To bigotry no sanction

Posted on 2019/08/18 by davka

said the original George W.

On August 18, 1790, the orig­i­nal George W. penned eight con­se­quen­tial words that don’t receive suf­fi­cient rep­e­ti­tion. The words were not orig­i­nal­ly his. He mir­rored the text of a let­ter deliv­ered to him ear­li­er that day in New­port, Rhode Island by Moses Seixas that described the new Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment as one that is:

gen­er­ous­ly afford­ing to All lib­er­ty of con­science, and immu­ni­ties of Cit­i­zen­ship: deem­ing every one, of what­ev­er Nation, tongue, or lan­guage, equal parts of the great gov­ern­men­tal Machine

How­ev­er, the most famous phrase and the por­tion that Wash­ing­ton repeat­ed described the Gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, which gives:

to big­otry no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assistance

George Wash­ing­ton’s handwriting

You can see the full orig­i­nal let­ter here.

Amaz­ing­ly enough, as of Decem­ber 2010, the where­abouts of this essen­tial doc­u­ment, guar­an­tee­ing tol­er­ance in Amer­i­ca, was unknown! The For­ward tracked down its loca­tion and wrote about in an arti­cle by Paul Berg­er in June of 2011.

In March of 2017 at the annu­al con­ven­tion of the Cen­tral Con­fer­ence of Amer­i­can Rab­bis in Atlanta, GA I saw a col­league wear­ing a but­ton with this famous text. I tracked it down and recent­ly pur­chased one for myself. I wear it reg­u­lar­ly. I’ve since bought more to give to oth­ers who appre­ci­ate it.

The but­ton has an inter­est­ing back­sto­ry. I con­tact­ed the rab­bi who wore the but­ton at the con­ven­tion. She told me that her can­to­r­i­al soloist had giv­en her the but­ton and that it had been pur­chased on Zazzle.com. Search­ing for the phrase I was able to find the but­ton there and bought one for myself. There I learned that the but­ton was made by a woman named Eri­ca Schultz Yakovetz. I tracked her down on Zaz­zle and asked her about the but­ton. She offered the fol­low­ing expla­na­tion. (Note, we didn’t get anyone’s per­mis­sion to ref­er­ence them by name, how­ev­er, all the posts are pub­lic, so we expect it’s fair game.)

Back on Novem­ber 13, 2016, short­ly after that mis­er­able Elec­tion Day, my friend Andrew Greene in Boston post­ed to Face­book that he would like to see a but­ton made of this quote. [Since post­ing this I have learned from my rab­bi friend’s can­to­r­i­al soloist that Andrew Greene is a for­mer “Zamirnik”. One of the ways he pub­li­cized his friend’s quest to send a pin to every mem­ber of Con­gress was via email to Zamir’s “tut­ti” mall list. So the Zamir Chorale and their net­work played a part in help­ing with the suc­cess of the orig­i­nal Kick­starter cam­paign and order­ing pins.]

As a graph­ic design­er, a com­mit­ted Jew, and an avowed lib­er­al hip­pie, I was hap­py to take up the challenge.

The ini­tial request was just for “To Big­otry No Sanc­tion”, but a mutu­al friend from MIT (Richard Bar­balace) point­ed out that with­out more con­text, a mod­ern read­er might think it was call­ing for no sanc­tions AGAINST big­otry rather than no sanc­tion FOR big­otry. Thus I revised the design to include the sec­ond part of the phrase, “To Per­se­cu­tion No Assis­tance,” and that’s the ver­sion that has moved for­ward.

Short­ly there­after, anoth­er friend of Andrew’s, Yos­si (Joe) Fend­el of Berke­ley, CA, decid­ed that every incom­ing mem­ber of Con­gress and the Sen­ate need­ed one of these pins sent to them in time for the ses­sion open­ing on Jan­u­ary 3, 2017, and set up a Kick­starter to do so

Eighty-two (82) back­ers pledged $1,608 to help bring the project to life. [$1,500 was need­ed for the Kick­starter campaign.

(I placed a bulk order for him for those, of course, so he didn’t end up order­ing 500+ through Zazzle.)

The type­face I chose is a font called Trat­tatel­lo by James Grieshaber (now pro­vid­ed by Apple as a sys­tem font). The back­ground image is, of course, the US Con­sti­tu­tion.

I rarely make rec­om­men­da­tions for items I do not pro­duce myself. How­ev­er, since I have been pur­chas­ing and gift­ing copies of this but­ton to peo­ple I encounter, and they have been giv­en to each mem­ber of con­gress, I encour­age you to buy some for your­self to offer as gifts in this big­ot­ed and per­se­cu­tion-filled time.

The best way to pur­chase mul­ti­ple copies is direct­ly from Eri­ca Schultz Yakovetz at her Etsy site.

to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance. G. Washington
to big­otry no sanction
DateNovem­ber 14, 2017
Size2″ square
Pin Formclasp
Print Methodcel­lu­loid
TextTO BIGOTRY
NO SANCTION,
TO PERSECUTION
NO ASSISTANCE
~G. Wash­ing­ton

from “Commander in Chief” to “Bigot in Chief”

Recent com­ments by the cur­rent pres­i­dent have caused numer­ous main­stream press out­lets from around the coun­try to call out his behavior.

Houston Chronicle eEdition; July 16, 2019

The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board; July 14, 2019

Minneapolis, Minnesota Star Tribune; July 15, 2019

The Syracuse, NY Post-Standard; July 15, 2019

The Washington Post; July 15 2019

The Day of New London, Connecticut; July 15. 2019

The Daily News of Bangor, Maine; July 16, 2019

The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer; July 16, 2019

And it con­tin­ues. More recent­ly, the for­mer Con­gress­man Joe Walsh has a piece in The New York Times (August 14), mak­ing the case for a GOP chal­lenger to Trump. It’s part con­fes­sion­al and part indictment.

In Mr. Trump, I see the worst and ugli­est iter­a­tion of views I expressed for the bet­ter part of a decade. To be sure, I’ve had my share of con­tro­ver­sy. On more than one occa­sion, I ques­tioned Mr. Obama’s truth­ful­ness about his reli­gion. At times, I expressed hate for my polit­i­cal oppo­nents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our pol­i­tics for per­son­al attacks like that, and I regret mak­ing them….

The fact is, Mr. Trump is a racial arson­ist who encour­ages big­otry and xeno­pho­bia to rouse his base and advance his elec­toral prospects. In this, he inspires imitators.

Remember, only you can prevent (metaphorical) forest fires, and each of us can proclaim (even on our lapels), as the first Commander in Chief wrote:

…to big­otry no sanc­tion, to per­se­cu­tion no assistance

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple.

I have arranged for the col­lec­tion to be acquired by an appro­pri­ate muse­um (more about this later).

You can see most of the but­tons shared to date.

Posted in judaica, lapel buttons, politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A Growing Haggadah (2019)

Posted on 2019/04/16 by davka

New edition available for download

With Avigail’s edi­to­r­i­al involve­ment, the longer fal­low peri­ods between edi­tions of this Hag­gadah have short­ened. The pre­vi­ous print­ed edi­tion is only 2 years old. Before that, they were fur­ther years apart. While I remain fair­ly sat­is­fied, I am not com­pla­cent. I made many changes fol­low­ing Seder 5751 when Avi­gail and I vis­it­ed Reed to see if she want­ed to study there. The 2005 changes (though small) were sig­nif­i­cant and were at her insti­ga­tion. Avi­gail men­tioned at the end of Seder in 2009 that the time for a new edi­tion had arrived and she want­ed to help edit it (2010 edi­tion) and then the two of us reworked the text in 2015 and updat­ed it for gen­der ambi­gu­i­ty in 2016 which has been increased for the 2019 edi­tion). In recog­ni­tion of this, and her full par­tic­i­pa­tion in the task (both in writ­ing, edit­ing and mak­ing oth­er, often struc­tur­al sug­ges­tions), her name appears on the cover.

This is now a three-gen­er­a­tion Hag­gadah. I brought the box­es Jay had labeled “Passover” and “Hag­gadah” to Poway from Los Ange­les in 1989, a year after our return to Cal­i­for­nia. In those box­es were Hag­gadot and oth­er mate­ri­als Dad had col­lect­ed begin­ning in the ear­ly ’50s. Some of those tid­bits found their way into this Hag­gadah. This text has moved on. Dad’s gar­den was extreme­ly fer­tile; his pres­ence still hov­ers over this Hag­gadah. Actu­al­ly, it might nev­er have exist­ed were it not for the “HHH” (Hurvitz’s Human­ist Hag­gadah). When I last skimmed that work (now many years back) I noticed lit­tle of it still appar­ent in this one (at this point, hard­ly even the Neertza, though I have restored some of the “bit­ter­ness” he expe­ri­enced). Mom’s last type­script of Dad’s final edi­tion is dat­ed 1968, more than fifty years ago!

When I first start­ed the project in this form (a “fam­i­ly” rather than a “com­mu­ni­ty” Hag­gadah) Anne was a lit­tle girl and the only child reg­u­lar­ly at the Seder. My approach was to adults. Anne now returns to her fam­i­ly Seder as an adult. Avi­gail, Noam, and Nora are adults and more than old enough to ask the four ques­tions (a new gen­er­a­tion has begun to take their place). This year, Avi­gail will host our Seder where Nora will join us, Noam and his fam­i­ly will be in Cincin­nati with a dif­fer­ent clus­ter. Avi­gail con­tributed a cinquain which she wrote dur­ing Seder in 1991. In 1998, as I did the paste-up she asked if she could help. Both she and Noam past­ed in most of the graph­ics that year. A grow­ing Hag­gadah con­tin­ues to grow in dif­fer­ent ways. In 2016 I pro­duced “My Very Own Grow­ing Hag­gadah” which con­sists almost entire­ly of indi­vid­ual pages with the head­ing from the medieval table of con­tents fol­lowed by a text such as: “What words, shapes, col­ors, and sounds do you imag­ine when you think of bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er?” and “What words, shapes, colors,to and sounds do you imag­ine when the Matzah breaks?” By now and for many years, since the entire Hag­gadah is on the com­put­er, I’ve done all final edit­ing myself. Avi­gail and Noam now ask dif­fer­ent ques­tions that grow out of the text. Many of the new changes are respons­es to them. A num­ber of years ago Noam arranged for an ISB­Num­ber which I had hoped might facil­i­tate dis­tri­b­u­tion. Avi­gail used this text as the basis for a Hag­gadah used by stu­dents at Reed in 2003 and Noam used it as the basis for a dif­fer­ent Hag­gadah at Hamp­shire when he stud­ied there. Most of the new mate­r­i­al in the 2019 edi­tion appears in a rewrit­ing of the fourth cup… the cup of accep­tance. I deeply appre­ci­ate the thought­ful respons­es to the ideas pre­sent­ed there sought from and offered by Jay and Yoav Schaefer.

Why matzah?

The traditional explanation goes like this:

Matzah is the sym­bol of the “bread of pover­ty,” that is, the bread that poor peo­ple eat, which our ances­tors ate as slaves in Egypt. It reminds us of the great haste in which our Israelite ances­tors fled from Egypt. So lit­tle time did our ances­tors have to pre­pare food for their escape, that they baked unleav­ened cakes of the dough they had brought out of Egypt.

Does Matzah Grow?

When we lived in Poway, CA, I saw some­thing that looked as though matzah grew out of the side of a tree.

Rabbi Meir ben Tzipporah v’Nechemia haLevi teaches:

Judith came in from the fields where it appeared as though the whole com­mu­ni­ty was out har­vest­ing the new grain crop. The rains had ceased and the ground had dried enough to enable them to walk through the plants and col­lect the ripened sheaves. The stone house still felt damp from the win­ter and she helped her moth­er emp­ty the stor­age urns of the remain­der of the pre­vi­ous year’s grains.

The mois­ture had got­ten into every­thing. They rec­og­nized the aro­ma of slow­ly fer­ment­ing wheat and bar­ley and they did not want the old to con­t­a­m­i­nate the new. Judith’s moth­er even took the lit­tle wad of dough she always removed after knead­ing to put in a cool cov­ered pot to help the next batch rise and added that also to the pile to take out and burn. They were so care­ful that after sweep­ing the stone floor with the palm fronds they took feath­ers and swept out the corners.

Judith thought about how the Chametz puffed up the bread she liked so much, yet con­sid­ered how a sim­i­lar spoilage often puffed her up with pride. She always felt cleansed as she warmed her hands with the heat of the burn­ing Chametz. Both because it remind­ed her of the escape from slav­ery to free­dom, the beau­ty of puri­ty and sim­plic­i­ty and because she knew it would only take a week for her moth­er to cre­ate a new starter, Judith didn’t mind eat­ing the Matzah her moth­er would make with the brand new dough.

a matzah button?!

There are a few but­tons pro­duced for Pesach. Almost all of them are nov­el­ty items. Oth­ers use the ideas of the hol­i­day to make a polit­i­cal point. I’ve writ­ten about some of the polit­i­cal but­tons in the past. This but­ton usu­al­ly draws con­ster­na­tion. It’s a bit hard to dis­cern the image and its intent.

Shmurah Matzah
Shmu­rah Matzah
Date:2010
Size: 5.715
Pin Form:clasp
Print Method:cel­lu­loid
Text[none]

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point, they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see most of the but­tons shared to date.

Posted in family, holidays, judaica, lapel buttons, ritual, what | Tagged , | Leave a comment