Father Olivier and the IDF

The background to this story is the St Mary of the Resurrection Abbey, where there stands a church built between 1141-1170, when the Crusaders ruled the area. Unlikely as it may sound, the church was never destroyed, and although it probably served as a warehouse or barn for many centuries, it was cleaned out in the late 19th century, and in the 20th the original paintings on its walls were uncovered and restored, as much as possible after 800 years. There aren't many cities in the world with fully standing 12th century churches in them, but the Muslim village of Abu Ghosh, West of Jerusalem, has one.

When entering a church in Israel there's always the question of uncovering ones head. You're supposed to do that in churches, but religious Jews aren't supposed to do so at all. I always take off my hat, but sometime I don't take off my Kippa. This time there was a novelty, since our group included a young Muslim woman with her head covered, which she didn't remove, so the church accepted not only the sovereignty of the Jews, so to speak, but also the traditions of the neighbors.

Father Olivier heads the Abbey. He's French, but speaks fine Hebrew. Astonishingly fine, actually, since many of his sentences contain up-to-date IDF slang. So eventually we asked him about it, and he grinned. Back in the early 1980s he was discovered by some women serving in the IDF education corps, and ever since then they've been using him as their in-house expert for Church matters (Ani mashak hinuch be-inyanei Notzrim). Whenever there's an IDF unit spending a week learning about Jerusalem, they call in Father Olivier to explain all the different kinds of Christians there are in town.

Jerusalem never ceases to surprise.

Muslims for Israel

There's been a spot of bother in the US recently about Islam and how bad it is. I haven't participated, but do find the whole idea distasteful. I've occasionally poked fun at the unwillingness of various Westerners, from President Obama down, to pretend there's nothing remotely wrong with Islam. Yet the opposite should also be obvious: a religion which has been around for 1400 years must have given countless multitudes a feeling of dignity in face of life's travails, a purpose, a succor, a harbor to retreat to in dire times and a feeling of belonging and of satisfaction in better times.

On a practical level, James Kirchick reminds us that there are entire Muslim nations who don't fit into the black-and-white template.

Unetanneh Tokef

I've written in the past about Unetanneh Tokef, perhaps the single most powerful prayer of the High Holidays (but not for any lack of competition). The prayer was probably written in the Galilee in the Byzantine era; it's earliest copy comes from the Cairo Geniza.

A 13th century story tells how R. Amnon of Magenza (=Mainz) was tortured to death for refusing to convert to Christianity, and died as he was reciting Netanneh Tokef; whether the story is true or not I can't say, but it's old, it reflects real conditions in medieval Europe, and if one had the strength to die reciting a prayer this would be as good as any.

The Hebrew text, an English translation and analysis can all be found here.

At 1:50 pm on Yom Kippur of 1973 Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, and the Yom Kippur War began. Like 9/11, or Kennedy's assassination, it was a moment in time no-one ever forgets; the war was the second most bloody of our many chapters of conflict, exceeded in bloodiness only by the war of 1947-49.

Kibbutz Beit Hashita in the Jezereel Valley, a community of a few hundred families, lost 11 of its men, the highest proportion of casualties in any Israeli town in that war. In spite of being a very secular, left-leaning kibbutz, when the kibbutzniks commissioned Yair Rosenblum to write them a commemorative text he simply put Unetanneh Tokef to music, combining various styles of Israeli music. The most famous recording is by Hanoch Albalek, a member of the kibbutz. It has long since become a nationally recognized version.

By way of closing the circle, one might add that Beit Hashita is near Beit Alfa, the site of a magnificent Byzantine-era synagogue, so perhaps the anonymous author of the original prayer lived close nearby; in any case he couldn't have been very far away, given the size of the Galilee.

Jews at the Western Wall

Palestinian Media Watch has a video from the Palestinian Authority TV station (not Hamas: the PA good guys) which was broadcast over Rosh Hashana: Jews praying at the Western Wall are sinners and filth. (via Elder).

Meanwhile, Geoffrey recommends this video, about the Jews who used to go to jail for the crime of blowing the shofar on Yom Kippur, back in the days before the Zionists had done all those bad things to the Palestinians.



The first hero of the story, the Rav Segal, is no longer alive and doesn't participate in the film. I remember him, however, as a little old man with a white beard and an aura of commitment about him; people used to turn to watch him as he walked the streets of the Old City.

A Rabbi Speaks Like A Rabbi

Rav Ovadia Yosef has done it again. During his televised Saturday night talk he called for the death of Mahmoud Abbas and "these Palestinians". Saeb Erekat denounced him for preaching genocide, the State Department chided, media outlets pontificated, and in Israel, where at least some people might have been expected to know better, public figures piled onto each other in their haste to condemn.

It seems, after all, a serious matter. Rav Yosef, who just turned 90, is the greatest living Sephardi rabbi, and arguably the most important halachic scholar of our day. One in eight Jewish Israelis vote for the Shas party he founded in the 1980s, and more hold him in highest esteem. Prime ministers and opposition leaders alike visit him to explain matters of state in the hope of gaining his support. He's important. And complex.

Along with his unfortunate penchant for expressing himself in earthy bluntness, Rav Yosef has been a revolutionary force for modernizing halachic thought and integrating it into modernity. Again and again he has courageously formulated rulings that contradicted those of all his peers. He found a way to permit and encourage organ transplants; he permitted artificial inseminations; in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War he swiftly freed almost a thousand women from Aginut, and the list goes on. Most famously, in the late 1980s he was the first important orthodox rabbi to announce that peace with the Palestinians is preferable to continued control of the West Bank.

How then to explain this week's outburst, let alone excuse it? By listening to him in his natural context.

The Rav Yosef doesn't use the Internet, has never encountered a blog, is unlikely ever to have read Haaretz and certainly doesn't follow the New York Times. He doesn't watch television, though his weekly talk is broadcasted live. Lesser men have invested decades in migrating the compendia of all halachic literature into a digital database, Bar Ilan University's Responsa Project; for a long time Rav Yosef didn't even know this was happening, nor did he care. He has read those tens of thousands of books, and knows what's in them. His world is about Jewish learning, Jewish belief, Jewish thought, imagery, and language. It is extraordinarily rich, but overlaps only partially with the secular world, and hardly at all with the world of international diplomacy or media. Had one asked him for the date of his inflammatory speech he'd have answered that it was the 19^th of Elul, not the 29^th of August.

Elul is a distinctive month. For orthodox Sephardi men, it can't be overlooked, as they rise daily at 3am to chant slichot, the mediaeval supplications for mercy. Since Rav Ovadia's words and their meaning come straight from the slichot, any attempt to evaluate what he was saying and what his audience heard ought to notice them.

Common wisdom tells that the high holidays are about personal reflection, balance taking, resolutions to improve and divine absolution. Indeed they are – partially. They are also about communal behavior, national survival, and God's obligation to protect his people and avenge them. The theme of the seven weeks between the beginning of Elul and the end of the high holidays is that we're unworthy sinners pleading for God's forgiveness, but also that we're miserable and down-trodden and may he raise us for the glory of his name. That second theme has a clear subtext, that we suffer for our adherence to him and therefore are worthy of his protection.

There are numerous examples; here are two. The Ata rav slichot (Thou art benevolent) supplication says

Terrified by their travails

By their revilers and persecutors

Please don't abandon them oh God of their fathers…

Deliver them in sight of everyone

Let the evil ones no longer rule over them

Or the Ase Lema'an (Do it for their sake) verse, repeated every day: Do it for Your Truth, do it for Your greatness, do it for Your name, do it for Your kingdom… do it for Abraham Isaac and Jacob, do it for David and Solomon, do it for Jerusalem… do it for the martyred for Your Oneness, do it for the massacred for Your name, do it for those burned and drowned sanctifying You, do it for infants suckling at the breast who did not sin…

After a month of daily supplication and shofar blowing, Rosh Hashana amplifies the themes in two full days of devotion, followed by another eight of supplication and finally the blast of Yom Kippur. The Yom Kippur service contains the agonizingly long and detailed description of how the Romans tortured ten great scholars to death, followed by Avinu Malkenu (Our Parent, our Sovereign), recited for ten days and repeatedly on Yom Kippur: Avinu Malkenu, abolish our persecution and the conniving of our enemies, thwart the intentions of our enemies, destroy our persecutors, silence them…

Tellingly, the haunting Barbara Streisand recording of Avinu Malkenu drops this part, as do many of the references one can find in Google. It's as if enlightened or secular modern Jews are uncomfortable with the overt violence in many of the texts of this highest of Jewish annual cycles. They misunderstand the meaning.

In the middle of the second century CE the Jews renounced the use of political power. The catastrophe of two defeats by Roman armies, the first destroying the Temple and the second depopulating Jerusalem and Judea, was too much to bear. The Mishna, followed by the Gemara, were so traumatized they succeeded in hiding the true extent of the destruction and horror; it took the archeologists and historians of the 20^th century to decipher the true enormity, especially of Hadrian's genocide. Instead, the Talmud concentrated on the loss of great scholars and the stubborn, sometime suicidal determination to pass on the teaching of Torah. Implicitly, and eventually explicitly, the Jews told themselves they had a pact with God. They would suffer in his name, but he would fight their wars; they might die for his law, but he wouldn't allow their enemies to win. Their personal fate might be terrible, the destinies of their community dire, but the nation would always survive, and the enemies – eventually – would be defeated.

The yearning for divine retribution, at times blood-curdling in its intensity, was a substitute for action and for the need, even the permissibility, of counterforce. No matter how harsh the persecution of the Jews, there was never any cycle of violence. Words of violence effectively replaced the violence itself for 18 long centuries.

Admittedly, this has changed. In the 20^th century the Jews returned to the use of national power. Most of them are secular, they no longer believe in a God to fight their battles for them, and not all of the violence they engage in is wise. The ancient traditions, however, are still there. When the Rav Yosef lifted the theme for his talk straight out of the prayer book, he wasn't calling for genocide, nor inciting to violence. On the contrary. He was continuing a quiescent tradition, by calling on God to do what the Jews won't do and shouldn't do.

There is no causal line from his words to deeds, nor did he intend there to be. He was speaking as a Jew does in Elul. Perhaps it's too much to expect anyone to respect him, but at least they might refrain from damning him.

Postscript: Earlier today it was reported that the Rav Eliashiv, arguably the only living rabbi of similar stature to Rav Ovadia, criticized the comment: "There's no sense in aggravating the whole world", he reportedly said. Which shows that the ancient favorite pastime of rabbis, to disagree with one another, is as vital as ever.

Update: Reader David Sigeti draws my attention to the fact that Rav Yosef supports the continuation of the settlement freeze so as to give a chance to the peace negotiations just starting; most rabbis aren't taking that position openly at the moment.

Bones of Long-Dead Folks

Remember the stories of medieval relics? Any time a town or principality needed some positive PR, someone would dig up some old bones and proclaim them the long lost wrist or shin of some very dead saint; the visionaries went further and proclaimed they'd found the hip of some venerable Jew from the days of Jesus. The Venetians, never shy or reticent, went so far as to claim they had all of St.Mark, stolen in his entirety from Alexandria, if I'm not mistaken.

Then modernity came along and we grew out of such antics. Nobody would engage in such capers today. Would they.

All Knowing

I don't think I've ever written directly about my religious beliefs, one way or the other. In all the verbiage I spout, I challenge anyone to find any clear endorsement of a position on a transcendent deity. Mostly, this is because it's my business, not of interest to the world; but there's something very Jewish (I think) in discussing the issues I focus on without dragging divinity into it.

This post will be no different. The point I'm about to make is about logic, not belief.

The earliest computers were invented in the 1930s, I think. As a child in the early 1960s I heard the grownups talk about machines that were learning to think, though I doubt I'd ever met anyone who had actually seen such a machine (and they still haven't figured out how to think). If you can believe it, I completed my undergraduate studies on a portable typewriter, and never considered acquiring a PC until I was doing an MA. When in 1994 I stood in front of an audience of hundreds of researchers and said that the goal of the Yad Vashem archives was to put everything we had on the Internet, the startled audience erupted in applause. (Only later did I begin to think about the practicalities. Ouch).

70-some years after the first invention, The Economist has a special report on the super-abundance of data we're creating. (The report begins here; a single-page introduction is here). The thesis: Everything is being recorded, and the world is dramatically changing. The Onion spoofs the reality here.

If we allow our thoughts to run forward a few decades, to, say, the first centenary of the invention of the earliest computer, it's reasonable to expect there will be digital images of every inch of the globe viewable from any direction; there will be mountains of data on every human and much of their activities; every human thought which has ever been put into writing and survived until the late 1990s will be available somewhere in digital form; any and every human interaction which takes place in any format other than face-to-face talk will be recorded... and probably much more.

Whether you like it or not.

Now, assume a deity which has been around for longer than the first century of human digital recording. Is there any logical reason to assume that this deity doesn't have the abilities Man has so recently acquired? What's so implausible about a deity knowing everything about us all, always? We're well on our way there on our own, and just starting...

A Complicated Jew on Complicated Jews

Imagine a Catholic orphaned from murdered Jewish parents who thought they were Catholic, who narrowly survives and becomes a priest, spends a long career on the fault-line where Christians and Jews gingerly investigate the historical basis of their differences of opinions, then becomes a Jew and writes about it all in a calm, intelligent and balanced manner. Ah, and his subject matter is the single most important archeological finding of the 20th century, which itself shed some light, but not enough, on one of the strangest groups of Jews ever, if Jews they were; perhaps they were proto-Christians, or outcasts who served as an inspiration for someone, or perhaps they weren't at all. You might be likely to read his book, wouldn't you?

Geza Vermes, The Story of the Scrolls. The Miraculous Discovery and True Significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Not on sale in America, it seems, but you can buy it on Amazon.uk. If you need more prodding, here's a review that should do the job.

On Human Imperfection

A few weeks ago the Economist reported on some research which had peered into the mechanisms of powerful men who feel themselves above the law.

Everyone expects this of American senators or junior British ministers. In Israel it used to be career officers, though it seems the army may be well into getting its act together; Haim Ramon was convicted of sexual harassment a few years ago... and of course, we've got a former President on trial for serial rape.

None of which prepared anyone for the case of Rabbi Mordechai Elon, who abruptly disappeared a few years ago amid vague rumors of ill health, and who suddenly this week was unveiled as having harassed at least one or two of his students. Moreover, the unveiling was not done by a police investigation (for whatever reason, there have been no complaints with which to involve the police). Rather, the story was broken by a group of highly respected volunteers who have taken the job of protecting youth from abuses by educators; they call themselves Takana, Correction.

I cannot overemphasize the impact of this story on the Modern Orthodox community in Israel. Everyone I know is reeling. (Here's a story from a former student of Elon that will give you a vague inkling, no more than a shadow). You can't even use the normal platitudes of "maybe it will turn out to be wrong", since then the accusers will have destroyed themselves, which would be an even greater shock.

I know many of the figures in this story, some of them since childhood. There is nothing important that I could say about the case itself, but there are social implications in various directions. I'm posting on this out of a feeling of integrity: I can't lambaste all sorts of worthy targets all the time, but remain silent when the problem is next door (almost literally next door). Once I've had time to work through the social implications, maybe I'll revisit the story.

Songs of Prayer

Someone recently brought to my attention a beautiful new record of Israeli songs. It's called The Sound of the Soul
קול הנשמה, שירי תקווה וגעגוע
The producer is the son of Moshe Hovav (1930-1987). Hovav was the younger brother of Reuma Eldar, one of the most famous radio announcers in Israel's history, whose articulation of Hebrew (with a recognizable Mideastern accent) was widely regarded as near perfect. Moshe's was even better. Until the 1980s there was only one radio news channel, and since Israelis listened to the news hourly and obsessively, Reuma Eldar and Moshe Hovav were recognized by literally everyone. Moshe announced many historic events, the single most important being the liberation of the Kotel (Western Wall) in June 1967. You can still hear him every morning at 6am, more than 20 years after his death: a recording of him reading the Shema Yisrael prayer opens the daily program.

His son has now collected 35 songs in his honor. They are all songs of prayer, from varying sources. Some are straight from the Bible, others are traditional prayers written over the centuries, yet others are contemporary and don't belong to the liturgy at all. They are in many musical styles: traditional east and west, hassidic, almost-rock, and others. There's a prayer from the culmination of Ne'ila, at the end of Yom Kippur, which must surely be familiar to anyone who ever participated in that service, but in a version which sounds like pure Arabic music (and exceedingly moving). There's a chant by a young man hoping to be granted to do the utmost with his time in this world - this may be a traditional text but I don't recollect having come across it, and may well be his own heartfelt prayer. It's a gripping record.

It's also a snapshot into a part of Israeli society many foreign observers will never see: the conflation of popular music and prayer, preformed by a broad gamut of musicians. Predictably there are recordings by religious men whose entire career is made of singing religious songs - many of which however are consumed (also) by people who don't share any religious life-style with them. There are popular singers who have become religious and their music has evolved accordingly, while their popularity has never flagged. Yet there are also deeply moving prayers by singers, especially women, who cannot be identified as religious in any standard meaning of the term, by any measure: Ilanit, say, or Achinoam Nini (better known in Europe as Noa).

My favorite is the second track on the second disk. It's sung by Rivka Zohar. Back in the 1970s, when I spent lots of time following such matters, Zohar easily had the best voice on offer, like a crystal-clear bell. Then her life spun out of control, and she spent years roaming drug-scenes in many countries; most of us forgot her, though someone once told me he'd heard her in some club in Amsterdam, if that's where it was, and her ruined shell was pitiful to observe. Then she came back, pulled herself together, and lives on a hilltop in the Galilee. Only rarely will she record a single song - there have been but a handful since she came back. Her voice now contains all that she's gone through, and it's the most powerful voice you can imagine. The track is a simple expression of thanks to her creator.

Queen Victoria's Granddaughter Complicates Jerusalem

Rule of thumb number one when dealing with Jerusalem: There will always be significant parts of its story you've never heard of. First Corollary to the First Rule of Thumb: These previously unnoticed things will have weighty contemporary implications. First Golden Rule stemming from the First Corollary to the First Rule of Thumb: Things will always be more complicated than you expected.

I've been living here, mostly on and occasionally off, for more than 40 years, watching closely and always fascinated the whole time. I don't regard myself as more than a modestly knowledgeable observer, however. Here's a story - from the Economist, of all places - the general outlines of which I've known for a long time, but never in so much detail. It's about a granddaughter of Queen Victoria (remember her? She died in 1901, aged 82) who was murdered in the Russian Revolution and serves as an anchor for Vladimir Putin's very considerable interest in Jerusalem.

Zachor

Menachem Mendel alerts me to this notice about the death of Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. Yerushalmi was an important historian of the Jews, but he will be remembered by most people as the author of Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (The Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies). This short and readable book is easily the single most important book about how Jews remember, and how modernity has changed things; since remembering is one of the most important elements of being Jewish, it's a very important book. I'd rank it well up in the top ten books you'll want to read to understand the Jews; it's that good.

Available also in Hebrew, German, and perhaps other languages as well.

May he rest in peace.

A Pope at Yad Vashem

On March 23rd 2000 Pope John Paul II visited Yad Vashem. At the time I was the head of archives there, and thus managed to be at the ceremony.

From what I've heard, the visit of the present Pope this week was not particulalary memorable. John Paul's, was. It was also historic, of course.

Just this evening, totally by coincidence, I stumbled across something I wrote the evening after that first visit. So here it is:

John Paul II at Yad Vashem

The security measures were severe even by the paranoid standards of our goons. The roads leading to Yad Vashem had been cleared of all parked vehicles the evening before. The entire mountain had been ringed off, and for the first time anyone could remember, Yad Vashem was closed to the public on a workday. Not that it was empty, mind you, what with the throngs of press, VIPs, and multitudes of security types. Visits of Heads of State are routine at Yad Vashem, and often call forth no more than a mildly curious glance, but the Pope, contrary to Stalin's derisory scepticism, is no mere Head of State.

The few hundred of us who were allowed into the Hall of Memory, Ohel Yizkor, had to be inside 45 minutes before the ceremony started. There were a handful of government ministers, a gaggle of ambassadors, a pride of high-ranking officers and civil servants, the inevitable donors, not to mention the journalists, technicians, participants, and sycophants. The cardinals, 15 of them or so, were allowed to come late, merely ten minutes before the Pope himself.

So it was an unusual situation, with so much power - perceived, imagined or real - cooped up in a closed, dark and cold hall, waiting. At one point, one of our chief religious figures, so high-ranking that he was positioned down on the floor of the Ohel itself, sauntered across to exchange some pleasantries with a lesser luminary sitting in the front row of the gallery.
To my great astonishment, his path took him over the names of three concentration camps, engraved into the floor, his indifference to them total. Pleasantries completed, he sauntered back, this time trodding on two other camps. Looking closer, it became clear that others were disregarding the essence of the venue just as blithely.

John Paul II, when he arrived, did not allow himself to be led over the names.

Frail, bent, concentrating on each step and move, he eclipsed everyone present. Wearing plain white robes, his hair and skullcap white and his complexion pale, he seemed almost to glow in the dark surroundings. The structure of the ceremony had been outlined with representatives of the Vatican over months of discussions, so the fact that he was to walk back and forth from his chair to the eternal flame, to the laying of the wreath, to the survivors, to the podium, back to the survivors of his hometown of Wadovice, so unlike papal audiences where he sits and everyone else comes to him, must have been his own decision. And all in painful, mincing steps, bowed over his cane, deferential to the site, to the survivors, to the memory - and never stepping on the names of the camps, even when it would have been easier. It was that humble sign of respect, of acknowledgement of holiness, that made the greatest impression on me. A holiness not defined by canon, nor by halacha, but by the truest essence of holiness itself, of deference towards something that is greater than the mundane and ephemeral.

His words, of sorrow, of the need for silence (so different from the silence of that predecessor), bore the tone of a deep sincerity, strengthened by the situation, enhanced by his body language. The Head of the Roman Catholic Church, the single most important living figure in Christendom, bowed, sorrowful and deferential at the central Jewish site of memory to the Shoah.

The single figure in the hall whose aura was not totally eclipsed by that of the Pope was Ehud Barak. Attentive to the frailty of his guest, courteous and appreciative, he nevertheless stood ramrod straight. Courteous, but not deferential, he also was careful not to step on the words; he seemed also to be aware of the holiness, and by talking of his murdered grandparents, to be claiming it.

It was a fascinating twist: John Paul II, evoking with his age and aura of power and charisma the ancient lineage of his institution and its ongoing vitality, stooping - nay, rising - to an act of human weakness: to sorrow, to regret, to mourning; Ehud Barak, in the name of the even older Jews, appearing as the young host, gravely accepting the sentiments of his guest.

After the ceremony, Edith Zirer summed up the occasion poignantly. As a 14-year-old survivor at liberation, she had been assisted back towards Cracow by a young Polish clergyman. When he became Pope, she had visited him, to thank him. Now, he was her guest, and, as she told a reporter, "there is also sadness. I don't expect us ever to meet again". A 55-year circle had been closed.

"This I (don't really) believe"

Judith Warner has a reflection up at her NYT blog, titled "This I believe", in which she describes her hodge-podge of varying religious or hardly-religious inspirations, which include some residual Jewish fragments.

The result isn't malign, you've got to grant that; in a human history chock-full of religions people were willing to kill for, that's no small achievement. Yet along the way, whatever it is she's describing, it's not something she'd be likely to lay down her life to preserve, either. Actually, the theme of her post is that she has no idea how to pass on a significant religious inheritance to her daughter.

About six months ago, I asked Julia and Emilie if they’d consider trying out a Unitarian service one day with me.

“No way,” Emilie, then eight, declared, before I could even finish the sentence.

“I think that enough harm has been done in the name of religion,” said Julia, who had not long before studied the conquest of the Incas and had moved on to the colonization of Africa. “I don’t want to be a part of it.”

8-year-olds don't have original ideas, they reflect the adults around them (as do too many 18, 28, and 78-year-olds). Apparently none of the adults in Emilie's world have ever thought to explain to her that in the fundamentally flawed world we live in, religion, when done right, can be the richest source of human dignity, consolation, hope, and belonging she'll ever have. Sad.

Belief and Responsibility

On Purim we read the Book of Esther. There's a program to kill all the Jews of the Persian Empire, backed by the emperor himself. Mordechai is trying to thwart the plan with a counter plan of his own, based on the position of his cousin and adopted daughter, Esther, the queen. Esther hesitates, given the mortal danger she'll need to put herself into. To which Mordechai responds (Chapter 4, 13-14):

13 And Mordecai told them to answer Esther: “Do not think in your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace any more than all the other Jews. ¹⁴ For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”

It's an interesting statement. The world's greatest power has decided to murder the Jews, but Mordechai is supremely confident they won't be destroyed; this confidence, however, doesn't prevent him from taking any measure to thwart the program, no matter how high the personal danger.

The Demons History Bequeaths Us - 2

Norman Cohn (not a Jew, in spite of his name), on the Joachite prophecy, one of the longest-lasting millenarian ideas ever, according to which human history will go through three stages: the Age of the Father, or the Law; the Age of the Son, or the Gospel, and the third, still in the future, which will be the Age of the Spirit. The first had been the age of fear and servitude; the second, the age of faith and filial submission; the third would be the age of love, joy, freedom, when knowledge of God would be revealed to all.

Joachim of Fiore lived in the 12th century. Yet his ideas have had a very long shelf life, and when Cohn wrote about him, in the 1950s, they were still very much alive:

For the long-term, indirect influence of Joachim's speculations can be traced right down to the present day, and most clearly in certain 'philosophies of history' of which the Church emphatically disapproves. Horrified though the unworldly mystic would have been to see it happen, it is unmistakably the Joachite phantasy of the three ages that reappeared in, for instance, the theories of historical evolution expounded by the German idealist philosophers Lessing, Schelling Fichte, and to some extent Hegel; in Auguste Comte's idea of history as an ascent from the theological through the metaphysical up to the scientific phase, and again in the Marxian dialectic of the three stages of primitive communism, class society and a final communism which is to be the realm of freedom and in which the state will have withered away. And it is no less true - if even more paradoxical - that the phrase "The Thiid Reich", first coined in 1923 by the publicist Moeller van den Brueck and later adopted as a name for the 'new order' which was supposed to last a thousand years, would have had but little emotional significance if the phantasy of a third and most glorious dispensation had not, over the centuries, entered into the common stock of European social mythology. (Page 108-9)

The final paragraph of the book:

The old religious idiom has been replaced by a secular one, and this tends to obscure what otherwise would be obvious. For it is the simple truth that, stripped of their original supernatural sanction, revolutionary millenarianism and mystical anarchism are with us still. (Page 286)

One constant of the millenarian phenomenon was that the millenarian leaders almost invariably were burned at the stake, whether in the 6th century or the 16th. That no longer happens. A second constant was that before they were burned, they massacred the local Jews. Though, truth be told, one didn't need to be a millenarian to slaughter one's Jewish neighbors. You may of course contend that ideas that flourished at the center of European culture for centuries and were still thriving a mere fifty years ago, have now all disappeared, but you'd have to demonstrate how and why. Irrational thought disguising itself as rational is still rampant, and hatred of the Jews likewise, after all.

Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millenium, Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages, Paladin, 1970. The book seems unavailable at Amazon, more the pity, but at Worldcat they'll tell you which is the library nearest to you that has it - all you need to do is tell them where you are, anywhere in the world. It has also been translated to many languages, as befits a magnificent work of history that is still a great read, more than fifty years since its first publication.

A Beloved and a Hated Wife

Deuteronomy 21 verse 15:
כי-תהיינה לאיש שתי נשים, האחת אהובה והאחת שנואה, וילדו-לו בנים, האהובה והשנואה; והיה הבן הבכור, לשניאה

This is translated, incorrectly, as
If a man has two wives, and he loves one but not the other, and both bear him sons but the firstborn is the son of the wife he does not love (New International Version);
Fortunately, the King James version has it right, with:
If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated:

The Gemara asks how is it possible that a husband's feelings towards his wife might be of such interest to God, that he needs to rely on it to rule, one way or the other, about the status of the sons? Rather, the meaning of the verse must be that the wife is beloved or hated to God - and that is measured by the type of marriage. If it's a marriage condoned by the rules, it is blessed and the wife is loved; if it's a forbidden marriage (e.g incestuous or other) it is not, and the wife is unloved (though the status of the son, in this matter, is unaffected).

Kiddushin 78a

This thread began, and is explained, here.

Deciding According to Some Ancient Text - and a Reflection

Interesting item in the New York Times about some recent decision of the American Supreme Court that isn't really important to the rest of us. Something about the right to bear arms. Anyway, the learned author shows how everyone in the debate (the Justices, that is) need to show how their contemporary position fits into the intent of a group of white male gentlemen in the late 18th century.

I'm not poking fun, honestly. On the contrary, I understand that a society needs to have some basic texts to which it relates when making important decisions; no legal system could long function as a legal system without. Nor a religious system, either. Except that most religious systems relate to documents that are far more ancient than 200-some years.

PS - On another subject, or perhaps the same one from a different direction: I'm alway struck by how the internal American discussion of violence gets tied up with the number of guns lying around. In Switzerland and in Israel, both, there are probably significantly more guns in the hands of the citizens (or more accurately, the citizens who are also reserve soldiers) than there are in the US. Yet in neither country are these weapons the cause of a large number of crimes or murders. Sometimes they are, yes, but not often. Violence, you see, is a matter of culture, not of tools. Or - and I apologize for repeating myself endlessly - it's a matter of choice, not of conditions.

Jesus, a Jew of His Time

An article in the NYT tells about an inscription on a stone from 2000-some years ago that casts new light on the life of Jesus. The idea, as I understand it, is that Jesus fit into the Jewish society of his day even more than previously suspected.

Makes sense to me.

American Support of Israel

Here's an article about deep seated characteristics of America that explain why it's so supportive of Zionism. It's pretty obvious to me that the author, one Walter Russell Mead, is himself not so enamored of Israel; perhaps this led him to investigate what it is that makes so many Americans so supportive.

Interestingly, I found this article in a bookstore at the airport in Hong Kong. Just the kind of things you'd expect to find at an airport, huh?