The Thanksgiving Shrieks
Happy Thanksgiving anyway!
My first boss in Soho, NY, once came to me and told me how he loved the Thanksgiving holiday (is it holy?). He was a Greek Jew, a real Sephardi, you know. His family name was Yohai, and I felt that I knew some Kabbalistic secret about his name that even he wasn't aware of. We can rely on you, Rabbi Shimon (bar Yohai) in a difficult, pressing moment… The reason my boss loved Thanksgiving is that it was a holiday void, cleansed of religious significance. “Simply giving thanks” - he said.
For a secular, universal holiday, the pious ritual of eating Turkey feels religious. But in America, it is all about sanitized “universal values”. Passover is about an escape from slavery, Chanukah about those brave freedom fighters. God has no “universal value”, why even mention it?
There is a population explosion of wild turkeys here. It is a very aggressive bird. It will chase and attack you without fear. Breeding made the domesticated bird white, they also bred chickens white. Americans like their meat colored white, unless it’s a woke TV commercial… Those turkeys that are pardoned in the White House every year, not only they are completely white, but they seem perfectly docile like those woke white American men. Maybe the turkeys are on drugs for the ceremony? In the White House ritual, do they pardon a male or female bird? I bet they are female. How does that turkey seats glued to the table, is it even alive to be pardoned?
I think Trump should change the ritual. Instead of pardoning, he should butcher the turkey and served it on his table. Authentic turkey Yom Kippur. That would be badass in character. And fit the authentic MAGA revolution. Turkey Holocaust.
The Shrieks of the Coyotes
There is also an explosion in the coyote population here. Occasionally, you hear mad coyote screams, deep into the night and deep in the woods. There are such loud, heart piercing shrieks, that I sometimes wonder if coyotes got to feast on those wild turkeys. But I never see the evidence of the feast, I think the wild turkeys can defend themselves.
Killed by Indians, starvation, and decease. History can be sanitized, you can whitewash it, you can make the holiday “universal”, but the real life is a tragic Gulag that can only be seen and endured in the context of a heroic, messianic, hyper religious quest. The Promised Land dream, did it soothe, did it ease the pain? I doubt it.