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San
Diego Jewish World
damage of by then the last eight years, and when I become
President, Bill Clinton, my dear husband, will be one of the people who will be
sent around the world as a roving ambassador to make it very clear to the rest
of the world that we are back to a policy of reaching out and working and trying
to make friends and allies.... |
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Haifa University to grant 119
scholarships in the name HAIFA (Press Release)—The University of Haifa has initiated a unique memorial to the 119 IDF soldiers killed during the Second Lebanon War by granting academic scholarships in memory of each of them. A generous donation from American businessman, Younes Nazarian, has enabled establishment of the fund that will grant scholarships to University students who served in the IDF. "This memorial combines two issues that are very dear to my heart and that, in my opinion, are at the top of Israel's priorities: IDF soldiers and officers on the one hand and education, especially higher education, on the other hand. For this reason, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to memorialize the soldiers," said Nazarian, who will sponsor the $1,000 scholarships. University of Haifa President Aaron Ben-Ze'ev expressed his gratitude to Nazarian and his wife Soraya for their generous gift. "It has been a year since the war, and the University of Haifa, as the University of the north, searched for an appropriate memorial to the 119 soldiers who fell in the war, during which the University was under the threat of Hezbollah missiles. Many of our students fought in the war and we thought it would be fitting to honor the memory of the soldiers with scholarships in their name. The scholarship recipients will establish a personal connection with the family of the soldier in whose memory their scholarship is named," he said. Prof. Ada Spitzer, vice president of external relations and resource development, who proposed the idea to establish the scholarship fund to Nazarian, received his immediate approval, and together they outlined the guidelines for the scholarships. The University, in cooperation with the Unit for Soldier Memorials at the Ministry of Defense, spoke with each of the families and received their agreement to the initiative.
Formal announcement
of the scholarships will take place Tuesday, June 5, at the opening ceremony of
the 35th Meeting of the University of Haifa Board of Governors, during which the
University will award Nazarian an Honorary Doctorate degree. The families of the
119 soldiers killed in the war will participate in the ceremony. The
scholarships will be given out at a separate ceremony during the next academic
year.
Computers and Internet 'flatten' the playing field,
HAIFA (Press Release) —Technion researchers have succeeded in creating
in the laboratory “Peptides are tiny proteins that are part of the immune system found in all organisms – including humans,” explains Prof. Amram Mor of the Technion’s Faculty of Biotechnology and Food Engineering. “They survive in the body for only a short time – generally only a few minutes.”
The research team found a way to create in the laboratory a substance
similar to peptides. Up until
The solution was attained by improving existing peptides. At the end of
last year, the Technion researchers succeeded in improving the peptides
by adding a fatty acid. This discovery was good
“This is, in reality, molecular engineering,” says Prof. Mor. “We
engineered a substance existing in nature. In experiments on mice, we
proved that the new substance – OAK - prevents mortality at
The new substance is not broken down by enzymes and has a lifespan of
hours, as opposed to
OCEANSIDE, Calif.—A
Navy chaplain this last Friday evening provided a mixed group of civilians and
armed service personnel with a feeling for what Shabbat is like at sea. Rabbi
Chaplain Joel Newman conducted services aboard the excursion vessel Azure
Seas.
After we left the harbor and entering the ocean, Rabbi Newman and his Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base staff handed out a beautiful booklet with the entire Friday night service, in Hebrew (with transliteration) and English, and then proceeded to conduct the service. Assisting the rabbi were several members of his Marine Corps chaplain's staff who had “protected” him during his tour in Iraq. In addition, there were some Marines present who would be shortly leaving for Iraq They participated in the responsive reading portion of the service. During the cruise we were able to enjoy the view of the California shoreline as we journeyed down and around the area. It was wonderful to see the beautiful areas where beachside Shabbat services had been held by Rabbi Newman's mixed military and civilian congregation in the past. The waters were somewhat “choppy” and although some people mentioned it no one suggested we return to dock. However, there seemed to be a lot more conversation as soon as we reentered the port. Marilyn and I were particularly fortunate to have met Caroline and Michael Berlin who had recently returned from visiting Poland in conjunction with “The March of The Living." This was Michael’s first tip there, but Carolyn’s third. She is closely involved with “The March” and has been raising funds to promote its continuation. The Shabbot cruise was a totally great experience. We met many wonderful people with whom we had an opportunity to share Jewish experiences. Several had been on a tour to Israel recently. All in all, it was a most enjoyable, educational, and warming evening. Eventually, like all
good things, it came to an end. We docked around 9 pm and everyone said they
had a wonderful time.
On the choseness of the Jews My remark
may have been flip, but even apart from the cynicism that the vows of
politicians so often and so rightly inspire, there were serious grounds for
being apprehensive. For even while the then Prime Minister Rabin was declaring
that “There is no state of Israel without Jerusalem and no peace without
Jerusalem undivided,” his government was quietly tolerating Palestinian
political activity in East Jerusalem. Furthermore, much of the world was already
treating the offices in Orient House, in which this activity was taking place,
as ministries of the future Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its
capital.
Stretching around through almost every country on every continent, this diverse cultural heritage has contributed to the mosaic that is the Jewish community as a whole today. From ancient times in the Land of the Two Rivers (Tigris and Euphrates) to China, from the centuries-old communities in Cochin, India to the destination of the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria – the history is long and wide. This is a vast treasure chest from which an artist - a choreographer - can draw out different jewels to set into a necklace of dance. Dance is intrinsic to the basic human need for communication, within oneself, to others, as well as to forces that humans would like to propitiate and thus control. It is used to celebrate, plead, thank and commend. This basic need gave birth to folk dance from which all other dance forms originate whether it is the highly structured classical ballet or the strictly stylized dance of the Bali Temple dancers. Folk dance also served to soak up energy that might otherwise be used destructively. Therefore, it incorporates elements of competitiveness – one dancer after another showing off a particular movement. It also celebrates an event whether it is a victory in war, a marriage, or a harvest. It is part of religious ritual to thank or please whatever deities the group venerates, as well as to ready warriors for the coming hunt or battle. Folk dance encapsulates the group’s view of gender interaction running the gamut from complete separation of the sexes, through discrete interaction (holding hands), to orgiastic culmination. In addition to keeping all this in mind whilst watching folk dance the reviewer is constrained by the accessibility that is inherent in the genre – it looks as if anyone could get up and do it, because that is its original intent. However, when it is presented on stage rather than in the village square and tickets are sold, then it has to be judged on the basis of value received for money exchanged.
The program presented by the Keshet Chaim Dance
Company was nicely varied in choice of epoch and cultural scope. From The
Offering depicting the pilgrimage to the ancient Temple, to the Ashkenazic
Chassidic/Russian Dance, from wandering the desert in Sababa Ba Midbar
through From Spain to Jerusalem to The Yemenites as well as
Israel of today in Spirit of Israel, one did The Chassidic Dance with the men costumed in typical shtetl fashion couture (black hats trimmed at the ears with fake payes and vestigial tallit) included a Bottle Dance sequence a la Fiddler on the Roof which was fun to see. The Yemenites took us from a marriage in which the bride wears her dowry in the form of coins to a group of dancers clad entirely in funky black, pop locking and hip hopping. I’m not sure how it was connected except the program notes said it was to contrast tradition with modernity. What I really liked throughout was the costuming; it was both colorful and varied not only dance to dance but also within the dances. I find too often that more professional companies have lost sight of the fact that costume for folk dance and celebration has historically been eye catching. One of the ways people celebrate is to change clothes from the dull work-a-day fare to bright color. My one caveat would be that the use of horizontal striping in some of the costumes, as well as some of the belting tended to emphasize a few less than svelte waistlines. The music was rousing and had the audience clapping and stamping (particularly the man sitting behind me) and I found my own foot tapping throughout. The seventeen dancers, plus I do believe the artistic director, Eytan Avisar, joining in a couple of times, were spirited for the most part – but Avisar most of all. The “graybeard” outdid the youngsters in presentation and commitment. As mentioned earlier, folk dance in the village square is one thing, but on the stage is quite another. There was an edge lacking in the production values and it showed up in the details. In at least three of the six dances, costume parts ended up on the floor – a belt here, a headpiece there. That’s sloppy and inexcusable. Once is an accident, three times is a symptom. The hesitation before launching into a particular movement or interaction, and the need for recovery after a turn or jump or finish, betrays lack of certainty. The choreography brought the dancers to the edge of their capabilities and checking to see what the other dancers are doing, shows lack of confidence. Breaking out of character before completely disappearing into the wings – bearing in mind that the audience seated on the sides has an extended view into the wings, shows lack of professionalism. Most of these things are fixable if the artistic direction is interested in detail. Interestingly, the one time the dancers looked really comfortable was in the hip hop section of the Yemeni dance. Their smiles became broader; the “seams” that sew a dance together were suddenly less visible. The dance was crisp, edgy, flashy, all of which was – for the most part – missing in the rest of the program. Between each of the dances vocalist Gilat Rapaport sang songs connected with the dance just performed. She has a lovely voice and is an animated performer, “dancing” her songs and showing the ease often lacking in the dancers.
On its face professional folk dance is a
contradiction in terms, but not when staged and commercially sold. Then it
crosses the line and it is a line that this company, while enjoyable, |
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Jews
in the News
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We
departed Oceanside Harbor at 6:30pm promptly and headed out to the
Pacific. Everyone on board was excited and busy introducing themselves to
others. Shortly after our departure a buffet dinner was served. It consisted
of a salad, with a large selection of veggies, followed by a vegetarian pizza
(sorry no pepperoni-strictly kosher). 
Dance~The Jewish
Friedman...
(continued from above)
“This (Israel) is a dream factory for imagination,” Freidman declared, adding
that the country cannot invest too much in education. “With the proper
resources, this imagination can be transformed into creativity,” he said.
Friedman made it clear that he strongly believed that this could be accomplished
best through a multi-disciplinary approach that includes not only science and
technology but also the liberal arts.
He concluded his remarks with: “I say to the Hebrew University, to its
president, and to its next generation: May you go from strength to strength.”
Friedman, who once studied at the Hebrew University’s Rothberg International
School, joined The New York Times in 1981 and has served in several positions at
the newspaper, covering the globe in his reporting. He was Beirut bureau chief
during the first war in Lebanon in 1982 and covered the first Intifada while
serving as Israel bureau chief from 1984 to 1988. He is a three-time winner of
the Pulitzer Prize.
Others who received honorary degrees at today’s ceremony were: Iraqi advocate of
democracy and opponent of the Saddam regime, Prof. Kanan Makiya of Brandeis
University; feminist researcher and writer, Prof. Linda Nochlin of New York
University; winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in chemistry, Prof. Aaron
Ciechanover of the Technion; professor of organic chemistry, Sir Alan R. Fersht
of Cambridge University; professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, Ann M. Graybiel; horticultural scientist, Prof. Jules
Janick of Purdue University in the U.S.; and Michael Dunkel of Sydney,
Australia, longstanding friend and governor of the Hebrew University and a
leader of its Australian Friends organization.
An honorary doctorate degree was also awarded earlier to German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, which she received at a separate ceremony held at the Hebrew
University in March.
Veteran Israeli educator Michael Bahat received the annual Samuel Rothberg Prize
for Jewish Education.
The foregoing article was provided by Hebrew University.
Choseness...
(continued from above)
Nevertheless, the plain and brutal truth is that today there is more reason,
much more reason, to worry about Jerusalem than there was in 1995. In 1995, and
in spite of the ominous signs of trouble ahead that seemed all too obvious to
me, very few Israelis outside the fringes of the far Left were willing to
contemplate a redivision of Jerusalem. In those days it was still the reddest of
red lines, and not even the promise of a peace treaty could induce the vast
majority of Israelis to cross it. Not so today. In fact, according to a recent
poll, 57% of Jewish Israelis “are willing to make some concession in the city as
part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.”
One rationale for this willingness is supplied by my old friend, the historian
Walter Laqueur. In a recent book entitled Dying for Jerusalem, Laqueur
informs us that “the city is already divided,” and he goes on to invoke the
authority of the prophet Isaiah to justify a relaxed attitude toward this
situation: Isaiah, he writes, “said many wonderful things about Jerusalem--that
for Zion’s sake he will not keep silent, and that out of Zion will go forth the
law. But he did not say that his right hand will forget her cunning unless the
Ministry of Tourism and the Ministry of Health are located in this city.” And
Laqueur adds that nowhere in the Hebrew Bible is it said that “sovereignty on
part of the city cannot be shared with others.”
A prominent Israeli intellectual, another old friend of mine, Hillel Halkin,
agrees. He points out that the great majority of Jerusalem’s Arab inhabitants
live in a part of the city that was “never traditionally thought to be part of
Jerusalem at all. When one speaks, therefore, of ‘repartitioning’ Jerusalem,
this is not quite the frightful specter that it might appear at first glance.”
There is also a variant of this rationale that was given to me privately by
another prominent intellectual who once occupied a high position in the Israeli
government. Since, he said, the city was already de facto divided to the point
where neither he nor anyone he knew ever dared to venture into its eastern part
after dark, why continue resisting a de jure acknowledgment of that reality? (To
this I replied that there were neighborhoods in New York and other American
cities of which the same thing could be said, but that did not mean that they
should not remain parts of the United States.)
A third, and perhaps the most telling rationale of them all, is demographic.
Because the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem have a much higher birthrate than
the Jews living here, and because so many Jews have been leaving the city, the
Jewish majority has steadily dwindled. Furthermore, according to another poll,
no fewer than 78% of Jewish Israelis do not wish to live in Jerusalem. In
addition to being put off by the scarcity of jobs, some of them feel that there
are already too many Palestinians here, and some, if truth be told, feel that
there are too many Jews--haredi Jews, that is. There is thus a distinct
possibility that Jews will wind up as a minority within their own capital city.
Which is why a hawk like Professor Dan Schueftan can join in advocating a
redivision of the city with a Peace Now activist like the novelist Amos Oz. Yet
Schueftan--who calls Israel the eighth wonder of the world--believes in
achieving as much separation as possible between Jews and Arabs, while Oz--who
dwells obsessively on Israel’s putative sins against the Palestinians--dreams of
an Israeli ambassador to Palestine and a Palestinian ambassador to Israel
strolling frequently to each other’s offices in the two parts of Jerusalem for
coffee and a friendly chat. Needless to say, no such vision of the lion lying
down with the lamb presents itself to Schueftan’s eyes. He favors a redivision
only because, as he put it not long ago, “ Israel without the parts of east
Jerusalem heavily populated by Arabs… is stronger than Israel that includes
300,000 [more] Arabs.”
Now, even though I know that demographic projections often turn out to be wrong,
and even though I believe that strength cannot be measured by demography alone,
I certainly do not deny that the numbers give serious cause for concern. I also
freely admit that no comparison can be made between Jerusalem and New York, or
indeed between Jerusalem and any other city on the face of the earth. In fact, I
think that Mayor Uri Lupolianski is exactly right when he declares that
“Jerusalem is not only an inseparable part of the Jewish nation, it is the basis
of the existence of the Jewish nation.” Conversely Walter Laqueur is in my
judgment exactly wrong when he cites Isaiah, of all prophets, in making his case
for a certain nonchalance over the possibility that Jerusalem might be redivided
in some future negotiation.
To understand how egregiously off the mark Laqueur is, we need to recall a
little history. After the death of David’s son Solomon, the united kingdom
forged by David was broken apart into two separate kingdoms--Israel in the North
with its eventual capital in Samaria, and Judah in the South with its capital in
Jerusalem. But in 722 B.C.E., after some two centuries of stormy existence, the
Northern kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians and its people were
scattered to the winds to become the Ten Lost Tribes. About twenty years later,
in 701 B.C.E., Assyria, now ruled by Sennacherib, was on the point of meting out
the same fate to Judah, of which Hezekiah was now the king. Having already
overrun much of Judah, Sennacherib was now laying siege to Jerusalem. At this
juncture, what did Isaiah do? Did he propose that Hezekiah negotiate a deal
under which Judah’s Ministries of Tourism and Health would be moved elsewhere
and sovereignty over the city shared with Assyria? No, what he did was assure
Hazekiah that if he held out against Sennacherib, no harm would come to
Jerusalem because God would not permit it.
This belief in the inviolability of Jerusalem went very deep. Just how deep it
went we know from what would happen more than a century later to the prophet
Jeremiah. Because he was warning that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, would lay
waste to Jerusalem if a rebellion were mounted against him, Jeremiah was accused
of contradicting the promise of God to the people of Israel, and his political
opponents advocated that he be put to death for the crime of blasphemy.
It was also in Jeremiah’s time, when Josiah was king of Judah, that the book of
Deuteronomy was found in the Temple of Solomon when repairs were being made
there. The king himself and the people of Judah were already familiar with much
of what was contained in that book, but there was also something new and
startling. It was a prohibition, stated in the strongest possible terms, against
offering sacrifices on any altar but the one in the Temple in Jerusalem.
The reason this was so startling was that from the time of Abraham on down a
variety of altars had been built and dedicated to the God of Israel in a variety
of places, and nowhere in the laws of the Torah as they were known at the time,
or in any of the oracles and sermons of the prophets who had come before, had
there been the remotest hint that there was anything wrong with offering
sacrifices on them. Yet now God was commanding the destruction of all these
altars and shrines wherever they might be located and however ancient they might
be. From now on, there was to be no sacrificing and no celebration of the
festivals anywhere except in Jerusalem. Jerusalem thus became not only the
capital of Judah but also, so to speak, the capital of Judaism.
In wondering about this singling out of one city from among all the cities in
the Land of Israel, I find myself ineluctably led into its larger and even more
mysterious context, which is the singling out of one people from among all the
nations of the world. And in puzzling over this belief that the children of
Israel, and their descendants who would in later centuries be called Jews, were
the chosen people of God, I find myself relying for help on an intriguing
Christian concept: the one Christian theologians call the scandal of
particularity.
There are many elaborate definitions of this concept, but in my opinion it was most strikingly elucidated not in any theological disquisition but in a little jingle often attributed to the British writer Hilaire Belloc. Actually, however, it was written in the 1920’s by a British journalist named William Norman Ewer, and it went like this: “How odd of God/To choose/ The Jews.” Given the sly touch of anti-Semitic malice concealed beneath the whimsy of this jingle, it was inevitable that there should have been responses in kind. One of them, of uncertain authorship, was “But not so odd/As those who choose/A Jewish God/But spurn the Jews.” Another, also of uncertain authorship, was more succinct: “Not odd of God/Goyim annoy’m.”
Ewer,
incidentally, was not only an anti-Semite; he was also, it has emerged from
recently declassified files of MI5, a Soviet agent. Make of that what you will.
Anyhow, in composing his jingle, this Soviet agent could have been speaking as a
believing Christian who had no choice but to accept what the Bible told him; and
the Bible told him that God had indeed chosen the Jews. Ewer thought this an
oddity, but to weightier and more solemn Christian minds, it was more than odd,
it was nothing short of scandalous, that the one true God, the universal God,
the God of all should have singled out any one people on whom to bestow
His special favor. And as if this were not scandal enough, the particular people
he thus singled out was the Jews: a scraggly tribe only just freed from
slavery and now wandering in the desert.
True, the often bitter fruits of that special privilege would in the distant
future sometimes lead the descendants of those scraggly wanderers in the desert
to pray: “Dear God, please choose someone else for a change.” But this in itself
could been taken--at least by the humorless--as an updated version of their
incessant complaining against God, so richly document by the Book of Exodus,
along with their readiness at every moment to rebel against the Law revealed to
them at Sinai--the very Law that God had chosen them as the instrument by which
it would at the end of days be accepted by all mankind.
Of course, Jewish complaints against God have also come from those who adhered
strictly to His law, and who could not understand why they were punished instead
of rewarded. We find such complaints magnificently expressed in the Book of Job,
and in the prophets Jeremiah and Habbakuk, both of whom actually summon God to
what would in later centuries be called a Din Torah, a lawsuit before a
rabbinical court, to answer precisely such charges. Nor did this end with the
prophets. Perhaps the most deliciously poignant latter-day example we have is
the 18th-century Yiddish folk song called the Kaddish of Reb Levi
Yitzchok of Berditchev, or A Din Torah Mit Gott. It goes in part like
this: “Good morning to You, Master of the universe,/
I, Levi Yitzhak, son of Sarah of Berditchev,/
I have come to swear out a complaint against you on behalf of Your people
Israel./ What do You have against Your people Israel? /Why are You always
setting Yourself upon Your people Israel?....”
We
shall see in a few moments the answer that the likes of Reb Levi Yitzchok
usually settled on. Meanwhile, returning to the Christians, they were ultimately
able to reconcile themselves to the scandal of particularity as applied to the
Jews when they discovered how useful a concept it was as applied to the very
cornerstone of their religion. Here, for instance, is how a British divine
preaching not long ago in Salisbury Cathedral put it: “It’s scandalous that, in
some way, God…cares for the Jews more than anyone else….This is known as the
scandal of particularity--that it was through a particular nation that God
especially made Himself known. But then it was also at a particular time,
in a particular place, and in a particular person that God fully
revealed His purposes and presence.”
Obviously Jews could not and cannot subscribe to the second half of this
expanded definition of the scandal of particularity: that is, what Christians
call the Incarnation. Yet neither do many Jews subscribe even to the first half
in which the election of Israel is acknowledged--and it is not only because they
wish that God had chosen someone else for a change that they reject the whole
idea of a chosen people.
To Jews such as these, the idea of a chosen people is just another ridiculous
myth that no enlightened person could possibly accept. Nor is its putative
irrationality the worst thing about it. In their reading, it was precisely
through this idea that the evil of racism came into the world--the very evil
which ultimately mutated into the claim of the Nazis that they were a master
race, and of which, by a tremendously tragic irony, the Jews themselves became
the major victim.
Most Jews who feel this way simply do not believe in God, but there are also
Jews who in some sense or other do believe in God and who nevertheless regard
the idea of choseness as a primitive tribal superstition to be outgrown. An
especially juicy example of the lengths to which how such Jews can go in dealing
with the doctrine of chosenesss comes from the Reconstructionist movement, one
of the branches of American Judaism. Here is what the movement recommends be
told to young people who are disturbed by the partiality God shows to the
Israelites: “The Bible describes a time when the Israelite religion was becoming
different from the religions of the neighboring peoples. Part of the ‘sales
pitch’ was the idea that the Israelite religion was all good, and that the other
religions were all bad….. Sometimes that sounds very unfair to our modern ear,
but it is really just an ancient ‘hard-sell’ campaign.”
Needless to say, to Jews like this the restriction of all ritual practices to a
single city, Jerusalem, only deepens the scandal of particularity. In their
eyes, it was bad enough for the earlier books of the Torah to maintain that the
one true God, the God of all, had revealed Himself to one people alone from
among all the nations of the earth. But then came the Book of Deuteronomy to
make it worse by particularizing Judaism even more narrowly.
The British divine I quoted a minute ago comes up with a good riposte to this
objection: “We sometimes hear people say, usually as an excuse for not coming to
church, that God is everywhere all of the time, and so we can worship him
everywhere--but the fact of the matter is that, even though there may be some
truth in that statement, we don’t experience God everywhere all of the time--the
scandal of particularity is that we experience Him at particular times and in
particular places.”
By the way, this is a very remarkable statement, but to appreciate just how
remarkable it is, we have to remind ourselves of a central argument of Christian
apologists throughout the ages in dealing with the relation of their religion to
Judaism. While acknowledging--as how could they not?--that Christianity was born
out of Judaism, they have claimed that it represents a higher stage in the
evolution of religious understanding--from, precisely, particularism to
universalism. Yet here, in the words of a Christian divine, we have an explicit
recognition that matters are not quite so simple as all that. Here we have an
explicit recognition that the particular and the universal are not opposites at
war with each other. Here we have an explicit recognition that the universal is
rooted in the particular and can only be reached through the particular.
Now if this British divine is representative, it would seem that Christian
thinkers have come to understand that what they used to regard and still
characterize as a scandal is not a scandal at all, but rather a paradoxical
truth. But what about the Jews--and here, of course, I refer only to those who
in some sense or other believe in God?
Well, it goes without saying that the Orthodox accept the idea of choseness
literally and without qualification or equivocation. First God appeared to
Abraham and made a covenant with him and with the line of his descendants
running through his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob. Then he revealed Himself
again in a burning bush to Moses in Egypt, and to the children of Israel as a
whole at Sinai, where He promised that if they kept His covenant, they would
become “a peculiar treasure to me above all people” (v’y’yitem lee sgoolah
mi-kawl ha-amim).
To the extent that Orthodox believers bother to justify all this in the eyes of
anyone who considers it an unseemly or even a sinful species of pride, it is to
emphasize that being chosen is as much a burden as a privilege--the burden of
wearing the yoke of the Law, ol hatorah. Or, to cite the answer given by
the prophet Amos and that the likes of Reb Levi Yitzchok had to accept: “You
only have I known of all the families of earth: therefore I will punish you for
all your iniquities” (Rak etkhem yadati mikol mishp’khot ha’adamah. Al kain
efkod aleikhem et kol avonotaykhem).
Like the Orthodox, those observant Jews who belong to the Conservative branch of
Judaism in America find nothing scandalous about the particularity of choseness;
and if they are less literal than the Orthodox in their understanding of the
doctrine, they seem relatively comfortable with it. But there are two other
modern Jewish movements, and both of them arose, at least in part, out of
embarrassment over the doctrine of choseness. The first of them, Reform Judaism,
was born in Germany in the 19th century. The Reformers did hold on, if a little
tenuously, to the belief in choseness. But they agreed with the then prevailing
Christian view in drawing a sharply invidious line between the particular and
the universal. The next step was to denigrate the ritual side of the Law as the
expression in action of the primitively particularist idea of choseness, and to
elevate the moral commandments, which were held to be universal and therefore
more advanced and enlightened. If the Jewish people were chosen, the Reformers
said, it was in the sense that they had a “mission” to uphold these moral
values. Hence their favorite parts of the Bible were a few verses selectively
culled from some of the Latter Prophets, especially Amos, Isaiah, and Micah who,
I once unkindly quipped, often seemed to be regarded by the Reform movement as
very high class fund-raisers for the Democratic party.
The second of the two modern Jewish movements, this one born in America in the
20th century, was Reconstructionism. From what I quoted in alluding to it a few
minutes ago, it was obviously more audacious than Reform. In fact, it even went
so far as to purge the liturgy of any and all references to the doctrine of
choseness, including even the phrase Asher bakhar banu mikol ha-amim
(“Thou hast chosen us from among all the nations”) from the blessing one recites
upon being called up to the Torah.
Am I then saying that a belief in the Jews as the chosen people can only
seriously be held by observant Jews and believing Christians? My answer is no.
To be sure, I myself strongly agree that the universal can only be reached
through the particular--and not just in religion alone, but also in art and
science which, in the words of the English poet William Blake, “cannot exist but
in minutely organized particulars.” Nevertheless I still find it so hard to make
theological or just plain logical sense out of the election of Israel that I
cannot altogether dismiss the old view of it as an oddity to Reason and a
scandal to Theology. At the same time, I also find myself, if a little
mischievously, beginning to think that if the idea of the Jews as the chosen
people is taken not as a matter of faith that can never be proved, but as a
hypothesis subject to empirical verification, it actually seems to make
scientific sense.
For
consider: All the great powers and principalities of antiquity--the Assyrians
and the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans--all the powers which at one time
or another conquered the Land of Israel and then outlawed the religious
practices of its Jewish inhabitants, or executed some and banished others--all
of these powers, each and every one, have crumbled to dust.
Having outlasted all these mighty empires by creating ways of surviving
statelessness, the Jews then remained alive as an identifiable people for
another two thousand years: in spite of persecution by Christians and Muslims;
in spite of forced conversions on pain of death; in spite of the murderous
rampages that periodically broke out against them; and in spite of further
expulsions from countries like Spain and England in which they had temporarily
been granted refuge.
In another of these countries, and in our very own time, there even arose a
tyrant who set out to achieve what he called a “final solution” of “the Jewish
problem.” His technique was much more direct than any that had been employed
before. He simply murdered as many individual embodiments of that “problem” as
his forces could reach, which turned out to be a full third of the 18 million of
them who were still around by the early decades of the 20th century.
Meanwhile, in yet another country, yet another tyrant was doing his best to make
it impossible for the more than 3 million Jews still residing in his domains to
practice their religion or maintain any other ties to their ancient traditions.
And we know that only his death in 1953 prevented him from adopting even more
extreme measures to push the still “unsolved” Jewish problem closer to its final
solution.
Yet all this, too, failed, and the Jews, though much diminished in numbers and
grievously wounded in spirit, were once more still here as an identifiable
people, while Hitler and Stalin and the empires they had built crumbled into the
same ignominious dust as the long line of their predecessors. And so, I make
bold to predict, will it be with the Persians of today and their Arab allies
who, even while denying that there was a Holocaust during World War Two,
threaten to enact another one by wiping Israel off the map during what I insist
on calling World War IV.
Israel: the state the Jews succeeded in building after nearly two full millennia
during which they had lived or died, been tolerated or persecuted, on the
sufferance and at the whim of the regimes under whose rule they found
themselves. What is more, they built it on the land from which they had
originally been driven into an exile so lengthy that it became for a them a
general touchstone (azoi lang vee dee golles, “as long as the exile,”
they would say in Yiddish of anything that seemed endless).
And there is even more to the story than all this. For in addition to the new
state of Israel, there was also America, to which over a century ago Jews began
fleeing by the millions from two great modern principalities that have also
disappeared--the Austro-Hungarian empire of the Hapsburgs and the Russian empire
of the Romanovs. These Jewish immigrants called America die goldene medineh,
“the golden land,” and they were right. True, there was no gold in the streets,
as some of them had imagined, which meant that they had to struggle, and
struggle hard. But there was another kind of gold in America, a more precious
kind than the gold of coins. There was freedom and there was opportunity.
Blessed with these conditions, and hampered by much less virulent forms of
anti-Semitism and discrimination than Jews had previously grown accustomed to
contending with, the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these
immigrants flourished to an extent unprecedented in the experience of their
people.
Thus it was that even before the remnant of one segment of the Jewish people had
returned to its ancestral home, another portion had found another home in a new
place and in a new world such as they had never discovered in all their forced
wanderings throughout the centuries over the face of the earth.
Nor have the Jews simply survived in the material sense. Listen to Mark Twain
writing in 1899, long before America had truly become a new home for the Jews
and even longer before they had built a state of their own in the Land of
Israel. Incidentally, while living in Vienna Mark Twain got to know Theodor
Herzl, and though he did not altogether oppose Herzl’s plan “to gather the Jews
of the world together in Palestine, with a government of their own,” he did
think that it would be “politic” to stop such a “concentration of the cunningest
brains in the world” because “it will not be well to let the race find out its
strength.” Considering that he began by characterizing the Jew as “a money
getter” from the time of Joseph in Egypt and up to the present day, Mark Twain
might have been expected, like the pagan prophet Balaam in the Bible, to curse,
or at least disparage, the Jews. But instead, and again like Balaam, he ended by
showering blessings on their heads. Here is what he said: “The Jews constitute
but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous, dim
puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought
hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as
prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly
out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s
list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and
abstruse learning are very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He
has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his
hands tied behind him….The Jew…is now what he always was, exhibiting no
decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his
energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but
the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his
immortality?”
Only recently, an attempt to unravel this secret was made by another American
Gentile, the brilliant political scientist Charles Murray. But after examining
various theories purporting to account for the extraordinary and wildly
disproportionate intellectual and cultural achievements of the Jews, Murray
rejected them all as unsatisfactory and finally threw up his hands. “At
this point,” he wrote in Commentary, “I take sanctuary in my remaining
hypothesis….. The Jews are God’s chosen people.”
If this is the conclusion, however playful it may be, that a self-described
Scots-Irish secular Gentile from Iowa finds himself forced into on the basis of
the empirical evidence, who are we Jews to say him Nay? And if, on the basis of
the same empirical evidence alone, and without necessarily relying on the
evidence of things unseen that is provided by religious faith, we say Yes, then
we are driven to join with those of our fellow Jews who, like
Mayor Uri Lupolianski, contend that “Jerusalem
is not only an inseparable part of the Jewish nation, it is the basis of the
existence of the Jewish nation.” And if we agree about the centrality of
Jerusalem, we are driven still further--into an angry rejection of the
reprehensible post-Zionist and anti-Zionist ideologues who are only too eager to
see Jerusalem divided yet again, or else transformed into the capital of a
binational state that would eliminate the Jewish particularism of Israel--to be
replaced not even by the fantasy of a universalist utopia but rather by an all
too real Arab/Muslim particularism. And we are also driven into a rejection,
though a much gentler one, of the position taken by certain Zionists who,
however regretfully, are ready to accept such a division as the price of peace
with the Palestinians.
Yet the hopes of peace today and in the foreseeable future are as illusory as
they were in the day of the prophet Jeremiah when he denounced all those false
prophets and corrupt priests who soothed the hurt of the people with cries of
peace, peace when there was no peace (shalom shalom v’eyn shalom).
Fortunately, the same poll that shows 57% of Israelis willing to pay in the coin
of a divided Jerusalem for peace with the Palestinians also shows that a
whopping 84% are not taken in by the promises of peace issuing from the mouths
of the false prophets of today.
A minute ago I made bold to predict that the Persians of our own time and their
Arab allies will fail in their evil efforts to wipe Israel off the map. Now I
will conclude with another and even bolder prediction: that their regimes, like
the long line of their anti-Jewish predecessors who in generation after
generation rose up against us to destroy us--that they will be the ones to bite
the dust while the Jewish state, which is indeed the eighth wonder of the world,
lives on--and, yes, with Jerusalem as its undivided capital.
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(continued from above)
After an early period of
creating small-scale objects, Nevelson’s breakthrough works – environments in
wood – were critically hailed in the late 1950s. She infused abstract art with
her personal story – the epic Jewish migration to the United States between the
1880s and the 1920s, her narrative as a woman artist, and her involvement in
American modernism – which functioned as an indelible source for her vast body
of work.
Nevelson’s unique contribution to American modernism was to create art from
cast-off wood parts, actual street throwaways, and transform them with
monochromatic spray paint. Beginning in the 1940s and continuing through the
1980s, Nevelson’s sculpture developed from tabletop pieces to human-scale
columns to room-size walls and ultimately installation and public art that
competed with the monumentality of their architectural surroundings.
Louise Nevelson arrived in America from the Ukraine in 1905. She witnessed
exceptional
historical events of the twentieth century, and was similarly mindful of the
sweeping changes in American art, forging a distinct visual language that earned
her the title “grande dame of contemporary sculpture.” Nevelson’s breakout
sculpture and prominent public commissions, as well as her acclaimed museum
exhibitions and frequent critical attention, were at times overwhelmed by her
outsize public persona distinguished by ethnographic garb and couture, fanciful
headgear, massive neckwear, and an imposing set of multilayered false eyelashes.
Establishing herself as a woman artist in a male-dominated art world was
complicated and
difficult. Rather than champion her role as a woman artist, Nevelson preferred
to focus on the work itself, eschewing labels throughout her life. Indeed, her
work is not easily allied with any one movement, though it has been variously
linked to Cubism, Dada, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism,
feminism, and installation art. “Contemporary sculpture and installation-based
art owe a considerable debt to Louise Nevelson’s aesthetic risk taking,” guest
curator Brooke Kamin Rapaport, said. “For a new generation, the opportunity to
view her work as it progressed from early trials in terracotta and bronze to
wood fragment constructions to grand environments will be revelatory. For those
who know of her contribution, this exhibition will provide an opportunity to
reassess and confirm Nevelson’s lifelong achievement,” she added.
The Jewish Museum, in association with Antenna Audio, has produced an audio
guide for The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend which
will cost visitors $6.00. Commentary is provided by Ms. Rapaport; renowned
playwright Edward Albee, a friend of Nevelson’s; the artist’s long-term studio
assistant Diana MacKown; and Nevelson’s granddaughter Maria Nevelson. The audio
guide is sponsored by Bloomberg.
In conjunction with the exhibition, The Jewish Museum and Yale University Press
are co-publishing the most extensive study of Nevelson to be published in over
twenty-five years. This lavishly illustrated book focuses on all phases of the
artist’s remarkable ascent to the top of the art world, from her
modernist-derived drawings of the 1920s and 1930s to her groundbreaking wood
sculpture of the 1940s to large projects of the 1950s through the 1980s. In
addition, it demonstrates how Nevelson’s flamboyant personal style and carefully
cultivated persona enhanced her reputation as an artist of the first rank. The
256-page volume, containing 140 color and 37 black-and-white illustrations, is
edited by Brooke Kamin Rapaport, who has contributed a major essay. It also
includes essays by noted scholars Arthur C. Danto, Harriet F. Senie, and Michael
Stanislawski. Gabriel de Guzman has provided an illustrated chronology. The
essays examine the role of monochromatic color in Nevelson’s painted wooden
sculpture; the art-historical context of her work; her acclaimed large-scale
commissioned public artworks; and her “self-fashioning” as a celebrated artist,
particularly her origins as a Ukrainian-born Jewish immigrant to the United
States. The book will sell for $40.00 (softcover) at The Jewish Museum and
$55.00 (hardcover) at The Jewish Museum’s Cooper Shop and at bookstores
everywhere.
The exhibition was designed by Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, a New York
firm.
The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend is made possible by
major grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the National Endowment for the
Arts, and Irving Schneider and Family. Important support has been provided by
the Lipman Family Foundation, Mildred and George Weissman, Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey
Brown, the Joseph Alexander Foundation, the Dedalus Foundation, Rita and Burton
Goldberg, and other donors. The exhibition catalogue is generously underwritten
by the Homeland Foundation.
The Jewish Museum was established on January 20, 1904 when Judge Mayer
Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary
of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, The Jewish Museum
maintains an important collection of 28,000 objects – paintings, sculpture,
works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and
broadcast media. Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs
that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent
institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.
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