The Truth Can Hurt

There are times when the truth hurts—not the subject of the statement but the maker of it. Two recent examples, one from a Republican, the other from a Democrat:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (he’s the Republican) said that Palestinians are an invented people (and as such have no legitimate territorial ambitions). His actual words were: “Remember there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire. And I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs, and were historically part of the Arab community. And they had a chance to go many places. And for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940’s, and I think it’s tragic.” He later asked rhetorically in defense of his remarks: “Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes. We are in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel while the United States—the current administration—tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process. Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth,” he continued. “These people are terrorists, they teach terrorism in their schools.”

This was a fine opening for his Republican challengers. U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said, “That’s just stirring up trouble.” Mitt Romney, who currently (December 16) stands second or third in polls, said he agreed with Gingrich’s comments about Palestinian terrorism, but that Gingrich went too far in publicly questioning Palestinian peoplehood. “I happen to agree with most of what the Speaker said,” Romney responded. “Except by going and saying that the Palestinians are an invented people. That I think was a mistake on the Speaker’s part.” Romney warned against throwing “incendiary words into a place which is a boiling pot” and that doing so could make things harder for Israel. Rick Santorum, agreed with Romney’s comments.

You’ll note that none of these gentlemen denied the truth of what Gingrich had said, only that he shouldn’t have said it. Even Gingrich seemed to acknowledge this as his campaign later issued a statement stressing that despite his comments on Palestinian peoplehood, he still favors the eventual creation of a Palestinian state. “Newt Gingrich supports a negotiated peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, which will necessarily include agreement between Israel and the Palestinians over the borders of a Palestinian state,” they intoned. Remember when Republicans made hay over John Kerry’s “I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it” sound bite?

I began by saying that Gingrich was speaking truth; the Palestinians are an invented people. But so are we all. I’m American, my paternal ancestors emigrated from Russia; my maternal ancestors from Austria-Hungary. Before that, I have no idea. But I (and my Italo-American and Polish-American and Hispanic-American and Afro-American friends are all now Americans, proudly). Arabs who trace their ancestry to grandparents and beyond who lived in the Ottoman Empire have the same right to call themselves whatever they want, even if it gives them a political advantage.

The other truth teller was The American Ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman. He delivered a speech at an event hosted by the European Jewish Union in Brussels in which he noted “the problem within Europe of tension, hatred and sometimes even violence between some members of Muslim communities or Arab immigrant groups and Jews is largely born of and reflecting the tension between Israel, the Palestinian Territories and neighboring Arab states in the Middle East over the continuing Israeli-Palestinian problem.” Advancing peace between Israel and its neighbors was the key to addressing this issue, he said.

Jewish groups condemned the statement as one sided. In response, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said that the views expressed by Gutman were the envoy’s and not the administration’s. Gutman has said that his remarks were “misinterpreted” and that he condemns all forms of anti-Semitism.

Tempest in a teapot? Seems like it to me. The man spoke truth. Let’s pretend that there was no Zionist movement, no Balfour Declaration, that after the First World War the Ottoman empire was carved up with what we call Israel not intended as a Jewish Homeland but an Arab one, and that since 1919 it’s been Arab. Would Muslims in Europe be acting in an anti-Semitic fashion? I don’t see it. They can’t win their war in the Middle East so they take their frustrations out on Jews in France, England, Germany and the Netherlands. Gutman was right, his Jewish critics wrong. But apparently he shouldn’t have said it.

The Republican Games

I don’t normally think of myself as being particularly sadistic, I’m not the sort of guy who rues missing the opportunity to cheer on gladiators going at each other to the death, but let’s face it—who doesn’t love the way the Republicans are behaving in the pre-caucus, pre-primary phase of their blood sport. They all want to unseat President Obama, and none are willing to raise a penny in taxes to help resolve the debt brought about by the Bush tax cuts and unfunded wars. All believe in cutting off their noses to spite their faces. For example, when asked at a recent debate if they would be willing to increase taxes by a dollar in return for spending cuts of ten dollars, there was a universal response—none would. But after those areas of agreement, it’s strop the razor, hone the machete, sharpen the tongue and praise Jesus. (Mitt Romney is a bit behind on the praise Jesus part, though as a Mormon he does believe in three gods, one of whom is the aforementioned gentleman from Nazareth.)

Romney has always been the pace setter, the one the others are trying to dethrone. One by one they rise up against him and one by one they fall by the wayside. I write this on December 2 so don’t know how things will be on the 9th, but I can report with certitude that today Newt Gingrich is the current first tier challenger, having replaced Herman Cain who previously had edged aside Rick Perry who’d steamrollered over Michele Bachmann. At this pace, poor Rick Santorum, who is universally ignored, might just emerge as the next great white hope to defeat Romney. Tim Pawlenty may have dropped out too soon. And Sarah Palin, too. Even she might have had a decent run at Romney before going down in flames against Obama. It’s all too wondrous to behold. Like watching gladiators. As is said about fox hunting, enjoying this is as indefensible, but irresistible.

And what does all this mean to the Jews? Well, on the one hand nothing more than to gentiles, but there is the Israel question now. Yes, all are passionate about the survival of the Jewish State but Ron Paul, who is opposed to spending any money unless it can be justified by the standards of the eighteenth century, opposes foreign aid altogether and Rick Perry, in what seems by comparison to be a more moderate view has come out with the idea that in any decision on foreign aid he would start at zero dollars and “then we'll have a conversation in this country about whether or not a penny of our taxpayer dollar needs to go into those countries.” Gingrich immediately signed on. The former House Speaker who looks fondly back on his suicidal shutting down of the Federal Government in 1995-’96 said the idea “made absolutely perfect sense.” Off camera Perry latter waffled, a technique he learned from Romney. “Obviously,” he said, “Israel is a special ally. And my bet is that we would be funding them at some substantial level. But it makes sense for everyone to come in at zero and make your case.” Time to bring out the maple syrup. Oh, and save some of that Aunt Jemima’s for Romney whose spokesmen announced immediately after the debate that he would exempt Israel from the policy.

What Perry seems to have forgotten (or never knew about) is a ten year Memorandum of Understanding that governs US-Israel funding levels, signed in 2007 providing for long-term assurances guaranteeing Israel both financial assurances and political support. So, while reneging on international promises is not unheard of, no Republican, whether Perry or any other GOP candidates in unison with him, would start with zero dollars for Israel; and if not for Israel, than probably not for other countries in the Middle East, all of which would look askance at America supporting the Jewish State to the exclusion of their own. Well, it sounds fiscally conservative anyway, if undoable (like much fiscal conservatism).

So, as Republicans vie with each other uttering “morituri te salutant” their razors stropped, their machetes honed, their tongues sharpened, their minds numbed (Oops, I shouldn’t have said that) how will Evangelical Republicans or Orthodox Jews, those bastions of the Republican Party, feel when Gingrich is brought low and they are ultimately forced to choose between voting for Obama or for a tritheist? Who can say? We can only sit back and enjoy the spectacle. Let the games continue!

Autumnal Reflections

I wandered into the Pawtucket Tax Assessor’s office because I’d been told that they will tell you the history of your house. “Sure,” said the nice lady. “What’s your address?” I told her and she looked something up in one book and then went to another and within minutes she had the page with the ownership record of my home.

I knew we’d bought the house from Betsy Joslin, a widow, shortly before her re-marriage, and once I’d met a man named Rosenfield who’d sold it to the Joslins, but I’d buried that information somewhere deep in my shallow sub-conscience. But now, looking at the list of owners of Lot 547, Plat 66 dating back to 1914, it suddenly hit me that there are an awful lot of people who also said, “this is my home” as they entered my front door and slept in my bedroom, cooked their meals in my kitchen, ate those meals in my breakfast room. I knew that the Joslins had two children who I imagine played and whooped and screamed as they tore through the house, as did mine, but how many other children have there been who felt that the walls that protect my family, protected them? Did Rosenfield (1963-1970) have children sleeping in my sons’ rooms? Or Sherlee Gershman (1954-1963) or Samuel and Edna Orenstein (1952-1954) or Esther Halpert (1941-1952)? Who was Frederick R. Marquis, Jr (1938-1941)? Is he still alive, did he love this house the way we do? Why was he only here for three years? Or Thomas and Muriel Mitchell (1929-1938)? Did they have children who played in the same backyard ours did? Were they the ones who switched from coal to oil, and who was it who then switched from oil to gas? Conrad Paris lived in my house from 1925-1929. Was he forced to sell by the coming of the Great Depression, or had he seen the house as a starter home? In 1924 there were two owners, and I don’t know why. Rosalun C. O’Brien sold to Thomas and Catherine Gill, but why did Thomas Gill buy the house when he (or someone who had the same name) owned it in 1918—or was it a house in 1918, or just an empty lot waiting to be developed? I don’t know. Gill bought the house (or the lot) from the Oak Hill Lawn Company who had bought it in 1916 from M. Jenckes and E. H. Thornton (if I decipher the handwriting correctly) who were the first listed owners, in 1914.

Sometimes, not often, I think I see a shadow, or sometimes a flash of light, or hear a peep of sound and then it’s gone and I wonder if the shade of a previous owner ever comes back to check on us, and then I remind myself that I’m an enlightened rationalist. Still, I wonder who these people were? Who will be the next people, and the next who won’t even know of our existence, of our joys and sorrows, of what we did to improve the house they will think of as theirs? We’ve had the house the longest, since October 1977, but I know we are really only caretakers.

I’d gone to City Hall to get a dog license for Emma who has lived with us for a year and a half. She knows nothing of Morgan whose home this was for ten years and she had no idea that Wordsworth had lived here for 17 ½ years. Wordsworth had no inkling that he was dog number two, that Jonathan had been first. In time no one will know of any of those animals who gave us such joy.

At the university where I’ve been on faculty since 1969 people who have been teaching for decades retire, and then in four years, no student on campus remembers them. Only we somewhat younger old geezers recall the ancient days, the long gone people. Someday, I suppose nobody will know I was there either, just as nobody knew until I went to the Pawtucket tax assessor’s office that while I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, Sherlee Gershman lived my house, thinking it hers. Who were her friends? Who came to visit? Why did she sell? And what of those shadows caught in the corner of my eye, that vague flash of light, that peep of a sound?

A lesson from History

The ancient Roman historian Titus Livius (59 BCE – 17 CE) reminds his readers in every age that “in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find for yourself and your country examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things, rotten through and through, to avoid.”
The ancient Roman philosopher/statesman Cicero (106-43 BCE) tells the story of consul Marcus Atilius Regulus who was taken prisoner by the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. (Consuls were the chief civil and military officers in the Roman Republic. To get an idea of someone with equal status and authority combine General Eisenhower in 1944 with President Eisenhower in 1954.) The Carthaginians thought this provided them a great opportunity—one consul could be exchanged for hundreds of prisoners. So Regulus was sent back to Rome on parole, sworn to return if Carthage’s prisoners of war were not released. He came to the senate and stated his mission; but he then advised against the deal; for they were young men and officers who would make war on Rome, while he was only one man, already bowed with age. In the end Rome kept the prisoners, and Regulus returned to captivity in Carthage.
What do we learn from this? If nothing else it’s that before the exchange of prisoners the prudent thing is to win the war. Giving back over a thousand Palestinians, a goodly number with Jewish civilian blood on their hands, in exchange for one kidnapped Israeli soldier was inopportune. Doesn’t anyone over there read history? The Regulus story may be in the preserve of a few fussy scholars but ask this—during the First World War, how many prisoners were exchanged (answer: None before the Armistice). During World War II did we send back any Germans, Italians or Japanese in exchange for American POWs? (Hint: “No”.)
I know the rationale. Israel makes a commitment to the families of its conscripts (pretty much all age appropriate Israelis minus those in Yeshivas) to bring them back—alive if possible, if not, at least for burial. I understand. But when are they brought back, that’s the question. Three years ago Israel gave up a multiple murderer, Samir Kuntar who in 1979 killed a police officer then took a 28-year-old man and his 4-year-old daughter hostage. He shot the father dead in front of his little girl and then smashed her head in, killing her. Kuntar was sentenced to 542 years in prison. But in 2008 Israel arranged a swap. It received the cadavers of 1st Sgt. Ehud "Udi" Goldwasser and Sgt. 1st Class Eldad Regev in exchange for this sadistic murder who upon his return to Lebanon was hailed as a hero by Hezbollah. And now the returning heroes of Hamas have been greeted in Gaza with cries from the crowd to kidnap more Israelis, to get back more prisoners. Sergeants Goldwasser and Regev were spared what Gilad Shalit may soon suffer. Can you imagine the young man’s anguish when the first of the terrorists released to get him back blows up a pizzeria, or a bus, or a Seder, or a pedestrian mall?
Israel prides itself on the return of conscripts but has forgotten the other part of the social contract, the part that says we will protect the civilians of Israel from terrorists. Israel, any government, must remember to do no harm to its population. It’s bad enough that despite seeking peace Israel has been in a state of perpetual war for its entire existence; it’s worse that it gives enemies fresh soldiers to make war on it. Hamas is strengthened; Israel has handed it potentially returning terrorists or if not them, has encouraged another generation to take the risk. After all, if they are captured before or after their assaults on civilians, all they have to do is wait a few years in jail and then come home to a hero’s welcome.
This edition of the Jewish Voce & Herald is due out on November 11, 2011, 11/11/11 for you numerologists. On November 11, 1918 at 11:00 AM, the First World War came to an end and then prisoners were exchanged, no longer a danger to the countries that had held them in captivity. I’m glad that Shalit is home, but the price was too high. Wait until after victory. Remember the lesson of Regulus, that honorable man.

Kol Nidre at the Wall (Street Occupation)

On Kol Nidre my oldest son and his wife attended services in their new shul in Virginia. My wife and I kvelled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as our son the cantor chanted the haunting melodies and gave life to the ancient words. But it’s the experience of our youngest son I’d like to discuss with you.

Much has been written about the so-called Wall Street Occupation. Unless you’ve been living under a rock you know that leftist activists in New York have taken over a small public park which they use as a staging ground for speeches and occasional marches on Wall Street. I’m pretty sure I know what the protesters are opposed to—corporate greed, but I’m not sure what they favor instead. Is it a genuine movement or warm weather flight of fancy, a nostalgic return to those thrilling days of 1968 in Chicago? Time will tell.

Here (edited for space) is what my son saw on Kol Nidre:

The service was held at a public plaza across the street from Zuccotti Park, where the occupation itself is centered. We were surrounded by police (and food carts, probably in the worst possible place for business that night). I got there right before it started. I’ve read that 1,000 participated. At 7:00, two rabbis and a cantor (Avi Fox Rosen, Getzel Davis and Sarah Wolf) stood in the center of the plaza and got everyone’s attention in the standard Occupy Wall Street style by shouting “Mick Check” in call and repeat style. They asked everyone to form concentric circles around them. They distributed some machzors and kippot, and created 4 aisles through the crowd. Some people brought folding chairs, but most of us stood and sat on the concrete. All instructions were given in call and repeat, so that everyone could hear. There are no microphones or bullhorns, as the occupation does not have a sound permit.

Most of the service was in Hebrew, a traditional Conservative service with some added phrases to make it more egalitarian. There was some singing and some nigunim (wordless melodies) as well. For most of the service we were sitting in a circle facing the Rabbi, but for the Amidah and for Al Chait (confession of sins) we faced East. We did the traditional Al Chait in Hebrew, and then a more political version in English afterward. It started, “We have sinned by yielding to confusion and falling into passivity.”

The sermon was in the same call and repeat fashion. The Rabbi took traditional Jewish concepts and made them relevant in ways that I was not expecting. For instance he talked about the origins of the holiday—the Jews seeking forgiveness for worshiping the golden calf. That got him talking about contemporary “gold worship”, wealth, capitalism, and the rest. Then he talked about how Yom Kippur can easily be embraced as an opportunity for forgiveness, and is therefore described in some texts as the happiest day of the year. He talked about what it means that humanity was created in God’s image. If we are meant to serve God on earth, then what better way to do it than to serve humanity? It was a smart way of making a humanist argument in a religious context.

The sermon was followed by an “unconventional Alenu.” He said Alenu is our commitment to serve, and do better in the future. So he had people shout out things they commit to do in the new year, and if anyone wanted to take on that commitment, they could shout “Alenu” afterward. The commitments ranged from “I will call my mother more often” and “I will question my own assumptions” to “I will work to end capitalism,” and “I will fight for a living wage for all workers.” People were shy at first, but after a few shout-outs there were too many hands up to call on, so the Rabbi had everyone yell out their own oath together, and we all did, and laughed, and then sang the traditional end of Alenu together.

We said Kaddish, and that was it. People milled around, and many wandered over to join the occupation across the street. The organizers say they are planning to do Friday night services there as long as the occupation continues. All of this—the whole political Yom Kippur concept—could have failed on both religious and political grounds, but I thought they did a really good job on both fronts. I think it was especially successful because it had an immediate and clear relevancy and urgency to it, and the Rabbi and Cantors all did a great job with the difficult circumstances (the constant call and repeat, the lack of chairs, etc.).

It was a very memorable Kol Nidre at the barricades of the revolution!

A very brief video of a nigun moment at the Occupation can be found at http://www.twitvid.com/6HEQ8

Does Israel Matter?

Even before his inauguration the right-wing of the American political spectrum was predicting that Barack Obama would not be a friend to Israel. Almost on a daily basis since I’ve been receiving e-mails all of which declaim that Obama is selling Israel down the river.

Some of the e-mails point to the recent bi-election for the New York 9th congressional district, a traditional Democratic enclave lost because the Democrat because Obama was too pro-Palestinian, the conventional wisdom would have it. But David Weprin, the defeated Democratic candidate, is an Israel hawk. Yet his Orthodox co-religionists voted en bloc for the Republican, Bob Turner, who has never set foot in Israel So what did Weprin in? As Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker points out in his blog it was his votes in the New York State legislature in favor of gay rights which earned him a virtual fatwa from the local rabbis: “It is therefore Assur [forbidden according to Torah law] to vote for, campaign for, publicly honor, fund, or otherwise support the campaign of Assemblyman David Weprin.” In other words, Israel had nothing to do with the vote.

A recent Jewish Telegraphic Agency story caught my eye. It discusses why the candidates for the Republican nomination for president are all so pro-Israel. Rick Perry flies to New York for the UN General Assembly meeting and accuses Obama of appeasement (a word most Jews rightly view with abhorrence) and Mitt Romney argues that “You don’t allow an inch of space to exist between you and your friends and allies.” But ought Obama and the Democrats be ashamed of his attitudes in the Middle East?

The Obama administration tried desperately to prevent the Palestinians from formally applying for UN recognition of statehood. It’s been selling Israel bunker-busting bombs since 2009. It’s opposed to new settlements, but so are a lot of Jews. To the Republican charge that Obama has “the most consistently one-sided diplomatic record against Israel of any American president in generations,” Democrats counter with reminders of the $3 billion sent to Israel for military assistance, including $205 million to build the Iron Dome rocket defense system for communities on Israel’s border with Gaza. They emphasize the United States’ effort to block the Palestinian declaration of statehood, and intervening to protect the Israeli ambassador when a violent mob stormed the embassy in Cairo.

Previous Republican presidents have put pressure on Israel. Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel to give up the Sinai in 1956; Richard Nixon prevented Israel from administering a coup de grace to the Egyptian Third Army during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Gerald Ford announced that America would henceforth take a more even-handed stance in the Middle East (and Jews voted for Carter in 1976). While his father protected Israel with Patriot missiles, George W. Bush cajoled Israelis and Palestinians into the ill-fated 2007 Annapolis talks. So what’s different now? According to Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the cold war is over when it made sense to pressure Israel so as to woo Arabs from the Soviet camp. And Republicans can count. Noam Neusner, a former domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush and now a communications consultant to Christians United For Israel points out that: “There are 5 million American Jews and 50 million Evangelicals,” who are even more monolithic in their support of Israel’s current government than are Jews.

As to Israel, does it matter if we have a Republican or a Democratic president? Both are committed to the survival of Israel; they disagree on how to achieve it. So do Jews. If a Republican wins in 2012 will he really always be so pro-Israeli as to be anti-Palestinian? Not likely. Marshall Breger, an adviser to President Reagan reminds, “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose,” meaning that all the sweet words aimed at wooing the Jewish vote will mean nothing when trying to decide what’s best for America. Dov Zakheim, a former senior Pentagon official in both Bush administrations, said that a Republican president likely would have to make decisions that displeased Israel. “Elections are about principle, holding office is about realties.”

My advice, for what it’s worth? When deciding for whom to cast your vote, think domestically. The Cold War is over. The Nazis are dead. Vote for the person you think will get us out of the economic mess Obama inherited; vote for the jobs program you think will work; vote for the social programs your think are necessary or aren’t. Israel can fend for itself quite nicely, regardless who sits in the White House.

Essay Writing 101

Sometimes the ways of the US Postal Service are strange to behold, beyond human comprehension. If things work as they should you’ll receive this on Friday September 30 just in time for an après Rosh Hashanah lunch sit down in your favorite easy chair. But as we know Saturday or next Wednesday is as likely a delivery date as any.

So, I ask you, what is this essay about? Will it rail against the inefficiencies of a privatized government bureau? Is it about Rosh Hashanah, perhaps lunch? Or easy chairs? Answer: None of the above. Instead it’s time for a redaction of the Essay Writing 101 a course I never took in college.

In the last issue I took a swipe at a letter writer who asked in what I thought was a patronizing and disingenuous fashion why Jews continue to vote for very liberal politicians when you would think that our values would be more in line with more conservative candidates. I found this patronizing because it suggested that Jews should be more like the author, like the majority of Americans, and, let’s face it, (and this is the disingenuous part) why aren’t we Christian. It would be to our advantage and like being a conservative would only require us to give up the past several centuries of our development to join the greater community. So I wrote a strong rejoinder but wanted to temper it a bit. So I added what I thought was a dollop of humor by teasing my editor (who nevertheless I described as “terrific”) for publishing what seemed to me a letter verging on the anti-Semitic.

It’s called “misdirection” in the essay writing business, sometimes it’s described in dance terms as a “lateral Arabesque” the starting with one thing you don’t intend to pursue but which sets up what your real target is, and then concludes with the initial misdirection either for emphasis or humor. It’s a technique used since at least the time of Homer’s Iliad.

So what was the reaction to the piece? Did I hit too hard, below the belt, score a knockout? None of the above. You shouldn’t have attacked Nancy (the editor) is all I heard. But I didn’t attack Nancy, I used Nancy’s publishing the letter as a springboard to dive into my real subject, the letter, I responded. You shouldn’t have attacked Nancy, is the response. Well, I give up. Nancy knows I didn’t attack her. In fact the original column concluded with a deliberate non-sequitur that I thought pretty clever, but she didn’t so out it went. Her only objection to my using her as a foil was that I referred to her as the paper’s editrix. She said it sounded too much like dominatrix but I said I had Amelia Earhart in mind who is always referred to as an aviatrix, but again the change was made. Never did she suggest that I was being unfair to her or complaining in a more than friendly tease.

So, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

(One person who wrote to me asked why I seemed not to know that most American Jews vote for very liberal candidates and chides that I should have known from the New York Times on September 23 that Jews have long proved a solid voting block for the Democratic Party. But my column was published in the September 16 edition of the Voice & Herald and submitted a week before that. I appreciate my correspondent’s belief in my prescience but if I knew what the Times was going to print two weeks before publication I’d be a very much richer man than I am.)

As this is designed to reach you on Rosh Hashanah and is the edition of the paper that precedes Yom Kippur, please let me take the opportunity to thank those of you who have made reading this column a regular part of your bi-weekly activities and to ask sincerely that if I’ve offended with anything I’ve written to forgive as my object may have been to provoke, but never to offend. Shana Tova, everyone; may 5772 bring us all the blessing of lives filled with love and joy, peace and prosperity, good health and the wonder of discovery. And may the US Postal Service get this to you in time for your après déjeuner period of overstuffed relaxation in an overstuffed chair. Amen

Jews as Liberals

Sometimes the ways of editors are strange to behold, beyond human comprehension. At the Voice & Herald we have a terrific editrix but why she chose to print a patronizing letter to the editor from a self-proclaimed practicing Catholic who asks “Why do most American Jews still support and vote for very liberal politicians when you would think that their values would be more in line with more conservative candidates?” is beyond me. You’ve got to wonder how desperate she is to have a letter to the editor.

Dear self-proclaimed practicing Catholic: I don’t know if most American Jews vote for very liberal candidates for office. Hopefully we do, but I cannot testify to that as I’ve not taken a poll. In fact I know several Jews who would take offense at your generalization pointing to themselves as George W. Bush conservatives. But if it’s true that we vote liberal it’s because of our history and our values. We have been at the noose end of the rope, the saber’s edge of the Cossack, the victims of the triangle shirtwaist fire, the inhalers of Zyklon B. What? Do you think that because many of us are now prosperous we should forget where we came from, forget that others are not yet prosperous and, in fact, are sliding into the morass of poverty as the wealthiest become wealthier? Should we ignore their plight which used to be ours? Should we forget that Jews marched in Selma, rode on Freedom busses, were slaughtered by conservative red-necks for daring to help African Americans register to vote? Should we forget the dogs that bit us, the tears we shed when we watched the news on TV and saw the atrocities of the south, the new heartland of the conservative Republican Party? Am I living in the past? Well, if so, I guess I’m a conservative after all. I’ll go to my local gun show and buy me an unregistered Glock. After all, I wouldn’t want no gov’ment revenu’ers interfering with my Second Amendment rights to pack a rod.

That’s the history we bring to the table, those of us who have not become conservatives. As to our values they go back to the bible. We were slaves in Egypt and I’ve lost count of the number of times we’re reminded of that fact in the bible and told, don’t treat your workers as you were treated in Egypt. Our prophets trump our desire for profits. They were advocates of social justice. Those of us who go to shul read them every week. Those who don’t attend regularly probably go on Yom Kippur where we always read, “This is the fast I desire: To unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, clothe him, and not ignore your own kin.” Well, thanks to Reaganism there are now too many homeless for us to take care of ourselves, so we depend on government to do the job for us and pay our taxes so that it can be done. We pay our taxes so that government can build high-speed trains and repair roads. Oh, wait, I forgot, as a conservative I don’t want to pay taxes; after all, it’s my money; why should I share it with some vagrant, why should I want it spent on trains when I own a car?

As long as I’m quoting bible, here’s a question for our purported practicing Catholic: What would be the political philosophy of someone who said that it’s easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven? Just wondering.

And finally, why was this question addressed to Jews in the first place? I know for a fact that many mainstream Protestants are more liberal than I am, and many Roman Catholics who are also. OK, Protestants, raise your hands if you are a liberal. I see, one, two, three, a million, ten-million. Now Roman Catholics, are any of your liberal? I see, one, two, three, a million, ten-million.

Please, Madame Editrix, enough. As to the rest of you, write a letter to the editor for her; she obviously is very lonely. Praise this column or attack it—or better yet, praise this column and attack Rosenberg’s.

A New Hero

I have many heroes, but today I add a new one to the list. In literature my hero is Hector of the Shining Helmet, defender of idyllic Troy from the barbarians at the gate. The Bible has a slew of heroes to choose from but I’ll stick with Joshua bin Nun, for obvious reasons. In science Galileo, who refused to back down from his researches even knowing the fate of those who preceded him tops the list, though modest Isaac Newton is close behind. Of American presidents I’ll stick with Kennedy, hero of my youth. In sports Gil Hodges wins the prize. His denied entrance to the Hall of Fame is a modern day equivalent of Hector being defeated outside the walls of Troy by the Achilles and Athena.

Except for Joshua, none of these fellows was actually Jewish, except in my mind. But the new guy is. One rainy day we drove to the Clark Museum in Williamstown to see the special exhibition called “Pissarro’s People”. (It’s there for another month if you have the inclination to make the drive.) I didn’t know much about Camille (since he’s my new hero we are now on a first name basis) other than vaguely that he was an early exemplar of the Impressionist School of French painting. What I didn’t know was that he was a Sephardic Jew. In fact, that morsel might be a clue to his personality and world outlook. Now, the world outlook of which I speak is not exclusively Jewish (it was shared by his exact contemporary Leo Tolstoy—1828-1910)—but Jews of his time, 1830-1903 and later, or some Jews, hold a similar perspective.

Pissarro is sometimes called the “Dean of Impressionism” or its “father”. He was an older member of that group that included Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Degas, etc. which broke with the sanctified traditions of Beaux-Arts formalism to create the more fluid art that gave the idea of passing reality rather than perfected views of the past. So why is a guy who painted fuzzy a hero? Not because of his skill (which is indisputable) nor because of his courage in defying the establishment (also indisputable) but because of how he lived and painted. His real rebellion was against the self-satisfied bourgeoisie to whom material possessions were the be all and end all, who treated laborers as if they were replaceable cogs. He married Julie Vellay (1838-1926) one of his mother’s maids, a woman he loved for who, not what, she was, and to whom he remained devoted for the rest of his life. That he would see in the maid servant virtue was reflected in his paintings of peasants who worked his rural lands. They are shown during hard work and deserved leisure. They are respected, not revolutionary as suggested in Jean-François Millet’s “The Gleaners”. To Pissarro the peasants he painted from the mid-1870s on were interesting people living interesting lives best shown in their collective markets, kind of like what is now springing up as nostalgic throwbacks such as the Saturday morning and Wednesday afternoon Blackstone Blvd. farmers’ markets, a place to see and be seen, to meet and to gossip, to buy (Blackstone Blvd farmers’ market prices are not for peasants) and to sell, a place other than the church to congregate. It’s a romantic image ignoring the smells and feel of cow dung and the backbreaking labor of sowing and reaping, but to Pissarro (and to Tolstoy, both of whom worked side by side—at least on occasion—with their peasants) it was the forecast of what was to come, a time when labor, peasant labor in this case, would own the land and determine what was to be bought and sold and for how much, the profits distributed according to effort and need. Think kibbutz.

In the end, Camille realized that this edenic vision was not to be and he drew a series of sketches called Turpitudes Sociales (Social Disgraces), Hogarthian depictions of life in the industrialized cities with a prediction of the uprising of the workers against those who exploited their labor. (You can find the complete set at http://www.clarkart.edu/exhibitions/pissarro/content/slideshow-turpitudes-sociales.cfm)

So, my new hero in art is the Jew, Camille Pissarro—not because he’s Jewish but because his Jewishness colors his work in a way I’d never realized until I saw his people at the Clark.

Prophets, not Profits

Tisha b’Av, the Jewish day of mourning has come and gone. Traditionally (though tradition and reality are not always congruent) both Temples were destroyed on the 9th of Av, the first by the Babylonians, the second by the Romans. The rabbis teach that Moses sent spies to scout the Promised Land who reported on its milk and honeyness. But the people wept at the prospect of entering such a formidable land full of giants. God declared, “You wept without cause; I will therefore make this an eternal day of mourning for you.” The day of course was Tisha b’Av. Other events associated with Tisha b’Av are the crushing of the Bar Kochba revolt, the expulsion from England, the expulsion from Spain, the beginning of the First World War, the first of the deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka.

A new reason to mourn is always available, this being planet earth. Our grief this time? The abandonment of basic Jewish principles by the Thatcherite State of Israel. Ol’ Margaret once famously said that “the problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” The problem with that aphorism is that the opposite is also true. After a while the poor will run out of money for the rich to cheat them out of.

In Israel, as you may have read in the last issue of the Voice & Herald Tisha b’ Av was a day of mourning for the heritage of the earliest idealistic days of the new state, of the Yishuv that had preceded it, the Israel of David ben Gurion and the Histadrut and kibbutzim. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netenyahu has drunk the Reagan/Thatcherite Kool-Aid to the last dregs, believing with them that it is a good thing for the rich to get richer and for the poor to shut up. Thatcherites like Netenyahu and Reagan trickle this treacle down more eloquently but in the end how else are we to interpret the American version that argues that in return for granting another 13 months of unemployment benefits, the super rich receive a twenty-four months re-authorization of the Bush-era tax cuts; more recently, in return for cuts in governmental services, many of which had benefited the growing poor and the shrinking middle class, there are no efforts to tax the rich.

In America we seem to take this lying down, we allow Republican ideologues who ignore the fact that our debt was brought about by Bush era tax cuts combined with a foolish war to trample the economic rights of working and middle class Americans. In Israel privatization has meant that a very few have acquired more money than you know Who. As Leslie Susser put it in the last issue, in Israel “Owners and a select few mega-salaried executives became richer and the middle class relatively poorer. It also led to the rise of the Israeli tycoons, who controlled a great deal of the country's wealth and power. Banks, energy companies, supermarket chains and media properties all were concentrated in the hands of a dozen or so billionaire families. Netanyahu's economic philosophy also entailed a reduction of corporate taxes… while the middle class saw the prices of everything from food to cars to apartments rise considerably. The system produced impressive economic growth but left wealth in the hands of the few. The trickle-down effect, middle-class Israelis said, had failed to materialize.” Of course it failed to materialize. It always fails to materialize. The trickle down effect is to economics what leaches were to medieval medicine. The result was the tent cities, the tens of thousands of young Israelis who demanded more equitable distribution of available resources. They were not violent; they made no demands that were out of line with the traditions of Eretz Yisrael. They want to be able to afford a place to live. After all, they are the conscript soldiers of Israel who daily place their lives on the line, willingly. And in return, the wealthier got wealthier, and they poorer. Jewish this is not.

Shall I quote chapter and verse here? The middle part of Tanach, the prophetic portion, never advocates trickle down economics, never proposes aggregate wealth. Instead Isaiah and Jeremiah, from whose books we’ve been reading the last several weeks as a lead in to Rosh Hashanah advocate the opposite, the care for the poorer classes; they bemoan the powerful’s ruthless exploitation of the poor. Gee, I hope they weren’t Socialists.

Norway and the Jewish Problem

Time has made the joke acceptable. Frequent usage has made it unnecessary to tell the whole thing, short enough as it is already. “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

On a recent Friday my wife, third son and I drove down to Scarborough Beach. It was a glorious day. We arrived a few minutes before high tide so the waves were crashing in, rolling one after another after another to the shouts of children and adults who threw themselves headlong into cresting waters or turned their back, trying to time perfectly when to jump towards land so that the water would catch and propel them forward. Over and over and over again we did one or the other in the great ocean that had seemed so frigid when first we entered but after moments was merely cool against our skin, and then we returned to our blanket and chairs and soaked up those rays capable of penetrating the slathering of SPF 70 sun block she insisted we wear while we read, raided the food locker and talked and laughed and enjoyed each other and the day.

On the ride home we listened to the news on the radio and heard the shocking reports out of Oslo and Utoya Island. The joy was sucked out of the car as the grim reports came through the speakers, more and more and more dead, most of them children, the Oslo bombing probably merely a diversion so that Anders Behring Breivik could operate his death machine uninterrupted on the island. “Other than that Josh, how was the day at the beach?” It loses something in the immediacy, doesn’t it?

Breivik, his lawyer tells the world, is insane. This is either a legal strategy or statement of belief, possibly both. I’m sure that future historians will wade through Breivik’s 1,500 page on-line manifesto which announced his intentions and provided his motivation. I’ve not yet begun the task, leaving it to others for the moment, but it’s become apparent that there are elements in it that smack of pro-Zionist sentiments.

The Jews of Norway are nervous about the perception that Breivik’s anti-Muslim sentiments couched in pro-Israeli terms. (He warns, “If Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next.”) This in a country whose ambassador to Israel, Svein Sevje, was quoted in HaAretz as saying “We Norwegians consider the occupation [of the West Bank and Gaza] to be the cause of the terror against Israel.” It doesn’t really matter that Arab terrorism long preceded the Six Day War that brought these territories under Israeli control, that’s apparently the way Norwegians, certainly the government, see it. Local Jews are quick to point out that just because some whacko murderer says positive things about Israel doesn’t mean that Norway’s Jews are pro-whacko or that they do not mourn the senseless slaughter of children. They know that just the previous day those children discussed a boycott against Israel and pressed the country’s foreign minister to recognize a Palestinian state. But what of it? Whether we agree wit these ideas or not (and many Jews do) they are legitimate areas of discussion and should not diminish our grief over the slaughter of the innocents.

Michelle Goldberg (who I assume is Jewish) in The Daily Beast comments that “Breivik’s embrace of Israel, far from being unique, is just the latest sign of a great shift among the continent's reactionaries. Indeed, in European politics, fascism and an aggressive sort of Zionism increasingly go together.” (In another piece she sees the massacre as an assault on feminism.) The on-line edition of The Jewish Journal of Greater L.A. has a long riposte arguing that while Breivik often speaks of the importance of defending Israel, what he wants to defend is not the Israel of Zionism. “It certainly isn’t any of the values associated with Israel by those liberal Zionists [Breivik] frequently demonizes: democracy; open political discourse; the rule of law.” Rather, Breivik seems to perceive Israel as the frontline in a war all Muslims are waging against Jews and Christians.

My day at the beach ended when I heard the tragic news out of Norway. The children of Utoya Island had their lives snuffed out by an ultra-nationalist who has taken Israel as a hostage in his madness. In May 1974 Palestinian ultra-nationalists took more than 115 people (including 105 children) hostage in Ma’alot, Israel eventually killing Twenty-five hostages, including 22 children. Rest in Peace, children of Israel and Norway. When the über-nationalists come a-calling gone is your innocence, gone is your youth, gone is your life, gone is our hope.

A Plan That Won't Work

I don’t doubt the man’s loyalty, bravery or honesty, but I do think Ephraim Sneh whose op-ed piece “Bad Borders, Good Neighbors” in the July 12 New York Times is off the mark. Sneh, a retired general in the Israel Defense Forces, was Israel’s deputy minister of defense from 1999 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2007. His credentials are excellent; his proposal for peace between Israel and the Arabs is flawed.

Sneh advocates a Rube Goldberg plan of returning to the 1967 borders (with territorial concessions based on exchange of Israeli land to Palestine in return for land occupied by Jewish settlements on the West Bank), and a disarmed Palestinian state, and Israeli soldiers patrolling the border with Jordan—which he argues disingenuously would not violate Palestinian sovereignty—and a three-way Israeli-Jordanian-Palestinian defense treaty. This “would bring about a dramatic, strategic change in the Middle East. It would remove the obstacle preventing moderates in the region from uniting against militant Islamist extremists and lay the groundwork for a new strategic alliance in the region, including the Persian Gulf countries, which are natural business partners for Israel, Jordan and Palestine. As a result, Israel would be able to extend its hand to new democratic and secular governments in the Arab and Muslim world. And those committed to Israel’s destruction would be confronted by a new alliance with enormous economic and military power.”

Right. And grateful members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will throw rose petals at the feet of Israeli troops who bring them this new era of democracy and prosperity. Has no one learned anything from America’s Iraq and Afghanistan experiences?

Oh, and lest I forget, nowhere does the word “Jerusalem” come up in Sneh’s piece. I suppose he intends to re-divide the city if it’s 1967 borders he deems most viable, but he doesn’t say so. I can’t imagine why.

He does talk about Gaza, though, the worm in the apple of his argument he must deal with, but he never does so satisfactorily. Gaza he admits has been the launching pad for thousands of rockets aimed at Israeli towns and villages since Hamas wrested control in 2007. What he doesn’t acknowledge is that that Hamas could not have taken over the territory if Israel hadn’t unilaterally withdrawn in 2005. I’d like to add to the Gaza discussion. Hamas is in control and is unlikely ever to surrender the power it won in 2007. Those who disagree, please raise your hand. Seeing none, I’ll continue. So, with Hamas held Gaza to the West, and the heirs of Yasser Arafat in the East, just how secure can borders be? How united will this new Palestine be divided by Israel? How much resentment will being disarmed, unable to protect itself, will Palestinians feel? And those Israeli troops patrolling the border with Jordan? That’s going to fly?

And one more thing. Let’s look at the land exchanges. Base the new borders on 1967 lines Sneh argues, but with modifications to account for Jewish settlements. Fine. The 1967 borders were with Jordan and Egypt, not with a people not yet known as Palestinians. If it were up to me I’d give the territories back to the quasi-stable governments in Cairo and Amman before handing them over to Hamas. But that’s not going to happen. I know, I know. That the proposed new borders zigging and zagging in and out of the West Bank region would be impossible to defend Sneh does not mention, but the sound of snip-snap, as Arabs cut off the Jews of the West Bank and Jews cut off the Arabs in land that used to be part of Israel will most certainly be heard in the land. And there’s another question I don’t think anybody has asked, so let me be the first. Do Arabs living in Israel really want to leave a stable and prosperous land where, granted, they live as a minority, in order to revel for a while (and it will only be for a while until reality raises its ugly head) in the nationalism of an impoverished united Palestine? Has there been a secret ballot on this question or are advocates of the old borders with territorial concessions on each side merely assuming that the Arabs of Israel would prefer being the Palestinians of Palestine? Just asking.

Anthony Weiner and Jesus

As if Anthony Weiner doesn’t have problems enough. For a really, really, really smart guy, you’d think he’d know how to keep his pants and shirt on when in camera range and how to pronounce his own name. Clue: From the German, the diphthong “ei” is pronounced “eye” never “ee” as in creep or peep. I know it’s tough for him either way, but what with his lewd behavior and all it would be better to be a whiner than a … well, you get the idea. Then there are the lewd photos, the denials, the admissions. You know all about that. “Drat,” I thought when the story was breaking. This is supposed to happen to Republicans—the Governor of South Carolina, the Senators from Louisiana and Utah, the Congressman from upstate New York, the Holy Roller televangelists. These are the people of the party of family values, not a skinny Jewish Democrat from Brooklyn whose mother taught at Midwood High, a mile from my boyhood home. Yes, I know about Spitzer. Before all this broke Weiner was my man in Congress. Yes, Patrick Kennedy and then David Cicilline actually had the seat but Weiner was to the left of Obama, the one who chastised him for capitulating over and over and over again to the white Christian party on the health care bill. And now this.

But there’s more; it gets worse for Anthony. Apparently he’s going to Hell. Unless he makes one little life change. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky—the Southern Baptist Convention's flagship school, has taken it upon himself to give the Jewish fella some unsolicited advice. According to a tweet that Mohler sent to “Dear Congressman Weiner: There is no effective ‘treatment’ for sin. Only atonement, found only in Jesus Christ.” This may be true; but I’m pretty sure it’s not the kind of treatment the Congressman was thinking about when he asked for a leave of absence to get his life in order.

When rebuked by Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA TODAY for hitting a Jew when he was down Mohler responded that “he was simply stating the Christian doctrine that “every single human being is a sinner in need of the redemption that is found only in Christ.” But then Mohler claims that he never actually sent the tweet to Weiner, only to the 27,000 people who follow his twitters. “As far as I know, Rep. Weiner is not among my ‘followers’ on Twitter,” Mohler complained disingenuously. “I did not assume that he was reading my posting. My message was mostly directed at my fellow Christians as a reminder of this very concern—that the American impulse is to seek treatment when our real need is for redemption.” Strangely, though, the tweet was addressed “Dear Congressman Weiner”. Unabashed, Mohler continued: “I never mentioned Judaism. Rep. Weiner’s problem has to do with the fact that he is a sinner, like every other human being, regardless of religious faith or affiliation. Christians—at least those who hold to biblical and orthodox Christianity—believe that salvation is found through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and in him alone... We also understand that other religions claim ‘routes to restoring righteousness.’ But biblical Christians cannot accept that these ‘routes’ lead to redemption and the only righteousness that saves—the righteousness of Christ imputed to the believer, who is justified by faith in Christ alone.” Got that, sinner? Yes, you. Not only is Weiner going to Hell but you are too. The Rev. Mohler has it on good authority. This is the same Rev. Mohler who, as the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reminds, caused a stir in 2003 “with his staunch advocacy of evangelizing Jews. He had explained then that warning non-Christians of the ‘eternal danger’ they face in not embracing Jesus ‘is the ultimate act of Christian love.’” How sweet.

I really, really, really wish that the holier than thou crowd would love me less, that Evangelicals would stop trying to get us (me) to convert to Jesus. Jesus probably wishes that they would stop trying to convert me too. He was a good Jew after all, who never left the fold, living as a Jew, dying as Jew and most likely in Heaven as we speak, despite being the Jew that he was. Well, maybe I’m being cynical again. OK, no Rapture for me. Oh, wait a minute…

Bannning Brit Milah?

Have you heard about Moishe who walked by a store featuring clocks and watches in its window? He needed a repair so he went in and asked the proprietor how much it would cost to fix his watch. “We don’t fix watches here,” the man replied. “I'm a mohel.” “A mohel? Why do you have clocks in your window?” “And what would you put there?”

I remember the brit milah of each of my sons. The first time I was amazed that I burst into tears. The second time I was amazed that despite telling myself that I would not weep this time, I did again. The third time I steeled myself against such unmanly behavior and cried hardest. I’m a wimp, I guess. I was delivering these innocents pain. I’m their father; I should be protecting them from men with sharp knives about to cut them, not delivering them up to them. It was like a sacrifice each time. Yes, I knew it was part of an ancient ritual welcoming the boy into the community, an opportunity for friends and relatives to kvell and to eat and to sing and to dance. But to me it was, well, if I believed in psychology I might be tempted to say that it was a subconscious return to my own eighth day experience.

We read that God told Abraham to circumcise himself and all who were of this party and his son Ishmael and later his son Isaac on his eight day but we’re not told why this should be the everlasting sign of the covenant. Speculation abounds—that by marking the organ of reproduction we are initiating our children into the covenant from the moment of conception, that it was always intended as a health measure, that it was borrowed from other ancient societies, perhaps even from the Egyptians and the Canaanites (who waited until just before puberty to perform the ritual).

The US Constitution prevents government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion (First Amendment). Nevertheless in two California cities, San Francisco this November and Santa Monica next, there will be a referendum decreeing that anyone who circumcises a boy under the age of 18 within city limits faces a $1,000 fine and up to one year in jail. The only exception would be for “compelling and immediate medical need.” To get on the ballot known as the “MGM [Male Genital Mutilation] Bill” 12,000 people signed a petition. Matthew Hess, who founded MGM Bill in 2003 and spearheads its legislative efforts, says he is trying to protect boys from what he considers a barbaric mutilation of their bodies. He became an activist in his mid-20s, he says, when he decided that his own circumcision as an infant resulted in diminished sexual sensitivity as an adult. “Freedom of religion stops at another person’s body,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA).

Ironically Hess is echoing the great medieval Jewish sage Maimonides who argued in his Guide to the Perplexed that “with regard to circumcision, one of the reasons for it is, in my opinion, the wish to bring about a decrease in sexual intercourse and a weakening of the organ in question, so that this activity be diminished and the organ be in as quiet a state as possible… The bodily pain caused to that member is the real purpose of circumcision. None of the activities necessary for the preservation of the individual is harmed thereby, nor is procreation rendered impossible, but violent concupiscence and lust that goes beyond what is needed are diminished.” Thus Jews have more time for study, less interest in lust as compared to uncircumcised Gentiles.

Opposing the ballot initiative is Nathan Diament, director of the Orthodox Union’s Institute for Public Affairs. He argues that “The stakes are very high. Circumcision is a fundamental aspect of Jewish ritual practice and Jewish identity.” In this he is joined by other Jewish groups and Muslim ones as well. The San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council, with Abby Porth, the JCRC’s associate director in the lead, organized a wide-ranging coalition of religious, medical, legal and political leaders to oppose the ballot measure. The Council on American-Islamic Relations Bay Area director Zahra Billoo notes that CAIR rarely finds itself on the same political side as groups such as the Orthodox Union. “It’s the assault on religious freedoms that brings the two together,” Billoo said. “The civil rights of Jews and Muslims are being impacted,” she told the JTA.

On the legal front Joel Paul, professor of constitutional law and associate dean of the University of California Hastings School of Law, says the law likely would not survive a court challenge as it entangles the state in religious matters by putting the state in the position of judging whether a certain religious practice is permissible.

It’s very unlikely that the ban against circumcision will become a reality. Neither the votes nor the Constitution will permit it. But in any event, I’ve looked and have found no creditable indication that the proposed ban is anti-Semitic in origin. Nevertheless, passage of such bills, even if based exclusively on humanitarian considerations, would be a devastating blow to the Jewish (and Muslim) communities. My tears at my sons’ brit milahs ended; but ending brit milah would end Judaism as we know it.

A crazy week

What a week!

First there was the Rapture. Unless you have been living under the proverbial rock of ages you know that according to indisputable biblical prophesy, on May 21 all true Christians will have been wafted up to Heaven for all eternity whilst the rest of us would be subject to agonizing torments of biblical proportions until October 21 when the world itself would come to an end. I’m not sure if at that point we go to Hell or simply cease to exist, but in any case we give up our chance to sing psalms and strum harps and praising Jesus for the next 20 quadrillion years. If you are reading this without suffering the torments of Hell on earth the prophesy proved false. But millions were taken in by it and some of those millions, desirous of having their pets looked after, after they are in the hereafter paid enterprising atheists to look after their dogs and cats while they were gone. I don’t know how much cash changed hands but the whole story is proof to me that the sprit of Elmer Gantry is alive and well and living in the mouth of a false prophet somewhere beyond the New England/New York region.

Then there was the Dominique Strauss-Kahn affair. Maybe “affair” is the wrong word in this context. After all, when people have affairs there’s presumably a degree of mutual consent involved. But M. Strauss-Kahn, the Socialist head of the International Monetary Fund (and how that happened is beyond me if the word “socialist” still has any meaning. The IMF, that pillar of support of the capitalist system is the last place you’d expect to find a socialist in charge. Or maybe that would be in a $3000.00 a night hotel room.) In any case Mr. Strauss-Kahn allegedly raped a cleaning lady, this with the impunity and insouciance you might expect from one of his international standing, and was on a plane waiting to fly home to France when New York City policemen came aboard, cuffed him and escorted him via a perp-walk to Rikers Island where as of this writing he is ensconced wondering, no doubt, how he of all people could end up in such a predicament. American journalists have been congratulating the United States for not turning a blind-eye, as Europeans, especially French or Italian Europeans might. Of course American (and European) members of the Roman Catholic hierarchy have been turning a blind eye to the activities of pedophile priests for decades and as part of the weird week I might mention that after an exhaustive investigation a commission has concluded that priests trained before the 1960s were not properly prepared for the social upheaval of the ’60s and ’70s, so they made passes at little boys who wore glasses (and those who didn’t as well). Makes sense.

Then Mahmoud Abbas published in the New York Times a statement justifying the Palestinian Authority’s decision to approach the UN to ask for recognition of Palestine as a sovereign state. According to his view of history “the last time the question of Palestinian statehood took center stage at the General Assembly, the question posed to the international community was whether our homeland should be partitioned into two states.” By “our homeland” he means all Palestine west of the Jordan River. (If he still thinks of all Palestine as west of the river than Israel has troubles. So does J Street.) Then, according to his distorted perspective, “Zionist forces expelled Palestinian Arabs to ensure a decisive Jewish majority in the future state of Israel, and Arab armies intervened.” I guess it was a lucky coincidence that fully mobilized Arab brigades were at the border ready to invade.

The week continued with a counter blast from Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Knesset. In his op ed piece he says if the West Bank/Gaza Palestinians declare themselves an independent nation, Israel will (or should) declare all Jewish settlements in the West Bank part of Greater Israel, and deny Arabs living in those zones Israeli citizenship. While Danon concedes that there would be international uproar over this he feels it will soon pass. I am not a believer in the two-state solution for reasons enunciated from time to time. But this is crazy. Danon and Abbas deserve each other, the one with no sense of the past, the other with no sense of the future. But if they deserve each other, why should we suffer?

As I’ve said, it was a crazy week.

More foolishness on the founders scene

Does anyone read the Constitution anymore? I mean, yes it has embarrassing elements (Article 4, Section 2, clause 3 allowing vigilantes from the South to come up North to retrieve run-away slaves comes to mind immediately. But we got rid of that one. It cost us a Civil War with 620,000 deaths, but we got rid of it.) But there are some gems. I particularly like the phrase in Article 6 that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” Many of the framers then went on to sit in the first Congress which passed and sent around to the states a dozen amendments for ratification including one that contains this little piece: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Which brings me to David Barton. He belongs to that school of unprofessional historians known as Christian polemicists. At a recent conference on church-state relations held at Roger Williams University (full disclosure – I organized the conference) Professor Matt McCook of Oklahoma Christian University (which I do not believe is a hotbed of radical leftists) defines Christian polemicists as suspicious of professional historians whom they believe make too much of the Enlightenment and deny the fundamental Christian beliefs of the Founding Fathers. Instead this group argues that the founders were devout Christians who wanted to create the United States as a Christian nation. Other conferees took it as a given that the founders, even if some were religious, did not want to make America a Christian nation and one pointed out that the Constitution is godless (in that God is not mentioned at all).

Barton, according to a recent story in The New York Times (May 5), has been consulted by several potential Republican presidential candidates, including Mike Huckabee who extols Barton as “maybe the greatest living historian on the spiritual nature of America’s early days,” Newt Gingrich, who believes that “American freedoms are divinely granted,” and Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann. All praise his work dedicated to the argument that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and is on the road to ruin because we have forgotten this and abolished prayer in school.
As do all of his kind, Barton has a problem with Thomas Jefferson’s argument in his famous 1802 letter to the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Association which called for a wall of separation between church and state, the basis (along with actual words of the Constitution) of the principle that there should be a wall of separation between church and state. According to Barton, Jefferson’s “wall” was meant only to protect religion from the state, not the other way around. It was intended to keep “Christian principles in government,” not prevent religion in the public sphere. Sadly, there’s nothing in Jefferson’s letter or in his life to substantiate this. Jefferson was an atheist, convinced that within a generation all Americans would be Unitarians (another way of denying Jesus’ divinity).

At the Roger Williams conference mention was several times made of different tiers of founders. There were those who participated in the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and those who didn’t. Patrick Henry is an example of the latter. He was a devout Christian who advocated taxation to support religion, and limiting public office to Trinitarian Protestants. But the people who actually wrote the documents that define America rejected Henry’s ideas.

Even ignoring the fact that Barton twice spoke before neo-Nazi groups (he claimed not to know they were neo-Nazis) his distortions ought to offend Christians and Jews (and Muslims and atheists). America’s radical departure into modernity was acting upon what it learned from Europe – to separate church and state. When the state creates a preferred religion, the state will be engulfed in civil war, learning will be stifled, dissenters will be jailed (or worse) and society will stagnate.

God gave the United States a nonsectarian Constitution – I know because Newt Gingrich tells me so. But if we allow the David Bartons of this world, based on cherry-picked quotations and a misreading of the past, to convince us that America was intended to be a Christian nation, America will not be strengthened; it will be destroyed.

Spiked Pieces

Neither the piece immediately below nor the revised version following were published in the April 29 edition of the Voice & Herald. The editor said there were factual mistakes and wouldn’t run either version. I wonder, though, if I’d been commenting on identical events in, say, Topeka if she would not have published it. Ironically the optimist in me says she wouldn’t, but the realist who occasionally emerges thinks she would have.

When on the Morning of the Long Knives the suits descended from their aerie the eleven victims were doing their jobs, as far as I know with dedication and competence. It was not to help them; they were marked for elimination. We are told that budgetary considerations were paramount, that staff had to be cut as funds were down. I’m sure that’s true, as I’m sure that the salaried suits all agreed to take a pay cut in this time of economic distress.

The word on the street is that as the layoffs were announced the victims were immediately escorted out of their building in front of patrons, allowed only to take their personal belongings. No lingering good-byes, no opportunity to ask “why me?” just a security enforced exit. A person with experience in these matters reports that this is how business works and the Alliance is a business. Things have to be done this way to avoid badmouthing, bad morale and general malaise if the fired are not taken away immediately.

At the preschool the children were playing outside when their teacher was told to go upstairs to talk to the manager and hear about the layoff. When she went down to collect her things, with an escort, the kids were inside and saw her leave. There’s a lasting memory for you. “My pre-school teacher got busted. I don’t know what she did but it must have been really, really bad.”

The chief suit, the chairman of the board, responded to public outrage by throwing other people under the proverbial bus. They chose who to terminate, not me, he suggested. He then asked that we feel sorry for the poor souls—for those who chose who would be let go, not the laid off themselves. “Let us all respect the process and the unimaginable burden they had to bear. They acted with compassion, dignity, and respect,” he writes. I wonder who has the greater burden to bear—those fired or those who selected those to be fired. In his explanation of events could not the chairman of the board, a distinguished attorney and political figure in the state have chosen a phrase less offensive to Jewish eyes and ears than “The genesis of that final action…”? Was I the only reader who saw the coincidence of “final action” and “final solution”? And the word “action” of course is the very word used in the 1940s winnowing process. Is there no sensitivity? At all? Maybe not. Here’s what he also says: “Let’s remember who and what we are and focus on our future. We are social justice, lifelong Jewish learning, and loving kindness.” Loving kindness? Escorting dedicated long-term employees out the door as though they were potential criminals? He then concludes with wishes for a happy Passover. I assume that the people who were terminated so suddenly on the Monday before Passover and two weeks before Easter were either Jewish or Christian. Is it a demonstration of loving kindness to let people go before, not after, they celebrate normally joyous holy days with their families? I’m guessing that the Passover Seders in the afflicted homes were glummer than they traditionally are; I’m guessing that Easter Sunday was marred in those homes where Jews showing loving kindness fired Christian workers just before the holiday. Could it not have waited? I guess not. Loving kindness apparently has its limits.

This newspaper is published by the Alliance but is not a house organ. If you are reading this column, you know the truth of that. But I think we failed the public with our headline and sub-headline in the last issue. While in print the story of the firings occupied prime space, right corner above the fold, the on-line version was buried below “Relearning and Rethinking the Passover Saga” and “Israeli Knesset Members Try Listening”. The headline in both was deliberately sanguine despite this metaphorically sanguinary event: “Restructuring at Alliance leads to streamlined efficiencies: Even with staff reductions, no interruption of services is expected.” Our readers deserve better; so do the eleven who were terminated. The remaining staff ought to look into joining a union. It may not save jobs in a period of economic difficulties, but it might at least give the suits pause before they swoop down in such a cavalier fashion with their security guards.

After this was rejected I tried to tone it down and made some “factual” changes, but not enough, she said. No security guards, for instance. Had the opening two sentences of the paragraph above really been true these minor issues would have been resolved in the usual editorial fashion, not by spiking the piece.

This is not the column I wanted you to read. That one was spiked by the editor. She said that my criticism of the Chairman of the Alliance board of directors for his explanation of why and how eleven employees were let go was an ad hominem attack on him. She also said that some of my language was over the top and that that there were factual errors in the piece. She also objected to my contention that the layoffs just before Passover and Easter were poorly timed, pointing out that there is no good time.

As to the first complaint, I can see where she was coming from but I never attacked the man; in fact I respect him. I did think though that his justification for the way employees were treated was disingenuous. As to the second, that some of my criticism was over the top, she was dead on; it was and shouldn’t have been. My facts? Well, I referred to people being fired and she pointed out that firing is for cause; letting go or laying off is for economic reasons and that there were justifiable if unfortunate economic reasons to reduce staff (a point I never contested). That language could have been easily fixed if there were not the other problems. As to the timing of the lay offs, the editor is correct, but so am I. A draw.

I still hold with my closing paragraph which as she did not criticize it I imagine she’ll let stand. I said: “This newspaper is published by the Alliance but is not a house organ. If you are reading this column, you know the truth of that. But I think we failed the public with our headline and sub-headline in the last issue. While in print the story of the [layoffs] occupied prime space, right corner above the fold, the on-line version was buried below ‘Relearning and Rethinking the Passover Saga’ and ‘Israeli Knesset Members Try Listening’. The headline in both was deliberately sanguine despite this metaphorically sanguinary event: ‘Restructuring at Alliance leads to streamlined efficiencies: Even with staff reductions, no interruption of services is expected.’ Our readers deserve better; so do the eleven who were terminated. The remaining staff ought to look into joining a union. It may not save jobs in a period of economic difficulties, but it might at least give the suits pause before they swoop down in such a cavalier fashion with their security guards.”

In 1997 Robert D. Kaplan wrote what has become a famous essay in the Atlantic Monthly. He called it “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” He wrote about how and why democracy always fails in emerging nations with no middle class and no tradition of nationhood, but in advanced industrial societies the principal villain is corporations, those faceless though familiar entities that govern our every moment. They establish their own communities, their own rules, their own police. They have power in the halls of congress and with the presidency and work to maximize profits by becoming global, leaving the workers of their home constituency with scraps. They are the oligarchs of the modern world, the few governing for the benefit of the few. “Neither the Founders nor any of the early modern philosophers ever envisioned that the free market would lead to the concentration of power and resources that many corporate executives already embody,” he writes.

What does this have to do with the way the lay offs at the Alliance were handled? A friend of mine who defended the actions argues that this is how businesses must do things and the Alliance is a business. That may be, but some of us at any rate were working under the assumption that the Alliance was a different kind of business. Yes, the bottom line could not show a deficit, just as no business can. But the idealist in me thinks of Jews as a people apart, a light unto the nations, not a business copying the ruthlessness of corporate others but a people with an ethos allowing them to find ways to do things that must be done more humanely, and then not being disingenuous about it.

Reflections on "Paul"

The only recognizably Roman Catholic member of the clergy I could identify was a nun sitting in the front row. We (and a capacity audience) were watching the North American Premier of Howard Brenton’s “Paul” at the Gamm Theatre. When the play was over, she was the first person to stand and applaud. I turned to my wife, tapped her on the shoulder, pointed to the nun with my chin and asked “Did she see the same play we did?” It’s hard to imagine.

Some background: According to “The Acts of the Apostles” the fifth book of the New Testament, those who knew and followed Jesus were still Jews, but Jews who thought the Messiah had come in the person of Yeshua (Aramaic for Joshua). They still obeyed the old laws but because they shunned rabbinic authority and were baptized, they were shunned and persecuted. The principal persecutor was Saul of Tarsus who, hearing that there were Jewish followers of Yeshua in Damascus determined to go there to stamp out the community. On the way, he was blinded by a light and heard a voice saying “Why do you persecute me?” and realizing that only the voice of Yeshua would say such a thing—though he was dead—he converted to the new faith. And to him it was a new faith. Unlike Jesus’ old colleagues who thought of themselves as Jews, Paul (the name he adopted upon having his miraculous experience on the road to Damascus) creates a new religion, one where circumcision is not required, nor eating of kosher meat etc., the better to attract gentiles (Greeks) to the new faith.

Now, all of that is a given. The play, though, assumes facts not generally found in the Christian texts—that Jesus and Mary Magdelna, a prostitute, were married, that Jesus did not die on the cross, so was not resurrected but kept in hiding by Peter and James (Jesus’ brother—another thing not generally accepted by Christians) that Joseph and Mary were wealthy purveyors of religious objects in Nazareth, that Peter and James sent Paul out to convert the gentiles assuming that he’d be ignored—or stoned, that they brought Yeshua with them to Saul’s encampment and had him talk to Saul, a well meaning hoax that Saul believed in its entirety. The depiction of Nero is so off the wall that I won’t even mention it other than to say that if you missed Kelby T. Akin as the despotic emperor you missed something rare.

So, we are there the night before Paul’s execution is scheduled. He’s chained, chanting almost as if in a self-induced trance “Christ is risen” over and over and over again. He is a man of faith. But then Peter (played by Gamm veteran Jim O'Brien) is brought into the prison and as the play unfolds he reveals to Paul all the deceptions. Jesus was not God, but an inspiring man. This Paul the believer refuses to believe, that he has been deceived, that his life’s work is based on someone else’s artifice. Peter, who knows the truth ultimately joins in with him intoning, imploring, Jesus the risen God, to help them. If he’s going to die, he may as well die for a cause—whether he believes it or not.

So, why was that nun applauding? I don’t know, but I suppose she does.

A good piece of theater ought to leave us with questions—all the best literature does. Here the question is not so much was Jesus God (the answer is “No”) but the epistemological question, how do we know that the things we know (and are the things we know truly true)?

And we Jews? We enter the Passover season in a couple of days. Our tables will groan under the weight of food, we’ll be a little drunk after four cups of wine, we’ll open the door to allow Elijah the prophet to come join us (he hasn’t yet, but maybe this year) we sing songs and prayers, we ask questions to which we already know the answers, but do we? Were our ancestors slaves in Egypt, rescued by God through his servant Moses? Were there all those plagues? Or miracles? It hardly matters. If one wants to believe, there’s no harm; if one sees the story simply as a metaphor for the potential of the oppressed to rise and liberate themselves, so be it. To my uncertain knowledge there is no historical evidence that the story of the Exodus is true, but it’s a wonderful story nevertheless. If nothing else it gives us the opportunity to clean behind those corners we never normally get to, to be with friends and family to sing and rejoice. Dayenu.

What's a Jewish Subject?

A recent letter complains that the Voice & Herald is becoming a platform for the Democratic Party with a leftist agenda that alienates conservatives and uses me and my last column as his prime example. I admit to being an economic liberal. In fact, I’m proud of it. I think that taxing the wealthy to support public programs such as bridge repair, heath insurance, medical research etc. is all to the good. I think that President George W. Bush was right on target when the announced that his form of conservatism was “Compassionate Conservatism” suggesting that the other kind, the usual kind, the Reagan kind, is not. It’s too bad that his words were lip service only. In his 1988 acceptance speech when nominated by the Republicans to run for President George H. W. Bush talked of making America a kinder gentler nation which upset Reagan acolytes, but he too was on to something. Do liberals have all the answers? No. Do I disagree with some liberal positions? Yes. As to being called a liberal or a conservative, I think the terms have lost their meanings. Given the choice I’ll define myself as a “Humanist” by which I mean someone in the tradition of Cicero, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, someone who believes that if an action liberates humanity it is positive; if it retards it, if it enslaves, it is to be opposed. If humanist is too vague, just call me Jewish.

So, in my last column I started out by discussing union-busting in Wisconsin and elsewhere and then segued to the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Where’s the Jewish content? My critic wants “to hear about Jewish news and interests in the paper.” In the Forward (a Jewish newspaper) Leonard Fein (a Jew) writes in his March 2 column about “Sam Gompers, David Dubinsky, …Albert Shanker, to say nothing of … Andy Stern, Randi Weingarten and a host of others who have played — and still play — central roles in America’s labor history…[Labor] is… a Jewish issue because justice is everywhere and always a Jewish issue.” Who can disagree? You don’t have to be a Marxist to know that the ruthless exploitation of the worker is not only immoral but economically counter-productive—just read Adam Smith’s “On the Wealth of Nations,” that primer of capitalism and you’ll find the same thing. Is Smith not Jewish enough? “Justice, Justice thou shall pursue,” is or ought to be a familiar quotation. It’s from an old book my critic might once have read. Each Yom Kippur we chant from Isaiah on treating our workers fairly and find nothing with which Governor Walker and his ilk would agree. Jeremiah’s explanation for the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple was that masters were enslaving their workers. Micah (another Jew) asks “what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Does this include depriving people of their rights so that the wealthy can become wealthier? Is Moses Jewish enough? Read what he has to say about Egyptian labor practices and about how Jews in their own land should treat gleaners.

Too old fashioned? There’s Abraham Joshua Heschel who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who along with James Cheney were lynched, two Jews and a black man murdered in Philadelphia, Mississippi because they tried to register Negroes to vote. Not by liberals. When Ronald Regan, that demigod of the modern conservative movement began his quest for the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1980 he went first to Philadelphia, Mississippi of all places, and proclaimed that he believed in states’ rights, a code word in those days (and maybe in ours) for segregation. He was a conservative; I’m not, I’m a Jewish humanist, and if being a humanist offends those who are not, such is life.

If there are conservative Jews who in the modern context place the greed of the land owner above the rights of the gleaner, who do not walk humbly with their God, who do not place Justice before all other considerations, are they living up to the standards set before them by generations of greatness? Or have they succumbed to Mammon like the Jewish owners of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory, Max Blanck an Isaac Harris, union-busters who locked poor immigrant girls into their factory and escaped while 146 of them died within a few minutes, jumping out of the building, crushed against the bolted doors, of burns and smoke inhalation. Blanck and Harris were found not guilty of manslaughter by a jury of their peers, other people who as Abraham Cahan (another Jew) reminds uswere businessmen, salesmen, rent-collectors, not poor Jewish women denied the rights of collective bargaining.

Modern Day Pharoahs

If turn around is fair play, if the majority cannot simply clobber the minority into submission in the land of the free and the home of the brave, let’s pass a law that calls for annual election of governors of Wisconsin and not have their salaries automatically deposited. Let’s pass a law that for every dollar a billionaire donates to one party he has to donate 50¢ to the other. Free speech isn’t free, after all. Soon enough it will be Passover and we will be reminded again about Pharaoh’s unfair labor practices. At our table I think we’ll contrapuntally read excerpts of the conversations between Governor Walker and the man he thought was David Koch. (If that fundraiser from NPR resigned after he was caught in a sting; if the woman who was NPR’s CEO resigned after her subordinate was caught in a sting, doesn’t fair play suggest that Walker resign too? When kosher pigs fly. Maybe.)

I’ve been thinking about union busting a lot lately. You can’t avoid it; it’s everywhere: Wisconsin, Ohio, Providence. The old manufacturing unions are pretty well pre-busted. Not because American workers abandoned them but because capitalists decided to close shop up north and move south only later to discover that they could make even more money off the backs of cheaper labor in Asia so they hightailed it across the Pacific. Conservatives and “Right to Work” advocates (= right not to have any say in working conditions or salary) now are after the public unions recruiting the jealous, the ones who used to have a good job but whose livelihood has been snatched away by the recession brought about by the economic activities of the very people now giving themselves huge bonuses and buying politicians, having managed to defeat campaign finance reform. These unfortunates are willing to say, “If I can’t have a pension, why should they?” as if the public employees’ pensions are taking food out of their mouths, as if the suffering should be shared only by all poor people while the wealthiest get tax breaks. But the public workers of Wisconsin were willing to take lower salaries and contribute more to their benefit packages. Their line in the sand was collective bargaining.

Next week we mark the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory disaster. Many of us remember the Station Nightclub fire that cost this community 100 lives. If there was anything good to come of that tragedy it was a series of laws to tighten fire codes (I suppose we are still paying fire marshals even though they are public employees). Back on March 25, 1911 600 workers, the vast majority immigrant girls, mostly Jewish, were working on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the ironically named Asch Building. A match carelessly dropped onto some fabric cuttings set the conflagration going. The fire hose was rotted and fell apart as men tried to extinguish the fire which quickly spread among the materials and cleaning chemicals. Some of the women managed to get to the roof and from there escape to other buildings; a brave passerby manned the elevators until the shaft was engulfed in flame. To prevent pilfering the owners of the business had the doors barred shut. In only 18 minutes a hundred and forty six women were killed, either from burns, from suffocation or from smashing into the pavement as they jumped in their desperate attempt to survive. The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, managed to escape the conflagration, thank goodness, and later they managed to escape prosecution. Let us all praise devious lawyers. (The owners subsequently lost a civil suit and were required to pay $75 per victim which they could well afford as their insurance company paid them $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty. In 1913, Blanck was once again arrested for locking the door in his factory during working hours and fined $20.)

Did any good come of the fire? Well, there were new safety regulations, and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, formed in 1900 was greatly enhanced and served for decades to protect workers against the Max Blancks and Isaac Harrises of the world, men who put the bottom line before the lives of the people who made their profit possible. But I forget; we are all anti-union nowadays; we see the unions as self-serving and out of touch with the real working people of America—the ones without jobs.

A Modern Purim Story

Paul Krugman stole my Nobel Prize. I don’t hold it against him, but I think the guy should at least publicly acknowledge the debt. As many of you know we were roommates in college (Yale ’74) who’ve maintained our friendship over the decades meeting each year on Boxing Day to exchange gifts and get hammered (he’s a Jameson’s man, I go for Glenlivet French Oak 15 year old). It was my idea that resulted in the paper that he was cited for in his Nobel ceremony; he just did the statistical analysis. He doesn’t exactly deny this, but he claims that anything written down on a sleazy bar’s coaster dated December 26 any year, doesn’t count as co-authorship. “Nonsense,” I counter, but he rejoins with “Ha!” and shows me his medallion.

But now his guilt feelings have paid big dividends as he’s shared with me in strictest confidence an explosive WikiLeaks revelation that he’s planning to release in his column on March 20, “Just in time for Purim,” he tells me. He thinks I’m going to sit on this, that I’m not going to scoop him, not beat him to the publication punch, that the promise I made last December 26 to keep his confidences holds the same weight as if spoken when sober? He thinks the Nobel is his exclusively? Ha! Read on.

Not content to embarrass American diplomats, the WikiLeaks people have tapped into the (formally) private correspondence of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. Walker is nervous that a Cairo-like rebellion is in the making, that public employees, who are rallying at the State House in Madison demanding that he reverse course on his attempt to abolish their collective bargaining rights might soon demand his recall. He’s even sought advice secretly from Hosni Mubark who faced a similar crisis last month. That correspondence is part of the WikiLeaks revelations as are Walker’s concerns that the Book of Esther he’s been reading on the advice of a local rabbi describes a situation uncomfortably like his own, for just as Haman wanted to kill Jews because Mordechai refused to bow to him, Walker is trying to kill public employee unions which did not support him in his election bid. Just as Hosni called in his thugs to beat up the Tahrir Square protestors, Walker has called in the Tea Party to out-shout the Public Employees. Walker knows it didn’t work for his pal Hosni, but is trying it anyway; he also knows what happened to Haman, and he looks with fright at all those three-corned hats the cheeseheads wear to Packers games. The internal memos reveal that he thinks they are mockingly reminding him of Haman’s fate.

In another WikiLeaks revelation there is correspondence between Walker and his former top aid who has the euphonious name of Ima Goodheart. Goodheart, in E-mail correspondence with Walker, points out that “public workers essentially make a deal to get paid less now and collect pensions upon retirement. So we can’t renege on good-faith contractual agreements.” Thus Goodheart is described as a “former aid.”

In public Walker claims there is no other solution to Wisconsin’s debt crises. In private he thinks the solution is two-fold. “First,” as he puts in the WikiLeaks’ revelations, “we kill the unions and then we give big tax cuts to the wealthy.” When Walker sent an E-mail to George H.W. Bush asking what he thought about this, the former president tweeted: “LOL, Voodoo economics in the land of pasteurization. Will you never learn?”

Walker has also been corresponding with other Republican governors. WikiLeaks revealed that he congratulated Governor Rick Scott of Florida for rejecting $2.4 billion in federal money to build a high speed rail connecting Tampa and Orlando which would have created 24,000 new jobs at a cost to Floridians of only $1.25 million. As Scott wrote to Scott “Well, done Scott! Together we can deny public services to all!”

Can the Scotts be stopped, or do we all have to start drinking Scotch to forget some Scotts Welsh on obligations. After all, on Purim, which rapidly approaches, we are enjoined to get so drunk that we can’t tell an Aleph from a Beth. On Purim we tell stories that are not necessarily true in all details, like this one you’ve been reading—actually none of them are—but we tell the essential truth that arrogance in high places has its comeuppance if, like the protesters in Madison and in Cairo, like Mordechai and Esther, we stand up to manipulative oppressors. It’s happened before, Scotts; it can happen again.

Happy Purim.

Europe and the Jews

Have you subscribed to “Habitus: A Diaspora Journal” yet? Twice yearly Josh Ellison (originally of Providence where his parents still reside) and his staff bring forth a journal of essays, fiction, poetry, photographs with a focus on a city in which Jews have or are still playing a major cultural role. Number 7, just out, features Berlin, one of those cities where Jews no longer reside in large number, but you cannot think of the Jews of Europe without also thinking of Germany and its capital. The events of 1933-1945 still resonate. The cancer of anti-Semitism, exploited by the Nazis who found it waiting for their use continues. It’s still part of the “What is a Jew,” or rather, “What is a European” question.

The Jews of Germany had been living their since ca. 1000 CE., a generally impoverished and persecuted minority. But with the coming of the Enlightenment, Jews (some Jews, I have in mind as exemplar Moses Mendelssohn--1729–1786) discovered the beauties of western culture and Germans (some Germans) realized that Jews were people with intelligence who ought to be welcomed into society—either as Jews or as converts. For their part Jews were willing to modify their religion so as better to fit in, to assimilate—the Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox movements have their origins in 19th century Germany. The point is that Jews made a successful transition from pariah to bulwarks of culture, industry and finance. In the end, that’s part of what did them in. How could such a small population rise to control the stock market, the theater, be so prominent in law, science and medicine? It must be that they are using unscrupulous methods. The Jew was seen as an outsider who only pretended to be German!

So under Hitler Germany became judenrein, Jew-free. Most Jews in modern Germany are from the former Soviet Union, their predecessors having escaped before the War or killed during it. There they live with government subsidies, a kind of reparations.

Today in Germany there is a new outsider, principally Muslim, often Turkish. They are not re-living the Jewish experience in that they are new to the country, new to the continent unlike the Jews who resided as a subject race within Germany for centuries and who knew western culture if only by observation. But these new Germans, living in the land for a generation or more can identify with the older group. Jews were rejected; Turks are being rejected.

Zafer Şenocak is a Turko-German. He was born in Istanbul and with his parents moved to Germany when he was child. His native tongue is Turkish, but he writes in German when his themes demand it. In an interview with “Habitus” he concludes, “It is very strange: anti-Semitism describes Jews as less than human. Then you have this anti-anti-Semitism, describing the Jew as something unreachable: good at everything, knowing everything. Jews are just people. They kill and are killed like every other people. In Europe there is no balance on this issue—you move from one extreme to the other. This is the problem with idealization—it’s a broken image. There is no real discourse with the Jewish people. There is no direct contact. Everything has to be deflected. Europe still can’t look the Jews directly in the face.”

It was that last line, “Europe still can’t look the Jews directly in the face” that sent chills down my spine. We are the overachievers who hold the broken distorted mirror in the face of Europeans who killed us, reminding them of what they did. Few are left who organized the slaughter, manned the gas chambers, found and destroyed hiding places. But Europe knows what it’s done, Şenocak reminds.

In Europe, some of us were socialists, others capitalists, some were intellectuals others shop keepers, the gamut of intellectual and economic behavior. All were destroyed, except those few who managed to survive. Here in America, we are in a similar circumstance. We came to a country not our own, a country where Christians were the dominant element bringing with us our strange ways. Many of us have subsequently modified, but we are still strangers in a strange land. When “Americans” are of the left or right they are still Americans. Jews though are Jews of the left or right. And we are caught in the middle between those who have become anti-Semitic through being philo-Palestinian on the left and the gun-totting yahoos on the right, neither of which represents us, both of which might be very happy if we left.