. . . But I Digress

Woody Guthrie's Jewish connections aren't exactly the best-known thing about him. But he did have a deep respect for Jewish culture, and his second wife, Marjorie Greenblatt Mazia, was the daughter of acclaimed Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, for whom Woody had enormous respect and from whom he learned a lot about Judaism. Woody and Marjorie raised their son, Arlo, in what Arlo described as a Jewish cultural framework.

Woody Guthrie spent part of the Second World War in the Merchant Marine, and the war made a significant impression on him. Some time after the war ended, he wrote a poem about the horrors of the Buchenwald concentration camp. The poem describes the atrocities committed there and singles out Ilse Koch, the wife of the camp commandant and one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals.

Guthrie never set the poem to music. That was done in 2003 by Lorin Sklamberg of he Klezmatics, for an album of Guthrie's Jewish-themed songs. Sklamberg's haunting tune brings the lyrics to . . . well, not quite "life." Whatever "bringing lyrics to life" might mean in this specific context of "music that sounds like it's being sung by the unquiet dead."

Interestingly, the Klezmatics omit one line from Guthrie's original text. About three-quarters of the way through the poem is the line "Lamp shades are made from skins." This is most likely a reference to a lampshade that Ilse Koch did appear to have owned that was made out of the tanned skin of . . . some mammal or other. Lots of claims and counter-claims have circulated about whether or not it's made from goat skin or human skin, and whether Koch did or did not have prisoners specially selected to have their skin made into this lampshade.

It's a Very Good Idea to look up whether your (U.S.*) state is an open-primary, closed-primary, or modified-primary state, and to do this before you vote.

Some general concepts:

Primary: This is the intra-party election, where each party decides who its nominee for the general election will be. They are held several months before the general elections. You get Democrats running against Democrats, Republicans running against Republicans. (Very few of the true third parties are big enough to need primary elections.)

Open primary: This is a primary election in which anyone can vote, regardless of whether you're registered with a party or which party you're registered with. You do have to swear that you will vote in only one (1) primary, though.

Closed primary: This is a primary election where the only people allowed to vote in a party's primary are people who are registered as members of that party. Only registered Democrats can vote in a Democratic primary; only registered Republicans can vote in a Republican primary. If you are a registered Independent, or you're registered to vote without a party affiliation, you cannot vote in a closed primary.

Modified Primary: Mostly an open primary, but each of these states has some kind of restriction on who can vote in a primary. Often this looks like registered Democrats and Republicans only being able to vote in their party's primary, while unaffiliated votes can choose to vote in one (1) primary for either party.

This applies to primary elections only. If you are registered to vote, you can vote in the general election, and you can vote for whomever you like. If you are a registered Democrat, you are entirely free to vote for a Republican or a third-party candidate if you want. It's a secret ballot; nobody will know who you voted for but you (and anyone you choose to tell, of course). If you feel like the two major parties don't represent your views, you are perfectly free to register as an Independent or register as unaffiliated and cast your vote for your favorite candidate. In the general election.

BUT.

If you live in a closed-primary state, you must be registered as a member of a party in order to vote in that party's primaries. In the primary, it does not matter how reliably you vote for that party's candidates. You could be a registered Republican who always always always votes for the Democrat, and you would still not be allowed to vote in the Democratic primary in a closed-primary state.

If you live in a closed-primary state, and you want to vote in primaries, you must register with a party when you register to vote. It's often one of the ticky boxes on your voter registration form. You can, of course, always change your party registration -- in my state, that's just filling out another voter registration card, tickying the box that says "Party Change," and then tickying "YES" for the question "Do you want to register with a party" and tickying off which party you choose. That is the very simple thing that will allow you to vote in a primary election.

Why would you want to register with a party when you genuinely feel that none of them represent your views? Well, that's where the party's candidates are chosen. If you want a say in who gets nominated -- I'm talking to the "the Democrats/Republicans never choose the best candidates, how can I possibly vote for these sanitized, corporatized stuffed shirts?" people here -- then you want to vote in the primary elections, because you want to have a voice in selecting the good candidates. And there are some places where a whole election truly can be decided in the primary rather than in the general!

In a closed-primary state, you must be registered with a party to help it choose its candidates. So, if you don't feel that any party represents you, then pick the party whose candidates you'd like to have some say in choosing.

Some states have same-day voter registration, but that often does not extend to party changes. In my state, we can register you to vote and vote you on the day of the general election (though this service is only available at places like City Hall, not at your local polling place, and lines can be long). But we cannot process a party change that fast. At the polling place where I work, I can give you a party change voter card to fill out, and you still can't vote in the primary that day, because I give the card to the moderator, who will take it down to City Hall after the polls close. Your party change cannot be processed while we're all working at the polls, so on the day of the primary, you are still not registered with that party. Sorry.

Your best course of action is this:

A. Know that a primary is coming. There will be signs. Literally. On people's lawns. B. Look up whether your state has open, closed, or modified primaries. You could Google this, looking for websites that end in .gov for the true answers, or you could call your local Registrar of Voters; that office exists to answer questions like this. C. If it turns out that you need to be registered with a party to vote in a primary, check your voter registration to see if you're registered with that party. Again, this is probably going to be a call to the local Registrar of Voters. They'll probably ask you for your date of birth, your street address, and your name. D. Do all of this before Primary Election Day. It does take a little bit of time to process a party change, if you need one. I'd suggest doing this the week before the election, just to give time for the party change to go through and for the Registrar of Voters to get your name on your district's voting rolls so that you're all properly listed on Election Day.

If you do all of this, your election experience may be as simple as showing up, giving the checkers some ID, getting crossed off the list, getting your ballot from the ballot clerk, voting, dropping the ballot into the box/tabulator, and getting your "I Voted" sticker. On a slow election day, this could be about fifteen minutes out of your day.

The alternative is this: you show up at the polls, and the checkers don't have you on the list. You get sent to the assistant registrar (that's me!), who will take the time to see if you're on the inactive list, and if not, if you're in the right polling place. Depending on how the day is going, I might ask you upfront what your party registration is. Maybe you don't know. Maybe you were under the impression that because you're registered to vote and you always reliably vote for $PARTY, it's fine. I then call the Registrar of Voters, give them your date of birth and your name. And the most common answer that they give me in a primary? "This voter is unaffiliated."

At which point, I will offer you the chance to affiliate with a party by filling out one of the voter cards I have at my table. But, because that card isn't going to the Registrar of Voters until after the election, you won't be voting that day. And you will leave, disappointed that you could not complete this errand. (We will still be happy to see you at the general election, though!)

So, the TL;DR is: If you want to influence a party's selection of candidates, learn your state's primary status, and register with a party before the primary.

This has been a Friendly Neighborhood Election Lady PSA!

(P.S. If there is a hornet nest outside the polling place, go to another entrance and let the moderator know. The moderator will take care of the hornets. Ask me how I know this . . . )

Psalm 146 is part of a sequence of Psalms recited during P'sukei D'Zimrah. This is the "warm-up" service that we say before Shabbat Shacharit, the "let's get down to business" Shabbat morning worship service. The name "P'sukei D'Zimrah" literally means "Verses of Song," and there are a lot of Psalms recited during this service. (A few other texts, too, but lots and lots of Psalms.)

For everyone who makes it their mission in life to Protect The Children From Bad Thoughts . . . good luck with that. Nursery rhymes are dark. Even something as simple as "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring." A lot of people forget the second half: "He bumped his head and went to bed and didn't get up in the morning." A cute little nursery rhyme about a guy dying from untreated concussion!*

The Yiddish version is a bit more direct about the cause of death. "It's raining, it's pouring, the old lady sneezes, a policeman comes and shoots!"

And if you've ever wanted to hear a child's nursery rhyme about sudden (probably antisemitic) state-enforced violence sung in cantorial style with the HHD cadence, you're in luck. Cantor Yoel Kohn is here for you.

For those not in the know, hagbah is one of our weirder mitzvot, especially the Ashkenazi version. The idea is to show off the Torah portion. Ashkenazim keep the Torah scroll in a cloth robe, which is taken off to read, so the Torah is out there on the reader's table naked. After the reading is finished, Ashkenazim select someone (who knows what they're doing) to pick the scroll up off the table and hold it open, showing three columns of text, to the congregation, who chant a little bracha that says, in essence, "Yup, that there's the Torah."

(Sephardim and Italkim do it differently. My synagogue is Ashkenazi, so this is the version I'm learning.)

The thing is, a synagogue's Torah scroll is generally not a small, compact object. They do vary in size, but they are two large-ish wooden spindles (about 18 - 24 inches) with wooden discs supporting about 90 feet of handwritten parchment scroll. They can also weigh between 20 and 40 pounds. They are elegant, but not particularly stable, especially when you're holding the spindles shoulder width apart with just a Very Expensive piece of parchment connecting them.

Now, this can be done -- it is done in synagogues around the world, every week, without incident. There's Technique™ involved, too; it looks like a feat of brute strength, but, as our workshop instructor points out, quite a lot of it is body mechanics and balance. This is why we're having workshops, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn how to do it. The typical person chosen as magbiah (the person who performs hagbah) is a sturdily-built middle-aged man, but with the right technique, most adults can do it, even teeny tiny women in heels.

I can do a perfectly good hagbah with a lightweight scroll opened evenly. And I've done it twice for the Women Cantors' Network, with such scrolls. These last two hagbah workshops, I've been improving my skills with larger, heavier scrolls and, at the one this past Shabbat, the ones that are lopsided, like at the beginning or end of the Torah cycle, where we're in Bereshit or D'varim and most of the weight of the scroll is on one side or the other. (The secret here is modified technique.)

Our instructor was talking all about the rules of doing hagbah and all the precautions taken "for the honor of the Torah." Which I get -- we do things for honor all the time. What I don't get is . . . that's a lot of concern for honor in the details, but the mitzvah itself is an act that has approximately the same peril-to-potential-cringe-comedy rating as a kegstand. I guess a beautifully, elegantly done kegstand would be a thing of joy and honor, but it's still a kegstand.

The instructor agreed that there was in fact something fundamentally weird about Ashkenazi hagbah. But, of course, if you're going to do it, you have to do it right, both for the safety of the Torah scroll and your own personal safety. And, hey, I have successfully lifted a heavy, D'varim-lopsided scroll twice in practice now, though not in a service. All my service hagbah has been with smaller, more evenly rolled scrolls.

This is something of a rare gem, in that it's a Yiddish collaboration by two Soviet artists, one of whom (David Tukhmanov) was not Jewish (though his third wife was). It's a pretty self-explanatory song, especially noteworthy since the Soviet Union did not easily give exit visas to Jews who wanted to emigrate, either to the US or to Israel.

If you were just to look at the poetry for this song, by the Soviet Jewish poet Emmanuel Kazakevitch, you'd see a charming little sketch of Jewish beekeepers in a beautiful meadow working with their bees to produce sweet, healthy honey for everyone to eat. The tune, by Soviet Jewish composer and pianist Lev Yampolski, is simple and folky, quite appropriate to the image of happy beekeepers.

Here's the bit of information that you don't have yet. This beekeeping meadow is located in Birobidzhan. This was an enclave that the Soviet Union carved out for Jews way out in Siberia, near the Chinese border, toward the Pacific coast. It was established in 1931, as kind of a Soviet solution to the Jewish Problem -- this solution being "send all your Jews away to an ostensibly semi-autonomous homeland of their own way out in Sibera where you don't have to think about them any more." Yiddish was officially supported as a pillar of the kind of reified Jewish culture that the Soviets hoped to promote there.