We grew up in San Francisco. Raised Unitarian, at one point, one of our classmates was Naomi Wolf - who, along with Paul Vixie, attended Herbert Hoover Junior High School.
More recently, we read an article by Naomi Wolf, online, and wanted to correspond with her about her comments - to our astonishment, we had recently discovered that we were, through our mother, of Ashkenazi descent. Unable to locate an electronic mail address for Ms Wolf, we sent an email to naomiwolf@gmail.com; and received a reply.
We entered into a correspondence with this party, where we attempted to discuss our newfound Jewish identity, in which we proposed setting up an ironing board on a street corner and asking passers-by, what the word 'Jew' meant, to them.
We had not even read the reply to our email, a few days later, when, abruptly, our electronic mail address, at Hushmail - which we had relied upon, for most of the past decade, as our primary address - was abruptly disconnected, without explanation. We lost all of our email. We infer that was the intent.
Readers will recognize this as a typical act of deplatforming, which at one time was rare but has now become so commonplace as to have its own Wikipedia page, and to almost not require explanation.
We will happily entertain accusations that we are anti-Semites, as soon as we can all agree on what we mean when we use the word 'Semite' - there appears to be considerable disagreement.
As Lewis Carroll explained the problem, over a century ago:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
’The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.”
We cite this as evidence that the question - What is a Jew? - is an explosive one and that the people who fear to see it answered will stop at nothing to keep the question from even being asked.
We also cite this as evidence that the people doing this have no respect for freedom of speech or freedom of association and that they do not share North American values and they have only contempt for North American laws.
We do not personally think these unknown individuals whom maliciously interfere with others' freedoms are interested in the truth. They seem better acquainted with the other side of the aisle. Which leads to the question: How, in the view of their Creator, can these people possibly be considered Jews?
We have no evidence that the person we were corresponding with was the same Naomi Wolf we had known some fifty years before. They denied being that Naomi Wolf,
But while we are on the topic of Naomi Wolf, we should like to point out that if, as we think, she was born in 1962, then she is now nearly old enough to receive Social Security, and that it may be time to quit dyeing, and blow-drying, her hair, to make herself appear twenty years younger; time to quit trying to kickstart her career with COVID-themed media events that attempt to position her as some sort of spokesperson; time to stop pretending she is not a sixty-year-old woman; time to go home and bake some !@#$% cookies for her grand-children - assuming she has any.
Food for thought.
