Nightmare Scenarios

My recurring nightmare first hit in Junior High School. The dream is always different, yet in theme always the same. I’m wherever I am and suddenly I remember that I hadn’t submitted a required term paper in Spanish class (that was the first, so I give it as exemplar of all). If a benevolent deity were observing he’d wake me then and there; but no such luck. On and on I dream of flunking out of Junior High; the fear becomes angst, the angst, blooms into panic until, finally, gasping for breath, sweat covering my body I awake with a start. But even then the terror has not subsided because I can’t immediately ascertain if the task not done was a dream, or not. Gradually, reality takes hold and I remember that there were no Spanish term papers in the 8th grade. But still the heart palpitates, still the light of day is slow to comfort, still the vice around my head is not fully loosened, until it is.

I tell you that because a variant of it happened again, recently. On Saturday last I napped. But my reverie was suddenly interrupted by the dream of the undone assignment. I had a column to write for the Voce & Herald and unlike Spanish term papers, this was real. I awoke with a start but without an idea. What to write, what to write, what? The Forward had arrived while I slept. It’s usually good fodder for ideas, but not that issue. But then, grasping for straws, I knew there was one ace in the whole as yet unexplored. David Klinghoffer. He doesn’t always appear and so my immediate prayer was, “Let there be Klinghoffer,” and I was rewarded with … Klinghoffer! His essay was on Huckabee and evolution, but, to be honest, I didn’t follow the thread of it, and so I despaired. But then I read the description of the author: “David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is the author of the forthcoming ‘How would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative’ (Doubleday).” So maybe there is a compassionate deity who hath delivered a column into my hands, after all.

Now, one of the first things you learn in PhD school is “Never discuss something you’ve not read.” Normally this makes excellent sense, but as Doubleday has not yet spewed forth this tome, may I be excused if I disobey, just this once? Done! I grant myself the dispensation.

Let’s start with basics: What’s the difference between a conservative and a liberal? The former thinks society is pretty much the way it should be. The latter realizes that things could be much better. I’m thinking that a compassionate deity would not expect readers of Tanakh to support policies that make the rich richer, the poor poorer, the nation engaged in unnecessary wars of opportunity.

According to a recent column by Bob Herbert in the Times, Wall Street fat cats are collecting $38 billion in seasonal bonuses this year. My guess is that they read Klinghoffer and vote for Bush. On the other hand, only 16% of workers think their children will be better off than they are. And Tanakh says about this? “And you shall not glean your vineyard…; you shall leave them for the poor and stranger.” This is one of six references in Leviticus which suggests that rapacious employers should leave at least something for the tired, the poor, the homeless, the people liberals are concerned to protect. I don’t know how Klinghoffer will address this issue.

Labor is protected in Tanakh, not to be exploited as modern conservative are wont to, justifying it with market-driven theories. Every Yom Kippur Isaiah asks: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen… to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house; when you see the naked, that you cover him…?” Liberals seek to provide for the needy; Bush conservatives cut taxes and when a hurricane struck New Orleans the poor (and the poor always suffer most in a natural disaster) found that there was neither money nor interest in helping them recover. Is that what Tanakh teaches? I’ll have to wait until Klinghoffer’s tome enlightens.

I began by discussing nightmares, but the real nightmare of course, would not be a column unwritten, but four more years of compassionate conservatism with faith-based initiatives and tax breaks for the wealthiest.

Whence cometh the Religious Right?

I wonder why, as a Jew, I should care what kind of Christianity is acceptable to the religious right of the Republican Party. Do I really care whether Mitt Romney’s religion is a legitimate branch of the Protestant tree, or a cult that has sprung up, like myriad others in the fertile soil of American credulity? No, but I have to admit that this question is of importance to someone out there.

I used to hate it when old folk would begin a sentence with “When I was young…” or its variant, “It used to be that…” but now that I’m approaching mid-life myself, I suppose I’m entitled to say, When I was young it used to be that public piety was the exception to the rule, not a requirement for the presidency equal to, or more important than, knowledge of foreign policy. Samuel Johnson, once famously said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I humbly add, “…and religion is the first defense of the inadequate politician.” Did Eisenhower flog his religion in public? Even that scoundrel Nixon somehow managed to avoid recourse to his Quaker piety. Barry Goldwater, the modern standard-bearing forerunner of the Republican right wing, Barry Goldwater said many things about religious tests for office, but they boil down to this one statement: “I don’t have any respect for the Religious Right.”

So, what happened? How did religion come to dominate a party that purports to stand for strict construction of the constitution—which states clearly that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”? And how is that even Democrats are bowing before the altar of faith? Here the culprit, as is often the case, is Ronald Reagan, whose handlers decided that wooing the Moral Majority would win votes. His success taught the others. At first religion was disguised as “family values” but out of the closet it came with the 2000 Republican debates. George W. Bush announced that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ—foolish ol’ Thom Jefferson thought the correct answer was John Locke! When Bush won despite his obvious deficiencies those who would be his successors learned to play the same card.

As to Romney, his speech to Evangelical Christian leaders spoke volumes in what he said, and what he omitted. He asked not to be rejected based on his religion, but only once in the course of his 20 minutes did he mention the word “Mormon.” He said that he would not let his faith intrude on decisions, but then called for “a robust role for religion in public life, declaring there was a common moral heritage across religious lines in the country that he would champion,” according to the New York Times. He promised, in his words, to “take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from the God who gave us liberty.” He also said, “In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life.” (I plead guilty to that one!) Then he said two other things, but ignored their opposites. He said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.” Then he cited as proof that the founders did not want an absolute separation of religion and state a story set during the continental Congress. When someone suggested a prayer be said he was told that there were too many different religious views present. “Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot.”

What Romney failed to say was that in 1774 there was no constitution of the United States to guide proper action; what he failed to say was that during the Constitutional convention, an acrimonious debate ensued; prayer was again suggested—this time met with embarrassed silence; before the founders got back to business. What Romney failed to say is that despite the fact that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience,” when he was Governor of liberal Massachusetts he was pro-choice; now that he’s running for the Evangelical vote he’s pro-life. Is anyone surprised?

World War II Monument: A Reflection

A month ago I gave a talk to the Jewish War Veterans of Rhode Island. My hosts were generally of an age to have been in service during the Second World War, possibly Korea. I thought of them again on the day before Thanksgiving.

I’d done some shopping on Federal Hill and on my way back to the more familiar environs of the East Side I stopped at the newly dedicated World War II memorial on South Main Street. There were no legal spots to park, so I took my chances with the law and walked to the shrine. Its principal features are two low walls bearing the names of the 2,562 Rhode Islanders who died while serving in the war and eight pillars dedicated to specific engagements in the Pacific/Far eastern Campaign (3 of these); the South East Asia campaign; the Battle for the Atlantic; the Mediterranean conflict; and the European Theater (2 of these). The pillars support an open circle of stone, suggestive of a halo above the whole. Inscribed on the walls are two phrases, the first unintentionally ironic, given the length of time it took to complete the memorial. It’s by Edward Everett, the other speaker at that famous Gettysburg cemetery dedication in 1863. “No lapse of time, no distance of space, shall cause you to be forgotten.” The other is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Decoration Day”: “Yours has the suffering been, the memory shall be ours.”

Near this circle are four benches; while the inspirational lines and the names of the dead are the magnets to the eye, the benches, I think, provide the context. Onto each, carved by RISD professor Merlin Szosz, (the idea was suggested by my friend and colleague Michael Fink, also of RISD) is one of the four freedoms enunciated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his sobering January 1941 State of the Union Address:

“I suppose,” he’d said, “that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world …. During 16 long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. And the assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.”
Then, after discussing the munitions necessary to engage the enemy the president reminded:

“As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses and those behind them who build our defenses must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all the things worth fighting for. [Mr. Incumbent President, are you listening?] In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

“The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want, …everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments...”

If ever there was a rallying cry for a good and just war, these four freedoms, their summation carved into the benches at the World War II memorial, was it. Our enemies were real; their weapons were real; their conquests were real; their defeat as uncertain as it was necessary. We (they, those of that generation, my father’s generation) were not fighting for natural resources, or for strategic advantage, or just because we could; they were fighting for a recognizably just purpose. That we have not yet achieved the goals is not the point. It may be impossible to achieve any of the four. But reading them on the benches at the memorial is the constant reminder or what freedom is really all about, what struggle with tyranny is really about.

When I got back to my car, I saw it had been ticketed by an over zealous constable. But how could I complain? My cost was as nothing compared to the 2,562 who I had come to commemorate, Rhode Island’s dead of the Second World War. Zichrono Livracha; Requiescat In Pace; rest in peace, haverim of the previous generation who died in the effort to preserve our freedoms.

Autumnal Thoughts

As a college sophomore (Warren Gamaliel Harding was president, I think) I read this poem by Stephen Crane. It helped to define my world view as few pieces of literature have been able to:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”

I thought of those lines the other day, on the Sunday of the great football victory over the Colts, as we walked to an appointment. The sky was deep blue with cirrus wisps and puffs of cotton, floating; the breeze merely a gentle disturbance of hair; leaves swirled downward, beautiful in their death pirouettes, bestrewing lawn and sidewalk with vivid autumnal hues. It was a good-to-be-alive day.

We walked resolutely to meet our guide, sure that we had to take this journey, uncertain as to its results, dreading its implications. We came early to the gate, but there he was, patiently waiting, knowing with a certainty that we would arrive. Though it wasn’t necessary, we got into his car and drove along the paved paths at a funereal pace, as was right and proper, to the new Jewish section. For years my wife and I had strolled the lanes of Swan Point, lamenting that it wasn’t a consecrated Jewish cemetery. The only Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island is half an hour away by car (a vast distance in the minds of locals, of which we have become two) but this place is within walking distance of home; many of its graves are guarded by ancient trees, shading in summer, colorful in autumn, stately, almost magisterial, all year round. But not for us who wanted a Jewish funeral. Then, last year, my synagogue bought land in Swan Point surrounded by a road and declared it acceptable for congregants. So, there we were to look at what might be our permanent abode, within walking distance of the home we’ve lived in for a mere 30 years.

It’s a vast field inhabited now only by two people, their graves so recently occupied as to be not yet ready for headstones, but soon enough they will be joined by others whose plots were spoken for. “Who’s reserved already?” we enquired. “X and Y and Z whom you know,” we were informed. “Where’s X?” I asked. “Where’s Z?” she inquired. “What’s the best view?” In the end we made no commitment. Not yet, anyway. But we’ve reached the age where we have to start looking. Walking home in the still brisk morning, the sun shining on our faces, breathing the air that scattered the leaves and rustled our hair, we talked of inevitabilities, returning to the foolish human questions: What’s the view, who are the neighbors for all of eternity?

In the end none of it matters, of course. The view won’t be enjoyed by us (but we hope that if anyone ever visits they, at least, will find it pleasant). As to whom the neighbors are, do we really expect an eternal koffeeklatch? I don’t. I expect that once dead, I’ll be pretty much … dead. Heaven? Hell? Do they exist? I don’t know (but I doubt it); I’m a Jew. What matters to me is perfecting this world, not entering one already perfect. I live my life here, I protect my children, I love my wife, I teach my students.

So rather than concentrate on the issue at hand—to buy or not to buy and if to buy where and when, I thought of Crane’s poem and realized its flaw. The universe might not care about us, but we do. We have things to say, things to teach, lessons learned, memories treasured in secret mental vaults that ought not to die with us. Someday in retirement I think I’ll open a business. I don’t know yet what I’ll call it but it will give the living the chance to communicate with the universe, to reverse the poem’s cynicism, to allow people to shout “Not only do I exist, but I matter. This is who I was; this is what I’ve learned; this is me!” and I’ll write it down and smooth it out and present it to the speaker as a work in progress to be amended and refined over time and in the end given to his family as a gift as lovely as an autumn day in New England, but more permanent, like those majestic trees in Swan Point Cemetery.

Perfection Becomes Jews

This is my column as submitted for November 2, 2007. The editor thought it a bit risqué in places so toned it down. Alas, the lass tampered with perfection:

Another letter from my atheist friend, Pauly Poopydingus, with a notarized permission-to-publish attached. But first an admission of an error that has been haunting me for the past two weeks. In the last issue I spoke of a lecture I attended on the topic: “Did Primo Levi ever forgive the Germans for their treatment of the Jews?” I then used that as a jumping off point to discuss whether contemporary American policies re: tortures of captives, are something for which we will have to ask forgiveness in the future. Some who support the administration's policies in Iraq took offense, as is their right, but one pointed out what I acknowledge is an error in typing, though not in judgment. I wrote, from the perspective of someone who did not suffer the agonies of Auschwitz, “Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans.” My mistake was in conflating Germans and Nazis. I intended to ask, as Levi had, “Is it time to forgive the Germans” but instead of “Germans,” I wrote “Nazis.” To the question I intended to ask, “Is it time to forgive the Germans,” I stick with my original emphatic “maybe;” to the question I didn't intend, “Is it time to forgive the Nazis?” I respond with “NO; not now, not ever!”

As to Poopydingus, he writes from the safety of far-off Cincinnati that “Jews should stop being angry with Ann Coulter. She’s an exhibitionist who feeds off of her own self-created self-importance by spewing forth one quotable stupidity after another (Liberals are traitors; Edwards is a “faggot”; 9/11 widows are enjoying their husbands’ deaths—there are others, but those suffice).”

About then I began to wonder where Poopydingus was going with this, but he never disappoints.

“But her latest foray into fatuousness, that America should be a nation of Christians and that while Jews (I imagine she means, Republican Jews) can go to heaven, Christians look forward to the time of ‘perfecting’ Jews into Christianity. That, Josh, is something Jews should embrace, cherish and adore.”

Which led me to ask, “Why should I appreciate Coulter, exactly? Isn’t this just more anti-Semitic assault, like in the bad old days before toleration, diversity and the commonality of man became the guiding principles of liberalism?” Poopydingus continued:

“We live under the patronizing presumption that there’s such a thing as ‘Judeo-Christian civilization.’ Verily I say unto you, old chum, there ain’t no such thing. There are Jews and there are Christians (and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and, God bless us, atheists). But in the search for commonality, to avoid conflict, you monotheists have ignored a glaring reality. Here it is, ready for it? Better put on your sunglasses because you’re gonna be blinded by the truth, knocked off your ass, like St Paul on the road to Damascus: If you believed in the divinity of Jesus, you’d be a Christian! If you believed that Muhammad was the last and greatest of God’s prophets, you’d be a Muslim. If a Protestant believed that the Bishop of Rome is infallible in matters of faith and morals he’d really be a Catholic. But none of these things apply. We all think each others religions are bull___ (will they print that?) don’t we? Except me who says they’re all bull___. Of course Coulter spoke as she did! She’s a Christian who believes that all other religions are bull___. Christians have believed this since the dawn of their religion. Wake up, Josh; smell the incense! They only kept Jews around as witnesses to the success of their Truth or to borrow Money. You guys, anxious to be accepted by the majority, fearful that if they ever remember that you deny the divinity of the Christ they worship they’ll have another pogrom, readily plunge headlong into the canard that there’s such a thing as Judeo-Christian civilization. Pshaw! You Jews can be proud of what you’ve done; you don’t need to hide behind a cassock. So she offended you by reminding you of an eternal truth—that Christians think Jews have missed the boat. Well, you think they’ve jumped ship. Relax; re-assert yourself, now that you know what the true believers really think of you.”

It’s obvious that poor ol’ Poopydingus is on the fast track to Gehenna. But he never disappoints.

A Correction

In the posting immediately below I speak of a lecture I attended on the topic: Did Primo Levi ever forgive the Germans for their bestial treatment of the Jews and others. I then use that as a jumping off point to discuss whether contemporary American policies re: tortures are something for which we will have to ask forgiveness in the future. Some who support the administration's policies in Iraq took offense, as is their right, but one pointed out what I now acknowledge is an error in typing, though not in judgment. I wrote, from the perspective of someone who did not suffer the agonies of Auschwitz, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans." My mistake was in conflating Germans and Nazis. I intended to ask, as Levi had, "Is it time to forgive the Germans" but instead of writing "Germans," I wrote,"Nazis." To the question is it time to forgive the Germans, I stick with my original emphatic "maybe"; to the question I didn't intend to ask, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis" I respond with "NO, never!"

I was originally thinking of editing the piece as it appears on this blog, so that people would never know of the gaff--but that, it seemed to me, was too much in imitation of the way Winston Smith earned his meager subsistence in 1984, so I leave the original error and ask the reader's forbearance.

On Primo Levi, forgiveness and dangers of complacency

Last week I attended a lecture in Salomon Hall on the campus of Brown University. The lecturer was Alvin Rosenfeld whose talk was on Primo Levi, the Italian Jewish chemist caught up in the Nazi Holocaust who managed to survive Auschwitz and write several books about the experience, most notably but not exclusively Survival in Auschwitz. The question Rosenfeld addressed is whether forgiveness is possible for someone who has undergone Auschwitz, specifically whether Levi ever forgave his tormenters. It’s a good question, but it’s insufficient. If we only ask about forgiveness by others of others we ignore the value of history and literature as predictive mirrors of our lives.

I write from memory, not from notes, but my impression is that Levi started out despising Germans, not only Nazis who he saw as microcosms of the whole. The worst Nazi crime was to deny him his humanity by stripping him of reasonable alternatives, of creating a Kafkaesque world. But over time he tried to understand them, even going so far as to learn German so as better to communicate with any Germans who might be so inclined. With the exception of one who died just before a promised meeting, the interviews never took place. In the end, Levi could not forget, could not forgive. Despairing of coming to grips with the destruction of his soul, he may have committed suicide in 1987. He left no note, but Rosenfeld does not doubt that the fall down a flight of stairs was deliberate.

As I listened, I wondered. First I asked myself if is time for those of us who never endured the Nazi horror to forgive, but then my thoughts wandered to a more pressing issue. Suppose we are guilty ones who will be asking our descendents to forgive us. Do we deserve it? Was Walt Kelly right? Have we met the enemy…and he is us? What have we allowed in our name as we have ignored what has been imposed on us and the world by those who claim to reflect darkly our attitudes, in the process perverting our ideals. Nazis took a country that was in the forefront of human cultural development and dragged it down with them into the slime of Auschwitz. Is this Act II of the same crime?

The following Sunday I began my day, as I always do, by opening up Frank Rich’s column in The New York Times. He begins with this broadside “‘Bush lies’ doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.” He then discusses torture. That’s done in our name, folk, but denied in our name as well. All of which goes to show that George Orwell’s dystopia is alive and well and living in Washington, DC. Rich reminds that the claim is made that we don’t torture we engage in “enhanced interrogation” techniques. We knew that. What we (I) didn’t know is that the term is from the Gestapo who called it Verschärfte Vernehmung which means “enhanced interrogation.” (And who knew that when Richard Nixon was speaking about the “Great Silent Majority” which supported his war on Vietnam he was inadvertently quoting from Homer who referred to the great silent majority as those who have died? I did!) Rich holds our feet to the fire for countenancing Abu Ghraib and now for turning our backs on the scandal of outsourcing to fight our wars in our names so that we don’t pay attention when Blackwater mercenaries indiscriminately kill Iraqi civilians. In our name. He doesn’t even mention the illegal detentions in Guantánamo, but he does compare our methods with those used by American interrogators of Nazi prisoners. “We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” says one. Another “recalled that he ‘never laid hands on anyone’… adding ‘I am proud to say I never compromised my humanity.’”

Rich concludes with this: “Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those good Germans’ who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.”

Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans.

Yom Kippur reflections (2)

After tempers had cooled (see column below that was not published) I submitted this, which was.

Yom Kippur is one of those Holy days that does not sneak up on us on velvet paws, catching us unawares. Granted, Rosh Hashannah (and Passover) are proverbially always early or late but never on time, with Yom Kippur there's plenty of warning—ten days after Rosh Hashanna, comes Yom Kippur. Like clockwork. You can't miss it.

This year, on the day of Kol Nidre, this newspaper, for the first time in a year and a half, appeared with no column from The Old Olivetti. In response, the Jewish community wept, beat its breast and fasted. Or maybe that was because it was Yom Kippur. It's hard to say. This much I do know, that it was gratifying to be stopped on the street by strangers: “Aren't you the Old Olivetti?” “Yes,” I admitted. “How come no column? I look forward to it.” Well, therein lies a tale.

There was a column, of course, but it wasn't published. It was written as a critique of the newspaper's decision to charge for obituaries, a policy I and others had opposed in its discussion phase. We'd lost that battle but once letters of criticism started to arrive, once the Board of Rabbis unanimously condemned the decision, I took the opportunity to put forth my opinion in print. Editors thought the piece was too abrasive and contained errors of fact. It was toned down, the facts were checked, but at the last moment it was decided to postpone publication until memories were clarified. I was outraged, but losing an argument is as much a part of life as the occasional victory. And, in fact, there was a sort of victory. In response to the letters, in response to the rabbis, possibly in response to my unpublished article, the policy of charging for obituaries was suspended pending a review. It's now again safe to die without the newspaper offending the sensibilities of the Old Olivetti.

Readers might ask: What's so awful about charging for obituaries? The ProJo does it, so do other Jewish newspapers. To which I respond, the ProJo’s obituary section is not a community service and if other Jewish newspapers err, that's a reason not to follow their example. And Yom Kippur is exactly the wrong time of year to start imposing a fee, even a nominal one. ($45 is nominal to me, but it might not be to a poor person. One of the facts in dispute concerned whether the poor would have to pay; “no” was the official answer, but this did not appear in the announcement of the impending charge.)

And how does Yom Kippur heighten sensitivity? In traditional Jewish fashion I'll answer that question with questions of my own. Is Yom Kippur merely an exercise in self-restraint demonstrated by fasting? Is it merely a superficial show of ritual breast-beating remorse for sins? (Here's my confession: I didn't actually do any of those things I confessed to. I wouldn't even think of doing most of them. But, still, ritualistically I rose and recited; I beat my breast with the congregation around the world. Somebody had done those things. In case he was busy and couldn't make it to shul, I asked for him to be forgiven.)

On Yom Kippur we read from the book of Isaiah. To me that's the highlight of the day (that and the special tunes sung only in the penitential seasons, tunes that linger still in my mind as I drive to school, shop at the grocery, walk the dog, write this column).

“This is My chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry, take the homeless into your home. Clothe the naked when you see him, do not turn away from people in need...If you put yourself out for the hungry and relieve the wretched, then shall your light shine in the darkness and your gloom shall be as noonday.” It's thoughts like those that define a Jew as a Jew, that produce a Samuel Gompers, an Abe Cahan, an Andrew Goodman and a Michael Schwerner. Having been oppressed for centuries, Jews have always championed the little guy; charging his family to recognize his life and achievements is simply wrong.

As I sat in shul on Yom Kippur I did ask for forgiveness—Avenu Malkenu, Our Father our King, forgive us for even thinking of trying to balance our budget on the backs of our grieving Jews.

Censored

NB: This article was not published, neither in this form nor in a drastically watered down version. It was felt that it was offensive to the Jewish Federation of Rhode Island. That which might have been offensive, I agreed to omit. Nevertheless, the September 21, 2007 edition of the Jewish Voice and Herald appeared without its usual "From the Old Olivetti" column. People noticed.

If the postal service is on the ball, you'll receive this shortly before or on Yom Kippur. Around the globe Jews rise and confess their sins. “Avenu Malkenu (Our Father our King) forgive us for the sin of...” and then there is an alphabetical recitation of crimes against man and God. Here's my confession. I didn't actually do any of those things. I wouldn't even think of doing most of them. But, still, ritualistically I rise and recite; I beat my breast with the congregation around the world. Somebody did those things. In case he's busy and can't make it to schul, I'll ask for him to be forgiven.

But this I do confess in sincerity: Avenu Malkenu, I did not fight hard enough to prevent a stain from besmirching the Rhode Island Jewish community. I tried. Really I did. But I lost. This newspaper was conceived as a tool to aid the campaign of the Jewish Federation, and so it remained for several years. But for the past dozen years the editorial board has been struggling to give the paper credibility by expanding coverage beyond pictures of rich people at fund raising events, and puff pieces on the good work done by Federation and its agencies. Those still intrude, but of late we've diversified into hard news covering stories of Jews in local, national and world events that didn't make it into the ProJo. We have added columnists whose job is to express an opinion, not to serve as cheerleaders, sometimes critical of Federation and its agencies, sometimes critical of Israel. We've doubled our output, going from a monthly to a bi-weekly, increasing the number of pages, adding color, etc.

A few years ago the then editor, the late Jane Sprague, suggested we publish obituaries. The editorial board approved. The obituaries were a community service, a gift of the Federation newspaper to the bereaved. Rich or poor, important or unknown, what we received we printed. For the first time in their lives, the little guys in the community got recognition—though they had to die first.

Concurrently it was decided that the paper should break even. Now, half the paper is editorial content, half is adverts. But still there's a shortfall, covered by Federation. A business committee was established to figure out ways to reduce Federation's subvention. One idea was to charge for obituaries. “No!” I railed when this was brought to the editorial board. “The ProJo does it.” “I didn't care. It's not Jewish.” “But Jewish papers do it.” “I didn't care—they are not behaving as Jews.” I lost the argument and a few weeks ago an announcement was posted that we would start charging for obituaries beginning September 1. (The implied suggestion, of course, was you were smart enough to die in August you'd beat the fee.)

What does this mean? It means that even in death the little guy and his family are to be marginalized. At least three people were so upset about this outrage that they wrote to the paper in protest. The Rhode Island Board of Rabbis voted unanimously to oppose the decision.

The business committee asks, “How else can we raise the money to meet the deficit?” Well, frankly, that's their problem, not mine, but here are some answers. Make the fee optional; start charging Federation for the advertising it puts onto our pages; increase the cost of commercial advertising; find an angel willing to make a whopping contribution (give the person naming rights—The Menachim Pupick Jewish Gazette has a nice ring to it); start charging a subscription fee; sell donuts in the lobby; cease publication.

But in the end all of these solutions fail to recognize that the job of Federation is to give money away! It raises $4,000,000 a year, keeps some to pay salaries and expenses and then apportions the rest to the Bureau of Jewish Education, to the Family Service, to schools to the JCC, and to this newspaper, no longer merely its shill, but now a valuable resource to the community. Every dollar Federation spends on the paper is not spent at the Seniors' Agency, but every dollar spent at the Senior's Agency is not spent at the Bureau. Which is more important, seniors or students? It's a stupid question. They are equally important. So is this newspaper, the one that contains this column you have read till nearly the end.

Avenu Malkenu, forgive us for even thinking of trying to balance our budget on the backs of the grieving poor.

On teaching history

Much of today's paper concerns education. I've been engaged in the process my entire life, from first grade at the Yeshiva of Flatbush (I was expelled) to the present as a college professor. I'm vain enough to think that some might like to know what professors (or at least one history professor) thinks of the process. I do not pretend that what I think of education is universally held, but I hope it is.

Let me begin with a negative. I don’t teach to the student present; I teach to his future self. I don’t only teach what happened, I teach methods of determining what happened; it’s not the same thing. Some students take one course with me and love it, while others hate it, some take multiple courses with me either out of love for the way I present or as evidence of masochism. In all cases the goal is the same—to make of them thinking human beings.

I assign grades, but I know that their grade can only be determined in a dozen years. Do they remember the facts beyond the course? If “yes,” fine; if not, it may not be important. Do they remember that they are part of history, not the end of it; that they are products of a chain of human endeavor inheriting from the past, contributing to the development, and then leaving the world to the next and the next and the next generations for as far as can be imagined? If so I have succeeded. If after a dozen years they are still asking of something they read or hear, “is this true?” then I have succeeded. If they become teachers and pass along the knowledge and the perspective I’ve taught, then I’ve succeeded. But whatever profession they enter, if when they hear a politician speak they can also hear Pericles, and Cicero and Caesar saying the same things, even if they don’t remember exactly where they heard all that first, I’ve succeeded. If when entering a polling booth they take their obligations seriously, I’ve succeeded.

It is to them I teach, the students who are not yet there but the people they will be in a dozen years, hearing the echoes of the lessons; they are the ones to whom my class is aimed. How successful I am can only be judged by them. This past Fourth of July I met a middle-aged man who asked if I remembered him. I said his face and voice were familiar but that I couldn't place them. He had been a student of mine in the early 1970s and he said that what he had learned from me was vital in his career. I asked what that career had been, expecting that his reply would be “teacher” but, no, he said he had been employed in the defense intelligence establishment. What was useful to him was not the facts I taught, but the questions I'd taught him to ask of documents, the process of discovering truth. He remembered. I had succeeded.

Teaching, to me, is the transmission of the accumulated wisdom (and failed attempts at wisdom) of mankind from antiquity to yesterday. It is the role of the teacher in society, especially the historian, to distill this accumulated knowledge and present it in readily digested portions. I do not know everything that happened in Europe; I do not teach everything I know; I hope to stimulate my students to want to know more than I have taught them, more than I currently know, to understand their role in history, to understand what and how the present receives from the past and contributes to the future.

I encourage my students to challenge me when they disagree and to prompt me when they want more than I have given them. In the process I hope that they learn that authority may be challenged, should be challenged, and how best to challenge it. This process intimidates some students. They don’t like their core ideas threatened and some don’t like my making them think about things they have always taken for granted. Some realize that raising uncomfortable issues is to their benefit, allowing them the opportunity to confirm with knowledge that which they had previously held only as an opinion. Some appreciate new perspectives (new to them) and change their minds about the issue at hand. I always require them to think about what they believe.

So, when I'm not typing columns on this old Olivetti, that's what I do.

Jews and Economic Justice

I was at the greasy spoon around the corner from the college. The coffee was nearly as old as I am, though in better shape; it was so strong, my spoon stood erect in it. A drunk sat next to me. “Wass your motto?” he slurred. “My motto? I don't have a motto.” “You gots to have motto. Evrb'dy has a motto.” I fobbed him off with: “Don't accost people in greasy spoons.” He smiled, and as he rolled off his stool onto the grimy floor, he muttered, “Thas' a good one. Don' accos...”

This set me to thinking. If it's true what the drunk had said, that everyone needs a motto, is there a motto for the Jewish people? How to decide? Hold a contest? What's the universal quality that has characterized the Jewish people and how can it be phrased succinctly? Then I remembered a conversation I'd had at a wedding table and it came to me. “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.” It's from Deuteronomy, a quintessential Jewish book; but do we abide by it?

At that wedding I was seated next to an executive of a company that manufactures hobby items. He informed that while corporate was in South Carolina the actual product was made in China. I frowned. “I see you don’t like that.” “I don’t” I replied and discussed economics and social justice for the rest of the evening. “Unions forced us to do it,” he explained. I smelled a rat. “Let me guess,” I rejoindered, as you are in South Carolina there never were any union affiliated workers from whom you took away manufacturing jobs.” He admitted the truth of that but then came back with “labor in America is too expensive.” I came back with “Labor in China is being ruthlessly exploited by the most capitalistic communists never envisioned by Karl Marx!” He said that profits were shared with employees. I asked if the Chinese workers who actually made his products were receiving their shares, and he said, “No, they are not our employees, we contract that work out.” “What do the workers who used to manufacture your products do now?” I asked, “The ones whose jobs you sent overseas.” “They work in the service industry,” he said. “America is becoming a service economy, not a manufacturing one.” “Were they stock brokers, physicians, dentists, teachers?” He glowered and said “No, the service they perform is as security guards, telemarketers, that sort of thing.” “And do you think they get as much satisfaction doing that as they would if they were actually making something, participating in the manufacturing process?” He reminded me that I was a pie-in-the-sky academic while he worked in the real world where the bottom line was all that mattered. I reminded him that his former employees also lived in the real world, hand to mouth, where the bottom line matters even more, and so do the workers in China. I only wish I knew then what I know now, about tainted dog food, lead paint in Barbie dolls, bite-sized magnets attached to toys, all products of cheap unregulated labor in China.

If labor is being exploited it used to be the Jewish response that this is an abomination and Jews rallied in defense of the oppressed. And now? A few months ago I wrote about the Conservative movement's Jewish Law and Standards committee on which only three rabbis out of twenty-five had voted that workers employed by Jews should get a living wage. Rabbis against a living wage? Is this what Moses meant when he wrote “Justice, justice, thou shall pursue”? I’m thinking maybe not. So maybe this isn't such a good motto. But then I remembered that in another column I quoted a Reconstructionist rabbi, who in a Passover reflection had written: “If we only pour ten drops of wine from our cups and do nothing more, we do not understand the significance of our act. Our joy cannot be complete when there is harshness, cruelty, or suffering in the world. We cannot wait for others to tackle the injustices of our time.”
The aphorism is that if you save one person’s life it’s as though you’ve saved the whole world. Is the converse true? If you ignore one man’s economic injustice is it as though you’ve cheated the whole world? “Justice, justice, you shall pursue”—a motto or a pious irrelevance? Are Jews more concerned with holding the moral high ground or with maintaining the bottom line?

Anti-Semites of right and left

Recently in The Forward and in the New York Times reference was made to the revival of Jewish culture in Poland. Jewish style restaurants opening, klezmer bands playing, derelict synagogues being restored, a Festival of Jewish culture every June which brings thousands of people to sing Jewish songs and dance Jewish dances. “The only thing missing, really,” the Times reporter noted, “are Jews.” Both pieces discussed the usually tortured relationship between Poles and the Jews who used to live among them. Before the Nazi invasion one-tenth of the population was Jewish (3.5 million people), now there are only about 10,000 in the whole country. Before the Nazis, Poland was a land of persecution. After the Nazis there were renewed pogroms when surviving Jews tried to return home, and again in the late '60s in response to the Communist anger over the success of Israel in '67 and the associated “blame the Jews for the civil unrest” of 1968. A Polish friend tells me that to this day Poles see the greatest threats to their national existence coming from Germany, Russia and the Jews. He added that he was not listing the perceived threats in order. “But there are no Jews in Poland,” I said. “Yes,” he said “but there are anti-Semites.” So this Jewish revival, largely by Christians, is as welcome as it is surprising. But why this sudden interest in reviving a destroyed culture? Maybe its a progressive counterpoint to conservative nationalist strains in Polish politics.

In another Times story complaints are made about a Polish priest, Tadeusz Rydzyk who has a radio program which he has used as a springboard to create “a conservative Catholic media empire.” Both on the air and in secretly taped conversations Fr. Rydzyk has been heard making anti-Semitic remarks. He says that he is the victim of entrapment and suggests that the tapes had been tampered with, but he's not denied making the statements.

An American friend, who loves to send me stuff off the Internet demonstrating that “the left” is becoming, or already is, anti-Semitic, sent me a story out of England. Caveat: I trust nothing that people send on the Internet without first running it through one or more of the urban legends sites. I've seen nothing yet that contradicts this, but I can't swear to it. The piece says that opposition to the Iraq war and loathing of Israel has led the self-styled 'anti-racist' Left to make common cause with Islamonazis. And “anti-Zionism” soon tips over into straight- forward Antisemitism. A Daily Observer columnist comments on what he calls the casual anti-Jewish sentiment around Left-wing dinner tables and in the salons of Islington. (In the 1930's, of course, it was conservatives who held these dinner parties and over the table made snide anti-Jewish remarks.) He is appalled by the way in which his old comrades-in-arms have embraced terrorist groups like Hezbollah, one of the most anti-Semitic organizations on Earth. There's more, but you get the point. A Labour MP says he's disgusted at the way many on the Left have become almost casually and routinely anti-Semitic. “We wouldn't have seen this ten or 15 years ago. This idea that in some way there's a conspiracy of Jews running the world goes back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the last century. We've seen this before, and now it's resurgent.” The author of the Internet piece concludes with the usual “the American left is anti-Israel” statement that makes me suspect the validity of the whole. Well, to right wing ideologues, I guess that's true, but there are many people left of center, farther left than I am (if you can imagine such a thing) who love Israel and what it has been able to accomplish despite its myriad problems. And there are no right-wing anti-Semitic bigots here? P'lease!
So what gives here? Conservatives are anti-Semitic in Poland, Liberals are anti-Semitic in England. Was Herzl right? Do Jews carry antisemitism with us in our knapsacks as we are forced to wander from place to place? He was writing in a different era, of course, when from Russia to France anti-Jewish outbreaks were endemic (pogroms in the former, Anti-Dreyfusards in the latter). Or in the post-holocaust world is “anti-Semite” merely what you call your political opponents? Comments?

“Of Mice and Men”

You've seen the story about Farfur? He was Hamas' version of Mickey Mouse who taught Palestinian children to hate Jews and to look forward to Islamic world rule. Following an international storm of protest, al-Aqsa TV finally canceled the obnoxious rodent—by having him beaten to death, on television, by an actor portraying an Israeli because while the Jew wanted his land, the mouse gallantly refused to hand it over. The world forced the withdrawal of a particularly noxious pediatric poison, but at what price? In place of a malicious mouse, the civilized world gave Hamas the opportunity to create yet another martyr to its cause.

It may be time to acknowledge that those who doubt the capacity of humans to progress beyond their immediate self-interest are right. Palestinian Arabs of the Hamas stripe are reluctant to emerge from the clawing spider's-web of the past, preferring instead to fight to the death all those with whom they differ whether they be Jews or other Arabs. Given a chance to make a model state in Gaza, Hamas chose instead to pelt Israel with rockets and to launch a bloody self-defeating civil war against its nominal ally Fatah. Nor is Hamas and its ancillary mobsters alone among the Arab population. Tom Friedman of the New York Times, who initially supported the Iraq war, now concludes that America must pull out by a date certain. He cites Basra as evidence that gradual withdrawal is not viable. “The British forces there have slowly receded into a single base at Basra airport. And what has happened? The void has been filled by a vicious contest for power among Shiite warlords, gangs and clans and British troops are still being killed whenever they venture out.” I might mention that in and around Baghdad the same scenario is being played out with the added ingredient of Sunni terrorists murdering Shiite civilians and vice versa with mosques being bombed and politicians assassinated.

A recent New Yorker article reminds that one of the principal architects of this disaster, Paul Wolfowitz, thought that Iraqis would joyfully greet our liberating forces. He was right. But what he didn't realize, until it was too late, was why. With Saddam's heavy hand gone, pent up hatreds could explode, vengeance against enemies could be accomplished; heretical and infidel blood could flow again on the streets of Iraq. Who now considers that the people of Iraq are better off in the post-Saddam world or that the area is more stable now that Bush's America has tried and failed to impose its will on the region in an aborted effort to bring democracy? Everybody would have been better off had we simply hunted down bin Laden in Afghanistan and then come home to lick our wounds.

Our misadventure in Iraq was doomed from before we started. If Arabs had wanted democracy, they would have had it. If America were a democracy, Al Gore would have been president. The hypocrisy of a nation with the Electoral College trying to bring democracy to a people that doesn't want it is staggering.

In an earlier era, in a less self-aggrandizing spirit, Northern liberals attempted to bring integration and equality to a Southern white culture we were told was so racist it could not be changed. After a while we thought we'd won. And then the backlash began. It always does. The South first took over the Republican party and then swung the entire country to the right. Richard Nixon used a Southern strategy in 1968 to win the White House, and Ronald Reagan announced his 1980 candidacy for president in Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town best known for the murder of three civil rights workers, including two Jews, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. The South, Hydra-like had risen again. Last month the Bushs' Supremes virtually abrogated Brown v. Topeka's guarantee of equal educational opportunities. Believers in Natural and Constitutional law had lost again

Humanity, our hope for creating a better world, is a mere chimera while people put more blind faith in obscurantists than in advocates of human potential, in superstition rather than in science, in religion rather than in reason. But they always will. Our salvation is with us, the living, with us the forward thinking, not with antiquated bigotries that lead to Farfur, and Philadelphia, Mississippi and George W. Bush. We are lost if we forget that. We thought the times had a'changed. We were wrong.

June 22- On two critics of Israel, Burg and LeBor

I've been practicing, but it's hard.

Here's a sample. “Heil Hi....” See? I can't do it, not even in print. I'll try again. “Heil Hit...”. Nope, still can't.

And why would I even try? Because I've just finished reading a lengthy interview in a recent Haaretz magazine. The subject was Avrum Burg, 52, former Speaker of the Knesset, former chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, one time candidate for Labor Party leader. You might think that such a person would be an advocate of Israel. Well, he is—much as Vidkun Quisling advocated for Norway.

According to Burg, The Law of Return “is the mirror image of Hitler.” The interviewer, Ari Shavit comments: “In your book we are not only victims of the Nazis... we are almost Judeo-Nazis... You do not actually say that Israel is Nazi Germany, but you come very close. You say that Israel is pre-Nazi Germany. Israel is Germany up to the Nazis.” Burg doesn't disagree. “Yes,” he says, and then explains: Israel has “a great sense of national insult; a feeling that the world has rejected us; unexplained losses in wars. And, as a result, the centrality of militarism in our identity.” His proof is the way Arabs are treated, the separation fence and other defensive measures. He compares the occupation of the West Bank to Hitler's Anschulss (the forced 1938 union with Austria). He doesn't like the comparison to Nazism, though, a term he says is extremely charged, but accepts the comparison to “National-Socialists” to me a distinction without a difference.

If he's right, we Zionists are proto-Nazis, which is why I, an avowed card-carrying Zionist, am practicing my Sieg Heils. But wait! What if Burg is wrong? What if we are not sliding down the slippery slope to a fascistic State of Israel. (Burg says we are already there—Q: Are you concerned about a fascist debacle in Israel? A: I think it is already here.) What if we are surprised when the Knesset doesn't “prohibit sexual relations with Arabs.” What if Burg is wrong and the Jews don't “use administrative means to prevent Arabs from employing Jewish cleaning ladies and workers... like the Nuremberg Laws”? He predicts, he states with the authority of the zealot, that “all this will happen and is already happening!” But, but, but, if we don't start treating Arabs as untermenschen sometime soon I'll have wasted all my goose stepping practice—and it wasn't easy to learn to goose step. Have you ever tried it? Gevalt. My thighs were killing me.

Burg's sense of honor does not distract him. When he was denied a pension for his chairmanship of the Jewish Agency because of his attacks on it (the pension is for NIS 200,000 annually—just shy of $50,000—plus a chauffeur driven limousine) he sued saying he's been deprived of a basic right. Although he's taken French citizenship he appears to want to be Labor's candidate for prime minister. That'll happen when I learn to ejaculate the words that began this column.

In a similar, though less obnoxious, vein Adam LeBor, in the Times (June 18), argues that Hatikvah should be changed, just a wee bit. Instead of referring to “nefesh Yehudi” (Jewish soul) the anthem should speak of “nefesh Israeli” (Israeli soul). This he contends would allow Christians, Arabs, Russians etc who are Israeli citizens to have a sense of inclusion in the Israeli state. “Updating 'Hatikvah' could be the start of a psychic shift among the country's Arab and Jewish citizens about what it means to be Israeli.”

LeBor is obviously whistling Dixie. No matter how conciliatory the Jews of Israel are, by changing the national symbols all they will accomplish is to water down their resolution to survive. About a fifth of the population is Arab. To my knowledge none are fleeing to Syria, but shall we put a crescent moon and star in the center of the Mogen David on the flag to keep them? And if the one wee change is made what shall we do with these lines? “Our hope is not yet lost, The hope of two thousand years, To be a free nation in our own land”? LeBor's proposal is a prescription for suicide. It will not be seen as an attempt at reconciliation, but as appeasement, as were withdrawal from Lebanon and the Gaza with nothing to show in return. Israel is the Jewish state, open to others to live in. Or to move from.

Reflections on the Six Day War, 40 years after

I've been reading “The Seventh Day,” David Remnick's essay in “The New Yorker” of May 28. It's a discussion of Israeli revisionist history. Remnick, who sees Israeli villains under every bed, argues that:

It [The Six Day War] was a war that Israelis regarded as existential in importance––defeat could well have meant the end of the state after less than twenty years––and yet winning had Pyrrhic consequences. Out of it came forty years of occupation, widespread illegal settlements, the intensification of Palestinian nationalism, terrorism, counterattacks, checkpoints, failed negotiations, uprisings, and ever-deepening distrust. What greater paradox of history: a war that must be won, a victory that results in consuming misery and instability.

Relying on the revisionists, Remnick denies the necessity of the war. He quotes Israeli leaders (without giving the context) who argued against going to war, and those who even afterwards said it was unnecessary. He claims that Prime Minister Levi Eshkol was wise in his reluctant ditherings; that the military forced him to go to war. Yes, he concedes, Nasser had the UN remove its peace keepers from the border so that Egyptian forces could bring their tanks and warplanes within striking distance of Tel Aviv. But even Israel's friends, the Americans and the British and the French warned Israel against striking first.

But could Israel listen to Britain and France? In 1938 they had given the same sort of advice to the young republic of Czechoslovakia with disastrous consequences. (By incredible coincidence, in 1938 Czechoslovakia was 19 years old when it was sold down the Danube; Israel was 19 years old when the same dynamic duo of appeasers tried to sell it down the Jordan.)

On June 5, 1967 Israel did attack. By placing his air force so close to the border, Nasser brought it within striking distance of Israeli fighter jets, which essentially destroyed his air capability and lost him the war. King Hussein of Jordan honored a recent pledge to Nasser and struck at Israel and lost the West Bank in exchange. (I suppose it's necessary to point out that the West Bank was part of the remnant of a proposed Arab state, one rejected by the Arabs as they invaded Israel. Gaza was the other remnant, occupied by Egypt since 1949. There never was a Palestinian state—there should have been one, one far bigger than the current West Bank and Gaza, but... As to Jerusalem, occupied by Jordanian forces since 1948, that was supposed to be an international city, open to all. Unlike Muslims permitted to pray at their holy places under Israeli rule, Jews were denied access to their holy places under the Jordanians. I just thought you would like to be reminded.)

Remnick is a fine writer, but he's fallen victim to “The Zeitgeist,” the spirit of the times, which lures historians to ruins against the rocks of misunderstanding. At first I wondered why he began with a seemingly superfluous reference to George W. Bush who called critics of his war policies “revisionist historians” but then it became abundantly clear. The spirit of Remnick's times (and mine and at last count of 70% of America's) is that the war in Iraq is an unnecessary adventure, that currently and in the future the US is and will be paying the penalties for Bush's arrogance. What Remnick forgets is that history is oracular, not predictive. It tells us truth (if we are honest) but it's never repeated. Israel in 1967 was not the United States in 2003. America's war is foolishly opportunistic, Israel's wasn't. Had Eshkol waited, a massive Arab attack would have driven the Jews into the Sea. Nasser was saying: “Our basic objective will be the destruction of Israel...The critical hour has arrived.” Control of the air was essential. Either Israel had it or Egypt. There was no choice. The enemy was across an invisible line in the sand, not thousands of miles away. Nasser and his Arab allies had the ability to destroy Israel in a way that Saddam never could touch us. Al Qaeda attacked us; we attacked Al Qaeda's enemy. It was stupid. When Israel attacked it was necessary for survival. Sadly, the long term consequences are as Remnick describes them, but there would not have been a long term had Israel waited, had it not avoided being another Czechoslovakia.

A pagan and an atheist on religion re: Klinghoffer

Those of you who know me know the depths of my piety. So rigorous is my observance of the laws of Judaism that I constantly search for a six-hundred-fourteenth commandment to obey. Until recently, no luck. So it might come as a surprise that four times a year, around my oval table, I entertain two old friends, Paulie (“Poopidingus”) Pearlman, and Artie (“the Dodger”) Alston. Poopidingus is a practicing pagan; Artie, a devout atheist. This despite the fact that both were born to Jewish mothers; I attended their bar mitzvahs.

Over the years we've worked out a pattern. I say kiddish over the wine, Paulie the motzi, and Artie leads birkat. In unison, looking at our respective wives we stutter along through the interminable list of their virtues cited alphabetically in the Eishet Chayil. Why a pagan and an atheist would engage in these Jewish rituals I'm not sure. I, for instance don't sacrifice goats in Poopidingus's backyard. Just to make things kosher in their eyes we end the evening by singing the “Internationale,” for Artie, and “Diana” for Paulie (“I'm so young and you're so old/This, my darling I've been told/I don't care just what they say/'Cause forever I will pray/You and I will be as free/As the birds up in the trees/Oh, please, stay by me, Diana”) which is the closest to a pagan hymn he can find in English.

But this time Paulie arrived madder than Zeus with a toothache. “Did you see Klinghoffer in the April 20th Forward?” As we hadn't, he pulled out his copy and showed it to us. “It's titled 'Defend your Faith when it's Blasphemed.' My goddess (remind me to hit you up for another chai—we're having a building campaign to reconstruct Temple Beth Artemis which burned down a few years ago). Remember the Danish cartoon riots? It's headlines like Klinghoffer's that are the feces that launched a thousand Shiites.

“What is his problem?” he continued, his agitation mounting. “I don't get upset when people deny the existence of Zeus or Hera; Klinghoffer's the atheist to Christians who believe in the divinity of Jesus and the Holy Trinity. He's mad because Richard Dawkins says that the God of the Hebrew bible is 'arguably the most unpleasant character in fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully' doesn't make it true. But Klinghoffer's outrage doesn't make it false, either.” He was just getting warmed up. “I was at a couple of friends' daughter's bat mitzvahs recently and read of the death of Aaron's sons and of the death of the poor chap who was trying to prevent your holy arc from falling to the ground and smashing to smithereens. You do seem to have an arbitrary god there. Homer, at least, gives us the occasional reason for the displeasure of the gods. Your god just kills somebody and then, apparently, demands silence as a response. Some god!”

Artie chimed in. “Have you guys seen reviews of Hitchens's 'God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything'? I can't wait to read Klinghoffer on that.” Skimming the article, he continued: “I see here that he also objects to universities teaching that Tanach is just a collection of stories stitched together, and that the Zohar is not a second century book of mysticism but a 13th century hoax! Can you imagine? A religious hoax? Gershom Scholem, the great scholar of Jewish mysticism, whom he slams, once defended his academic endeavors by saying the “Nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is scholarship!” I've always loved that line. That the sun revolves around the earth, that'll be Klinghoffer's next claim.”

Sadly, we lamented the decline of the Age of the Enlightenment. It had a good run while it lasted, but the fundamentalists are back in force—Muslims in their madrass schools, Christians at Liberty University, and Klinghoffer at the Forward. “Religion's all made up by man,” said Poopidingus; “still, it's an occasionally amusing story, if you don't take it seriously,” chimed in Artie. Sighing, Paulie in his “Zeus Lives!” tee-shirt, Artie sporting his “Vote Atheist” button, peered deeply into the depths of their Manischewitz Concord Grape wine and wondered where humanity had gone wrong. I, on the other had, had discovered my six-hundred-fourteenth mitzvah! To comfort rationalists as the darkness descends.

A comparison between US and Israel when poor leaders are in charge.

I love America And Israel. (And France and Italy and Britain and Canada, but let's not complicate things too much.) I love the things we share and the things that distinguish us as separate. We practice different forms of democracy—ours based on principles of separation of powers, theirs a hodgepodge of forms including elements that would be familiar in France (multiple parties and separate elections for the legislature and head of government); the Netherlands (proportional representation); British (virtually independent cabinet ministers and an unwritten constitution). We both have trouble controlling our borders, and each has a dominant religion, though we both practice forms of religious pluralism. We both have incompetent leaders who got us into lost/losing unnecessary wars. (It is an historical truism that if you are going to get your country involved in a war of choice, you may as well win.)

And the differences? In America we pretend that religion has no place in secular society despite “In God we trust” and “one nation under God” and crèches on public property and menorah lightings in state houses; Israel pretends to be a secular society independent of its official religion until the rabbinical authorities assert their control over everyday life (see Alison Golub's occasional columns on the perils and pitfalls of trying to prove you are Jewish enough to get married in a theocracy).

But a key difference is in the way we can or cannot control the executive power. In America, regardless of how George W. Bush-like the president is, it's almost impossible to get rid of him before his term expires. Yes, congress controls the purse strings (when it wants to) and yes, the president can be impeached and convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors—whatever that means but in fact, unless one rises (sinks?) to the level of Richard Nixon, there's no effective way to remove a president—and even if there were, in our current case we would just be exchanging the puppet for the puppeteer. Congress can override a presidential veto, but the president can run roughshod over the will of 2/3 (minus one) of either house and have his veto sustained. Israel, which is working with an independently elected prime minister avoids the Italian imbroglio of constantly falling governments, but there can be pressure placed on the prime minister to resign even without a formal vote of no-confidence as required in England, for instance.

Which inevitably brings us to the two commissions. In America an independent commission of senior legislative, executive and judicial retirees, all of great distinction, from both political parties, studied the origins of the Iraq war and made suggestions as to what to do now. These boiled down to “incompetence” (the generous reading) and “withdraw” respectively. Not wanting to influence the 2006 mid-term elections, the commission withheld its final report until after the polls were closed and the votes were counted and it became obvious to all that the president's policy of imposing democracy in Iraq by bullet was throughly repudiated by the democratic process by ballot. So, what has the president decided to do? Ignore. First he called for a surge of troops (the immediate result of which was the huge increase in civilian and GI deaths) and then he vetoed a congressional spending bill which called for gradual then total withdrawal of American troops. If you read this on May 11 there will still be 610 more days of this administration to endure.

In Israel where a similarly constituted commission, this on the origins and conduct of the war in Lebanon this summer reported that “There are very serious failings in these decisions and the way they were made. We impose the primary responsibility for these failures on the prime minister, the minister of defense and the [outgoing] chief of staff.” By the time you read this the Olmert premiership may already be over. It is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Being an accidental premier can work, but not this time. The man who managed to defeat the sainted Teddy Kollek back in 1993. was and is the wrong man at the wrong time who did the wrong thing. His time may already have come and gone, or perhaps he's still hanging on, but at least in Eretz Yisrael it's possible to change course, to get rid of incompetence and try something new. Here in America, we wait, and wait, and wait and wait. 610 and counting.

Reflections on the Virginia Tech killings

Even now, nearly two weeks later, my students look to me for answers. I offer rationality, reason. It is insufficient. Madness is on the loose. Virginia Tech occupies every thought of students and faculty on campus. We are relieved when through the door it's only a late arriving student. My students look to me for explanation. I offer rationality, reason. It is insufficient. Madness is on the loose.

It was the day after Yom Hashoah. Liviu Librescu, born in 1930 in Romania had been a survivor of the Holocaust. Romania's Iron Guard didn't wait for German orders. Jews were rounded up and murdered by homegrown fascists by the hundreds of thousands. But he survived. In the post-War era he lived under the tyranny of the Ceausescu regime which would neither allow him to practice his profession nor leave the country. It was only the personal intervention of Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978 that secured his release from the suspended animation of life under Ceausescu's tyranny. In Israel he taught at Tel Aviv University and at the Technion in Haifa. In 1984 he came to Virginia Tech on sabbatical leave and stayed, becoming its most published scholar, ever. According to his son Joe, at Tech “he saw himself as the ambassador of Israel ... to an American university that had few Israelis but many representatives from the Arab world.”

I don't know how Professor Librescu observed Yom Hashoa, or if he did at all. I do know that on the Monday, Marlena,his wife, drove him to campus from their home at the edge of a forest through which he liked to take long contemplative walks. Shortly after 9:00 a.m. he was teaching Solid Mechanics to a class of 23 students. Gun shots were heard from the room next door. Professor Librescu slammed shut the door to his classroom and pressed his body against it. One of his students, Alec Calhoun, later told the AP that “he and classmates heard 'a thunderous sound from the classroom next door, what sounded like an enormous hammer.'” The students' initial response was to flip over their desks to use as hiding places. Librescu, though, shouted to them to get out the windows, to jump from the second story. The students kicked through the screens and jumped, one then another then another. The last image Calhoun has of his professor was just before jumping himself. He turned and saw Librescu at the door, blocking it to give the students another few seconds to escape. The killer, Cho Seung-Hui, tried to break in, but couldn't. Soon enough he shot through the door and hit professor Librescu five times. One student, Minal Panchal, was killed. All the others escaped. A survivor, Caroline Merrey, 22, reported that as the students were jumping out the window, “Professor Librescu never made an attempt to leave.” She reports that “He's a part of my life now and forever. I'm changed. I'm not the person I was before Monday.” None of us are. My students look to me for answers. I offer rationality, reason. It is insufficient. Madness is on the loose.

There is no way to bring back the 32 students and faculty killed. There is a way to help prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. Back in 1974, the Buckley Amendment, more formally called the Family Educational and Privacy Rights Act came into being. In short this says that if a student is 18 years of age or older, faculty cannot communicate with their parents. This to protect the students' privacy, a possibly laudatory goal. Down at Virgina Tech Cho Seung-Hui's English teacher noted dangerous tendencies and advised him to go to counseling but could not follow up. The campus police were called in on a couple of occasions in response to some creepy behaviors, but... You get my point. The consequence of protecting Seung-Hui's privacy was the death of 32 innocent students and teachers. The law had been obeyed scrupulously, the deaths are irrevocable. This we can do something about. We can write to our congressmen and senators and urge them to revoke the Buckley amendment, to allow teachers and counselors and administrators to talk to worried, distraught parents. I understand that mental health professionals have a code of ethics by which they must abide—but need teachers be bound by their code? When concerned parents call I want to answer their questions without fear of being sued by a student. Anyone care to join me?

Did we learn the lessons of the Seders?

The Seders of 5767 are now only a memory. Still, it's appropriate to ask, did their stories of freedom change us, clear our eyes, awaken our consciences? Are we more free now than before the Seders? By one definition, the answer is clearly “no,” for no man is free while even a single man is a slave. And, worse, what if we are enablers of the slavers? If we are, can we ever be free or are we merely latter day Egyptians, benefiting from the new pharaohs? Here's a simple quiz.

Did you emphasize that the story of our ancestors was the story of the exploitation of oppressed labor? And then did you go out and buy a product made in a sweatshop rather than in a Union shop?

Did you read of Pharaoh and not remember that people are being smuggled into this country to work in sub-human conditions; indeed, are being smuggled into the country in sub-human ways, crammed into airless trucks from Mexico, driven through deserts, abandoned if their drivers fear capture, or if from Asia, forced to live in ships in conditions comparable to those of the Middle Passage of the 19th century which smuggled Africans to our shores?

Most Jews no longer work with their hands in crafts. If we work with our hands it's as surgeons or dentists or musicians. We work with our minds as lawyers, teachers, store owners, stock brokers. We have achieved the American dream. We have become market driven bottom liners shopping for price, ignoring the human cost that goes into the production of our inexpensive goods. And why not? Being bourgeois is comfortable, it's convenient, it's what people around the world want—as proof of which there are all those desiring to come here. But there was a time when it was us who came to this country as the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. And then we began the American labor movement. Those who did were Yiddish speaking secular Jews; maybe they never entered a synagogue, but they were the product of the Seder, of the retelling as though they had been slaves in Egypt. They were not going to wait to be liberated by a God they did not believe in; when they searched for the Messiah, they looked into the mirror and saw their own grime-lined faces. They remembered that they had a mission as Jews, to redeem not only themselves but mankind in general, so they formed their unions and they marched for workers' rights and then when African Americans demanded equality, of the white community it was Jews who were the first to ride freedom buses and march in Selma. We've given all that up now, but at the Seder, if we did it right, we remembered when we were slaves in Egypt; if we did it right we wept at the success we've achieved at the cost of abandoning our roots as workers for the liberation of the downtrodden.

Rabbi David Teutsch of the Reconstructionist Seminary has it about right. “If we only pour ten drops of wine from our cups and do nothing more, we do not understand the significance of our act. Our joy cannot be complete when there is harshness, cruelty, or suffering in the world. We cannot wait for others to tackle the injustices of our time. What will we do this year?” Oh, Rabbi Teutsch is also a PhD—from the Wharton School of Business. He writes as a Jew, but with that business background he might also be channeling the ideas of the principal theorist of capitalistic economics, Adam Smith. Smith asked the question we too often ignore—what is it that gives something value? And his answer was straightforward and simple—it is labor. Without labor taking a raw material and transforming it into something usable, it is just a tree, not a desk; some ore, not a knife; some gold, not an earing. Smith, who brooked no interference in the economy, not from government, not from price fixing allowed only this—the formation of workmen's associations so that laborers could collectively negotiate their wages. Smith wasn't a Jew, he was, I imagine, a Presbyterian, but like Teutsch, he knew the lesson of the Seder. Messiah? Look in the mirror and see your own reflection. You are the messiah if only you would recognize the strength within yourself, within our tradition that began as slaves in Egypt.

Necessary preparations for freedom and responsibility

Because they don't have to make their homes kosher for Passover (two sets each of dishes and flatware coming up and going down from basements or attics) Christians miss an essential element of Passover, the opportunity for a fresh beginning, at least symbolically. Yes the back aches; yes the period between a chumitzdic household and one that's ready for Passover is complex, (and if anyone know the answer to the kosher for Pesach pet food conundrum, please send me a letter) but when the process is complete, when the house is prepared, when the Seder is ordered, when the guests arrive for the annual re-telling, ironically there is within that ancient repetition a concurrent renewal.

Christians believe that Jesus, the lamb of God, sacrificed himself so that his community would be relieved of the burden and not have to perform the sacrifice ever again. Ironically Jews don't perform sacrifices any more either but unlike Christians we don't believe that the Messiah has been here and is on the way back, real soon. When Christians celebrate Easter they are marking the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. For Jews, Passover is the commemoration of the resurrection of the children of Israel, freed from the moral death of slavery. But were they ready? Does one have to be prepared for redemption?

My Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, its binding showing the stress of decades of perpetual breaking defines “redeem” (and hence its offspring “redemption”) as buying back, freeing by payment, and then more religiously, as deliverance from sin. On my 31st day my father redeemed me by paying $8.00 to a cohen, but as I was very young at the time the process seems not to have been entirely complete as now I'm required to fast on the day of the first Seder or listen to the conclusion of a unit of study. Why I do these things escapes me, but do them I do, continuing traditions in which I have no faith. Do we really need the ten thousand Passover nitpicks of ancient (and medieval and modern) rabbis? Is that redeeming?

The redemption price of our ancient ancestors was an unusual one—it was the Egyptians who paid dearly to release their captives, an O. Henry story set 3,200 years before the birth of Red Chief. It was a sudden rescue (pagan writers later claimed it was an expulsion, but what do they know) without preparation, not only sans leavened bread, but worse, minus the moral preparation for dealing with freedom. The books of Exodus and Numbers reveal this. Our sainted ancestors came to the Sea and complained; (maybe slavery in Egypt wasn't so bad); they complained in the desert; (maybe slavery in Egypt wasn't so bad); they built themselves a golden calf; (who needs Shacharit and Minchah/Maariv? Those Egyptians really knew how to pray. Party, party, party); they rejected the advice of Joshua and Caleb that with God's help they could conquer the powerful Canaanites. Given the opportunity to err, they invariably did.

What Moses seemed not to have realized (or perhaps Someone even higher than Moses?) was that freedom takes practice. It's like a spring trap, hard to open, fast to snap shut and break an unwary finger. The great 19th century Zionist Ahad Ha'Am knew this. You can't just take a bunch of Russian Jews and dump them into the wastes of Palestine without first getting them ready for the task. Yes, establish agricultural training centers, but more importantly, prepare the culture of the immigrants; teach them what it means to be a Jew outside the ghetto's walls, teach them the roots of Judaism including, but not exclusively, the Hebrew language. Herzl, for all his genius, thought the Jews transplanted from Europe would speak German and live bourgeois European lives. Ahad Ha' Am taught that there was more to establishing a Jewish presence than the need to flee persecution. To be a Jew in Israel, doing God's work (man's work—it's often the same thing) was what mattered, not merely rescuing someone from cossacks. Nobody seemed to anticipate the resentment of Arabs—who are not ready for freedom either, as witness their slaughter of each other in Gaza whenever given the opportunity.

That ancient Seder song Dayenu has it all backwards; it shouldn't be, if You only had given us this it would have been enough. It should be, it's never enough prep time. Is that the academic in me? Resurrect Moses; ask him what he thinks.

Iran's nuclear capabilities and Israel

Iran. Gevalt! Does anyone know what is happening in Iran? It's the story that refuses to go away despite our inclination to put our collective head in the sand and hope it will go away. We don't know what is happening there. Are nuclear weapons aborning? Or are the Bushies crying Wolfowitz again the way they did with the non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and if they are, why should we believe them this time? Certified liars are, after all, certified liars. But just as paranoids occasionally have real enemies, liars sometimes tell the truth—even if inadvertently. Is this such an occasion? For the sake of argument, let's pretend that whether the administration is lying or not, that crazy Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his ilk are really trying to develop a nuclear bomb. Word out of Israel is that he is. Israel is in rocket-range of Iran. Its opinion counts. What is Israeli reaction? It's divided. (All those who are surprised, raise your hand. Seeing none, I will proceed.)

There are those Israelis who say UN sanctions ought to be imposed to force Iran to give up its ambitions. (Stop laughing, this is serious, no, really it is, chuckle, chuckle snort hoot.) Then there are those who advocate a preemptive launch on Iran's nuclear facilities the way in 1981 Israel struck at Saddam's Osirak bomb making factory. Quick in, drop bombs, fly home. The problem is that Iran is not concentrating its efforts in a single location and knocking out sufficient targets is beyond Israel's capabilities given the added distance Israeli bombers would have to travel. Could these sites be hit by missiles? Maybe, but Israel seems not to be in the business of advertising its missile capability. Does Israel have a nuclear bomb and a missile capable of delivering it in a preemptive strike? Same answer. Let's pretend that Israel does nuke Iran. Then reality raises its ugly head, as it is wont to do.

In this scenario Israelis are divided between minimalists (“hawks”) and maximalists (“doves”). Minimalists argue that with its anti-missile defenses, the few rockets Iran could launch in counter-attack would be shot out of the sky except for maybe one or two. Maximilists say Iran has a lot more missiles, too many to be destroyed, and that will would be destroyed is Eretz Israel. Ahmadinejad has already said that he would be content to lose half his population to Israeli nuclear attack if it meant destroying all of Israel. Is he serious? Do you want to find out?

The theory of Mutual Assured Destruction that many of us remember from the '60s and 70s was mad enough, but it proved correct. It was based on the presumption that the Commies of Moscow (A) believed that eventually they would win, so why destroy, and (B) that they wanted to wake up the next morning. With Ahmadinejad and his ilk neither of these necessarily apply. Like many of the mentally challenged of all religions, the guy seems enthralled with eschatologal visions of the end of the world brought about in the Middle East by some kind of horrific fire next time as predicted in (insert here name of some holy book). And even if he dies in the process, the world will be spared the horror of Jews and Christians polluting it as all will be gone (he to his 70 virgins, we to Gehenna). Or is he another kind of crazy, the type typified by Saddam, the type who doesn't have weapons of mass destruction but wants the world to think he does even if that means attack by outside forces? Look up Misughanah in the dictionary and you'll see these two enemies smiling at each other.

Oh, and if religious Shiite Iran gets the bomb, you can bet that Secular Sunni Jordan and secular sunni Egypt will start clamoring for one (or more) too, not so much to use against nearby Israel, but to prevent attack from the Iranians. And if they get one, can Syria be far behind, Syria which wants back the Golan, Syria that while secular and Sunni is allied to Shiite Iran through their mutual support of Hezbollah? So what is Israel to do? Attack? Or hope sanctions will be effective? What a choice. Neither will work. Probably Israel's only hope is either prayer—that Iranian leaders will be overcome by a tsunami of reason, or to engineer a coup. Bring back the Shah!

March 2- Baseball in suite L7, Fenway Park

This is a story that begins at a Purim ball. A couple of years ago, a hastily thrown-together consortium consisting of myself and three chums bid on four tickets to a luxury box at Fenway Park. Bidding was spirited, but we prevailed. The tickets were for a game against the Oakland A's. We had just lost the last 5 out of 6 games. The masochism that is Red Sox Nation was grumbling, the seismic readings were setting off alarms. Panic was raising its ugly head, its yellow fangs dripping slime, its eyes blood red, its beating wings fanning ever more fear and anguish. "The team has no heart"; "the manager has no brains." "All is lost"; "the curse continues." And now we face the mighty Athletics of Oakland. "We're doomed!"

Typical Red Sox stuff.

Into this malaise we four intrepid fans entered the Park by an obscure gate tucked away in the corner of the building. Up we walked, higher and higher until we came to a long corridor lined with framed enlargements of "Sports Illustrated" covers depicting Red Sox players and history. The air was hushed and fresh, the floor carpeted, not the concrete slab slippery with beer, smelling vaguely of yeast, which is what greets most fans entering the Park. This was the entrance to Olympus, after all. We stopped in at the Red Sox Hall of Fame, a room bearing bronze tablets of heroes of the remote and immediate past. It was the anteroom of a fancy restaurant with windows overlooking the playing field. We did not linger but moved on for another 50 feet until we came to Suite L7, ours for the night.

L7 has its own clean private bathroom-what else would you expect? It is, in essence, a large foyer with a kitchen, the refrigerator stocked with beer and soda, wine and bottled water; it has three steam tables, (treyf meat); a table of cheeses and crackers, sliced vegetables and dip; it has a comfortable leather couch facing a TV tuned to NESN; bowls of chips, bags of Cracker Jacks, and a glass wall from which the field seems to pour forth below. Our seats were just beyond the glass walls; Frank, our personal attendant, showed us to them and took care of our needs. (One need I had was that when the pizza arrived, it was doused with pepperoni. Couldn't eat it, of course, so Frank arranged for a plain cheese.) At one point he announced that the cookies had come in. At another we saw that in the adjacent suite a woman was dispensing Ben and Jerry's ice cream. We were stuffed, of course, but eagerly awaited our turn, which, tragically, never came. But the view! We were up above the masses, between home plate and third base. No obstructions-no venders, no poles, no other patrons could interfere with our view. I felt like a Republican. As the sun was setting, we looked out over the right field bleachers and saw the skyscrapers of downtown Boston turn a glorious burnt umber until the color slowly faded over several innings. The sight of those buildings alone was nearly worth the price of admission.
Oh, and there was a baseball game, too. We won, 11-0 but we always kept a nervous eye on the scoreboard, as all true Sox fans do, to see what the Yankees were doing in their game at the Stadium. Ha, ha! They were in the process of losing to the then lowly Tigers of Detroit. The suite, a triumph! The view, a triumph! The victory, a triumph! The Yankees losing while we were winning, a triumph triumph! The fact that our checks had cleared three months before so that we had the feeling that all this was free, another triumph!

The problem, of course, is that we were all so spoiled by L7 and the ambrosia and the nectar to which we knew we would never return, that leaving was no less a forever exile from Olympus than Adam's and Eve's (to mix my mythologies). Being in the suite was not quite comparable to seeing the Kotel for the first time, but for baseball lovers, it was a pure delight. It was perfect luxury. As it all began on Purim, we all brought our groggers and as their batters went down one by one, we generated a "smother-out-the-sound-of-Haman's-name" noise. That is, when we weren't stuffing our faces.

On Arabs who feel persecuted by Jewish symbolism in Israel

An article in the Times caught my attention. “A group of prominent Israeli Arabs has called on Israel to stop defining itself as a Jewish state and become a ‘consensual democracy for both Arabs and Jews.’” Commissioned by Israeli-Arab mayors, “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel” was the product of efforts of some 40 Arab academics. “They call on the state to recognize Israeli Arab citizens as an indigenous group with collective rights” arguing that Israel “inherently discriminates against non-Jewish citizens in its symbols of state, some core laws, and budget and land allocation.”

Immediately I wrote to Prime Minister Helen Clark, President Pervez Musharraf and Governor Rick Perry demanding that they rename, respectively, Christ Church, Islamabad and Corpus Christi. So far, no response. By my very unofficial count, 8 national flags fly a version of the star and crescent of Islam, 18 some form of the cross or other symbol of Christianity.

Recently nationalists were incensed when an Arab, Ghaleb Majadele, of the Labor Party, was offered and accepted a position in the Israeli cabinet. Jewish nationalists don’t trust Arabs, and Arabs don’t want other Arabs to join mainstream Israeli parties, preferring instead the martyrdom of marginalization. Yet even Majadele said that he was “uncomfortable with national symbols like the flag...and the anthem, which speaks of the ‘Jewish soul’ yearning for Zion.”

According to the Times, “most Arab Israeli politicians have rejected the document as unrealistic, exposing divisions within the Arab community.” This attitude of the politicians reflects the general Arab mood. According to a recent poll, only 14% of Israel’s Arab population think Israel should remain a Jewish state as currently constituted; 25% want a Jewish state that guarantees full equality to its Arab citizens, and 57% want a bi-national state. What this all means, from the Arab intelligentsia and the Arab street, is, at best, a rejection of the two-state solution propounded by moderates on both sides.

Yasser Arafat (may soon he have many interesting conversations with his pal Osama in a hell unimagined even by Dante) used to claim that the Palestinians were what their name purports them to be, descendants of the Philistines who were living in the land when the Jews first dared show their faces back around 1250 BCE. This, of course, is historical nonsense, but it’s convenient nonsense, the sort that people who want to believe will believe. I don’t. Even Arabs don’t believe it. Zahir Muhsein, a member of the PLO Executive Committee said in an interview with a Dutch newspaper in March 1977: “The Palestinian people does not exist... In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism ... The moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.’” That was thirty years ago. Muhsein (who was the Fatah commander of the Palestinian forces which massacred over 300 Christians in the town of Damour, Lebanon the year before) is dead. In their hearts do Arabs still believe that there is but one Arab nation? Are the Palestinians part of the whole or independent? Do they want peace with Israel or haven’t they figured it out yet.

What is Israel to do in this circumstance of ambiguity? Preserve its will to exist; preserve the intention of the founders that Israel be a state dedicated to “full equality in social and political rights to all inhabitants,” Jewish, Muslim, Christian. Arab jihadists and intifadists have that will for their people. It is not now the time for Israel, the Jewish state, to surrender its identity to those whose parents wanted to destroy it aborning. In the 1948 war some Arabs were killed, some fled, some fought. Those who stayed, stayed as citizens of a republic that assures them autonomy—they don’t go to Jewish schools unless they want to; they don't serve in the Jewish army, but they do vote in Israel’s elections and they do elect their own people as mayors and Members of the Knesset. Israel has since 1967 had problems with the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza. Is this survey the opening shot in a campaign to weaken the internal relations between Israeli Jews and Arabs? I wish I knew.

A pagan friend on monotheism

Some don't disbelieve me; others mock me. The one camp thinks that somewhere deep within the bowels of my home or office there's a computer upon which I write. The scoffers say things like: “Josh, [I've asked them to call me 'Excellency' but to no avail] I just hit the 'send' button and whoomph, my letter is received.” Maybe, I mentally concede, but I'm a Luddite because I know that when the Postal Service mail arrives at my door, there's more than just bills, circulars and occasional invitations. There are letters from friends and relatives, long epistles I can open, and read, and savor. The joy of receiving real mail trumps the speed of truncated missives. Over the years I've collected hundreds of letters from correspondents who took the time and trouble to write to me. I suppose you can save E-mail as well, but it's not the same. You don't get the tactile sensation of holding the paper, the same hint of the sender's fragrance lingering.

One fellow I've known since before high school recently came out of the closet. Not gay, pagan. This surprised me. I didn't think there were pagans in my old neighborhood, but he assures me that there were and are. I tease him about sacrificing goats to mythical beings long since discredited; he denies the goats but insists that paganism is much to be preferred to monotheism. What follows is recently received:

“Excellency:

“Do you really think your god is the only one? Pshaw. I don't know if any god exists but to play it safe I'm worshiping Zeus this week. What harm can it do? Look at the universe. It's 14 billion light years from here to wherever. That's roughly 5 trillion miles times 14 billion miles of space. Do you really think there's one god who not only created it all, but governs the life of every creature within it? Double pshaw. OK, maybe there's one god per planet, but even that's a stretch. (Can you imagine the despondency of the poor schlub of a god who created Pluto? Barren, cold, and now not even a planet!)

“And what benefit is there to humanity to impose the one god theory? When we pagans ruled the roost we had wars, and you have wars. Our wars, however, were never to impose a religion on anyone else; yours are often enough just about that. Muslims conquered the Middle East and North Africa and imposed their religion; Christians launched a series of Crusades to kill infidels (and Jews). And if that's not bad enough, within the monotheistic religions, but never amongst us polys, people kill each other over the proper belief and practice of the one true religion. Christians used to massacre other Christians over such arcane questions “as is god the son equal or inferior to god the father,” and “does the bread become the body of Christ, or not?” Barrels of blood flowed over these questions. Have you seen pictures out of Baghdad recently? Sunnis are killing Shiites and Shiites are killing Sunnis and then if they remember, almost as an afterthought, they kill Americans. We pagans never imposed our beliefs. We're immoral, you read? And the proof of that is condoning homosexuality? Pshaw. Just ask your Reform and Conservative rabbis about that one!

“You might point to the bible and say, 'see, here are examples of pagans persecuting Israelites.' Ah, verily, I say unto you, not so. Pharaoh didn't try to impose his religion on his slaves, he just wanted them to work harder. He didn't deny your god, he just didn't know about him until Moses showed up—and neither did the Hebrews, if I remember correctly. The Amelikites didn't try to impose their religion, they fought to prevent illegal immigrants entering their territory. Canaanites didn't impose Baal, they were interested in re-conquering land. The Greeks didn't impose paganism on the Jews, Some Jews thought pagan practices would get them in the good graces of their conquerers, at least until the fanatics stepped in and went to war against both the Hellenists and the Hellenized Jews. Until that nut Nero, the Romans didn't persecute Jews and yes, they did persecute Christians, but Christianity was illegal and subversive—the way Communism was seen to be here in the '50s, and persecuted.”

I wrote back and asked if I could use his letter in my column. A week later I received his response:

“Sure, why not. God willing it will provoke some intelligent discussion.”