laugh with me at the stupid shit some of their people do (or maybe they used to do but have stopped). They are proud of their children, their wives, and their dogs. Does that sound like you? It should sound like you because they are you!
If you live in the US, it is all of us. Here is your number: 95%. Consider this your understanding of everyone you see around you: 95% of your own family are great and 5% are stupid assholes, 95% of your neighbor’s family are the same percentages. We are all embarrassed about the knuckleheads who look like us because of the color of their skin or their religion or their profession because 95% of the time they do not speak for us.
95% of the time people want to follow the law and trust the police. 95% of the time we drive very well and we expect others to do the same. 95% of the time we have pride in others who look like us or represent us in some sway. 95% percent of the time we expect other people to respect women and their ambitions to realize their abilities, whether we have a daughter or a sister because we understand that Women’s Rights should not have to still be an issue in 2022 because we understand that “Women’s Rights Are Human Rights”.
When we hear other languages or accents we should be hearing the sounds of what makes America great: people who have come here to realize the potentials of being in this country and not living in fear in their own countries, or held back because of the Nationalistic pride that includes prejudice where they are from.
The “Green Card” is still the most sought-after item on this planet because it offers what many countries cannot provide: a truly new life free from fear. The American Dream still exists, even if its goals have changed from ‘owning a house’ to “giving opportunities to every member of my family, irrespective of their color or gender”.
I see people every day and there are only tow fears I continue to see, (1) men are afraid of making their wives angry because they love them so much, and (2) women who fear that their husbands will disregard all the wives’ concerns about their husbands habits with food, alcohol, medications, and their weight and they will lose their man too early.
Germany is not the enemy of the Jews. That bad history was over 90 years ago and it was unforgettable, unforgivable, and brutal. It is time to move on. It is now a miracle of technology, beauty, and kindness.
via Blogger https://bit.ly/3yXNHMv
Recent Comments