"G'MAR CHATIMA TOVA"

Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement on which the tribe fasts and goes to temple to privately confess your evil deeds, thus earning a tabla rasa for another year to repeat the ways of the flesh in violation of the Ten Commandments. Personally I wouldn't go to temple or church. I am an atheist. I fear neither heaven nor hell nor guilt, then again we are all guilty of something, which is how the police justify arresting the wrong person.

"He committed a crime. The question is only what crime."

Many. Last year I lied, denied the existence of God, and nearly killed the driver of an oncoming car, when I fell asleep at the wheel. I did not cheat on my wives, I honored my father and mother, and I worshipped no false god. No true god either.

This omission endangered my immortal soul. The only remedy might be an act of contrition via the sacrament of confession.

"Bless me father for I have sinned. It's been a long time since my last confession."

I can't remember how long.

Two decades? Three?

Thirty-one years ago I swam in the Ganges at Varanasi. That feat expiated all my previous sins. So I only have the last thirty-one years of sins to negate somehow.

Good deeds?

I've done a few of those on occasion, but while the road to Hell is paved by good intentions, the surface has been greased by the bad.

I am sorry for a lot, but then again too little to mention, because I did it my way.

When in doubt, quote Frank Sinatra.

Old Blue Eyes won't steer you wrong.

MEA CULPA OI VEY 2011

Several years ago I rode my bike down Kent Street to Williamsburg. Scores of Hassidim were flocking out of the Brooklyn shtel to congregate by the East River to atone for their sins and the Expulsion from Eden. Men and women were separated by a fence and I thought about taking a photo, but realized this was a private moment and continued my trip to the metal shop, where a check was waiting for me.

After all 'nimmt geld' was one of the most important tenets of 47th Street.

On the way back the gathering by the small inlet next to old Brooklyn Navy Yard had grown by the hundreds. Police were setting up barricades in expectation of a larger throng in the early evening.

Today I called up Manny to wish him 'Gmar chatimah tovah'.

My old boss answered the phone and asked who was this.

"Your shabbas goy and not someone you owe money."

"Thank the stars for that."

"Are you open tomorrow?" I had some gold to sell as scrap.

"No, but only because the religious people closed the exchange, but if it was up to me, I'd be open all day." The ancient Brownsville native lived to work as many hours as there were left in his waking days.

"Aren't you going to temple tomorrow?"

"Feh, I'm going to Hudson's Bar." It was his local.

"What about a fast?"

"Not a chance. At my age I don't give up any meals, plus I have a medical condition. I need a drink to keep sane." Business in the Diamond District was brutal these days.

"What about a mitveh?" A ritual bath was a purification rite for the Hassidim.

"I'll take a shower and don't even ask me to apologize to 'God'. He ain't done nothing for me this year other than give me more problems than Job. He should be saying sorry to me and everyone else in this economy." Manny was a little bit of a commie. His son was the complete opposite. Richie Boy still believed in the trickle-down theory. "What do you care? You're a goy. You do anything wrong last year?"

"A couple of things."

As a boy I had been an altar boy.

At Mass struck our chest saying 'mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa'.

None of us meant a word of it.

"Then you have nothing to say to God either. Forget all that Moses shit from the Old Testament. How Yom Kippur was the day he got the second set of the Ten Commandments. Moses was the same as all men. Only sorry, if they got caught fucking around." Manny was an expert at that.

"No, I guess I don't have to offer any apologies to God." I was a content atheist. "I'll see you Thursday."

"I should be so lucky."

I hung up the phone and thought about the lack of religion in my life.

LA Dodger Sandy Koufax had refused to pitch the first game of the 1965 World Series, because it fell on Yom Kippur. His replacement Don Drysdale gave up seven runs in less than three innings and told his manager, "I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too."

Not me, I was going to Mullane's on Lafayette Street in Fort Greene to have a beer and I don't have to wish I was a goy to do that.

As for Yom Kippur.

Have a happy day of saying you're sorry.

I believe you, but all my friends think you're lying.

Never Saying Sorry

More than three thousand years ago the Israelites emerged from their nomadic existence and established the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. The Asssyrians and later the Babylonians depopulated the lands west of the River Jordan and the Romans completed the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah in two devastating wars and the Jews were set out across the world throughout the centuries until after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, when the British sought to create a Jewish homeland, disregarding the local Arab, Christian, and Jewish inhabitants. The Zionists were granted two-thirds on the land with the 1948 UN approval of a Jewish State.

Since then the apartheid nation has seized more and more land from the Palestinians without ever apologizing or atoning for this crime against a people. Not a single Arab served in the concentration camps. Israelis proudly declared their victories as acts of Yaweh, instead of crediting the West for distablishing a region to creat havoc in the Middle East.

Yom Kippur is one of the holiest days in the Jewish religious calendar.

The day of atonement.

The only Jew I know who is penitant for his tribe's neo-Nazi treatment of the original inhabitants of the Levant is Professor Berthell Ollman, who once wrote a brilliant letter of resignation from the Jewish people for their Zionist policies.Shamen on their tribe.

One day peace, same for Ireland, Tibet, and so many people across this world.

Fuck your Shalom.

Injustice for one is injustice for all.

I don't ever expect the Jews to ever say their sorry.

So feh to Yom Jippur and shamen to the people of Yshim.

Pre-Yom Kippur 2024

I am not Jewish, despite having been circumcised at birth at Boston Lying-In. The doctors were Yankees. My birth certificate even denotes my having been mutilated in accordance with the Anglo-Saxon upper class believing that boys masturbated less without a foreskin. Idiots. We were told that this barbaric custom was for hygiene. Poof! Religious fanatics ruined our heaven on earth, but this coming weekend is Yom Kippur, the high Jewish holiday borrowed from the Babylonians in the 5th Century BCE.

Presently I'm working as a diamantaire in Montauk with Cousin Richie. Jews have their schlongs schnitted post-birth, since The Torah states that God made a covenant with Abraham, and that every male among the Jewish people should be circumcised as an outward sign of this covenant. Of course circummcision has nothing to do with Yom Kippur, but anthropologists state that for the Masaai, Polynesians, and First People around the globe circumcision was a rite of passage for young men as a test of bravery and endurance, a ritual mutilation, a sacrificial spilling of blood.

In 2019 a Masaai warrior had told me that at thirteen or the coming of puberty the tribal doctor had cut his manhood before the entire clan with friends taunting him, as he received the 'button-hole' technique pulls the glans of the penis through an incision in the foreskin, leaving a portion of foreskin hanging as a permanent appendage

Thankfully I don't remember my circumcision at Boston Lying-In Hopiatal for Women in 1952, but just imagine the horror of emerging from your mother's womb to be greetef into this cruel world by a man with a knife. No wonder we're all fucked up.

This weekend is the Jewish High Holiday is Yom HaKippurim, the Day of Atonement, when Jews around the world seek forgiveness from their God after which their fate will be prescribed by the Holy One and in accordance with rites passed on throughout time worshippers off the following poem.

"A great shofar will be blown, and a small still voice will be heard. The angels will make haste, and be seized with fear and trembling, and will say: "Behold, the day of judgment!"... On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Yom Kippur fast it is sealed, how many will pass and how many will be created, who will live and who will die, who in his time and who not in his time... But repentance, prayer, and charity remove the evil of the decree... For You do not desire a person's death, but rather that he repent and live. Until the day of his death You wait for him; if he repents, You accept him immediately."

That horrible Day of Judgment is feared to be coming soon with the Israelis spreading war throughout the Levant in a merciless revenge for Hammas' October 7 Attack on the Negev settlements. Gaza destroyed, the West bank attacked, leaders of the resistance huunted to ground, Missiles and artillery attacks on Lebanon. No one is spared the the wrath of the destroying IDF. The old, the young, children, women, everyone is a target. The fundamentalists of America are on their knees this Sunday, praying that Yawweh will bring Armageddon and Christ will come again. Oh, what joy, the world end. At least all the Christians will be gone.

And if not I ain't atoning for anything.

Atheists have no avenging Gods.

The Masaai warrior also said that at 19 he went out into the savannah armed with a spear and slew a lion.

"A single throw at fifty yards. Killed him instantly."

John had the lion skin at home. He showed it to me. It had been on living flesh only five years earlier. Today Israel struck Gaza killing more children. The Zionists are massing tanks to raze Gaza City to the ground like the Romans wiped all trace of the Cathargenians from the Mediterranean. Azrael has gone mad as they seek revenge for October 7 and the Holocaust and the Chosen People are hellbent on war and revenge. No atonement. Madness. Sheer madness. Free Palestine.

A Jew Canoe 2014

In the 1950s crackers from the South christened a Cadillac with New York plates passing through Dixie enroute to Florida as the ‘Jew Canoe’. That decade and the 1960s marked the zenith of the glory for Detroit cars. Americans abandoned their boats during the 1973 Oil Embargo for more fuel-efficient foreign cars and the Mercedes-Benz sedans surfaced as the new 'Jew Canoe' along with offerings from BMW. Both companies had close business relationships with the Nazis. Cadillac never exploited this connection to guard their market share of the Jewish-American market.

BMW had used slave labor. Mercedes-Benz had exploited foreign workers and there have been rumors that the company even built death gas trucks for the SS extermination squads. Even the groovy VW Beetle owed its manufacturing to 'guest workers', who learned the lesson of 'arbeit macht frei'.

Both Richie Boy and Manny drive Mercedes-Benz.

“How can you buy a German car?” I have asked them on many occasions. “They killed 6 million of you.”

“It’s a comfortable ride.” Manny loved driving his Mercedes 600 SL to Florida. His annual migration south came in February. His total yearly mileage was less than 10,000 miles. He would have been better off flying to Miami, but car drivers loved the freedom suggested by their automobiles.

“So you’ve forgiven the Nazis?" I confronted Manny on his hypocrisy at the diamond exchange in the new century. Richie Boy couldn't have given a shit. He had traded in his Land Rover for the Benz SUV. His head was buried into the phone. Its microwaves were frying his brain to a crisp.

“We’ll never forget.” Manny's brothers fought in the war. One of them came back not the same.

“Never again.” I had a VW Bug as a kid. I bought a BMW 2002 in Hamburg. My last car was a Toyota. I had not forgiven Emperor Hirohito for Pearl Harbor. Once Sony came out with the three-in-one electron gun Trinitron TV. Black and white was a thing of the past.

“That is right.” Manny had a long memory. His family came from Poland. He still spoke Yiddish to anyone French, Italian, or Russian. He spoke it pretty good too.

"You know I've been thinking about writing a song NEVER AGAIN centered on a Jewish family driving home for Yom Kippur in a Benz."

"Never again in a Cadillac, you mean." Manny had heard this dreck before. "Cadillac never made a car as good as my Benz."

"No, I don't think they did." It was the truth.

"But I did love them in the 50s. They said style." Manny swooned like the first time he had seen his wife. Hilda had been the best-looking woman in Brooklyn. "Wish I had one now. The old Jew Canoe."

"You know what's the difference between a Jew and a canoe?" Richie Boy got off the phone. "A canoe tips."

It was a bad joke in so many ways that I had to laugh.

Es tut mir leid.

That’s sorry in German.

It’s not inscribed in any Mercedes-Benz or BMWs.

Big surprise, nicht war?

Then again, neither is Sieg Heil on a Mercedes Benz.

A Man in a Panama on the Bowery

Last week I spotted a man wearing a stiff Panama hat on the corner of Bleecker and the Bowery waiting for the change of lights. I couldn't recall ever seeing a man in a Panana hat on the Bowery. I knew the Boulevard of Dreams from my childhood. I approached the man and complimented his hat. We traversed the avenue together to Bowery Market I asked his name and he said, "Charlie, I do the sound here." Charlie. Sound. The Bowery. "Are Charlie from CBGBs?" I walked with a legend. "Yes." And with that I was transported to another time__ In December 1976 I tramped up the Bowery to my SRO room on West 11th Street. A thin fall of snow covered the sidewalk. I heard a band playing a breakneck cover of the Rivieras' CALIFORNIA SUN from inside a white-stuccoed bar with a white stucco front. I pushed open the wooden door, paid my admission, and approached the stage, mesmerized by the leather-jacketed quartet. In less than a minute I was hooked by the Ramones and remain a punk to this day as well as a hippie. Charlie's sound was a big part of it. The Dead Boys, Ramones, Richard Hell, Guadalcanal, Brenda in the lady's room, Alice funny as hell, Xcessive, Kim,my cousin, the Revelons, a softball game against the Angels, The Johnny Blitz benefit et al Charlie Martin. Long-haired genius. Mono sound run on four inputs with rotary knobs, bass and treble. CBGBs sound supreme. Charlie's now working at the Country Western bar next to Bowery Market. It's good to be back in the City, where ghosts come alive__ The Ramones - California Sun 1976 Thank you, Charlie__

Ramones First Show

Early morning
Just
After the dawn
Wake slow
Open my eyes
Look at my phone
6:21 am__
Alone another dawn
I lost count how many
Back asleep asleep
Dream nothing
White light
All is nothing__
Wake up
Alone again
My family halfway around the Earth
My dawn to their dusk
My Village their Sri Racha
Dawn to dusk__
No more sleep
Open eyes
Look at phone
6:58 am__ I fall asleep
Wake up
Look at phone
7:43 am__
Way past the dawn
Bright sunlight
In bed on the 9th floor of 4 Washington Square Park
My dreams forgotten
I am awake
I live
Get out of bed
Go to the bathroom
I pass water I live
Life goes on
8:36 am___
Awake standing
Life come to stay
For today
8:37 am__
Living is life
Today
8:38 am
A deep breath
Time to start the day__
Fifty years ago
August 16, 1974
Tonight that Year
The Ramones play live for the first time
CBGBs live
Blitzkrieg Bop__
Me that day
24
I wake on a bluff
Overlooking the Pacific
Moonlight Beach
The end of an LSD trip
The end of America__
Fog fills the dawn windows
White all white
Floe in bed with me
Naked like me
Asleep
Fingertips on her bare shoulder
Warm flesh Alive same as me then
Same as me now
August 16, 2026
8:51 am
I shower I dress
Blitzkrieg Bop LP playing on my stereo
The Ramones
I first saw them winter 1977
I live
I hope tomorrow too
The Ramones forever today
Me alive too
Gabba Gabba Hey__