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8 | SEPTEMBER 26 • 2019 

essay

Shana Tovah-

ah-ah-ah Achoo!
A

llergies are nothing to 
sneeze at.
As a kid, I didn’
t 
understand. I sailed through 
my childhood without ’
em, 
barely understanding what they 
were. My only 
exposure was one 
poor kid in my 
class who left 
a trail of soggy 
tissues wherever 
she went. 
Then I upped 
and moved to 
Michigan — and 
my sinuses have never been the 
same. 
I don’
t know what exactly 
I’
m allergic to, but I do know 
it appears in the air as soon as 
the summer’
s over and wreaks 
havoc in my nostrils through 
the winter. 
I walk around with my eyes 
squinted — people think I’
m 
studying the clouds or pon-
dering the cracked ceilings or 
something — until they hear 
my man-the-lifeboats, let-it-all-
out kind of sneeze. It’
s like an 
internal earthquake, so loud it 
sends small animals scurrying 
for safer ground. And then 
there’
s a whole lot of uncontrol-
lable sneezes chasing right after 
that first big seismic one. They 
come in bunches of 10, at least. 
I’
m walking around with red 
eyes; my head is stuffed. It’
s 
plain old miserable. I spend a 
lot of time sneezing up a storm 
and doing that awful chhhh-
hh grinding noise from deep 
in the back of my throat that 
somehow offers a little relief 
yet causes people walking near 
me to cross the street in alarm. 
And every year, I think about 
that poor kid in my class, who 
sneezed her way through her 
childhood, and how no one 
ever wanted to hold her hand 

(eewwww) and, boy, if I could 
go back in time and whisper 
to my younger self some sage 
words of advice, I’
d definitely 
say something about that. 
I feel that kind of stuff comes 
back to bite you later. You know 
how it is, you get back from 
the world whatever you put out 
there and all that. Smile and the 
world smiles with you. What 
goes around, comes around. Be 
mean to a kid with allergies and 
you might wind up with them 
yourself later in life and, boy, 
will those tissues haunt you. 
Here we are, it’
s almost Rosh 
Hashanah. We’
ll hear the shofar, 
dip the apple in the honey, “do” 
tashlich (which, you’
ve got to 
admit, is one of the fishiest cus-
toms we have). It’
s a great time 
to reach out to others, rekindle 

some relationships, even if you 
barely speak during the busy 
year. (In my case, I’
ve been 
reconnecting with my best bud 
of the season, Claritin.) There’
s 
just something about the new 
year that inspires connection. 
Keep in mind that whatever 
warm and fuzzy vibes you’
re 
sending out to the world will 
likely make its way back to you 
when you need it most. 
So, if you’
re like me and also 
suffering from seasonal allergies 
these days, I have one thing to 
say: Bless you, bless you, bless 
you and shanah tovah! 

Rochel 
Burstyn
Columnist

HMC Was
Appropriate Venue
A letter in the Sept. 12 
edition protests the use of the 
Holocaust Memorial Center 
as the venue of the Close the 
Camps demonstration against 
the T
rump administration’
s 
treatment of detainees, saying 
the site selection trivializes the 
Holocaust. It states, “I was led 
to believe that the purpose of 
the Holocaust Memorial Center 
was to preserve and protect the 
memory of the more than 6 
million Jews murdered in the 
Holocaust.”
I concur on the HMC’
s 
purpose. But what is the 
memory for if not to move us 
to raise our voices when a leader 
builds his support by exploiting 
bigotry?
 At the risk of alarmism, 
consider the tragedies of 
Pittsburgh and Poway — and of 
Charlottesville, El Paso, Quebec 
City and Christchurch — each 
a miniature Kristallnacht whose 
perpetrators assumed our 
president’
s rhetoric gave them 
license for unspeakable crimes. 
Dare we wait until the detention 
centers sink to the depths of 
Auschwitz before we cry foul?
The Close the Camps rally 
did not trivialize the Holocaust. 
It invoked it as a warning that 
even if we don’
t reach that 
destination, we’
re on the road 
toward it. That warning is why 
the Holocaust Memorial Center 
exists, and its use as a venue was 
thus entirely appropriate.

— Elliott Shevin

Oak Park

Content Over 
Appearance
Yes, the Detroit Jewish News
is now glossy, and newsprint 
won’
t come off on our fingers. 
However, the original purpose 

of the newspaper is to inform its 
readers. With so many American 
Jewish people ambivalent toward 
Israel, isn’
t it your obligation 
to keep your readers informed 
about Israel? 
 How many people know that 
Post T
raumatic Stress Disorder 
(PTSD) is a growing problem 
in Israel, from the very young 
to the elderly? How many 
readers know about sirens going 
off constantly and that Israelis 
have seconds to reach bomb 
shelters? Do they know about 
the constant rocket attacks from 
Gaza and the West Bank and 
how many hundreds of acres 
of farmland have been burned 
from incendiary balloons? 
Is it no wonder that so many 
uninformed Jewish people 
take up the Boycott, Divest 
Sanctions (BDS) cause. That 
is directly attributable to the 
media constantly talking and 
writing about the “plight” 
of the Palestinians. Do they 
provide a balanced reporting of 
what the Jewish people living 
in Israel suffer through daily? 
Do they ever report that the 
Palestinians are the aggressors 
and Israel only reacts when they 
are attacked by them? Do they 
know about Iran’
s presence in 
Israel’
s neighboring countries of 
Lebanon and Syria? If you don’
t 
write about them, then who 
will?

— 
Annette Gerus

Commerce Township

(Please read the publisher’
s Rosh 
Hashanah message on page 5 
regarding the dramatic changes 
impacting the print media 
industry and the Jewish News.)

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