RedOvechkin1917

I think yeshiva was a really happy time for me. Maybe one of the happiest and most meaningful years of my life. I think that the year spent hitchhiking, eating hummus, immersing myself in Jewish community, ritual and prayer -- and just the freedom of exploration -- gave me a high that I've been chasing ever since. Even as I recognize the evils of Israel, Zionism and the IDF -- I don't think I've ever felt so free and alive as I felt that year in yeshiva. In my year in yeshiva, I was very uncomfortable with the institution's relationship to Zionism, religious Zionism, and the IDF. I'll get to all that stuff, but recently my therapist has been encouraging me to sit with the pleasant memories from that year. Asking me, as he always does, how it felt in my body. Relaxation. Sunshine. Hitchhiking. Hitchhiking to get hummus with friends on Fridays. Then taking a small hike, hitchhiking back to the yeshiva in time for Friday night kabbalat shabbat prayers. Where the melodi...

I went to Big Sur this weekend with Eva. When I was there, my friend Moshe came by and related the following dream which he had: "I stand in the creek with the water up to my knees. I make a bow and arrow motion with my arms -- I hold my left arm out front to hold the bow, pull my right arm back and let it go, releasing the imaginary arrow into the bushes on the other side of the creek. "My depression would be gone in an instant if I could join a military force capable of taking down the IDF," Moshe told me. We both laugh. It's a joke, but only kind of. We both know he's pretty capable physically, but when it comes to most things, the truth is he usually doesn't give a fuck. Who cares about running a 5K when his tax dollars are funding a genocide? He reserves his strength for the things he gives a shit about, but if someone random asks him, he'll just say he has depression and spare them the whole story. ** I try to to explain to my Dad: my depression is ...

I feel like absolute shit today. It’s not really the cold, more just being absolutely desperate to do shit for Palestine and being unable to do so. Some days I’m kind of able to put things aside and be focused on RFP and working out and silly little things in the U.S. – being motivated to have healthy habits, eat well, exercise, do what I can, and other days I really just cannot be bothered. Today is definitely one of those latter days. I think if I had the opportunity to go on one of the Sumud flotillas I would do it. I would certainly think very strongly about it. I don’t know how I would pay rent while doing it, if it would mean being away from work for a while, but I really feel like I would do it.  The days that I find myself just feeling immense grief for Palestine and unable to really function or focus on anything other than that. I think my therapist would say that feelings like those are valid, and that the healthiest way to process them is to make space for them. Which is...

  The Panthers are gone, and Lamar can't deliver the W. What the fuck is going on? If we can't have Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver, can we at least have Lamar seal the win? I'm thinking about the capitalist division of intellectual and physical labor, and how sports are one of the only arenas in American life where an individual can use their body and mind at the same time. The division between brain and body just isn't really a thing when you're playing a sport, especially quarterback, and that's awesome. If the Panthers had been more successful, maybe there would be more spaces where these Cartesian divisions would be collapsed.

What business do kids born in the New Jersey suburbs have telling Palestinian organizers how they should respond to a genocide? Campers at a random Jewish summer camp. I have no idea if these students would or would not go on to become leaders in the Jewish pro-Palestine movement.  *notice: upsetting imagery and language ahead* Picture this: Your family members, your friends, your entire fucking neighborhood, has been destroyed by IDF soldiers, IDF snipers, and IDF armored bulldozers. Tens of thousands of your people have been slaughtered, fully city blocks have been razed, and thousands of men, militants or not, are held for torture within Israeli prisons, with no chance for anything remotely resembling a fair trial. Then, some kids from New Jersey show up, wearing kippot , or yarmulkes , telling you that when they were in third grade Hebrew school, their teacher taught them that the primary value in Judaism was tzedek , meaning justice. They ask you to put your petty quarrels asi...

Let me tell you about a friend of mine. I hate him. He's so toxic. ~~~ Yoni Tzahal hates the english language. He really does not like activism. He hates the DSA meetings. Yoni Tzahal misses the Israelis he went to yeshiva with. He wishes he could talk to them on the phone. He feels like they understand him better than these American activists he surrounds himself with. He doesn't understand activists, especially in the U.S. All this time spinning their wheels, never getting anything done. Just whining about how bad things are in the world. When they very clearly have pathologies in their personal psychology. Running around collecting petitions, endlessly whining about all the helpless victims in the third world, never understanding that they are the broken ones. That the people they seek to save are infinitely more resourceful and happy than they will ever be. If they were ever willing to confront their own neuroses and complexes. Yoni Tzahal really really hated being at Yale....

A father helping his son get dressed for hockey (this is a random picture from the internet, not me and my Dad. I'm not sure if we have any images of the two of us together at the rink) I feel like I have a certain memory, and chasing that feeling is something that has me running all over the place.  Really, it's just my various memories of playing youth hockey, and my Dad taking me to the rink and helping me put my gear on and helping me tie my skates. I played ice hockey in elementary school and middle school. When I was in seventh grade I broke my collarbone playing football after school with friends and after that I decided to quit hockey. I'm not sure why exactly. But I have very precious memories from playing hockey in those years. I remember having a very early morning game at the Rockville Ice Rink. My game was on the outdoor rink -- Rink 3 -- and the locker room my team was assigned to was one of the outdoor locker rooms. It was very cold that morning - probably be...

Photo from Arizmendi, a worker-owned co-op in my neighborhood in San Francisco. Seeing that they will be closed on May Day (tomorrow!) is one of the few things giving me hope right now. The need to build a mass movement of workers for class struggle is so vital and sorely needed right now. Because I'm stressed about running out of money and not being able to pay rent Because there is no fucking way I can work an office 9-5 Because even though I have access to wealth I still get super stressed about money Because I really don't want to go back to busting my ass in a bakery on early mornings Because I feel like shit on days that I have to wake up early. Usually I feel like shit unless I can sleep till noon. Because when I sleep till noon I still feel like shit Because antidepressants don't work for me, but psychedelics do, and psychedelics tell me very clearly: a better world is possible, fight for it (and also show yourself compassion and love). Because I'm not one of th...

Above: Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin: two leading members of the West German leftist group "The Red Army Faction" I just finished reading "Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF" by Stefan Aust. I thought the book was really fascinating, and I was inspired to read it after I watched "The Baader-Meinhof Complex," the 2008 movie which was based on this book. The author has an obvious conservative bias which makes the book sort of hard to get through at certain times. Many of his criticisms of the RAF seem very valid and seem to hold up pretty well, but it's clear that Aust has a limited understanding of the oppressive nature of the capitalist/imperialist system. He seems sympathetic to the RAF's goals of ending German support for the Vietnam War, but his ability to understand the harms of capitalism seem to end there. But the book documents in great details tons of stories and literature relating to the RAF, so the book is very much worth re...

 I've been having a really wonderful time in Mexico this past week. I think I've honestly been feeling pretty dead inside in San Francisco, and I just feel so much more alive here in Mexico. I am so excited by Claudia Sheinbaum's victory in the recent national elections -- a recent poll has her carrying an 85% approval rating. She is the first woman president of Mexico, and Jewish and pro-Palestine and anti-imperialist. Her victory is such an amazing triumph and it's totally absurd that it hasn't been covered more in the New York Times and other U.S. media outlets. Then again, Sheinbaum's left-wing politics are a threat to the vested interests of the U.S. capitalist class, so it's no surprise that the billionaire owners of the Times don't really want to cover her. Then again, many Times readers are more and more interested in how to actually elect a left-wing government that doesn't bend eagerly to the will of fascism, so one way or another, folks sh...

"We all needs times of beauty / moments of refreshment by which to be empowered for the struggle But if we seek empowerment exclusively in havens of retreat / we soon begin to think that beauty finds its dwelling place apart from where the people are You have shown us that there is nothing more beautiful than a human face on fire with the love of justice Because for you there is no line dividing art and revolution / Your poems in themselves are revolutionary acts and revolution is empowered by your verse  So / Our friend / Keep writing and keep doing / The rest of us will always need reminding / that word and Deed are one" This poem comes from Fernando, one of the individuals portrayed in "Liberation Theology: An Introductory Guide" by John Mcafee Brown. The book gives a brief account of the role of priests and liberation theology among the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. I have gotten interested in liberation theology since I have more or less concluded that any leftist ...

 This will be a short review, because this recent book was a real dud. I just finished "Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma" by Tirzah Firestone. I have become interested in learning about intergenerational Jewish trauma but the author just spends more or less the entire book waxing about liberal zionism, so it really ruined what was a promising premise for the book.  I want to learn about how descendants of Holocaust survivors might carry trauma in their bodies and lives, but this book spends most of its time talking about how the Israeli occupation is bad, but on the other hand, what are we supposed to do, surrender to terrorists? She literally says the separation wall is ugly, but in some places it is aesthetic. THANK YOU, NEXT. Anyway, Jews are clearly a pretty traumatized people, but it definitely does not justify the horrific crimes of Zionism. I do like to think about what Jewish life and Jewish communal life would be like in the present were it...

  "Curse the mind that mounts the clouds / in search of mythical things and only mystical things, / mystical things / cry for the soul that will not face / the body as an equal place / and I never learned to touch for real / down, down, down, where the iguanas feel." -- "Iguana Song," by Judy Mayham This is a poem used as an epigraph in the book I just finished, "Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma" by Peter A. Levine (1997). The book documents the way that trauma and traumatic events are stored in the body, and the way the emotions from trauma live in the body in long-lasting ways. I guess it's a bit like "The Body Keeps The Score" but less problematic because it's not all about U.S. soldiers (I haven't read the latter book, to be fair, and also the author does get quoted in this book a few times.) I picked up the book because Tommy Caldwell posted it on his instagram page, and it spoke to me because ... I liked the tigers on the front ...