Poems by David Fargotstein (01/03/1982 - 06/05/2017

Midnight Sentry

~David Martin Fargotstein

I came across a midnight sentry

Perched along a shore

A peculiar kind of creature

I’d never seen before

A mass of feathers, deepest blue

No wings that I could see

No arms or legs or anything

Upon this mystery

I, becoming careless

Due to curiosity

Let slip a stone, it rattled down

And brought its gaze to me

Its feathers ruffled as it turned

In its attempt to see

The interloper, hiding close

Who broke its reverie

Two giant eyes of shining gold

Above a narrow beak

Scanned the rocks to find the sound

And trained themselves on me

It didn’t seem disturbed at all

It didn’t try to flee

It simply fixed its eyes on me

With curiosity

I met its gaze, devoid of fear

And was surprised to see

The creature had begun to move

Slowly towards me

It perched itself upon a rock

And nestled into place

Then it turned its head again

And aimed it at my face

Through a connection made of gazes

I began to fall

Descend into those giant eyes

Without a fear at all

It happened almost instantly

A story being told

In feelings, poured into my mind

Through those eyes of gold

As story of this creature’s past

From egg to what I see

Born aside its lifelong mate

By natural destiny

A life of love, devotion true

With nothing in between

A vision of paradise, in motion

Shown to me

Suddenly, and without warning

Explosions of despair

The sea had risen up and taken

The other of the pair

As quickly as the story started

My wits returned to me

I touched the cyan feathered mass

Its gaze upon the sea

It turned its face to me again

And it was plain as day

This little creature’s joy in life

Had surely gone away

It hopped from perch onto the sand

And moved away from me

To join the lover that it lost

In the waves, beneath the sea

The Ascent

The Ascent

~David Martin Fargotstein

Single cells begin to split

And life the way we know begins

Forming tools to touch the world

Bodies form and limbs uncurl

Swimming now, in primal sea

Metabolize, begin to feed

The weakest ones will perish first

To satiate the stronger’s thirst

True selection has begun

To wash away the weaker ones

More and more complex they grow

Fins and limbs begin to show

Teeth and claws and eyes and skin

Gills and scales and dorsal fin

Starting now, this divine plan

And so begins the ascent of man

Fins to limbs we start to see

Creatures crawing from the sea

Amphibious and glistening

Limbs then legs then feet then wings

Sea and earth and sky, now home

Nurtures these creatures to grow

Some as giants, some just small

Some you cannot see at all

A few of these, we’ve come to see

Took to living in the trees

Covered with hair, forelimbs strong

Carrying their young along

This beginning, as we see

Of intelligence and memory

A tiny spark begins to light

As neurotransmitters ignite

Arboreal, understand,

Is the precursor to Man

Down the road, a funny thing

We shed our hair, learn to sing

Discover fire, never cold

Discover ways to save the old

Invent the wheel to save our backs

Invent the club to prevent attacks

With spear and arrow now we hunt

Forage for food under the sun

Spread our species far and wide

Leave the other ones behind

Hunt and gather, fish and wander

Gaze into the sky and ponder

Discovery of farming, crude

Allows us to create our food

From camps to towns to cities, nations

Adobe huts to tollbooth stations

Glistening spires of stone and steel

High fructose and processed meals

Sleds and horses to speeding cars

Discover America, explore Mars

Every change along the way

That made us what we are today

Was ruled by CHANCE and not by FATE

Not by CHOICE and not by TASTE

The universal dice, now cast

Produced the human race at last

The likelihood of all you see

A molecule against the sea

This cosmic coincidence of chance

Delivered us into this dance

Mankind alone is privy to

This mingling which I share with you

Alone in all the universe

No other creature knows the hurt

Or Joy that’s characteristic of

The HUMAN CONDITION known as

LOVE

Jews aren't as Democratic as you are led to believe.....

As the founder of the Memphis Jewish Republican Coalition – and as a Reform Jew – I would like to respond to the (JTA) Hebrew Watchman article entitled “80 per cent of Reform rabbis are Democrats; That’s Higher than any other clergy” written by Ben Sales. This article quoted the results of a Yale study that covered the spectrum of religions, polling over 130,000 clergy – including only 2,700 rabbis and no Jewish congregants. While the statistics of the political views of Jewish rabbis may very well be accurate, the assumptions and conclusions regarding where the various congregations are on the political spectrum is intentionally flawed and misleading. The study attempted to define the political disposition of the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox congregations without any input from the congregants themselves. It’s not like the technology isn’t out there to poll the congregants. They don’t poll the congregants because they know the results, if taken honestly, will not fit the narrative that Jews are 70% Democratic, 30% Republican. It’s far more complex than it may seem.

If an honest poll we taken across the spectrum of Jewish congregants, you would find that a large majority are socially liberal and conservative on financial and foreign policy - and neither political party fits in this mold.  As for Mark Pelavin, who heads up political policy and outreach for the URJ in Washington D.C., he would like to continue too suppress this reality, but Jewish voting trends don’t lie. Bush and Obama got 24 and 22% of the Jewish vote. Romney got 30%, and Trump got 25% (but many think it was really in the 37% range) according to various polls.  The trend among Jewish voters – across all congregations – is towards political conservatism.

With that said, the article was right about one thing: The majority of Rabbis ARE Democrats and they do “push their political beliefs” on a congregations where 25-35% (and growing) don’t agree with them - and are offended that their house of worship has become another MSNBC or CNN, with all it’s political biases. The clergy “over-reach” into pulpit politics is alienating and disrespectful to a growing minority of their congregants. It is mildly irritating when there is overt outreach to Syrian refugees when there is no attempt to reach out to the Jewish conservatives in the congregation.

It isn’t easy being a political minority at my local synagogue, Temple Israel in Memphis. It isn't easy at ANY typical reform synagogue. Conservative voices are ignored, and political discussions and panels are one-sided. “The tyranny of the majority” (Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville) that the founders of America articulated are playing out in our synagogues. But there is hope. Jewish voting trend lines are expected to continue to lean even more Republican as the Democratic Party moves further to the left. I don’t go to synagogue for political indoctrination. I don’t go to Friday night services looking for serenity and instead get a lecture on gun control. What could be more alienating?

The whole purpose of the Memphis Jewish Republican Coalition is give voice to those Jews who feel alienated and alone in their synagogues. Over 350 individuals have joined and identified as Jewish Conservatives. There are thousands more in Memphis who sympathize but are intimidated to identify as Republican. It’s interesting that those Jews who identify with the MJRC are decidedly more liberal on social issues like abortion and gay rights among other social issues, but are less likely to advocate for open borders, weak international relations and bad financial policy. Even then, we don’t always agree and we respect differences of opinion. I wish that were true of our synagogues.

Pricing is suspiciously absent from the Health Insurance Debate

Why is it that the “healthcare debate” is always about Insurance premiums/deductibles and not about the “prices of goods and services”? Generic drugs prices - where there is no R&D expense – have recently risen into the hundreds of dollars, where they used to be $2-$5 a prescription. A hospital will give an estimate of their base charge for an inpatient procedure, but once you are home you get 30 bills for doctors and tests, which end up running the bill 2-3X more than anticipated. The public is caught between huge Hospital conglomerates (posing somehow as non-profits) who gouge their patients, drug companies that charge obscene prices with no justification, an FDA that seems complicit in this abuse of the public, and insurance companies. Until pricing is front in center in the healthcare debate the issue will never be resolved. Health Insurance premiums are directly related to the price gouging committed by the “industry”.  The proof is in the fact that a person with no insurance can negotiate a better price for prescription drugs (drug company discount cards) than a person who has health insurance with a conglomerate that has a million people in their pool. There is a lot of political lobbying muscle in the AMA, Health Insurance industry, drug companies and hospital conglomerates. Who is lobbying for the patients?

The Judenrat and Kapos are still with us.

When one asks a Jewish survivor of the Nazi death camps what was their most horrible experience, many will say it was the Jewish overseers: the Judenrat, and the Kapos, - Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. The evil of the Nazis is comprehensible for evil is ever present in their world, but the Jews who cooperated in the genocide of their own people is beyond imagination. The Judenrat and Kapos are still with us.

According to the great Soviet dissident Nathan Sharansky we can recognize Jew-hatred when manifested against Israel by the 3 Ds: demonization, double standards and delegitimization. By this definition J Street is loudly and proudly anti Semitic. Jewish Voices for Peace has gone so far Progressive that they honored Rasmieh Yousef Odeh, an IslamoNazi Jew killer who is about to be deported by the United States.  The Democrat Party has gone full and poisonously “Progressive anti-Israel” by aligning itself with J-Street as demonstrated by Nancy Pelosi’s speech at the most recent AIPAC policy conference when she read the manifesto for a two-state solution written by J-Street staffers. The crowd of 18,000 pro-Israel supporters was for the most part unusually quiet. No clapping, no standing ovation.

American Jewish Progressives worship at the altar of the liberal state. Their religion is not Torah Judaism but Progressive values. They identify with the power of progressive liberal government so closely that they stifle conservative dissent within their houses of worship, much like the Kapos of WW2. In the mind of Jewish progressives, they would rather do outreach to radical Islamic Imams than reach out to their conservative brothers.

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Politics and public policy has no place in modern Judaism, and I predict that this desire to worship at the alter of Progressive liberal values will continue to imprison those who only want spiritual Judaism, not a political manifesto.