“JUST LIKE A FATHER” Day

This is the Fathers Day Column from the Culpeper Star-Exponent, written by my Wife,
Rabbi Rose Lyn Jacob

Father’s Day is upon us once again. Since our lives have been turned topsy-turvy by the pandemic, Father’s Day gift giving has been a challenge. Traditional “go-to,” tried and true Father’s Day gifts from the “before times” seem out of place, if not totally useless. Neckties, long the staple of Father’s Day gifting have gone the way of the dinosaur. So have fanciful cuff-links and their raison d’êtra, the dress shirt. Today’s Father’s Day gift is more likely to be a T-“message shirt” stating how awesome dad is, or a state-of-the art barbeque meat thermometer, or, my personal favorite for the new dad, a camo-diaper bag!

I think it is fair to say that Fatherhood is a bit more challenging these days. Gone is the 1950’s television fatherhood model. It went the way of the last Edsel rolling off Ford’s production line in 1959. Dads, in general, may be harder to find these days. He might be on military deployment on the other side of the world or “doing time,” in another state. There are dads who would give anything to be healthy enough to do “dad stuff” with their kids. There are invisible sperm donor dads, and deadbeat dads. There are men who have fathered children, but didn’t stay around to be an actual father to them. Then there is the most heartbreaking category; dads who die before they’ve had the chance to raise their children, pass on values, give guidance through life’s bumpy roads, and be there for the joyous moments.

How do you honor those men who can and are willing to step in and fill the void of fathers who are unable to father? A few years back, those artistic and inspired folks at Hallmark found a “new” niche category for marketing their product. You can find these cards just below the “Father’s Day” section, with its own little tab; “You’ve Been Just Like A Father To Me.” Now, not everyone who has been helped in their path to adulthood feels comfortable expressing that emotion with a greeting card; even if they feel it. Still others would need a roll of stamps to mail the cumulative number of cards to all the men who took the time to help with “dad” things over the years, who shared “dad” values and taught life skills by example.

I’ve met many people men and women who share with me stories about these caring men and the impact they’ve had on their young lives. Like Dad’s friend who subbed for her father at the middle school Father-Daughter Dance, and made certain he was there years later to walk her down the aisle. Or the fella who made sure his neighbor’s sons and daughters knew how to change a tire, check the oil, fill the wiper fluid and parallel park, even though the DMV says they won’t test you on it. There were stories about learning how to use power tools, or a screw driver. There were stories about learning to hunt or fish. There was the guy who taught you chord progressions on the guitar and how to tie a Windsor knot. The one the one who showed you how tie a bowtie, ‘cause big boys don’t wear clip on ties to the prom! And the ones who reminded you to hold the car door open for your date, even if that has gone out of style.

Some were lessons to last a lifetime. How to look someone in the eye and give a firm handshake. How to make a budget and save for the future. And the important things to look for when choosing a partner in life. Those of you who are fortunate to be able to celebrate Father’s Day with your father, or your Hallmark “Just Like a Father,”, know how special this man; these men, have been in building the person are today.

Much has happened leading up to this Father’s Day. Covid continues in its many iterations. Natural and man-made disasters have increased in number and duration. We have grown numb or even indifferent to news coverage of mass murders, gun violence, targeted hate crimes, political divisiveness, and the war in Ukraine. And these stories have highjacked what should be an enjoyable holiday with friends and family.

Each Father’s Day, there are those who observe but not celebrate. For them it is a day to remember; a quiet contemplative day. Those who have been cut off from their fathers, for whatever reasons, will pick up the phone and exchange a few awkward words, and a few awkward silences, with a dad who is physically or emotionally distant. Unlike the past few years, sons and daughters can visit with their elderly parents. It will be a day to sit beside the once strong, now fragile man who raised you, softly recounting for him memories that once were his; knowing he no longer knows who you are.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve grown accustomed to news sources labeling all sorts of people as “heroes.” So here is a ‘shout out’ to those who come to bat and rise to the occasion when fathers are can’t be there for their kids. They may not make the evening news, but they are heroes none the less.

Written in memory of my father and role model, Michael Jacob.

Goodbye New World Order — It Never Was

When the Soviet Union disintegrated, President George H. W. Bush, never a great man with words, awkwardly dubbed the post-Soviet era as one framed by a “New World Order.” Aside from the general feeling of well-being the term evoked, there was no clear understanding of what it meant. Political scientist Francis Fukuyama suggested we were witnessing “the end of history” as we had known it. Being the short sighted, instant gratification culture that we are, we couldn’t wait a moment to see if it really was, and what it all meant.

If the modern nation state stemmed from the mid seventeenth century Peace of Westphalia, much of modern international law began with the 1899 Hague Convention that presumed to find a way to define certain “laws of warfare.” This international foolishness continued through the founding of the League of Nations, that stillborn creature that essentially broke the British Empire while accomplishing little, and the United Nations, an equally futile organization that “kept everyone talking” in order to avoid another world war, while tens of millions more were killed in genocidal wars of national liberation, from Afghanistan to Kosovo, Biafra to Vietnam, Croatia to Syria, Iran to . . . you get the idea. Still, all those agreements and organizations did give the nation states they nurtured a structurer to rest on, talk across, and fight with.

Through all that, rebellions were put down, and national integrity was mostly preserved. Where new nation states emerged, they did so from the framework of colonial systems. As bad as those colonial systems may have been, they gave initial structure and infrastructure to the emerging nations. All this happened with the backdrop of the super power nuclear balance of terror. Though the United States and the Soviet Union never fought each other, they fought proxy wars on every inhabited continent. For the longest time, the Soviets seemed to be winning; the forces of socialism appeared more appealing, especially to the leadership of the new nations. Then, suddenly, it was over. The Soviet Union fell of its own weight in 1991, proof of its own ineptitude, collapsing back into nothing but Mother Russia, and ushering in that new world order that Bush and Fukuyama both thought would fundamentally change the world.

The new order held together for seventeen years. Then in 2008 Russia sponsored a conflict between Georgia and its ethnic Russian-sympathetic enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Not only did the Russian clients win, but in the following years, the South Ossetians continued to surreptitiously to move the border, a few hundred meters at a time, shrinking Georgian farm land as they went. This process continues to this day. The entire Georgia war was close to being completely under the western press radar, but it was a watershed moment. For the first time a modern nation-state was losing its borders in the post-World War II era. This wasn’t a temporary adjustment, it was permanent.

In 2014 Russia invaded Crimea, a part of Ukraine, and in the presence of invading troops, conducted a rapid election that called for the unification of Crimea with Russia.

In 2022 Russia declared that Ukraine was not a legitimate country, but rather a natural historic part of Russia. Shortly thereafter Russia conducted a multi-axis invasion of Ukraine with the intent of incorporating it into the Russian Federation. We can’t prove those orange clouds that have begun to support the Russian advance in eastern Ukraine are chemical weapons, but it does appear Russia has once again shown its disdain for both the Hague and Geneva Conventions. Well, when they were signatories, they had little use for those documents.

These activities, taken together, tell us we are in a post Westphalian world. National boundaries no longer exist, except as they can be maintained by force of arms. It should be no surprise that Russia is offended by the expansion of NATO. She has serious plans for the domination, and possible absorption of her neighbors. The question isn’t whether the United Nations will be up to the task of preserving the world order. It clearly is not. The UN is even more hollow and futile than was the League of Nations in the 1930s. The question is: Will NATO be up to the task of keeping the modern western world order from collapsing? The ‘N’ in NATO may stand for North Atlantic, but South Korea has expressed interest in a relationship with it. NATO is the gold standard. But the presence of an adequately firm leadership at the NATO helm is not guaranteed. Much of the free world is wringing its hands and wondering.

Those of us in the west think Eurocentrically, but there is a similar, multi-threaded issue to that of Ukraine brewing in the far east. China is a nation nursing many grudges, both actual and perceived, concerning historic wrongs. While everyone is familiar with the Chinese claim to sovereignty over Taiwan, all Chinese grow up with a firm understanding of the historic Chinese claims to at least some territory of all her neighbors. In 1969 China and the Soviet Union fought a bitter seven-month war over borders that made a strong enough impression on the Soviets that they moved the Baikal-Amur Railway several hundred miles north to distance it from what might become a frequently violent border region.

In 1979 China launched attacks against Vietnam, ostensibly due to Vietnam’s interference in Cambodia. But once again, the dispute seems to have centered on China’s theory of the border’s placement.

All Chinese geography text books have maps emphasizing Chinese sovereignty claims, not only to land areas, but also to adjacent seas and even traditional fishing grounds far from China, some abutting distant countries.

In the absence of a strong hand by united democracies, it is likely that the near future will see increasing violent acts by claimants to adjacent nations’ territories, with the danger that open war as we knew it in much of the 20th century may resume, with all the risks it entails.