Nightmare Scenarios

My recurring nightmare first hit in Junior High School. The dream is always different, yet in theme always the same. I’m wherever I am and suddenly I remember that I hadn’t submitted a required term paper in Spanish class (that was the first, so I give it as exemplar of all). If a benevolent deity were observing he’d wake me then and there; but no such luck. On and on I dream of flunking out of Junior High; the fear becomes angst, the angst, blooms into panic until, finally, gasping for breath, sweat covering my body I awake with a start. But even then the terror has not subsided because I can’t immediately ascertain if the task not done was a dream, or not. Gradually, reality takes hold and I remember that there were no Spanish term papers in the 8th grade. But still the heart palpitates, still the light of day is slow to comfort, still the vice around my head is not fully loosened, until it is.

I tell you that because a variant of it happened again, recently. On Saturday last I napped. But my reverie was suddenly interrupted by the dream of the undone assignment. I had a column to write for the Voce & Herald and unlike Spanish term papers, this was real. I awoke with a start but without an idea. What to write, what to write, what? The Forward had arrived while I slept. It’s usually good fodder for ideas, but not that issue. But then, grasping for straws, I knew there was one ace in the whole as yet unexplored. David Klinghoffer. He doesn’t always appear and so my immediate prayer was, “Let there be Klinghoffer,” and I was rewarded with … Klinghoffer! His essay was on Huckabee and evolution, but, to be honest, I didn’t follow the thread of it, and so I despaired. But then I read the description of the author: “David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, is the author of the forthcoming ‘How would God Vote? Why the Bible Commands You to Be a Conservative’ (Doubleday).” So maybe there is a compassionate deity who hath delivered a column into my hands, after all.

Now, one of the first things you learn in PhD school is “Never discuss something you’ve not read.” Normally this makes excellent sense, but as Doubleday has not yet spewed forth this tome, may I be excused if I disobey, just this once? Done! I grant myself the dispensation.

Let’s start with basics: What’s the difference between a conservative and a liberal? The former thinks society is pretty much the way it should be. The latter realizes that things could be much better. I’m thinking that a compassionate deity would not expect readers of Tanakh to support policies that make the rich richer, the poor poorer, the nation engaged in unnecessary wars of opportunity.

According to a recent column by Bob Herbert in the Times, Wall Street fat cats are collecting $38 billion in seasonal bonuses this year. My guess is that they read Klinghoffer and vote for Bush. On the other hand, only 16% of workers think their children will be better off than they are. And Tanakh says about this? “And you shall not glean your vineyard…; you shall leave them for the poor and stranger.” This is one of six references in Leviticus which suggests that rapacious employers should leave at least something for the tired, the poor, the homeless, the people liberals are concerned to protect. I don’t know how Klinghoffer will address this issue.

Labor is protected in Tanakh, not to be exploited as modern conservative are wont to, justifying it with market-driven theories. Every Yom Kippur Isaiah asks: “Is not this the fast that I have chosen… to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring the poor that are cast out to your house; when you see the naked, that you cover him…?” Liberals seek to provide for the needy; Bush conservatives cut taxes and when a hurricane struck New Orleans the poor (and the poor always suffer most in a natural disaster) found that there was neither money nor interest in helping them recover. Is that what Tanakh teaches? I’ll have to wait until Klinghoffer’s tome enlightens.

I began by discussing nightmares, but the real nightmare of course, would not be a column unwritten, but four more years of compassionate conservatism with faith-based initiatives and tax breaks for the wealthiest.

Whence cometh the Religious Right?

I wonder why, as a Jew, I should care what kind of Christianity is acceptable to the religious right of the Republican Party. Do I really care whether Mitt Romney’s religion is a legitimate branch of the Protestant tree, or a cult that has sprung up, like myriad others in the fertile soil of American credulity? No, but I have to admit that this question is of importance to someone out there.

I used to hate it when old folk would begin a sentence with “When I was young…” or its variant, “It used to be that…” but now that I’m approaching mid-life myself, I suppose I’m entitled to say, When I was young it used to be that public piety was the exception to the rule, not a requirement for the presidency equal to, or more important than, knowledge of foreign policy. Samuel Johnson, once famously said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I humbly add, “…and religion is the first defense of the inadequate politician.” Did Eisenhower flog his religion in public? Even that scoundrel Nixon somehow managed to avoid recourse to his Quaker piety. Barry Goldwater, the modern standard-bearing forerunner of the Republican right wing, Barry Goldwater said many things about religious tests for office, but they boil down to this one statement: “I don’t have any respect for the Religious Right.”

So, what happened? How did religion come to dominate a party that purports to stand for strict construction of the constitution—which states clearly that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”? And how is that even Democrats are bowing before the altar of faith? Here the culprit, as is often the case, is Ronald Reagan, whose handlers decided that wooing the Moral Majority would win votes. His success taught the others. At first religion was disguised as “family values” but out of the closet it came with the 2000 Republican debates. George W. Bush announced that his favorite political philosopher was Jesus Christ—foolish ol’ Thom Jefferson thought the correct answer was John Locke! When Bush won despite his obvious deficiencies those who would be his successors learned to play the same card.

As to Romney, his speech to Evangelical Christian leaders spoke volumes in what he said, and what he omitted. He asked not to be rejected based on his religion, but only once in the course of his 20 minutes did he mention the word “Mormon.” He said that he would not let his faith intrude on decisions, but then called for “a robust role for religion in public life, declaring there was a common moral heritage across religious lines in the country that he would champion,” according to the New York Times. He promised, in his words, to “take care to separate the affairs of government from any religion, but I will not separate us from the God who gave us liberty.” He also said, “In recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life.” (I plead guilty to that one!) Then he said two other things, but ignored their opposites. He said that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world.” Then he cited as proof that the founders did not want an absolute separation of religion and state a story set during the continental Congress. When someone suggested a prayer be said he was told that there were too many different religious views present. “Then Sam Adams rose, and said he would hear a prayer from anyone of piety and good character, as long as they were a patriot.”

What Romney failed to say was that in 1774 there was no constitution of the United States to guide proper action; what he failed to say was that during the Constitutional convention, an acrimonious debate ensued; prayer was again suggested—this time met with embarrassed silence; before the founders got back to business. What Romney failed to say is that despite the fact that “Americans do not respect believers of convenience,” when he was Governor of liberal Massachusetts he was pro-choice; now that he’s running for the Evangelical vote he’s pro-life. Is anyone surprised?

World War II Monument: A Reflection

A month ago I gave a talk to the Jewish War Veterans of Rhode Island. My hosts were generally of an age to have been in service during the Second World War, possibly Korea. I thought of them again on the day before Thanksgiving.

I’d done some shopping on Federal Hill and on my way back to the more familiar environs of the East Side I stopped at the newly dedicated World War II memorial on South Main Street. There were no legal spots to park, so I took my chances with the law and walked to the shrine. Its principal features are two low walls bearing the names of the 2,562 Rhode Islanders who died while serving in the war and eight pillars dedicated to specific engagements in the Pacific/Far eastern Campaign (3 of these); the South East Asia campaign; the Battle for the Atlantic; the Mediterranean conflict; and the European Theater (2 of these). The pillars support an open circle of stone, suggestive of a halo above the whole. Inscribed on the walls are two phrases, the first unintentionally ironic, given the length of time it took to complete the memorial. It’s by Edward Everett, the other speaker at that famous Gettysburg cemetery dedication in 1863. “No lapse of time, no distance of space, shall cause you to be forgotten.” The other is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Decoration Day”: “Yours has the suffering been, the memory shall be ours.”

Near this circle are four benches; while the inspirational lines and the names of the dead are the magnets to the eye, the benches, I think, provide the context. Onto each, carved by RISD professor Merlin Szosz, (the idea was suggested by my friend and colleague Michael Fink, also of RISD) is one of the four freedoms enunciated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his sobering January 1941 State of the Union Address:

“I suppose,” he’d said, “that every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world …. During 16 long months this assault has blotted out the whole pattern of democratic life in an appalling number of independent nations, great and small. And the assailants are still on the march, threatening other nations, great and small.”
Then, after discussing the munitions necessary to engage the enemy the president reminded:

“As men do not live by bread alone, they do not fight by armaments alone. Those who man our defenses and those behind them who build our defenses must have the stamina and the courage which come from unshakable belief in the manner of life which they are defending. The mighty action that we are calling for cannot be based on a disregard of all the things worth fighting for. [Mr. Incumbent President, are you listening?] In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

“The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.
“The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the world.
“The third is freedom from want, …everywhere in the world.
“The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments...”

If ever there was a rallying cry for a good and just war, these four freedoms, their summation carved into the benches at the World War II memorial, was it. Our enemies were real; their weapons were real; their conquests were real; their defeat as uncertain as it was necessary. We (they, those of that generation, my father’s generation) were not fighting for natural resources, or for strategic advantage, or just because we could; they were fighting for a recognizably just purpose. That we have not yet achieved the goals is not the point. It may be impossible to achieve any of the four. But reading them on the benches at the memorial is the constant reminder or what freedom is really all about, what struggle with tyranny is really about.

When I got back to my car, I saw it had been ticketed by an over zealous constable. But how could I complain? My cost was as nothing compared to the 2,562 who I had come to commemorate, Rhode Island’s dead of the Second World War. Zichrono Livracha; Requiescat In Pace; rest in peace, haverim of the previous generation who died in the effort to preserve our freedoms.

Autumnal Thoughts

As a college sophomore (Warren Gamaliel Harding was president, I think) I read this poem by Stephen Crane. It helped to define my world view as few pieces of literature have been able to:

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
“A sense of obligation.”

I thought of those lines the other day, on the Sunday of the great football victory over the Colts, as we walked to an appointment. The sky was deep blue with cirrus wisps and puffs of cotton, floating; the breeze merely a gentle disturbance of hair; leaves swirled downward, beautiful in their death pirouettes, bestrewing lawn and sidewalk with vivid autumnal hues. It was a good-to-be-alive day.

We walked resolutely to meet our guide, sure that we had to take this journey, uncertain as to its results, dreading its implications. We came early to the gate, but there he was, patiently waiting, knowing with a certainty that we would arrive. Though it wasn’t necessary, we got into his car and drove along the paved paths at a funereal pace, as was right and proper, to the new Jewish section. For years my wife and I had strolled the lanes of Swan Point, lamenting that it wasn’t a consecrated Jewish cemetery. The only Jewish cemetery in Rhode Island is half an hour away by car (a vast distance in the minds of locals, of which we have become two) but this place is within walking distance of home; many of its graves are guarded by ancient trees, shading in summer, colorful in autumn, stately, almost magisterial, all year round. But not for us who wanted a Jewish funeral. Then, last year, my synagogue bought land in Swan Point surrounded by a road and declared it acceptable for congregants. So, there we were to look at what might be our permanent abode, within walking distance of the home we’ve lived in for a mere 30 years.

It’s a vast field inhabited now only by two people, their graves so recently occupied as to be not yet ready for headstones, but soon enough they will be joined by others whose plots were spoken for. “Who’s reserved already?” we enquired. “X and Y and Z whom you know,” we were informed. “Where’s X?” I asked. “Where’s Z?” she inquired. “What’s the best view?” In the end we made no commitment. Not yet, anyway. But we’ve reached the age where we have to start looking. Walking home in the still brisk morning, the sun shining on our faces, breathing the air that scattered the leaves and rustled our hair, we talked of inevitabilities, returning to the foolish human questions: What’s the view, who are the neighbors for all of eternity?

In the end none of it matters, of course. The view won’t be enjoyed by us (but we hope that if anyone ever visits they, at least, will find it pleasant). As to whom the neighbors are, do we really expect an eternal koffeeklatch? I don’t. I expect that once dead, I’ll be pretty much … dead. Heaven? Hell? Do they exist? I don’t know (but I doubt it); I’m a Jew. What matters to me is perfecting this world, not entering one already perfect. I live my life here, I protect my children, I love my wife, I teach my students.

So rather than concentrate on the issue at hand—to buy or not to buy and if to buy where and when, I thought of Crane’s poem and realized its flaw. The universe might not care about us, but we do. We have things to say, things to teach, lessons learned, memories treasured in secret mental vaults that ought not to die with us. Someday in retirement I think I’ll open a business. I don’t know yet what I’ll call it but it will give the living the chance to communicate with the universe, to reverse the poem’s cynicism, to allow people to shout “Not only do I exist, but I matter. This is who I was; this is what I’ve learned; this is me!” and I’ll write it down and smooth it out and present it to the speaker as a work in progress to be amended and refined over time and in the end given to his family as a gift as lovely as an autumn day in New England, but more permanent, like those majestic trees in Swan Point Cemetery.

Perfection Becomes Jews

This is my column as submitted for November 2, 2007. The editor thought it a bit risqué in places so toned it down. Alas, the lass tampered with perfection:

Another letter from my atheist friend, Pauly Poopydingus, with a notarized permission-to-publish attached. But first an admission of an error that has been haunting me for the past two weeks. In the last issue I spoke of a lecture I attended on the topic: “Did Primo Levi ever forgive the Germans for their treatment of the Jews?” I then used that as a jumping off point to discuss whether contemporary American policies re: tortures of captives, are something for which we will have to ask forgiveness in the future. Some who support the administration's policies in Iraq took offense, as is their right, but one pointed out what I acknowledge is an error in typing, though not in judgment. I wrote, from the perspective of someone who did not suffer the agonies of Auschwitz, “Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans.” My mistake was in conflating Germans and Nazis. I intended to ask, as Levi had, “Is it time to forgive the Germans” but instead of “Germans,” I wrote “Nazis.” To the question I intended to ask, “Is it time to forgive the Germans,” I stick with my original emphatic “maybe;” to the question I didn't intend, “Is it time to forgive the Nazis?” I respond with “NO; not now, not ever!”

As to Poopydingus, he writes from the safety of far-off Cincinnati that “Jews should stop being angry with Ann Coulter. She’s an exhibitionist who feeds off of her own self-created self-importance by spewing forth one quotable stupidity after another (Liberals are traitors; Edwards is a “faggot”; 9/11 widows are enjoying their husbands’ deaths—there are others, but those suffice).”

About then I began to wonder where Poopydingus was going with this, but he never disappoints.

“But her latest foray into fatuousness, that America should be a nation of Christians and that while Jews (I imagine she means, Republican Jews) can go to heaven, Christians look forward to the time of ‘perfecting’ Jews into Christianity. That, Josh, is something Jews should embrace, cherish and adore.”

Which led me to ask, “Why should I appreciate Coulter, exactly? Isn’t this just more anti-Semitic assault, like in the bad old days before toleration, diversity and the commonality of man became the guiding principles of liberalism?” Poopydingus continued:

“We live under the patronizing presumption that there’s such a thing as ‘Judeo-Christian civilization.’ Verily I say unto you, old chum, there ain’t no such thing. There are Jews and there are Christians (and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and, God bless us, atheists). But in the search for commonality, to avoid conflict, you monotheists have ignored a glaring reality. Here it is, ready for it? Better put on your sunglasses because you’re gonna be blinded by the truth, knocked off your ass, like St Paul on the road to Damascus: If you believed in the divinity of Jesus, you’d be a Christian! If you believed that Muhammad was the last and greatest of God’s prophets, you’d be a Muslim. If a Protestant believed that the Bishop of Rome is infallible in matters of faith and morals he’d really be a Catholic. But none of these things apply. We all think each others religions are bull___ (will they print that?) don’t we? Except me who says they’re all bull___. Of course Coulter spoke as she did! She’s a Christian who believes that all other religions are bull___. Christians have believed this since the dawn of their religion. Wake up, Josh; smell the incense! They only kept Jews around as witnesses to the success of their Truth or to borrow Money. You guys, anxious to be accepted by the majority, fearful that if they ever remember that you deny the divinity of the Christ they worship they’ll have another pogrom, readily plunge headlong into the canard that there’s such a thing as Judeo-Christian civilization. Pshaw! You Jews can be proud of what you’ve done; you don’t need to hide behind a cassock. So she offended you by reminding you of an eternal truth—that Christians think Jews have missed the boat. Well, you think they’ve jumped ship. Relax; re-assert yourself, now that you know what the true believers really think of you.”

It’s obvious that poor ol’ Poopydingus is on the fast track to Gehenna. But he never disappoints.

A Correction

In the posting immediately below I speak of a lecture I attended on the topic: Did Primo Levi ever forgive the Germans for their bestial treatment of the Jews and others. I then use that as a jumping off point to discuss whether contemporary American policies re: tortures are something for which we will have to ask forgiveness in the future. Some who support the administration's policies in Iraq took offense, as is their right, but one pointed out what I now acknowledge is an error in typing, though not in judgment. I wrote, from the perspective of someone who did not suffer the agonies of Auschwitz, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans." My mistake was in conflating Germans and Nazis. I intended to ask, as Levi had, "Is it time to forgive the Germans" but instead of writing "Germans," I wrote,"Nazis." To the question is it time to forgive the Germans, I stick with my original emphatic "maybe"; to the question I didn't intend to ask, "Is it time to forgive the Nazis" I respond with "NO, never!"

I was originally thinking of editing the piece as it appears on this blog, so that people would never know of the gaff--but that, it seemed to me, was too much in imitation of the way Winston Smith earned his meager subsistence in 1984, so I leave the original error and ask the reader's forbearance.

On Primo Levi, forgiveness and dangers of complacency

Last week I attended a lecture in Salomon Hall on the campus of Brown University. The lecturer was Alvin Rosenfeld whose talk was on Primo Levi, the Italian Jewish chemist caught up in the Nazi Holocaust who managed to survive Auschwitz and write several books about the experience, most notably but not exclusively Survival in Auschwitz. The question Rosenfeld addressed is whether forgiveness is possible for someone who has undergone Auschwitz, specifically whether Levi ever forgave his tormenters. It’s a good question, but it’s insufficient. If we only ask about forgiveness by others of others we ignore the value of history and literature as predictive mirrors of our lives.

I write from memory, not from notes, but my impression is that Levi started out despising Germans, not only Nazis who he saw as microcosms of the whole. The worst Nazi crime was to deny him his humanity by stripping him of reasonable alternatives, of creating a Kafkaesque world. But over time he tried to understand them, even going so far as to learn German so as better to communicate with any Germans who might be so inclined. With the exception of one who died just before a promised meeting, the interviews never took place. In the end, Levi could not forget, could not forgive. Despairing of coming to grips with the destruction of his soul, he may have committed suicide in 1987. He left no note, but Rosenfeld does not doubt that the fall down a flight of stairs was deliberate.

As I listened, I wondered. First I asked myself if is time for those of us who never endured the Nazi horror to forgive, but then my thoughts wandered to a more pressing issue. Suppose we are guilty ones who will be asking our descendents to forgive us. Do we deserve it? Was Walt Kelly right? Have we met the enemy…and he is us? What have we allowed in our name as we have ignored what has been imposed on us and the world by those who claim to reflect darkly our attitudes, in the process perverting our ideals. Nazis took a country that was in the forefront of human cultural development and dragged it down with them into the slime of Auschwitz. Is this Act II of the same crime?

The following Sunday I began my day, as I always do, by opening up Frank Rich’s column in The New York Times. He begins with this broadside “‘Bush lies’ doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves.” He then discusses torture. That’s done in our name, folk, but denied in our name as well. All of which goes to show that George Orwell’s dystopia is alive and well and living in Washington, DC. Rich reminds that the claim is made that we don’t torture we engage in “enhanced interrogation” techniques. We knew that. What we (I) didn’t know is that the term is from the Gestapo who called it Verschärfte Vernehmung which means “enhanced interrogation.” (And who knew that when Richard Nixon was speaking about the “Great Silent Majority” which supported his war on Vietnam he was inadvertently quoting from Homer who referred to the great silent majority as those who have died? I did!) Rich holds our feet to the fire for countenancing Abu Ghraib and now for turning our backs on the scandal of outsourcing to fight our wars in our names so that we don’t pay attention when Blackwater mercenaries indiscriminately kill Iraqi civilians. In our name. He doesn’t even mention the illegal detentions in Guantánamo, but he does compare our methods with those used by American interrogators of Nazi prisoners. “We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” says one. Another “recalled that he ‘never laid hands on anyone’… adding ‘I am proud to say I never compromised my humanity.’”

Rich concludes with this: “Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those good Germans’ who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo.”

Is it time to forgive the Nazis? Levi asked. I ask if it’s time to forgive ourselves. Maybe in the first case the answer is yes; the Nazis are dead. In the second, only if we want to avert our eyes, like the good Germans.