I've been meaning to keep the number of these things to a limit, but I have to tell you about this extraordinary experience I had this evening. At about 6:00, my brother phoned to say there was a rally being held on the Promenade at Brooklyn Heights for Muslims and non-Muslims to show solidarity. By the time I arrived, people were already leaving, but the crowd was still substantial. The promenade offers a spectacular view (sorry, it's such a tempting redundancy) of lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as Governor's Island and the inner harbor and all the other islands in the inner harbor and the Verazzano bridge…you get the picture. A column of dust rises behind the buildings which once were footlights to the World Trade Center. Okay, you've had enough of these descriptions by now-I'm sure.

As I approached the Promenade proper, someone was singing "We Shall Overcome" over the p.a. system. I joined in heartily, but hardly anyone else did, there at the entrance. Then another singer sang something else I didn't know and then something I did know but couldn't sing in that key. And nothing happened after that.

After a while, I began to sing something, I think it's by Rav Nachman-at any rate, it's by a Jewish mystic, I believe, of the 18th or 19th Century (I believe-so, what else is new). The song is called "Kol HaOlam Ku-lo" I guess. It has a very simple lyric: "All the world is a very narrow bridge, and the main thing is not to fear, not to fear at all." I began just singing to myself. Standing on a park bench, in a crowd and sunglasses. But then the song carried me away and I sang it out. My eyes were shut and my legs were shaking.

When I finished, a small Jewish group nearby started singing "Heeneh ma tov" a very popular song from a Psalm of David: "Behold, how good it is [when] brothers sit together." After a while, that petered out and I began to sing "This Land is Your land." That finally got people going. We sang the two verses everyone knows and then looped back and did them again and finally threw in a couple of rounds of the chorus for good measure.

Then nobody could think of anything. My 'sister-in-law' suggested "Give Peace a Chance," but, come on, who knows the words or something? Well, we've been listening to the Star Spangled Banner a lot on the radio lately and I've been thinking about the lyrics.

Sorry, this needs a new paragraph. How the flag is *still there. And, after all, sullied as it may have been by the Vietnam War, the national anthem really isn't a war mongering song, it is about the battle of our independence. And if that makes you raise an eyebrow, I'd say I'm pretty much on the left, but I'm not orthodox. I'd been thinking about singing the Star Spangled Banner in front of the firehouse, anyway. In homage. So I sang it.

The objections came instantaneously. 'It is a war song.' Well, I'd started, and I wasn't about to stop. And here is the extraordinary part. I sang the national anthem and no one but my brother, in a display of solidarity with me, sang. Not only that, they said hostile things. And not only that, I watched them walk away from me. I wish I'd had my video camera. It was absolutely extraordinary. All of them walked away, and if they didn't walk away, they turned their backs.

I have no conclusions to draw from it, at the moment. But I think it was more sad than bizarre.

And it was very bizarre.