January 7, 2019--Happy New Year From Jack

"I was wondering if I'd ever hear from you again."

Without even a happy new year Jack moved on to his favorite subject--Donald Trump: "2019's going to be one wonderful year," he bubbled. He called less than five minutes after midnight new year's eve, "The way I see things, having Nancy as Speaker is a political gift that will keep on giving."

"We'll see," I said, "Remember who won the recent midterms in spite of the fact that Republicans tried to make it a referendum about San Fransisco's--wink, wink--Nancy Pelosi. How did that work out for you? The Democrats picked up 40 seats and took control of the House. Which will mean that for Trump, who never had to deal with congressional opposition, it's no longer Ryan and McConnell time. He had them in his hip pocket. Pelosi is a whole other matter. She may be 78 but she's at the top of her game and knows how to use power. Just ask George W. Bush, who had to compromise with House Democrats when she was Speaker during the last two years of his presidency and ask John Boehner who as House Minority leader during the first two years of the Obama administration was regularly rolled over by her. Think about the Affordable Care Act--no Nancy, no Obamacare. Twenty million without healthcare insurance."

Jack said, "Don't you think Trump is licking his chops when thinking about running for reelection against Elizabeth Warren while at the same time Nancy is Speaker? Both are red meat for his base. If he was a drinking man Trump would be popping corks tonight."

"I have to remind you of one thing--his base is about 30, 35 percent of likely voters. The last time I checked that's nowhere near 51 percent. Though I'll admit that Trump managed to get elected this time while losing the popular vote to Hillary by about 3.0 million votes. He likes breaking records. Well that's a record he in fact owns, unlike most of the others he claimed to have broken. Like having the most productive first two years of all presidents in history."

"Let's talk in a few days," Jack smirked, "After she actually takes over. Let's see how she's doing then. In the meantime, have a happy year."

True to his promise Jack called again on Saturday morning, less than 48 hours after Pelosi and the Democrats took control of the House.

"If I had called you 12 hours ago it would have been a whole different story."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Thursday was a big and I'll admit good day for Democrats. Especially Nancy. She had a bounce in her step that made her seem 58 rather than 78 and looked very hot on the floor of the House in a red sheath dress--red/blue am I reading something into the color of her outfit--surrounded by what looked like 20 grandchildren. They were more excited than she was. It was great TV time for your Dems. Even Fox didn't have talking points about how to trash her. Very kumbaya. And she and other Dem leaders cleverly fended off reporters' questions about impeaching Trump. How there are no current plans to do so--sure--and that we should wait for the Mueller report before thinking about what to do or not do. All very responsible sounding."

"This seems about right," I said, wondering warily about where Jack was headed with this. He sounded too self-satisfied to believe half the positive things he was saying. I didn't have long to wait.

"And then, thank you God, to take over the headlines along came the new Palestinian-American congresswoman from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib. One of two first-time-ever female Muslim members of Congress. Talk about political gifts."

"Oh, her," I said, feeling air slowly begin to leak out of my balloon.

"Yeah, one of the two Muslim members who Nancy changed the House rules for so they could wear head scarves, hijabs I think they're called, on the floor of the House. Rules didn't allow that. But Nancy got them changed as part of the first order of business, thank you very much."

I let him rant on.

"So what did the honorable gentlewoman Tlaib do to thank Nancy? Let me quote her. I wrote it down because you're always lecturing me about ignoring and making up facts. But here's a fact for you, right from Tlaib's potty mouth."

Jack read--"This is from your New York Times as recorded on someone's smartphone:

"People love you and you win," Ms. Tlaib told the crowd Thursday night. And when your son looks at you and says: 'Momma, look, you won. Bullies don't win.' And I said, 'Baby, they don't.' Because we're going to go in there, and we're going to impeach the motherfucker."

"The Times actually dropped the MF bomb in its front-page article. Not an M and a F with a whole lot of asterisks in-between. But 'motherfucker' itself. In print. But before you tell me how to think about this, let me add one more thing--Muslims don't drink alcohol, right? So what was she doing celebrating in a bar Thursday night on Capital Hill?"

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I was unhappy with her. Less than a day after being sworn in she comes out with this? Not that it would have mattered if she said it a month from now. It's inappropriate and, if we're serious about winning in 2020, she should be criticized, including by Democrats. Especially by Democrats. It's not enough to claim, as I am hearing many Democrats doing, that Trump said worse things. He did but shouldn't be the one to set the bar on appropriate behavior.

"And, one more thing--how politically stupid can she be. Teeing this up for Trump and Trumpians? So in 2020, rather than Trump running against Pelosi as the boogyman he can run against someone even better--a Muslim with a foul mouth who says she would talk this way to her six-year-old son."

"What can I say?" Jack said. I could almost see him grinning. "I couldn't have said it better myself. And then from my perspective, to make matters better, Nancy Pelosi, I mean Speaker Pelosi refused to criticize Tlaib, saying, 'I'm not in the censorship business.' I wrote that down too," 

He added, "I can see Trump's people already producing TV ads featuring Congresswoman Tlaib. Mind you, I'm not happy with some of the things he's been up to, including his shutting the government to get the money to build his stupid wall. But you guys can be even stupider. You always seem to shoot yourselves in the foot. Like Hillary calling Trump people 'deplorables.' There was no recovering from that. So 2020--bring it on."

"You guys can't stop running against Hillary. You need to move on. And be sure to call me," I said, "as soon as you get your hand-delivered copy of the Mueller report. I don't think anyone will be able to distract voters by mocking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's dancing. Which, by the way, is pretty good."    

June 15, 2016--Midcoast: Headscarf

The woman ahead of me in the checkout line at Kohl's in South Portland seemed distracted. While the rest of us were organizing purchases in our shopping carts, she was looking around as if under scrutiny.

Perhaps it's because of her headscarf, I thought. With the massacre in Orlando still dominating the news, and with the killer from an Islamic background, it wouldn't be surprising for an identifiable Muslim out in public to be nervous about what non-Mulsims might be thinking.

As her eyes swept the store, when she caught me looking at her, she quickly lowered her head and began to fidget with the clothing she was in the process of buying.

I said, not knowing exactly why, "It's still so windy."

With that she turned fully around, now with her back emphatically to me.

Not deterred, I said, "The forecast, though, is for it to subside later today. The wind." Still no reaction, "I'm worried about the plants we bought recently," I chattered on, "The wind dries them out and it's blowing too hard to water. Oh well."

By then she was first in line and one-by-one gently handed the pants, T shirts, and blouses to the cashier. They didn't exchange even a word but I could read the cashier's body language. She was decidedly not happy dealing with the woman and after ringing them all up, without folding them, stuffed the garments, as if they were garbage, into a large plastic bag.

When it was my turn, the cashier sighed audibly. "Not my favorite morning," she muttered to herself, but intentionally loud enough for me to hear.

"Sorry about that," I said, "It's the wind."

"Couldn't care less about that."

"Then what . . . ," I began to say knowing I should probably pay and get back in the car and head home.

"Come here to go on welfare and get us to pay for their health care and then the next thing you know . . ."

I knew she was referring to Orlando.

"Here I am working three jobs, none of them with benefits, and they just show up and have nothing better to do than go shopping." I tried to suggest without saying that I didn't want to hear this and was eager to be on my way.

"Did you see her nails? Pretty fancy don't you think?" In fact I had noticed them. "Check these out." She held her hands close enough to me so I could see them without my glasses. "Haven't had the time or money to get them done. It's been ages. Last time was when my daughter got married." She took a deep breath, "What a world."

The wind had indeed subsided as I made my way to the parking lot. As usual, frustrated with myself, I couldn't remember were I parked and so I wandered first to the left and then to the right. And saw standing there, between two towering SUVs, the woman in the headscarf.

To avoid agitating her further, I turned around and began to head back toward the store, for the moment not thinking about where I had parked. I just wanted to get out of her presence and leave her in as much peace as possible.

"Mister, mister," she called to me. I kept walking. But she continued to call out to me and so I stopped and looked back toward her. I couldn't determine what was best for me to do. It was clear she was distraught. Should I wait for her to come closer--it was evident she wanted to as she walked rapidly toward me--or should I pretend I couldn't hear her and head back into the store, feeling certain she wouldn't follow me there. It was unusual enough, from what I knew about Islamic women, that she was trying to engage me unobserved but in public.

Following my instincts, I stopped slinking away and waited for her to get closer.

"You seem nice," she said when she caught up with me. Carefully standing at least six feet from me she again avoided eye contact. "I din't mean to ignore you in the store."

"That's OK," I said.

"I knew what that woman was thinking. The cashier. What she felt about me. Especially right now with the news."

"I didn't pick anything up from her," I lied.

"That's nice of you to say. But I know it's not true. We came here from Somalia two years ago. My husband is a doctor and works now in the hospital in Portland." She gestured toward downtown. "I have two young children at home and I stay with them to take care of them. My sister's with them now. I'm studying to become a real estate agent so I can work when they're both old enough to be in school."

"I wish you well with that," I said. Still not feeling comfortable. And not entirely understanding why.

"I heard what she said. The cashier. We're not on welfare. We pay taxes. We're becoming Americans. Studying for our citizenship. More than anyone, we hate what happened in Orlando and before that in San Bernardino. I don't know why I'm telling you this. Maybe I want Americans to know who we are and how we feel."

"I can only imagine," I said, not lying.

"I know what people think. That we're all terrorists. I see the way people look at me and my husband. But with this . . ." She touched and adjusted her headscarf.

"I hope that's not true," I said, "Making it more difficult is what politicians and candidates are saying."

"I follow the news. I understand what you are saying. But can I tell you something I'm ashamed to admit?"

"Only if you . . ."

"I don't blame them. It was the same in Somalia. We came from educated people and then there were the militias. All the kidnappings and killings. They too called themselves Muslims, but they were animals. And so in Mogadishu, where we lived, if I saw a young man who made me think he was from Al-Shabaab, I wanted him to be captured and even killed. Just from the way he looked."

"I can understand."

"What I am saying is that in that way I was no different than the cashier. I even understand wanting to build walls and not let any Muslims into America." She began softly to cry. "I hate myself for saying that. But that's what being afraid does to you. So I understand."

And with that, she turned away and headed back up the aisle of parked cars.

December 14, 2015--GOP Goose-Steppers

We need to calm down.

Those who are fearing that we are about to be bombed unrelentingly by ISIS need to get a grip. It's bad enough as it is and so the last thing we need is to get all hysterical and make things worse by overreacting.

Those drawn to Donald TRUMP, rallying to his bluster, believing his xenophobic proposals to suspend   the admission of Muslims to the country will keep us safe, need to take a deep breath and at least one step back.

And those of us on the progressive left also need to get control of ourselves--no matter what we think about him and his likely unconstitutional ideas, he is no Hitler.

Though that is what I'm hearing from liberal friends and reading in some hyped-up op-ed columns in the New York Times.

About the latter, on Saturday, Timothy Egan, in his piece, "Another Indecent Proposal," defamed TRUMP and his followers by labeling them crypto-nazis. With TRUMP assigned the Hitler role.

To make matters even more outrageous, the Egan piece, when it first appeared on the NY Times website, was more blatantly titled--"Goose-Steppers in the GOP."

Egan and some of my friends need to have a drink.

And while doing so, to give him his due, they need to quote TRUMP accurately. What he is saying may be bad enough on its own as not to require citation out of context.

For example, out-of-context Egan writes--

Trump's proposal--"a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering there United States"--is not just flotsam from the lunatic fringe. Well it is. But the fringe is huge.

Whereas in a campaign press release TRUMP actually said--

Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on.

Or as he put it more colloquially--"Until we can figure out what the hell is going on."

What TRUMP said and what Egan said he said is quite different.

We may still deplore what TRUMP is saying and implying about Muslims, but we diminish the effectiveness of our deploring by intentionally not quoting him honestly.

And we can't just ignore his charge that our "country's representatives" at the moment can't "figure out what the hell is going on."

They can't.

Homeland Security people this past weekend acknowledged that they really blew it when they reviewed the application for a visa from the Pakistani women who joined her American-born husband in perpetrating the San Bernardino massacre. For years, openly on social media, she expressed interest in joining in violent terrorist activities against the West. And though her application was reviewed three times, no one picked that up. And the rest is tragic history.

It probably would have helped if we had, sorry, taken a TRUMP-pause to figure out what was going on with this and her.

Here's a little more from the Egan op-ed--

And sure, all the little Hitlers probably don't amount to a hill of beans. But what about the 35 percent of Republican voters on the New York Times/CBS News poll, who say they're all in with the man sieg heiled by aspiring brownshirts and men in white sheets?

For me, when someone so quickly starts making Hitler analogies, I know they're out of control and are not thinking with their heads but with their fears and emotions.

Hitler was Hitler. TRUMP is TRUMP. As I said, that's bad enough.

December 8, 2015--Muslim Rapture

I have been wondering why so many people are reporting that the massacre in San Bernardino is making them feel more fearful than the events of 9/11.

The nearly 3,000 deaths by terrorists dwarfs the 14 murdered last week. And yet many are saying they are now more frightened than at that time.

I have been informally questioning people I know about this. Mainly well educated, independent-minded, intrepid people who have made their way successfully through life. Some have lived adventurously and, for the most part, the ones I have been surveying are among the politically most progressive people I know.

They tell me that it is not about the numbers. Obviously "only" 14 deaths pale by comparison to the carnage in 2001. What is emotionally occurring this time for them is the difference between the externally-driven attack on September 11th and the fact that in San Bernardino the assault was conceived and carried out by seemingly assimilated Americans.

The husband at least. And his wife, though born in Pakistan, is described as a typical suburban spouse and mother, not apparently alienated by life in the United States. Though she may turn out to be a version of the Manchurian Candidate, she and he felt to neighbors, family, and friends just like the rest of us.

So to be attacked by them brings the terrorist threat home. Makes it, if you will, homemade. Perversely almost mater of fact. Not too, too much planning or preparation was required.

And it occurred right in the neighborhood. Just down the block. Around the corner. As so to those I surveyed, this feels very different than the attack perpetrated by Al Qaeda operatives who trained for and planned an enormously complicated plot against America that culminated on that horrific day in 2001.

So the nature of this most recent assault means everyone is a threat.

Well, I have been hearing, not everyone. Not everyone is a threat.

I have been hearing that the fear and threats are not from all of our neighbors but from Muslims.

And, again, I am not being told this by supporters of Donald TRUMP who is calling for racial profiling and now forbidding all Muslims from entering the country until "we find out what the hell is going on."

 These, once more, are liberals. Otherwise tolerant people. People who pride themselves on enjoying the diversity that is America. This is from those who have spent a lifetime defending and embracing our various forms of difference.

These formerly tolerant people are even going further than TRUMP, saying that if all Muslims could suddenly and painlessly disappear, they would welcome that.

One who shared this opinion called it a Muslim Rapture--that all Muslims in the world, the billion-plus of them--would be taken right up to heaven and those of us Left Behind could go on with our lives.

After hearing this, I asked others about this and quite a few said it sounded to them like a good idea. Everyone would get what they want--Muslims an early departure to heaven while the rest of us could live on in peace.

Everyone who shared this views, of course, realized and acknowledged it is an unrealistic fantasy. But it is an expression of their fears and perceptions that they are not seeing a clear path to a solution to the problem radical Islam represents.

Most were quick to add, as if to mitigate these views, that though it embarrassed them to feel this way, they also deplore the excesses of all religions, the fanatical fringes. Especially messianic ones like millennialist Jews who are waiting for the Messiah to appear and radical Christians such as the Adventists who are eagerly looking forward to the Apocalypse. All anticipating End Times.

One even had a joke--

"What's the difference," he asked me, unsmiling, "between radical and moderate Muslims?"

Also not smiling, knowing where this might be heading, I said I didn't know.

"The radical Muslims want to kill us. The moderates want the radical Muslims to do the killing."

I groaned.

But then turning the tables on me, I was asked what I thought about the Muslim Rapture. Stammering, I said, "Please don't quote me as I won't quote you, but I am ashamed to admit--of course it's a fantasy and not a reality--but . . ."

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.

January 19, 2015--Headscarves

At his joint news conference Friday with British Prime Minister David Cameron, with unusual public candor, Barack Obama said--

Our Muslim populations, they feel themselves to be Americans. There is, you know, this incredible process of immigration and assimilation that is part of our tradition that is probably our greatest strength. There are parts of Europe in which that's not the case, and that's probably the greatest danger that Europe faces.

He could have added, getting himself into more trouble for truth-telling, that if we think about just France, which includes Europe's largest Muslim population, French ideology also contributes to the danger.

They live with the assertion and the fiction that theirs is a non-racial society. That Muslims, for example, who migrate to France from one of their former colonies are French citizens (no need to live in the shadows) with a full set of rights that derive from a belief system that claims that these rights are universal and are a natural benefit of the very fact of being human.

Thus, in an act of avoidance and social absurdity, France does not even gather statistics about how its various ethic minorities are faring--income numbers, educational-attainment levels, family size, religious affiliations, and so forth. All citizens are equally French and there is no need to make any divisive distinctions.

They do not even point out that though Muslims make up a full 10 percent of France's population, in the 577-seat French Assembly only about 10 are Muslims. And this, hypocritically (since France is supposed to be a fully secular society and data about religious affiliation is not actively gathered), is only because by recent action these seats were specifically craved out to assure at least some "minority" representation since until a few years only one member was Islamic.

And most Muslims in France, though they have documented, legal status, do in fact live in a Gallic version of shadows--in banlieues, isolated and segregated Muslim suburbs that surround all French cities where lack of education, jobs, and hope are endemic.

To make matters worse, the French authorities, by clinging to these illusions, take aggressive action to forbid any public display of ethnic or especially religious affiliation. For years controversy has raged around the issue of women wearing full veils and girls wearing headscarves (hajibs) in schools and other state institutions--l'affaire du voile. They are banned and this contributes to the tension between the Muslim and more secular French communities.

Meanwhile in Florida where immigrants legal and undocumented are not always welcome (I am trying to be kind) headscarves are common.

The other day, we needed to do some banking for my mother and at Wells Fargo, about a mile from where she lives, many of the women on line or waiting to see bank officers were wearing headscarves and seemed comfortable in the mix of Anglos and others from various Caribbean islands.

Later the same day, at Foodtown in multiethnic Davie, many of the customers and half the cashiers were wearing hajibs and, as at the bank, seemed totally assimilated in the polyglot mix.

So I think Obama had it right--many in Europe could do much better and isn't it good that we are as welcoming a society as we are. Far from perfect, but on the world stage, impressive.

November 26, 2014--Sacred Spaces

I once had a colleague who for his doctoral dissertation wrote about scared spaces. Mainly those places that held special, spiritual meaning for native peoples. Places that they attempted to hide and if necessary defend against outsiders.

I asked him if there were equivalent places that were held to be scared by people in the so-called developed world. He smiled at me, as if to indicate how naive I was.

"Just look around you," he said.

"Even here in Midtown Manhattan?"

"Even here. During lunch let's walk over to Saint Patrick's Cathedral and look at the people worshipping there. Sense what that physical place means to them."

I didn't take up his offer but two years later, in Jerusalem, I understood all to well what a sacred space is and how those for whom it is sacred, who couldn't hide it from "outsiders," were willing, eager to defend it. Even to give up their lives to protect it from encroachment.

This was most emotionally vivid at the Western Wall. A sacred place to observant Jews who claim it is one of the walls of the Second Temple, which itself stood on the site of the even more sacred First Temple, constructed, it is believed, nearly 3,000 years ago by King Solomon. And it is at this very place where the Third and final temple will be built, the intra-orthodox fervently believe, when the Messiah appears.

They await him now and some are making preparations for his arrival, including moving in on the Al-Aqsa Mosque which sits on top of the Temple Mount, one of the most sacred places for Muslims, the place from which it is reported the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven. All of this not very far from a number of sacred places for Christians--the Via Dolorosa, the road along which Christ was said to have  borne the cross as he proceeded toward Calvary and the Church of Holy Sepulchre, which was built to mark the sacred place where he was crucified, entombed, and resurrected.

All of these places--central in meaning to Jews, Christians, and Muslims--are located literally within a square kilometer of each other. Those who are skeptical, even non-believers (me included) when there feel overwhelmingly that this is a special place, charged with spiritual power.

A sacred space, a site where our search for meaning, truth, and divine inspiration commingles with religious beliefs and practices in the attempt to find the most fundamental of answers--just what my long-ago colleague was attempting to get me to understand.

How then, with so much at stake, in the world's most-contested piece of real estate can there ever be a resolution to the conflict between Israeli Jews and Muslim Palestinians, both claiming, in the flow of blood, that they have special rights and historical, divine, prerogatives for exclusive control of the place that one side calls the Temple Mount and the other the Dome of the Rock?

This is not a situation where compromise and splitting-the-difference has much chance of working.

October 15, 2103--Getting a Get

A friend keeps a close eye on fanatics. Particularly of the Islamic sort, especially in regard to their barbaric treatment of girls and women. Like burying them in the ground and stoning them to death.

Though depressing, this is worth doing. We all have to speak out in outrage about practices of this kind. Those sanctioned by religious leaders and governments more than any others.

She and I were talking about this recently and I said that, though I share her outrage, I have chosen to concentrate on keeping my eye on and decrying fanatics among my own coreligionists. That's where I can claim credibility--not seeming in a one-sided way to castigate the sins of others while ignoring what those culturally closer to me may be doing that is also outrageous.

"But your people aren't killing people, not doing these kinds of hideous things to girls, so why are you focused on their relatively benign behavior?"

"In some cases they are not that benign--though admittedly, stoning women to death is in a category of its own. But in the past there are too many cases of Jews killing innocents. If we want to go back to the Old Testament, recall the Israelites treatment of the people of Canaan. The God of the Jews, it is written, instructed the Israelites to commit genocide on the Canaanites--to kill every one of them, including all woemn and children."

"But that was thousands of years ago," my friend protested.

"True, but this suggests to me that we still have to keep a wary eye on all people under the sway of fundamentalist religious dogma, especially if their faith's history might predispose them to violence. I particularly try to maintain a critical perspective on zealots in Israel and on the ultra-orthodox in America."

"I hear you, but I still see things a little differently."

Of course, in many ways she is right, yet I keep alert to the unacceptable things "my" people do and attempt to bring them to public attention.

The other day, for example, the New York Times reported about something occurring in Brooklyn that on the surface felt bizarre and Medieval.

Something about ultra-orthodox Jewish women seeking rabbinical permission to divorce abusive husbands. According to Jewish practice, in order to divorce a husband it is not enough to hire an attorney and file a petition in a civil court. Women must go before a committee of orthodox rabbis and attempt to convince them that there is appropriate cause for the rabbis to endorse their desire to seek a divorce. If they are convinced, they issue a get, a liturgical document that then allows women to proceed.

Since as in the other biblical religions women are considered less than second-class citizens, getting a get is complicated, difficult, frequently humiliating, and often costly.

To be clear--orthodox women seeking divorces usually need to pay the rabbinical court many thousands of dollars for them even to consider their cases. Especially in those circumstances where the husbands refuse to give permission for their wives to proceed since according to orthodox doctrine husbands have this power.

But according to the recent report in the Times, not only is the process very expensive, but what some rabbis have been arranging is bizarre, and likely illegal.

For fees that can total $60,000, the rabbis hire people to kidnap the reluctant husbands and have them physically tortured in order to force them to sign the required papers.

At least two rabbis who allegedly arranged for the kidnappings and torture were scooped up in a sting operation that included law-enforcement officials taping telephone conversations in which the rabbis casually talked about how they go about their violent business. Ironically, with a feminist twist since the beneficiaries of their "services" are women.

According to a rabbi caught on tape by federal prosecutor, after the husbands were abducted, "They beat them up and tied them up, shocked them with Tasers and stun gun until they got what they wanted."

One of the perpetrators, Rabbi Mendel Epstein talked openly and casually about how his hit men went about the techniques they used to fool the police if the victims stepped forward to report the kidnappings and torture:

If they beat them up carefully, leaving no visible bruises, "basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him then, uh, [they think there] is there some Jewish crazy affair here, they don't want to get involved."

And not only that--the rabbis guaranteed that after their "tough guys" finished with the husbands, the women will get their gets. And for the most part they did.

October 9, 2013--Virgins in Paradise

This must be the week for passing along quotes from my reading. 

Monday, from Woodrow Wilson, I shared A. Scott Berg's description of the leaders of the Four Powers, victors in the First World War, literally redrawing the map of the world while on their hands and knees on the floor of the president's office in Paris.

Today I offer one from Jess Walter's powerful 2006 novel, The Zero, set in the days right after the destruction of the World Trade Center at what became Ground Zero. Largely through the eyes of a policeman who was there that day, Walter takes readers on a harrowing tour of a city and a country shuddering through the aftershocks of that devastating terrorist attack.

His hero cop, Brian Remy moves through the dreamscape narrative in a state of heightened awareness and simultaneous dislocation, encountering "The Boss" (a slightly fictionalized version of Mayor Giuliani), first responders, government agents who inhabit an Kafkaesque world of mystery and half-truths, and U.S. and foreign nationals living double and and at times metaphoric lives.

One of the most vivid characters is peripheral to the main events--Walter calls him "the old Middle Eastern man"--but is an important truth-teller. At one point, he says to Remy--

"The way people here mock a religion that promises virgins for martyrs in the world after this one. Your own culture would seem to indicate that there is nothing more profound than sex, nothing more humbling or graceful or suggestive of the mystery of creation. And yet the idea of virgins in paradise somehow seems to draw your greatest scorn. Do you honestly imagine yours is a sexless heaven? What kind of paradise is it that has harps and angels but no orgasms?  

". . . You're always convincing yourselves that the world isn't what it is, that no one's reality matters except your own. That's why you make such poor victims. You truly can't know suffering if you know nothing about rage. And you can't feel genuine rage if you won't acknowledge loss. 

"That's what happens when a nation becomes a public relations firm. You forget the truth. Everything is the Alamo. You claim victory in every loss, life in every death. Declare war when there is no war, and when you are at war, pretend you aren't. The rest of the world wails and vows revenge and buries its dead and you turn on the television. Go to the cinema. 

". . .  Entertainment is the singular thing you produce now. And it is just another propaganda, the most insidious, greatest propaganda ever devised, and this is your only export now--your coffee and tobacco, your gunpowder and your wheat. And while people elsewhere die questioning the propaganda of tyrants and royals, you crave yours. You demand the propaganda of distraction and triviality, and it has become your religion, your national faith. In this faith you are grave and backward fundamentalists, not so different from the grave and backward fundamentalists you presume to battle. If there are barbarians knocking on the gates with stories of beautiful virgins in the afterlife, then aren't you barbarians too, wrapping the world in cables full of happy-ever-after stories of fleshy blondes and animated fish and talking cars?"