Musings

1. From someone from the US, the Mediterranean history is pretty mind-boggling. The thought of civilizations from thousands of years BCE is hard to wrap my mind around

1. Croatia‘s history is so different from the rest of the Mediterranean. Italy and Greece are clearly in their modern period and nobody expects Changes in their borders. Croatia seems to be still in a period of flux with changes happening in borders.  Well, Tito had many flaws ( that’s an understatement ) but he kept Yugoslavia together by sheer charisma. As soon as he died, it all fell apart.

Yugoslavia became Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Kosovo.

Under Josip Broz (Titos real name) Yugoslavia was established as a communist state in 1945. He pursued a policy of non-alignment between the Eastern and Western blocs, most notably defying Soviet dominance with the Tito-Stalin split in 1948. During his rule, Yugoslavia developed a unique form of socialism with "workers' self-management," and de-centralized power to the republics to manage ethnic tensions, a system that ultimately weakened after his death in 1980. After Tito died in 1980, the rising ethnic nationalism eventually led to the violent dissolution of the federation in the 1990s, leading to the Yugoslav Wars. 

1. Viking offers a Shabbat setting every Friday. By that I mean, they provide wine and challah and two electric candles.  We went last night. I’m one to never turn down a good challah.  We’ve done this on Viking before and they’re usually is one other couple to join us and it’s quite sociable. This time there were 20 of us. Do I have to explain what it’s like having 20 Jews trying to decide what a Shabbat services? It be it became clear early on that there were two Alpha Jews fighting over how we should proceed.  The more observant person one.  I started to pass out the wine to be useful and Alpha Jew told me I was doing it in the wrong order. I decided to grab some challah and leave. Unfortunately, David didn’t stay that much longer and I felt I ruined it for him. I didn’t mean to He claims I didn’t ruin it but what does he know?