Mr. Blunt and Cranky, in the interest of being a well-informed Radical Centrist, gets his news from lots of locations: indeed, he is probably the only blogger you know who reads both the Huffington Post and the Wall Street Journal on a daily basis. Those sites, and fringier ones, on the Right and the Left. Echo chambers? Not for this guy,
So, he was on one such site and found this powerful piece of prose: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022822840 (reprinted below, in its entirety). The Cranky One contacted the author and asked permission to spread this awesome piece of writing around a bit, and that permission was graciously given.
Since it is a Saturday, you probably have a few minutes to spare, and in this writer’s opinion, you could do nothing better with that time than to read this story. Then think about the burial of the Boston Bomber:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev has finally been entombed, and that’s a good thing. “A GOOD thing?”, I can already hear some of you saying, outraged or nearly so. Yes, I said it’s a good thing!
The maternal side of my family is the usual ‘dogs’ breakfast’ mixture of Eastern European immigrants, but for my purposes here I’ll concentrate on my Mom’s paternal grandparents, a Polish Catholic plumber and a Polish Jewish seamstress. For two such people to fall in love in turn-of-the-20th Century Poland was possible, but to marry was unthinkable. Therefore, my great-grandfather saved enough money for them both to emigrate to America, and they left in the middle of the night, never to return to Poland. They came through Ellis Island, married in New York City and eventually wound up in the coal country of southern Illinois, where my great-grandfather had a cousin who helped him get a job as plumber in the mines. Great-grandmother, an excellent seamstress, also found work sewing ‘fancy dresses’ for ladies and also doing alterations for a local haberdasher. Being thrifty folk, they saved their money and eventually were able to buy a hardware and undertaking establishment, a not unusual combination at that time.
Great-grandfather was taught how to embalm by a salesman for an embalming-supply company and passed the state licensing exam. Intelligent and ambitious, in 1910 he ‘split off’ the undertaking business from the hardware store, purchasing a Victorian house on one of the town’s main streets for exclusive use a a ‘funeral parlor’. A booming immigrant population was drawn to the area due to coal mining, and his undertaking establishment began to flourish, because he and great-grandmother were also ‘hunkies’ (a derogatory term applied by the native population to all new immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe). Fast forward a decade, to the late 1920’s…
Southern Illinois was a turbulent, violent place at that time: Prohibition was in effect, and two gangs literally went to war over control of illegal booze, gambling, ‘ladies of the evening’ and roadhouses. The KKK was also at its zenith, targeting ‘wets’, immigrants and Catholics. Murder, mayhem and political corruption were rampant– everyday occurrences. One of the gangs was led by a particularly brutal man, Charlie Birger, himself a Russian Jew whose parents came to America when he was a child. Birger, undoubtedly a psychopath, eventually made a fatal mistake– he ordered the murder of a local politician– and was arrested, brought to trial, convicted and sentenced to hang, the last man to ever be hanged in Illinois.
Among the preparations for Birger’s execution was the very practical question of what was to be done with his body after he was hanged. His sister, who lived in St. Louis, indicated that she wished to claim it. The coroner contacted undertaker after undertaker after undertaker, all of whom flatly turned him down, always citing as their reason that “it would be bad for business” were they to do so. In desperation, he finally reached out to ‘the hunkie undertaker’, my great-grandfather. After a bit of beating around the bush, he put the question to him. On the verge of turning the coroner down, like all the others, my great-grandmother spoke up and said, “Of course we will help Mrs. Schansky”. My great-grandfather didn’t speak, but nodded reluctantly in agreement. Relieved, the coroner left.
As soon as the coroner left, great-grandfather turned to great-grandmother and asked, “Why, Ruth? Why?”. My great-grandmother looked at him levelly and replied, “We’ll do it because it’s a mitzvah, that’s why!’. For those of you unfamiliar with the word, a ‘mitzvah’ is an moral deed performed as either religious duty or as a moral act of human kindness. Before sundown on the day Mr. Birger met his well-deserved fate, my great-grandparents helped his sister and his children bury his body in a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, according to Jewish custom.
We are liberals and progressives here. In spite of the horrendous acts Tamerlan Tsarnaev committed, his FAMILY did not commit those acts; they too were victims of his crimes, and no less worthy of a measure of our compassion and understanding. I’ve read comments here on the subject of what should have been done with Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s body that made me double-check whether I was at DU or that other site that can never be mentioned. Isn’t it our belief in ‘mitzvahs’ what make us different from them? I thought it was, and I still think so.
Awesome, innit? Do the world a favor and listen to the writer, because he (and his ancestors) are 100% right
Oh, and please reach out to ColesCountyDem and suggest they start blogging. The world needs more writers of this caliber.
Mr. Blunt and Cranky
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