I am a Jew. I am not a good or a bad one, just a Jew. It is my tribe, thousands and thousands of years old. We have a history of being persecuted that is burned in our DNA. I am not going to become a Wiki-expert in this era of fake news, an idea I don’t quite understand anyway. It’s just me.

Somewhere along the way, with my surprising affinity for the practice of Zen, I understood the nature of the impermanence of all things and fighting this inevitability being the root of all our suffering. As if that wasn’t shocking enough, we are all connected to each other, those before, those here and now, played out into the endless future. Wait a minute! Have I switched from the Jewish God to the Buddha? I was never attracted to the idea of being The Chosen People. There is a formula for disaster in my people actually believing this blatant admission, a lethal vanity. Look around today at all the religions that profess to be superior to their neighbor’s. Which one is the right one and the answer is not one.

I wish I could simply stay on point, but my mind always gets in the way of my thoughts. A couple of weeks ago, I started thinking about my people and how they suffered unspeakable, unimaginable tragedies at the hands of the Nazis. There are still some of us with faded numbers tattooed on our arms. Take a look at the huge ditches, piled high with the emaciated corpses of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and mentally and physically challenged human beings, discovered in hell with names like Auschwitz. Zen says we are today connected to everyone single one of those tortured souls. Anne Frank is my baby sister and what am I to do today?

Why has every dominant society flourished and failed? Power is a special kind of intoxication, a poisonous formula that always destroys the addicted. Wealth and power is how every fool thinks they will vanquish their inevitable impermanence. This perversity is further distorted by blaming those they have castrated and made into slaves. Every dominant society has chewed up every obstacle in its way, destroying civilizations and cultures and forcing human beings into barbaric servitude.

I am not sure why the study of history is considered a discipline. I think one of the ideas of education is that in studying our patterns of behavior, we learn, we learn to look at the consequences of our actions and change is the only way to breed change. My syllabus for Stupidity 101 is rather simple: same shit in-same shit out and every dominant society gets an A+.

Have I mentioned I’m a Jew? My people are very proud, always have been. Education and the arts are how we distinguished ourselves over the millennia. I have no idea why, just like I don’t know why we are fairly crappy basketball players and linebackers. We were often merchants and money lenders and for the record, I am broke. The Germans were humiliated after WWI, one of wars many blessings. They had no future, feeling spiritually bankrupt by the knee jerk victors. I can’t wait for someone to explain to me how anyone wins a war. I probably should make it the only term paper for Stupidity 101. It is very important for blame to be laid at the feet of anyone other than ourselves.

You know no countries wanted to take the Jews from their certain death at the hands of Germans? The Nazi lurks within the darkness of all our souls. The United States is responsible for creating the global cesspool that is overflowing in every part of the world. Dictators are lining their pockets with gold, while their people live in hopelessness and fear. Politicians are ascending to the thrones of power, put there by good people who are dying to blame others for circumstances they have either created or tolerated.

I am a Jew and these are now dangerous times. We have allowed ourselves to be robbed by the power elite, who own our system. All of us are part of some kind of nightmare board game and we are all in jail with no dice to throw. My friends, if anger and mistrust are your fuel, you will ride over the cliff like every society that has preceded this one.

In 1969, I bought a brand new, red VW Beetle and my mother was very upset. I loved that car and still miss it. Is there anyone who understands that if we keep acting the way we have always acted, the results will be the same? Do you understand we have got to take care of each other? Do you understand that being different doesn’t make you better or worse, just different.

Everyone of you is going to die, some sooner than others, some by surprise and others with some kind of strange notice. Please, don’t get upset or think I am an asshole for saying this. Every fucken day could be your last and what is it that is so goddamn important that makes you want to hate a Jew like me?

One last thing, please feel free to substitute Muslim for Jew. The supposed cradle of our civilization is home to my people and my Muslim brothers and sisters, who have lived in that neighborhood for thousands of years. Peace is the only answer and someone will have to turn the other cheek, which is the only way violence can fail. This is all I would teach in Stupidity 101.

I am sorry, I already know this is far too many words for our new media and if you have gotten this far, thank you for hanging in. Most of the time, I love to joke about being Jewish, probably in the way many African Americans take well earned liberties in their humor. In my country, I smell the Aryan stench and it sickens me, which is what made me look for that star in the first place. History repeats itself because we allow it.

Rest in peace Anne Frank and Emmet Till.

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