Wednesday, July 11, 2012

David Brummer, RIP

David Brummer, author of the Seattle-based Brumspeak blog, has passed away. His most recent post was about Ari Shavit's recent interesting interview with Moshe (Bogie) Yaalon, just two weeks ago.

I never met David in the flesh, but we knew each other thru the blogosphere. If memory serves he first made contact to assure me one could live in the Jewish community in Seattle and have no knowledge of the existence of that town's most famous anti-Zionist blogger. His profile contains this explanation for his blogging:
The genesis for this project stems from my own efforts to reconcile a social worker’s worldview with a post 9/11 world. While dialogue,conciliation,and compromise continue to be necessary ingredients to any long-term resolution,it has become clear that a new paradigm is needed in the battle for decency,pluralism,and basic human rights for all. As a social worker and psychotherapist,I know that the only way to effect real change is to start with an unsparing assessment of where we find ourselves at the starting gate and why. In recent years, there has been an assault on truth which has diminished our ability to understand and define what we are struggling to achieve. These new battles must be fought in the realm of ideas as much as on any battlefield. It is my hope that this Blog can be a vehicle to explore and more fully articulate some of those ideas and worldviews that so preoccupy us today.
His photo fits the image: one of these kind folks who expected the world could be fixed if everyone had enough goodwill, who then came to understand over time that either they wouldn't (all have the goodwill) or couldn't, perhaps because of conflicting agendas. Indeed, that's essentially what his final post says. In politics, at least, he lived long enough to reach maturity; in all other respects, he obviously didn't live long enough.

As the traditional sephardi condolence greeting goes: may his family find solace in the rebuilding of Zion.


As for everybody else, I suggest paying respect by reading his final post.

1 comment:

Avram said...

Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet.

I read the blog - interesting but I don't agree with "That is an Ashkenazi way of thinking." If one reads the history of Sephardi & Mizrachi Jewry in the Arab/Ottoman world, that was their way of thinking too (Sir Martin Gilbert's "In Ishmael's House" is a good starter for those who don't have a good background in the subject). Bar a few pockets in the last 1000+ years, this was the JEWISH way of thinking.