Today is Monday, April 14, 2025. Elliot and I were away for the last two days spending the beginning of Passover with my Cherry Hill lifelong friend “Harold” and his wife “Rachel.” As always, the two days flew by very quickly, considering that Harold and I attended synagogue services Sunday morning around 9:30, while both Rachel and Elliot lounged around the house to wait for our return. That morning, I had to set the phone alarm to 8 and get out within the hour or so.

We arrived at Harold and Rachel’s house around 2:30 p.m. on Saturday after leaving the apartment around 10:30, where we had breakfast in Jersey City at Beechwood Cafe. There we had a very nice prepesadik breakfast consisting of an omelette consisting of tomato, spinach, onions, mushrooms, and roasted red peppers for Elliot and a berry mix pancake for me.

But I cannot continue writing my little entry here without writing about the latest appalling attack on a Jewish governor’s residence in Pennsylvania by a crazed arsonist on the first day of Passover. I can’t believe this abominable incident of violence was not an antisemetic display of hatred perpetuated by a lunatic. The man, 38, set fire to Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro’s house early Sunday morning and set the fire with a homemade Molotov cocktail he fashioned from lawnmower gasoline and beer bottles.

Shapiro and his family were indeed very fortunate in that he, his wife Lori, his four children, two dogs, and another family were safely evacuated from the state-owned Harrisburg residence, which was significantly damaged by the conflagration, hours after the family hosted a Passover dinner. No injuries were reported.

The assailant was asked what he would have done if he found Shapiro home and he replied that he would have beaten him with a hammer. This sick response from an obviously sick man brings to mind the hammer attack on former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, a few years back.

The idiot in chief, when pressed to say something about this atrocious act of violence, just stupidly said, “The man was not a fan of Trump,” thus diminishing the true response of horror he should have uttered and the fact that he threw the fucking spotlight back on him, casting him in the third person which is just nutty altogether.

But who expected any words of true empathy from the convicted felon who is president. The action committed by Governor Shapiro and his family was unconscionable and should be condemned by everyone!

Declaring himself a proud Jew, Shapiro was defiant in the wake of this devastating attack against him and the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He said he will not be “deterred” by the alleged attack. He told CNN, “If he was trying to terrorize our family, our friends, the Jewish community, who joined us for a Passover Seder in that room lsat night, hear me on this: We celebrated our faith last night, proudly and in a few hours, we will celebrate our second Seder of Passover.”

After writing about this hugely unpleasant incident in Pennsylvania, I’m finished with continuing the blog. Sorry, my attention has been distracted by this terrible event.

And so it went!