Passover’s implied obligations to the world i.e. Darfur

Passover looms. It is getting to be a competitive sport, have you noticed? We are having 15 for the first Seder and the same for the second. Oh, but my friend X is having 18; Y counters that she’s having 30 but Z wins this year’s competition with 50 “Wait ’til next year,” grumbles X. Oh, and then there’s the time competition. Our Seder lasts until 11:00; ours ’til midnight; ours ends at 2:00 in the morning; ours lasts until the next Seder begins! Up and up goes the ante. We read most of the haggadah; we read the whole haggadah; so do we but we add to it; so do we but we sing each song in as many tunes as we know for each. Huff, puff. At Chez Stein (which when the children we young enough to live at home was called “Bedlam Hall”) the Seder will be over before 11:00, the company will be large enough so that it will be festive, but not so large that people won’t be able to talk to each other; we will read the haggadah as appropriate and an edited version of Exodus; we will discuss the moral implications of the story. Dayenu. Oh, and each year, though I say I won’t, each year I promise to remember but always forget that old Buddhist mantra: “Ohmmmmmmm, don’t be a chazar, Ohmmmmmmm.”

But while Passover is marked at its beginning with great feasts, at it end there is always Yiskor. As I help my wife set the table, as I smell the delicious fragrances wafting in from the kitchen, as I greet friends and relatives who come to our door bearing wine and flowers and good cheer, as we begin by asking the four questions, there is always, in the back of my mind, a fifth question, one asked by both the wise and the wicked son, to which I have no satisfactory answer. What does this mean to me? What does liberation mean? Is it personal freedom I celebrate or the potential of all men to be free from…from what? Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms, two positive, and two negative (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). The US Constitution grants others—freedom to assemble and petition the government, freedom to vote, freedom (if in a well regulated militia) to bear arms and freedom to feel protected in our homes.

In Darfur the government and the Arab Janjaweed, randomly select villages and destroy them, killing the men, raping the women. In Afghanistan a man was to be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity. Am I, a Jew in Rhode Island, safe and secure here, free here, well fed here, to try to do anything about the Darfur millions? And the one man in Afghanistan? What can I do? It’s not likely that I can get onto a plane and rescue the poor guy or organize a brigade of overweight, exercise-deprived college professors to stand guard over the huddled masses in the Sudan and Chad. I can write to my congressman and to the president; I can sign a petition, but all of that seems woefully inadequate. In effect, I’m free, but powerless. I am free just enough to be tantalized—I can see the problem, but can’t resolve it, not as an individual anyway, but as part of a mass of other free people, then maybe, just maybe, our freedom, our liberation can be shared with the world. Look what we have done as collective individuals, often under Jewish leadership and inspiration—we have ended slavery, we have ended Jim Crow, we have organized labor, we have created public education—and it all goes back to that story of the liberation from Egypt, that great exemplar, that magnificent role model. What was done for us once, we now can do for others. Is it sufficient each Passover to read of the liberation of our ancestors? Is it sufficient each week that at the Shabbat table I thank God for the liberation from Egypt? Is that the secret message of Dayenu, It is enough? Is it enough that we know that Sisyphusian challenges await the free on behalf of those still enslaved by fear, persecution and economic deprivation? Not for Jew it isn’t. There’s always something more to be done in the constant challenge of repairing the world.

So our table will groan with the weight of the food, our friends and relatives will leave the house with their bellies full and their spirits lifted, but I’ll know that at the end of the holiday I’ll stand and recite Yiskor for my mother; I’ll know that somewhere the Janjaweed is lurking in Africa, somewhere there is hunger, somewhere there is still slavery. Dayenu?

On Jews at a racist convention

On Friday evenings, after Shabbat dinner, or on Saturday afternoons after schul, after I read the Voice and Herald, I like to sit and read the Forward, the national Jewish weekly that, now that I have this column, has become the other Jewish newspaper in our house. So, a couple of weeks ago I was relaxing in my easy chair, calmly getting the bad news of the world, perusing the always provocative singles advertisements, reading the editorials, the book reviews… and then I saw it. It wasn’t hidden; it had been in plain sight all along. Maybe I just hadn’t wanted to see it, so I deliberately overlooked it. But there it was, in black on white. Maybe it was a spoof; but no, while the author (Jonathan Tilove) writes with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, a little cruising around on the internet confirms the basic facts. Oy. Gevalt.

First a caveat: As I approach middle age, I get used to things I never before thought possible. That there are Jewish Republicans has lost its shock value. That some Jews voted for Bush continues to astound, but, hey, people can make a mistake—just ask anybody, except President Bush, and most people will admit to the occasional error. But this story in the Forward hit like the proverbial ton of bricks (which, by the way, is no heavier than a ton of feathers, though it’s less likely to cause sneezing fits).

There was a convention of white racists in Herndon Virginia, innocuously and disingenuously misnamed “the American Renaissance Conference” which has met biennially since 1994. Among the assembled bigots, there was a dappling of … yes, I hate to break this to you… Jews. Arrggghh, now I’ve said it; the dark secret is out of the bag. I reveal names only because the Forward already has. Michael Hart, described as “a squat, balding, Jewish astrophysicist” (this is getting weirder and weirder) was happily in attendance, but left angry. At the closing ceremony David Duke, PhD (yes, that David Duke, the former Grand Dragon of the KKK—the PhD is a recent affectation earned from the Ukrainian Interregional Academy of Personnel Management [MAUP]; his dissertation bears the titillating title: “Zionism as a Form of Ethnic Supremacism”) showed up and delivered a speech referring to a threat to civilization even greater than that of Islam, “a power … that dominates our media, influences our government and that has led to the internal destruction of our will and our spirit.” That, ladies and gentlemen, if you need elucidation, is you. And me. Hart, bless his cardiac muscle, rose to his full diminutively rotund stature and barked in our defense, “You f…ing Nazi, you’ve disgraced this meeting.” Whoa, tempers were flaring. This might not have been the Mensa meeting some thought it would be.

So, what kind of meeting did Dr. Duke disgrace? The American Renaissance group attracted about 300 white people (mostly men) of whom about 15 were Jews. According to Tilove, “The attendees are united by a common belief in black intellectual inferiority, opposition to non-white immigration and ardor for maintaining America’s white majority.” This sort of coven (I hope that won’t be taken as an insult to witches) is bound to attract Nazis and their sympathizers. (By the way, someone should tell Hart that the KKK, for all its faults is not a Nazi group.) And that’s the bane of the organizer, one Jared Taylor who said, “‘Ultimately, for all the things I care about to happen, Jews must be part of the movement.’… Jews have influence and are widely seen as the ‘conscience of our society.’” How very white of him. But you’ll notice the correspondence with Duke’s use of the idea of Jewish influence. A coincidence? Who am I to say?

Now, when I think of the renaissance, I think of Petrarch and Boticelli and Michelangelo. I also think that these guys are now turning over in their graves, embarrassed by people who take the name of their movement (which propounded humanism) and then pervert it into a euphemism for race hatred. And that Jews would be part of this? And then lament and be surprised when the bigots reject them? Louis Calabro (not one of the 5%) complained “any time {I do] anything to rally white European American pride, those who object are almost invariably Jews.” So he doesn’t want Jews at the meetings. Who can blame him? I don’t want Jews at those meeting either.

One attendee, Michael Matthews demanded of one our landsmen in attendance, “Are you a Jew? I don’t think you should be here.” Our guy, Michael Berman was hurt. “You see,” he lamented” there’s no home for me. I’m like a black sheep here and everywhere I go.” Interesting choice of words, Michael. Maybe this Jewish black sheep can yet feel a little empathy for black people? But maybe that’s too much to ask.

All of which is to say, Jews, be careful of with whom you get into bed. To mix my metaphor, if you enter a den of vipers, don’t be surprised if you get bit.

A Purim Story from London

The vagaries of the calendar mean that the publication date of this edition of the Jewish Voice and Herald is out of sync with the onslaught of Purim, nevertheless, around this time of year my thoughts always return to my first Purim as a groom, which coincided exactly with the last day of our F. Scott and Zelda period. We were in England on a quick spring-break house-swap.

Our plane landed the day before Purim and being young and in love, my wife and I had celebrated the beginning of the holiday by drinking to excess and then falling fast asleep on the down mattress we had the pleasure of using for those ten days. The next morning around midnight (according to my biological clock, though it was 6:00 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time) we heard a pounding on the front door. We both responded with the same inarticulate grunts, “Huh, wha’ what’s happening?” It was not our finest hour. More pounding. I got up, not knowing where and when my clothes had come off. More pounding on the door corresponding perfectly with my hangover headache. Whoever it was, he or they or (I was beginning to suspect ) it was certainly persistent. “I can’t go down to the door like this,” I protested. “Here, wear this,” said my helpful bride. Hurriedly I put on her pink shorty robe. Inside out. Naturally I couldn’t find the buttons and because of the obvious discrepancy between her svelteness and my rotundity I couldn’t properly close the dainty thing either. I stumbled out the door of the bedroom, half blindly (my glasses hadn’t been anywhere near my fumbling fingers when I’d shot bolt upright as the pounding began), found the stairs, and trooped down, half falling, half stumbling, fully confused, my head throbbing, my eyes bleary, my mouth dry, my hair a shambles, my eyes bloodshot. Finally I attained the front door. After an interminable moment I remembered how to unlock it and I threw the portal open to confront an uncaring world.

The man I saw hadn’t shaved that day, or the month before, apparently. He wore work cloths that looked and smelled as though they had not been washed since the Blitz. He stared at me as though I’d just landed from Saturn. I stared back at him with wonder—as in “I wonder what this fellow is, and what he wants?” As though reading my mind he attempted to resolve the issue by saying, screaming at me, really, “DOOSTBINMIN!” which did not do a great deal to clarify anything. “WHAT?” I shouted back in incredulous reply. “DOOSTBINMIN!” he said, still louder, eyeing me suspiciously. “WHAT?” still louder on my half. “ROOBISH, MUN, Y’ROOBISH!” Well, as you can tell this was not getting us very far.

By now Penney had gotten dressed and, sylphlike, came gliding down the stairs. (She’d just abandoned Zelda and entered her Loretta Young phase.) She said to me with infinite patience, “Josh, sweetheart, he’s the dustbin man and he wants to collect our rubbish.” “Oh,” I said sheepishly, glad once again that I’d married a polyglot. “That’s right, Guv,” said the now smiling dustbinmin, as he leered lasciviously at my pretty bride and waited for me to collect any household garbage we might have. There was none of course, as the owners had left us a spotless home to move into. Feeling somewhat guilty I found only a couple of old newspapers and a slipper chewed in half by some kind of animal I’m glad to say we never actually saw in person. These offerings I placed into a plastic bag and proudly gave them to our garbage man, who looked at the meager contents with ill-disguised disdain. “That it, Guv?” he asked. “Yup,” I said, sheepishly. “Right-o,” he replied. “Hag Purim Sameach” and off he went. My mouth agape I tried calling after him. “How’d you know we were Jewish, that this was Purim?” But the words didn’t quite come out, and as I saw him toss our trash into the back of the big garbage truck I’d somehow failed to notice until this point, he waved enigmatically and that was the last I saw of him that morning. “A Jewish dustbinmin?” I asked snobbishly. Well, why not.

Only later did I find out what really happened that morning. Our dustbin man was, in fact, Peter Kurtz, the rabbi of the local Reform (they call it “Liberal”) synagogue, in disguise. He was a friend of the house’s owner who had told him that a Jewish couple was moving in for a couple of weeks. In the spirit of Purim the rabbi had donned the garb of a garbage man and pulled our legs. After all these years (thirty-five by last count) we still exchange Purim cards and visit each other when we are in the other’s country. An odd way to begin a life-long friendship, but life is strange with its twists and turns. Just ask Queen Esther who passed as a Persian until the call came to reveal her true identity.