5/21/24

 Tuesday, May 21, 2024

Lights out around 11, up to let Lilly out at midnight, up again, and lights on at 3, when I let Lilly out again.  Ate my overnight oatmeal at 4ish, with a prednisone pill, as I read the  Report of the Panel of Experts in International Law regarding the request of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for Arrest Warrants for Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and for 3 leaders of Hamas. . . .  By 6:30, there is a lovely fog creeping in from the lake, enshrouding our neighbors' gray house.

Prednisone, day 9.A major improvement over the last 2 days in the bilateral shoulder pain and good improvement in both hands.  I sent a follow-up Secure Message to Dr. Ryzka reporting this.  Dr. Ryxka replied to my first message before reading my second: "Dr. Ryzka replied to your original secure message late yesterday by mentioning that he has sent an additional prescription for 10 mg pills of prednisone and he would like for you to take while continuing prednisone 20 mg AM. Take the additional 10mg in late afternoons or early evenings daily (for a total 30 mg daily) and he will see during your next appt if this dose makes a meaningful change."  Quid nunc?  I will wait for his response to my second secure message.

I put on my compression socks again this morning, hoping for some reduction in the lymphedema, which didn't occur yesterday.

I spoke with pharmacist Jill Hansen at 11:30 this morning.  She alerted me to the fact that I may end up on insulin and a continuous glucose monitoring device if my glucose count goes up too high, not forever, but until my glucose gets to an acceptable area.

More thoughts on Jews as a "nation" with a "national right of self-determination."  After writing about Zionism yesterday, I took off the shelf a book containing a collection of essays by the Jewish and Zionist philosopher and polymath Yeshayahu Leibowitz.  I purchased it from Ebay a couple months ago for a price I wouldn't ordinarily have been willing to pay because I knew of his then-contemporary opposition to the occupation of Palestinian lands after the 1967 war and his prediction on the effect occupation would have on the Israelis, their government, and their occupying military.  He is not an easy read but it is a worthwhile one. One of his essays titled "The Uniqueness of the Jewish People" including the following:

The belief that the history of the Jewish people differs from that of all other people hinges on the use of the term "people."   The existence of different peoples is a fct we take for granted without giving it much thought.  Only rarely does it occur to us to ask ourselves what indeed is "a people."  Why does a conglomerate of human beings, each of whom differs from the others, constitute a particular nation, while others, who do not differ from these individuals more than they differ from one another, do not belong to this people?  A "people" is not a natural entity.  It is a being of the mind.  A nation exists insofar as there is a consciouness of its existence - the awareness of particular human beings that their communal existence has a framework which is "the nation," their nation.

. . .  no historian or sociologist has succeeded in proposing  a criterion that would determne whether a  certain human group was or was not a nation.  Several defining characteristics have, indeed, been listed: racial origen, language, territory, state, ,and so forth.  But many and diverse groups are considered "nations" and, although they lack one or even several of these characteristics, no one doubts their status as "nations."  It is instructive to compare the Swedish people and the German people (the Austrians? the Swiss?), the Indian people (who lack a "national language"), the Arab people, the Palestinian people, and so on.  Can an objective acount be given of the peoplehood of all of these national groups?

Where does the Jewish people stand in view of these considerations?  Its existence has been an  empirical fact for the last 3,000 years.  Despire variations, changes, and structural metamorphoses, it has presereved in self-identity and continuity for approximately a hundred generations.  It retained them not only in the self-awareness of the Jews but also in the consciousness of non-Jews. . .  What were the defining characteristicss of the historical Jewish people during these hundred generations?

The biological criterion does not apply. The Jewish people is a multiracial melange.  Today we can clearly discern typical facial features of all races among people who are Jews in every sense of the word "Jew."  Even from the standpoint of the traditional perception, the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have no racial or even familial peculiarity which would distinquish them from the Ismaelites, the Edomites, the Arameans, and the Moabites.

As for language, the significance of Hebrew for the Jewish people is unlike the significance of the national tongue for other peoples.  During most of their history the Jews did not speak Hebrew.  [Even the Talmud] is written mostly in Aramaic.  In the contemporary world, most of the 13-14 million people who are considered Jews do not know or speak Hebrew.  Yet Hebrew was and is even today the national language of the entire Jewish people because every Jew knows that the Torah was given in Hebrew, even if he reads it in translation, and the Shma and the daily prayer are in Hebrew. 

The historic Jewish nation is not defined by territory either.  Most of its history is not specifically related to the land of Israel . . .  Needless to say, the historical Jewish people is not definable in terms of statehood.  During the greater part of its history it had no state of its own.  Even today only a minority of Jews are citizens of the Jewish state.

The Jewish people, as it existed in history, is definable only by reference to its Judaism -- a Judaism that was not a mere idea in the mind but the realization of a program of living set forth in the Torah and delineated by its Mitzvoth.  This way of life constituted the specific national content of Jewishness or, in other words, the uniqueness of the Jewish people.  The Jew practiced a way of living that was exclusively his. [Style of eating, sexual practices, work/Sabbath.]  Unlike the identies of of the peoples that are characterized by race, language, territory, or state, the national identity of the historic Jewish people is Judaism . . .  It is not surprising that a people distinquished by a criterion absent from the defining characteristics of all other peoples should also have a history which was different from that of other nations.

The distinctiveness of the Jewish people as a historic national entity began to be blurred some two hundred years ago.  Until then a Jew who cst off the yoke of Torah and Mitzvoth usually recognized that he thereby loosened his ties with the Jewish people.  The innovation of recent generations is that phenomonon of Jews - a great number of them, and today the vast majoirty of those considered Jews - who have abandoned the Jewish way of life without severing themselves from their people.  There is no authentic "Jewish" content to their lives that might distinquish them from that of Gentiles.  Nevertheless, they continue to regard themselves as Jews, to present themselves as Jews and to by regarded as such by others.  Consequently, a question that was hitherto meaningless arises: who is a Jew?  Who and what is "the Jewish people" with which they are affiliated?  Not only is there today no Jewish national identity that actually distinquishes a Jew from a Gentile, but even among those held to be Jews, the common the common constitutive element that would render them one people is lacking.  Jews who abide by Torah and Mitzvoth and Jews who have cast off their yoke cannot dine at the same table, have difficulty working together (Sabbath), and even marriage between them is problematic when both parties do not agree to observance of the laws relating to "purity of the family."  Thus the appeal to national solidarity of all Jews is nowadays merely verbal and declaratory.  It reflects no living reality. . . 

In our times we lack an objective criterion, independent of the subjective beliefs, views, and opinions of those who apply it, to determine whether someone is a Jew.  In other words, we have no mark by which to define Jewish identity today. . .

Am I overreaching in thinking this is Professor Leibowitz's scholarly way of saying that "the Jewish nation" and its "national right to self-determination" is a self-licking ice cream cone?   I must be too simplistic in this thought.  I need to read more and think more, though I notice that Leibowitz went on to write:

There is no greater opposition than that between the conception of Am Segulah (a chosen people) as implying subjection to an obligation and Am Segulah as purely a privilege.  He who empties the concept of the Jewish people of its religious content (like David Ben Gurion) and still describes it as  Am Segulah turns this concept into an expression of racisst chauvinism.

Is that what Zionism has turned into - racist chauvinism? 

Major storm heading our way at 10 p.m. as I stop typing these notes.  I have my old boom box which receives AM as well as FM radio stations on the kitchen counter along with a hurricane lamp.  On the end table next to the recliner I have a flashlight and a battery-powered lantern.  iPhone, laptop, and Apple Watch all maximally charged.  Keeping my fingers crossed that we won't have a power outage, but I'm nervous about it, remembering the 27-hour power loss we had a couple of years ago.  Lilly has been very nervous, seeking reassurance and wanting to go outside for no reason.  Does she sense the atmospheric pressure dropping?  Also, it's 83℉ outside at 10:30!  I'll turn the lights out but I suspect I won't get much sleep until this monster blows past us.  Keeping my fingers crossed for minimal tree damage.

Tornado warning/sighting at Aztalan State Park in Jefferson County with its fascinating Indian mounds.  Residents of Lake Mills and Johnson Creek are being warned to head for their basements now.  60 mph wind gusts.