Dan Ornstein

From Charleston to Charlottesville to Pittsburgh to Poway to DC to El Paso to Buffalo, each of these people was a victim of racists emboldened by replacement conspiracy myths to commit mass murder. They were victims of a subculture of scapegoating, masterfully repurposed by supremacist politics, politicians and shock jocks seeking to retain their power over an inflamed base, at all costs. They were victims of our ancient, obstinate refusal to be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers.

I cannot locate the origins of this figure of speech. Perhaps it was first used in a comedy sketch many decades ago, but it has since become a catchall for any criticism of a person who busily pursues low priority activities during a crisis. We imagine the eater chowing down on a five-course gourmet meal inside a besieged bunker or settlement as the bullets fly and the bombs fall. In a comical context, we laugh because the meal being eaten with such gusto seems so out of synch with the grave situation at hand. Beneath that laughter, as we all know, is our anxiety that we are witnessing a very unfunny distortion of priorities in dire circumstances.

Twenty years ago, I wrote the following words for Northeast Public Radio in an essay about turning forty.

The phrase, “The Big Ten” is one of the most interesting examples of an American figure of speech whose dual references can be amusing, confusing or both, as I discovered one morning after worship at my synagogue. I had just finished delivering a sermon about “The Big Ten,” my allusion to the biblical Ten Commandments that seemed obvious enough to me, when one of the former presidents of our community approached me.

The Kaaterskill Clove, a million-year-old gorge that reaches depths of 2,500 feet, is a majestic gem of the Catskill Park, the vast wilderness area of the Catskill Mountain range in New York. The Catskills still elicit mixtures of laughter and nostalgia among the diminishing ranks of East Coast Baby Boomers, Jews especially, who grew up vacationing or working in the area during the heyday of its Borscht Belt hotels and resorts that long ago disappeared.

I live on land that I purchased in the city of Albany, New York in 1994.I live on land whose previous owners included African Americans and American Jews who moved to Albany, New York at different times in the late 1970’s and early 80’s.

The photos of my bar mitzvah celebration that arrived in the mail from my parents coincided with the forty fifth anniversary of that celebration. Metaphors, perhaps, for an adolescence I would prefer to forget, the pictures are blurry and poorly composed.

As the indoor restrictions of COVID wore on through 2020 and 2021, my wife and I found new solace and pleasure in hiking the trails of the conservancies and state parks dotting the greater capital district.

With a recent religious fast on the Jewish calendar fast approaching, I was curious to find out how the modern English word, fast, came to mean…

The Barberville Falls in Rensselaer County rush with noisy, furious joy down an imposing, ninety- foot wall of wafer-like stacks of sandstone, limestone…