Hey Anne,
Found this poem in one of Isaac’s boxes. Do you know anything about this woman? Did she really exist? Doubtful huh? 10,000 miles? Not sure anyone would travel 5 miles to visit a loon, except for social workers. Just being real, not mean. I’ve always loved our little brother, but his issues pushed everyone away.
Our ghost, Mr. Shrink, is back again. Poor Isaac!
Be careful, the paper is dried out. Looks like something chewed on it. Wash your hands afterwards!
Lizzy
I felt “watched” whenever the moonlight streamed into my bedroom window at night, paranoid that God used the moon as his lookout – probing me from there with his powerful flashlight. I didn’t want “him” to see what I daydreamed about in my bedroom. Not that it was anything bad or abnormal for a 12 year old, but I didn’t want my parents finding out and meddling in my private stuff.
Is there a primal place within us that is intentionally designed to be perpetually immoral?
Inherent immorality – The perpetually dark aspects of our human nature that we refuse to fully acknowledge, and that cause ongoing disturbances within our personal lives and throughout our societies. We’ve individually and collectively disavowed these aspects of ourselves through various psychological and sociological strategies, setting up an ongoing confrontation between our idealized versions of ourselves and the full reality of our human nature, which continues to operate in whole, despite our attempts to disown aspects of it.
Ambiguous immorality
Immoral has become a watered-down, inconsistently used version of a word that once evoked feelings of fear, shame, and guilt in our religious and social communities. There is no longer a collective consensus as to what it means to be immoral. Just about anything that conflicts with a person’s idea of good behavior, is often referred to or thought of as immoral, without any real understanding of what this word originally referred to. Google “immoral,” and you will see what I mean. Anything from voting for Donald Trump to watching the Superbowl is being referred to as immoral, and this also includes gay marriage, welfare, profanity, genetic engineering, sex education, lying to save your life, closing schools for Jewish holidays, and hundreds of other examples that span a wide spectrum of beliefs.
Having been born in 1960s and raised in a mostly secular environment, I was far removed from the old world Judaism of my grandparents and great grandparents, who immigrated here from the Ukraine. My maternal grandfather and a few distant relatives practiced the traditions with an Orthodox fervor, complete with readings from the Torah and the fulfillment of the prescribed rituals. They understood both the mundane and sacred in what they were reading and practicing, including the Talmudic applications of it. Yet, for me, it was like observing somebody else’s religion or culture. It felt very foreign to me, and to this day it still feels that way to some degree.
Notes from David 