Sinners who brandish the torch: Keep an eye on Philly as you keep Minneapolis in your line of vision

         [The original version of this blog can be found on Substack here.]                                                                                                                                                                                                      Jan. 30, 2026 

We watched the movie “Sinners” last week, and as we often do after movies, we consulted reviews and stories on the web. “Sinners” has been nominated for 16 academy awards, the most ever in the history of the Oscars. Its storyline is described as a Southern Gothic horror about twin Black gangsters, returning to the Jim Crow South in the 1930s to open a juke joint in the face of supernatural evil personified by vampires. 

With music and dance as driving elements, it explores themes of race, culture, generational trauma and struggles for Black freedom and identity. It represents survival, resilience, and the adaptation to modern life while honoring one’s roots. 

Not quite the movie I’d expect Trump and MAGAs to promote for Oscars. 

The scene of the exuberant opening night of the juke joint reminded me of the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof. In Fiddler, the wedding’s Kabbalistic frenzy is accentuated by the flamboyant Kasotsky dancing of neighborly Russians. Only to be jarringly engulfed by Russian Cossack vigilantes on horseback who torch the venue, ushering in a pogrom. 

In “Sinners,” neighborly, but zombie-looking whites preach love as they try to add their music to the festivities. Only to emerge as vampires who literally and figuratively suck the blood from the community before torching the venue. 

The final scene in Fiddler is of Tevye pulling the family pushcart during the exodus from Anatevka. Behind him, a mystical fiddler is prancing along, symbolizing the precarious balance of playing music on a roof or in a diaspora in the generational commitment to maintaining cultural traditions while navigating a rapidly changing, often hostile world.

The final scene in “Sinners” is of Chicago blues legend Buddy Guy who symbolizes the resilience that honoring one’s roots can be the enduring antidote to generational trauma that at best enjoys latency periods. 

Music is a tie that binds Jews, blacks and others whose identities are generationally attacked and smothered. As is legacy and oral history. They are more indelible especially when history itself is being erased and whitewashed by a process of elimination. For fellow Jews who are seduced by the Trumpian horse goose steps against anti-semitism, you might want to keep any eye on Philadelphia as you keep Minneapolis in your line of vision. 

In Philly at the corner of 6th and Market Streets sits the President’s House, a short walk from Independence Hall. They are being prepped for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence later in the year. The outdoor exhibit at the President’s House entitled “Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” depicts how Presidents Washington and Adams, and their households, once lived and worked at a house on the site. 

[President’s House at night - Click here to view a gallery of the site] 

Though the house was demolished in 1832, it’s being preserved through videos shared from the perspective of nine enslaved individuals who lived and worked here. That is, until the other day when an intrepid band of marauding federal officials (no relation to ICE or Homeland Security as far as I know) began removing exhibit panels at the behest of yet another Trump Executive Order, ironically entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” 

National Park Service workers removing exhibit panels [Click here for the ABC News story] 

Philly, the city of Brotherly Litigation, filed suit last week to keep the exhibits from being taken down. 

So far, there’s no indication that Trump and his National Park Service erasure teams have torched the exhibits. After all, the park service teams aren’t wearing masks to cloak their identities. Torchings may be the most visually incendiary tools of intimidation and subjugation, but why brandish torches and hide behind masks when a smokescreen of restoration and truth social can get the whitewashing done? 

If all goes according to Trumpian plan, before we know it, there will have been no slavery in the U.S., no Jim Crow, and no nine slaves living and working in the President’s House alongside Presidents Washington and Adams. Anti-semitism will have existed only in the service of extortion, and no immigrants will have soiled the gene pool and polluted the electorate. 

At least then, as Lee Greenwood sings for Trump, I could be proud to be an American.

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