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.