MARIO ALVAREZ- I just want to know how I got from communist Hungary in 1956 to the Brazilian Guarani gold mining town I lived in under the Brazilians Armed Forces during the ’67-68 military coup? Not even the White House can tell you from all these many years.
I spent 7 months in a subway station in an iron cage or a caves underground in the German bombed Jewish ghetto in Warsaw, 1980-1981. I was illegally allowed to leave the Warsaw ghetto after a year. No one even looked at me as a Jew. One person would say, “You stayed a Polish Jew, now you look Jewish?” My mother’s favorite Jewish song came on: “Get On Your Knees, Starves and Put On Your Toes.” There were many black students, as I was Israeli, and they liked my Jewish thing.
My sister’s daughter got a job in an Anglo-Saxon Company in Japan. She is in England today. Her husband’s father, father-in-law, aunt, uncle, cousins, etc. went to the Japanese Tea House. They came from all over the United States, Canada, England, and even Japan to join in the serving tea, chatting about life, TV, and Japan. Japanese society is very civilized, much more civilized than our own society. It is so sad.
I don’t believe for a moment that President Xi is sinister and plotting any nefarious schemes behind this televised dinner meeting this week and will try the best to convey to Trump his sincere respect, commitment to the good of China, but overall I do not have any faith in the future. My own honest impression is that Xi is stalling for a date with Donald Trump, not so much for him to visit Beijing, but so that he could avoid a Xi variant of a Clinton Variant!
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Mario Alvarenga is a member of the Amulaya Yeshiva.