The world has beaten a path to Judith Butler's door and the sweet sessions of her robust and imaginative thoughts have given succor and encouragement to the world's dispossessed and (pre)occupied. I must confess I have not read much of her academical infused writing;
 |
She looks a bit like Ayn Rand
but I'm being unfair & obnoxious
|
I tried, honestly, but I'm afraid I just can't get through it-even with my trusty Webster's Third by my side. I am awaiting word, by the way, from my indispensable local library on whether her recent book, Parting Ways-Jewishness and the Critique of Zionism has arrived. My little local public library is quite good at getting the books I request when they don't have the volume on their own shelves and I can just imagine, that is I like to imagine, that some of my more recent requests have raised a stern librarian-brow as my library is located in a small town in upstate New York that has made a name for itself as its school district is being sued because of certain anti-semitic behaviour -
 |
No? Maybe?
|
"Boycott Israel Prof Judith Butler Invited to Jewish Museum Conference on Franz Kafka" Lightning Rod Academic's Politics 'Not a Factor'
 |
The Jewish Museum at 92nd St. and 5th Ave was once the
Felix Warburg home. According to Rand Paul's favorite
source, Wikipedia, Mr. Warburg's father-in-law, Jacob Schiff,
thought the plans for the house too ostentatious and would invite
anti-semitism- you know, what will the goyim say.
|
"The Jewish Museum in New York has reportedly invited a controversial critic of Israel to speak at a conference on the work of Franz Kafka in March." Judith Butler, a University of California professor who is a lightning rod because of her harsh criticism of the Jewish state, was invited because “politics were not a factor” in determining speakers for the March 6 event, entitled “Wish You Were Here: Franz Kafka,” according to the Algemeiner."
I love the title of the event. And then from something called "Higher Ed" a few days later:
Judith Butler Withdraws From Talk at Jewish Museum
February 24, 2014
"Judith Butler, a noted literary theorist who is the Wun Tsun Tam Mellon Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, has called off a talk she was supposed to give at the Jewish Museum in New York City, amid criticism of her support for the boycott of Israel. Butler's talk was not to have been about her views on the Middle East, but on Franz Kafka, who died well before the State of Israel was created. A statement from the museum said: "She was chosen on the basis of her expertise on the subject matter to be discussed. While her political views were not a factor in her participation, the debates about her politics have become a distraction making it impossible to present the conversation about Kafka as intended."
This seems a trend among our communal organizations, to disinvite or refuse to invite any (famous?) outspoken critic of Israel qua Israel's policy toward the Palestinians. It really has been going on for quite some time and its always the same - the names change, but the issues remain along with the misconceptions, fear, and passions. Last year students at Brooklyn College invited Ms Butler and after the usual contretemps the event went on and as far as I know Brooklyn College is still standing. Recently (and what isn't?) high school students at the well-heeled Ramaz School, an Orthodox Jewish private institution on New York's upper east side, asked Prof. Rashid Khalidi of Columbia to offer his views on the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. Dr. Khalidi, too, is an outspoken advocate of Palestinian rights and a hard critic of Israel's current policies in the "territories". Ironically (or not) he was invited at the suggestion of Peter Beinart, a writer and author, who has himself often criticized Israel for its harsh treatment of the Palestinians and many at the school thought it was a good idea. The head of the school, a Mr. Shaviv, thought otherwise. According to reports Shaviv had a very amicable meeting with Khalidi but his reason for finally cancelling the event with the students is, well, a little pathetic, and, most unfortunately, a bit cowardly - especially in an educational milieu. Shaviv is quoted as nixing the visit because,
“It would be a bit like inviting the head of our high school tennis team to play an exhibition match with Andre Agassi,” he said. “We are not a university. We are not a graduate institute on the Middle East and politics. We are not a political organization. We are a high school. Given the sensitivity of this issue, this was simply not an appropriate or balanced dialogue."
To me it seems a fine learning experience for high schoolers- not an invitation for fearful propaganda but an opportunity to hear articulated by a highly qualified teacher himself, the "other side", if you will. And besides, thats no way to treat a fellow New Yorker- Prof. Khalidi was born in New York, same as most of the kids he would have been speaking to - as one New York kid to another, c'mon. (As a matter of fact it wasn't that long ago-only about 44 years ago- when my high school graduating class invited our own Congressman to speak at our graduation ceremony; he was chosen by popular vote after our principal gave the ok that as long as we voted openly we could have whoever we liked; unfortunately our principal couldn't abide with our Congressman's anti- war activities and his liberal Democratic politics and so nixed the popular choice. We held the ceremony -not in the high school but in a neighboring town's movie theatre with our parents and friends in attendance to hear our choice of speaker.) The Ramaz School is named for Rabbi Moses S. Margolies (1851-1936) who was considered the "dean of orthodox rabbis" in America. A respected educator and a Zionist he is a note -an appoggiatura, if you will, to another Boycott that had its impetus in the fateful January of 1933. According to the NYTimes Rabbi Margolis as
part of the Anti-Nazi Boycott of 1933, "rose from his sickbed to address the overflow crowd at Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933, bringing the crowd of 20,000 to its feet (it was a different Garden then and besides the Knicks didn't play there yet) with his prayers that the antisemitic persecution cease and that the hearts of Israel's enemies should be softened."(Wikipedia is something, eh. Just ask Rand the Moocher Paul) That boycott, one of the first (and as it turns out the only) to organize publicly in protest of the Nazis rise to power was met with great enthusiasm initially but as a singular movement gradually died for many reasons although there were news reports and various "studies" then that the boycott was having some effect and I'm sure there were those among the Jew-haters who were much worried that the Nazis were making the "Elders" angry. Of course with over 80 years of hindsight to soften the view it was a fixed game to begin with. Even among American Jewish "leaders" it was a question of whether or not to do it and some were afraid to "cause any waves" lest the Germans really get angry with their fellow yehudim. This rift, if you will, between the "uptown-German-Jewish establishment" and the downtown "poorer"-more-recently-arrived-Russian/East European Jews (the terms usually apply to the Jewish citizens of New York City but in this case we will widen the scope to include the rest of Jewish-America- a risk I'm willing to take) has greatly informed the political and social history of American Jews for over a century now and in some respects its dynamic is still being felt. Among the American Jews that opposed the boycott then were some influential ( a dangerous word to use in certain paranoid precincts and minds) German - Jews (from the upper east side) who had help found some of the earliest Jewish self-help and civil rights institutions in the U.S., like the American Jewish Committee and who played major roles in the Democrat Party in New York (oy).Reform Jews who for a goodly part of the first half of the 20th century were not exactly supporters of democratic efforts on the part of the downtown Jews to organize for their piece of the American dream and for the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine; the differences would also have tragic consequences during WWII when one side would accuse the other of hindering each others efforts to rescue Jews from the European slaughter.
 |
Can you see how the protest was framed-its the Jews who want to
wage war against Germany. An organization called "America First"
would have a lot to say about whether the U.S. should be fighting
for the Jews in a European war
|
It would read more like an absurdist tale this fraternal conflict within the organized (or for that matter disorganized) Jewish community in the United States if it wasn't so consequential. Afterall, we are all Jews in this together, no? The German Jews certainly had rough going over here for a while but they seemed to have made a niche for themselves among American elites at the time - if they were refused entrance to certain avenues of business or recreation or living quarters they made a little world of their own- detailed in such popular histories as Birmingham's Our Crowd, or described in the biographies of the more famous such as Guggenheim, Schiff, Warburg, Sulzberger, Adler, etal- even Robert Caro's extraordinary book on Robert Moses ( excuse me a sec while I poopoopoo). Their relations with the "downtown" Jews (about two million left Czarist Russia and other friendly ports after 1881) were somewhat patronizingly strained and cordial and, of course, philanthropic. And running through all these narratives and histories in books and scholarly journals and studies is the theme of "what will the goyim" think and say. It was bad enough that the newer immigrants were poor, I mean really poor, but did they have to be so left in their politics and did they have to speak that funny language that sounded like German but with an ironic inflection and accent that always made you think of a punchline and the way some of them dressed can you imagine and why did many gravitate toward that -what was it, Zion-ism? Do they actually
believe they will have a home-land for themselves and if they agitate for such a pipe dream here won't the you-know-who accuse ALL of us of dual loyalty when we want so much to be seen as only American? It was like being embarrassed by a poorer cousin (I think that was another name of one of those popular studies) or your uncle from the country. Perhaps not as blatant but thats the general idea. I don't know if that was a common behaviour among other immigrant groups but it all wasn't a matter of never the twain- there was indeed much interaction. I bet there was more co-opting and shared dinners then than there is today among the various factions of "organized" American Jewry. It is hard to imagine - for many today, both Jew and non-Jew that for a goodly part of its formative half-century as an organizing principle prior to the founding of the State of Israel Zionism was a minority movement among Jews and even among Zionists there were deep and wide currents of policy disagreements and political goals. That old joke about two Jews and three opinions is never far from the truth.
 |
Kafka, thought of opening a cafe
in Palestine with his girlfriend, Dora- she would run the kitchen
and he would be the waiter. "Waiter, whats that cockroach
doing in my soup?"
|
The Nazis had the better boycott. They put on their brown shirts and jackboots and hitched up their holstered guns and Mauser-designed rifles and then went and stood in front of Jewish shops and businesses and dared anyone to go in and shop - they did this throughout Germany and it was a great success. Turns out the Germans - aside from the Jews-
thought it a wonderful idea. (I may be exaggerating a bit- but not by much) Anyway they didn't seem to have much trouble organizing it ( and in a couple of years they had the Nuremberg Laws in place and well...). I guess it helped that the entire German state was behind it. The boycott here got off to a rousing beginning - as mentioned above - but soon lost its momentum among other disheartening reasons. There was a Depression going on and, lets face it, most Americans really didn't care that much about what was happening on Grenadierstrasse. Those who did however thought that they had very strong reasons to not participate. Perhaps both the early successes and the sad demise of the "Boycott"- spearheaded by the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League and its head honcho, a guy named Sam Untermyer, a veritable one-man army, was the result of having just a single person more or less running things, but I'm conjecturing. Don't get me wrong he had plenty of help both in America and overseas but overall he was the heart and soul of this movement up until the time his health forced him to stop in 1938. He challenged the giant department stores like Macy*s, he met with representatives of foreign governments(was that even legal?); he tried to get the support of the Roosevelt administration but some people had other ideas.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Untermyer Assails Deal with Reich
JTA Release ; October 1, 1934
Samuel Untermyer, president of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights, yesterday made public the text of a formal protest dispatched to Secretary of State Cordell Hull against negotiations between this country and Germany leading to a trade agreement for the exchange of merchandise.
Declaring he had information that five cotton merchants acting as envoys of the government had come here to purchase large quantities of cotton against payment in German merchandise, and that this information supplemented “the various persistent rumors” of active negotiations, the boycott leader declared he was justified “in entering a formal and emphatic protest against any such agreement or any further negotiations looking in that direction as contrary to the best interests of the country.”
Mr. Untermyer took strong exception to statements of Secretary Hull that boycott activities in this country will “result in a loss of approximately five dollars in exports for every dollar’s worth of goods kept out of the United States,” and pointed out that according to figures of the Department of Commerce the United States last year sold to Germany only $1.15 in goods for every dollar’s worth bought here.
“By what process of arithmetic, reasoning or economics that is"
( The letter he sent to Hull was much longer in the particulars and was dated Sept. 29, 1934- for those who are keeping accounts- I am tempted to show you the letter in its entirety but I am technically challenged (really?) and cannot get my "scanner" to cooperate with my Mac and quite frankly don't have the budget to upgrade right now. So you're on your own kids. I will take the time to type out the last part of this extraordinary missive as it reflects both the man's force and passion. He wrote:
"Considering the ethics and wisdom of making another agreement with a country that holds the record for broken and repudiated agreements, we ask you also to take into consideration the evidence and disclosures already accumulated by the McCormick Congressional Committee of the country-wide seditious propaganda sowing the seeds of race and religious hatred, and of the many millions of dollars that are being squandered here in that dastardly undertaking by a country that refuses to pay its obligations to us. The conspiracy against our peace and security, on account of which the attaches of the German Embassy were expelled prior to the severance of diplomatic relations before the War, is not a circumstance compared with what is now transpiring."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Not even even people like Rabbi Stephen Wise -which for you younger viewers out there, was a name that once resounded with liberal chutzpah and social justice and Albert Einstein!- lent support to this until later in the campaign and as stated previously some of the well-heeled Uptown Jews thought that such a "drastic" course would harm the already vulnerable German Jews living under the heel of Nazism as did quite a few Jewish citizens in other lands including British controlled Palestine.
("The boycott might have been more effective had American Jewry had been more united and not so hopelessly divided into religious and ideological factions. Rabbi Silver's opposition to Untermyer's efforts to coordinate the boycott with other organizations did not help. The boycott might also have benefited from a more courageous defense of human rights on the part of the Roosevelt Administration. However, governments such as those of America and Britain had "attitudes of almost complete disinterestedness," as the British Jewish Chronicle observed in 1935. On the other hand, the Nazi government regarded Untermyer's exposure to the American public of their human rights abuses and what he perceived as their long-term plan for the Jews as a serious problem. In this respect, therefore, Untermyer's boycott campaign was not a wasted effort and his last years were spent honorably".- Richard Hawkins, see below)
Untermyer is worthy of a better bloggist than yours truly and its recommended that you seek him out on the internet machine as he makes a wonderful appoggiatura to this time in our history- ( it is important to mention that at the outset of this endeavor he was 75 years old and had a most successful career as a corporate lawyer and communal leader, was well compensated and lived grandly; it seems he was cast in the "Brandeis" mode of having a social conscious beyond that of his economic status as the great historian Jacob Rader Marcus has stated while discussing another prominent attorney and Jewish leader, Louis Marshall, who was an early leader of the AJCommittee and most prominent among the "our crowd" clique ( see our post anent Henry Ford), :
" He (Marshall) was successful in many ways but not in the ambition that he quietly if not secretly nourished, He had hoped ultimately because of his ability to be appointed to the United States Supreme Court. When David Josiah Brewer, the United States Supreme Court Justice died (1910), Marshall hoped to succeed him. He certainly would have done a good job. Taft, however, was vigorously opposed to him; he would not appoint a man who was a partner of Samuel Untermyer, the nemesis of large corporations. Untermyer, Marshall's partner, was a Democrat and a liberal." )
{For a fine overview of Samuel Untermyer efforts in regard to the anti-Nazi boycott see: Hitler's Bitterest Foe- Samuel Untermyer and the boycott of Nazi goods, 1933-1938 bt Richard A. Hawkins, American Jewish History, March, 2007 }
It is interesting to note - another American appoggiatura if you will, unfortunately its not a verb (see Arban's) - that among the more notable people who were approached to lend their name and reputation to the Anti Nazi boycott was Waldo Frank, at the time a well-known writer who was associated with several left-liberal causes and enterprises; a novelist and literary critic during the post-World War I years and was most identified with his writings about Spain and South America. He was, back then, a sort of celebrity; a public intellectual who seemed to be everywhere and seen everything and was invited to speak on his various adventures. He was as well-known in his time as a writer and journalist as Judith Butler is in hers among the academy movers and shakers, women's rights groups and left-leaning political conferences. When asked by the "non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League if he would participate in some way with their boycott he wrote ( in November, 1934):
"...I am aware of the fact that there are several organizations in the country conducting antiNazi activities on non-sectarian grounds; indeed, I serve on at least one such committee. But I am afraid that this does not cover the point which I made..that the Jews as a group (insofar as they have spoken with group emphasis) have based their opposition to Hitlerism on the chief ground of the oppression of Jewry; and that they have permitted the boycott to become identified in this country principally with their racial or sectarian grievance against the Germans as oppressors of Jews. Whatever common cause has been made with the socialists and liberals and communists in Germany has been done so inconspicuously as not to have borne weight.
This is one point. My other grievance relates to my general skepticism about boycotts in any form. They are a dangerous weapon, because they can not be intelligently controlled. If for instance the Jews claim that they are interested in a boycott against Germany primarily because of their championship of human rights, why do they stop at Germany? What will they do if someone shows them that human rights are also being tramped down in Italy, in Japan?
I have found no reason to withdraw my conviction that the Jewish boycott action against Germany has been against the best interest of the Jews(in the long run): and it is this interest, believe me, which I have at heart."
Ouch. Now this is a kid from West 78th St ( another New Yorker- from comfortable middle-class Jewish home), A DeWitt Clinton grad (when it was on 10th Avenue and 59th St, where John Jay College is today) his folks were able to send him to school in Switzerland before he enrolled in Yale where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Class 1911. Sound familiar, eh? But he worked summers on ranches out in Wyoming and Montana and after college lived in Greenwich Village as a struggling? writer.
He was photographed by Stieglitz, found work with some of the newer journals and magazines, started to travel more and by the time this letter had been written he had traveled down South with the Black poet, Jean Toomer - he actually put on "blackface" to be able to stay with Toomer during this time (now therein lies a good tale); was beaten by fascists in Buenos Aires, flew in a single-engine plane over the Andes, and was run out of Harlan County, Kentucky by coal-company goons and sheriff deputies while investigating a coal strike in the early 30's. Eventually during his lifetime he would meet seemingly everyone from Kahlil Gibran to Charlie Chaplin to the President of Mexico to Fidel Castro to fill-in-the-blank. He would describe himself as a Jew without Judaism and an American without America; a true man of the world. It is the markedly avowing socialist-weltanschauung (thats right two u's) that still resonates among the social-justice seekers and anti-war advocates and hope-filled dreamers; nation-states are passe and we all should just be concerned with each other while singing John Lennon tunes ( I mean that's what we all should be striving for). Frank would later on write books about Jews and Israel always emphasizing what he considered to be the paradox of Israel:
"their belonging within their not-belonging and it is unthinkable without the participation of its neighbors who, in their cultures, have been both the Jews' heirs and their enemies.
Because the Zionists reject this paradox, I have never been and could not be a Zionist. By Zionist ideology, the Jews do not belong in Europe. But if, more than any other culture including the Greek, they created Europe, who with better right than the Jews belong in Europe? and in the West that Europe fathered?"
Waldo Frank was certainly not an unintelligent man. He was a man with deep wellsprings of compassion and humanity. The quote is from his book, Bridgehead, The Drama of Israel, published in 1957-58, not quite a decade removed from the War of Independence and only 13 years since the "liberation" of Auschwitz, etal and yet just as sure as a passing remark by the once lovable HelenThomas made over a half century later would mirror in its latent way that same sentiment I don't think there's a Jew on earth - from whatever side of the political divide- that does not do a double-take, physically and philosophically, when they hear or read "the Jews belong in Europe".
"By Zionist ideology, the Arabs are and ever will be outsiders-however amicable and at peace. But the consanguinity of Arab and Israeli is deeper than blood, more substantial than the machines and technics of the West which today separate "modern" Israel from "feudal" Islam. For the machines of Christian Europe, as I have elsewhere shown, spring ordinately from Israel's culture as it wedded with the Greek; and the religious nationalism of the Arabs is a version...virulent and misguided...of the immanence of God in human conduct, first expressed in the Jewish Torah and today secularized in Palestine no less than in the surrounding hostile Islam."
Sounds a bit Freudian, however, it is a large hearted internationalist who can hope that the very spirit- his word- that divides Israeli and Arab - its interesting to note and I don't want to make too much of it in this context but he never addresses the Arabs as Palestinians- (that very spirit)must bring them together.
Belonging in Europe was a feature of quite a few Jewish scribes writing in the wake of the First World War and the nutty time that was the 20's- especially in Germany and France
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
News Brief
Jewish groups decry National Front election successes in France
(JTA)
– Jewish groups in France and Europe blamed voters’ indifference for the success of the far-right National Front party in French local elections.
National Front candidates were elected mayors in 11 municipalities in the vote on Sunday — a dramatic increase over the party’s previous record of four mayors in 1997, the news site europe1.fr reported. A record number of French voters did not cast ballots.
“The message is loud and clear that the French electorate is either not taking the threat from the far right seriously or they do not care,” Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the European Conference of Rabbis, said in a statement Monday.
Jewish groups and leaders have feared National Front’s rise because its leaders include politicians with a penchant for anti-Semitic and xenophobic rhetoric. Among them is Jean-Marie Le Pen, the party founder and honorary president, and the father of current leader Marine Le Pen.
Jean-Marie Le Pen has several convictions for inciting racial hatred against minorities and denying or minimizing the Holocaust.
“This result should sound alarm bells across Europe and indeed the world, that the politics of hatred are making a formidable comeback,” Goldschmidt said.
The Union of Jewish Students of France, or UEJF, said in a statement Sunday following the close of polls that it “regrets the success of National Front in many municipalities” and blamed the result on the indifference of voters and authorities to efforts by organizations such as UEJF to prevent National Front victories.
Goldschmidt also referred to perceived inaction, saying, “No doubt most analysts will characterize the success [of the National Front] as a protest against what many see as the failings of [French President] Francois Hollande, but there is no question that it benefited enormously from a record abstention of 38.5 percent.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joseph Roth, another "famous" Jew of his time; a liberal journalist/novelist from Austria, traveled throughout Europe as sort of a freelancer and being paid very well as a noted writer-spent the post-war (I) years in Berlin and many in Paris where he was living just before he died in the last spring before the second world war. A contemporary of Frank's -he was 5 years younger- Roth, too, felt that who but the Jew had a better right to live in Europe.
His writings reflect almost a cosmopolitan ( another loaded word) arrogance as if daring his fellow Jews -or anyone else- to be anywhere else - who would give up Paris for Jerusalem (How ya gonna keep'em down on the hof(?) after they've seen Paree?). He could imagine the passing scene on the Grenadierstrasse in Berlin as a kind of metaphor for the place and plight of all Jews as literal wanderers on the face of the earth - not really at home anywhere yet at home everywhere. "He sees," writes his translator, Michael Hoffman, "in their daily perambulations up and down the street the will of history being played out. This is what we Jews were meant to do":
"Of all the thousand ways that they have gone, and go, and will go, not one is a way out, not one leads to a concrete, earthly goal. No "fatherland", no "Jewish homeland", no "place of refuge", no "place of liberty". Not exactly a Zionist, Roth thinks that "in seeking a "homeland" of their own, they are rebelling against their deeper nature."
And Roth:
"...zionism can only be a bitter experiment, a temporary opportune degradation of Judaism or perhaps merely the reversion to a primal, long since outmoded, form of national existence. Maybe it has succeeded in arresting or delaying the assimilation of Jewish individuals or groups. But in return it seeks to assimilate an entire people. If it appeals to the warlike traditions of Judaism, then one should counter that the conquest of Canaan is less of an achievement than the Bible, the Psalms, and the Song of Songs; also, that the present of the Jews is greater, possibly, than their past: being more tragic."
Roth could have been arguing with the right-wing Zionists of today, I mean he's writing this just after the Arab pogrom in Palestine in 1929 and like Frank he's certainly no idiot- but there is a romantic/political take to his Jewishness- the kind Waldo Frank and to an extent Judith Butler and even your fearless blogger have expressed- Jews are better than this better than statists who insists on the all-importance of The State- nation- states are so passe..etc. And then in the midst of this riff on how Zionism really isn't good in the long run he turns into a Tevye-like chronicler (listen):
"With the help of these terrible jagged letters he gave the Jews the first terrible moral law, for them to spread among the cheerful, blithe peoples of the world. It takes, I thought, a truly divine love to choose this people. There were so many others that were nice, malleable, and well-trained: happy, balanced Greeks, adventurous Phoenicians, artful Egyptians, Assyrians with strange imaginations, northern tribes with beautiful, blond-haired, as it were, ethical primitiveness and refreshing forest smells. But none of the above! The weakest and far from loveliest of peoples was given the most dreadful curse and most dreadful blessing, the hardest law and the most difficult mission: to sow love on earth, and to reap hatred."
Far from loveliest? Thanks a lot. Still he was able to write about the dissolution and utter destruction of his world and people that few writers have ever matched and it remains for others to say whether he was spared the catastrophic horror that was to come when he died- a young man-in that spring before the war. (If you must know- he drank alot...and who could blame him given the time and place?)
Judith Butler, a smart, precocious Jewish girl from Cleveland - and I think we all know how hard that can be on a kid- will take issue with anyone who equates Jews with Zionists or as she writes "Jewishness with Zionism". We can use precocious because we know from an interview she once gave that she was thrown out of her Hebrew school class (in Cleveland?) for talking too much. She was a discipline problem (I know...who wasn't in Hebrew school?) Waldo Frank, too, was thrown out of DeWitt Clinton for refusing to take a Shakespeare course because he said he knew more than the teacher. (Who doesn't like a smart-ass Jewish kid?)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Hungary, Anti-Semitism Lingers 70 Years After Nazi Occupation
Posted:
BUDAPEST, Hungary (RNS) Seventy years ago today, shortly after the German army invaded Hungary, thousands of Jews were prodded by bayonets and swords into the freezing waters of the River Danube.
But first, they were ordered to remove their shoes so that others could walk around in them.
For Jews worldwide, March 19 is a horrific anniversary.
During the 12 months after the invasion, more than 450,000 Hungarian Jews were rounded up by the Gestapo with the enthusiastic help of its Hungarian equivalent, the Arrow Cross Movement, and sent by train to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other extermination camps in Poland.
Of an estimated 800,000 Hungarian Jews at the beginning of 1944, fewer than 200,000 were alive at the end of the war. The Nazis and their allies murdered three-quarters of Hungary’s Jewish population in the last year of the Second World War.
Today, many Jews are wondering whether the passage of time has done much to quell this nation’s troubling history of anti-Semitism.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is seeking re-election on April 6, said at recent meetings of the World Jewish Congress in Budapest that his government is determined to stamp out the rising tide of xenophobia and anti-Semitism. He described the latter as “unacceptable and intolerable.”
Earlier this month, unidentified vandals desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Tatabanya in northwest Hungary, daubing slogans such as “Stinking Jews” and “There was no Holocaust but there will be” on gravestones.
In February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry called in the Hungarian ambassador to Jerusalem in a rare move to voice Israel’s “deep concern” over growing anti-Semitic incidents in his country.
The envoy heard Jewish concern about the Hungarian government’s apparent unwillingness to deal truthfully and courageously with its past.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It has been a little confusing for me - for the longest time now as a matter of fact - as to just how to consider Zionism as a current currency- wait, that may be a poor choice of words- ( this week's conclave in Vegas has left a bad taste in my mouth and there isn't enough J&B on hand to rinse the palate) ; as a viable national philosophic-politico-aspiration. I mean why keep using the term Zionism or Zionist now 65 years after the State of Israel won its independence.
There is a nation, Israel. The only national aspiration now is to figure out how to live in peace with (I want to say the rest of the world) its hate-spewing neighbors or at the very least, how to prevent them from annihilating you. Why then is "Zionism" an issue? No? There was nothing beyond the hope of a Jewish homeland; a country to call our own. You're either for Israel or against it; you either support the current policies of its government or find them abhorrent and against the best interests of a Jewish state. So what is all this Zionist anti-Zionist stuff? If you were around 65, 80, 120 years ago we could have a heated discussion - then. But Israel is not going to recall itself; since when are there backsies in history?(OK, I know. I'll wait a sec) The UN is going to hold another meaningless vote on whether to "de-nationalize" the Jewish State? One of the more salient features in our communal life - and this is being addressed to my fellow Jews in America (including the Kristols and Podhoretzes who once again have not invited me to their seders respectively)- is that, for the most part, everything seems to have just started yesterday; there is no sense of history or continuity - so caught up are we in our many status-bestowing agencies and gated-gardens that the ideas and passions and sacrifices of earlier generations are long forgotten or at least neglected. Zionism was a struggle - fought from various political stances and among different national people from disparate places - and yet: for all who chose to make this fight it was a hope ( a long-shot, but a hope nevertheless ). To read and hear the "anti-Zionists" of today is to listen to the echoes of their counterparts decades ago. From the worried and seemingly apoplectic dual-loyalty admonishers to the "Israel-Firsters' (from both the left and right ) brandishers, both Jews and non-Jews. Did I mention the anti-semites (maybe I did)? To listen to the "other side", the Palestinian version and attendant commentary you would think - and be right to think such because that is what you always hear and what has always been taught you since you were a babe in kalishnikovs-
 |
A surprise?
|
that the Zionists had committed the crime of the century. I have often been amazed how those on the "left" and those who in polite company are referred to as "right" can readily distinguish Zionism from Jewishness; between what are Zionists "interests" and what are Jewish "interests". I am particularly bewildered as it is the eve of Pesach ( and I've been plodding along with this now for far too long but I just want to get this off my chest) and for as long as Jews gathered for Pesach and read the haggadah (do the math) they would at the end of the seder always proclaim "La-shannah habba-ah bi-yerushalayim-next year in Jerusalem". Today, especially, for the peace of Jerusalem.
The roots of Zionism are long and deep. I don't wish to rehash the entire history or set upon justifying the need; the imperative if you will, its not necessary, and the mere fact that Jews today are constantly asked to do so speaks to that imperative more than the people who question the need. ("Oh, reason not the need!") It was hard enough to get this program started. Imagine living back in 1897 (actually both of my grandfathers really could!)
 |
Herzl- A Jewish journalist with a different idea.
Imagine if he had majored in "gender" studies.
|
That hen-pecked Hungarian newspaperman, Herzl, (another journalist-what is it about that calling?) is appalled at what goes on during the Dreyfus trial in France decides to actually try to do something to alleviate what the world has come to know as its "Jewish problem"; writes a book about the Jews returning to their homeland and organizes what is the first "Zionist" congress, designed to get Jews excited about the "necessity of Zionism" which he and a few others considered to be "the only effective remedy frankly and unreservedly" to be presented before the non-Jewish world to solicit its support and sympathy. (According to some sources, Isaiah Berlin among them, Herzl's original solution to what he thought of as the "anomaly of the Jewish situation" was to cause all Jews to be baptized! It would in one fell swoop put an end to the ambiguous and intolerable status the Jews often found themselves; simple and final, as he said. Nothing, of course came of this utopian try and just as well as there is no telling what my grandmothers would have wrought) It was a touchy time for Jews ( when isn't it?) soon after the Dreyfus affaire ( actually it was still current and would remain so until 1906 and I believe there are still to this day certain legalities about this sorry episode that haven't been satisfactorily resolved); it was still before the publication of Zola's famous letter - so the real you-know-what hadn't hit the you-know-what yet- when 204 delegates from different countries gathered for the First Zionist Congress in August, 1897 in Basel, Switzerland. Basel wasn't the first choice. For some reason the organizers thought to hold the conference in Munich but the Jews of that city let their hostility be known rather forcefully - as many Jews then (and now?) were timid and rather afraid to confront a hostile world so openly. The great scholar and teacher, Israel Friedlander, who wrote about that first Congress, reported:
"It was a solemn and historic moment when the representatives of scattered Israel now, for the first time since it was driven from its home by mighty Rome, met on common ground to exchange brotherly greetings and to voice their common fears and hopes."
 |
Capt. Dreyfus-the Mugshot
|
The anti-semites would have a field day with such a gathering. At a time when Jews were suspected of one conspiracy and another ( I know, I know, when aren't we?) the big whopper of all these hateful and odious tracts was being hashed out in France and later in Russia. One of the original "editors" of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian by the name of Nilus, tried to claim that it all came from this first meeting in Basel but he soon changed his story when it was pointed out that the First Zionist Congress was open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews also; but somehow I don't think that helped to reduce sales and distribution worldwide. In his seminal work (and it really is), Warrant For Genocide, Norman Cohn, postulates:
"There must be some reason why they bear the absurd name of Elders of Zion ( why wasn't it called Elders of Jewry or Elders of Israel?), and there is in fact a very plausible one. As we have seen, the first Zionist congress at Basel was interpreted by antisemites as a giant stride towards Jewish world-domination. Countless editions of the Protocols have connected with the congress; and it does seem likely that this event inspired if not the forgery itself, then at least its title...All in all it is practically certain that the Protocols were fabricated some time between 1894 and 1899 and highly probable that it was in 1897 or 1898 ( in France during the Dreyfus Affair by a far-rightwing czarist Russian- go figure).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 in 4 European Jews afraid to wear kippah, survey shows
October 16, 2013
(JTA) — A quarter of respondents in a survey of Jews from nine European countries said they avoid visiting places and wearing symbols that identify them as Jews for fear of anti-Semitism.
Fear of wearing a kippah and other identifiably Jewish items was especially strong in Sweden, where 49 percent of 800 respondents said they refrained from such actions, according to the yearlong survey conducted among more than 5,100 Jews by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.
In France, 40 percent of approximately 1,200 Jews said they avoided wearing such items in public, followed by Belgium with 36 percent, according to preliminary results from the survey obtained by JTA.
In total, 22 percent of respondents said they avoided “Jewish events or sites” because of safety concerns.
“The results show that a majority of European Jews are experiencing a rise in anti-Semitism,” Gert Weisskirchen, a former representative of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for fighting anti-Semitism, said Tuesday at a conference in Kiev, Ukraine.
The survey, which began on Sept. 3, 2012 and closed last month. Along with Sweden, France and Belgium, the survey was conducted online in Britain, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Latvia. The full report is due to be published next month in Vilnius.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Friedlander should be added as another appoggiatura to our little chronicle. Born in Poland in 1876 he was ordained at the famous ( a show of hands, please) Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin in 1900, receiving his doctorate from the University of Strasbourg a year later and he came to New York, I believe, at the invitation of Dr. Solomon Schechter to teach at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. (For the younger or not as hip readers these were and are very prestigious and respected institutions of higher learning-something my dear mom would have been proud to see me attend if they just hadn't made it so difficult to graduate grammar school first) A revered teacher, he was a scholar of medieval Arab Literature and Jewish History, a tireless worker on behalf of his people, and an eloquent advocate on behalf of the Jewish homeland ( he was the father of three sons and three daughters: his sons' names - as if proclaiming his Zionist credentials- were Herzl, Benzion, and Daniel Balfour), Dr. Friedlander was from a generation who seemed to temper the heady mix of political Zionism with an unshakeable disposition of what it was that made us Jews in the first place.
 |
"A Zionist Delegation to Jerusalem, 1898"
(According to Google)-That may be Dr. Herzl
himself in the center and if I'm not mistaken
a very young Wolf Blitzer on the left.
|
 |
Go find an image using Google and
every anti-semitic reference & picture
pops up when you type Zionist Congress. I
take it as a matter of faith that this is a photo from
that first congress and that Jack Nicholson is not
among the attendees.
|
________________________________________________________________________
Fatal Shooting Near Brussels Jewish Museum
by JOHN-THOR DAHLBURG
Posted:
BRUSSELS (AP) — At least three people were killed and one seriously injured in a spree of gunfire at the Jewish Museum in Brussels on Saturday, officials said.
Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders, who was in the vicinity, said the scene "was terrible and left me shocked" as he saw two of the three dead lying at the entry of the museum, located in the touristy Sablon neighborhood.
He added that "you cannot help to think that when we see a Jewish museum, you think of an anti-Semitic act. But the investigation will have to show the causes."
Ingrid Van Daele, a spokeswoman for the Interior Minister, confirmed the casualties. She added that investigators were still on the scene gathering details, and that it was too soon to say whether it was an anti-Semitic attack.
No details were immediately available, but according to RTBF, a Belgian broadcasting company, a person with a backpack opened fire then fled.
Police have closed off the area around the museum, near the center of Brussels, and numerous ambulances were at the scene.
The Sablon area consists of cobblestoned streets with numerous antique shops, trendy cafes and museums, including the Jewish Museum. The attack happened during a three-day jazz festival in the neighborhood, and came on the eve of national and European Parliament elections.
Viviane Teitelbaum, a member of the Brussels legislature, said anti-Semitic attacks reached a peak in the early 1980s but had dropped off before a recent rise in anti-Jewish sentiment.
"It has been a very difficult place to live" for Jews, she said, adding that many young people are leaving the country. She added some 40,000 Jews live in Belgium, half of whom reside in Brussels.
________________________________________________________________________
Also on the Wikipedia they have such accessible pivot table-like spreadsheet data on a "LIST OF TERROR INCIDENTS IN FRANCE" from December, 1800 to the Charlie Hebdo murders with Date, Type (Shooting, Stabbing, Bombing, Car Crashing), Dead, Injured, Location and Description. Divided by century, too. But your nutty blogger needed an excuse to include pictures of CY and Honus on this sheet for whatever reason.
The first Kishinev pogrom (in modern times?) occurred during the first week of the 1903 baseball season which was eventually won by the Boston Americans, the godparent of the Red Sox and almost a decade before Fenway was built. It also fell on the Russian Easter which traditionally has not been one of the Jews' favorite holidays. Soon after the pogrom Russia's ambassador to the USA "Count" Cassini blamed the Jews for this because we would not "soil our hands by being farmers but would rather sit on our Jewish asses and lend money. I'm paraphrasing what I read in Wikipedia which is more than Rand Paul can say. This was the same head-scratching logic that just 111 years later the Turkish prime minister would use in his recent remarks regarding the events transpiring in Gaza and Israel.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yale chaplain quits in wake of letter blaming Israel for rising anti-Semitism
(JTA) — The Rev. Bruce Shipman, an Episcopal chaplain at Yale University, resigned in the wake of his letter to The New York Times that blamed rising anti-Semitism in Europe on Israel.
The Episcopal Church at Yale issued a statement on Sept. 4 announcing that Shipman, “on his own initiative, had resigned as Priest-in-Charge of the Episcopal Church at Yale, effective immediately.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israel-natch- being the prime cause of anti-semitism in the world. The "Count" if you're keeping a scorecard was the grandfather of the guy who designed the "Jackie" look back during the Kennedy Administration. It was this pogrom that inspired W.R. Hearst to ask the great Irish patriot and labor leader, Michael Davitt, to travel to Russia and investigate
the anti-semitic outrages. His book, Within The Pale, The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia, was published in October, 1903 -perhaps on the day Cy Young outpitched Brickyard Kennedy of the Pittsburgh team. I have always found the story of Hearst and Davitt fascinating - Hearst was sort of still at the beginning of his outrageous career recently cashing in from his unctuous role in the Spanish-American War and Davitt was sort of at the end of his more illustrative life of fighting for the poor and oppressed- something Hearst too had visions of at one time. In one of the appendixes of Davitt's book - a Reuter's telegram from St. Petersburg dated June 13, 1903 echoes the thoughts of the "Count"( and prime minister). It relates the recantation of "the famous Orthodox priest", Father John of Kronstadt:
 |
Michael Davitt
|
"To my beloved brethren of Christ in Kishineff: From the newspaper accounts that followed those first published about the Kishineff catastrophe, I have come to the conclusion that the Jews themselves were the cause of those disorders and the murders committed on April 6 and 7. I have arrived at the conclusion that it is the Christians who have suffered in the end, and that the Jews have been doubly repaid for their losses and injuries by their own brethren and others...I say to Kishineff Christians, forgive the reproach I cast upon you alone on account of the horrors perpetrated. From letters of eye witnesses I am convinced that one cannot lay all the blame upon the Christians, who were incited to the disorders by the Jews, and that the latter are mainly responsible for the catastrophe."
It is ironic - almost poignant - to consider that one of the more noteworthy incidents in Michael Davitt's life had to do with a popular protest against unfair rents and how land sales were regulated in British-Ruled Ireland ( this was sometime around 1877 to 1881). Davitt and his co-organizer, Charles Parnell, to make their point, had the local farm workers stop their harvesting of the estate of a Lord Erne. Now this Lord's agent or supervisor was a guy named Charles Boycott. To make matters a little more trying for Mr. Boycott the locals closed their shops, shut the laundries , and his mail was not delivered - you get the idea. The protest against Boycott was a big time news story for awhile, making all the local and British newspapers. Mr. Boycott was pretty much isolated after this started and so the local government under the control of the British had to send in what can be considered the equivalent of our National Guard to help harvest the crops and, I guess, do the laundry and deliver mail. It costs the British Government - that is if Wikipedia is right - "at least £10,000 to harvest about £500 worth of crops" and Mr. Boycott gave all English speakers from that time to this a new verb to conjure. (He died at the ripe old age of 65, in 1897, 2 months before the first Zionist Congress)
 |
Capt. Charles C. Boycott
|
There was no World Series played in 1904. I forget why, something about John McGraw refusing to recognize the American League's legitimacy? Oddly enough there was no pogrom on the record either. A second Kishinev pogrom occurred in 1905 almost a week after the last World Series game was played. The '05 series was one for the ages. And so was that second pogrom. But I digress- I must ( Note to my reader: You may have noticed that when the subject gets a little too overbearing for me- events too horrible to "read" straight I seek a lighter counterpoint to offset the heaviness of the occasion- it may seem sacrilege and absurd but then again what are you complaining about. Not to wade into the muck of philosophical prosody here but I have always remembered an essay of George Steiner's where he is wrestling with one of those Holocaust themes of interminable meanings for the whole damn human race - actually I think thats a phrase from Mark Twain - and he writes that one of the things that he " cannot grasp, trying to get them into some kind of bearable perspective, is the TIME RELATION." And as soon as I had read that phrase I knew what he was going to say next:
"Precisely at the same hour in which (_______) and (____) were being done to death, the overwhelming plurality of human beings, 2 miles away on the Polish farms, 5000 miles away in New York were sleeping or eating or going to a film or making love or worrying about the dentist. This is where my imagination balks. The two orders of simultaneous experience are so different, so irreconcilable to any common norm of human values, their existence is so hideous a paradox - Treblinka is both because some men have built it and almost all other men let it be - that I puzzle over time. Are there, as science fiction and gnostic speculation imply, different species of time in the same world, "good times", and enveloping folds of inhuman time, in which men fall into the slow hands of living damnation? If we reject some such module it becomes exceedingly difficult to grasp the continuity between normal existence and the hour at which hell starts, on the city square when the Germans begin the deportations or in the office of the Judenrat or wherever, an hour marking men, women, children off from any precedent of life, from my voice "outside" in that other time of sleep and food and humane speech. On the fake station platform at Treblinka, cheerfully painted and provided with window boxes so as not to alert the new arrivals to the gas ovens half a mile further, the painted clock pointed to 3. Always." ( In subsequent sources the clock was painted to read 6)
[This passage - actually the whole essay entitled "Postscript" (I hope-see I copied it in a notebook I maintained long ago when I was quite the conscientious undergrad- eager to make known all that I read and thought to the awaiting war wounded world - I kept the notebook- for some reason- and lost the eager lad.) The spell-correct feature on my Mac automatically underlines Treblinka and Judenrat thinking -Macs think? - I must have mis-spelled them because it (obviously) doesn't have such words pre-programmed; the young programmers never heard of them - I guess- they're unknown- and therein lies another digression - but later.]
Its a little too easy- this evocation of disjointed time- but what better illustrative have we to bespeak our common humanity or is it inhumanity? Clive James, the distinguished and erudite cultural critic from Australia- and what cultural critic is not Australian or at least erudite- in his magnum opus , Cultural Amnesia , assays a guy named Wolf Jobst Siedler who I remembered from the indefatigable Gitta Sereny's book on Albert Speer, which is why you read a guy like James in the first place - not only has he read more than you but probably in the original language and besides he is quite fun and articulate at the same time and while I'm offering this priceless advise read Ms Sereny's journalistic journey (sorry); her INTO THIS DARKNESS and ALBERT SPEER: HIS BATTLE WITH TRUTH are literally the closest many of us will ever get to, well, the heart of darkness. Anyway, Siedler, whom James describes as a "fair choice for the title of Most Civilized Man in Post-War Germany, was as it happened to be - Albert Speer's publisher; more like his champion in those post-Spandau years and according to Ms Sereny, was a very smart and successful publisher who came from an intellectual family - his father was very much a liberal and very much anti-Nazi; young Wolf was even imprisoned for a spell for his "subversive" activities and then forcibly sent to serve on the Eastern front. Aside his publishing career James tells us that his "most valuable" contribution has been as an essayist and though criticized by some for being too placating to Nazi/German history James is able to cite this passage from a collection of his essays which I believe offers a glimpse of the man's sensitivities. Here he is alluding to Kristallnacht- Night of Broken Glass, March 9/10, 1938:
"... the most misleading thing about this State was that on the very evening of the burning of the synagogues, an event which brought the Eastern Europe of the Middle Ages into the Germany of the twentieth century, everywhere in the cities of our country festively clad people went to operetta, theatres, and symphony halls, and that, six hours after the deportation wagons left the station platforms of Berlin, the trains for the seaside left also."
AROUND AND AROUND WE GO
The hour at which hell starts and the hour the train leaves for the seaside- Good times and Inhuman time. How do we reconcile? Do we? We try - but we never do succeed, really. How can we? People being what they are. One irreconcilable image I always remember reading about with an agonized shudder(sorry words can fail) - and I've found it cited in several places for your dining and dancing pleasure- I can't recall if it was in the Ringleblum or Kaplan diaries that survived the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto but one source is the legendary Zivia Lubetkin's memoir, In The Days Of Destruction and Revolt, Zivia was one of the leaders of the Jewish Fighting Organization that fought the Nazis to final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and escaped through the sewers to fight them again in the forests of Eastern Europe. In her words:
"The enemy set fire to the ghetto, first from the air with incendiary bombs, and then by igniting the ghetto from all sides with flamethrowers. They were confident that suffocation and the deadly flames would succeed where face-to-face combat had failed...With their last ounce of strength the Jews ran through the burning rubble in search of shelter. The fire forced them out of their hiding-places and underground bunkers. Many were burnt alive or suffocated from the smoke...They sought shelter behind every wall, within any ruin that could no longer burn, in any corner where the flames were not unbearable. How can one describe the enormous suffering and terror of the Jews trapped in the flames?"
The ghetto burned. The flames blazed for days and nights on end, consuming every house, every building, every street. The Warsaw Ghetto was burnt at the stake. Pillars of flames rose and sparks crackled in the air. The sky glowed with a terrifying red light. Close by, on the other side of the ghetto walls, life went on as usual. The citizens of the capital walked, played, enjoyed life as usual within full view of the smoke and flames during the day and the bright red-orange fire blazing through the night. A carousel spun and the Polish children laughed and swung innocently around. Girls visiting the city from the outlying villages came to the carousel to swing by the ghetto walls, "as the Jews burn". The wind swept sparks, soot and smoke over the walls. A stray spark might set one of the Aryan houses aflame, but there it was immediately extinguished; while here, in the ghetto, the houses burned to the ground...
It was early in May, 1943. On the other side, beyond the ghetto, it was spring. On this side of the wall we were burning alive...The smoke billowed around us. Sparks crackled and we had to leap through the flames while the Germans fired on every Jew they could see.."
 |
Warsaw 1943
|
And there are others who have witnessed:
"On April 19, 1943, the Nazis began the "final liquidation" of the ghetto. The Nazis and their host of collaborators (led by the Jewish police) marched into the ghetto but were sent fleeing twice. The Luftwaffe rained incendiaries on the ghetto, which was engulfed in flames. Gun shots echoed through the city. Jews leaped from burning buildings. A few feet away, literally, Polish families fresh from celebrating Easter at nearby churches flocked to a carousel that had been set up in Krasinski Park, outside the ghetto wall." -
Southern Institute for Education & Research, Tulane University
"I walked out on that Palm Sunday and I went to Plac Krasinski where there was a church, a very old church, and I felt that my safest place is in the church. I went to that church and I attended the Mass and the priest spoke. Not a word was mentioned that across the street people are fighting, dying by the hundreds, and fire. I was just like a good Christian listening to the whole sermon. Then it is, traditional in Poland that when the, after the services, the priest goes out in front of the church and he greets the parish...the people, probably is practiced here in every country the same way, but in Poland it is a traditional thing. And he greeted all the Poles and across the street was a carousel with a playground and the music was playing and the carousel was...the people took the children on the carousel, beautifully dressed. Sunday. Palm Sunday. And... music was playing and I was standing in that group watching the other side of the block, of that burning ghetto. From time to time we heard screaming, "Look. Look. People are jumping from the roofs." Others will make remarks, "Jews are frying." That's just a free translation from Polish. But I never heard any sympathy voices. Maybe there were people who looked in a different way, but I never heard it" -
Benjamin Meed-Personal Histories-video archive
 |
Warsaw today
|
The current director of the Jewish Historical Institute, prof. Feliks Tych, tells about his memories:
" On the square they installed sort of funfair. Swings, merry-go-round. They were popular. Nearby the fight was going on in the ghetto, one could hear shots and explosions. Those on the swings and merry-go- round seemed undisturbed by it. I could feel it wasn`t their war."
And :
I hesitated to get on the carriage. I looked behind the corner. There was a German cannon and a group of youngsters helping German soldiers. They shouted Jude, Jude and pointed to obscure human shapes that appeared in the windows of burning ghetto houses. It felt like a game. I got on the horse carriage. A man sitting in front of me said: Jews are frying, but nobody picked up the discussion. -
And :
I hesitated to get on the carriage. I looked behind the corner. There was a German cannon and a group of youngsters helping German soldiers. They shouted Jude, Jude and pointed to obscure human shapes that appeared in the windows of burning ghetto houses. It felt like a game. I got on the horse carriage. A man sitting in front of me said: Jews are frying, but nobody picked up the discussion. -
-Polish Forum About Culture, People...
In Rome on the Campo di Fiori
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.
 |
Like Zabars, except its outside
|
Baskets of olives and lemons,
Cobbles spattered with wine
And the wreckage of flowers.
Vendors cover the trestles
With rose-pink fish;
Armfuls of dark grapes
Heaped on peach-down.
On this same square
They burned Giordano Bruno.
Henchmen kindled the pyre
Close-pressed by the mob.
Before the flames had died
The taverns were full again,
Baskets of olives and lemons
Again on the vendors' shoulders.
I thought of the Campo dei Fiori
In Warsaw by the sky-carousel
One clear spring evening
To the strains of a carnival tune.
The bright melody drowned
 |
A ghostly carousel through the smoke
|
The salvos from the ghetto wall,
And couples were flying
High in the cloudless sky.
At times wind from the burning
Would driff dark kites along
And riders on the carousel
Caught petals in midair.
That same hot wind
Blew open the skirts of the girls
And the crowds were laughing
On that beautiful Warsaw Sunday.
Someone will read as moral
That the people of Rome or Warsaw
Haggle, laugh, make love
As they pass by martyrs' pyres.
Someone else will read
Of the passing of things human,
Of the oblivion
Born before the flames have died.
But that day I thought only
Of the loneliness of the dying,
Of how, when Giordano
Climbed to his burning
There were no words
In any human tongue
To be left for mankind,
Mankind who live on.
Already they were back at their wine
Or peddled their white starfish,
Baskets of olives and lemons
They had shouldered to the fair,
And he already distanced
As if centuries had passed
While they paused just a moment
For his flying in the fire.
Those dying here, the lonely
Forgotten by the world,
Our tongue becomes for them
The language of an ancient planet.
Until, when all is legend
And many years have passed,
On a great Campo dei Fiori
Rage will kindle at a poet's word.
The Campo di Fiori is located in the middle of Rome and has been for centuries a market place and a place of execution. It was there in Feb., 1600 that the free-thinking monk and philosopher, Giordano Bruno, was burned at the stake for what the Catholic Church thought was heresy; promoting such dangerous tea-party-like ideas like denying the earth's central place in the universe or advocating that people of different beliefs should respect each other. To mark the day the citizens of Rome ( probably liberal Democrats) come to the rather somber statue of Bruno (in a hoodie) that is now there and place flowers. I wonder if they also consider that in that very same piazza just 47 years before Fr. Bruno's flaming farewell, the Roman Inquisition having raided most of the Jewish homes and synagogues in Rome had assembled an impressive collection of Talmuds and had themselves a spectacular bonfire, hoping that the destruction of "their rabbis wisdom would better dispose them into receiving the true word of God."
Prof. Friedlander's tragic death was a long forgotten event in a long eventual history. Depending on which side your political sentiments lie, he was either murdered by Cossack-like bandits or was killed as a warning to the West by the Bolsheviks. Or no one knew but shit always happens in the "bloodlands".
(as reported in the New York Times of July 10, 1920)
Report Prof. Israel Friedlander Killed, With Rabbi Cantor, by Bandits in Ukraine
WARSAW, July 10.--A Lemberg dispatch reports that Professor Israel Friedlander and Dr. Cantor, a rabbi in the Free Synagogue, both of New York, have been killed by bandits near Kamenetz-Podolsk, where they had been distributing funds for the American Joint Distribution Committee.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As it turned out the latest research for those who are dying to know is that the Prof. and Rabbi Cantor were accidentally killed by an advancing Red Army troop who were searching out Polish partisans who wore gray. Unfortunately, Prof. Friedlander, too, wore gray on that day.
It may be of sobering reflection for the reader to note that Dr. Friedlander first arrived in New York in 1903, the year of the first Kishinev pogrom and the published account by Michael Davitt. It just happened to be the same month of the very first World Series (won by Boston of the American League for those who are still keeping score). As was mentioned he was an important leader in Jewish education - from his position at the Jewish Theological Seminary his contributions to the field are still considerable even unto our own day. At a time of great upheaval - wait a sec that's trite and something Rand Paul would plagiarize- a time of unimagined tsuris and stress and rendering and heartbreak and hope Dr. Friedlander's short life was a monument to the humane spirit (I can hear my old English teachers cringing now). I think he was working on the second volume of Simon Dubnov's great History of the Jews Of Russia and Poland at the time of his death. For some reason this work has not been given its "scholarly" due and the Friedlander translation in English is still considered the standard, not that it has much competition.
 |
Rabbi Bernard Cantor
|
Dr. Friedlander lived at 61 Hamilton Place in New York City; that's uptown around 141st St., near City College. We know this because Dr. Friedlander was sort of the recording secretary to a group of prominent Jewish communal and educational activists who would gather together at their individual homes about once a month to discuss various issues and events that affected the New York Jewish community. They called themselves the Achavah Club (for all you conspiracy bums I believe that's "brotherhood" in Hebrew) and Dr. Friedlander made sure either he or some other responsible member- there weren't many, really, would make notes of the evenings discussions, who attended and at whose house. His "minute" book was kept for many years by his
 |
Israel Friedlander
|
(I don't know whether to include this next fragment as an "aside" or just meander along as I do because 1.) nobody reads this stuff anyway 2.) I have been gathering material and reading up on things and saving news articles for well over a year since I first started this "Page"- and I gotta tell ya folks, a lot can happen within a year and has. I began with an idea of questioning the merits but not the passion of the so-called anti-Zionist support of the Boycott against Israel. ( what was the aside? idiot) Well, reader (and incidentally anent asides I am delighted that my seldom if at all "blog" or as my wife refers to it, my "blab", has been visited of late by readers from Lebanon and Iran and Luxembourg? and France- where theres more than one of you, and Poland which I find intriguing because I have as not published this page yet)- its April 9, 2015 and I have been stumbling along here for over a year- unfortunately not continuously. Perhaps I shall click to publish (he said to himself) and then I could always add on as the days come and go-I have tried that with a couple of my other pages and have not returned to finish which goes to show my disciplined work habits and even less disciplined thoughts.)
Among Dr. Friedlander's fellow club members -( and lets face it, unless you take a particular interest in the early organization efforts of the New York City Jewish Community or are a student yourself of this time and place or are a relative (no lets not go there) or just a nutty reader who has read everything, you probably have never heard of most of these intellectually and politically engaged men of another era. However, there may be one or two you recognize) I am mooching from the annotations of Prof. Moshe Davis (b"h) who was an educator for many years as well as a respected historian of American Jewish history and of what is known as "Conservative" Judaism which for you already confused readers has nothing to do with Sheldon Adelson's bank account or Eric Cantor's conscience. As far as I know the Prof. is the only guy who has actually written about this short-lived all boys club - except for a few brief mentions in some forgotten oral histories. Davis comes to this interesting(for me) footnote well placed- in 1945 he succeeded one of the members of the club, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, as head of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary (the leading academic and spiritual center of "conservative" Judaism). Kaplan is a giant in the distinguished history of Jewish education in America and the founder and guide of what is today "Reconstructionist" Judaism - not to dwell here but just as a soupcon of reference Rabbi Kaplan's daughter was the very first to be bat-mitzvah -ed. This may not seem such a big deal today in our enlightened times but that barrier among other "heretical" notions that Rabbi Kaplan had expressed and written about in his strivings to bring Judaism to a more immediate relevancy and more attuned to a more liberal spirit of a post-war world would cause this educator to be actually excommunicated by the organization of orthodox rabbis-
 |
Rabbi Kaplan
|
Another member in good standing was Leon Moisseiff who lived at 3 East 106th St. which may have been a private house at the time and is no longer standing; the years have given way to large limestone and granite blocked apartment buildings and 100 years of Manhattan wear and tear, but always right across Fifth Ave is Central Park whose lushness and serenity have changed very little since that time or so we imagine and as the written record shows the very last meeting of the Achavah Club was held here on Sunday evening, March 17, 1912 - for the sake of our nautical readers it is a wonder to note that the RMS Titanic was still moored at Belfast and just getting ship-shaped for the trip to Southampton and then on to New York City. Friedlander attended along with three others but that was it. It seems the club was winding down after two and a half years and this would be the last- the guest speaker for the evening was Arnold Kretschmar, who according to Prof. Davis' description was a correspondent for various Russian and Zionist newspapers and who was the editor of the official publication of the Zionist Actions Committee in Constantinople and thank goodness for Prof. Davis; try googling Mr. Kretschmar and see what you get. (Good luck) Is it any wonder my spellchecker keeps underlining these names.
It should be pointed out that the unofficial leader of the club was Judah Magnes who was at the time head of New York City's Kehillah - a organization that would attempt to coordinate under one tent ( so to speak) the multivarious social, philanthropic, labor, educational, political endeavors of the often fractured Jewish community. The impetus for such an undertaking was an article published in the September, 1908 issue of the North American Review (!) written by then NYC Police Commissioner, Theodore Bingham, titled "Foreign Criminals in New York" wherein he stated for all the world to see that 50% of the "criminal classes" in New York were Jews.
 |
Theodore Bingham
|
"It is not astonishing that with a million Hebrews, mostly Russian, in the city (one-quarter of the population) perhaps half of the criminals should be of that race when we consider that ignorance of the language, more particularly among men not physically fit for hard labor, is conducive to crime..."
You can just imagine the tumult this caused. ( It did get my great-aunt Ida to chase my great-uncle Mo out of the house and into the schmatte business) It was the first serious attempt at organizing the Jewish community in the United States - kehillahs had long been in existence in the "old countries"- and in such a large metropolitan area. Remember its around 1908-1910. Anyway the large Russian/Eastern European Jewish community was particularly incensed because not only was such a smear libelous and invoked a fear that so many had thought they had left behind but they were equally as pained and frustrated with their so-called co-religionists "uptown"; the already assimilated Reform German Jews in the form of the newly established (1906) American Jewish Committee-wealthy and connected as they were did and said little to come to the defense of such an accusation. So the Kehillah was this large democratic-in spirit and function (for awhile)-attempt at combatting this outrage and laying the groundwork for a better organized and financed communal structure - and Magnes was their champion.
( Still another member in good standing was a guy named Bernard G. Richards. Unlike many in the club he had very little formal schooling and yet by the age of 26 he had already published what is today considered a classic among American "immigrant" literature. His Discourses of Keidansky was a best-seller when it first appeared in 1903 - that year again- and its praises were still being tendered by the likes of Saul Bellow 60 years later. Before coming to New York, Richards had already made a name as an essayist-journalist on Boston's prestigious "Evening Transcript" and was a well-known contributor to other publications of the day. When the Bingham article came out Richards had a response published in "The American Hebrew" the very next week written in his humorous and barbed sarcasm:
"The statement which has just been published about us has its definite object, and we ought to be willing to help in the reform which its proposes to bring about. Mr. Bingham needs more detectives and immigration restrictionists need more arguments, and we ought to aid in this good work. There are 25,000 Irishmen in New York, and they are all on the police force. But still that is not enough and it is necessary to increase the number of secret service men. We ought to have at least 100 detectives to watch every immigrant who comes to this country, and the immigrant ought to pay for them, instead of hoarding his money, or sending it back to the old country. What have we come here for anyway, if not to build up this country and enlarge the number of jobs on the police force. If not for us a deathly quiet would reign in many parts of this City, and goats would be grazing where big tenement houses and factories now stand. You don't need many policemen to look after the goats, nor do you need many secret service men to keep order among them..." And that was just the first paragraph.
(I know what you're thinking but I have no sources on just how many protests and demonstrations there were whenever a new synagogue was to be built downtown.) Richards after his tenure with the Kehillah would participate in a number of Jewish communal and Zionist activities. Readers of this blog whose memories are befogged and bourbon-blurred can click back to our classic postings of July 27, 2012 and August 12, 2012 for a re-visit of some of Richards' activities.
It had been suggested that the Achavah was originally set up to be an advisory committee for Magnes; a heimisha think tank that could help him navigate the choppy waters of the loud and diverse precincts of the Jews of New York. He was, according to not a few accounts of the time, a charming, young, handsome and progressive rabbi who was widely liked and could be called the first popular celebrity-type leader among the early Zionist Movement in America. He was the fair-haired hero from California - born in San Francisco, raised in Oakland. You couldn't help but be impressed with this guy and what a wonderful catch for some lucky gal to stand with under the chuppah (Please don't use the Michelle Bachmann annunciating app). Louis Lipsky, another club member, and a most important figure in American Zionist history as a leader, writer, and editor remembers Magnes when he first appeared in New York around 1903:
"He was a tall, spare young man with a light beard, who smiled generously with an easy friendliness, and confessed without provocation that in Berlin (where he attended the university) he had been converted to orthodoxy, that he had attended a Zionist Congress and knew Theodor Herzl...Soon he was speaking at Zionist meetings. Soon he knew all the celebrities of the East Side, including Chaym Zhitlowsky, a famous revolutionist and Yiddishist"
- and, as we said, a member of the Achavah Club. The diversity of interests represented by its membership reflected Magnes' desire to engage intellectually with the problems of "Diaspora" life and to help locate Zionism as a main ideological component within the Jewish communal tradition - one of the underlining reasons why the club came together in the first place. It is interesting to note ( as a side "appoggiatura") that up until now-
 |
Magnes
|
"This was the period of Societies. The Achavah could have become the model for a new type of Zionist chapter. When the Achavah was formed, there was no Zionist chapter in existence. They were all groups of landsleit: Hatehiyah was a society of Russian Jews; Kadimah was a Roumanian group. They were really Zionist clubs; but unless a person was a landsman, he could not belong to a Zionist group. I was not a landsman, except of America ( I believe Lipsky was from the Rochester, N.Y. area). Senior Abel ( a club member) was interested in a New York Zionist Association. This was an attempt on our part to form such a society..."
But the Achavah was more than just that, although to be a member one had to be -as the club rules stated- "an adherent of National Judaism". We had alluded several paragraphs earlier to the rift between the "uptown" more established German Jews and the more recently arrived democratically inclined (read: poorer and more socialist/labor-minded) East European/Russian Jews- and for a while Magnes was a leader. Even after the demise of the Kehillah due to various differences in policies and some outsized personalities -even Magnes would give up the ghost. Those who were contemporaneous looked at his own ambitious agenda and a too quick habit of retreating in the face of undaunting odds which may or may not have to do with the fact that he married the sister-in-law of Louis Marshall who if the reader remembers was the law partner of Sam Untermyer and quite a macher in New York and Washington politics. Magnes may be regarded today as a real heart-breaker among those who remember him at all - for a man who rose to the pinnacle of American Zionism only to back away when the realization that "these people" really were serious about a state of their own; he was more a preacher of pacifism than practical politician and this led him into many conflicts with the organizations he professed to lead- these tendencies would manifest later in some of the largest rifts in organized Jewry and some of the bitterest. He was an elitist of sorts looking to control the unruly democratic mob; later he would side with his wealthy patrons including his relative by marriage, Louis Marshall and the anti-Zionist American Jewish Committee. Today, he is romanticized by those Jews- both in and out of Israel who still look upon "Political" Zionism as a mistake- they hold up the banner of what is historically referred to as "Cultural" Zionism as professed by such as Ahad Ha'Am ( Asher Ginsburg on your scorecard)
No comments:
Post a Comment
The Joyful Moocher welcomes and encourages all comments.