From here, in New Jersey, I find it hard to get the news about Israel and Gaza.  Whatever happens in graduation ceremonies here have nothing to do with what’s going on there.  So I’m stuck with reading the news in Hebrew papers. like the Times of Israel

https://www.timesofisrael.com/

It too doesn’t tell me much, but my internet connection is pretty bad, so I can’t even evaluate what I’m getting.  

And evaluation is what is desperately needed.  Especially poetic evaliation. As William Carlos Williams wrote “It is hard to get the news from poems/but men die miserably every day/for lack of what is found there. – 

And here, my internet connection seems to be fading – i’ll explain quickly.  With a situation so complex, no single perspective is sufficient, and sometimes only a very specific instance can provide a true taste of reality. 

As I walked into a kind of Mom and Pop pharmacy just now, a customer was talking to the druggist.  I only heard the last line “Jews don’t belong here,” before he went to sit down.  

I bought my cough medicine and left.  I’ll never know if he was talking about me,  himself, or the druggist, or if he was giving the punch line of a joke.

But I kind of feel that moment shows something of the uncertainty of the feeling of being a Jew in the US right now.