OPINION

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OPINION

I Can Go Out, If I Want

The subject line of the email read “POKER!” There could be no clearer signal that the time has come Dave Schechter to emerge, From Where I Sit however hesitantly, from 15 months of relatively self-enforced isolation because of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus.

If a half-dozen or so double-vaxxed, roughly middle-aged guys feel comfortable sitting around a table for two or three hours, with libations and snacks, kibbitzing throughout, then things are getting better.

I am not a skilled poker player. I constantly ask for a refresher on the rules of whatever variety of poker the dealer has chosen. I bluff tentatively or not at all. I usually donate to others’ winnings.

All of which is irrelevant to enjoying the game.

One year ago, I wrote in this space: “I miss knowing that I can go out as much as actually going out.” I was potentially immunocompromised and nearing a birthday that would move me into a second COVID-19 risk category as determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In truth, I wasn’t that disturbed. “As an introvert and someone who writes from an office at home, being told to shelter in place felt like being told to keep calm and carry on,” I wrote.

The headline atop that column — “Social Distancing Before It was Cool” — came from a line in a column in the Miami Herald by self-identified introvert Leonard Pitts Jr. “There is a spirited back and forth on social media these days between extroverts bouncing off walls and introverts discovering they had a superpower all this time and didn’t even know it,” Pitts wrote.

A year and two injections of the Moderna vaccine later, I am adjusting to the idea that I can go out, if I want.

In my last column, I discussed the anniversary weekend trip that Audrey and I enjoyed in the Columbus, Ga., area. Since then, the boys and I were among 20,000 fans at Atlanta United’s first home game this season. Attendance was limited to half of capacity in the lower two sections of the MercedesBenz Stadium and physically distanced.

The regular usher in our section, “Janet,” and I greeted each other with fist bumps. She spent much of the next two hours walking up and down the stairs holding a sign that reminded fans to keep their masks on when not eating or drinking. From what I observed, the vast majority of fans complied. Mercedes-Benz is an indoor space and, in such environments, I will continue to wear a mask, until the CDC recommends otherwise.

According to the CDC, as of May 1, 34.9 percent of Georgians had received at least one dose of vaccine and 24.4 percent of its population had been fully vaccinated. Based on the rate at which Georgians were being vaccinated, the CDC estimated that it will be Feb. 6, 2022, until 50 percent of the state’s residents are fully vaccinated.

You read that right. The “good news” is that Georgia no longer ranks last among the states in the percentage of its population fully vaccinated; Mississippi, Utah and Alabama trail. That is why, even with a vaccine said to be 95 percent effective at preventing sickness, I will carry a mask when, and if, I go out.

In a recent article in The Atlantic magazine, a staff writer interviewed two of her colleagues, one an extrovert and the other an introvert, about how each viewed their pending return to social activity. I understood well what the introvert meant when she said: “I think small talk is the tax that God exacted for the privilege of human speech.”

Pandemic life had to be more difficult for extroverts, who are energized by their interactions with other people.

Now, as doors that have been closed are flung open, extroverts are looking forward to plunging back into the social milieu, while introverts hope they can regulate their exposure to situations in which they feel a lack of control.

I welcome the return to Atlanta United games, to the poker table, to a meal or a cup of coffee with friends I have seen only on Zoom calls, and the pleasures that again are possible because of vaccines against a disease that should have taught all of us to value the time we spend alone — and the time we spend with others. ì

Letters to the Editor

The AJT welcomes your letters. We want our readers to have an opportunity to engage with our community in constructive dialogue. If you would like your letter to be published, please write 200 words or less, include your name, phone number and email, and send it to editor@atljewishtimes.com.

Letter to the editor,

Egypt, Jordan and Israel all benefited somewhat from the bilateral peace treaties they signed. But those treaties did not produce warm relations between the signatories, nor did they have any effect on the Israel-Palestinian impasse. The problem is what it has always been. The Palestinian leaders are more interested in destroying the world’s only Jewish state than in building a state in which the people they govern could become productive citizens. The difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority is strictly tactical. Hamas makes no pretense of being willing to negotiate and stages attacks against Israeli population centers. The PA talks of peace but urges its people to “violently resist the Occupation (sic),” rewarding those who answer the call by granting generous stipends to the murderers (and/or their families). Both Hamas and the PA insist that Israel must take in millions of Palestine refugees and give them the homes they claim their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents … lost when Arab violence failed to prevent Israel’s rebirth in the Jews’ ancestral homeland.

Talk of a Two State Solution is meaningless, unless it is specified that the states will be a Palestinian state willing to co-exist, peacefully, with the nation-state of the Jews. The Palestinian leadership needs to take concrete steps to prove that they are sincere in this aspiration. They need to work to stop the attacks (whether by “state actors” or “lone wolves”), negotiate on borders (realizing that Palestinians, not only Israel, will need to make concessions), actively work to reverse the anti-Jewish rhetoric they’ve been spewing for generations, and start building the infrastructure needed by a viable state.

Toby F. Block, Atlanta

Letter to the editor,

I recently had the good fortune to commune with the distinguished Mr. Rodney Mims Cook Jr., whose name is familiar to Atlanta families for its affiliation with the civil rights movement, among other accomplishments.

I reached out to Mr. Cook Jr. with regard to the dedication plaque at the Millennium Gate in Atlantic Station, specifically, about how that dedication plaque declares Jesus as The Christ, and details how the arch itself is modeled after the Roman Arch of Titus, which is famous for its relief of Romans sacking and pillaging The Temple in Jerusalem.

I asked Mr. Cook Jr. why – in the metro area that saw the lynching of Leo Frank, the resurgence of the KKK and the subsequent rise of the ADL, the metro area that endured the bombing of The Temple, and which is still home to one of the largest populations of Jews in the United States – there is a monument and a dedication that celebrates the decimation of the Holy of Holies and declares Jesus to be The Christ.

For his part, Mr. Cook Jr. was the model of decorum and grace. He detailed his own experiences with injustice and spoke about the exhibits within the museum itself (there is a museum within the arch, which is currently closed due to COVID restrictions) that highlight some important moments in Atlanta’s Jewish history. (Certain exhibits were even assisted by The Bremen Museum).

I am appreciative of these exhibits. It’s important that the rich (and sometimes harrowing) history of Jewish Georgia be told. But not every visitor to the arch is going to buy a ticket to the museum. All, however, will see the dedication declaring Jesus as The Christ, will learn how the arch is modeled after the Arch of Titus, and will read about how Western civilization owes itself and its accomplishments to the ancient Romans, Greeks and Egyptians.

While it is inarguably true that ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt had immeasurable impacts on Western thought, it can easily be argued that other cultures and civilizations, including our own, made contributions equally as influential. The Bible, the Ten Commandments, the moral and ethical foundations to our laws and justice system, and even Jesus himself – the West owes all this and more to the influence of the Jews. And yet, society, schools, and even local monuments continue to focus on the achievements of those who conquered, enslaved and even murdered those who did not conform.

History continues to be written by the victors, I suppose.

For his part, Mr. Cook Jr. says the monument is a private one, and that the references to Jesus as Christ are appropriate, because the Gregorian calendar Westerners use, established by the Catholic Church, is based around the life of Jesus. My counterpoint that historians are now acknowledging that such a Christian-centric dating style is inappropriate and are switching from B.C./A.D. to B.C.E. and C.E. designations fell on very respectful, deaf ears.

So will the dedication plaque at Millennium Gate, which declares Jesus The Christ, models itself after the tragedies we lament at Tisha B’Av, and declares that some of history’s most oppressive regimes are the ones to which America owes its greatness, be changed?

Probably not.

But the victory, fellow Jews, remains ours.

Because ancient Rome, Greece and Egypt all fell.

But we’re still here.

We still have a voice, and we still have a vote. And I’ll take my voice and my vote over a monument any day. L’chaim!

Erin Miller, Marietta

Letter to the editor,

A new scientific survey conducted by the University of Arkansas and described in Tablet magazine (3/29/21) reveals that the long-held belief by liberals that education reduces antisemitism is false; in fact, education in America increases antisemitism. (“Are Educated People More Antisemitic?” by Jay P. Greene, distinguished professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas; Albert Cheng, assistant professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas; and Ian Kingsbury, who received his doctorate from the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas and is a fellow at the Empire Center for public policy in New York).

Clearly the antisemitism that has infected American higher education for decades has had its desired effect.

Professor Cary Nelson of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in his widely acclaimed treatise, “Israel Denial: Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism, & the Faculty Campaign Against the Jewish State” (2019) makes clear that on many campuses in America for a professor to fail to loudly and publicly condemn the existence of the only Jewish country in the world, Israel, is to strike the death knell to his or her career.

In January 1942 at least half the men sitting around the conference table at Wannsee, Germany planning Auschwitz and the rest of the Final Solution of the Jews had doctoral degrees. Does the Arkansas survey, which makes clear that one becomes more antisemitic as one becomes more educated in America, foreshadow a similar group of “educated” individuals making similar decisions for Jews in America’s future?

Richard Sherman, Margate, Fla.

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