TO UNDERSTAND HARM: Introduction

I am here with you post election. It is the so called holidays, the end of the year thankfully. But no one knows what the new year brings except uncertainty. Harmful things have happened to me and others during the run up to the poisoned election. The runoff of that ill tasting emotional turmoil has continued to spawn more plots and twists than could have been imagined in some of our worst nightmares. Many try with varying degrees to unwind the ball of yarn, peel back the layers of onion,
look back and forward in attempts to make sense of the non-sensible. The things I know for sure are the things that happened to me in one work situation that lasted for one year and a few weeks before the election. And like others, I am unraveling what appears to be preposterous but has a resonating truth that I was not aware of even though I knew that something very odd was happening.

So here it goes. I worked in a nursing home in Queens which serves a lot of ethnic Bukharan Jews. There is a day care center for people from that community. I loved watching the dances, parties and enjoyed the good nature and old world friendships over backgammon. I often wondered about the wars and other experiences they had back home in the former Soviet Union. I did not work with them as they were bused in from their homes just for adult day care. On occasion one of them was a patient on my roster.  I found they were a somewhat closed community and I did not intrude. It was like an invisible line that would not be stepped over. In my research I found that the Jerusalem Post carries articles on the Bukharan community here in NYC.  It also has articles of fake news regarding Hillary Clinton and others. Which helps me to understand some of the hate filled rhetoric I heard in that facility.

The entire facility was kosher and they fed everyone including their employees which is a rarity these days. I felt a sense of being taken care of because of that. It is run by Ashkenazi Jews. This is important to know. Two separate Jewish groups who are sometimes at odds with each other were there. I didn't understand what really was going on. One ran the facility and the other rented a place for adult day care within the larger facility. It all seemed to work. I noticed the Bukharan group did not seem to be overly religious. I live in the lower east side of New York City and am used to religious Jews. So to see these two groups together was novel to me. I knew nothing but love. I don't know why I wrote that, but compassion is the default for myself and others.