🎗 Faigy Mayer committed suicide Monday by falling twenty stories to her death from a Fifth Avenue rooftop in NoMad. I had met her a handful of times at social events in the “Off the Derech” community and the “reason‐based community” over the past three years. In this photo, she was taking a selfie at a social gathering organized by a mutual friend visiting from Israel.

📷 Ami’s return to America, Oliver’s City Tavern, 190 West 4 Street, Greenwich Village, 13 September 2012. (Photograph by Elyaqim Mosheh Adam.)

With five participants (plus the facilitator), the gay men’s discussion group Friday was quite well attended compared to how it’s been recently. The introductions and preliminary talk about ourselves led into an organic discussion about addiction. As it turns out, I was the only one without an addictive personality; everyone else present has had true addictions to alcohol or to recreational drugs or to sex or to overeating. Gripping a discussion as it was, I had difficulty relating to it for that reason, but also for one other: Multiple participants were happy to attribute their strengths to God and take credit for their accomplishments away from themselves in order to hand it over to a Deity. Even those who saw the benefit of praising and recognizing merit in human accomplishment still tempered it with God talk. (God gave me the tools the overcome my addiction but I had to use them.) The facilitator even attributed human ethics to God, saying that he truly believed that our internal voice that knows right from wrong (to which we do not always listen) is God. Another participant compared God to the sun and humans to the planets which revolve around it. Nevertheless, this was an exceptional discussion in which I learned about their strategies for overcoming their issues and I got to briefly discuss the adjustment disorder I feel I had in the early Aughts.

It was the first night of Passover and I had no seder to attend, but I went out to eat with the men’s group participants to a local diner and had a Passover meal of chicken cordon bleu, a garden salad and side vegetables (no bread).

Sunday at the Ethical Humanist Society of Queens, we were joined by Richard L. Koral from the American Ethical Union and the Ethical Culture Society of Westchester who also joined us for our monthly luncheon thereafter at Jax Inn.

Six Exotic Jews group members also gathered Sunday for an “Exoticon” in Upper Manhattan. We met at General Grant National Memorial where Ariel emphasized Grant’s racism by reading aloud General Order Nº. 11 and then spitting on the site. (See the video.) A British tourist inquired about it, and after explaining, a number of us eventually got onto the topic of libertarianism (and their implying that we were a group of libertarians annoyed me because we are not, but rather a Jewish cultural group). There was also a large group of adolescents there rehearsing a dance routine.

After briefly visiting Sakura Park, those of us who were hungry got food from a local supermarket and we sat, talked and ate on public benches. Then we went to Riverside Park which was really gorgeous and we located what we believe is the Freedom Tunnel. Then came rehydration and dessert at other local venues and more talking and sitting on benches. Afterwards, we rode the subway together to Times Square and then little by little separated from one another as our paths diverged.

While waiting with one of them in Jackson Heights for his bus, our topics turned unsurprisingly towards linguistics (Arabic ligatures, and why the letter jim is a moon letter even though it’s usually coronal).