This is Birobidzhan, the “Jewish Autonomous region” founded by Stalin.

It’s not just that Jews preferred the land that they had a historical connection to. Many Jews actually did migrate to Birobidzhan to start a Soviet Jewish state.

It did not work out so well.

https://twitter.com/daniel_sugarman/status/1731339278993539317

Birobidzhan was founded in 1934 as an alternative Soviet Jewish state. Tens of thousands of Jews moved to Birobidzhan, encouraged by the government, to build a Jewish, Yiddish-speaking nation.

Just two years later, the anti-Semitic purges began.

Hi, America. Somehow this is not widely known. But this is what every Jew and every Jewish institution is dealing with, every day.

It’s a lot, and it’s been this way for many years. So when we see rising anti-Semitism on our streets right now, we are truly scared.

https://twitter.com/ravbogard/status/1717919010254143613

For context: this is a relatively recent phenomenon for American Jews.

When I was growing up in the 90’s, my synagogue was always unlocked. I never felt unsafe. I remember the day that my shul decided to always lock all of the doors except for one. Then it was all doors.

Today my kid started coughing at school and asked the nurse for a COVID test.

The response? “Oh, we don’t test for COVID here anymore.” They sent my kid back to class coughing, and that was that.

We have learned nothing. My kid is fine btw - no COVID, just allergies. But they were super stressed that that might be accidentally giving it to a friend or teacher at school. There was no way to check at school.

We have the tools now to live with COVID. But we are choosing not to use them.

A few months ago I wrote a thread about mass mentality and #COVID19 using Eugene Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros to frame groupthink behavior in our then-new shift towards normalcy.

I felt alone at the time, but the thread resonated with a lot of people, w/ 5 million+ views. 1/

https://twitter.com/debra_caplan/status/1516816659125874695

It’s been 5 months since then, and COVID has been increasingly disappearing from our public consciousness ever since. Despite 400+ American deaths a day, day-to-day life in America looks almost the same as it did in 2019.

America seems to have moved on.

3/

After successfully avoiding Covid for 2.5 years, my husband tested positive for Covid 3 weeks ago, cleared the infection, and then tested positive again yesterday.

3 weeks!

#BA5 immune evasion is no joke. We are still pretty Covid cautious. We mask (N95) everywhere, test before seeing people indoors, etc. We are quadruple vaxed.

And still, my husband got Covid twice in three weeks.

This is insane. Are people just supposed to keep catching this thing over and over again until?

Early on in the Covid pandemic, there were lots of articles about how the 1918 flu disappeared from our collective memory and the historical record. Alfred Crosby famously called it "America's Forgotten Pandemic" in his 1989 book.

A short 🧵 1/ Crosby's book "probes the curious loss of national memory of this cataclysmic event."

The 1918 pandemic killed between 50 - 100 million people in two years. Encyclopedia Britannica's 1924 history of the 20th century so far didn't even mention it once. 2/

“COVID is over” and yet, right now Covid is also everywhere.

It’s cognitive dissonance in every direction and it’s truly wild.

A 🧵 1/ This week:

“Covid is over” but my kids’ schools went from reporting 1 or 2 cases every few days to reporting 4-5 new cases every day. 2/

Hello, new followers and fellow Berengers!

I'm a professional theater historian who writes about Yiddish theater. I also write about contemporary theater/film and culture at large.

I tweet about theater (and general) history and what we can learn from it. In short: a lot. My post on Rhinoceros-as-Covid-parable seems to be making the rounds, which means that there are a LOT more Berengers out there than I thought.

I teach Rhinoceros in my theater history classes. I never thought it would be so relevant again, but here we are.

In 1959, Eugene Ionesco wrote the absurdist play Rhinoceros in which one by one, an entire town of people suddenly transform into rhinos. At first, people are horrified but as the contagion spreads, (almost) everyone comes to accept that turning into a rhinoceros is fine. 1/ Rhinoceros is a play about conformity and mob mentality and mass delusion, about how easy it is for people to accept outrageous/unacceptable things simply because everyone else is doing it.

In the end, the protagonist Berenger is the only human left. 2/

We have a police brutality problem in the United States.

But it doesn't have to be that way. There are plenty of other countries that have robust police forces without anything like the number of civilians shot by police that we have here. There are plenty of models. In Norway, the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, and Iceland, the police don't carry guns at all, except in certain situations.

THREAD: Ever wanted to learn some Yiddish?

Eastern European Jews lived in turbulent times, and it's reflected in their language. So here are some Yiddish phrases and expressions that might be useful as we live through a world-altering pandemic. 1/n Yiddish is basically obsessed with health, and the notion that good health is a prerequisite for happiness. In Yiddish, there are "tsores" (problems) and "gezunte tsores" (healthy problems). You can't take gezunte tsores too seriously. 2/n

As hard as this is, it isn’t likely to be short haul.

In 1918-1919 there were three waves of the pandemic. The first was the mildest. The second was the deadliest.

People who were infected in one wave were less likely to be infected in the next. /1 Social distancing measures and other non pharmaceutical interventions were imposed in the first wave, then relaxed. But when the second wave hit, they were imposed again in many places. Relaxing distancing measures too early led to a serious spike. /2

1/ Dr. Max Starkloff was a hero who saved countless lives in St. Louis during the Spanish flu pandemic. City governments today ought to follow his example to mitigate the impact of #COVID19. 2/ Starkloff was the city health commissioner of St. Louis. In October 1918, St. Louis had its first 7 cases. Two days later, Starkloff abruptly ordered the closure of ALL schools, movie theaters, bars, sporting events, religious services, playgrounds, and other public places.

I've been writing a lot here about learning from the 1918 flu pandemic to fight #COVID19. I'm a historian, thinking historically is what I know.

But we also need to reflect on what we can learn from the very recent past. We are in great danger of repeating our recent history. What are the historical lessons we ought to be learning from January and February 2020?

The sooner we learn these lessons, the more lives will be saved.

During the 1918 flu pandemic, NYC health authorities moved slowly to combat the disease at first. They thought it would peak quickly and go away. But when it didn’t, NYC health officials came up with an unusual plan - and it worked (1)

We can learn from this history #COVID19nyc NYC emerged from 3 waves of the 1918 pandemic with a far lower fatality rate than neighboring big cities. NYC had a death rate of 4.7 per 1000. Boston had 6.5. Philly had 7.3.

NYC mitigated a pandemic through public health measures once and can do it again (2)

I'm writing a biography of Yiddish theater and film star Molly Picon. I often introduce students to her, and they're usually most interested in her gender-bending roles.

Yesterday, my students wanted to know everything about what happened to her during the 1918 flu pandemic. First time ever in the years that I've been lecturing about Picon that anyone's ever found this part of her story so interesting.

But Molly's story of encountering the pandemic is actually really fascinating. Here's where Yiddish #theaterhistory meets the 2020 news cycle.