There really is a difficult post to write. I also know for writing it I will receive hate mail and be vilified. But as someone who spent my Judy Blume years until my late 40s living in Lower Merion I am watching here and there on the sidelines as this craziness to ME evolves and continues. And it is so ugly.

So yes, the limited commentary in this post is opinion based. It doesn’t make me an antisemite for asking the questions, but to the people on this crusade it will. I’m sorry I do not feel I can be responsible for their feelings. I’m honestly not sure that anyone should be responsible for their feelings. I think they ask a lot of people and I think they’re making demands that might not necessarily be fair to everyone.

I started thinking about this yesterday when I was sent these screenshots:

The person who sent me the screenshots said to me and I quote :

They truly don’t understand that humanism is not anti-Semitism.

Then came all this stuff about a gift from a student in I guess Lower Merion High School (screenshot is above and below in the gallery along with comments.)

According to school district spokesperson Amy Buckman, the gift (a handmade piece of pottery) that was created by a former student when they were 15….and it was given to said teacher 17 years ago. The information is it’s been there for 17 years. Without incident until the witch-hunts started.

Oh and the student artist is Jewish. It was a gift to a beloved teacher, and now these people in their zeal for whatever their glory is they are seeking are trying to make it into something ugly and dirty, and I have a problem with that. So I will post what the school district had to say, and they were going to ask the teacher to take it down, although it is sat in a classroom since it was given as a gift with no problem.

So this is what I don’t understand. And it’s pretty simple. Do these people actually understand what antisemitism is and I know they’re going to hop all over me because they’re Jewish and I’m not and I know nothing according to them, but I do know what antisemitism is and a teacher displaying a pot with a star of David and other symbols created by Jewish student is not antisemitism. It was that student’s artistic expression. He was interpreting things as someone who is Jewish and was he wrong? I don’t think we can be the judge of that. I don’t think they can be the judge of that. It was a gift given in caring to a teacher. I don’t understand how these parents can’t focus on the fact that this is a teacher that a student thought so well of, they gave them this gift.

Two Jews, Three Opinions in the Age of Online Rage

And I think the thing that is getting to me the most and Lower Merion is all of this infighting. I don’t know how else to sum it up as it’s Jewish people fighting with Jewish people over who’s a better Jewish person. I think that’s God’s judgment, or maybe a rabbi’s for interpretation, but not everyone else.

But these people are turning Lower Merion into a sea of ugly. And I also think because it all surrounds the school district and the upcoming school board races that it also has to do with politics. These people don’t like the Democrats and they’re pushing a more Trumpian agenda and I think that is what is behind a lot of of this and I think that’s flat out wrong.

Now, I will be honest and say that I think a balance of both parties on a school board is something that’s a good thing but that’s just my personal preference. But given the way extremes and politics seems to rule the day. I don’t know what works anymore. I just think it has to be the right candidates. This is another office where I almost wish that people could run for school board without a party affiliation so you could just judge the person by their qualifications etc.

However, with politics, especially in Lower Merion it has always been whomever gets all the toys wins, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that is a good thing. But I think it’s really duplicitous to post a slate of Republican candidates for school board under a window with a star of David for a visual when you don’t even know anything about them and they’re not identified as being Republican.

Oh and on the GOP slate running for office is a high school student from Harriton. My gut instinct says he really wants to make a difference, but he’s being used by the adults around him. He’s like a more annoying Alex P. Keaton without the wit and depth of that TV character as portrayed by Michael J. Fox.

Now I think it’s a great idea to have high school representatives to the school board, but we went through this in Great Valley a few years ago where some extremism woman put her daughter up who was a teenager in college for school board. Her teenager never really went anywhere. Everybody laughed at it and the girl lost miserably. The mother then also tried to run for state representative unsuccessfully, and school board unsuccessfully in her own right. And we think that was what it was all about: just her ideals and ambition not actually her daughter’s.

People don’t seem to understand that while it’s great to have kids as representatives to the school board from high schools wherever they live, these are kids. They’re not emancipated minors, paying taxes and living in their own homes and paying for everything they’re at a stage of their life where OK maybe they have jobs after school and what not but they’re being supported by their parents. Their hearts might be in the right place, but they lack the expertise and real life experience to serve in anything other than a student representative capacity.

I don’t really have anything more to say. I have admitted since the first word in this post that I am out of my depth here because I am not Jewish. But I do care, and I wish these people could just meet and lay down their weapons and their keyboards and try a humanist approach. After all together, they could achieve real good. But this crusade of everything is antisemitic mixed with Trumpian politics isn’t working and it diminishes in my mind again as a mere mortal and a shiksa what antisemitism really means.

May we merit to bring about the day when war and bloodshed cease,

and a great peace embraces the whole universe.

“No nation will lift up a sword to another,

and the art of war will no longer be studied.” (Isaiah 2:4 )

May we live to see the leaders of all the nations

inspired to do good with their peoples

and with all other peoples of the world,

bringing about the fulfillment of the Scriptural blessing,

“I will bring peace to the Earth,

and you will lie down with no one to terrify you,

and I will bring calm to all vicious creatures on Earth,

and the sword will no longer pass in your Land.” (Leviticus 26:6)

~Rabbi Hillel Lavery-Yisraëli

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BUT WAIT!!! THERE’S MORE!

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An unfortunate post-script to this post is how folks in Lower Merion who make people’s lives hell over these topics just can’t help themselves:

And they keep on sending in their nasty comments. This latest one? Oh my. Not a paper, a blog. Merely expressed my opinions, which they do not like. Also, not doxxing, they chose to write to my blog.

And now the other comments. I love being told I can’t say anything because I am not them, essentially. And golly gee whilikers, I am sophomoric at best according to a mansplainer, yet they all can’t stop reading this? Thank you kindly, to the nice lady who gets my post. These people are putting this stuff out everywhere and expect people to accept what they say as just gospel and well heaven forbid you don’t. And yes Harry darling, I am a shiksa, yawn, we have already established this.

And the hits they keep on coming. This is fascinating and another excellent study in mob mentality on Facebook. Like the guy above who thought he would incite me because he mentioned Israel wasn’t at the Pope’s funeral? I mean for real? Am I supposed to have a fit of the vapors and start waving my rosary beads around and spraying the internet with Holy Water?

Then there was this:

Say what? Another unsolicited private message from him and yes there have been others. Usually trying to get me to share his posts. This isn’t on Facebook and he and others have been beating this drum, wanting their manufactured issues (can I call it propaganda?) out there, but because my opinion is different from what is acceptable in their social media echo chambers it’s bad? I ignored the comment (and my sources tell me this guy is still on some kind of cruise to Iceland and this is what he’s doing with his time?) so then he had to write this blog:

And then this:

Gerry, Gerry, Gerry I am not publishing anonymously. And his or her? That’s actually funny. Every post is signed AND besides YOU KNOW MY NAME. And no, my blog page is not a group on Facebook, it’s a page, and so what if I point out the distinction? It’s public and you see it, unless of course I remove you which is my right, just like if I decide I don’t want more hate mail from someone I can restrict that and what’s the big deal? Also, none of these screenshots have been shared by me on Facebook.

Oh but wait, he got a very funny reply:

Then there was this:

Gerry has a son (who knew?) who didn’t like another topic I wrote about. Now more people are reading this blog….so thank you son of Gerry.

And this guy Todd Hall. I was waiting for this. Oh gosh someone brought up the Save Ardmore Coalition. Shockers. I am proud of my part in the ORIGINAL Save Ardmore Coalition. We did a lot of good, cool stuff, and stopped eminent domain for private gain in Ardmore and marched alongside Susett Kelo in Washington DC. But his facts are skewed. I spent most of my life in Lower Merion but yes I did move. My husband is from Chester County. I love Chester County so when he said he was not willing to live on the Main Line of today because it wasn’t his scene, I was fine with that. I mean I get it because all of these nouveau Main Line people who live in the nasty echo chambers of Facebook who live in especially Lower Merion today? Not my country, not my people.

Next the person who claims I did bad bad things only I do not have a clue as to meeting them but they are ok slandering me? Ok honey, get your 60 seconds of Fakebook fame, you obviously need it:

Every hour of every day someone somewhere is sharing screenshots from Facebook on Facebook. But when I do it, it’s bad.

And the saddest thing of all? Because these people have had their vitriol and nastiness and intolerance exposed, they are on the war path and miss the point of what I wrote in the first place. But they can have their sad bubbles and echo chambers of nastiness. It’s their right to behave like savages I suppose, but they seriously expect people to just take their abuse? And these are the people who will holler to the rooftops about bullying in the schools? Gosh where do they think the kids learned it from?

These people have taken a sensitive topic and weaponized it against even people of their own faith. I think that is really sad.