Signed with tears

 Signed with tears


I am having a down moment.


I had just searched the Boston Globe for articles regarding Steward Health Care. In the final 20 years of my career, I steered as far clear of that system as I possibly could, although living in its midst. There were 10 recent major newspaper articles regarding this organization, or, to be deliberate, disorganization. To be clear, this entity has been, as the Bible says, corrupt, greedy, unethical and cruel. 


I took a deep breath, sitting and sighing, relaxing for a moment.


I realized that I have been running away from explosions all of my life.

I was born during the first year after World War II, on Armstice Day, in memory of the World War I event, the same day as Veterans Day in the USA.


My father, and his family, and my mother‘s family, escaped the pogroms of Eastern Europe, part of the great Jewish diaspora. As a consequence, I grew up in South Africa during Mandela’s long walk to freedom.


I recognized the paradox of Jewish life in that country, the Republic of South Africa, during the 1950s and 60s. I was proud of the Jewish partnership in the fight for freedom there, but perturbed by the ready discrimination displayed by many Jews and other white South Africans, toward the native South Africans and other, so-called, non-whites in the country. I decided to emigrate as soon as I could, which I did after finishing medical school.


I planned to live in Israel briefly before embarking on postgraduate medical training in the United States, before returning to the promised land. I quickly realized that Israel was an impossible dream, and recognized the apartheid, already extant, imposed by this impossibility, and so left for the United States as soon as I could, earlier than planned.


The USA was engaged in the war in Vietnam. I maintained my immigrant status to avoid personal involvement in that conflagration.


We raised our children during the Cold War, which felt distant. The dissonance I sensed in this country, from a comfortable place, the progressive and liberal state of Massachusetts, was building in the background. I used to be confident that we would overcome, but now, well into the 21st-century, my optimism is shattered.


The disconcerting history of this country looms large, the Native, American genocide, African enslavement, intense racial and social discrimination, the Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan, lynching and intractably cruel societal, economic and political discrimination, unveiled white supremacy, and the American evangelical movement, and the distortion and disintegration of the value system which seemed to be emergent during the late 20th century. 


And now, in 2024, a master of deception, an evil genius, intends to become the president of this country, backed by a significant and staunch populist portion of the population. The Israelis have been driven crazy by the anti-Israeli extremists all around it. We have many Israeli relatives. A Russian dictator is intent upon making Russia great again by pillaging Ukraine, close to where my father was born. South Africa, where my sister lives, is leading the case against Israel, accusing it of genocide in Gaza, while South Africa disintegrates economically and socially.


Droves of decent people flee unstable countries and attempt to crawl across our southern border in pursuit of the American dream. Many of them die in this sleep.


All of this is happening as the earth warms unnaturally, climate becomes extreme, and resulting global social and economic crises loom.


I live in a bunker, hoping my family will remain safe, and my grandson will grow up in a happy and stable place. 


This is my dream, and it must be yours too.


Like all of you, I have no choice other than to continue. There is nowhere to go, no running away, nowhere to hide. We all live in a state of nature in all the possible meanings of that phrase, upon the only earth we know of.


So I’ll stand tall, with a gentle smile, as I attempt to be as nice as I possibly can, to everyone and everything I encounter. 


If you, and you, and you, all do the same, I think we may be able to get along.


But I sign this with tears.


Aubrey Lieberman

1/26/24

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