Uzis at the Ready?

The questions of the day are two. Here’s the first: Who would like to see a viable peace in the Middle East with Arabs and Jews living harmoniously in nations side-by-side? Raise your hands. Let’s see, there’s one, two, ten, a thousand, one hundred million, two hundred million.

Now the second question: How many think this will occur in your lifetime? One, two, three, ten, fifteen, sixteen...seventeen......that’s it? I grant, this is not the most scientific of polls, but is there any evidence at all that Arab leaders really want peace with Israel? Hamas leaders? Hezbollah leaders? Syrian leaders? Has peace been possible since 1948? Yes. Has peace been achieved? No. (Well, “yes” if one counts Jordan and Egypt but “no” once those governments are toppled by Islamic fundamentalists.)

So, Happy Birthday Israel. Keep your Uzis close at hand.

In recent days former president Carter has visited leaders of Hamas and declared that they seek peace. This was immediately contradicted by leaders of Hamas. Love or loathe him, Carter is not stupid. So if he said “yes” and they said “no,” it’s obvious that Hamas set him up for a fall. They betrayed their own advocate. Can we expect them to honor their (former) foe?

Last week there was complaint from Palestinians about President Bush’s up-coming trip to Israel to celebrate its sixtieth birthday. He’s already met with Mahmoud Abbas, president of... (well, I’m not sure what. “The Palestinian Authority” is his official title, but he seems to have only a little authority over Palestinians in the West Bank and none at all in Gaza.) Bush said after the meetings that he “remained confident that talks could produce parameters for a Palestinian state.” (OK, another poll: Raise your hands if you know what that means? Seeing none, we’ll proceed.) The president of the United States went on to say, “I assured the president that a Palestinian state’s a high priority for me and my administration: a viable state, a state that doesn’t look like Swiss cheese, a state that provides hope. I’m confident we can achieve the definition of a state.” Achieve the definition of a state? Can a man whose goals are so nebulous be expected to accomplish anything? Does he even have the vaguest idea of what he hopes to accomplish? And was it necessary to insult Helvetians in the bargain? Abbas (who, as a former top aide of Yassir Arafat must be used to double-talk) responded graciously, praising Mr. Bush for “seeking a true, genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East.”

The two presidents are scheduled to meet again in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt, not in Ramallah, the temporary capital of Greater Palestine (until all of Jerusalem can be liberated). My guess is that this is less an overt insult to the Palestinians than an imperative imposed by the Secret Service. “It’s a slap in the face,” said Dianna Buttu, a former negotiator for Abbas. Bush is “saying to the Palestinians ‘You have no history, and your past does not matter.’ He’s not visiting a refugee camp, he’s not meeting survivors of the forced expulsion.” Mustafa Barghouti, a former Palestinian information minister chimed in: “The lack of sensitivity to this matter is very prominent. Forty-eight was, of course, the date when Israel was created but it’s also a very sad date for Palestinians who were dispossessed from their lands. It’s a very deep scar in Palestinian life.”

Does anybody out there see any hope for peace in any of this? Deep scars of the political and emotional kind do not heal. They get infected when palliative measures are not sought, when those who bear the scars prefer to let them fester to prove a point rather than take steps to heal the wounds. Those refugee camps are still in place because Israel wants them? Bush should go to Israel to honor its
60th birthday and also commiserate with the Palestinians? This makes sense to someone?

How many times could there have been peace in the Middle East? Let me count the ways. After 1948, after 1956, after 1967, after 1973, after Oslo, after Madrid, after Camp David, during the Clinton initiative. Is there anything now, other than a one state solution that would return all of Palestine (from the River to the Sea) to the Palestinians that can bring about peace? A peace devoutly to be wished by anti-Zionists everywhere.

Happy Birthday, Israel. Keep your Uzis at the ready.

Passover thoughts, 2008 (5768)

Passover looms. The dishes and pots and glasses and utensils have been schlepped from storage to cabinet, replacing their everyday equivalents which were simultaneously schlepped from cabinet to storage until the chag is over and we can eat bagels again.

So, it’s time to ask (yet again) what the holiday, the holy day, is all about. It has some unusual rules—what was kosher this week won’t be next week. On the other hand, things permitted during Passover can be done anytime (except for the slouching. My mother never let me slouch at meals. [“Reclining, Mom,” I’d tell her, “I’m reclining, not slouching.] It did me no good.)

To the rabbis of antiquity telling the story of the Exodus speaks of the miracles of God in the liberation of His people. More modern, nearly contemporary secular Jews saw the story as one of liberation only. The miracles? Well, maybe. But the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who chose Passover, in 1943 to make their last stand were not expecting a miracle; they were hoping for nothing more than that a few escape while the rest died with at least a remnant of dignity.

To me Passover is or ought to be the Jewish equivalent of the first Monday in September or May 1st. It’s Jewish Labor Day, a celebration of the triumph of the downtrodden worker. Oppressed so hard they could not stand, our ancestors overcame to become the role models to Negro slaves in the antebellum South. Both communities, Hebrews and Africans were exploited labor, both sought relief from God or man, whoever arrived first.

But while our tables groan under the weight of the food placed on it; as we drink the final intoxicating drop from the fourth cup of wine; as we open the door for Elijah to join our celebrations, scant attention will be paid to what’s in the dark, beyond that door. Two weeks ago the newspapers reported that 80,000 American jobs had been lost in the month of March, the most in 5 years, the third straight month of losses. Some, I suppose, may be replaced by those whose labor can be purchased at sub-standard wages.

In Israel there is a kibbutz near Eliat which may reflect current practices. The well educated Israelis work up north in business, and give their net salary to the kibbutz which then uses the money in part to employ Tai workers of the fields. Sic transit Gloria tzion. Does the Jew of Israel no longer believe in the nobility of labor? Is the Jew of Israel interested only in the bottom line? Has Thatcherism and Reaganism spread so far? It seems the sad truth. Of whom do Americans who send jobs to China or exploit cheap labor here think when they point to the matzah and pronounce, “This is the bread of our affliction? We were slaves in Egypt…”
When we invite people to our table (“All who are hungry come and eat”) we offer matzah, the bread of affliction, the bread of poverty. It’s what we eat as well so that there is no difference between what we serve ourselves and those in want. We are all equal on Passover, the rich the poor, all of us are descendants from slaves eating the food of slaves on the threshold of liberty.
If we are to think of Passover as though we were in fact slaves, as the Haggadah enjoins, then it’s obvious that Passover is the story of the redemption of oppressed labor. Their burden was heavy, their lives miserable, like the sweatshop workers so many of our grandparents were at the turn of the previous century. At our house we read excepts of the original text of Exodus (something the Rabbis apparently thought unnecessary or distracting, as they didn’t include that in the service) and we sing of liberation—We Shall Overcome, and Battle Hymn of the Republic (though not the “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea” part); and to the same tune, Solidarity Forever! Always we conclude by singing the song of modern liberation, Hatikvah, to me the hope not only of Zionists to recreate a Jewish homeland, but the hope that Jews will not forget that from which we emerged—an oppressed people yearing to be free, the tired the poor of the age of miracles then of the post-holocaust world now. It was as workers of the field that Jews re-created Israel. Now that’s work for foreigners?

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
(Puck [Robin Goodfellow] in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream, Act 3, scene 2.)

As if Israeli police don’t have enough problems, there’s a new fracas in the offing. Long ago, even before Sunnis and Shiites started slaughtering each other, Christians were killing other Christians. The cause? A proper understanding of who and/or what Jesus was; a proper understanding of the relationship between the three Persons of the Holy Trinity. This is a series of arguments Jews managed somehow not to have with each other, and I, for one, thought that in the name of sanity that a via media by which each sect agreed not to persecute members of the others had been reached. But Christians can’t agree on things any more than Muslims. Or Jews.

In 326 CE, St. Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine the Great, traveled to the Holy land and identified exactly where every event mentioned in the New Testament took place. “The birth was here,” she pronounced pointing to the spot where there arose the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. “Our Lord was crucified here, anointed there and entombed (from which on the third day He emerged) precisely here.” In short order a huge church was built to encompass all three of these latter spots, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Identifying where something took place 300 + years before is difficult, but did not stop the saint from her appointed task. After all, Jesus had to be crucified somewhere and St. Helen’s location is as good as anyone’s. (The last time we were in Israel we wanted to visit this holy shrine but got lost in the backstreets of the Arab shuk. My wife approached a merchant and asked how to get to the church and I knew that our children’s inheritance would be diminished considerably. He showed us; in fact he took us and gave us a mini-tour and then brought us back to his shop. By the time we were able to extricate ourselves… well, she looks lovely in the items we purchased at bargain rates.)

The Christian community has fractured many times over the centuries. There is the split between east and west that became official in 1054. The Orthodox Church has as many branches as there are nations that adhere to it. In the West from 1517 on Protestants divided, subdivided and continue to create new and fascinating versions of the one true holy apostolic church. Whether Mormons are Christian is a debate I choose not to enter.

But back to the Holy Land, which Zionists such as myself call Israel, there is a new feud developing. No one Christian sect controls the church of the Holy Sepulchre. It’s been divided amongst six different forms of Christianity with precise lines of demarcation ever since 1852 when the Turks, in a vain attempt to stop the shouting, divided authority between the sects and left other areas as common (which means that no one controls them, so no one cleans them which creates a terrible odor from the lavatories. No, I’m not making this up.)

To complicate matters, at noon on every Easter eve (I don’t know what that means either) the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, currently Theophilos III, descends into the tomb in which Jesus was briefly buried and receives from God, fire. According to an article in the April 7, 1982 Christian Century, “The event consists of the sending down of fire by God, the bursting forth of flame at the sacred tomb and the lighting of the candle held in the hand of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem.” It should be noted that this sort of thing has precedent. Two weeks ago Jews read parsha Sh’mini, about the dedication of the Tabernacle. God sent fire then, too. It is said.)

But for the past couple of years the Greek Patriarch has refused to be accompanied by the Armenian patriarch who is slighted, feeling that the Greeks are treating Armenians as second-class Christians. Fisticuffs have resulted. Israeli authorities arrest the miscreant monks, but then release them. Oh, if you’ve not read about the fights it’s because Christians can’t seem to agree on when precisely to celebrate Easter. In the West this year it was March 23. To the Orthodox it will be April 27. Israeli police are hoping that the only sparks flying will be the divine ones sent from heaven.

Lord, what fools these mortals be/To take religion seriously.

A Purim piece (redux)

Josh Stein is on a research assignment in Greece. He sends this classic piece for the Purim edition.

I remember my first Purim as a groom. It was the last day of our F. Scot and Zelda period. We were in England on a quick exchange. We’d swapped houses with a professor of British colonial history who needed a place to stay in Rhode Island. It was a marriage made in heaven, much like the one upon which I was embarking.

Our plane landed the day before Purim and being young and in love, my wife and I had celebrated the beginning of the holiday by ourselves, drinking to excess in the traditional manner, falling fast asleep on top of the down mattress we had the pleasure of using for those two weeks. The next morning around midnight (according to my biological clock, though it was 6:00 a.m. English time) we heard a pounding on the front door. We both responded with the same articulate grunts, “Huh, wha’ what’s happening?” More pounding. I got up, not knowing where and when my clothes had come off. More pounding. Whoever it was, he or they were certainly persistent. “I can’t go down to the door like this,” I protested. “Here, wear this,” saith the bride. Hurriedly I put on her pink shorty robe. Inside out. Naturally I could not find the buttons and because of an obvious discrepancy between her sveltness and my rotundity I couldn’t properly close the thing. Stumbling out the door of the bedroom, half blindly (my glasses hadn’t been anywhere near my fumbling fingers when I’d shot bolt upright as the pounding began), I found the stairs, and trooped down, half falling, half stumbling, fully confused, head throbbing, eyes bleary, mouth dry, hair a shambles, eyes bloodshot. After an interminable moment I remembered how to unlock the bolt and I threw the portal open to confront an uncaring world.

The man I blearily saw hadn’t shaved that day, nor the day before, apparently. He wore work cloths that hadn’t been washed since the Blitz. He stared at me incredulously. I stared back at him with wonder—as in “I wonder what this fellow is, and what he wants?” He attempted to resolve the issue by saying, screaming at me, really, “DOOSTBINMIN” which did not do a great deal to clarify anything. “What?” I shouted in reply. “DOOSTBINMIN” he said, still louder. “What?” “ROOBISH!” Well, this was not getting us very far.

By now Penney had gotten dressed and sylphlike glided down the stairs. (She’d just abandoned Zelda and entered her Loretta Young phase). She said to me, calmly. “Josh, he’s the dustbin man and he wants to collect our rubbish.” “Oh,” I said sheepishly, glad once again that I’d married a linguist. “Tha’s right, Guv,” said the now smiling dustbinmin, as he lasciviously eyed my pretty bride and waited for me to collect any household garbage we might have. Sadly the owners had left us a spotless home to move into, so there was none Feeling abashed at the lack I found a slipper half chewed by some kind of animal I’m glad to say we never actually saw. This meager object I placed into a plastic bag and proudly presented to our garbage man, who looked at the meager offerings with ill-disguised disdain. “Tha’ it, Guv?” he asked. “Yup,” I said, sheepishly. “Right-o,” he replied. “Hag Purim Sameach!” and off he went.

My mouth agape I tried calling after him. “How’d you know we were Jewish, that this is Purim?” But the words didn’t come out, and as I saw him toss our trash into the back of the big garbage truck I’d somehow failed to notice until this point, he waved enigmatically and that was the last I saw of him on that morning. “A Jewish dustbinmin?” I mumbled snobbishly.

Only later did I find out what really happened that morning. Our dustbin man was, in fact, the rabbi of the local Reform (they call it “Liberal”) synagogue who was a friend of the house’s owner who had told him that Jews were moving in for a couple of weeks. In the spirit of Purim the rabbi had donned the garb of a garbage man and pulled our legs. After all these years (thirty by last count) we still exchange Purim cards and visit each other when we are in the other’s country. An odd way to begin a life-long friendship, but life is strange with its twists and turns. Just ask Queen Esther.

Boomers in the White House (Or: How I guessed wrong)

Caveat Lector. Reader, beware! In 1980 I confidently predicted that President Carter would narrow defeat Ronald Reagan. In 1992 I was sure that President George H.W. Bush would defeat little known Bill Clinton. In 2000 it was obvious that Al Gore would win over George W. Bush. (On that one I was right, except that…well, you know…) So I’ve given up on predicting presidential contests, even primaries. By the time you read this Obama will probably be the prohibitive favorite, or even the nominal nominee of the Democratic Party (whoops, poor Obama, I’ve just made a prediction!). The rules of the game are that I can’t endorse, and I wouldn’t, but I can comment in the comment section of this paper, and so I will.

Those who voted in the Democratic Primary earlier this month were purportedly given a choice between style (Obama) and substance (Clinton). But as Barbara Fields alluded last week, there might be more than that; we were given a choice between my generation and the next, and for those of us in my age-range we can compare to those in our parents’ generation.

My parents’ generation was represented by Kennedy and Nixon, the one the golden boy of change, the other an exemplar of suspicion and trickery; Ford and Carter are of their generation too, both men of honor, neither up to the job; Reagan was a throwback, the front man for those who wanted ever since its inception to undo the New Deal. Then after H.W. Bush it was my generation’s turn to produce presidents. We gave you Clinton and Bush, both draft evaders, the former a womanizer whose indiscretions cost his party its hold of congress and later the presidency. The latter is a failed example of a puppet king who succeeded in doing his masters’ task, lowering their taxes, and then thought he could assume the mantle of leadership by creating an unnecessary war, and in so doing has alienated 70% of the country.

My generation was the product of the sexual revolution (thanks to Hugh Heffner, et al.) and rock and roll—that most mindless of music which has now further degenerated into the non-music of racial slur, misogamy and gangstas. We were babied by our doting parents who had survived the Great Depression and the Second World War, determined that we should have what they had not, and we appreciated it. But if Clinton and Bush are our representative presidents, we have failed to live up to our enormous potential.

Now another Clinton is running for president. At first she seemed to be the prohibitive favorite, the all but anointed champion of her party, the heir presumptive to her husband’s popularity. She was thought of as inevitable. And she was. Until the voters had their say. First in Iowa, then in South Carolina, then not able to eliminate her rival on Super Tuesday she suffered a string of defeats until the March 4th contests which are before me, but by the time you read these words you will know whether she was able to survive as a viable candidate, or not. Yes, she’s strong on policy, but she’s of my generation, and therefore I think that she’ll lose; I think the American public has had enough of us baby-boomers whose time in office was brief (16 years) but perhaps too long.

Obama on the other hand seems to have surmounted the twin trials of being inexperienced and half African. He is reputed to be a Manchurian Candidate, a crypto Muslim who will betray America and Israel. It’s nonsense, of course, but such are the tactics of conservatives who fear that he will defeat whomsoever the Republicans put up—whether it be the aged war hero or the amusing creationist.

As a people we seem at this writing to be at the tipping point. Should we give one more chance to the old discredited generation, or take a blind leap of faith towards the new? Not to belabor the cliché, but it’s the same question voters were asked to resolve in 1960. Nixon the man of experience, who while the same age as Kennedy, seemed a throwback to the old, or take a chance on the less experienced visionary. Then, narrowly, we looked forward. Today? I think we will again. My generation has failed America in its offerings as president. I think America is looking for new hope in a new generation of mixed blood. I may be wrong. It’s happened before.


A correction: Last week quotation marks were inadvertently omitted, making it appear that I had said that I would like to ban the writings of David Duke, etc. but that we don’t do those things in America. While I agree with the sentiment, the words were not mine; I was quoting a colleague, J. S. Friedman of the College of Wooster in Ohio.

The Hissing of Hatred Towards Jews

In Italy, as in the rest of Europe, there is a hissing stream of hatred toward Jews and things Jewish, including Israel. It’s usually condemned by governments of the moderate right and left, but it persists. Is it possible to side with Arabs in the seemingly endless conflict with Israel without being anti-Semitic? Yes, it is. If by siding with Arabs is one hoping for the destruction of Israel? Not necessarily. But something else is worming its way to the surface of normal life. In Italy, a land I love, three events have recently cast shadows, crossing the line from intelligent disagreement to venomous strike. One attack is from the left, another from the right, the third is from the Roman curia.

The first assault has made national headlines and needs no more explanation here. In Turin there is an annual international book fair. This year it was decided to honor some of Israel’s most prestigious authors—Amos Oz, David Grossman, and Abraham Yehousha. Some leftists, led by the leader of the Communist party, protested that honoring Israelis at the same time that Israel is celebrating its 60th birthday was tantamount to the fair taking an Anti-Palestinian stance and they called for a boycott. One hardly need wonder for long if this would have been the response to a salute to Arab authors.

The Roman church has decided to allow the Latin Good Friday Mass which before Vatican II referred to Jews as blind and perfidious but now only contains this pearl: “Let us pray for the Jews. May the Lord Our God enlighten their hearts so that they may acknowledge Jesus Christ, the savior of all men. Almighty and everlasting God, you who want all men to be saved and to reach the awareness of the truth, graciously grant that, with the fullness of peoples entering into your church, all Israel may be saved.” Well, it’s better than being called perfidious, I suppose, and the odious reference to Matthew 27:25 is omitted, but, still, I could do without prayers for my conversion with its implied condemnation of retrograde Judaism.

If all that weren’t enough, on January 16 anonymous Italian bloggers took it upon themselves to publish the names of 150 Italian professors identifying them as “publicly and politically” loyal to Israel, not to Italy. While their university affiliations were listed their home addresses and phone numbers were not. But how long would it take even a fascist (for this assault is from the far right, from people who look back fondly to the good old days of il Duce) to find it out…and take action?

The obvious intention of the blog was to intimidate Jews. The government of Italy took swift action. Reuters reports that it was removed and that Interior Minister Giuliano Amato ordered police to investigate. Education Minister Giuseppe Fioroni called the blog a shameful “kind of Ku Klux Klan of the digital age.” Reuters further reported that the blog had “links to far-right websites and themes like Holocaust revisionism, appeals to boycott Israel” and in support of Mussolini.

An Italian colleague, Donatella Ester De Cesare wrote a letter of appeal which reminded that “The aggression towards intellectuals is the first sign of the savagery. We ask your solidarity. A word, a gesture could be important.” Faced with this cry for help, academics around the country discussed what could be done. Initially it was proposed that letters to the Italian embassy in Washington be sent thanking the government for its swift action. One well-known professor of Holocaust studies put Donatella’s letter on her website. But then it was suggested that here we would not close down even the most obnoxious of webpages. “Sure I would love to shut down David Duke’s website and a host of others, ban David Irving’s books and so forth, but here we’ve agreed not to do things like that.”

I signed a petition which reads in part, “We stand in solidarity with, and thank those colleagues from Italy, of different faiths and ethnicities, to let them know that they are not alone and that, as scholars, we have an obligation to stand against racism and anti-semitism.”

Will it help? Probably not; the Italian government already knows how academics feel, and so does the fascist right. But still, it’s a beginning. Anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism is rife. The serpent has slept; now he awakes, ever with more audacity. “The perfidious Jew is your enemy,” he hisses; into willing ears.

Prayer: Is anyone listening?

In last Saturday’s pre-Super Bowl edition of the Providence Journal, various local clergy responded to the question, “Does praying for victory in a football game help?” The Catholic bishop said it probably does no harm, but he assumes that God has more important things to worry about. (This is true only if God is not a New Yorker or a New Englander, because obviously to us there’s nothing more important!) True to his heritage the pastor of the First Baptist Church in America said he believed in separation of sports and religion. But then he added that he doesn’t pray about sports as it’s not fair to the other team. A local imam of my acquaintance advised against praying for frivolous things. Nevertheless, if his team (The Giants) is losing late in the fourth quarter, he might, deep down in his heart, offer up a prayer—and then ask for forgiveness. And what said the rabbi? He offered this gem: “It’s not right to pray for one group and cause distress to others…[but] “based on Biblical teachings, the side that has the most spiritual effort is the one that will win out. Sometimes the spiritual forces are stronger on one side than the other.”

What do all these have in common? Incredibly enough they all think that prayer can affect the outcome of a game (but that we shouldn’t stoop to that). Holy Moley! Are these guys kidding? Haven’t we as a species yet grown out of the idea that magic works? Here’s the Religious Studies 101 distinction between magic and religion. The latter implores the spirit world, the former commands it. According to the rabbi, God weighs the spiritual strength of those who pray and grants victory to their team? Did I read that right? Sir James Frazer, in his classic The Golden Bough argued that mankind goes through three stages of contact with the unknown world—first magic, then religion and finally, the stage we are entering (he wrote in 1900) the scientific. But apparently when it comes to football, monotheists among us have taken a giant step backwards. Only the Hindu swami began to approach the question with the mindset of a rationalist: “Whoever plays better wins.” (At this point, if I knew how to spell Homer Simpson’s famous ejaculation, I would insert it. “Dough!” Does that capture it?)

The older I get, the closer to death I come, the more I realize the futility of prayer. God or nature is self-evidently indifferent to what happens to us. We exist, we die and someone else is born and the cycle goes on and on and on and on. I don’t pray. In schul I sit, I stand, I sing, I meditate, I make a minyan. Prayer itself? Much of it is in praise of God, but I figure He knows how great He is; He doesn’t need me to tell Him. Prayer for the sick? Better to see an AMA approved physician. The eighteenth century deists said that God made the world and then merely observes. Sometimes it’s hard to disagree. And on Saturday, the death of a friend caught in a fire fresh in my mind, I didn’t. On Sunday I attended a shivah minyan and then went to friends’ house and rooted for the Pats. Life goes on, and there is no evidence at all that God cares.

When my mother died, I attended daily morning and evening minyans. I donned a talis, wrapped my arm with tephelin, and stood to say kaddish at the appropriate moments. Those who attend the services on a regular basis read Hebrew faster than I can think in English. So I tried various tricks. I read only the first half of each line. And still fell behind. Then I switched to reading every second or third line. No good. All this left me with the obvious question: Why do I do this each day, twice a day. In the end I concluded that as my mother was always there for me when she was alive I would be there for her, fulfilling the obligation imposed on me centuries before either of us was born. And so, for her, and not for me, I went to schul. It’s what dutiful sons do.

This newspaper loves to receive letters from readers. Let’s start something. Flood the editor with your opinion on the value of prayer. We can begin a dialogue.

Oh, and my friend the imam, Allah may forgive him, but I don’t.