In Other News, Anti-Semitism Continues to Rear Its Ugly Head

Recent events in France have brought the seemingly somnolent monster of anti-Semitism to the forefront of national consciousness. On Friday two Muslim terrorists killed 4 Jewish hostages at a kosher supermarket in Paris, in addition to massacring 12 people at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In a Wall Street Journal article covering news of the attack, a Parisian resident Hervé Laurent stated somberly: "Clearly something is broken in France."("Deadly Raid Ends Terror Spree in France," Meichtry, Gauthier-Villars, & Bisserbe, 2015). In response to the murders of Yoav Hattab, Philippe Braham, Yohan Cohen and Francois-Michel Saada, France ramped up its security on Jewish schools and synagogues in the vicinity, deploying up to 10,000 soldiers around the country to protect Jewish children.

So. The Holocaust is over, the Jewish blood libel has been ridiculed and summarily dismissed, the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition lie 500 years in the past. And yet the hate and prejudice that perpetrated these tragic events is still alive and well today. A few months ago the former chief rabbi of England, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, wrote an essay in the Wall Street Journal discussing this phenomenon, stating that, however much the media and other nations may attempt to mask the ugliness of its features, anti-Semitism continues to be prevalent and that, "Never again has become ever again." He cites recent examples from all across Europe: "In France, worshipers in a synagogue were surrounded by a howling mob claiming to protest Israeli policy. In Brussels, four people were murdered in the Jewish museum, and a synagogue was firebombed. In London, a major supermarket said that it felt forced to remove kosher food from its shelves for fear that it would incite a riot. A London theater refused to stage a Jewish film festival because the event had received a small grant from the Israeli embassy."("Europe's Alarming New Anti-Semitism," Sacks, 2014).

What is this monster, and how can Jews and non-Jews stop its evil and hate from infecting the world?

             
           

The Encyclopedia Judaica describes anti-Semitism as“a term coined in 1879, from the Greek “anti” [against], and “Semite” by the German agitator Wilhelm Marr… “Anti-Semitism”soon came into general use as a term denoting all forms of hostility manifested toward the Jews” (Heinemann, Gutmann, Poliakov, Weissman, Toury, & Hertzberg, 2007, p. 206-246).

However, to define the term “anti-Semitism”, examples serve better than any dictionary definition, and they exist in abundance. A few years after my family moved to the small Dutch farming town where we currently live, several of my little brothers were playing outside, and some boys their age rode by, yelled “Heil Hitler”, gave them the Nazi salute, and told them to go back to the ovens of Aushwitz. When my parents visited Israel they were walking in an Arab neighborhood and several small Arab children came out of their house and began pelting my parents with small stones: simply because they were Jews. These are examples of anti-Semitism on a very small scale, perpetrated by children bearing weapons no larger than tiny rocks and hurtful words... yet this attitude had to have come from somewhere. This is where anti-Semitism starts – in the minds and souls of young children, who grow up thinking that hatred for another race is not only normal, but is right and just.

The history of this monster is a long and tragic one. But nowhere in the pages of history can we find such a horrendous and tragic example of anti-Semitism on a mass scale aside from the Holocaust. A brief look at the statistics of the Holocaust should somewhat suffice to convey its utter horror: in 1933, about nine million Jews lived in Europe. By 1945, an estimated 5,830,000 Jews were completely wiped out. In a little over ten years after Hitler’s rise to power, two out of every three European Jews had been killed. An estimated 1.2 million Jewish children were murdered, mostly in the six extermination camps established in Poland where mass murder by gas was conducted systematically. Millions also died in these ghettos and camps from forced labor, starvation, disease, brutality, and execution (Leckie, 1987, p. 903-920).

During the Holocaust, one of the darkest times in Jewish history, the true colors of non-Jews all over the world were revealed when neighbors turned on neighbors, and friends upon friends. Historian Martin Gilbert recounts such an incident in the Ukraine his book The Righteous: A Jew managed to escape from the ghetto of Dabrowica in Poland, and sought refuge from a Ukrainian peasant whom he had thought his friend. But his “friend” responded, “You come to me asking me to help and save you?…Hitler has conquered almost the whole world and he is going to slaughter all the Jews because they crucified our Jesus…Get out of my sight, for the devil remains the devil, and the Yid remains a Yid” (Gilbert, 2002, p. 9).
        

Yaffa Eliach in his "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust" tells the horrifically ironic story of Holocaust victim Zvi Michalowsky who survived a mass shooting near a church and climbed naked and covered in blood out of the pit after the Nazis had gone. He made his way to a Christian home and knocked on the door. When the widow saw him shivering on her doorstep she chased him away telling him, "Jew, go back to the grave!" But then Zvi had an idea. "I am your Lord, Jesus Christ," he told her, "Look at me - the blood, the pain, the suffering of the innocent - let me in." The woman's demeanor changed dramatically and she fell at his feet crossing herself - "My God, my God!" she cried, and welcomed him into her home (Eliach, 2011, p. 54-55). Yes, the Jews crucified Jesus, and for that, they were persecuted, tortured, and killed by the millions during the Holocaust. Yet in the name of avenging Jesus' death many Christians somehow forgot that their Savior Himself was also, in fact, a Jew.

          Anti-Semitism has existed as a social evil for centuries, it still exists today in the modern world, and Jews and Gentiles alike need to stand behind Israel and the Jewish community to prevent anti-Semitism using their words, their deeds, and their overall attitude of support.  It is prevalent everywhere, even in the free, democratic, culturally diverse country of America, as my brothers’ personal experience above demonstrates. The authors of Encyclopedia Judaica point out that anti-Semitic rhetoric and behavior has been more pronounced in some periods of American history than others, such as during the Civil War, when General Grant expelled all Jews from military territories in December of 1862. (Heinemann, Gutmann, Poliakov, Weissman, Toury, & Hertzberg, 2007, p. 206-246).  A significant increase in reported acts of anti-Semitism in America has been recorded during the last few years, as Jeffrey Ross explains in his Jerusalem Post article, Campus Anti-Semitism Grows In the U.S.; “In 1984, the "Annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents" of B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League showed incidents on six campuses. This figure doubled to 12 in 1985 and increased to 19 in 1986. In 1988, the number jumped to 38, the highest ever recorded by the ADL” (Ross, October, 1989, Jerusalem Post). Ross reports that a Holocaust memorial adjacent to the Yale campus was desecrated on the 50^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, and swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were spray painted on the walls of New York State University. The next morning a philosophy professor told his class that the Jews had brought these incidents upon themselves (Ross, October, 1989, Jerusalem Post).

“Here? In America?” you might ask in disbelief. The answer is yes, anti-Semitism still exists in America – and not only do these incidences point to its existence, they demonstrate the fearful truth that an anti-Semitic attitude is growing in the United States.

Today anti-Semitism’s most powerful and frightening voice is not Germany, but Islam. Islam’s very ideology is based in hatred of the Jews and the belief that the entire Jewish race should be wiped off the map. “The Jews are said to have always abused the generosity and hospitality of the Moslems by stirring up unrest against them - from the Jews of Medina who betrayed the Prophet Mohammed to the Jews in today's Arab and Moslem world” (Israeli, 1990, The Jerusalem Post). Leaders of the Arab world such as Khomeini and Iran’s president Ahmadinejad are very vocal in their hatred of the Jews. If we wish to avoid yet another Holocaust, we must take measures to stop Muslim aggression on the Israel.

How can one individual hope to combat such a prevalent social evil, such widespread hatred of a people, such racism and violence? More can be done than one would think. One man's stand for the Jews, one solitary voice of support for Israel, one person speaking up against any expression of anti-Semitism, is a powerful, unquenchable light in a dark world. Think how differently the Holocaust might have turned out if all the non-Jews had banded together and stood against anti-Semitism in the 30s and 40s. An entire generation of European Jewry might not have been lost. A great many Jews were saved because of the bravery of righteous men and women. Over 19,000 non-Jews have been recognized as Righteous “Among the Nations” By Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem (Gilbert, The Righteous, dust cover).

In the preface to his work The Righteous, where he recounts the stories of the noble Europeans who helped save the Jews during the Holocaust, Martin Gilbert describes this scene: “On 28 October 1974, while walking on Mount Zion in Jerusalem, I saw… a procession on its way to one of the city’s Christian cemeteries.” Surprised that most of the procession seemed to be Jewish, Gilbert asked one of them whose funeral it was, and was told that it was that of a German Christian, Oskar Schindler, who had helped save the lives of more than 1,500 Jews during the Holocaust (Gilbert, The Righteous, p. ix).

The solution to the problem of anti-Semitism is not to passively stand on the sidelines and allow Jews to be attacked. To prevent anti-Semitism, you must support Israel, support your Jewish friends and neighbors, support the entire Jewish community. Stand up against anti-Semitic slurs and jokes even when the situation may be awkward or uncomfortable.  Support Jews with your words, your attitude, and most of all through a united stance against all forms of anti-Semitism. Support them to turn the tide of hatred that they have endured for so many thousands of years as a nation. Support them because God has called us to show love towards every race and people and to stand against racial hatred and prejudice. The massacre of the 4 Jewish men in Paris on Friday is the brutal culmination of more subtle forms of anti-Semitism: indifference, apathy, and silent betrayal.

This is not an ancient or outdated social problem – this monster is not asleep or dead or forgotten in the past - its ugliness is alive and well in today’s modern world, as evidenced by America’s apathetic and even hostile attitude towards Israel and Islam’s violent and unwarranted acts of hatred towards the Jews. We must never let another Holocaust happen again in a civilized country, as it did in Germany of 1939. We must stand with the Jewish people and declare, as did the citizens of Billings, Montana in 1939 when the Klu Klux Clan was waging their anti-Semitic hate campaign: “Not in our town” (Ross, Dec. 4^th, 1995, Columbian).

References:

Eliach, Yaffa. Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust. 2011. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Gilbert, Martin. The Righteous. 2002. Doubleday Publishers: Great Britain

Heinemann, J.; Cutmann, J.; Poliakov, L.; Weissman P.; Toury, J.; and Hertzberg, A. et al. Antisemitism, Encyclopaedia Judaica. Ed. By Berenbaum, M. and Skolnik, F. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. P. 206-246.

Israeli, R. 1990, Aug 09. Antisemitism and Israeli Islam. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/320997884?accountid=12085

Leckie, R. Delivered From Evil: The Saga of World War II. 1987. Harper and Row Publishers, New York, N.Y.

Ross, J. 1991, Jun 25. U.S. Campus Antisemitism Grows. Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/321023782?accountid=12085

Ross, L. (1995, Dec 24). Not in our town. Columbian. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/252751995?accountid=12085

An Editorial From the New York Times. Oct. 20^th, 2003. Islamic Anti-Semitism, Loud and Clear. Pittsburgh Post - Gazette. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/391022693?accountid=12085

On W. Somerset Maugham

Lately I haven’t been able to get enough of British author W. Somerset Maugham. A year or so ago I read what is considered to be one of his greatest works, “Of Human Bondage,” and was disappointed. I was also consciously disappointed by other works of his that I picked up and read, “Cakes and Ale,” and “Ah King.” I say “consciously,” because unconsciously, I believe that something in his writing attracted me. If it hadn’t, I don’t believe I would have kept reading any more of his works. I would have dropped “Of Human Bondage” more quickly than I dropped Plutarch’s “Lives” when I found myself nodding off after a couple of pages. But I didn’t… as if against my own will, I kept coming back to Maugham, reading volumes of his short stories and various random works of his that happened to be lying around the house. I told myself it was just because I was bored, and his pieces are lightly entertaining.
         Generally I am grateful when people take it upon themselves to recommend books to me. “You’ll love this,” they say, or “That book was amazing,” or “This one’s a classic, a must-read.” What they really mean is, at that point in time, that book had something to say that spoke directly to their frame of mind or current experience, that the author articulated a message so personally powerful, it captivated their mind and their energy and their concentration, and they came away from the encounter somehow changed.  What they mean is, “that book expressed ideas that coincided directly with my own, or gave voice to ideas I didn’t even know I had.” Alternatively, or additionally, “this book expressed ideas that blindsided or contradicted some of my deep-set convictions, forcing me to re-evaluate and alter them.” It’s hard to know, though, when to give up on a book or an author altogether, or to keep coming back and trying, because you know it just simply isn’t the right time. There is a season to read certain works, and there is a season to refrain from reading them. (For example, when struggling with depression, or an emotionally trying set of circumstances, I make it a personal rule to stay away from Dostoevsky.)  
         A year ago, I wasn’t ready to appreciate W. Somerset Maugham the way I have come to appreciate him now. And a year, or even a month from now, perhaps I will have ceased to appreciate him. Usually if someone whose opinion I value, and whose fundamental convictions resemble mine, keeps telling me I ought to try and read so-and-so, I will keep trying. It was this way with Herman Melville. Over and over I picked up and gave up on Moby Dick. It was never the right moment. His metaphors meant nothing to me, his analogies seemed preachy, I found his descriptions of whaling tedious and his imageries empty and dull. Then suddenly my sophomore year of high school I picked it up again, devoured it, and loved it. I found it exciting, moving, dramatic, relevant. I was glad I had persisted.

And suddenly, at this point in my life, I feel as though I can relate to Maugham's writings. It wasn't this way several years ago. I wish I could remember exactly why I didn’t like Maugham then nearly as much as I seem to now... I think the endings of his works left me feeling dissatisfied. I strongly disliked his conclusions. An author – especially an author of short stories – can do so much with his conclusions... They are the solution to the conflict. They are the grand finale. They are the apex, the answer, the elucidation of everything you've been anticipating… And Maugham’s endings always left me going, “Wait…what??” Here is an example from “The Trembling of a Leaf;”

“He wondered why he had ever loved her so madly. He had laid at her feet all the treasures of his soul, and she had cared nothing for them. Waste, what waste! And now, when he looked at her, he felt only contempt. His patience was at last exhausted. He answered her question.
         “He’s the captain of a schooner. He’s come from Apia.”
         “Yes.”
         “He brought me news from home. My eldest brother is very ill and I must go back.”
         “Will you be gone long?”
         He shrugged his shoulders.”


And?

And nothing. That was it. As in life, no dramatic conclusion, no solution, no resolution. Not a happy ending, although certainly not a tragic one… Just an ordinary one. Maugham’s writings are always that – delightfully ordinary, and incredibly readable. I have struggled through too many philosophical treatises and dense historical expositions not to appreciate readability when I see it. And the more widely I read, the more important a quality I believe readability is for an author to have. It’s all very well to say deep things in an abstruse, subtle manner, to leave readers guessing at the true meaning, and scholars arguing about your purpose in your wake for decades... But if I were an author, I think I’d much rather leave my readers perfectly clear as to my intentions. If my message is important enough to write a novel about, it should be important enough to express lucidly. And Maugham’s writing is nothing if not lucid. Someone once told me how much they hate naïve, blunt writing, writing that attempt clumsily to wrap itself in opaque metaphor, but instead results in a maladroit statement of personal ideology. There is a fine line, certainly, between trying too hard to be subtle and failing… and trying too hard to be subtle and succeeding. Either way, though, I think that you’re simply trying too hard. I think the point is not to try at all. I am no author, and I would not dare to attempt walking the fine line between subtle expression of ideas and blatant proclamation of dogma, but as a reader, it’s nice to enjoy the happy medium Maugham provides. His books have been described as “pleasure reading” – so what? Reading should be pleasurable, shouldn’t it?

And so, a year later, I come back to Maugham. Although there are lists of other books I should be reading, multitudes of authors to try, whole genres I have not explored, horizons to be expanded… I keep coming back to Maugham. Especially since his novels and short stories revolve around subjects that truly interest me at this point in my life – love and friendship and betrayal and fidelity and heartbreak and relationships between people. Ever and always, they are honest, and deal honestly with the corruption and the joy and the hypocrisy and the pleasure of being alive.  And they end at absurdly abrupt junctions, leaving you wondering at the point, the meaning of it all... as do the stories in our own lives.

No better analysis of Maugham’s writing exists than his own. In the Preface to his first novel of complete short stories, East and West, Maugham meditates on his own writing, and on the two greatest influences behind it, Maupassant and Chekov. He both criticizes and praises them, and talks about how he discovered them as a young man and how they’ve impacted his style ever since. When talking about Maupassant, you almost think that Maugham is discussing himself… “It may be that [Maupassant’s novels] have no great spiritual significance. Maupassant did not aim at that. He looked upon himself as a plain man; no good writer was ever less a man of letters. He did not pretend to be a philosopher, and here he was well-advised, for when he indulges in a reflection, he is commonplace. But within his limits he is admirable. He has an astonishing capacity for creating living people. He can afford little space, but in a few pages can set before you half a dozen person so sharply seen and vividly described that you know all about them that you need” (Maugham, East and West, 1921).

Again, when he lectures on Chekov and Maupassant both… (“lectures”? Is that the right word? Maugham never lectures. He muses.) he might be speaking of his own writing: “Chekov is extremely readable. That is a writer’s supreme virtue and one upon which sufficient stress is often not laid. He shared it with Maupassant. Both of them were professional writers who turned out stories at more or less regular intervals to earn their living… it was part of the day’s work. They had to please their writers. They were not always inspired, it was only now and then that they produced a masterpiece, but it is very seldom that they wrote anything that did not hold the reader’s attention to the last line… Sometimes a critic will describe a book of short stories as magazine stories and thus in his own mind damn them. That is foolish. No form of art is produced unless there is a demand for it and if newspapers and magazines did not publish short stories they would not be written…”

Right now, perhaps I’m weary of subtlety. I appreciate the effort it takes, as an author, to say what he wants to say using fables, metaphors, and elusive language. I appreciate the epic proportions of a novel like Brothers Karamazov, and the importance of themes such as Hugo's and Tolstoy's. But coming down to earth from novels like theirs leaves one with a depressing sense of anti-climax, the sneaking suspicion that life, real life, is not like that, at all... Human beings are not like that. The majority of them, unlike Levin and Alyosha and Jean Valjean, do not possess the capacity to rise above their past and become such passionate, self-sacrificing idealists. One in a hundred years, perhaps… and about these men, certainly, such novels deserve to be written. But what about the rest of us? Maybe we don’t deserve to have novels written about us, and our petty struggles and base desires and failings and small victories… and there are people like Somerset Maugham who have written about us just the same.

         “I like a story,” concluded Maugham in his introduction, “that fits...You feel that life does not dovetail into its various parts with such neatness. In life, stories straggle, they begin nowhere and tail off without a point. That is probably what Chekov meant when he said that stories should have neither a beginning nor an end. It is certain that sometimes it gives you a sensation of airlessness when you see persons who behave so exactly according to character, and incidents that fall into places with such perfect convenience. The story-teller of this kind aims not only at giving his own feelings about life, but at a formal decoration. He arranges life to suit his purposes. He follows a design in his mind, leaving out this and changing that; he distorts facts to his advantage, according to his plan; and when he attains his object produces a work of art. It may be that life slips through this fingers; then he has failed; it may be that he seems sometimes so artificial that you cannot believe him, and when you do not believe a story-teller he is done. When he succeeds he has forced you for a time to accept his view of the universe and has given you the pleasure of following out the pattern he has drawn on the surface of chaos. But he seeks to prove nothing. He paints a picture and sets it before you. You can take it or leave it.” 
             

Knowingly or unknowingly, Maugham was describing his own purpose and style as an author. Like his hypothetical writer, Maugham also does not seek to prove anything - he paints a picture - in some cases, a masterpiece - and sets it before you - and you, the reader - today, tomorrow, or years in the future - are perfectly free to either take it or leave it. 

"Gratitude," by Abba.

A post from my father on the meaning behind Thanksgiving... 

"Gratitude:

"An acknowledgement of what the L-rd has meant to us in the past and what He still means to us today, as well as an avowal of what our relationship to Him has been and should be.

"Our Sages comment that when one day in the new future that is to come, all things on earth will be in such an ideal state that there will be no more cause for prayers and offerings; even then, prayers of gratitude and offerings of thanksgiving will never cease. For it would be only under such conditions that these acts would attain their true significance. How great is gratitude, the noblest of all human traits and destined to endure throughout eternity.

"May we be made aware of the vanity of all the years of our life, of the inadequacy of all that which lies beyond us and which we think we can attain as the years go by.

"All he joy and happiness of which any of us is capable of attaining dwells in the certainty that we have lived all our days, hours, and minutes on earth in gratitude and loyalty to G-d, and that we have faithfully discharged our duty throughout time.

"And whenever G-d sees fit to call us away, we will boldly heed the summons, content in the thought that we have realized the goal for which we were created.

"May He, therefore, teach us how to number our days aright and greet each day with a heart full of gratitude for, each day is one more day in His service. What an awesome privilege to remain in His employ, unworthy servants such as we are.


"Happy Thanksgiving."