RUTHFULLY YOURS

The vast preponderance of recent news coverage on Donald Trump has been on his remarks about Mexican illegal aliens, but he also made statements on outsourcing jobs, saying that if he were president, those U.S. automakers who move their manufacturing facilities south of the border would be slapped with a 35 percent tariff on every vehicle they imported into the U.S.

But in my view, the best way to prevent manufacturing jobs from going elsewhere is not to build a tariff fence around the United States. The best way is to examine the forces that make it so much cheaper to manufacture elsewhere. Its not just labor costs. Germany has higher labor costs than we do, but a 2011 Time Magazine article says this:

One of the miracles of the nation of Israel is that Jews from all over the world, with different mentalities and cultures, arrived to the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel, unified and created a modern Jewish-Israeli culture.

Bashert is a word in Yiddish, its meaning destiny, fate. There are times in life when something happened and one can only relate to it as bashert. My meeting Vanessa Paloma Elbaz at a fundraising event in Los Angeles was simply bashert.

What fascinated me about Vanessa is the project she took upon herself to accomplish. She is documenting the Moroccan-Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) music, Haketia*, which is part of the big story about the Moroccan ancient Jewish community colorful and rich history and culture.