Tank Cannon Splits Turret in Half Every Time We Fire

Every time a gunner pulls his trigger in a tank and fires the main gun, the turret is split in  half as the gun recoils--stopping just a couple of inches before the rear of the turret.

As the gun snaps back into place, the spent shell pops from the breach, a nearly yard-long cylinder of hot aluminum that bounces from the back of the turret to the turret floor.

I was thinking about that black cannon cutting the turret in half and the clattering cannon shell bouncing in the turret because I am reading "Master and Commander" by Patrick O'Brian. This exciting book about late 18th Century sea battles explains gunnery at sea in considerable detail, including the injuries common when firing a battery of muzzle-loaded cannons on a ship at sea.  Crushed feet, burned faces, smashed arms, bodies trapped between guns, all these injuries happen frequently enough for Captain Jack Aubrey to say during a long fight, "The guns are as deadly to the crew as to the enemy."

It reminded me that I could not remember anyone who was injured by our 105mm cannon snapping back in a black blur of recoil then spitting a spent shell as it returned to its lethal place.  I am sure many armor crewman have been injured in a tank turret in the hundred years since tanks debuted on the battlefield, but it did not happen in my tank.

I am glad to have dangerous fiction and safe reality.

Evolution: Israelis and American Jews Grow Apart

Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon 

in the Sinai during the Six-Day War in 1967

I love Evolution. Not only is it one of the most brilliant theories in the history of science, fundamentalists of every kind just hate it and Charles Darwin is not Jewish, not even a little!!

As a Jew, I have heard the sub-text of criticism of science all my life. Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, brilliant Jews without number have been disparaged for their work by people who hate Jews. But the man fundamentalists hate the most is as thoroughly English as Windsor Castle and the family that lives there.

Darwin, the reclusive English gentleman, developed a theory of life so sweeping that critics, especially religious conservatives, are still trashing his theory 150+ years later: a theory that has proven as tough and durable and resistant to flame as cast iron frying pans. 

Most of all, I am delighted at examples of Evolution working right in front of our eyes. The way to see Evolution work is to take a population of any living thing, separate it into two or more parts as far away from each other as possible, a water barrier is especially good, and watch the two populations change.

Darwin famously illustrated his theory with Galapagos finches.  Gil Hoffman, politics reporter at the Jerusalem Post, showed me how evolution occurred with Jews living in Eastern Europe, primarily Poland and Russia and nearby countries, for hundreds of years before the 20th Century, when everything changed.

At the end of the 19^th Century, that population began to divide into two parts.  Zionists left to restore Israel as a nation. Others, like my own grandparents, left for America. 

You could say there were three groups: those who left for America, those who left for the land that would become Israel, and those who stayed.  In 1939, those who stayed were the largest group. By 1945, millions were slaughtered and many survivors fled Europe for the Middle East or North America.  Beginning in the 1970s, more than a million Russian Jews would flee to Israel and America, continuing the trend. 

But the early Zionists and my grandparents in America were the populations that separated and evolved.

Jews who fled for America largely assimilated. The tailors and shopkeepers and laborers had children who became doctors, lawyers and the writers who shaped American literature, Broadway and Hollywood.  They were American success stories. The Zionists became pioneers, making the desert green, fighting for survival, eventually gaining independence and becoming one of the fiercest Armies in the world. 

One culture produces Moshe Dayan and Ariel Sharon. The other gives the world Jerry Seinfeld and Philip Roth.  All four brilliant in their own way, but no doubt who you would call if you were under attack. 

American and Israeli Jews speak a different language, eat different food, celebrate the same religious festivals in different ways and in this century are increasingly separate on politics. 

Gil Hoffman travels regularly between Israel and America.  He spoke at my Synagogue this year.  He worries about the increasing divide between Israel and American Jews.  He did an excellent episode on the subject on his podcast “Inside IsraelToday” on the Land of Israel Network.

In America, three of four Jews identify as Liberal and/or Democrat and in the same numbers, loathe President Trump.  Israel, in sharp contrast, is one of just three countries in the world that have a positive opinion of Trump: nearly 70% of Israelis have a favorable view of Trump.  The other two countries positive about Trump are the Philippines and Nigeria. Apart form those three nations, the 192 member countries of the United Nations have a negative opinion of America’s chief executive, including America.

As more anti-Semitic incidents happen in America, the gulf between the two communities continues to grow.  Over the last century, American Jews have become much more American: rich, largely insulated from the virulent anti-Semitism of the rest of the world, and driven by personal ambition.

Trump made the alt-right and white supremacists his base, infamously saying there were “fine people on both sides” at an event with one side waving Nazi flags and chanting “Blood and Soil.” Anti-Semitism in America increased rapidly as Trump ran and won his racism-centered campaign.

In Israeli society, universal conscription means the path to power and influence is through the Army.  Israel is under constant threat and defines itself by its readiness to fight with enemies on every side. For Israel, surrounded by enemies, Trump is an ally who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and pulled out of the Iran treaty that was so unpopular in Israel.  

The political differences between American and Israeli Jews are likely to get worse no matter what the future holds for the two countries.

When groups split and grow apart, the usual trajectory is to grow further apart.  When Gil Hoffman speaks on this topic, he hopes to be a small part of bringing the two groups closer together, even as he reports the news that shows Jews separated by six thousand miles in distance are separating even further in politics and practice. 

I am going to try to live part of my life on both sides of the divide. I am planning to spend the first three months of 2020 traveling in Israel.  For Jews, anti-Semitism is a question of if, not when. Israel is a place of refuge for all Jews everywhere. So I want to know and experience more of the Land of Israel.  We’ll see how my thinking evolves.

Digging Up My Cold War Past: Moving Day Soon

We are moving to a new house next month. Our six kids are in or through college so six bedrooms is more than we need.  As we cleaned the garage, I found this in a corner. My now grown sons used it to play in the yard more than a decade ago.

In the 70s when I first enlisted, this basic issue.  All of my time in the Cold War Army, I was an Armor Crewman, so I never actually carried my entrenching tool in the field.  But it was fun to look at this old pick/shovel and think this simple, effective tool was part of my life from soon after I graduated from high school.

Grandpa Hyman: My Favorite Draft Dodger

My grandfather Hyman Gussman dodged the draft.  He was 44 years old at the time and in Odessa, a Black Sea port in Tsarist Russia.  It was August 1914 and Grandpa had inexplicably visited his former home after emigrating to America in 1900.

When his ship landed at the Odessa docks, the customs officials realized Grandpa was an emigre Jew and sent him to the Army.  Hyman managed to escape and started walking north.  He kept walking for until February of 1915 when he made it to Finland. On the way he almost died from pneumonia, suffered starvation and terrible Russian winter. 

Eventually he got to Portugal and back to Boston.  He lived until 1932 and in that time never left Boston again.  I wrote more about this story here.

Thinking about Grandpa made me realize that my position on draft dodging has some gray area.  Not in the order of Commander-in-Chief: no one should command armies who let another man serve and die in his place.  But in Tsarist Russia in World War I, the draft was a death sentence for Jews.  I am glad Hyman Gussman disobeyed Russian draft law.

Nuts About Cycling: The Next Call After a Broken Collarbone

My collarbone after I crashed

Twenty-five years ago, in 1994, I decided to get a vasectomy, but it was spring and I knew it would mean a week or more off the bike.  I thought I would wait till cold weather in the fall.

One Saturday in April of that year, I was riding rolling hills. I went down a mile-long hill in an aero tuck until I could feel the bike losing momentum.

I stood up to crank hard on the pedals and attack the hill. 

Then I was in the ditch on the side of the road.  When I stood, my right crank snapped in the middle.  I flipped over the handlebars and landed on my shoulder. 

In the ditch I tried to get up, but when I moved my right arm, I heard crunching coming from my collarbone—like potato chips were being stepped on.

I had smashed my collarbone.  A nice person with one of those big early cell phones came by and called me an ambulance. 

At the hospital, the emergency room doctor stuck his finger in my shoulder at the site of the break. I groaned in pain. He smiled.

“You smashed the collarbone,” he said.  “It will heal up great with no surgery if you don’t move it too much.” 

They strapped my right arm to my side and sent me home.  For the next three weeks I heard a lot of crunching if I moved the wrong way. 

Then I realized this cloud had a silver lining.  Monday morning, first thing, I called the urologist and said, “Can you get me in this week?”  They had an opening on Thursday. 

When I showed up the nurse and then the doctor asked if I wanted to let the collarbone heal up before the surgery. “No,” I said. “I’m in pain anyway. Let’s go.”

The collarbone healed, the surgery was successful and if someone asks how much I love cycling, I can say, “I’m nuts about it.”

My Top 15 Video Series

Lucius Verenus, Centurion, HBO Series ROME

I watch video series more than any other kind of video entertainment. I was talking with a friend and made a list of my favorites. I just started watch the Handmaid's Tale, Season 3. When I read the book thirty years ago, I thought it was crazy.  Now it's scary.

Here's my list based on no criteria other than how much I like the show:

1.     The Wire, HBO—Best TV I ever watched. So hooked I watched entire series 3 times, once with my sons.

2.     Band of Brothers, HBO—watched 3 times, once with my sons.

3.     Sopranos, HBO—entire series once, some episodes again.

4.     The Americans, FX—I may watch it again.

5.     Justified, FX—I watched because the lead actor is so good, Timothy Olyphant.

6.     Blacklist, NBC—weird but as with Justified, the lead actor makes the show endlessly entertaining: James Spader.

7.     Mad Men—Uneven, but overall very good.

8.     The West Wing, NBC—I watched it when it was new and watched it again after Trump was elected as a total fantasy: a brilliant, mature, thoughtful President.

9.     The Shield, FX—so dark, so good.

10. Breaking Bad, AMC

11. 24, Fox, good for three of seven seasons, really good. Different WMD each season.

12. Alias, ABC Jennifer Garner, Camp,, lots of fun.

13. Rome, HBO—wish it lasted longer.

14. Deadwood, HBO—so dark. Timothy Olyphant is amazing.

15. The Pacific, HBO--not as coherent as Band of Brothers. At its best it is excellent.

D-Day 75th Anniversary Next Week: Cold War Follows

Family Gravesite of Major Richard "Dick" Winters

One of the 9,000+ graves at the US War Memorial above Omaha Beach

On June 6 we will be marking the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the end of Nazi Germany. With the demise of Nazism came the longest stretch of peace in the history of Europe: no shooting wars between European countries since the spring of 1945.  

The peace was certainly tense, and included the Balkan slaughter and atrocities, but it held. Along with millions of other Cold War veterans, I was part of keeping the Soviet Union from expanding further. And, to the surprise of everyone who lived through it, we Cold War soldiers saw the Soviet Union totter in 1989 and collapse in 1991. 

NATO was at the center of the long era of peace. NATO expansion after 1991 seemed to offer more peace and stability, but now the NATO frontline states really are on the front line, not in danger of direct invasion, but of takeover through political terror, insurgency and cyber attacks.  

I hope Europe remains at peace long after I am gone, but I would not bet on it.  Just as nearly all of the veterans who stormed the shores of Normandy have passed on, the long era of peace that was our combined legacy is crumbling.  

They won a great victory for all of us, we held the line until the Soviet Union crumbled and now we will have hope NATO holds together for our children and the future of the world.