A New Exodus
A New Scroll of LA Jewish News
Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license
Folks
Forseeing a trip to Arizona? I am, an extended one. This week, MegilLA is launching my new serial “Bitter Springs,” the story of a new exodus that is set in the grand chasm state. Though the serial is not about a return to an 1864 near-total-ban on abortion, it is at least as outrageous. More like the postage stamp, the serial will have tons of heated-up landscape, dangerous prickly stuff, and dark canyons to explore. Unlike the stamp, the serial, which will appear in future issues of MegilLA, will have mountains of drama, rocky commentary to be mined, and well-springs of unexpectation; all populated with a multitude of newly “remigrated” Jews. Think of this bit of perforated paper as affixed to my post card from a near and speculative future.
Returning to the present, I need your support to continue stepping into this new territory. If you like what you read, please resend this issue to other readers, and please support MegilLA with your paid subscriptions.
Shabbat Shalom
Edmon J. Rodman
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Bitter Springs, A Dry Serial
Chapter 1
Edmon J. Rodman
My family’s success with escaping persecution lasted only a hundred and ten years. My grandparents, Joseph and Rebecca, had come to the U.S, the goldene medina, in the middle teens of the 20th century from Russia to escape pogroms and possible forced resettlement, and now their story was mine.
They would have never dreamed that a few generations later, their descendants would once again face exile, “remigration” as the government called it, to a distant barren land. Only this time the new “home,” an internment town in Arizona called Bitter Springs, was not frozen; in July it seemed as hot as a falafel ball right out of the oil.
As Jews, over time, we have learned to adapt to desert climes. Given a forty-year march through the desert, we refresh ourselves with water from a rock. Shown a sand dune in the Negev, we see a drip farm. Placed in proximity to a place like Palm Springs, we see ourselves sipping iced rose hip tea by the green.
We also learned how to cry by the waters of Babylon. Yet, nothing prepared us for a government-sponsored all-paid journey into the mile-high heat. Our tradition does tell us to have hope, though. So, I hoped the waves of heat coming off the red rocks were a mirage.
As a child, in the early 1960s, I remembered on a family vacation getting a hair cut in Wickenburg, Arizona. On the drive to the barbershop located on the town’s one-traffic-light main street, my father joked about how I “was going to get scalped” by an Indian barber.
I thought we were mostly beyond that kind of wild west imagery, but it lingers in a boomer-mind that grew up with TV shows like “Rin Tin Tin,” and “Daniel Boone.” Two years into the new presidency, it was the U.S. Federal government that was on the warpath.
By an emergency order of the Department of the Interior, west coast Jews had been strongly “advised” to lease or sell their homes. “For our nation’s safety and for yours,” said the well-targeted bombardment of messaging on social media.
The nation had sleepwalked into a nightmarish presidency, and American Jews had awakened to a dark reality that required sunglasses.
The ADL, who had tracked the rising rates of antisemitism diligently, sued, and the case was heard by the Supreme Court which in an 8-1 decision affirmed that the emergency order passed by congress and signed by the president was entirely kosher.
American Jews quickly discovered that though Fundamentalist Christians loved Israel, many were not that philo-semitic when it came to their American neighbors.
Especially in LA’s incredibly tight real estate market, the government-created exodus was greeted with a huzzah or two.
Some Jews escaped to Mexico before the border closed, or managed to get on flights to Israel before that exit vanished. My family, a victim of our life-long belief in “never again” moved a little too slowly.
There were others who openly resisted, sometimes violently. More Jewish households than anyone had imagined had guns; they were routed or rounded up by ICE, and National Guard regiments from Texas, Arizona and Nevada. A deputized vigilante group called “The Proud Goys” by some of the internees, added a populist patina to the whole affair.
Were there Jews in hiding? We had all heard the stories, and I have a cousin who is hiding out somewhere in a cargo container. But in LA, no one has basements, or attics, and all the granny flats have grannies.
One of our neighbors did offer the space beneath his staircase, but even the ICE people had seen Harry Potter.
One bright sunny LA morning a “special” Uber came for us. There were no flashing lights or sirens, except for the ones that were going off in my head. No neighbor came out to watch.
Our suitcases were tagged and loaded into the van. We were handed a receipt. Before we got in for the drive to the station, my wife and I looked at each other with the eyes of the optionless. Over our many decades together, we had watched the Holocaust documentaries, and movies, had gone to the museums; the piles of shoes and bags left too much to unpack.
But if you are wondering, we didn’t pack our mezuzah. We left it up.
In disarming air-conditioned comfort, the majority were taken by bus, train, and plane to northeastern Arizona, near Window Rock, the Navajo Nation’s capital for “protection and reintegration.”
The Navajo Reservation covers over 27,000 square miles, larger than 10 of the states, with a population of 170,000. For anyone who has driven through it, as I had years before, the highway flows through hauntingly beautiful vast empty stretches, off most peoples’ maps.
At first, the Navaho Nation’s government protested the breaking of the treaty, and resisted the “remigration” of Jews on their land. An accommodation was reached only after threats, and the offering of a land-lease agreement.
Not all Jews were ordered out of their homes. As had been repeated by the Administration at rallies around the country “There were good Jews, and there were bad Jews.” Though the definition seemed to subtly shift from month to month, I came to suspect, after trading notes with several internees, that I had done something fair to middling bad.
Others had committed shondas of varying nature.
Like many, Sugarman’s family had been ordered onto the Navajo Reservation because they actively campaigned against the Dear Leader during the run-up to his election. Burt, still wondered if his Beverly Hills neighbors had turned him in.
Aaron’s crime was that he wasn’t pro-Israel enough. From his donations to various middle east peace groups, the IRS had flagged him as a “bad Democrat,” and punched his ticket to AZ.
Others had raised their voices against the “best internments” program a little too loudly. Many rabbis had sermonized against it, even though their more conservative congregants were made uncomfortable.
Cantors wrote protest songs, videobloggers made protest reels, artists made collectable protest signs, even a Jewish rapper offered a righteous rhyme or two; all were headed for a new life in the rocky red canyons.
Overall, to regimes that have their hearts set on ordering us about, Jews are a pain. We ask exasperating questions, speak our minds about the disadvantaged and equality, show up to vote, are often well-educated, and have this memory as long as a receipt from a drug store. In many times, we have been considered good Americans. This was not that time.
Mostly, Japanese Americans spoke up on our behalf, sharing their own bitter history of relocation to internment camps during WWII with whoever would listen. They too had been the target of an executive order signed by a president.
As for our ordered trek to the reservation, I’m afraid it was because of a bit of foolishness. Downtown, before the election, I had purchased a papier-mache pinata of the Dear Leader, took it home and filled it with some crappy candy. In a less-than-brilliant move, I had my wife take pictures of me whacking at it with an old Dodger bat-night give-away. Was it the posted photo of the busted arms, head and candy spread on the lawn that did it? Apparently, all those thousands of likes on Instagram didn’t help.
Before my wife and I got on the bus, an officer asked for my cell phone. I would never see those photos again.
Too be continued…`
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