I begin with congratulations to the New York Knicks. While it goes against every fiber in my body to root for them, I feel genuinely happy for them and their long-suffering fans. In Hebrew the suffix “nick” personifies an expertise or deep connection - it’s not always complimentary. A “nudnik” is a specialist at being annoying. A kibbutznik is someone who not only lives on a kibbutz but embodies its essence. Well, these Knicks are the best Knicks ever, who had the greatest comeback ever. The suffix “nik” is originally Slavic and is also found, though less often, in English (e.g. “Beatnik.”) But if we’re talking ancient literature, interestingly, the Greek word nikē (νίκη) means “sneaker.” No, actually it means “victorious,” and appears in the New Testament in a fitting manner.
Perhaps the Knicks win can inspire us all to live up to John’s charge. We are all champions, all of us who are born of God, all of us will emerge on the wings of victory, because we all are created in the divine image.
AND NOW, TO THE NEWS OF THE DAY…
No matter that the removal of Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center was covered by a tarp. Whenever the tarp is removed - and it will be - the thrill will be even greater. Knicks fans know all about that. Meanwhile, if the tarp stays up, it will begin to look like the ugliest combover, further sullying Trump’s image. One person commented while watching the livestream, whenever it happens “…it will be a glorious unveiling of this triumph for the JFK Center and the American people.”
Might I suggest taking it down on July 4? Or let it linger until after the midterms, so the image can be the focus of a million attack ads and pilgrimages. Because this iconic image is way more potent than what’s now hidden from view. Its very hiddenness is part of what makes it so powerful. That and the anticipation.
Jews waited 2,000 years to return to the original Wailing Wall. This facade will become our American Wailing Wall, the perfect metaphor for all the crimes the administration has kept hidden, and a reminder of the cesspool that they have made of our beautiful capital. If this unveiling needs to wait until January 20, 2029, so be it. We’ll count the days, like Ted Koppel used to do. “Day 102: JFK Center Held Hostage!”
“The John”
How fitting that all that the only words now visible to the right of the tarp are “The John.” That’s Trump’s Washington in a nutshell. D.C. has become America’s John - sullied by the unbearable antics of America’s john (taking the other meaning of the word), the john named Don.
Americans will come together to hold vigils at “The John,” our newest and most sacred desecrated spot, praying for our immigrants and abused women, disenfranchised people of color, bankrupt farmers and other victims. Thanks, Don!
Or maybe we can rename the covered facade as our National Peek-a-Boo Wall, which stands as a reminder of Trump’s infantile perspective on object impermanence. If you don’t see it, it didn’t happen.
But we know what truths lie beneath. Trump’s gotten used to seeing his name removed from buildings over the years and has learned all the tricks to covering his tracks. For the master of the cover-up, the tarp covering the Kennedy Center’s facade is an ideal symbol. It is the perfect visual metaphor for the Trump Era.
The National Cover-Up Wall will become a catch-all for everything he’s hidden away. The tax returns, the Epstein files, the Butler earlobe, 11,780 votes from Georgia, a lock of Vlad’s hair. Bibi’s manhood. The Iran victory plan. Ukraine’s cards. Who knows, maybe even the Pee Tape. It’s all behind the curtain. So let’s make a deal!
The removal of Donald Trump’s name from the Kennedy Center was a purification ritual reminiscent of the toppling of so many prior false idols erected by self-worshipping megalomaniacs, like the cathartic toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in April of 2003.
In chapter 12 of Deuteronomy, the Torah’s zero-tolerance policy regarding idolatry seems to foretell this week’s court-directed actions at the Kennedy Center.
And ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and burn their Asherim with fire; and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; and ye shall destroy their name out of that place. Deuteronomy 12:3
Another great quote for the Trumpian Bible Thumpers.
The Trump name has been removed from over a dozen major projects over the past ten years as well as many lesser buildings, including luxury projects like Trump Place on Manhattan’s West Side, whose residents demanded that the offending name be removed. Creeping in traffic down the West Side Highway became almost a pleasurable experience for me when that happened. And even bumper-to-bumper on the Whitestone Bridge couldn’t take the smile off my face when Trump Links golf course on the Bronx side was sold to Bally and the Voldemortian name removed. No more “Trump Links” at Ferry Point.
Back in his first term, a time of relative harmony and just two impeachments, the unspeakable name came off hotels and apartment buildings, in New York, Panama, Toronto and elsewhere, and skating rinks in Central Park.
In mid 2021 the Trump Parc luxury building in my city of Stamford joined the club, by eliminating the unmentionable name, which was driving down real estate values, along with the pretentious “c” in “Parc,” to become Park Tower Stamford, a name as all-American as Park Place on a Monopoly board. People living there were overjoyed, except presumably for Susie Wiles and Linda McMahon, who owned units in the building.
Trump and his Kennedy Center board of lackeys must have giggled into their sleeves thinking they had outwitted the libs with their tarp idea, denying his opponents the pleasure of watching the letters coming off one at a time. But the joke’s on him. He’s not merely a loser, he’s a criminal and, to put it in religious lingo, a sinner. And a sinner who is deathly afraid of being exposed - now literally exposed to the light of day - for the weak fraud that he is. I wouldn’t sink to using epithets like calling him “chicken,” but he can’t even handle seeing his name taken down…and it is true that if you add the letter “y” and remove the “d”, “Donald Trump” anagrams to “poultryman.”
Just sayin’.
As for the sinner part, this man isn’t merely an idolator, he’s a SELF idolator. He has revived the ancient art of narcissistic idolatry, the fetishization of one’s own self into a graven image, and now, by leaving the tarp in place, this covered facade can become a living museum of the history of megalomaniacal self-worshiping despots.
Maybe, alongside Saddam’s “I’m falling and I can’t get up” photo, we can add an exhibit from ancient Babylonia, featuring Nebuchadnezzar (see Daniel 3)1 who built an enormous gold idol of himself and forced everyone to pay homage to it, an order resisted by Jews. Like Trump, the Babylonian king saw the handwriting on the wall. Nebuchadnezzar understood the nature of the warning and heeded it. Trump saw the handwriting on the wall and hid the wall behind a tarp.
We can add a likeness of Caligula, who in the year 40 CE installed an idol of himself in the Temple in Jerusalem. His provocation was also protested vigorously by Jews.
Ever since Deuteronomy (which grew out of the anti-idolatry reforms of King Josiah of Judah), Jews have never been big fans of idolatry. We still aren’t.
In fact, the rejection of idolatry is at the very core of our origin story. It’s who we are. Which is a big reason why 70 percent of American Jews did not and will never vote for Trump and disdain Putin. We know a narcissistic fetishist when we see one.
We’re in the Smashing Idol Biz
It all began in the idol shop of Terach, Abraham’s father, where, according to the legend, Abraham destroyed all the idols and then put the sledgehammer in the hands of the largest one. When Terach returned and was incensed at the destruction, Abraham pointed to the large one and said, “He did it. The big one.” At which point Terach looked over at the inanimate object and begin to understand the foolishness of his idolatrous ways.
“And ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods; and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.”
Jews gave to the world a precious gift – the gift of the invisible God – a God who transcends all and incorporates all. Like Abraham, we need to leave the false gods behind. Abraham remains the model for the iconoclasm that has defined Judaism from the start. Seinfeld was a show about nothing. Abraham discovered a God who is nothing – and everything. A God who loves with an eternal love but is beyond all human emotion – a God who could not possibly have whims; a God who could not possibly expect Abraham to kill his own son.
In Judaism we worship nothing. No – thing. Nothing finite gets in the way of our contemplation of the infinite. Even the Torah is celebrated not as the embodiment of divinity but as a blueprint for our sacred quest. When a written Torah becomes unreadable, it is buried, like Moses, in an unspecified grave that can never become like an Egyptian pyramid and never be fetishized. The words live eternally, but the artifact is kept out of the limelight. In that way, the Torah can never become an idol. We worship no-thing – so that we can question EVERYTHING.
It is an ultimate challenge to be a Jew in this era. As Franz Rosenzweig wrote a century ago, “No idolater has ever worshiped his idols with greater devotion and faith than that displayed by modern man toward his gods.”
Over the centuries, Jews have perfected the art of iconoclasm. We’ve found lots of ways to smash idols. Jewish humor has been a prime vehicle to assert non-conformity in the face of powerlessness, as this classic joke from the early Nazi era.
German Jews taught their children to conform, outwardly, to Nazi customs, for the sake of survival. One such Jew was teaching his young child how to conduct himself when eating in a restaurant where he might be observed by others.
“When saying the blessing,” he reminded the youngster, “the correct form of grace is ‘Thank God and the Fuehrer.’”
“But suppose the Fuehrer dies?” queried the boy.
“In that case, my son,” the father explained, “you just thank God.”
“May God bless and keep the Czar…far away from us.”
Or, in the same spirit, the newly liberated Estonian government moved a statue of Lenin to a perfect spot where he could help direct people to the portable bathrooms:
If the Kennedy Center Tarp can be called “The John,” then this is “The Ivan,” a John who points to the johns.
And so, in the spirit of ancestors who showed unbelievable courage in standing up to the forces of brutality and conformity around them, we Americans need to make like Deuteronomy and smash all the idols we can. And the ones we decide not to destroy… we can place near the port-o-sans so they can be useful, and a reminder of what a crazy egomaniac tried to do to our country and our world.
I just can’t wait to see all Trump’s statues to himself come smashing down someday soon, just like those letters of his name on the Kennedy Center facade. I hope the Arch of Trump does get built - so it can be summarily smashed, and soon, by some modern-day King Josiah (might his last name be Barlet?)
A Parable for the World Cup
Once when I was walking through the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, I was stunned by a sight of extraordinary normalcy. A group of teenagers was kicking a soccer ball, using an ancient Roman-era column as one of the goal posts. Undoubtedly this pillar had once stood in the courtyard of the Second Temple, only to be tossed to the valley below following the Temple’s destruction. In the end, this sacred pillar was being treated no more reverently than the head of Sadaam’s statue that was rolled through the streets of Baghdad. If a column from the Temple itself can become a soccer goal, is nothing sacred? Precisely. Nothing. Even that.
It is humbling to know that even the Kennedy Center will someday be buried under swampy Potomac moss. But long before that, the letters of Donald Trump’s name that defaced the center’s facade will end up in some landfill across the river. Or maybe those letters will be tossed in that public golf course along the Potomac used (probably illegally) as a dumping ground for the debris from the demolition of the White House’s East Wing.
A humble ending for the East Wing - presages an even humbler ending for the narcissist-whose-buildings-shall-not-be-named, the one who worshipped his own name, the one whose name was taken down by biblical decree.
“…and ye shall destroy their name out of that place.”
From Daniel 3:
King Nebuchadnezzar built a gold statue, ninety feet high and nine feet thick. He set it up on the Dura plain in the province of Babylon. He then ordered all the important leaders in the province, everybody who was anybody, to the dedication ceremony of the statue. They all came for the dedication, all the important people, and took their places before the statue that Nebuchadnezzar had erected. A herald then proclaimed in a loud voice: “Attention, everyone! Every race, color, and creed, listen! When you hear the band strike up—all the trumpets and trombones, the tubas and baritones, the drums and cymbals—fall to your knees and worship the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar has set up. Anyone who does not kneel and worship shall be thrown immediately into a roaring furnace.” The band started to play, a huge band equipped with all the musical instruments of Babylon, and everyone—every race, color, and creed—fell to their knees and worshiped the gold statue that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.
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