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.