Of the Justice Department, Constitutional Rights, the Opera, and Shofars

On Friday January 15, 2010 two officers from the Justice Department were sent to interview me at my residence about a law enforcement matter.  One officer asked me if I had been to the opera lately.  I told him I attended the opera on November 15, 2009: to see a performance of Wagner's Gotterdammerung.

In the second act of the Gotterdammerung, Wagner specifies the use of steer horns, animal horns similar to a ram's horn, or the shofar used in the Jewish religion for ritual purposes.

At another point in the interview, the officer asked me if I was seeking a "spiritual connection."

Yes, some things are just coincidence.  It's interesting to note, however, that Wagner grew up in a Jewish neighborhood where he might have heard a shofar blast in childhood.



http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-03-30/news/giuliani-s-g-tterd-mmerung/

[But he [New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani] and [Police Commissioner] Safir have now been exposed as encouraging a runaway police force to be in wholesale contempt of the Constitution. These police subject not only black and Latino citizens but whites as well to kinds of abasement that have not been seen in a big city since the reign of southern mayors and police commissioners before the Civil Rights revolution.

The American Jewish Committee and the New York Board of Rabbis have joined the black and Latino communities in sharply criticizing the mayor and his police commissioner.

Rabbi Robert Levine speaks of New York under Giuliani as "a racially polarized city in which there are two standards of justice."

The rabbi says he is sending a shofar blast to further awaken the city. The shofar (a ram's horn) is blown at the start of the Jewish New Year to proclaim a truly new beginning. In biblical times, it was a call to battle.]