WEBVTT

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Here's a little bit
more about Spain.

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This begins with some
information about Jewish eating

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customs, something I'm sure you
were all dying to know tonight.

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You'll hear too a little bit
about the Spanish Inquisition.

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And if you'll forgive me,
I did have the audacity

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to put in some of my own
troubles in this poem.

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God, forgive me.

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OK.

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"The generally tender cuts of
meat in the back of the animal

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are forbidden by Jewish law.

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Such law also forbids
the consumption

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of the sciatic nerve giving
rise to long-stewed pot

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roasts of the forequarter and
that other classic forcemeat,

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gefilte fish.

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Such humble meals as meatballs
could be prepared ahead

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and served cold on the Sabbath.

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During the trials
of the Inquisition,

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the preparation
of albondigas was

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presented as evidence of
secret Jewish practice,

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the vast majority
having long since fled.

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Only Jews who remained in Spain
and converted to Catholicism

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were put to trial.

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Rank justice, if you will, that
the reader may be more justly

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occasioned to make
inquisition of the truth.

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On the operating table, before
the membrane between waking

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and sleeping is cut by
drugs, the surgeon's fine,

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straight teeth appear
like distant white cliffs

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where I'm to be
welcomed as someone

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who can finally walk to safety.

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Notwithstanding I'm
not one of the ones

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who has chosen to leave.

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Nor am I willing to stay
behind as conditions worsen.

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Naturally, there
is every difference

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in the world now versus then.

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With the divine intervention
of science as a way out,

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rather than take what is coming.

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And I make no case
whatever for bravery.

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It actually became all
about my mother and country

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in the sense of what one
inherits when there is

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no choice what one can choose.

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As a cripple for months,
I became obsessed

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lest I judge those who
converted rather than flee.

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Feeling sorry for myself,
despite what I understood,

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must be real torture.

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The pain of persecution
for no reason.

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I knew my circumstance to
be fundamentally different,

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yet I remained woefully
who I was having

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no practice, no agency, no law.

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I thought of truth as
accessible with my nerves.

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Make as speedy and
Inquisition as thou canst

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into thy own fate.

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O, my master, I get lucky.

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The white cliffs fade.

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The room feels
positively medieval.

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Do I observe on the
white bloodied apron

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the butcher wipe his knife?

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Determinedly, I hang
from the meat hook.

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Where is my mother
shouting from,

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telling me to bring the
hose to do some watering

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with everything so dry?

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I hear them hosing
down the charnel house.

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When I awake, I walked
out of the hospital.

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The Prodigal Jew.

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On quivering bones, it
makes a ringing of bells."

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