Life as Mrs. Lincoln - The Jewish Standard

I don’t mean that, of course. Time has smoothed the horror of that night in Ford’s Theatre, 160 years ago, into a punchline.

We used to pull it out when conversation had to move on from something grim but distant to the lighter present. It used to be funny, when it was done right.

Now, though, it’s a daily refrain. Life is so complicated right now that many of us have become perpetual Mrs. Lincolns.

Of course, Jews always have been known not only for being persecuted, and for surviving persecution, and then eating, but also for black humor. Now would be a good time for those dark jokes.

But the thing is, it’s springtime.

We have a story in the paper by Yonah Levenson about duality. She’s sitting in an airplane, on her way home from Israel for her first trip there in 35 years, next to a young Satmar woman who knows — or at least betrays no knowledge — of anything that’s going on in Israel, including October 7 and the hostages. And Yonah includes photos from Israel. Like all the images we’ve seen from there since October 7, they combine terror and death and destruction with the unstoppable force of creation and light.

Pesach, the holiday of national liberation, will be here in little more than a week. Until then, those of us who do these things are still doing frantic last-minute scrubbing and vaccuming and jettisoning. And then we celebrate, with family and friends and empty seats and newly full seats and food and wine and life and love and song and history.

The parks are bursting with life now. These are the few fast-moving weeks when trees and shrubs and flowerbeds look different every day. It’s wildly exciting.

So, what else is new, Mrs. Lincoln? What goes along with terrorism and antisemitism and authoritarianism and kleptocracy? Maybe it’s forsythias and magnolias and daffodils. And maybe, just for a few minutes, their magic works.

—JP

Opinion

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