- Aug 3, 2014
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I'm sure we will all have very different memories. I'm not opening this up with the idea that I want to debate people. Only that I would like to reflect, and would like to reflect on the reflections of others.
Personally, 2025 was an amazing year for me privately. The word miraculous comes to mind. I have a fantastic team of doctors that made amazing strides both with my physical health and my mental health. After years of being disabled, I have returned to part time work. But that's not even the half of it. The improvement in my emotional state of mind has been... breathtaking. It's as though I have been sitting in the dark, and someone came and opened the door, and the light is streaming in. I think I will look back at 2025 as the year when the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis.
In stark contrast, what I have seen go on in the world around me has been terrifying. I have watched my country slip deeper into tyranny and empire. I have wept over the middle east. I have been witness to a rise in demonization of "the other" to a degree I previously only read about in books.
Some of that has hit me personally in a very real and deeply frightening way. The rise in antisemitism has been going on for many years, but 2025 was particularly bad. We had the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home during Passover, a politician who had made his Conservative Judaism an integral part of his political identity. On Yom Kippur, a terrorist drove his car into a crowd outside a Manchester synagogue before continuing in with a knife. It was only a couple weeks ago on the first day of Hanukkah that a father/son terrorist team shot up the Jewish crowd on Bondi Beach. I remember putting my head into my hands and asking my friend, "Are we ever going to have Jewish holidays anymore where we don't have dead Jews?"
Some day, my great grandchildren will be reading about this in their textbooks. I want them to know the truth. That's the reason that I filed a police report about the swastika carved into the wall--not because I think the cops will catch the guy, but because I know the FBI collects those statistics.
The day is going to come when my great grandkids say to me, "Bubbe, where were you when the Supreme Court ruled that Presidents need not obey the law? Where were you when separation of powers was thrown out the window? Where were you when Christian Nationalists were undermining freedom of religion? Where were you when Trump spoke of acquiring Greenland and the Panama canal and the American Riviera in Gaza and Canada being the 51st state? Where were you when he attacked Venezuela to acquire oil?" And I can say to them, "Here I am. You see me in this picture. That's me screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming my warning to anyone who would listen: No Kings."
Personally, 2025 was an amazing year for me privately. The word miraculous comes to mind. I have a fantastic team of doctors that made amazing strides both with my physical health and my mental health. After years of being disabled, I have returned to part time work. But that's not even the half of it. The improvement in my emotional state of mind has been... breathtaking. It's as though I have been sitting in the dark, and someone came and opened the door, and the light is streaming in. I think I will look back at 2025 as the year when the butterfly emerged from the chrysalis.
In stark contrast, what I have seen go on in the world around me has been terrifying. I have watched my country slip deeper into tyranny and empire. I have wept over the middle east. I have been witness to a rise in demonization of "the other" to a degree I previously only read about in books.
Some of that has hit me personally in a very real and deeply frightening way. The rise in antisemitism has been going on for many years, but 2025 was particularly bad. We had the firebombing of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home during Passover, a politician who had made his Conservative Judaism an integral part of his political identity. On Yom Kippur, a terrorist drove his car into a crowd outside a Manchester synagogue before continuing in with a knife. It was only a couple weeks ago on the first day of Hanukkah that a father/son terrorist team shot up the Jewish crowd on Bondi Beach. I remember putting my head into my hands and asking my friend, "Are we ever going to have Jewish holidays anymore where we don't have dead Jews?"
Some day, my great grandchildren will be reading about this in their textbooks. I want them to know the truth. That's the reason that I filed a police report about the swastika carved into the wall--not because I think the cops will catch the guy, but because I know the FBI collects those statistics.
The day is going to come when my great grandkids say to me, "Bubbe, where were you when the Supreme Court ruled that Presidents need not obey the law? Where were you when separation of powers was thrown out the window? Where were you when Christian Nationalists were undermining freedom of religion? Where were you when Trump spoke of acquiring Greenland and the Panama canal and the American Riviera in Gaza and Canada being the 51st state? Where were you when he attacked Venezuela to acquire oil?" And I can say to them, "Here I am. You see me in this picture. That's me screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming my warning to anyone who would listen: No Kings."
