my "near-death experience" at local café

On March 23rd, I had a "near-death experience" at a coffee shop. Café Grumpy, in Brooklyn, New York, at the corner of Diamond Street and Meserole Avenue -- I was there with my wife and four-year-old son.

She tells us to sit down while she buys the beverages.

I notice a drug-addicted man sitting close to our table and smoking an e-cigarette. My eyes are transfixed by his shirt depicting Kali--a Hindu goddess accompanied by the severed heads of many men.

I hear a song:

"Underneath the water pipelines, the young men of Palestine love to glide against the wind."

"Kalimatiya Naqab Kuni Irada (كلماتيا نقب كوني إرادة)," Sanaa Moussa (سناء موسى). Her Arab voice emanates from this man's mobile phone:

"O, Naqab Desert, be my will / Be majesty and leadership / Become a sword, be a lesson. They prepared a grave for us, so we filled our burial pit with flowers and carried the sun at dawn, saying No to genocide."

I take my phone and play my favorite song (in Hebrew--ירושלים של זהב):

"The crisp mountain air like wine / and the fragrance of pine / carried by the dry Khamsin wind... Imprisoned within her dream / Jerusalem sits alone"

He doesn't like this modern Israeli song composed by Naomi Shemer and performed by Ofra Haza in the necessary compromises of the new Hebrew composed of a compact, ancient language with European and Arab influences and loanwords.

I lose my temper when the smoke gets closer to my son, so I stop myself from speaking impulsively, do some box breathing, and try to remember the principles of nonviolent communication, as popularized and developed by Jewish-American Marshall Rosenberg, PhD, Doctor of Philosophy.

Police spokesman Frank recently tweeted this:

Isu: there's no Messiah save him: the Woke anti-colonialist.

The accused, Isa Ali Ghanem, age 27, is arrested under charges of first-degree manslaughter, with a hearing scheduled in Brooklyn Criminal Court for April 1st.

At around 3:30am, Markus Freud accompanied his wife Gabriela Hernandez to a coffee shop where he was subsequently stabbed by the Populist Revolutionary Isa Ghanem.

A customer, Derrick, began recording the incident as Ghanem shouted "fucking faggot" to Freud who walked unsteadily and collapsed to the ground, bleeding profusely.

Derrick continued filming Freud, posing for YouTube and yelling "this colonizer just died, comrade." Ghanem also started filming Freud on the ground from within the café.

Some Good Samaritans flagged down a police officer patrolling the neighborhood, and NYPD reached the scene around 5:30pm.

They attempted emergency procedures of resuscitation on Freud, but emergency workers officially declared Freud expired after rushing to the hospital in a noisy ambulance.

Ghanem was taken into custody without incident.

Freud's family, the NYPD, and mayor Ellen Addams published statements begging citizens not to share images and videos of the murder over social media.

Freud's sister Britney Love tweeted on X decrying the killing and Derrick's recording of it, saying, "A 'socialist' sacrificed my brother's life yesterday and his comrade recorded it (please do NOT view) instead of contacting the authorities; and to make matters even worse, he shared it on social media for the sake of views, fame, and publicity."

Their father, Kane Freud, told the New York Times about his son's murder, saying, "It's so evil. I never bring a knife into a café, do you?" A fundraiser for Gabriela and son Cain Freud was organized by a local Chabad chapter, whose Director, Aaron Winehouse, is a neighbor and friend of Gabriela's sister.

Mayor Ellen Addams tweeted on X:

This is a terrific and tragicomic story to learn about. Never once did I feel unsafe walking the sidewalks with my bodyguard beside me.

Our hearts go out to Markus Schlomo Freud and his son.

When people share the filmed moments of his death, I feel uncomfortable confronting my mortality as well as the realities of my city.

--March 27, 2033

Becoming the 666th homicide in New York this year, Freud's killing was alluded to on March 25th (along with three other stabbing deaths from previous weeks) by Populist Donald Trump while addressing an increase in violent crime in America's big cities.

Police spokesman Sergeant Frank Miller tweeted:

This homicide was witnessed by approximately four dozen bystanders. Please visit us and talk to us privately. We don't bite!

And you don't need me to tell you that uploading a politically sensitive, violent, gratuitous--almost 'pornographic'--snuff film of a man's dying moments is completely unacceptable and inappropriate.

Anyone with a sense of bourgeois, upper class taste understands that THAT is inappropriate.

Mayor Ellen Addams tweeted the Daily Wire's journalistic piece on the killing, giving condolences to Freud's family.

Derrick posted his films and photographs of Freud on X, the content going viral and spreading to platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok.

He claimed that he was "jaded and cynical and desensitized to violence after consuming hours upon hours of political media, movies, plays, serials, and videogames," but would later tweet his own uniquely sensitive and philosophical X post saying,

“Fuck yeah, bro, this drama doesn't faze me much. You may believe that there is some sort of meaning or order to this whole fucking universe, but there isn't. I'm just keeping it real, man."

Derrick would also reportedly make a pilgrimage to Café Grumpy every year on the anniversary of Freud's death.

Once a year, on March 23rd (or is it the 4th of Nisan?) both Isa and I visit the surface of the Earth to see what's going on. But instead of getting to actually observe what's happening in the world, all we're allowed to see is the front page of a newspaper. The last headline I can remember was,

Jesus (or Yeshu) Died on April 1st, 33 AD or XV Nisan, 4945?

I don't remember when the headlines started to become more mystical and spiritual in nature, but to be honest, it's a welcome departure from what preceded it. This year the headline I see is

MAȘIAH (Moshiach) born in Cape Town, South Africa on August 19th, 2030 (XX Av) at 7:43am

The Looming Threat of Atomic Terrorism

Resurrection Imminent?