Different Slants

Seeing the World from a New Angle

The Black Cashier, The Jewish Bookstore Owner and the Crazed Customer…by Robert M. Katzman

August 16, 2020 © by Robert M. Katzman

(Originally written 11/18, this revised story has new meaning to me with the possible election of a President with Irish ancestry and his VP with immigrant parents from East India, Jamaica and with a Jewish husband, to boot. Only in America could this happen, yet still, the hate persists. This true story relates how I handled hate when it came to visit me, 30 years ago. May healing and understanding occur in America if they are elected.)

(Read on …)

The Sunday Before Thanksgiving…by Robert M. Katzman

By Robert M. Katzman Sunday, November 24, 2019

(Undated November 21, 2021)

About 35 years ago, when Joy and I were 36, Lisa was 10, David (now Konee) was 7 and Rachel was 5, a tradition was started within our little family. People don’t actually know when traditions start unless they linger through time like this one. This is that story: 

Once upon a time, in 1985 or so, I was on my second marriage with two young children. But when I was much younger and married to another very young and good person, we had a daughter, Lisa. After the 2nd marriage, on Thanksgiving Day, Lisa was home with her Mom and so she couldn’t be with her younger siblings or Joy and me, and it was sad for all of the five of us.

(Read on …)

An Older Man’s Perspective on Yom Kippur: The Jewish Day of Atonement

By Robert M. Katzman © October 10, 2019


I believe that the central and very big idea of Yom Kippur, is essentially to ask for forgiveness as a community, all over the world, not only for one’s self. To atone collectively. 

Asking God to forgive another’s sin’s is an amazing concept if you think about it in reference to when these ideas were assembled–perhaps 3,000 years ago–when it was simply kill or be killed. 

(Read on …)

Atonement…Judaism Distilled…by Robert M. Katzman

Filed under: Bewilderment,Jewish Themes,Life & Death,My Own Personal Hell,Philosophy — Bob at 3:03 pm on Monday, September 17, 2018

Atonement: Judaism Distilledby Robert M. Katzman © October 1, 2012

This brief speculation, below, about meaning in poetic form was derived from a much more detailed and complicated original true story about my now deceased wife Joyce, grand-daughter Emjay and myself in Ottawa, Illinois ending up involving the Ottowa Police department. I somehow realized there was a poem within it, and decided to separate it.

Atonement Among The Christians 

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Choosing to be in a small town in Central Illinois, over praying for forgiveness for my sins in a Chicago Synagogue on Yom Kippur–the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, is no simple decision

God, may be watching. Possibly, not approving. The risk could be fatal. But then, who knows?

When a person belongs to a group of people whose tiny numbers–less than 2/10ths of 1% of Earth’s entire population of seven billion or so, why worry about God noticing you no matter what you do?

(Read on …)

Paul, Beautiful Sue, Wayne, the Paperboy Failing Algebra & the University of Chicago Lab High School (1966)…Part Two…by Robert M. Katzman

Paul, Beautiful Sue, Wayne, the Paperboy failing Algebra, and the

University of Chicago Lab High School in 1966.

by Robert M. Katzman © January 31, 2018 

Part Two

So Paul and I met twice a week for months in that small room in the library with two wooden chairs and a wooden table. I told him about how the newsstand was progressing and what I was learning, and the difficulties of learning to manage a one-armed, one-legged 69-year-old employee, born in 1896, who as it turned out was the original owner of where my newsstand was now, except his was there in 1916. This became sessions of stories about stories.

I had no identity as a writer, never considered that as any kind of career for myself and wasn’t writing down any of what I told Paul when we met, or his stories either. Like two pre-biblical Israelites carrying on a kind of oral tradition of expecting the next generations to preserve unwritten history. But we were both telling each other stories. I wasn’t expecting anything from him, but I was glad he seemed interested in this kid talking about whatever I was talking about. But when we were telling stories, we weren’t talking about algebra, so that was good.

(Read on …)

Some Things I Can Still Do…by Robert M. Katzman

Some Things I Can Do

By Robert M. Katzman © Christmas Day, 2016 

Roast chopped raw onions, pregnant with water, in olive oil at a high temperature, enhanced with garlic, black pepper, basil and five Asian spices until the edges char and people in other parts of my house inhale the enticing aroma of crunchy consumable sizzle.

(Read on …)

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