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What to say about Juneteenth. It is an actual event that actually happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, horrific, racist violence in a prosperous black enclave.

So did the Crown Heights pogrom, and the LA Rodney King riots, and the national murder and mostly peaceful mayhem after George Floyd’s death.

So how do you “celebrate” “Juneteenth”? On the 9th of the month of Av, Jews sit on low benches or the floor, publicly read the biblical book of Lamentations, shut off some of the lights in the synagogue, etc., read lamenting poetry most of the day, etc., and don’t put on phylacteries* until the afterrnoon.

*leather boxes strapped on the left hand and on the head, containing passages of the Torah, normally worn in the morning by adult Jewish males.

It’s what Jews do among themselves.

Juneteenth seems to my limited understanding to be an annual call to white people to feel guilty for the crimes commited in the last century in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I’m sorry, but I wasn’t there. Not even born in 1925, never in my life been to Tulsa. So I don’t feel guilty. Nobody who actually was there is actually still living, of either the victims or the victimizers. So sh!t happened a hundred years ago. It was awful. It was terrible. But nobody does that sort of thing nowadays. So get over it. Or don’t. I’m not buying into it.

Holocaust remembrance day, likewise, except that people in America who shouted “Heil Hitler” at me, are probably unmoved by the remembrance. Maybe they do observe Juneteenth. Who knows.

Life is short, and often cut short by evil people. Keep moving forward until you’re done with this short life. Accomplish something meaningful, not just dwelling on the past, wearing it like a crown of thorns.