How to get up some mornings

After several discussions with friends over the last few days, I decided to try and understand a world which increasingly makes no sense. The source of a lot of my information is Facebook – perhaps that is part of the problem. But I also read books, newspapers, online posts. However, everything has a POV and nobody seems to be starting from neutral. So this morning, as I am thinking about getting out of my warm, cozy, comfortable safe bed, I flip through Facebook and ‘learn’ or perhaps just ‘read’ that there are incriminating revelations about LBJ’s role in JFK’s assassination; live hostages in Gaza’s torture tunnels are being forced to refer to themselves by numbers rather than their names; egg prices are down; more details of atrocities committed by Hamas are posted.

But there are sparks of light too – in some areas – Rav Leo Dee has won a legal ruling to take more than 10.5 million pounds sterling from the PA who, were responsible for the murder of his wife and 2 daughters; among other things it’s a way to disarm the murder merchants. Many people are still working on Arab-Jewish partnerships towards peace. Yet, so much of the path is unclear, unforeseeable, uncharted. Many people seem to understand exactly what needs to be done and how to accomplish that goal. Many other people forcefully disagree with them.

Perhaps it is safer to stay in bed today to sleep, to not think, to not feel.

But yesterday while cleaning out a kitchen closet I found a bag of cornmeal which needs to be used or discarded before Pesach. Since then I have been dreaming about making an old favorite recipe of my Romanian-born mother. She used to cook mamaliga, a polenta-like dish considered to be the national dish of Romania, which she served with browned onions, cheese and sometimes sour cream. It was always delicious.

Some days a childhood food is what I need to get me out of bed. So I got up, dressed, sliced the onions and began to sauté them over a low flame – onions need to be sautéed slowly — when a cell phone chirp alerted me to a new Facebook message. I had just begun to mix the corn meal with hot water, which requires consistent slow mixing, but I reached for my cell phone anyway (yes, it’s an addiction), clicked and read that “Gazans are taking to the streets to protest Hamas.” Welcome and long overdue but how much agony and suffering could have….Never mind, let’s not even think about that.

Another chirp, this notification is about death threats to Israeli actress Gal Gadot, star of Disney’s recently released movie, Snow White. Hey, Snow White got death threats too, didn’t she? More chirps announcing national parks being closed because there are not enough park employees – due to federal budget cuts – to ensure the safety of visitors. Columbia University students are holding vigils to reclaim their right to protest the right of Jews to defend themselves, a former Israeli Supreme Court Judge is advocating civil war in Israel if the Israeli Attorney General is fired, six hostage’s bodies were recovered in Gaza, and Israeli internal affairs protests are escalating.

The mamaliga was delicious. And I did get out of bed.