yerida here we come

i told my sister that i was planning to move back to new york at the end of this year and she didn't take it well. of course she insisted that i did not make an adequate attempt to integrate which is obviously true. she should live to be 700 years old and i should see here twice a year.

freyda is in bad shape. a virus causing her pneumonia which could be something that she is vulnerable to that other people who have not had bone marrow transplants are not vulnerable to.

i don't know what i'm doing this year. and my desire for new york and my desire for reefer are confusing. but this is not me, this is me on a break.

israel holding onto the west bank for security reasons can be justified. israel holding on to the west bank for a land grab cannot be justified.

the lack of family that shares my "left wing" point of view does not help my assimilation here.

the war in gaza did not help my assimilation here.

the election of netanyahu did not help my assimilation here.

my reaction to my return to israel on august 6th of last year was at the basis of all this.

my lack of finding a female that i would respond to or that i would allow myself to respond to, is at the basis of all this.

i have never come close to getting a real job here.

micha giving me the heave ho did not help.

cutting off relations with klitsner by allowing myself to be overcome with the obsession with his/her daughter did not help.

one arabic teacher alienating a female student from me and one arabic teacher alienating himself from me did not help matters.

hating this fucking country did not help matters.

my shyness without reefer did not help matters.

Gassel wedding

I went to the Gassel wedding in Abu Gosh last night. turns out there was a bus provided by the gassels to get to the wedding, which i was able to use coming home, but they didn't let me know and i used public transportation, which wasn't egged, but superbus #185, which the place didn't tell me, but egged told me and involved a few phone calls and much worries and worrying mom because of the weiss's who were going to be there.

i said hello to the weiss's at the wedding. nate didn't even say hi though i was 18 inches away from him, but leah responded friendly.

the batemans were there, david and beverly and their presence changed the affair from a negative to a plus (a mild plus, but a plus nevertheless). the place was very nice. lorin was quite nice. ray repeats things and hardly ever says anything interesting. debbie more or less waits him out. rafi seemed to appreciate my gift. ( i think i gave tzvia a hundred more shekels, which was before i even knew that lorin knew about my sin. their wedding was two and a half years ago. only wedding regret i should have gone to shrader's wedding.)

beverly is selling real estate. (what a waste that such a creative person should be doing something so mercenary.) when i said i wasn't working, she said that sucks, which is true in terms of adjusting to living here that it sucks.

i talked openly to bateman, even mentioning the split between aryeh and me. he has covered the be fruitful and multiply side and all i need to do now is accomplish something. he is out of the rabbinate and he said it was addictive, the hero worship part of it. the upshot of all my copying down of my autobio and writing about aryeh is that he spooks me.

her cousin in ezras torah is rich, and her cousin's mother is both upset that he didn't make more money and also didn't become a talmid chochom.

money, money, money was all beverly really talked about. except her exception with the "i can't sit next to a woman who's not my wife". the couple from shilo who arrived there on erev yom kippur three years ago after a short stay in har nof, who invited me to sleep in their son's room. their son is a renaissance man who studies music at a high school yeshiva geared towards music (in the territories). they were the ones who told me about the bus that was leaving and "saved" me from the experience of waiting for the superbus out in abu gosh.

the woman who i met at gassel's a few purim's ago and who was at the wedding of tzvia. (little gassel, i called her) and who lives on karnei shomron, didn't recognize me which is no great loss to me.

i sat next to a lawyer from minneapolis who had spent many years in chicago, who set up a business for israelis who then fired him and he told me of various hiring and firing shennanigans by israeli companies and his wife is now cleaning homes and he is watching money that he saved (not that mommy and daddy gave me, but that i earned and saved) dwindle away.

someone announced that there had been a bris of his grandchild on yom kippur and i wondered how the mohel did metzitza. (beverly drinking tempted me to drink, but the yetzer tov won out and i drank coca cola instead.)

how old are you? beverly asked. i hesitated. you can say. finally i got 55 out, and i was a year younger than she and david. but can i still have a slice of bread. i look young for my age.

the corned beef at the smorgasbord was to be chewed and spit out. the meat at the meal was better than that.

the rabbi who read the ketuba dissed abu gosh and said yeah for kiryat yearim or anavim or whatever.
the lawyer next to me, predicted sharia as the system of government for sweden in a few years.

i didn't have all that much to say to beverly and david or ray and debbie and found a seat when they wanted to start the chupa although i sat ten minutes before the crowd was sufficiently subdued. i had brought my knapsack with me, which was a pain in the butt, but i pulled out my dictionary and read.

after going to the bank this morning, i saw klitsner at the mega and said hello. kind of awkward. i gave him my phone number. "we were talking about when to invite you." he wished me a good kvitel (chasidic connections) . first time i ever talked to someone in the mega, have spoken to people in the mall.

i got a sruga yarmulka at the wedding.

the guy next to me hoped i wouldn't make yerida. bateman's hero worship got me thinking about becoming a rabbi. comments about the rabbi's anti abu gosh comment got me thinking about my future as a prominent leftist in israel.

mondoweiss reports from "palestine"

mondo describes people who steal artifacts as "vermin". calling them the lowest of the low would have been better than using the term "vermin". mondo reports others saying that what they saw in hebron reminded them of what they read about the Nazis. thus putting it in journalistically acceptable format, but still comparing the actions of the Hebron people to Nazis.

peace talks in washington

netanyahu and abbas met in washington d.c. it feels foolish and naive to be hopeful and i have yet to discuss this latest development with any living soul for fear of allowing unwarranted optimism to creep into my conversation. (last night the headline was palestinians do 180 degree turnabout on negotiations. this morning: erekat says netanyahu dragging his heels.) but phil weiss calls the talks a "farce" which shows where his heart is and walt no longer references mondoweiss on his blog. amnesty international has attacked the attack on settlers last week, there is some argument regarding this on mondo. obviously they should not be there (in the west bank) obviously if they are going to be there, they need to be armed. obviously this should not be used as an excuse to harass palestinians.

personal notes: shabbos was lonely. i went to the city last night late and walked back via aza. arabic "progresses". my lamp went out. got e mail from joe greenholtz. need to call larry vis a vis my books. harold proved useless. he is ducking creditors. i am making progress getting godthoughts down to a minimum. no intention to hear the shofar blowing. mich norm phone call after shabbat- more pain, but nothing specific. wrote e mail to joyce. the girl in the ahava got a shach and taz. shazz means exception (arabic). need to get back on track vis a vis liberty and vis a vis angriest and vis a vis bmp, which is too many, so i need to choose. many thoughts of education, but few actions.

(Y3) let me out of here!

yesterday the combination of fatigue and a plumber who made things worse instead of better made me wish to leave here shortly (60 days instead of 300 days), but a busride to my parents calmed me down (despite the fact that i almost got run over on the way there, in the crosswalk nearest my house. called the driver a fucking cunt which elicited a smile from a dib). showed them the last half hour of history boys (informed pa that he better like it because tony liked it) and the first half hour of temple grandin (claire danes as an autistic savant who improves the lot of cattle on the way to the slaughter). got suitcases up from basement, showing max the basement and he commenting that people could live down there. (jukes/roaches do live down there. that is where i plan to put some books.) the fact is the guilt about leaving israel- mich norm 90, other people 5, israel 5, drives me to tantrum, because tantrum is my replacement for decision.

hamas is shooting people on the west bank, killed four near hebron the other day and mondoweiss has many voices that express satisfaction with that, but other voices that express opposition to that. i put in my bare minimum (i thank you for this post) to ahmed moor the other day. first post in a while.

since america 2009

broken tooth
zev to town
resnick to town
asshole arabic teacher
micha quits me
phil weiss to town
david kammerman to town
nondependable reefer
purim at kenny
amital funeral
sheikh jarrah x 2
visit gush
visit karnei shomron
2 bat mitzvahs
one wedding
dad declines/Filipino
camcorder fuck up
reduction in viepax threat

(Y2) politics

I began my stay in Israel in favor of a 2 state solution as the best of the bad choices of solution and i still hold the same opinion. when the plo comes out in favor of a one state solution and begins to advocate east jerusalem arabs signing up for citizenship that will be the point when the rubber hits the road in terms of how left i am willing to be.

I went to a few rallies: two rallies in Sheikh Jarrah where i felt alone and out of tune with the other rally'ers. one saturday night rally in favor of the new left contract, i arrived at the tail end of the rally because buses after shabbat start real late and the rally which was mostly for out of towners started real early and my reaction was mostly argumentative. some rally near the prime minister's "residence" that was either about corruption or about freeing gilad shalit, i don't remember which. I remember arguing a couple (at least 3) times with people at the "women in black" in kikar paris. I argued against a sign that said, "obama shut up" at the december 09 anti settlement freeze rally in kikar paris. the right wingers are a bunch of shits. i've had people tell me to leave israel, some asshole getting on a bus near mashbir and the people at the "obama shut up" rally and after the new left rally when arguing with rightists.

if any single event changed me politically it was the gaza war. I think the war went on too long and was too destructive and in retrospect they could have changed the siege rules to reach an agreement.

i was repulsed (too strong) at the rally against the turkish embassy in the aftermath of the mavi marmara (that i saw on t.v.).

my participation in the mondoweiss web site and even before that in the jewcy web site moved me to the left because of my needs to reach an intellectually consistent opinion, which is only necessary if one argues with leftists and is not necessary if i am sitting alone in my room reacting to each headline one by one.

my visit to karnei shomron was my most advanced stay in the territories and i have written about that before.

I didn't vote for obama.
I am against attacking the iranian nuclear project by israel and probably by america as well.
carey fredman's advocacy of attacking it plus his motorcycle accident afterwards, plus micha odenheimer's wife's vehement opposition to it, clarified the validity of the opposition to israel's attack on it.

I met phil weiss. i met shmuel from italy.

I felt the attack on the merkaz harav school before i even read about it.

I studied arabic and saw lots of arabs at the malcha mall.

I tried to cop in the old city but various factors stood in my way.

(Y1) my yerida

nothing is written in stone and there are no guarantees in life, but my plan is to leave israel about july 1st. i have been here a little less than 4 years and i don't feel at home. my cousin zev wrote in a recent letter, i never understood why you made aliya. you are a new yorker and will always be a new yorker, so why would you move to israel.

here's what i wrote back today:i do not regret my time spent in israel, if only for the writing that i've done. it was also something that i had accepted as "fact" when i was young. (i will move to israel when i grow up.) and even though various other facts i had accepted when i was young (i will be religious when i grow up, i will get married when i grow up, i will have children when i grow up) were not borne out by reality, i accept that i wanted to make the aliya thing a reality. i do feel that there is a bit of a contradiction between loyalty to israel and living in america and thus an attempt at aliya made sense on that level. i think most americans who make aliya go through crises during the first seven years of their aliya, but whereas they have kids in school as a factor which keeps them in israel, my childlessness is an "advantage" in this case. I am also glad that i got to experience living here and learning as much arabic as i did and i regret many things i didn't do here that i had imagined i would do here, but when elvis or sinatra sing "my way", i change the words to- "regrets i have a few, but then again too many to mention."

i should add that because mention rhymes with bentsching that is usually included at the end of whatever verse i try to follow up the "my way" verse with.

"And thanks, the food was good, but will somebody please start the bensching."

at the midr'chov a guitar player played dylan's tambourine man as i was leaving and some song that said home is wherever i am when i arrived there. is new york home? is jerusalem home? i certainly feel like prison here. certainly the deprivation of ganga is a major player in my moods and that element confuses me: am i going back to new york just for the ganga? but there you have it.

mich, norm are the primary concerns of regret. but the fact that i have not informed tova and pnina yet of how solid my plans are, also indicates that there are other regrets.

I guess i am glad i was in israel for amital's funeral and got to say hello to him one last time at kenny's son's wedding.

jews of lebanon

last day of august.
i'm not sure how many days it is since my last post to mondoweiss, but here's to keeping that streak going. if they had immediate posts i'm sure i would not be able to restrain myself, but given the lack of immediate posts it is entirely feasible.
i started trying to put bmp in order (meaning lighting a fire under it and thus absolving the language problem by making it immediate instead of weak) by changing 3rd person to 1st person.
dreamed of judy the k. and wasted time and plugs that don't go into outlets and sharing quarters with others and hairy female stomachs. reminded of hanging out at the k. residence in some dreams.
so someone on mondoweiss has posted regarding the lebanese being superior to americans that they have rebuilt a synagogue despite all the attacks from the jewish state, whereas america does not want the mosque near ground zero.

as christopher hitchens has pointed out on slate, the opposition to the mosque has a lot to do with other subjects other than the attack on the world trade center: namely the fact that white america feels under attack by the growing population of nonwhites that will recede from majority status to plurality status some time around 2040. that it is this insecurity that is at the base of the opposition to the mosques that they have as much to do with insecurity regarding immigration as they have to do with the attack on the WTC. does lebanon need to fear jewish immigration. when the numbers of jews in lebanon hovers somewhere between 50 and 1000 and the jewish community does not dare to vote so as to maintain their discretion, no. Lebanon has nothing to fear from jewish immigration. the jews have something to fear from their presence in lebanon despite some public relations statements made by nasrallah. the reestablishment of the synagogue is pure P.R. and to equate the new mosque which is meant to attract a truly universal population that visits new york and an increasing muslim population that is immigrating to america to a synagogue that has no rabbi, because the jewish community is too small and too scared to have a rabbi is to compare an open society to a society that is not opened to jews, but is near the end of a lengthy process of kicking out the jews, if not by policy than by acts of hatred.

visit to Karnei Shomron (as reported to mondoweiss)

By chance, one week before Shmuel spent a Shabbat at his sister’s, I spent a Shabbat at a West Bank settlement as well. While he had the excuse of his nephew’s post wedding Shabbat, I had no such excuse, only a desire to see an old friend from 40 or so years ago and a desire to see him on his home turf. I found the experience quite confusing, besides the usual: friends of old who have kept the faith with Torah, with large families, looking forward to retirement, the presence in a settlement nowhere near the lines of 67 added an element of unusual confusion.

Although as has been noted the two state solution is nowhere near, that is still my hope and thus my friend’s home, would have to be evacuated like the Gaza settlements. I imagined receiving a call in the middle of the night (Friday night) from the IDF, telling me to help evacuate the family of my host from their home, to ease the process of evacuation.

In fact my only mention of politics was at the lunch table, “Do you think Israel will ever annex the West bank?” and my friend said, “Not today and not tomorrow.” Although the heat was intense my friend and his wife took me on a tour of the settlement and from the fringes we could see the surrounding hills, mostly empty. My friend’s wife said, “See. There’s plenty of room here for everybody.” I didn’t argue. If everyone would get the vote and full rights, she is right. It’s not a lack of room that’s the problem(although there is a lack of water, it seems.) but the lack of a political agreement.

As a rule I try to minimize my participation in prayer services because they tend to send my compass’s needle twirling instead of pointing towards true north. But Shabbat afternoon I participated, but when I reached the paragraph that prays for peace, I found the contradiction between my vision for peace and the fact of the settlement a bit too glaring.

(M66) look back in anger

Jimmy (Richard burton) is angry. He is married to a pretty dull blonde and he is friends with a noncombative passive sort of fellow. his wife is pregnant and he doesn't know. he sells candies, though he has a college education. his wife burns herself on an iron when jimmy knocks it over. jimmy has a soft heart for a woman who is motherlike towards him when she visits town. later she dies. the dull blonde invites her friend, claire bloom to visit. jimmy and she argue. jimmy is a trumpet player and he plays loudly in order to tell us he's angry. jimmy and his friend interrupt a rehearsal where claire bloom is on stage and they make havoc of it. the blonde is sick of jimmy beating up on her emotionally and so eventually she leaves town. claire bloom falls in love with jimmy. turns out the friend doesn't like claire bloom and so he decides to leave town. then jimmy's wife shows up. she has lost the baby (and the ability to have kids). now that she is a sufferer she and jimmy can get along together.
tortuous to watch.
B

(M65) Escape from alcatraz

Clint- a prisoner who has been sent to alcatraz because he has escaped from other prisons arrives. He meets the warden, a sadist. (This is established when the warden takes away painting privileges from an inmate who goes nuts when this is done to him.) Clint meets the other inmates- first a quirky sort who feeds food to his pet mouse. Then the local bully who wants to fuck him, but Clint beats him up in the shower. When the bully tries to stab Clint in the yard, Clint succeeds in foiling the attempt. The offender is sent to punishment, but so is Clint. (the cruelty of the place.) Clint befriends a black inmate. Clint tells his plan to three others- his neighbor and two others who have access to materials needed for the escape. Painstaking preparations including welding a spoon onto a nail clipper, including a narrow escape. Guard almost sees the welded instrument when the neighbor cannot whistle in time. Right before the escape: bully gets out of solitary and black friend stops him from attacking Clint. Threat of bully causes a moving up of the escape date, which thwarts the warden's plans to move Clint. Clint's neighbor decides not to escape and then regrets his decision, but ends up in his cell. Clint and the other two swim away on a homemade raft. The only evidence of their survival are crysanthemums left on the island adjacent to Alcatraz. (that flower was the signature of the painter who cut off his own hand in protest of the removal of his painting privileges.) we don't know whether they made it or not. Based on a true story.

B

paranoia? bullshit!

Robin- The first thought that comes to mind is that old joke, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” I have counter protested pro Palestinian protesters in the streets of New York and at times they find it to their benefit to hold hands with blatant Jew haters. And then they dare to call me paranoid! This doesn’t apply to you, because I do not recall anything in your posts that resembles that idea of holding hands with Jew haters.

Fear is innately irrational because it is an emotion. When one steps away from the emotion and tries to analyze whether intellectually there is or isn’t something to fear, then one can analyze whether it is a rational fear or an irrational fear. Paranoia is a disease. If a fear has some basis in the present reality rather than in some incident that occurred in connection with another person years ago, then it is not paranoia, it is not a disease. It can be called (whatever you want to call it, but assuming you wish to use the language with some degree of precision rather than talk or write like an ignorant street rabble rouser) exaggerated fear, but it is not paranoia.

If I read the Hamas charter and take it at its word, does that make me paranoid. It may be a bad argument because the Likud charter is bad too. But this is not about arguments per se, this is about whether my fears are so irrational to be labeled diseased. If I take the Hamas charter at its word does that make me diseased? I think not. If the founders of the Muslim Brotherhood, the “mother” organization of Hamas were admirers of Hitler, this might not be argument enough to avoid negotiations, but it certainly is enough to remove fear of Hamas from the category of diseased.

I could go on in that vein, but I think the accusation of paranoia is just bull**** and should be avoided, unless you wish to use words in an imprecise and thus unhelpful manner.

To associate Palestinians with the hatred evinced by Nasrallah is a disconnect of sorts. But this would be truer if Nasrallah’s appearance were followed by some Palestinian saying, “This guy is a total shit, do not pay any attention to him. He is a man of violence and we do not wish to be associated with him, his speeches, his methods and his ideology.” But Nasrallah is not followed on t.v. by someone saying such words. (How far do you think Beirut is from Jerusalem? Closer than Philadelphia to NYC? Closer than Washington, D.C. to NYC, that’s for sure. He’s not Palestinian, but he is an Arab and a Muslim who lives near me and words in his praise are poured in this blog’s comments section and words of criticism of him have never been typed by the authors of this blog. If I am wrong, show me that Phil or Adam or any of their guests have ever spoken poorly of Nasrallah.)

The fact is that no matter what anyone could prove to me about the intents of the Palestinians the Israeli public is nowhere near to approving a one state solution. The fact is that I am not about to advocate such a solution unless I do not feel conflicted about it. Even if I were allowed to see the future, say the next 100 years, and it would indicate that a one state solution would not lead to bloodshed, I would still feel twinges of regret about advocating it, for there is the idea that the Jewish people need a country of their own and this country has been handed to this current generation of Jews and Zionists and it is the duty of this generation of Jews and Zionists to keep the faith and pass the Jewish country to the next generation. A twinge of regret that I would be willing to bulldoze over because 100 years of peace would be enough of a motivation for me to drop the duty that the previous generation has handed to the present generation. But if you think I am going to hand over the keys to Hamas to endanger my nieces and nephews based upon the premise that the suicide campaign of 2000 to 2005, killed only a quarter as many Jews as it killed Arabs, or was based on their sense of grievance which will disappear as soon as we share the land, despite their written word that the Jew has no place in this land, then you are just plain wrong.

Tony Judt's faulty thesis

The original article by Tony Judt, PBUH, in the NYRB is three quarters regrets and one quarter prescription. Regret that the current (2003) situation was so unpromising and one quarter prescription- nationalism is an anachronism, so why not adapt to the new century and go with binationalism.

The assertion that nationalism is an anachronism seems faulty to say the least. Is Yugoslavia still there? No. Why not? Nationalism. Are people killing each other in Iraq? Why? At least in part- nationalism.

Judt spent the first part of his great work “Postwar” describing how Europe feared that the postwar peace would fall apart and how various factors contributed to keeping that peace. A peace that took 45 years and a nuclear standoff to maintain. And still what keeps the peace in the former Yugoslavia? NATO forces. So it is an imperfect peace. To pretend that the rest of the world has gone through the same learning process that Europe has endured is precisely that: to pretend and not to appreciate the various realities and indeed the various chronometers that apply in various corners of the world. That is what is faulty with his thesis. It is poor scholarship to apply the lessons learned in Europe to areas where the lesson has not yet been learned or is still being learned on the bodies of the dead in Iraq, for example. Is the fragile “peace” of Lebanon, where a military victory last spring by Hezbollah has forced the forces of dissent to go kiss Assad’s ring in Damascus, a sign that the lesson of Europe has been learned all over the world? Hardly.

Judt’s assessment of the unpromising nature of the reality in 2003 was all too accurate. The suppression of his views were a sign that certain opponents of his weak thesis were not willing to debate him in public and preferred the “behind closed doors” policy that had worked for them in the past. But one should not confuse his courage and his scholarship (regarding Europe) with the thesis regarding nationalism throughout the world as an anachronism. One can hope and pray that the rest of the world (including Europe’s former Yugoslavia and the Middle East from Iraq to Lebanon to Israel and Palestine) will catch up to the lessons learned by certain of Europe’s countries in the years ‘45 to ‘90. But to assume that such lessons were learned because one wishes they were learned is in fact a thesis without proof and with most evidence present (unfortunately) in the negative column.

my knowledge of israel

I learned to read Hebrew in Winnipeg in the first grade from a Canadian born male librarian. I learned to speak Hebrew from an Israeli woman (born in Czechoslovakia) in the second grade. My third grade and fifth grade Hebrew teachers were Israelis as well.

Israeli students were added to my class in the third and fourth grade.

Before I ever went to Camp Moshava I was sent one Sunday to attend a meeting of Bnei Akiva. A map of tiny Israel was placed on the blackboard. The fact that they spoke Hebrew there did not scare me. But the fact that they only had a few hours of television every day on only one channel I found truly frightening.

In 1964 I attended Camp Moshava for the first time. Singing Hatikva was already familiar to me as was the Israeli flag. Now there were new nuances- kibbutz, a motto of Torah and labor, and the Bnei Akiva (Sons of Akiva) youth group anthem.
“A brotherly hand is extended to you,
O’ beloved youth
Around our flag all of us
Will encamp ourselves.”

I had started reading the newspaper in the aftermath of the JFK assassination. When we moved to Chicago in 66 after the fifth grade the newspaper changed from the Winnipeg Free Press to the Chicago Sun Times.

Soon after Passover of ‘67 saber rattling was heard from the Middle East. The chanting of Psalms now joined the regular prayers as a constant feature. “From the depths we cry to you, o’ Lord.”

On the first Monday in June the war broke out and by Wednesday the political cartoon in one of the papers featured the God of the Jews beating the Arabs. On Thursday the report of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty interrupted the celebration of my class. On Friday when a report of Nasser’s resignation caused joy from my classmates, I demurred. I was politically sophisticated enough to anticipate that the resignation was just a ploy.

Reading the magazines after the war I discovered the Arab refugee problem. Arab families were shown in a photo crossing the barely usable Allenby Bridge in the direction of Jordan. New refugees were being created and the older refugee problem was for the first time revealed to me.

In the eighth grade debates were one mode of teaching us English and history. My subject was school busing. Among the other topics was the war in Vietnam and the concept of trading land for peace. We got to vote after the debates. The boys class voted against trading land for peace and the girls class voted in favor.

In the ninth grade we moved again this time to Queens New York. In Social Studies class (1969) for extra credit we held a debate regarding what to do regarding the Israeli Arab conflict. My side was in favor of returning territory for peace. Although my partner emphasized the beauty of peace, I emphasized the demographic problem. If Israel held on to the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians would be 40% of the population by 1990 was the key quote from Time Magazine.

In my sophomore year for Jewish history class (1970) I wrote a report on the Palestinian refugee problem . That was when I first heard of Deir Yassin. I reported various possibilities for what caused the flight of the refugees. I came out in favor of compensation as the cure for the refugee problem, no matter what the cause.

In September of 1970 Palestinian fedayeen (guerillas, terrorists, choose one) hijacked a bunch of airplanes headed out of Israel on one day. I had relatives on the flight that avoided getting hijacked through the maneuvers of the pilot putting the jet into a deep dive in order to throw the hijackers off their feet. My great uncle Favish was interviewed on the national news, “I wasn’t feeling so well and I had just asked the stewardess for an aspirin, when all of a sudden…”

one god (mondoweiss)

Certainly the presence of crosses, statues and images of saints are one of the reasons why Christianity might be mislabeled as idol worship. But there is a valid reason. God is one, not three and to say that God is both three and one (by some mystery) strikes the pure monotheist as polytheism. God is the creator and alone. Only to him is it worthy to pray. Christianity says that something existed with God from the start and that is the Son and the only way to pray to the father is through the son. This is not monotheism.

The issue of prayer: that God only hears prayers that are channeled through Jesus is particularly galling, if not from the idol worship point of view, then from the “God only hears our prayers” point of view. I’m not sure all Jews would agree with this, but my impression was that the Jewish God had particularly good hearing and even if you prayed to your ancestors (as long as you had a broken heart) God was near to you and heard your prayers.

If God is particularly attentive to prayers at a place (Jerusalem’s temple) or at a time: (Day of Atonement and fast days are when god is particular attentive), these contain elements of impurity: that God has human traits to be attentive at particular times. In fact to attribute to God caring about humans seems to give God a human trait as well. Some Jews (Maimonides) believe that the sacrifices in the Temple were a concession to human frailty and thus were limited to a particular time period. But even Jews who believe that the Temple will be rebuilt and the sacrifices reinstituted, still it is to the one God that the prayers and the sacrifices will be dedicated and aimed.

In fact the two names given to God in the Hebrew Bible- (YHWH) pronounced Adonai (or Adoshem) , meaning Lord and elohim pronounced elokim, meaning God can be taken for the start of a nonmonotheistic strain (thread) of Judaism. Certainly there are those who see Judaism in its roots to believe in many gods, but that Adonai was the most powerful of the gods. but the Kabbala attributing the element of justice or punishment to the name of elohim and the attribute of mercy to the name Adonai, to this day complicates Judaism’s purity of monotheism.

My own attitude is that God (or the god that I wish would exist) is close to the broken of heart and hears all prayers. I accept that there is a type of intolerance present in monotheism that seems not to be present in polytheism, but because of the emphasis on God’s oneness in the key prayer of the Shma I cannot get past oneness as a key attribute of God and a true understanding of God. These days my God is very laissez- faire and a bit weak as well. I do not accept earthquakes for one as being a necessity, but rather a fact that illustrates the imperfection of God’s creation. I consider the creation of life- from insects to humans to be something that cannot be explained by science and indicates to me some creative force beyond explanation and this I call God. I pray, because I prayed when I was younger. I struggle so that my prayer does not excuse my inaction, but there can be a type of humility that prayer contains and I find the alternative of arrogance at the root of most of humanity’s problems. There are certainly pitfalls contained in belief in God, as in the arrogant believers who believe their God entitles them to oppress others. This is an abyss that may be difficult to avoid. But part of life is a struggle to attain a true assessment of reality and the existence of a god, one god, who hears prayers, (even if he does little about what he hears) is part of the reality that I live in, in my believing moments.

Jewish frontiers 2010- israel and continuity

there are two battles to be fought in this day and age for a jew: one is the battle for continuity. as an artist I'm not sure what role I will play in this. (if my art gets published, there ain't no telling where it will go.) i have participated in the families of yaffa, tova and pnina, but again what does the future hold for me and them. there is a long shot chance of producing a baby or two, but long shots are not to be discussed here.

then there is israel. tough to tell where that battle will go. the unsustainable status quo, the worrisome one state solution. the two state solution permanently out of reach?

Oliver Stone's mediocre analysis

Oliver Stone's mediocre analysis.

This blog views itself as a corrective: No need to mention Gilad Shalit when the rest of the world knows his name and ignores the Palestinian prisoners and thus also: No need to criticize Oliver Stone, when so many others criticize him.

The question that Oliver Stone was dealing with in his hard hearted statement was: why the emphasis on the murder of six million Jews when more Russians than Jews were killed. The answer that soft hearted Oliver offered was that Jews control Hollywood. The effect of his answer was to denigrate the Jewish dead and not emphasize the Russian dead.

In fact there are other better answers that reflect history and storytelling rather than the power of Hollywood's Jews.

First: history: The Nazis' cruelty towards the nations to their east: including the Poles and the Russians is well documented history, if not represented adequately in American cinema. The Nazi hierarchy consisted of Aryans on top, Slavs as slaves and Jews as vermin to be exterminated. If once lacks the historical sense to differentiate between the attitude towards the Slavs and the Jews, then one might become a filmmaker rather than a historian.

Second: storytelling: The single mindedness of Hitler and the Nazis towards the Jews is well documented and does not deprive those killed by the Nazis in the course of their conquest of their attention because of special treatment by historians or fiction writers, it is because war as destruction (kill every human in our path) has one storytelling value (meaning value as a story device) and killing as selection: find the Jew and kill him has a greater storytelling value. A tank rolling through a town and crushing everything in its path is different than a knock on the door and a request for "Any Jews here for us to kill?" True both people end up dead and killing is killing and a person is a person, but fictionally there is a different weight to the intentional gathering of the Jew rather than the indiscriminate destruction of a killing machine.

There are many more films about the deaths of the Jews in concentration and extermination camps than there are films about the deaths of Jews to einsatzgruppen, shooting squads. This disproportion does not reflect the fact that the Jews in Hollywood have a special attachment to those killed in camps rather than those killed by shooting squads. Again it is the narrative value of the process involved in the death camps rather than the lack of narrative of the process involved in the killing squads. The Holocaust, particularly the knock on the door, "Are there any Jews here?", the train ride, the selection, the camp with its workers next to the chimney expelling the ashes of millions has a storytelling quality that the killing of the death squads and the deaths of the Russians does not possess.

But it is much easier to blame it on the power of the Jews in Hollywood than to attempt to dissect either the history or the intrinsic story values of the history.

Arab vs Jewish populations/ Uri Avnery

IN a recent column these were Uri Avnery's statistics: 5.6 million Jews and 3.9 million Palestinians. This includes Gaza, Israel, east jerusalem and the west bank.

(m64) The fall

a little girl is told a tale by a man in a hospital. the little girl is russian (7 or 8 years old( and the man is an american stuntman who seems to be paralyzed below the waist by a fall during his work). the man uses the little girl to get him pills so he can kill himself. the story he tells her is about a variety of men or semi/men who have to return from an exile to take over the kingdom and avenge deaths and recover lost loves. it is extremely beautiful (the story part of the film) designed by someone with a great eye for dance, movement, colors and shapes, but without a very firm sense of narrative. (since the story is being told extemporaneously by a man in a hospital in order to endear himself to a little girl, this makes sense in terms of the situation, but hurts when we are not enticed by the story itself and only by its colors and contrasts.)

B/B-

response to kylebisme in mondoweiss

kylebisme asserted in a post by mark braverman regarding Presbyterian engagement on I/P creates new rules for relationship with the Jewish community.

that there had never been a mainstream Jewish majority support for Zionism until after WWII and this was because the Nazis had let the Zionists live and killed the antiZionists. I took offense.

kyklebisme- Germany had the highest survival rate for Jews of any country that the Nazis occupied, annexed or ruled. That was because from 1933 Germany made clear to the Jews that they weren’t welcome. Those who could afford it, left. Most of them went elsewhere besides Palestine. It may be true that those who ended up in Palestine survived and those who escaped to the Netherlands (for example) ended up dead, but that was not because of the Nazis preferential treatment of Zionists.
In any case, Germany was never the great home of Zionism. Eastern Europe (particularly those lands ruled by the Czars from 1790 until 1917) was the great home of Zionism. And in Eastern Europe the Nazis didn’t differentiate between Zionists and nonZionists or antiZionists. They killed them all, or at least all they could get their hands on.
Post WWII Jewish mainstream support for Zionism did not have to do with the Nazi selections. It had to do with the fact that the universalism that was at the core of the Jewish secular belief system previous to WWII was shattered by the Nazis, their collaborators and the world’s apathetic onlookers. Maybe that shattering was a mistake. (Maybe in fact the world could be trusted to take care of its Jews? No. That assumption is fallacious. The world cannot be counted on to protect anyone. Rwanda’s Tutsi’s found that out 17 years ago.) But that may be beside the point. Maybe despite the fact that the world looks away when it is convenient, universalism is still the best philosophy around. It might be shitty from time to time, but it may be better than nationalism when we get down to cases. But in the aftermath of Auschwitz few Jews were in that state of mind. Their state of mind was: we have to worry about ourselves. The world doesn’t give a shit. That was what was different after WWII, not the population of Zionist Jews based upon the Nazis selections. (Read Isaac Deutscher, who obviously felt that this abandonment of universalism was regrettable and hoped that the Jews would recover.)
(I find your theory regarding the post WWII mainstream Jewish pro Zionist opinion to be ignorant and offensive.)

tisha b'av

i ate this year on tisha b'av, but i went to the kotel to witness and walked back the hour plus walk. (I intend to be in america next tisha b'av, so might as well take a look this year.) I saw micha who kicked me out as a friend and also steve, who is a potential future friend. (I have dismissed the idea of calling the woman i met at micha's almost two years ago, this is a change, not necessarily a positive one, but a change.)

the kotel was not inspiring after midnight although the jaffa gate with streams of people was inspiring.

tisha b'av is another black hole in the calendar to go along with yom hashoah. yom kippur is worse than a black hole, because i find that not fasting is worse than fasting and fasting leaves a 24 to 48 hour post fast impact. and it is not yet 24 hours post tisha b'av and i'm feeling better, although not 100%.

I engaged in intermarriage arguments on mondoweiss yesterday and mooser treated me like dirt again. it certainly raises the advisability of participating there. shmuel has been absent for a while. maybe he's on vacation. phil weiss is not a positive voice on jewish identity, by any stretch of the imagination.

i saw a movie "girl with the dragon tattoo" and it was decent and stuck in my mind. i need to return "tokyo story" it was decent and did not stick in my mind. I chatted via gmail with danny yesterday. he mentioned that joya had been at jew camp. she is destined to marry a goy, unless she goes to brandeis.

intermarriage (mondoweiss)

As an individual it seems quite probable that intermarriage is natural for Jews living in an open society. Between the fact of the wider availability of nonJewish mates and scientific data pointing to the attraction to those with somewhat similar genes (the scientific equivalent of Mooser’s “I don’t want to marry my sister!”: The sweaty undershirt test reveals the preferences of women when given sweaty undershirts to rate their attractiveness: A 2002 study found women prefer the scent of men with genes somewhat similar to their own over the scent of nearly genetically identical or totally dissimilar men.) it seems safe to say that intermarriage is natural. To stop, prohibit or sanction those who intermarry is to squelch their individuality or their natural inclinations.

Intermarriage may be preferable to the wider American society- blurring lines of ethnic separatism might create a more perfect union. (I doubt that if we are taking the world as one community that the intermarriage of Jews who make up such a small percentage of the world would make much of a difference.)

Intermarriage is decidedly against the interests of Jewish society. It is not in the interest of Jewish society to limit the number of Jews being born or to increase the odds that those Jews who will be born will have a Christmas tree in their house or be confused about whether they are Jewish or not. It is conceivable under certain circumstances that bringing new genes into the Jewish tribe would be a positive, but given the present inability of Jewish society to educate even those who marry in, Jewish society is in no shape to compete against the predominant society and to expect positive things to happen to Jewish society from this development seems ridiculous.

To prefer the natural tendencies of the individual over the needs of the Jewish community/tribe/people/civilization is an acceptable reaction, especially given the importance our society gives to individualism and we as individuals value our individualism. To prefer that which is better for America over that which is better for Jewish society is an acceptable choice for someone who values their American identity over their Jewish identity. To pretend that there is no clash of values here and there is nothing to be lost by Jewish society seems dishonest to me.

(As for those who wish to see the Jews disappear, that there should be fewer people who look Jewish and so Jewish nepotism will be weakened, I think it is clear that this is an anti Jewish attitude. If this can be explained some other way, please enlighten me.)

In the argument regarding the future of Israel, the Jews of the Diaspora who wish to make their arguments heard by the people of Israel, those words might be better heard by those who value Jewish society. (See Yair Sheleg’s column on Tisha B’av in today’s Haaretz.) By not valuing Jewish society your comments regarding the future of Israel will be seen by Israelis as coming from a stranger with totally unJewish or anti Jewish values rather than from a friend.

(M63) man of the west

gary cooper near the end of his career and lee j. cobb (with a special dustin hoffman like performance by arthur o'connell). gary cooper is a baal teshuva, who once was an outlaw. he travels by train (bound for fort worth, where he never arrives) to hire a school teacher for his little town (which he refers to by two names; one of which is good hope). he is carrying money for a year's wages for a teacher and while on the train he says this in too loud a voice. a train robbery is attempted and foiled, but cooper, julie london (a former schoolteacher and a present tense barroom singer) and o'connell have fallen off the train. they need shelter to survive the cold night and cooper leads them to the home of his former gang, led by lee j. cobb, with a prominent member- jack lord. he had left lee j. cobb in the lurch many years ago and he was lee's finest pupil and lee felt betrayed. jack lord forces julie london to do a striptease, despite gary's assertion that julie is his "girl". this creates friction and jack lord and o'connell end up dead in the ensuing fracas. they are supposed to rob a bank in lassoo and lee sends gary and one other up ahead. in fact lassoo is a ghost town (cooper to lee in climax scene: "it's a ghost town and you're a ghost. your day is over.") gary kills the guy who accompanies him and two others who are sent after him. he returns and finds that julie london has been impurified. he kills lee j. cobb and rides off with julie london. (julie knows that gary's married and they have no future, but she has at least tasted love and she wouldn't change anything for the world.)

B- the story, good but not great. cooper a bit too old for the role. always great to see lee j. cobb, even in heavy makeup.

Visit the Gush

Amital died last Thursday and Friday he was buried in the rocks. I am beginning to try to think of it as the death of the high priest, cohen gadol, which frees the accidental killers from the cities of refuge. Today, arranged weeks ago, I met dov for lunch in the Gush. The place looks quite different from/than 20 years ago, let alone 36 years ago. 36 years doubled leaves us on the eve of World War II, so we see how long ago that is.

On the way there passing through the settlements of Neve Daniel and Elazar I appreciated the land conquering impulse and came up with the following analogy: conquering the land is id, putting the brakes on is superego. we need id to live, although we need brakes to define the limits. Decent analogy.

Dov sparked thought and I stole a lunch and didn't say hello to Wolf the friend of Kenny's and didn't stay to hear Rav Amital eulogized. "All those years ago" by George Harrison and "diamonds and rust" by Joan baez. "you tell me you're not nostalgic, you who are so good with words and in keeping things vague. well, i need some of that vagueness now I see it too clearly, I love you dearly and if you're offering me diamonds and rust, I've already paid."

Mondoweiss comment:

Off the topic of taxes, but on the topic of settlements and occupied territory.
I’ve been living in Jerusalem for about 3 and a half years now. Certainly from an American point of view I visit occupied territory often. I visited Sheikh Jarrah twice for purposes of demonstrating/observing a demonstration. I walk through the neighborhood adjacent to Sheikh Jarrah once in a while, because it is a more interesting route from my parents’ to where I live. I go to a doctor in Gilo. I visit the Old City once in a while, for it is the most interesting part of Jerusalem. But Jerusalem aside and one visit to a cousin for a Sabbath stay, my sole sojourn into occupied territory has been to visit my sister (in pre 67 Israel) near the city of Beit Shean, where the shortest distant between two points is not quite a straight line, but includes a sojourn through the Jordan Valley which is occupied territory.
Today I went to visit my alma mater, Yeshivat Har Etzion, located in Gush Etzion, specifically Alon Shvut. The route is different than it was 20 years ago when I last visited. At that time one passed through Bet Lehem and the Dheishe refugee camp to get to the Gush. Since then they have dug a tunnel and shortened the ride considerably. When the bus passed through the settlements of Neve Daniel and Elazar I was attracted to the rural atmosphere and wondered how to reconcile my attraction to these settlements and my opposition to the settlement movement.
I proposed the following analogy. The urge to settle is an urge of the id. (Those who reject the Jewish attraction to the Land, will not agree.) Just like the id is necessary to keep the species alive and interesting, so the id is essential. (Without a love for the land, Zionism is bloodless, merely a refuge, which could have taken place in Madagascar except for circumstances.) But man does not live on id alone. There is also the superego that needs to put the brakes on the id. To tell the id that there is more than id in the world, there are others in the world- laws and other humans to consider. But superego does not make the world go round. It is not the lifeblood. It is the brakes. Superego alone is lifeless, bloodless. For Israel to function it needs to have both superego and id in consideration and negotiate with the world through the ego.

Arab israelis. comment to donald on mondoweiss

Most American supporters of Israel realize that even if a two state solution is reached, there will still be a problem regarding the large Arab/Palestinian minority, the foremost problem of which is the potential for them to achieve majority status through large families. As such many Jews would wish for those Arabs to move out. How many of those who wish for such an outcome would express this in terms of policy or in terms of considering it a realistic political expectation, I don’t think it’s really that many. (In fact the two state solution, which in 1995 seemed just around the corner, is considered by most to be an unrealistic expectation, so much more so an agreement that would entail forcing the Palestinians living in Israel to consider their citizenship forfeit.) Unlike the right wing Jews in Israel, many of whom labor under illusions regarding the realities of the situation and prospects for the future, I think most right wing American Jews harbor fewer illusions regarding what is and is not achievable in terms of US foreign policy specifically.

I find my discussing these issues to be a bit strange: reflecting my understanding of pro Israel stances that include elements that I disagree with, rather than vociferously advocating my own position and considering anything to the right of me to be ridiculous, fascistic, unacceptable (choose one). My own position fluctuates reflecting sometimes my wishes and other times the reality. Take Obama. If Obama succeeds in getting Israel and the Palestinians to sign an agreement (a peace agreement certainly and an agreement on eventual borders would also be a plus in my opinion) I think it would be great. But one has to consider the odds slim. If no peace is signed, then in all probability Obama will have eroded Israel’s position in the Democratic party specifically (and maybe in the American public’s mind generally). (Certainly one could blame this more on Israel than on Obama, but I think for example a President Biden would not have eroded Israel’s position in the Democratic party to the degree that Obama will have done so if he serves his full 8 years without achieving any progress on the Palestinian Israeli front.)

Regarding my own position regarding Arab Israelis. (I use this term, because that is the term I use to think of them and so that is the term I use to describe my own thoughts about them.) They’re not going to move away from Israel. Would I like them to? Maybe. It would simplify certain matters. But I don’t expect them to and so underneath a web name like wondering jew I’m willing to reveal that it would simplify life, but my wishes are hardly relevant to the reality.

I live in Jerusalem and there are Jews who dream of a day when all the Arabs will move out of Jerusalem. Personally I don’t. I consider the Old City to be the “coolest” part of Jerusalem and the Old City would look mighty strange without any Arabs.

As I wrote in another comment a little further down on this post I consider the Arab Israelis in tune enough with the existence of a Knesset and general issues like free speech that I do not consider the growing Arab population inside Israel to be a mortal danger. I think discrimination by Israel (regarding education specifically) of the Arab sector is stupid. The more educated they are, the more the economy of Israel as a whole would hum, the more they would be in tune with democracy and the ship of state would run smoother. The worse the education, the worse the economy of Israel as a whole, the worse the economy of the Arab villages in particular, the greater the attraction of Islam, the larger the families would be and the greater the danger.

I realize that there are elements of patronizing that are involved in my discourse and if I were talking in person to a Palestinian I would try to figure out how to say the same thing in a more polite manner. Although most of the participants in the comments section don’t deserve honesty (don’t deserve much at all), in general I think you do, and so I have tried to be honest. Two elements that are necessary in a discussion on the I/P issue are curiosity about the other side (compassion would be best, but curiosity is the minimum requirement) and honesty.

circumstances, history and chemicals

my cousin's recent suicide attempt and this morning's good mood lead me to this discussion of the causes of depression:

there are three causes to depression: circumstances: unemployment, loneliness and a difficult dilemma which can lead to depression.

then there is history: low self esteem created by circumstance and anger at people that gets misdirected inward.

then there are chemicals: staying up late can produce chemicals that make one feel better. in that case the chemicals either override the other causes or put the causes in a different perspective.

i have woken up from too much sleep and thus the drugs in my brain that after a long sleeplessness make me feel better are lacking and in their place is just blah and circumstances and history.

t.v. the shield

interesting series. minor points: cc pounder excellent actress. participation of glenn close and forest wittaker major actors in a t.v. series. the forest wittaker role in fact was a major role in the plot development of the series. the character of dutch similar to the character of bayliss on homicide- college boy in the precinct, except dutch played more for laughs, but both of them "need" to discover their dark sides. (also one cop cuts off his beard to make room for another cop with a beard.)

vic mackey a bad cop- his badness is defined in the first season- he kills another cop who has been sent to spy on him. the fact that he is in bed with the druggies is half and half, but killing another cop crosses the line. the second outstanding evil act is the robbing of the armenian money train. the second in command is dixie boy, shane. they are a one two act. forest whittaker arrests lem is the key act. and shane killing lem because they don't trust him is the next act and finding out that shane killed lem is the completion of that plot development.

the final act portrays vic even worse than he is and shane even crazier than he is. once shane flees he should leave town, but doesn't so that the l.a. cops can be in on the capture, otherwise it makes no sense. the tableau of shane suicide and his wife and son poisoned is incurably sad. for vic to turn on his last partner really makes no sense. that his judgment would be so bad as to think that his wife was really in danger of being arrested made no sense. they just wanted to paint him as "crime doesn't pay" deserving whatever shit he gets.

after (simultaneous) we learn to empathize with tony soprano i suppose empathizing with vic mackey who is definitely a more sympathetic character is no stretch.

(m62) night porter

two of the same actors: rampling and dirk bogarde who were in the damned. the year is 1957, somewhere in germany. dirk bogarde is the night porter at a hotel, when charlotte rampling shows up. they had a "relationship" many years earlier in some concentration camp, where rampling was a jew and bogarde was SS. the relationship obviously was not of equals since rampling was but a girl and all the power was in bogarde's hands, but nonetheless it was quite intense. bogarde uses the hotel to host various fellow members of the SS. They have a ritual, where they produce witnesses to their crimes and then confess and then those who have control over documents burn them. bogarde has never submitted to this process and doesn't want to. (he kills some italian who would have been a witness against him rather than involve him in this process and this is unclear, but goes against the rules.) rampling is supposed to be a witness against him in this process, but bogarde wants to rekindle the relationship. rampling who is accompanying her musician husband (from america) stays in the hotel and although she seems coerced, in fact invites the continuation of the relationship. she moves in with bogarde and they continue. bogarde turns the apartment into a prison for the two of them. he is shot at by the SS men who want him to submit or to hand over Rampling, but he prefers to live as a prisoner with her. Eventually they leave the apartment together and are both shot, which is a culmination of their relationship and something that they both desire.

int'l women's peace service

the area that is palestine is not clearly defined as the oslo accords have now been declared null and void

tv history

august 49- 2 million sets; 720,000 in nyc
april 50- 5.3 million sets
oct 50- 8 million sets
june 51- 13 million sets
1953- 25.2 million homes have sets (half U.S. homes)

(I/P 2) blockade

What is sensible for Israel to blockade from Gaza, what is not sensible? What is legal for Israel to blockade what was against the law? I'm not ready to invest the time to study these issues.

(I/P 1) Weiss tone deaf on Pew poll

Mondoweiss. I think I wish to avoid commenting and thus my comments go here:
Weiss comments on the poll that shows that 39% approve of Obama's Middle East policy and 41% disapprove, and he feels that this is consonant with the Arab world's disapproval of the US policy on I/P, but in fact it is more likely that the disapproval reflects Obama's anti Israel position whereas the Arab world rejects Obama's pro Israel position. Weiss is tone deaf as usual.

(M61) The damned

Nazis. A family gathers to celebrate its elder's 70th birthday on the night of the Reichstag fire. There is Dirk Bogarde, the employee who has climbed to run the factory and now loves the elder's daughter. She has a son, Martin, who is bi and weird. There is one brother who belongs to the SA. There is one brother who is an enemy of Hitler. There is a cousin who belongs to the SS. The news of the Reichstag fire disturbs the celebration. The enemy of Hitler flees, but he leaves the gun, which Dirk Bogarde uses to kill the elder and frame that son. The member of the SA assumes that he will become the president of the company (the elder before death had appointed him as vice president), but Martin (who owns a lot of stock) under the influence of his mother appoints Dirk. Martin is overly friendly with a seven year old girl who lives next door to him and when the child (a Jew) has a fever she commits suicide. The suicide is used as blackmail by the member of the SA to force Martin to call a board meeting at which time the SA member will be made the new president. But before that happens comes the night of the long knives and the SS cousin takes Dirk Bogarde with to the massacre of the brownshirts and Dirk kills the SA brother. The SS cousin no longer needs Dirk and instead he puts his money on Martin, on whom he has the tapes of the confession of the malfeasance with the girl next door. And now Martin wants to become the leader of the company. The enemy of Hitler brother returns to turn himself in, because the Nazis are holding his daughters hostage. His wife has been killed trying to leave the country, but the girls are still alive and only when he turns himself in does the regime release his daughters. Dirk Bogarde and his wife are held prisoners in their castle and Martin wants his revenge against his mother. He sleeps with her. She is a drug addict. There is a Nazi wedding- are you Aryans? Do you have any diseases? Sign the register. Then wife and hubby go off to a side room and Martin leaves poison for them and they kill themselves and Martin is left alive and in charge, actually the SS cousin is in charge.

For 150 minutes it moved well. Interesting. B plus. (The cover picture indicates that it is about some kind of S and M Nazi topic but that is hardly the fact, Martin is a deviant, but his deviancy is a plot device rather than the focus of the movie.)

mondoweiss (affinity for other jews, coen brothers)

Phil- You are way off base. As if you can convince those Jews who feel an affinity for other Jews and thus for the Jewish state, based upon Shlomo Sands’ book. Those Jews like yourself who wish to assimilate and disappear are doing so whether or not there is a genetic or cultural basis to the concept of the Jewish people. Those Jews who feel the affinity will continue to do so no matter what Shlomo Sands wrote in his book. The process of undoing Jewish affinity for other Jews (and thus for the Jewish state) has been accomplished by the pull of Western society and the push of the discomfort of sitting in synagogue, seeing Hasidic Jews on the street or reading about Israel in the Times. As in “A Serious Man” by the brothers Coen, the Hebrew teachers who teach the validity of the Jewish affinity are undone by the sounds of Grace Slick on the radio. If the Brothers Coen still feel such an affinity forty years later despite their marrying out and integration into American society, then maybe there is something deeper to the affinity after all. But in any case it won’t be a book by Shlomo Sands that undoes the affinity and the idea that it will is truly silly.

mondoweiss (why not solidarity with Jews?)

Phil- It seems to me that you are in fact talking to those Jews who already agree with you (mostly in the Diaspora) and you exhibit few signs of attempting to communicate with those who disagree with you.

Firstly, the word “psychosis”. Maybe after three years in individual therapy, a professional might offer the word gently to his patient with whom he has developed an intense relationship and find some purpose in using the word. (Even then I doubt it.) Otherwise the word only serves the purpose of gaining the approval of those who agree with you and alienating those who disagree with you.

Secondly on the validity of the use of the word: It is difficult to tell where irrational fear based on previous experience begins and rational fear based on the current situation begins. (I don’t think a professional would use the term psychosis for a fear based on previous “recent” experience, but you’re a journalist/blogger and not a mental care professional.) The current situation does contain a rational fear that the Jews will be kicked out of I/P. If Helen Thomas’s statement proves anything besides the unfair limits placed on free speech on people in important places, it proves that the Jews who live in I/P should fear being kicked out of I/P. The constant evocation of the possibility or the inevitability or the innate justice of a one state solution on this blog means that such a solution is not an irrational fear. And a journalist such as Robert Fisk has stated that he does not think it unreasonable to expect that there would be no room for Jews in such a one state. So if this is a reasonable fear, however much previous experience in Europe is irrelevant to this fear (and the copy of Mein Kampf displayed in Amman and photographed by yourself shows that there is some “connection” if not causal, then certainly ideational), to label the reasonable fear as psychosis is misplaced.

But the other question besides your terminology is your place in Jewish society. You feel that Zionism has distilled Jews- with ethnocentric Jews landing in Israel or supporting a Jewish state (two states and no right of return) and others like yourself landing in the aggregate of intermarriage and integration. It is unclear how those who have intermarried and integrated can communicate with those who have chosen marrying-in and ethnic identity. Are you saying, “We both read Kafka, therefore we do have something in common, so you should listen to me.” Are you saying, “I use a Yiddish phrase every now and then, so you should listen to me.” You are saying, “We both respect Schwerner and Goodman, so you should listen to me.” But it seems to me that if you take the need for talking Israeli Jews away from the precipice, it will have to be someone other than yourself who does so, or else you will have to develop a common language and avoid alienating terminology if that is really what you are trying to do. Just saying, “Please listen to me,” will not work.

poorly timed dreams

Are you really satisfied with Mayday?
Are your dreams enough to keep you high?
Can you steal the books at midnight and teach yourself to rhyme?
Can you dress Anne Frank in flesh and give Ibsen a good time?
Can your ever missing dorm room supply the device you need?
Will the 32 year old female supply the love I need?
The chewiest Tootsie roll
the choosiest groom
the well stocked library
the ever elusive room.
the place where I sleep
never safe from an attack
the homeless who might hurt me
usually they're black
the false refuge I can't conjure,
but still I can't get back.
Are you really satisfied with may day?

(M60) five minutes of heaven

a protestant irish uvf teenager fighter kills a catholic and leaves his younger brother alive. (mother of younger brother: you killed your brother by not stopping the killing.) when he grows up he becomes liam neeson and he sets up programs of reconciliation. a t.v. station arranges a meeting of them on camera, but the grown up younger brother has very mixed feelings and brings a knife with and wishes to kill liam, but at the last second calls off the meeting. liam needs the meeting to get on with his life, so he visits belfast and sends a note, lets meet at the house where the killing took place. they meet and younger brother takes out a knife and they wrestle and fall out a window, injured but not dead. liam tells him. live for your daughters, forget about me. younger brother goes to a therapy group and realizes he wants to live for his daughters. he calls up liam: it's over. liam falls to his knees and cries.

Solid B

(B1) Brooklyn Follies

Paul Auster. the main character is someone in remission from cancer living in brooklyn. his nephew tom works for a book store manager, who spent time in prison for an art scam. the narrator's great niece shows up and unable to figure out what to do with her, they decide to ship her to a cousin in vermont. the kid is smart enough to pour coke into the engine to stall out the car. they stay for a few nights in an inn in vermont where tom falls in love with a pushy fat teacher. they return to brooklyn, where the book store manager was working on another scam this time having to do with old books and when he finds out that the scam was on him he drops dead, but he leaves his bookstore to tom and to rufus, a black transvestite who heads back to jamaica after the funeral. the kid, lucy's mother, is found and saved by the narrator from her religious fanatic husband. their preacher is into days of silence and when lucy's mom told lucy, "just tell them I'm okay" lucy takes it literally that she can't tell them anything else and that's why it's so difficult to find the mother.

state of grace (M60)

long lost sean penn shows up again in the old nabe to his old friend gary oldman. gary introduces him to his brother ed harris and he is in the mafiosi type irish gang. also reintroduced to gary's sister who has tried to get away from the family and its business. sean is in love with her and against her better instincts she's in love with him. the italians tell ed harris that john riley, gary's best friend, has to be killed (an $8,000 debt plus disrespect). ed kills john. gary goes nuts. sean confesses that he's a cop to gary's sister. gary shoots some italians (whom he holds responsible for john's death) and the italians want him dead. there is a sit down- the italian and ed harris. gary and gang are supposed to come in shooting, but sean confuses gary regarding the instructions and the shooting doesn't happen. the italian tells ed to kill his brother. he does. sean tells ed that he's a cop. there's a shootout- ed gets killed and sean is injured.

B

(M59) Memphis Belle

A bomber goes out on its last mission over Germany. Cast includes one guy from Homicide, Stoltz, matthew modine and harry connick junior and the guy who played Rudy on the plane. on the ground is david straithairn and john lithgow the guy from life magazine who wants to make them famous for completing 25 missions and coming back home. it is a dangerous mission and because of smoke over the objective they have to circle around and come back and bomb it (never revealed how successful the bombing mission over bremen in fact was) and there is an injury to stoltz (they almost parachute him out of the plane where the germans might help him, but instead the med student does his best) and near misses (the turret bubble underneath is blown out and Rudy hangs on for dear life). they lose two engines and have trouble bringing the wheel down for landing, but they finally land.

B minus.

(M58) casualties of war

michael j. fox is a rookie soldier in vietnam. a black vet gets shot and killed. the platoon is supposed to get R and R but they are stuck on base. They are led by Sean Penn who decides (combination of black's death and the R and R deprivation) to kidnap a girl and take her with on their next foray. they do so and they rape the girl. then they kill her. fox refuses to participate. when fox rats them out his commanding officers say just let it be. but he tells a chaplain and the guilty are judged and sentenced to time. with riley and leguizamo.

B minus

(M57) Nikita (aka la Femme Nikita)

nikita (aka marie aka josephine) begins as a thief who kills cops. she is sentenced to (30 years/ death?) but the secret service thinks it can use her, so she is allowed to live. she is a wild child, but her mentor bob has faith in her and he teaches her to be human (also female), but also to be an agent. He takes her out to dinner and gives her a gift. a gun. kill those people at that table, there's a window in the bathroom. she is upset at the betrayal, assuming the dinner is a real treat and not a test. and then she kills the people, finds out that the window has been boarded over, but still she manages to escape. she is released onto the world and falls in love with a check out clerk. she and fiancee invite bob over and bob gives them tickets to venice, where she is given a job, which arouses suspicions of her fiancee. she then is given a job to get some documents from an ambassador, but when the job goes bad, the violence drives her "nuts" and she has to escape. she leaves her fiancee and bob.

Solid B, maybe B plus.

(M56) the little mermaid

ariel the 16 year old daughter of the king of the ocean has two characteristics- a fascination with all things human and a great voice. she goes above sea level to watch a celebration on a boat and she catches sight of a handsome prince and falls in love. when a storm causes the ship to crash, she saves the prince. there is no way to gain the prince's love except by selling her soul (her voice) to the demoness of the deep. if she cannot get the prince to kiss her within three days she will forfeit her real soul forever. despite being deprived of her greatest asset the prince is almost in love with her, but the demoness changes her appearance and uses ariel's voice to enchant the prince. the wedding is interrupted just in time by ariel's allies the birds, but the sun sets without the kiss and ariel is about to be turned into a soulless monster and in her stead the king of the ocean, triton, gives his soul to the demoness. the prince in an epic battle with the demoness kills her and thus frees all the captured souls and the king returned to his former greatness sees his daughter's great love for the prince and he turns her into a human and though this deprives ariel of contact with her father and sisters it means a happy life with the prince.

B minus

(M55) the reflecting skin

a 9 year old boy who gets his kicks from exploding frogs in lady's faces, comes from a home with a desperate mom (who punishes him by forcing him to drink water til he will "burst" or pees himself) and a fantasizing pa. He tortures the widow next door. when pa is accused of killing a kid (the deputy dangle's pa's homosexual tendencies as a threat over his head) pa commits suicide by gasoline and match. Older brother comes back from war and befriends the widow. A black car kidnaps boy's friend and friend ends up dead. The black car picks up the widow and she ends up dead.

B-/C weird and tedious, but interesting.

(M54) performance

the james bond sixties meet the mick jagger sixties. a mafia enforcer in england goes a step too far and must hide out and he does so in mick jagger's basement where he "learns" to be a different kind of man.

C

(M53) max

young hitler has so much potential but uses it for politics and not for art.

C minus.

(m51 and m52) swimming with sharks and indian jones and the last crusade

both mediocre flicks. kevin spacey has to show almost no range of emotions, except for 30 seconds of mourning and the plot was mediocre and the message was mediocre. C minus.
i liked both other indiana jones movies better. raiders is an important movie. important is going too far, but nonetheless a very good movie. and the second one i liked as well. the fourth one was also just so-so. i give this a C minus.

(m50) cache

excellent french film by the maker of white ribbon. a sophisticated frenchman age 42 married to juliet binoche with a 13 year old son, a star of pbs intellectual show receives "hate mail". it is not hate mail exactly- it is a videotape of the front of his house, to show that he is being watched accompanied by a drawing of a child coughing up blood. the police do not respond. the tapes continue to arrive, ultimately including a tape showing a building and a door to an apartment in a building. the frenchman goes to the building and finds the man he expects to find. when frenchy was young and living on a farm, his parents had two loyal algerian workers who apparently died in a police riot and they were ready to adopt their son. but frenchy didn't like it and he lied about the little algerian saying that he was coughing up blood. he also told the kid to kill a rooster and told his parents that algerian was destructive and wanted to kill frenchy. so the thoughts of adoption went out the window and in its stead they sent algeria to an orphanage. and this is the man who was taping his house and sending him the drawings. frenchy lies to his wife and says that algeria wasn't home when he went there but algeria sends a tape of the confrontation (including frenchy threatening, don't continue or else) to frenchy's wife. frenchy's 13 year old son doesn't come home one night and algeria and algeria's son are arrested, but in fact frenchy's son was at a friend's house. algeria sends a tape to frenchy's workplace and is threatening frenchy's livelihood and then algeria calls up and says "come on over" and frenchy comes over and algeria implies that it is the son who sent the tapes and then with frenchy watching he says, "i wanted you to see this" and he slits his own throat." frenchy wanders around dazed, eventually returns home and his wife says tell the police. (unseen: he tells the police and they believe him.) algeria's son shows up at frenchy's work and confronts him and says you ruined my father's life. frenchy says, you made the tapes; algeria could never have done it. algeria's son denies it, believe what you want. the confrontation ends and algeria's son is satisfied with the confrontation and the movie ends with a flashback of algeria being sent away to the orphanage and then a shot of a school dismissal. (school is out- the lesson is over. but the past is prologue.) A minus.

(m48 and m49) anne of thousand days and bridge

anne of the thousand days was based on a play written by maxwell anderson, imitating shakespeare and quite good with richard burton at the top of his form. genevieve bujold is not much of an actress and this obviously weakens it. but i now have some idea of the first two wives of henry the 8th and the things that drove him to establish the church of england- a desire for a woman and a desire for a son is what this movie says.
bridge at remarge was mediocre and i watched it with one eye. inspired by a true story and the bridge over the river kwai. george segal and ben gazarra are fun to watch, but it was not much of a movie. B for anne and C- for bridge.

breaking bad

i really got into breaking bad after seeing it on a top ten list last december. but recently it has really gone downhill. all the tension has been dissipated. the people sent to kill walter and injured hank have been killed. the threat of revelation from jesse has been assuaged and even if the marriage between walter and his wife is not heavenly, there is no real threat involved. so the last two episodes have been tension free and weak. i will not break this habit (prediction rather than vow) but i am let down by the current lack of tension and therefore interesting episodes.

hymie, wife and kids and the death penalty

hymie showed up on the telephone a few days ago and after a lull of a couple days a call came from chatzkal this morning. (after an earlier call from a telemarketer to whom i gave aviva's teudat zehut number, but they needed gil's number. they are ruthless.) he said the time is set for six and told me to call gassel. i called gassel, who answers the phone "aryeh" and i say lorin. and he was busy but i told him the info pretty quick and such it went. got very little sleep, but awoke early enough (discovered an inefficient closing of my inner door! upon my return home) and went to the library and switched my books, one by paul auster and one by judy blume. (never got to read her kids' books, so a chick book will have to do) and then called mich (dust storm today) and resnick (close the windows). then walked and was there way early for hymie but right on time for rocky and son. (reminiscing: yakov turner. "is this the gartel?!) finally hymie and family arrived. (i was by the window and saw him come into the wrong house next door) and he looked older, but the same. hung out on the mirpeset and it took me a bit to recall that his kids were adopted (his wife had been very sick at some point.) it turns out that he testifies in capital death punishment cases quite often and i just got a boost thinking in that direction because of that good comic actor on lost (not as perfect as chris farley, but still better than seymour philip hoffman for the role) and i told hymie the idea and he repeated the title "fat man walking" to me and told me the story of tiny who didn't fit in the electric chair. the right wingism of chatzkal and the others was a drag. gassel showed up just as rocky was leaving and his business goes from crisis to crisis but he's very glad to be here because his kids are staying jewish and rafi is engaged to be married after his art student wife gets her final project finished and checked off. being near hymie reminded me of his playing pool polo when he spoke of his pool in florida and there was a big israeli whose hand hymie's disappeared in and rocky reminded me that hymie was always late for class in eighth grade. the orange peel and the whereabouts of itri in beit safafa. arno rotbart was mentioned. many skokie guys who i never knew were mentioned. midrash with rocky was mentioned at the start but not when rocky left. gassel said he'd invite me for shabbos. i got hymie's e mail address written on invite to clara's graduation. his wife's name is esther and she comes from boro park so some memories of brooklyn were stirred. one kid was outside playing most of the time and the other one knew about the fat guy with the long hair. i was at a real low point in 80 when i last saw hymie, so those memories were stirred as well. resnick wasn't home for a post chatzkal get together. walked via the valley of the ghosts. got a nice nap soon after getting home.

(m46 and m47)kick ass and pusher

kick ass was a middling movie that referenced tarantino. pusher was a good movie about a pusher who owes money and is in real trouble with some very bad people. kick ass was a C. pusher was a B.

(m 44 and m 45) Guadalcanal Diary and the Bridge

One propaganda film shot in 43 and one German anti war film shot in 59. Guadalcanal is interesting to see Anthony Quinn and Richard Conte and Jaeckel as a kid and William Bendix and Lloyd Nolan. but other than that it revealed very little. The German film was quite good until the final scene. 16 year olds drafted from their adolescent lives in Germany right before the end of the war and thrust into the army. A kind commanding officer tries to keep them away from the front and assigns them to guard a bridge in their town. But when the captain assigned to them gets shot as a deserter because the idea of guarding the bridge is ridiculous to those who have been assigned the job of destroying it, the kids are left on their own and in fact they do go to battle against an american tank column that comes to attack. the battle is just another battle, and the kids are not discernible one from the other at least to me once the shooting starts and so the battle was a bit overheated and seemed like it didn't belong with the film which was semi comical until that point. absurdist or whatever. but until the battle it was quite a good movie. B or B plus for the Bridge and C or C minus for Guadalcanal.

juan cole on ahmadinejad the holocaust denier

sept 19, 2009

http://www.juancole.com/2009/09/ahmadinejad-spews-raving-lunatic-anti.html

Assessment may 22 2010

Since at one time I had "promised" myself an exit after Leora's bat mitzvah, which took place last night, it has come time to assess where I stand vis a vis my aliya. Firstly if I had unlimited cash I would still stay at the present moment to work on liberty maze and to get a filipino for mich and norm. I would travel to the states to get some reefer or maybe for vacation, but right now there are two priorities even after cash: 1. liberty maze and 2. filipino. thus 3. cash and 4. reefer. as far as pussy goes, it is unclear.

highlights of stay: bat mitzvahs of maya, eliana, hila and leora. wedding of moshe.
micha's party. visit to pardes chana.
klitsner fuck up. gassel fuck up.
resnick visits.
kenny's son's wedding. steve fredman's son's wedding. jon neuman's sons' bar mitzvahs.
buchman's daughter's illness.
tamar/tzaki weddings. gassel wedding.
micha kicks me out.
zohar and reefer. money for yaakov. intro to menachem. menachem kissoff.
rena's son's bar mitzvah.
zev visits.
arabic. english tutoring lessons.
political rallies.
visit to america. prague.
broken wrist.
movies on the net. books.
aviva's apartment. this apartment.
news of freyda's illness.
war in gaza. barakat election. obama election. netanyahu election.
sander shnorring.
gila day.
bmp, santa, liberty maze.
schrader fridays.
raanana visits. shluchot visits. beit shemesh visits.
scrabble on line, but not in person.
walks to beit safafa. havruta books. shari date. prozac. aus prozac. viepax. jeff friedman.
change banks. fake hundred dollar bill. tooth chipped, pain, dentists. rhodine encounters.

koestler quote

in this war we are fighting against a total lie in the name of a half truth

(M 43) School for Scoundrels

British fifties comedy (1960) A loser goes to a school of lifemanship to become a winner. Unable to win the girl, outmaneuver an underling at work, outmaneuver a competitor at a restaurant or on the tennis court, a salesman at a used car garage, he goes to a school of ploys and tricks to learn how to win. he succeeds at work against his competitor on the tennis court, reselling his car and gets the girl to come home with him. but when his tricks are too successful he is about to send the school home. the teacher of the school and his competitor break in on him and discover a new ploy, but it is not- it is sincerity, something the teacher truly hates.

B-

pre independence quotes mondoweiss

The British commander of Jordan’s Arab Legion, John Bagot Glubb admitted:

“Early in January, the first detachments of the Arab Liberation Army began to infiltrate into Palestine from Syria. Some came through Jordan and even through Amman . . . They were in reality to strike the first blow in the ruin of the Arabs of Palestine.”

The two forces fighting for the Palestinians during the war of 47 through 49 were the AHC, the Palestinian army and the ALA, the forces from outside Palestine.

The representatives of the Palestinians was the AHC, and thus this “one quote” is the quote of the official representative of the Palestinians making his case in front of the UN Security Council.

More quotes:UNSCOP was prevented by Arab and British forces from doing a full investigation in Palestine. They reported to the Security Council on 16 February 1948:

“Organized efforts are being made by strong Arab elements inside and outside Palestine to prevent the implementation of the Assembly’s plan of partition and to thwart its objectives by threats and acts of violence, including armed incursions into Palestinian territory… This Commission now finds itself confronted with an attempt to defeat its purposes, and to nullify the resolution of the General Assembly.”

So far: three quotes.

Cycle of events:

1. UN approves partition plan. Zionists rejoice. Arabs promise violence.

2. Violence- Including Palestinian Arab versus Jewish violence and Jewish violence against Arabs, plus the invasion of Arab Liberation Army forces into Palestine. Casualties in December and January came to 1000 killed and by the end of March 2000 killed.

3. Assessment by the Zionists that the situation of defense was untenable: With Arab forces controlling the roads throughout the country and particularly the road to Jerusalem, the decision was made to go on the offensive.

4. Launching Plan Dalet. he defeat of Gush Etzion, a Jewish enclave in the area allocated to the Palestinian state which was never born:

For five months the bloc was besieged, first by Arab irregulars, and then by the Jordanian Arab Legion. Throughout the winter hostilities intensified and several relief convoys from the Haganah in Jerusalem were destroyed in ambushes. For 47 days the armed conflict was intense.

But according to you there was no Jordanian Arab Legion in Palestine and would not be one until after May 15th, even though the Jewish forces in Gush Etzion were defeated on May 14th.

Jamal husseini April 16, 1948 AHC

On Apr. 16, 1948 Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committee’s spokesman told the Security Council, “The representative of the Jewish Agency told us yesterday that they were not the attackers, that the Arabs had begun the fighting. We did not deny this. We told the whole world that we were going to fight.”

(m42) Who'll stop the rain

nick nolte and michael moriarty. vietnam. michael moriarty disillusioned scores two keys of heroin and gives it to sailor nolte to bring to the states. sailor nolte brings it to the states and discovers los angeles very changed. he goes to moriarty's wife and she does not have the money she promised and the nolte has been followed by thugs. nolte outwits the thugs, and escapes with moriarty's wife. moriarty arrives and is tortured by the thugs, but they figure out where nolte is headed and find him holed up in a cabin on an old abandoned hippie retreat. they shoot it out. nolte is killed. moriarty pours the heroin out to the wind and moriarty and his wife escape with their lives and sanity. The post vietnam generation overtaken by drugs and greed.

(M 41) pretty baby

susan sarandon works in a new orleans whore house circa WWI. the house is remarkable in its madam who is plain talking (there are two things one can do when it's raining outside and i never liked playing cards) and antonio fargas as the piano player. sarandon is an irresponsible mom to brooke shields who is 11 or 12. sarandon gives birth. keith carradine, a photographer shows up and wants to take pictures, but he doesn't touch the whores. finally brooke is placed on auction to lose her cherry and gets 400 dollars bid on her. the man is rough, but brooke is tough. sarandon is proposed to by some guy and she leaves brooke at the house. keith is in love with brooke and when brooke is punished for some offense she runs away from the whore house and finds keith and moves in. she misbehaves one day and he kicks her out. she goes back to the whore house, but times have changed and the whore house is about to be closed down. keith comes around and marries brooke. he is living with her when sarandon and hubby show up and take her away, putting their past behind them and leaving keith alone.

message to karmen

hey karmen, sorry i didn't get back to you sooner. tonight is shavuot and i went to my uncle kenny's with my friend richard, who is in from out of town (he's from chicago). only kenny's youngest child (eight years old) was there. this week i had my brother (ultra orthodox) son got married in bnei brak. and later in the week my sister (modern orthodox) her daughter's bat mitzvah in beit shemesh. meanwhile my dad's parkinson's has worsened in the last few weeks and he's finding it very difficult to walk at all. shavuot people stay up and learn all night and i guess it's a time to socialize, but i just don't feel like dealing with people, although writing to you, is easier than dealing with people in the present tense. i'm writing a screenplay these days called "liberty maze". you read all of bar mitzvah prophecy, didn't you? i'm rather depressed these days, i'm not sure why. certainly my father's disease is part of it. in any case, i hope you're doing well.

yonah

(M 40) the house on telegraph hill

a polish woman takes another woman's identity in concentration camp. she writes to tell relatives that she is alive, but is informed that her aunt is dead. she gets sent to america and pursues the issue and meets richard basehart who falls in love with her, marries her and takes her home to san francisco, where she meets the housekeeper who is jealous of her. she meets a friend/enemy of richard basehart's and he helps her. she befriends her son and discovers that the playhouse has experienced a bombing (blamed on a chemistry set). she gets into a car accident when the brakes fail. no proof of tampering exists, but she is suspicious. the telegram that she received in the dp camp telling her that her aunt was dead raises questions and the research reveals that richard basehart sent it himself and not the lawyers. but before the woman can find this out, richard basehart tries to poison her, but the woman has switched the orange juice and richard has been poisoned. the housekeeper who loves the child suspects that richard will try to kill the child and so she lets him die from the poisoning. the friend and the woman live happily ever after.

C+

hour of the wolf (M39)

Ingmar Bergman. An unstable artist, max von sydow, and his fearful simple lover live alone on an island. at times he is loving, but at other times he is very harsh. during the summer there is no night and this means he cannot sleep, which does not help his sanity. she becames infected by his insanity and informed by a spirit she finds his diary and reads it. he sometimes tortures her with his tortured sketches. she is also troubled by the reports of his previous love. there are other people on the island and if his sanity is tenuous when he is alone, it is positively fragile when he is in society. the island society, "cannibals" are very harsh, hedonistic, over the hill, getting their kicks from the artist and his mousy tortured wife. in the winter it is dark all the time and max explains the "hour of the wolf" as the time of night when people have nightmares when they sleep or are filled with fear if they stay awake. he tells her of one occasion when he is punished by his father, locked into a closet and told that a tiny animal will eat his feet. this causes him to panic. he then tells the story of meeting a ten year old (or so) boy on the island. he and the boy struggle and he kills the boy with a rock and drowns him. (does the boy represent the boy in himself that he has struggled with and killed?). the cannibals on the island give him a gun and he shoots liv and then goes to the castle to find his ex mistress there, but the cannibals are watching and laughing at him when they start to make love. (he finds her stretched out naked on a slab as if dead. when he touches her "dead" body lovingly she awakens and laughs, a laughter that he does not mind, but when the audience of cannibals laughs in the same tone, he very much minds and becomes filled with hate.
the artist flees the cabin where he lives with liv and is never heard from again. liv wonders whether she loved him too much and thus became infected with his insanity and thus was unable to help him like he needed. or whether she didn't love him enough and thus became susceptible to jealousy and couldn't help him as he needed.

Englander's short story (mondoweiss)

Englander or Gezer does not say that the Holocaust legacy gives Israel or Tendler a pass to do anything. In fact it labels Tendler as both murderer and "misken" (damaged goods). I suppose to those who wish to label Tendler or Israel a 100% murderer, to see the misken side can be considered giving Israel a pass, but to an Israel supporter or sympathizer once you call Israel 50% murderer it is not really a pass. I suppose the same thing can be said for Blankfort's assertion that Englander is telling the New Yorker reader who objects to Israel policy to "shut up". Gezer does not tell his son to shut up, when Etgar calls Tendler a murderer, he merely suggests that his son recognize context and see the "misken" side of the Tendler personality. But to those who see only the 100% murderer, such a suggestion might seem like a demand to "shut up".

In fact, in my view, much of Israel's sins are not when it acts (rationally or irrationally) in its attempts to secure itself, but rather when it acts to take land in a way that lacks any security rationale whatsoever. The nakba, or the exiling of the Palestinians in 48, was an act that for the most part had a security rationale, but the building of the settlements, for the most part has no security rationale.

As to the appropriateness of someone of Englander's age writing a story with the Holocaust playing such a major role, I see nothing wrong with that. A question could be raised as to what role the Holocaust would have played in Jewish thinking if the disaster had not been followed so quickly by the establishment of Israel with its needs for wars and rationales. Yet to those who are artists or even sensitive nationalists or co religionists, a disaster of that magnitude casts a shadow over the existence of their nation and even of their self and to expect the genocide in Europe to only play a part in the dreams or unconscious or the art of those born before 1939 is arbitrary and insensitive. Religious Jews mourn the destruction of the temple thousands of years after the fact and although individualism may be the modern creed, mourning the genocide or the damage the genocide has done to the body and soul of the Jewish people a mere 65 years after the fact seems to be human rather than abnormal and certainly no outrage.