Ghosts of a Dream

Grace Paley writes about Jewish shame:

“Now at one time, the Jews wanted a king. They’d had a couple of perfectly good prophets, but they said they really wanted a king. The prophet Samuel, with biblical experience and wisdom, pointed out that a king would require all sorts of taxes, olive orchards, concubines, etc. a terrible expense. No, they said, they wanted to be like all the other nations and have a king also, they’d probably need, like all the other nations, an army, airplanes, nuclear weapons, borders, checkpoints, and maybe a big wall and a lot more land…”

Thanks to Deb Reich for sending this along.