A Plan That Won't Work

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

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

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

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

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 What he doesn’t acknowledge is that that Hamas could not have taken over the territory if Israel hadn’t unilaterally withdrawn in 2005.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

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

Anthony Weiner and Jesus

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

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

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

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

Bannning Brit Milah?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A crazy week

What a week!

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

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

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

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

As I’ve said, it was a crazy week.

More foolishness on the founders scene

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spiked Pieces

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reflections on "Paul"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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