February 18, 2015--Bibi, the Fanatic

"Eli, the Fanatic," one of Philip Roth's wonderful short stories, is also one of his most overlooked. Perhaps because of the direct way in which it deals with and excoriates secularized, seemingly-assimilated Jews.

Set in suburban America, the story concerns a non-observant Jew, Eli Peck, who is hired by his Jewish neighbors to convince a recently-arirved group of orthodox Jews to close the yeshiva they established in their midst. The other Jews in town are embarrassed by the visible presence of these Hasids, fearing they will call attention to them and thereby interfere with their desire to blend in among the largely gentile residents of Woodenton.

To make a short story short, Eli fails in his attempts to get the ultra-orthodox to back off, including abandoning their traditional way of dressing, and, after an epiphany of his own, gives up his normal wardrobe and appears before his stunned and outraged Jewish neighbors in Hasid garb. The last thing they want is to be identified as Jews. And, thus, they became what some call self-hating Jews.

It is worth reading these days when throughout the Middle East and the West a fierce new religious war has broken out with people being attacked, tortured, enslaved, and killed just for being who they are--the wrong kind of Muslim, Christian, or Jew. It's a from of back to the Middle Ages.

The latest outrages, just over the past few days, are the shootings in Copenhagen, the beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by ISIS in Libya ("We will conquer Rome, by God's permission"), and of course the murder of three Muslin university students in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

As evidence that fanaticism is not just confined to ISIS and other Muslim extremists, pay attention to what Benjamin Netanyahu is calling for. As after the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, this week following the murders in Denmark, Netanyahu again called for all European Jews, by "mass immigration," to give up their countries and European roots and emigrate to Israel where, he claims without evidence, that they will be safe from religious extremists of all stripes.

He makes no mention of Hezbollah fighters in the north of Israel nor rockets fired into Israel from Gaza. And, of course, the real possibility that Israel, under Netanyahu, will preemptively wage war against Iran.

In Bibi's own words--

Jews have been murdered again on European soil only because they were Jews. Of course, Jews deserve protection in every country, but we say to Jews, to our brothers and sisters: Israel is your home.

This call is hardwired into the consciousness of many Jews who remember the Holocaust when millions of Jews, on European soil, were slaughtered for just the fact of being Jews. Since then, there has been pressure on Jews living in more than 100 countries to "make Aliya," which literally means to "ascend," to "return" to Israel and for Israel to call for the "in-gathering" of Jews living in the Diaspora, in "exile."

This call for Jews to in-gather is about much more than safety. It has deep religious roots.

For the orthodox, to foster conditions that will call forth the Messiah (for Jews, of course, Jesus is not the Messiah) and lead ultimately to the End Times and Last Judgement, all Jews in the Diaspora must return to what messianic Jews refer to as Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, which to many means Greater Israel.

There is dispute about what is biblically-defined to be that Land, especially Greater Israel. With the latter it is a geopolitically dangerous view of national boundaries, because to those Jews literally right now awaiting the appearance of the Mashiach, Greater Israel stretches from the Nile River in western Sinai all the way to the shores of the Euphrates. In other words, from land belonging to Egypt to territory that is a large part of current-day Iraq. Settling the West Bank is a part of this strategy.

So these are not just eschatological ideas but political ones. And dangerous ones at that.

Thus, the seemingly empathetic, welcoming call by Prime Minister Netanyahu to Jews in so-called exile to emigrate to Israel resonates much more deeply that a simple reminder and offer to descendants of those who died in the Holocaust. It also serves a larger purpose--to have Jews return to ancestral lands and thereby help flesh out the boundaries of Eretz Israel and to contribute to the circumstances that will lead to messianic times.

As an American of Jewish descent I resent and reject these fanatical notions. I am not Philip Roth's Eli.

Though assimilation is never easy--even in polyglot America--I do not consider myself as living in anything resembling a diaspora. Any more than Americans of Italian descent consider themselves living in an Italian diaspora. Israel is not my home. No matter what might happen here (and there have been waves of dangerous anti-Semitism in America) this is my home, my land, my America.

February 12, 2105--Lust for Life

The French can be, well, so French. Take Dominique Strauss-Kahn for example.

Perhaps the last time you were aware of him was in 2011 when he was under posh house arrest in New York City awaiting trial for allegedly forcing a chamber maid at the Sofitel Hotel to perform oral sex.

There was some of his semen on her blouse but he beat the rap, claiming the DNA evidence was not conclusive and that she had a checkered past, having accused other rich and powerful men of sexually assaulting her and attempting to cash in.

He, on the other hand, did not deny that they had sex, claiming it was consensual, which appeared to be all right with his America heiress wife, who said at the time something like, "That's the way men are."

Subsequently, back in France, Strauss-Kahn, who had been Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and was preparing to run for the presidency of France, was accused of raping a journalist and having been involved with a ring of prostitutes. This was too much for his long-understanding wife, who finally dumped him.

And now, in Lille, a trial is underway in which Strauss-Kahn and 13 others are accused of pimping and abetting prostitution. If convicted, he could go to prison for up to 10 years.

According to a report in the New York Times, earlier this week, there was testimony about "sex parties with high-flying power brokers and prostitutes." Outside the courtroom topless protesters threw themselves at the Strauss-Kahn's car. For what reason I do not know. But, vive la France, it made for more juicy headlines and vivid video in a country that could use some diversion after last month's Charlie Hebdo massacre.

Though that testimony itself would have been enough to provide some schaudenfreudian relief, from the witness stand Strauss-Kahn offered up even more salacious fun--his defense.

It is that lust is no crime.

He acknowledged having been at sex parties (though as he put it during his testimony--it was only "four times a year") but claimed he had nothing to do with organizing the orgies nor hiring prostitutes--both crimes in France.

On the other hand, prostitute witnesses such as Mounia (no last name) authoritatively offered, that "it was obvious that those at the party were prostitutes," even though she acknowledged that she never discussed money with Strauss-Kahn.

His defense is that since at least the 16th century, there is a long tradition in France, libertinage, that makes legal "freewheeling sex and pleasure among multiple and consensual partners." But Mounia, when asked about the consensual nature of their activities, said that was not the case--Strauss-Kahn had forced her to engage in "a brutal act," she said, "I felt like an object."

Jade agreed, admitting she had engaged in prostitution but not libertinage, "I was not a person but a thing that was supposed to complete a task."

Duh.

But Strauss-Kahn had the final word--when insisting that at the quarterly orgies he was unable to determine who were prostitutes and who were non-working girls, he shrugged his Gallic shoulders and declared, "I dare you to distinguish between a prostitute and a naked socialite."

C'est tout.

January 15, 2015--Fanatics All

Do you know what happened to Angela Merkel?

I mean, I thought she was in Paris last Sunday to participate in the Je Suis Charlie march, joining governmental leaders from 40 or so other countries. (As a sidebar--not including the United States which sent the ambassador.)

I may have been hallucinating, but I thought I saw a picture of the front row of marchers with Francois Hollande, president of France in the center, locking arms with Palestinian president Mahmond Abbas on his right and Chancellor Merkel on his left.

But then when I picked up my copy of HaMevasar, the Israeli newspaper of the ultra-Orthodox, there was that same picture but no Angela Merkel.

So either I'm confused or losing it.

Before I could see if the New York Times had anything to say about this, I spoke with a friend who knows a lot about neurology to see if he thinks I'm losing it (yes and no, he said) and about the possibility that the image might have been doctored.

"Send me a link to the HaMevasar picture," he said, and within 15 minutes of my doing so he called to report, "It's obviously Photoshopped. I mean, the editor of the paper had Merkel crudely deleted from the photo. And also a few other female world leaders who were in the first two rows, making it look as if the march was an all-male affair. Just like a . . ."

"Just like an ultra-Orthodox Jewish wedding," I interjected, "where the men and the women attend and participate separately, including dancing with each other."

"Exactly," he said, "And here are a few ironic thoughts. First, they cut out the picture of the chancellor of the country that spawned the Nazis and perpetrated the Holocaust, but the country that now stamps out any manifestations of renewed anti-Jewish behavior and still pays reparations to Israel. Then the paper, HaMevasar, ranted about how the whole Hebdo massacre was about Islamic anti-Semitism, ignoring the fact that the initial victims were mainly French Christians. Finally, they completely ignored the fact that the march in Paris was about defending France's essential freedoms, very much including the right to free expression. And though HaMevasar does mention that the attack was on freedom of the press, it is in a journalistic context that is self-contradictory since by cropping the photo as they did it gives the lie to the very freedom this massacre was planned to stifle."

"Then there was Benjamin Netanyahu's reaction," I said. "On the day after the massacre he sent the French an impassioned letter of condolence that claimed, to quote him, that 'Israel is being attacked by the very same forces that attacked Europe.' As if the arrack on Charlie Hebdo was about Israel rather than about France."

"And he followed it up the next day when he linked the Paris suspects to Israel's enemies, likening the killings to the rockets fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip."

"Talk about chutzpah."

"And can you explain to me how the four Jewish victims of the kosher supermarket shootings all wound up in Israel for a ceremony and burial?"

"As I understand the situation," I said, "only one of the four had any direct connection to Israel. I think he had two chidden living there."

"The other three are either from North Africa or born in France and had no family in Israel. I don't want to be overly cynical," he said, "But it feels as if the Orthodox forces there have co-opted the situation and are representing the attacks in France as being about Israel and anti-Semitism. That is not to say that there isn't a reemergence of anti-Semitism in Western Europe, including France, though mainly from nationalistic forces, and so what Netanyahu and HaMevasar are up to is shameful."

January 9, 2015--Charlie Hebdo

In solidarity, my plan for this morning was to publish one of Charlie Hebdo's covers in which there is a satirical image of the Prophet Mohammed.

I had a good one selected--a full face caricature of the Prophet in which he looked just like a lascivious Yasser Arafat, saying, "100 COUPS DE FOUET, SI VOUS N'ETES PAS MORT DE RIRE." ("100 lashes if you don't die of laughter.")

But just as I was about to hit the Publish button, I hesitated, spend an anguished hour thinking about what to do, and then took it down.

I was afraid that somehow an Islamist would track me down and . . .

I have never been more ashamed of myself.