Response to Hamas kidnapping IDF soldier

I write on Friday the 14^th of July. Four thousand miles to the east rockets are exploding, bombs are dropping; the emotional reverberations are felt in my home; yours too, I imagine. What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad. Worse, Israel has only itself to blame. It did not learn the lessons of history.

Out of Gaza on June 25 came Hamas gunmen to kill Israeli soldiers on Israeli soil, and then they kidnapped one of them, a young corporal with dual Israeli-French citizenship. For weeks Jews in southern Israel had been hit with rockets, more annoying than lethal, but always an unprovoked menace.

Then on July12 Hezbollah forces crossed into northern Israel and killed and kidnapped other soldiers. Israel responded with an incursion into Lebanon, hitting bridges and the airport in an effort to prevent the kidnappers from taking their prey out of Lebanon into Iran. Already Nahariya and Haifa have been hit by Hezbollah rockets. Each side’s fury mounts with each rocket landing, each soldier or civilian killed or wounded.

What is to be learned? Nothing is learned. That’s the problem. The British and the French gave the Sudatenland to Hitler to buy peace; the French then hid behind the Maginot line while the British felt secure on their side of the Channel. None to any avail. That’s the lesson that ought to have been learned by Israel, but wasn’t. The most fundamental lesson is that Israel must never again unilaterally withdraw from territory. It does not work. Israel pulled out of Sinai when Anwar Sadat and Menachim Begin reached agreement on how and when and for what in exchange. In short, the Sinai for peace—real peace, not just the hope of peace. For this the Arab leader won the Noble Peace Prize and later an Arab bullet. But the peace held. (Israel offered Gaza in the same package, but Sadat was too smart to accept it. Gaza had only been occupied by Egyptian forces, it had never been part of Egypt proper; “No, Menachem, you can keep that snake pit,” the Egyptian leader conceded. One can only wonder what Begin’s reaction was. Probably not joy.)

But that’s it, the one example of negotiated handover of land. Later, in 2000, Israel surprised the world by unilaterally withdrawing, overnight, from southern Lebanon, callously abandoning its Christian allies to their fate. Munich redux. Almost immediately Hezbollah moved in and started attacking northern Israel with rockets and mortars claiming that a small area (Shebaa Farms, a 28 sq. km. piece of land) was still occupied territory, despite this time the usually hostile world siding with Israel, saying “no, it’s not.” And then last year, after a year’s buildup, Israel removed its settlers and soldiers from Gaza. Immediately weapons were smuggled from Egypt into Gaza. The Hamas led government either turned a blind eye or actively engaged in the process of illegally arming its militants. Either way, the results were inevitable and soldiers and civilians on both sides died.

So the first uncomfortable conclusion is that Israel must not again retreat without ironclad guarantees that it will not be assaulted by the very people to whom it returned land taken in defensive wars. The tail of the tiger is an uncomfortable thing to hold. Letting go is more than uncomfortable; it’s disastrous.

And the other choice? Can there ever be peace with the Palestinians? Egypt was one thing; Israel occupied another country’s territory and then gave it back following negotiations. But the Palestinian leadership believes that Israel itself is occupied Palestine. So what to do? Expel the Arabs from Gaza and the West Bank? Re-occupy southern Lebanon? One choice is worse than the next. Even if Israel succeeds in its intention of destroying the Hezbollah leadership, the Arabs can wait. If not now, then later their attack will be successful, they think. By this scenario, the only way to avoid the killings is to pull down the flag, blow up the improvements made over the past 60 years and go back to Europe and other places from which the Jews came with their talents. That’s not going to happen either. The Jewish people are in this thing for the long term. Withdrawal is not an option.

What the situation will be when the paper arrives at your door, I do not know, but today, it is bad.

Comparison of religion to baseball

Which is more important, religion…or baseball? Or is baseball the ultimate religion? It’s a tough call. I grew up as a Jew (but not as a Red Sox fan) in the leafy East Midwood section of Brooklyn. Until the first time my father took me to Ebbets Field I’d only seen the Dodgers on the grainy TV in our living room. In black and white. I gasped for breath in astonishment when I saw the real thing. The vastness of the perfectly mown green outfield grass, the brown of the base paths, the sparkling white uniforms of the Dodgers, all a foretaste of heaven, I thought.

When the god-like players poured out of their dugout and ran to their positions, Hodges to First, Gilliam at Second, Pee-Wee at Short and Robinson at Third, the deep uncompromising ebony of Jackie’s skin made me feel proud to be a Brooklynite because, even then, I knew that we’d been the first to allow black people to play. We did that wonderful thing and changed the world. In the back of my mind I assumed that all the players were Jewish. I still do.

That the greedy unspeakable son of Satan, Walter O’Malley, would bring the team to Los Angeles was one thing (what could you expect from such a bottom line bottom feeder) but that my heroes would actually go was jaw dropping, bone shaking, stomach wrenching. We were betrayed; the joy of our lives was stolen. One hero remained pure though. Jackie. When he was traded to the hated NY Giants at the end of the ’57 season, he refused to go; instead he retired from baseball, pure as pure could be.

In later life I became a Red Sox rooter by choice, but in fact it wasn’t much of a switch at all. Ebbets Field and Fenway Park are very similar; the Yankees are still the archenemy. Like the Dodgers, the Sox have only reached the Promised Land of World Series victory once in my lifetime, in both cases having to defeat the Yankees to do it; like the Dodgers the Sox have heroes of the past, godlike figures who walked the earth (Smokey Joe Wood, Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski); we both have our traitors (Harry Frazee, Walter O’Malley) but only Boston had an official curse (of the Bambino). The Red Sox religion has uniforms (hats and jerseys); we have our priests (managers and coaches); we have our songs (Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” and the risqué “Dirty Waters” whenever we win at home); we have our epic stories, of Buckner’s bumble in ’86, of Fiske’s home run in ’75, of leaving Pedro in for just too long in 2003; we have our sacred space, Fenway Park, hallowed be its halls.

My other religion is a form of Judaism possibly unique to me. I attend synagogue, but don’t generally pray. I wear the uniform (tallit, tephellin and kippah); I sing songs in half understood Hebrew. I maintain a kosher diet, more or less, mostly more; I behave in what I hope is an ethical manner. I believe that God created the world and man, except when I believe that chemical forces interacted and KABOOM! there was the earth. Either way, it doesn’t particularly matter.

As I sing the songs in a language I only half understand I am in communion with my ancestors of a hundred or more generations, and, I hope, with my descendants for an equal amount of time; as I think about the half understood forces of nature being slowly unraveled by struggling human science I continue to wonder if the Almighty is the originator of the Big Bang. God only knows, but He’s not talking. Of this, though, I am certain: The whole thing is designed so that if we use our minds, not depend on revelation, we’ll figure out His physics. I read the bible. It has some powerful stories and some interesting perspectives on life and love as does Shakespeare, both being divinely inspired, and I go on with my life.

I wonder if those who insist that America is a Christian nation (in Kentucky the governor is demanding that textbooks refer to BC and AD, not to BCE and CE) intend to keep us non-Christians around once they’ve transformed our country into their theocracy. Religion ought to be like being a Red Sox fan. It should be uplifting; it can be community building. Only better. No one gets excommunicated; no one’s ever burned at the stake.

Go Sox! (=Amen).

Responding to criticism of May 26 piece

Have you read Yehuda Lev’s piece? Not yet? It’s just opposite this column, there, on page 4. Go read it now. I’ll wait for you. Tum, de, dum dum, pooh, pooh tra la la la la. OK? Finished so soon? Nice of him to give those who missed my column last issue the opportunity to read selections from it this time. Thanks Yehuda.

Where to begin, he asks. What if the boy is 14 and the girl 13? Is there an epidemic of 13-year-old girls out there getting knocked up? Should we establish social policy for all America based on the aberrant behavior of stupid lovesick puppies? Is it not possible that 13-year-old girls would get pregnant less often if they knew that abortion was not an option? I don’t know, and I imagine Yehuda doesn’t either.

I am inconsistent on the morality of women raped having an abortion. I knew it when I wrote that, and I acknowledge it still. It’s a tough call. On the one hand the baby is not guilty of any crime and deserves to live. On the other the mother has been traumatized and could feel that her body is being violated yet again. Do I have to be consistent? Is life black and white, Yehuda? OK, if you insist. Here’s a solution. Castrate the rapist and offer psychological counseling the mother. When the baby is born, she can choose to keep her child or she can choose to give it up for adoption.

Yehuda claims to find a group more defenseless than human beings developing in the wombs of their mothers. While it is hard to penetrate his impassioned prose, I think he means babies not provided with loving families, brought into this world by uncaring pro-life fanatics who (here Yehuda starts rambling a bit, or maybe this part will be edited out before you read it) choose war over feeding and educating its population, catering to the wealthy. Huh? I know there are problems in the world Yehuda, and I know there is poverty, and I know that Bush is still president. But it’s not the fault of a child conceived in the womb of a recent MBA who doesn’t want to go onto the mommy-track.

Finally Yehuda gets to the core of my argument. And then misses the mark completely. Yes, I have a problem with “Clergy for Choice” but I don’t think the group has a guilty conscience. The ones who should have a guilty conscience, he argues, are those who support governments that are anti-child, anti-poor and anti-women. If there are such clergymen in America I think they should be defrocked immediately!

My argument was with clergy who pretend that the Hebrew bible supports individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs. This argument is comparable to that of ante-bellum southerners who thumped their bibles and quoted its passages in favor of the abomination that was slavery. Was slavery immoral? They argued it was not, that it was at least morally neutral or, some had it, a moral good, a moral necessity. I know what passages they quoted; I can’t think what the clergy for choice found in Hebrew Scriptures to leave it up to the woman to decide on her own conscience whether to have an abortion or not. I believe that the clerical spokesperson for this organization will have his say in this issue as well, so I will look for the citations with baited breath.

To me “Clergy for Choice” is in the same category as “Compassionate Conservative.” Both are disingenuous oxymorons in full gallop. Arguing the morality of abortion on demand is an example of the banality of expediency. Slave owners were moral and doing what they though best; World War II Germans were moral and doing what they thought best; suicide bombers think themselves moral and do what they think best. But saying it doesn’t make it so. Not in the ante-bellum south, not in 1940’s Europe, not now.

Should we criminalize abortion again? That genie is long ago out of the bottle and the bottle is broken. It’s a promise made by conservative politicians intent on duping the gullible while raking in the profits. Abortion is a moral issue now, no longer a legal one. Let’s look around us as Yehuda suggests and see the moral abyss we are in when we pretend that the willful destruction of the innocents is excusable.

May 26- Contra “Clergy for Choice”

Two weeks ago there was a story in these pages headlined “Pro-Choice clergy take to the airwaves” announcing that a group of Jewish and gentile clergy was forming a chapter of Clergy for Choice.

“The clergy group has begun to monitor legislative activity as well [as broadcast its opinions on the air]; in fact, it was formed as a response to a bill passed overwhelmingly last year by the R.I. Senate threatening to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.” I also favor reproductive rights (the right of fetuses to be born) and would have phrased it, “a bill passed overwhelmingly reflecting the will of the people of the state of Rhode Island to eliminate a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.”

The Clergy for Choice spokesperson also said that “the Hebrew bible and rabbinic writings support individual choice according to one’s own conscience and religious beliefs.” The do? The Hebrew bible gives women the right to terminate pregnancy according to her conscience and religious beliefs? In a book filled with the joy of mothers who give birth, the agony of the infertile? The Hebrew scriptures I read includes this from Deuteronomy 30:19 “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” That Hebrew bible? The rabbis? They permit the dismemberment of the fetus at the last moment if the birth is threatening the life of the mother, and yes, there is more recent responsa extending that principle to cover cases affecting the mother’s physical and mental health or in the case of rape and incest, but according to Isaac Klein, in his A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, “When abortion is desired for reasons of convenience, however, it is forbidden.”

Barbara Kavadias from the national group of clergy for choice skips the text-based rhetoric: “We [Jews] are pro-choice because of our faith. Pro-choice is an individual choice and it is not necessarily pro-abortion. We believe that no one; not pharmacists, not doctors, not hospitals, not the government should be able to impose their religious beliefs on us.” Does Barbara really speak for Jews? Or only for Jews who agree with her? The quotation leaves us to assume that Jews favor the right of mothers to terminate their pregnancies if they are of a mind to. We do? I’m a Jew and I don’t.

By now, most of my friends are appalled. I can hear them even before they collar me at schul, school or supermarket. “Josh, how could you, a liberal, a progressive, an advocate of human rights be pro-life?” (Yeah, yeah, I know, they’ll be smart enough to say “anti-choice” but it’s more fun the way I’ve phrased it.)

In fact, I do believe in choice. I believe that women can choose to have protected or unprotected sex or abstain from sex. I believe that men should choose to take responsibility for their sexual acts. I believe that a woman whose baby to a medical certainty is going to live a short, painful, life may choose to terminate her pregnancy to spare the child inevitable suffering and early death. I believe that a woman raped may legitimately choose to abort. I believe that no one has the right to choose to deny her child the right to smell the scent of fresh cut grass, to hit a home run, to meet and marry someone they love. NOTE: THIS BECAME THIS IN PRINTED ARTICLE.WORDS IN BOLD ADDED BY EDITOR, NOT ME: I believe that no one, not even she, has the right to choose to deny her child the right to smell the scent of fresh cut grass, to hit a home run, to meet and marry someone they love. Advocating state sanctioned abortion announces to the world that we are not responsible for our actions, that actions have no consequences, that do-overs are permitted. Sometimes they are, but never in anything important, never in taking a life.

To answer the question how, if I’m a liberal can I be in the pro-life camp I’m a liberal because there is poverty out there that must be eradicated, because there are workers being exploited, because there are rain forests being cut down and rivers being polluted. Liberals take the side of the underdog, of the voiceless, of black people in the south under segregation, of the Jews in Germany under the Nazis and in Russia under the Communists. I’m a liberal because I believe government must defend of the defenseless. Is there a more defenseless group of human beings than those developing in the womb of their mothers? They have no vote, they have no voice. But they have life. That’s why I’m a liberal who is pro-life. That’s why I’m deeply saddened when clergy and laypeople chose expediency over morality, death over life.

Clergy for Conscience, anyone?

May 12- On Brandeis offering honorary degree to Tony Kushner and hosting a

When, fifty years ago, the institution that has become Roger Williams University decided to break with the YMCA and chart its own independent course, a new name was needed. In a stroke of marketing genius someone suggested “Roger Williams Jr. College.” Brilliant! In a single stroke the fledgling institution acquired an aura of antiquity and and a philosophy to live by. Williams in 1643 obtained a Charter for his colony of “the Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay” open to all religions and the Indians were to be treated fairly, their lands purchased, not stolen. A better name could not have been appropriated.

Recently, however some students calling themselves the College Republicans began printing a scurrilous broadside they called The Hawk’s Right Eye. It spewed forth attacks on gays, Muslims, and women in what I only hoped was failed sophomoric humor. (Funding for this rag came from outside sources, not University funds.) Then the students went farther. They offered a cash prize to the author of the best essay on the subject “Why I am proud to be white.” (The Republican Party, both nationally and locally had had enough. Each condemned the students and refused to allow them to use the name Republican or any symbols of the Republican Party.)

The University, hearing the rumble of the ground as Roger Williams rolled over in his grave, condemned the contest as an outrage against the principles upon which the university rested. Mass meetings were held where people expressed their views. The president ordered the creation of an on-line journal called “Journal of Civil Discourse” and initiated a distinguished lecturer series with the theme of “reason and respect.” In time the crisis past.

Now it’s Brandeis University’s turn to be placed under the microscope. By 1948 it was already old news that the best American universities had quotas that discriminated against even the best American Jewish students. Just as physicians in the same situation founded their own hospitals, and just as Jews who were excluded from country clubs and hotels created their own, so American Jews created a non-sectarian university where Jewish students could receive an education on a par with the Ivies. What to name this new institution? Well in a stroke of marketing genius it was decided name the school after Louis D. Brandeis who its website describes as: “the distinguished associate justice of the United States Supreme Court [who] reflects the ideals of academic excellence and social justice.” What this too brief biography fails to mention is that justice Brandeis was the president of the Zionist Organization of America. Surely, though, this was one of the important considerations in selecting the name. Just as the name Roger Williams evokes fairness, openness, non-discrimination, evoking Brandeis represents American Jewish ideals including the idea that there should be a Jewish State of Israel supported by American Jewry.

But of late, this ideal has withered. The current president of the university, Jehuda Reinharz has chosen in his inaugural remarks (1995) to define the mission of the university as resting “on four solid pillars: dedication to academic excellence, non-sectarianism, a commitment to social action, and continuous sponsorship the by Jewish community.” What? That’s it? That’s our duty, to fork out dough and shut up? I think not.

Recently Brandeis has done two things that outrage the sentiments of many Jews. This is their right, of course. As an academic institution of the highest caliber it is obligated to present views both popular and fringe. At its upcoming graduation the university will grant an honorary degree to playwright Tony Kushner and its commencement speaker will be His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal heir apparent of the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan. That Kushner deserves recognition for his distinguished literary career is beyond question. But the Zionist Organization (justice Brandeis’ old group, you will recall) protests. They quote Kushner as having said that “The biggest supporters of Israel are the most repulsive members of the Jewish community and Israel itself has got this disgraceful record. Israel is a creation of the U.S., bought and paid for.” I will spare you the rest. But note, the sound you hear is of Louis Brandeis rolling over in his grave. President Reinharz comments that Kushner is getting the award for his literary merits, that there is no political test for the honor. What else would you expect him to say?

And then there’s the Palestinian art exhibit on campus. But that’s a story for another time.

That rumble you hear…

Memories of Russia

Maybe it was the sound of the language; maybe it was the music; maybe it was both of those things combined with the time of year—mid-March, just before Passover. In any case, a couple of weeks ago, as I sat in the audience and listened to the magnificent sound of the Moscow Men’s choir as it performed at Temple Emanu-El, I was mentally and emotionally transported to another time and place in my life, another time in the life of the world. Back then, in 1989, Islamic fundamentalism was confined to the backwaters of civilization, or so we thought. The enemy was the Soviet Union, though we knew it was in decline—but in decline it was still dangerous—would this be the time it would launch a weapon of mass destruction? We didn’t know. Already first the Poles, then the Czechs, the Hungarians, even the East Germans had thrown off the burden of Soviet domination. Already the Baltic republics were showing signs of clamoring for independence, soon to be followed by the Ukrainians and other peoples subject to Russian domination.

Here in Rhode Island the Community Relations Council of the Federation had a Soviet Jewry task force. I was chairman. We wrote to refuseniks in Russia offering support, we wrote to Congress our support of the Jackson-Vanick amendment; we adopted a sister city (Rostov on Don); we marched in Washington when Gorbachev was there. And we decided to pay him a return visit. In Russia. Many said they were interested in coming, but in the end, it was only four of us—Paul and Sheila Alexander, Wayne Franklin, and myself. Paul is a physician, Sheila is a community leader, Wayne is a rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, I’m a professor of history.

For months before hand we learned some rudimentary Russian—“Yes” “no,” “please,” “thank you,” “are you sure this is what Marx had in mind?” (All right, we didn’t use that one a lot, but we did learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that we could navigate the subway system when we absented ourselves from the official tour to visit refuseniks and Hebrew teachers and “the pharmacist”). We received instructions from national Soviet-Jewry organizations (naturally there were two competing such groups—they are Jews after all). We had names of people to call, books and religious objects to bring and pharmaceuticals ranging in potency from aspirin to antibiotics, none of which were available, all of which had to be brought into the country clandestinely, so, I guess, this is my confession. I was part of a ring of international drug smugglers. There, I’ve said it.

We flew to Kennedy airport after sleepless nights—would we be caught, if so would we be prosecuted, if so, would we be found guilty, if so would we spend time in the gulag? Foolish fears I now realize, but they seemed very real at the time. At Kennedy we met the other members of our tour group and, being suspicious, wondered if these perfectly normal looking Americans were really Soviet agents provocateurs—yes we (I at least) were paranoid. Our American tour director was a nice young man who discovered a love for the Russian language and its literature in college. He now shuffled back and forth between Russia and the United States acting as translator and facilitator for visiting Americans. As soon as he saw us lifting our suitcases which weighed a ton while we pretended that they were light as feathers, he knew something was up. “Those are pretty heavy talleisim” he commented. “Talleisim?” we feigned ignorance. “No, just the stuff we’ll need for a ten day trip.” “Right.” This was not encouraging. We’d not even left New York and already we’d been spotted as smugglers. Could we trust this smiling young man?

We flew to Helsinki and from there to Moscow. The first ordeal awaited us. Our passports were checked very carefully by a uniformed young man in a booth. He looked at the passport, he looked at us, he looked at the passport, he typed something into a computer, he looked at us and again at the passport. “Purpose of visit?” (It was really less of a question than it was an accusation.) “Tourism,” I said, so did the others in their turn. “Occupation?” (Same tone of voice, all the while my right arm was separating at the joints—wrist from forearm, elbow expanding, shoulder rising as I tried to hold on to the ten ton suitcase without showing signs of strain.) “Teacher,” I said as I grit my teeth in pain, pretending it was a smile. (This question was a tricky one for Wayne. If he said “Rabbi” we were told they’d really give him the third degree or prevent him from coming in at all—certainly his suitcase would be examined, which is why we kept the incriminating materials in our bags, not his. His answer was the technically correct, though disingenuous “teacher.”)

Once this gauntlet had been passed we had customs to get through. Not all bags were checked, but there was no green sign saying “nothing to declare.” All bags and their owners had to be OK’d by a human in uniform (a ubiquitous species in Russia, it seems). Amazingly, all of us, each pretending not to know the others though obviously Sheila and Paul were traveling together, were just passed through. Some chalk on the bags, a “Welcome to the Soviet Union” from the customs agent. “Is that it?” I asked our guide. “Yes.” “That’s what I lost sleep over for two weeks?” “Wasn’t worth it was it,” he answered cryptically. Only later, on the plane coming back from Helsinki did we learn his role in getting us through customs unscathed.

The rest of the story is anticlimactic. We saw the sights of Moscow, Kiev and Leningrad, we rode the magnificent subway system, we met refusenicks and teachers of Hebrew and the pharmacist. He wasn’t really a pharmacist, of course, but a link in the chain of getting scarce drugs to sick people. Paul had a long talk with him as he described the medicines they needed brought by the next contingent of Americans coming in. Paul gave him the medicines we’d brought. We received names of refusenicks we’d not known about and hoped that that list would not be the cause of our arrest and incarceration as we passed through the external customs agents. In the Soviet Union everything had to be accounted for—how much money did you bring in, what did you buy, how much money do you have left? If we’d gotten black market rubles so that we could buy more Russian goods or leave the money with the Jews we were visiting, we’d have to account for how we could purchase things with so little money, or conversely if we were not taking much out with us, what happened to the money we brought in.

In Kiev we were not scheduled to visit Babi Yar, but we insisted and our Intourist guide relented. There’s not much to see there now, but we knew had had happened. Between 1941 and 1943 over 100,000 Jews had been killed there. The monument, with tablets in Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish states only that over 100,000 “citizens of Kiev and prisoners of war” were executed there. The Jews, apparently, deserve no special recognition. Except from us. Wayne, Paul, Sheila and I, along with a few others from our group said kaddish in memory of those who had been massacred in the ravine the Germans, and later the Soviets, tried to hide by filling it in, making it a level meadow, disguising the remains of the atrocity.

We shopped in the stores that Russian citizens were not allowed to enter, where only foreign currency was accepted, where goods scarce or impossible to find in the stores of the Soviet Union were readily available to foreigners. So, we came with lists of what our new friends needed, and we bought. We also gave. We brought jeans from America (am I the last person on Earth still to refer to them as dungarees?), a hot commodity in the Soviet Union’s black market which could be sold by the Jews who had been let go from their jobs because they had had the temerity to ask to leave, some of them years ago denied their exit visas, and having to make do however they could. Those jeans, we hoped, could be converted into cash. On the streets people who wanted to buy my sneakers—off my feet, approached me with rubles to purchase the rare western footwear. I politely declined. It was too cold to walk barefoot in Moscow in March. On the plane flying from Kiev to Leningrad my neighboring passenger noticed my Cassio wristwatch which told the time, is a calculator, holds phone numbers and appointments, is a stop watch and a timer. By rubbing his thumb against his middle finger he indicated with what is apparently a universal sign that he wanted to buy it from me. “I don’t speak Russian,” I politely said, and feigned sleep.

When it was time to go, we had our lists of medicines and refuseniks and our gifts for friends and relatives back home and we endured the wait, as we had to pass through external customs. Sheila had most of the incriminating papers in her suitcase. This was a clear-cut example of hiding behind women’s skirts. We had been told that Russian men were uncomfortable rummaging through ladies undergarments, so the papers were under her underwear. As the unsmiling customs agent opened Sheila’s suitcase, it tipped and her clothing and the papers we had so carefully secreted went flying onto the floor. Flustered at the sight of these garments, he helped her to scoop everything up, including the incriminating documents, all of which he hastily shoved willy-nilly back into her case and (we think) apologized profusely for the inconvenience.

Once on the Finnair plane, we felt safer, but even more so once we had taken off. In Helsinki Wayne told Peter, our American guide what we had done. He laughed at our naivety. As we’d thought, he’d spotted us immediately for what we were. In the Moscow airport he found a pretty customs agent and encouraged her to flirt with the agent examining our bags. The agent, apparently thinking that the girl was really interested in him, paid no interest in us, and so into the belly of the beast we were allowed to enter with all our contraband. Thanks Peter.

We came back to America filled with stories of our adventures, just in time to celebrate Passover with the Matzah we’d bought in Leningrad at the only Jewish bakery in town. It was the best tasting Matzah I’d ever eaten, made with the hands of people as much prisoners in their country as the ancient Hebrews had been in Egypt. As I sat around our Seder tables and recounted our experiences to friends and relatives the idea of freedom suddenly meant a lot more than it ever had before. There was no Moses to lead the Jews out of the Soviet Union, certainly Paul, Sheila, Wayne, and I were no Moses, but we had done our bit to bring cheer and supplies to a people cut off from the rest of their people. We had let them know that we knew of them, that we were working for their liberation and eventual re-settlement in Israel or in the United States. I don’t know how much good we actually did for them, but we each felt that we had made a contribution in our small way to the betterment of mankind. I think (though cannot prove) that the international effort to free the Jews of the Soviet Union played a huge part in the disintegration of that great empire. Once the Jews started agitating for their liberty, others followed; once the Jews broke the silence and said, this is not working, let us leave, others joined the chorus.

And a couple of weeks ago, the Moscow Men’s Chorus, singing in Temple Emanu-El, brought it all back to life in my mind. Paul, Sheila, Wayne, I think we did good.

Dog/squirrel/cat story, for laughs

On Friday last I ran some errands. Upon my return I heard the cleaning lady yelling at Morgan the Wonder Dog. “You get down from there, naughty dog!” and then the reply, “Ha, ha, ho ho, you’re not Josh, I don’t have to do what you say.” Now, this came as a surprise, because I thought Morgan the Wonder Dog spoke only to me. In any case, up on the kitchen counter, staring intently at a squirrel hanging upside down on the bird feeder, was Morgan the Wonder Dog.

“What are you doing there?” I asked menacingly.

“She made me do it, she always makes me get up here.”

“She was up there all morning,” snitched the cleaning lady. “I didn’t put her up there,” she added nervously.

“I know, I know,” I reassured; “she has quite an imagination.”

Twice again the dog was up on the counter, either staring at the squirrel at the bird feeder or just staring at the bird feeder in anticipation. I determined to put a stop to these shenanigans. Thinking that the squirrel was aided and abetted by the table we have under the window, I went out onto the deck to take it away, carefully placing it along the side of the deck near the enclosed porch’s roof. It being a beautiful day, I left Morgan outside on patrol.

A cry from the cleaning lady alerted that something was wrong. Again. I went to the kitchen window but there was no squirrel. I looked out the window and saw that there was also no dog. She, in her infinite wisdom, had used the table I had so conveniently placed at her disposal to abscond from the deck onto the adjacent porch roof. So, there she was, running to the edge of the roof, stopping, looking down, wondering if she could survive the eight foot drop to the ground, backing off, running up again, considering again, backing off again, but I could see that her courage was mounting.

Then I saw the cat. “Oh, gods,” I implored, “don’t let her see the cat.” I opened the living room window and called to her. “Morgan, come here, I have cheese for you.” “No you don’t,” she said as she edged closer to the edge. “I’ll get it, you wait there,” I implored. So I ran the length of the living room, turned right through the foyer, right again through the dining room, through the breakfast room, into the kitchen where I threw open the refrigerator and tried to remember which kind of cheese she liked best—mozzarella, cheddar, Swiss? I grabbed a block of cheddar and retraced my steps, sticking my head out the window and ... no dog. She had jumped back over the rail onto the deck. To the deck I sauntered, gave her some cheese, brought her back in the house and sat down to work, again.

Another shriek from the cleaning lady. Now what? Gevalt! I’d left the window open and out through it Morgan had leaped onto the roof of the enclosed porch. Again. “Damn!” “Stay,” I commanded, rushed through the house to the refrigerator to get some cheese, back to the window where the dog had remained. I offered her the food, she came in, I closed the window. Our problems were not yet over.

I had noticed that the squirrel walked along the deck railing and leaped from it onto the sill of the kitchen window, from which it then jumped onto the birdfeeder. OK, what can I do about this? “Crisco!” was the obvious answer. If I coated the sill with a thin veneer of Crisco, the squirrel would leap, skid and fall to the deck floor, hopefully without doing itself any injury. So that’s what I prepared to do. What I hadn’t noticed was that as I opened the window, the squirrel was already in mid-flight towards it. It hit my outstretched arm and ricocheted up my arm into the kitchen. The other thing I’d not noticed was that the cat I’d spotted before had by now managed to get onto the deck and seeing its prey jump through our kitchen window, it decided on the spur of the moment to follow suit. So now I had a panicked squirrel being chased by a cat who only too late realized that there was a dog in the house who hated cats.

My right hand was also coated in Crisco. The next thing I knew, the trio was running first around, then through the breakfast room, into the dining room where the cleaning lady was standing on the radiator holding her skirt above her knees shouting (actually it more like screaming) something in Andalusian. The squirrel dove under the living room couch where the cat thought for a moment it would stalk it until suddenly remembering the dog hot on its tail, so it leaped five feet up onto the mantle, skidding along the surface, sending chackas scattering in all directions. Then, as the cat was skidding, the dog chasing it barking, the squirrel cowering, Penney came home.

As the door opened, the dog, always anxious to be outside, gave up pursuit of the cat, and headed out the door; the cat, seeing its chance to escape, jumped down from the mantle and fled after her. The squirrel who was watching all this from its vantage point below the couch took its opportunity to run through Penney’s legs to safety. The cleaning lady was still on top of the radiator screaming in Andalusian, skirt hiked. Penney took a quick look at the scene as it was unfolding and asked, “How come the cat is chasing the dog and the squirrel is chasing the cat?” This was too difficult to explain, so rather than try, we helped the cleaning lady down from the radiator and the three of us cleaned up the mess.

And what does all of this have to do with the Jewish Question, you ask? What? You have to ask? How do you prepare your house for Passover?