Easter Greeting

The above greeting card was framed and mounted on the wall of the Pike Brewing Company in Seattle. Located at Pikes Market, it is an eclectically attired place. Unlike another bit of memorabilia that I have written about, Michigan Memories, this one was posted without any explanation. It is a bit of a puzzle. There is the Star of David in it, but it is captioned, “Easter Greetings”. The two chicks look vaguely Eastern European, but what is the significance of the one chick’s bandaged foot. Is the chick behind the bar Jewish and the other gentile? Their hats look like clues, but they are clues now lost to time. I’m guessing that if you knew who sent the card and to whom, things would be clearer. Missing that information, the card remains a mystery to me, but it seems friendly enough, so maybe it is no more significant than the caption implies, a holiday greeting.

Today is the first day of Passover and this is Holy Week in the Christian tradition. This Sunday is Easter. At a time when both these faiths are marking holidays of deliverance, the events of yesterday in Kansas City become especially heartbreaking. A lone gunman attacked a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement home and killed three people. A known anti-Semite, neo-Nazi and convicted felon, this man had wanted to kill Jews. The fact that such a man haled from Missouri, my adopted state, makes the pain of these events all the more personal and tragic.