Our Jewish Heritage

There has always been great curiosity expressed with regard to origins; where did it all begin, and how? Geologists, paleontologists, historians, social anthropologists (long before modern science recognized these divisions in intellectual investigation and gave them their present nomenclature) assiduously sifted rock and sand, bones and crockery, deciphered hieroglyphs, pored over ancient writings and tried to make sense of it all. Logically, everything, every phenomenon, be it geologic, biological or cultural-sociographic had to begin somewhere. So where did that peculiar strain of people, Jews, originate, and how?

Somewhere in the Middle East, we know. They are grouped, not with Caucasians, but with the Armenids. This originally nomadic, pastoral group had been little documented in the ancient writings of other people, and it is assumed that reference to a group termed 'the Habiru' in casual and brief mention of a group of troublesome nomads is the first recognition of their existence as a distinct group by another and better-lettered early culture.

From that undistinguished beginning we have a people somehow bound together by a common destiny, a gradually enlightened culture, and a homophilic socialization. This group has ascended the heights of human endeavours, both singly and collectively; it has plumbed the depths of human despair and degradation, and somehow, survived intact. An achievement that no other ancient cultural-ethno-social group can claim. From the ranks of this people have come first and foremost, ideas which have revolutionized civilization, concepts which have paved the way to humanistic enlightenment, and moral and legal laws which have fathered those of the entire Western world. Jewish religion, philosophy, art, jurisprudence, medicine has had an impact on the world whose like has not been equalled by any other single group of people.

As humanists millennia ago, it was recognized that all life is sacred, and from that recognition was enacted moral and ethical laws to protect the very quality of life, and life itself. At a time when slavery was common (when it was sometimes a practical economic solution to survival for the chronically indigent) Jewish law proclaimed that every seventh year any person held in bondage should be deemed a free person.

Because of the respect with which the people termed 'the Habiru' viewed life they eschewed common practises seen in casual and brief early cultures that practised human sacrifice as an appeasement to their gods. Jews viewed this practise with repugnance and replaced such sacrifice with animal sacrifice. And to protect animals, strict laws ensuring humane slaughter were encoded.

And though, like most religions a great many prohibitions (meant to protect both the individual and the status of the religion) became ritual dogma, they could be suspended if under special circumstances life would be endangered by their enactment. Jewish law was not meant to be absolutely inflexible. The law-makers recognized human frailty and the need to be elastic in interpretation so that exigencies could be coped with.

Some very early and forward-thinking Jews wrote a wonderful series of literature embodying all possible human conditions, and at the same time they conceived of monotheism, a startling departure from the pantheism (worship of many gods) then customary throughout the world of religion. Jews, in this context, were enjoined to regard themselves as 'the chosen'. Not particularly 'chosen' as being better or in some manner elevated above their fellow creatures, but as given the responsibility to present a moral example that others might follow and in this indirect way ennoble the world of humankind.

It was a bold decision indeed for a people to determine, even collectively, even involuntarily, to regard themselves as a shining example toward the rest of mankind. Some might term it, with justification, hubristic. But here is where the precept "Act Unto Others" evolves from. If no other guidelines existed for human behaviour, that one alone would suffice.

And the individual was never forgotten. Everyone's 'right' to quality of life was recognized. Welfare or charity then was not the pejorative it has since become. It was the community's responsibility to care for all of its members and this was a responsibility taken seriously, not grudgingly, nor condescendingly.

Children were regarded as a blessing, and they were universally loved, protected and cherished. Education was always held in awe, and avidly sought. Yet the work ethic also was finely ingrained and respected. Uncouth behaviour, which might encompass anything from rudeness to gambling, or a disregard for others, to drinking to excess, was looked upon with revulsion.

Well, it is true that Jews also looked upon themselves, privately, as being distinct, different - other and above. There were Jews, and there were the others - Gentiles. Gentiles could not be presumed to be as steeped in the values and virtues of life as Jews, and therefore, suspect. There was always this great apartness - us and they.

Because of this exclusivity of apprehension, there arose also an exclusivity of thought, and dogmatism crept into the culture, and the interpretation of the popular religion, and Jews often became inward-looking; intellectually and for practical purposes, immune to change. Yet there arose also those who chafed at the bonds imposed and from their ranks came our Thinkers, those who looked further - our two Moseses, our Spinoza, our Marx, our Sholem Aleichem, our Freud, our Herzl, our Einstein, our Chagall.

And there were others - our scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists, writers, philanthropists, jurists, economists, men of medicine, financiers, inventors, industrialists, teachers and yes, even politicians and soldiers. These outstanding and often brilliant people collectively enriched the world with their contribution to the great fund of knowledge being accumulated and utilized.

Although Jewry has produced paragons, it has also produced by far a larger number of quite ordinary folk, the great majority of whom are indistinguishable from those of other backgrounds and traditions. And within the groupings of Jews themselves lie great fractiousness and even bigotry. Social strata have always existed, creating cultural and social ghettos between Jews themselves.

When at one time Sephardim were considered the cultural aristocracy of Jewry, the Ashkenazim were considered the peasantry. With the passage of time that perception has reversed itself, and we see its results in present-day Israel. And Jewish politics is as diverse as the population it represents, further creating internal strife.

Jews, in the collective sense, were in the past imbued with a great vision. Those people have been the progressives, those who stimulate change and progress. Yet these progressives have always been shunned by the established order within the Jewish tradition until the inexorable change occurred and the passage of time softened and blurred their offence, and they were looked upon with pride.

We've produced, as a people, some excellence - and a great deal of dross. Where does the excellence come from, one wonders? As a great amorphous mass of humanity, we've expressed a collective desire to be greater than a mere human might aspire to; greater than the sum of our parts.

We've attempted to be close to a supreme being in our religion; we've tried to behave as the god would have us do. We have tried to better the lot of humankind. Have we succeeded to any great degree? Lamentably, no. The task seems too great. The obstacles placed in the way of fulfillment too overwhelming. Although we have committed ourselves to an ideal which is part way achievable, singly we have not tried to live the ideal nor cared enough for others to strive together to achieve that ideal.

Yet this singular group, with so much potential did return to its roots. A proud and representative number of Diaspora Jews, some by Zionist conviction and zeal, some Holocaust survivors, and others returnees from countries where Jews have not felt comfortable, or have been openly oppressed, live in a state founded in the original land of their forefathers. In that land the ideal was to be realized finally, the dream fulfilled.

For a time it appeared that the original social humanist precepts, the ethics and vision that the prophets of old exhorted; fundamental human values that would enrich the whole while permitting each and every citizen to live with individual grace, would come to pass. The forward thinkers, the socialists, the kibbutzniks, the Labourites, began to fashion the experimental state and the state blossomed, becoming a noble ideal actually fruiting.

Soon, though, the original concept and dedication to egalitarianism gave way gradually to creeping elitism as one social-cultural group disparaged the 'backwardness' of another. And religious fundamentalism with its insistence on strict observance began to force its opinions into state structure.

Hostile neighbours stimulated the siege-mentality which bred militarism, rightist nationalism and xenophobia. In a world that was increasingly perceived as being unsympathetic to Israel, Israel further isolated itself, this time deliberately, by carrying a big stick and using it, and aligning itself with other rightist, nationalist regimes. Once the Labour Party and its socialist precepts was ousted and that of the rightist Likud installed, it could be predicted in which direction Israel, the emotional fount of world Jewry, was headed.

Today an encircled country defies the rest of the world and bitterly denounces its most immediate neighbours. This is bitter gall for a people whose origins, whose roots are so far removed from anti-humanism, from the military ideal, and colonialism.

This situation cannot continue. World Jewry, so possessive and loving of Israel, for the first time begins to caution that country that its focus and mentality must undergo a change and direct itself more in keeping with its traditional view of itself, and its people.

Israelis, stricken by their own hapless direction, ambivalent about their feelings toward their neighbours, uncertain of their country's future, are beginning to re-assess national policy and their own place in the world structure.

There will be a turn-about to the spirit which underlies that elusive, little-understood element, the Jewish soul; sensitivity to one's fellow companions on the earth. And with that change in direction Jews will once more strive to fulfill an ancient precept, and to charge themselves again with the responsibility of the 'example' of the chosen.  

Envelopes

Envelopes - you know, those paper squares, oblongs, rectangles, whatever, with which we writers hopefully encapsulate sheets of paper on which we have typed the gleanings of our genius' Muse thereby expediting said manuscripts through the mails - intrigue and bedevil me. They are cunning little tricksters, envelopes. Not so, you say, how can they be? Doubter...!

It doesn't seem all that long ago that agronomists and horticulturalists startled an unready world with the ridiculous theory that plants respond to stimulus. Oh indeed yes, respond to care, to immediate environmental factors; we all knew that. But plants, they told us unbelievers, like to be liked. They thrive, grow lustily healthy when cooed at, encouraged, have their fancies tickled. We believe, we believe...!

But, you say, plants are animate, growing things. And envelopes - did I say envelopes? Yes, they're inanimate. So they would have us believe. I said they are cunning, and they are. They love practical jokes. Believe me, I know. I am, you see, an envelope-observer of long experience.

It all started, don't you know, when I began my writing career. Up until then I'd been just like everyone else, a normal envelope-trusting individual. I thought like you, that envelopes existed for the sole purpose of well, enveloping things. I know differently now. The little blighters also play practical jokes.

They are, perforce, not necessarily what they appear to be; have personalities all their own, enjoy springing little tricks and treats on the unwary. Myself, I scrutinize all return envelopes carefully now, before slitting their ... oh, I am sorry!

Anyway, I can be quite devious myself. I prolong the agony of opening return envelopes, carefully running experienced hands over envelope and contents before the final irrevocable revelation.

Does it feel slimmer than when I sent it out? Some of the sheaf of papers accepted, one maybe? And the larger manuscript-sized ones; some of them, returned, feel delightfully slim. Have they been utilized by an economy minded editor to enclose a letter of acceptance, nothing more?

This little game has its own built-in pitfalls, for often when I'm serenely positive before opening, I'm completely shattered to discover within the envelope all that I had sent out returned, rejected, and I, dejected, having forgotten I'd used a thinner-than-usual bond paper.

But friends and fellow scribblers, it does happen that when I'm at my lowest, I'll barge right in, slit - sorry, open that dear envelope and inside will be mayhap, an acceptance. Sometimes when I least expect it, my full-size story manuscript will be blissfully absent and an acceptance will be nestled comfortably within said envelope.

And once, upon receiving a large manuscript-sized envelope I opened (that better?), looked within and perceived nothing. Nothing!

Holding it scornfully with the tips of index finger and thumb, making my way to the waste basket, wondering all the while which editor had forgotten to re-insert my manuscript, I was startled when a frail slip of paper swooshed out, and floated to the floor at my feet. Stooping, I retrieved it and beheld, lo, no mere frail slip of paper, but a fat and healthy one-hundred-dollar cheque. Egad!

Ah, envelopes - they're curious beasties. 

 

On Human Race : A Humanist's View

 

From the biological standpoint, the species Homo Sapiens is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the others in the frequency of one or more genes. Such genes, responsible for the hereditary differences between men, are always few when compared to the whole genetic constitution of man and to the vast number of genes common to all human beings regardless of the population to which they belong. This means that the likenesses among men are far greater than their differences.
- Statement on Race: issued by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

The term 'race' is a misnomer of singular proportions, given the fact that the vast majority of people seem not to realize that there is only one true human race - that of the entire species. Anthropologists use the term 'race' knowledgeably, whereas in its popular usage the word with all its biological implications has become degraded. Among the general population, the terminology and recognition of race has a social, not a biological cast; with decidedly pernicious overtones.

Anthropologically speaking, there are three recognized sub-groupings which fall within the species of man; namely Caucasian, Negroid and Mongoloid. From these three major sub-groupings a plethora of minor groupings identify peoples who, by virtue of a matrix founded in geographical isolation have evolved with specific physical characteristics, culture and society. All other definitions of race are informed and utilized by gross ignorance of the condition of man upon this earth.

Our condition is that we are of one initial stock; that by reason of geographic isolation and gradual adaptation there has evolved a diversity of facades - formed as much by environment as by random genetic change or by direct hybridization as a result of interbreeding. There occur naturally spontaneous random variations in gene frequencies and even the extinction of some, unnecessary genes. Even so, genetic variations between the groupings of people are minor.

People can be differentiated by cultural environment where the effect of cultural isolation will imbue a large segment of a geographic population with readily identifiable traits, ethics and perceptions. It would be more correct to call this group an 'ethnic' one.

Other groups of people are significantly affected by religious teaching and training which in large part may make up the basis for their cultural identification. This is most certainly termed a common 'religion', yet members of that religion may cross ethnic boundaries as well as geographic boundaries. There are, for example, Muslims living in the near and far east as well as in Europe and North America.

Still other large population groupings may be identified strictly by geographic location and this group of people may be termed a 'nation'. Yet within that nation there exists people whose heritage is culturally diverse, whose religious adherence is multifarious. This type of mixture is most commonly seen in the mixture which makes up the Canadian mosaic.

As is readily seen, the above three classifications are not mutually exclusive; a large group may combine a 'nation', yet have within it a diversity of 'religious', leanings and numberless 'ethnic' culturally-induced groupings - none of which should be rightfully called a 'race'.

Character is shaped and informed by immediate environment and that environment is familial, shaped by societal values further shaped by the cultural imperatives current in any geographic area. One may take focus on the American blacks who are a part of the American nation; whom society has traditionally placed in a disadvantaged position; whose culture has been shaped by such societal strictures (originally formulated to justify slavery); whose family structure is much looser than that of the whites among whom they live. This 'looseness' is based upon insecurity, an insecurity which stems from the erroneous assumption that blacks constitute another, more inferior race, than do the whites.

Man's condition is not immutable. Man, the race, has been undergoing genetic changes since he was first recognized as a separate genus, Homo Sapiens (Man the Wise). Physical anthropologists mark the changes in millennia, and even then the changes have been so gradual as to be hardly noticed. But, we are in constant flux. Yet the changes affect all of us. Differences in individuals within the same ethnic groupings are more diverse and pronounced than those which exist between the various ethnic groups themselves.

Unless complete isolation is possible between sub-groupings and genetic material common to that group is never interfered with by outside sources as by another sub-group, then the genetic pool of that particular group remains fairly stabilized and an ethnic group is formed; a group with a common, yet still fluctuating genetic pool. However, even these ethnic groups are continually shifting and in terms of historical 'time' have a limited lifespan.

And even within that group, as for example, the American Indian population before 1500, there existed a population sharing a relatively stable genetic pool, but living in separate enclaves. The genetic pool reached a certain equilibrium and there was a diversity in cultural leanings and linguistics, yet the American Indian did not constitute a specific 'race'.

And there is no such thing as purity of race or sub-grouping, to use the more correct form, since interbreeding takes place constantly within any given society. And it helps to remember that any given society which constitutes a nation is comprised of a number of ethnic groupings, religiously-oriented groupings; minor-groupings of the major groupings of the race of man. For example, it is estimated that fully 70% of all American blacks have white blood, with attendant white genes.

Apart from the fact that traditionally it was seen as permissible for white males to couple with black females (where the reverse was socially taboo), even the blacks themselves are instrumental in changing their genetic pool, by acculturated preference. Black males tend to select lighter-skinned black females as sexual partners. In this way, sexual selection dilutes the darker-pigmented genes and the resulting pool over a great period of time will ultimately mean that the black group situated in America will share the white man's lighter skin tone.

Take, for example, Jews, who are stubbornly considered by an uninformed public to comprise a 'race'. While it is true that the background for many Jews is that of the Mediterranean sub-group, Jews are merely a 'people' or segment of a population having in common a cultural orientation (historical) and/or common religion. There are some Chinese and Blacks who have taken upon themselves to be Jews, adopting the Jewish religion. This does not make them part of a Jewish 'race'.

People often ascribe deplorable social tendencies to particular sub-groupings, which they erroneously term 'races'. It is well to remember that what is permissible, even desirable in some geographic communities is shunned in others. When a people has long become accustomed to viewing certain social practises as normal and quite acceptable, these practises become established as social currency, and when transported into another, alien culture, the practises set these people apart where the resident population have a tendency to disdain little-understood 'racial' attitudes which are in fact, social and/or cultural tendencies.

We are here talking about perceptions. What we perceive is not necessarily the same thing to everyone. Perceptions are informed by experience and background. In other words, if we have been culturally induced to regard taciturnity, public display, acute economy, or extreme gregariousness as undesirable, those exhibiting those traits or habits are distasteful to us, just as the wearers of turbans or saris are conspicuous by their differences and held apart by suspicion. Because in their original environment these habits were seen as natural or fitting, misunderstandings arise engendering a mutual hostility.

Let's have a look at shylocking as adduced to Jews, in another instance of social strictures creating fallacious determinations. For generations Jews were not permitted to own land in Europe, nor to have certain recognized professions. They could not farm, the most common means of livelihood at one point in human history. They were sometimes permitted to become itinerant tradesmen. And they were permitted to 'lend' money; a practise expressly forbidden by the early Christian church to its faithful - which church ironically had itself taken the injunction from Judaic precept.

Jews then, became money lenders, eventually transmuting the practise to banking. But as they were then dealing in a Christian world within an expressly forbidden, church-proscribed practise, they were held to be 'unclean', their livelihood despised and indecent. Hence shylocks, from the immortal Bard's pen, who reflected the temper of his times; hence the term 'jewing' and the Oxford Dictionary definition of Jew as 'money-lender'. An unfortunate misnomer, since the great majority of Jews have always been and will doubtless continue to be, as 'average' material-wise, as any society which they inhabit. But all a matter of perceptions, of discrimination informed by ignorance where the apparent is more readily accepted than the actual.

There also exists among sub-groupings physical differences from their common genetic pool which further confuse matters. Where some sub-groupings can readily and genuinely be identified, as where their physical environment has gradually adapted them to their surroundings, i.e., the Pygmy of the African Congo, the Inuit of the far North, where one group has been reduced in size and colour and the second has acquired the genetic code for an 'abnormal' subcutaneous fat layer - so that they may better live in sound ecology with their environments - they are a distinctly characteristic group.

However, most 'racial' identifications are misconceived generalizations. We may think of those inhabiting the Indian continent as forming a distinctive race, yet they do not, for many confused sub-groupings have gone into the whole, and there is, moreover, an artificial sub-structure there of a social nature which will not permit interbreeding between groupings, thus causing an unnatural situation where the caste system has birthed further sub-groupings, with attendant fairly stable gene pools. The uninformed and ignorant outsider claims that 'all Indians look alike'; ergo they must be a single 'race'.

Jews are commonly perceived to be of the Mediterranean type, and some are. Yet so are the Greeks, the Italians, the Portuguese, the Spanish and certainly the Arab populations - and some of all these groups have often been mistaken for Jews. Yet among Jews there is a significantly smaller proportion of physical Mediterranean types than among, for example, Arabs.

In the same token we often conceive of Italians as being dark-skinned and hirsute, yet large groups of Italians are fair-haired and light-skinned and the same can be said for the Spanish - and among the fair-haired segment, there arises a social condition creating a hierarchy among that group. So we have the 'aristocrats' and the 'peasants'. Perceptual differences and their attribution to race have been encouraged for the express purpose of creating a hierarchy, a class of rulers and the ruled within a society, thus supporting the concept of racism.

Ethnic groups share a geographic boundary, often. They share a common culture within the geographic boundary. And most often they share a common religion. Yet the Italians, the Spanish, the French, the Greeks do not each comprise a race, but a nation. And within each nation are groups of people who do not share the same religion, nor the same dialect, nor exactly the same culture.

The human condition is constantly changing, albeit gradually and perhaps some day enough intermarriage within groups will occur to blend and weaken physical differences. Even so, cultural and geographic boundaries may remain. Yet even so, there is but one species.

The fondly-held belief of racists in 'racial' purity is a risible canard; the stronghold of culturally- and intellectually-insecure antediluvians, the substance of whose contention is as ephemeral as gossamer (without sharing any of that substance's beauty). For its purpose is to degrade other human beings.

Intelligence quotient is often used as a tool by which 'race' can be proven to point an individual toward highly-paid skilled employment or underpaid under-skilled employment. I.Q. tests are given across the board, to those from privileged and under-privileged social backgrounds alike. This, despite that we now know pre-natal as well as post-natal deprivation, both nutritional and environmental, leads to atrophying of the brain's potential.

In other words, an intelligence test specifically designed to measure the cerebral capacity of a middle-class group with background leading to middle-class aspirations is given to nutritionally-, emotionally- and socially-deprived groups of people. A tendentious practise; weighting the scale heavily in favour of racist theory of a sub-species of human.

Psychological traits and various endowments of physical and intellectual capacities exist within all groups of people whatever the ethnic background. There is no one group of people in any manner naturally superior to another, trait-wise, intellectually, or with regard to physical attributes.

Nomenclature and semantics become very important when misconceptions based on ignorance, breeding fear and prejudice, often lead the way to savage acts, one man against another. An example of how words, or loose and misunderstood terms can be so erroneous, is the example of the world 'savage'. Anthropologists commonly used that word to refer to primitive peoples. Yet now, the word 'savage' is no longer current; instead the words 'primitive' or 'illiterate' have replaced the 'savage'.

It can be readily understood why, when we recall that Alfred Wallace, an anthropologist-coeval of Charles Darwin (engaged in like studies of natural selection), in the course of his investigations into the source of man shot a black woman who had been sitting in a tree holding an infant (in Malaysia); thinking nothing much more of the incident than that he had mistakenly killed a 'savage' for an ape. The savage, apparently, then being thought nothing more than a more direct link to Homo Sapiens. She was a human being and he, the scientist, reflecting the unfortunate zeitgeist of the times, the true savage.

So let us understand that one cannot denote a group of people as a 'race'. The word itself with all its derogatory connotations has caused untold misery to millions of human beings. We divide 'races' into inferior and superior. We perceive some 'races' as being truly human, and others as merely sub-human. Subtly we do this. So we hardly notice it, but we do. We ascribe to certain 'races' distasteful practises and characteristics. The truth is that all human beings share like or at least comparable aspirations; to fulfill themselves as human beings in all dignity.

The means by which they fulfill their aspirations may differ, but the needs are the same.

We desperately need to understand that our biases regarding race are ill-founded. If some specific characteristics are found to be unappealing, it is well to remember that some which we ourselves share may be unappealing to other segments of a population; more commonly termed 'ethnic' groupings, and not 'races'. Yet, we must learn to accommodate ourselves to each other, to co-operate, to shift over and give some room. After all, this is not a very large planet, this mother Earth, and we are but one family; the human race.

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races. - Charles Darwin, "The Descent of Man", 1874.

Remembering ... Forgotten

 

The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth. Judah Benjamin, in reply to a taunt by a Senator of German descent.

None could have been more greatly taken by surprise and mortally offended than secular Jews in civilized, cultivated Germany - who considered themselves more affected and deeply steeped in modernity and creative energy and intelligence by their venerated generations of German citizenship than their Jewish heritage - to discover that they were regarded as mere Jews, fit for nothing but eradication by the Third Reich.

Their steep complacency at having attained acceptance at the highest levels of German society, academia, political life and wealth would be shattered by the reality of the military-political juggernaut that would overtake Europe and reach out to Asia, enveloping as it progressed, the near east and North America.

The intellectual vastness and social connections to the master race admitted of a moral certainty of racist exceptionalism that excluded Semites from the stellar genetic superiority of the Aryan race of supermortals.

You call me a damned Jew. My race was old when you were all savages. I am proud to be a Jew. John Galsworthy, Loyalties, Act. II.

Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Jews considering themselves culturally superior to Polish and Italian Jews never imagined their countries would accept that they were dross too, to be disposed of summarily along with their Latvian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other European countries' Jewish counterparts.

The massive round-up, degradation, humiliation, scorning, enslavement in ghettoes and death-camps located around Europe with infamous names like Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, with their slave labour, their medical experiments, their punishments and starvation rations, their gas chambers and chimneys puking the dark detritus of burnt bodies in a ghastly parody of orderly convention, bespoke the Nazi ideal of eradicating the impediments to the attainment of human perfection.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

The quietly determined theatre of extermination became a subterranean affair of cleansing the world of a plague, a dread scourge of those posing as human whose subhuman facade had been revealed by Nazi ideology that wallowed in the worship of pride, pursued perfection, and visualized a very exclusive and choice Utopia. The very physical characteristics of the perfect Nordic male would effectively have excluded the German chancellor.

And the Jews, en masse, no offence, merely acknowledgement of the most appalling inferiority soiled by genetic traits betraying their unworthiness of sharing the air, the water and other precious natural resources, were specifically chosen, in their totality, for annihilation, to make the world of the truly entitled by nature and inheritance, a better place.

Who hateth me but for my happiness?
Or who is honoured now but for his wealth?
Rather had I, a Jew, be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty.
Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

One might think that a collective representing the world's religious leaders would seek to intervene. They did not, presumably on the presumption that God would look after His own. The saving grace being that a small but noted number of religious and their laity took it upon their consciences and moral certainty to act on their own to save whom they could among Jews.

Suavity toward the Jews! Although you have lived among them, it is evident that you little understand those enemies of the human race. Haughty and at the same time base, combining an invincible obstinacy with a spirit despicably mean, they weary alike your love and your hatred. Anatole France, The Procurator of Judea

As in medical science, when an anomalous, sinister, threatening bacteria or virus emerges to threaten humanity as a horrible existential pandemic, all scientific and technological means must be harnessed toward the imperative of destroying the threat to the well-being of humanity's continued existence...

And, since time immemorial Jews, with their strange religion insisting on an especial status with their Maker, and exhibiting typically hideous traits offensive to others already held a tradition of suspicion and rejection, there was little problem in reaching international consensus that Something Must Be Done.

When people talk about a wealthy man of my creed, they call him an Israelite; but if he is poor they call him a Jew. Heinrich Heine

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. Albert Einstein

That 'something' emerged as an exquisitely planned and executed genocide. So expertly dedicated to its task, it succeeded in destroying resources to the military deeply engaged in challenging and overcoming resistance to German fascism's indomitable need to conquer the world and to dominate it for at least a thousand years.

And while it hampered the military, it succeeded in its exemplary mission to rid the world of a menace. The Jews sacrificed for the salvation of world civilization.

A hopeless faith, a homeless race,
Yet seeking the most holy place,
And owning the true bliss . . . .
Or like pale ghosts that darkling roam,
Hovering around their ancient home,
But find no refuge there.
John Keble, The Christian Year: Fifth Sunday in Lent

The tradition of a two-millennium-old story of sacrifice and redemption repeated. World Jewry has never recovered its numbers. The Jewish population of Israel, established post-war as the traditional homeland of the Jews, and considered by Jews to be its only safe haven on Earth, is now roughly reflective of the numbers that perished in the Holocaust.

And Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word among all people. Old Testament: 1 Kings

The invidious scourge of ethnic hatred known as anti-Semitism lives on, succeeding once again in the temporary wake of post-Holocaust remorse. The world and its affairs returned to normalcy.

Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
Emma Lazarus, The World's Justice

  

School Daze

There are some lovely little towns in Eastern Ontario. Some of them have been placed along the banks of rivers of which there are many in that part of the Province. The Ottawa and the Mississippi rivers come readily to mind. Some of the towns have fascinating histories as mill towns, small manufacturing towns, some of them purely agrarian-related, largely serving the adjacent farming communities. Some of them, like colourful, quaint Merrickville, have historical locks and docks on the Rideau River. Others, like Pakenham, have distinguishing features that are quite remarkable, like the five-span bridge, quite an engineering feat of its time, standing over the Mississippi right at the ever-raging, powerful rapids cascading downriver.

Life in these small towns carries on at a somewhat different pace than, say in Ottawa, an hour or more distant by car. And many people who live rurally drive that hour or more from where they live in these small rural communities to their workplaces in Ottawa. Some drive to Renfrew, or to Arnprior for work, and some people living in Renfrew or Arnprior or Cornwall will drive right into Ottawa, commuting that long drive back and forth, daily to their places of employment.

The children who live in those small towns attend school right where they live. Be it Almonte or Pakenham, Renfrew or Arnprior. The Upper Canada School Board has jurisdiction in part of that area, and like all school boards it is cognizant of the need of young Canadians to be educated, to be exposed, through good teaching, to all that they will require to know to go on to achieve a higher level of education and finally join the general workforce as educated adults, a credit to their society, to their country.

Many of these schools have been long established to ensure that Ontario children living in the eastern portion of the province, as elsewhere, do receive a good education. Some of them provide, in fact, an outstanding educational experience for their students, as we learn from an Ontario-based study outlining the successes or lack thereof, seen among public elementary and high schools throughout the province. Some schools, in some small towns distinguish themselves by the quality of the educational experience they offer to their charges.

And some just kind of plug along. Imagine your child attending a small school, meant to hold up to 250 students, but latterly school enrolment having gradually fallen well below the 200-student mark, classes become combined, so one teacher will provide the educational needs for split grades. It seems to work reasonably well. And there are many teachers who are innovative, patient and determined to discharge their professional obligations to their students in the best possible way.

Some of these teachers are truly leaders in their field, an inspiration to others, doing a difficult and needful job. Some teachers are truly professional in the seriousness of their regard for the students whom they teach. For others it’s just a job. They may have gone into the profession with a high-minded intent, but somehow, along the way, become dispirited and disinterested and disengaged. It does happen. It is, after all, a very high-stress profession. For which teachers in Canada unlike their counterparts in the United States, are generously compensated. Their remuneration is far higher, in recognition of what they are meant to achieve, and in recognition of the difficulties inherent in instilling a love for learning in children, and stimulating it. Or, at the very least, somehow managing not to stifle children’s natural affinity for learning.

Many succeed, some with a great deal of difficulty, and many do not. If a child is fortunate enough, he/she will experience the full range; exposure to well-intentioned but inadequate teaching methods taught by an indifferent teacher; exposure to a perennially-enthusiastic, determined and brilliant teacher who justifies her pride in her profession by discharging her obligations with flying colours. And, of course, everything in between those extremes.

For those children, in their formative years, being exposed to a teacher who is functionally incapable of managing a classroom of lively students without bullying them, without collapsing into a jelly of self-pity, without boring them with her/his personal problems, without failing to adequately ensure that children fully understand one lesson before moving on to the next, the school year can present as a total failure.

Under those circumstances, the school experience represents a tidemark of failure because the teacher has failed to guide the class toward the advances they are required to make throughout the school year. Particularly gifted children, those with a good memory, those with plenty of help from parents who have the time, the inclination, the understanding and the functional knowledge, can manage to retrieve something from the school year. But little thanks due to the teacher.

Parents have a tendency to overlook these unfortunate failures, simply because they recall their own experiences when they were young, coping with a teacher whose abilities and dedication to her task were insufficient to the job at hand. They sigh, recall that they managed to get over it and get on with their lives and trust that their children will, too. Adversity, after all, is no stranger to any of our lives. We must learn, even at a young, impressionable age -- perhaps particularly then to a degree -- that life sometimes is a struggle, just as true in the learning environment of a dysfunctional classroom, as it is later on in life when we must balance social interactions and workplace problems to find our own authentic place.

It does, however, behoove us all to give some thought to the tender sensibilities of adolescents, those children on the cusp of young adulthood, still clinging to childhood, confused by the change-over, by their hormones busy transforming them physically and confusing them psychically. They are taught -- by example, one trusts -- to respect others, to view with a certain equanimity differences between people, and to give equal weight to one another’s right to be slightly different, whether that difference manifests itself by culture, traditions, heritage, ethnicity, ideology or skin colour. Above all, they are taught to be deferential to authority, beginning with their parents, transferring to their teachers, and perhaps culminating with those who have seen far more of life than they have.

Society does have a hierarchy of respect due. In the same token, respect for the individuality of young people, their aspirations and their dignity should be reciprocated. Children are sent to school by parents anxious to ensure their children have the benefit of a decent education. There are alternate options, including home schooling, but there is no opting out of parental responsibility to have children schooled. Correspondingly, parents have a social obligation to have taught their children basic respect for others. Their children have every right to expect that they themselves will be respected.

How respectful is it of the rights of children to be schooled in a functioning environment when a teacher descends to hysterics on an ongoing basis? Accusing her class of stupidity, of failing to obey her injunctions, and treating them in the process to days surfeit with screaming and ranting at them. Collectively and singly. Take, for example, a mixed grade 7 and 8, and you have a room full of pre-teens, balanced by teen-agers. That is a potent mix. But a teacher with a calm demeanour, one imbued with emotional balance and experience in the classroom should be quite capable of influencing her class to pay attention, to settle down, and to eschew verbal outbursts.

With their own teacher continually berating them, impugning the level of their intelligence, screaming loudly for what seems to the class for hours at a time in high dudgeon over what they have collectively, or some unfortunate student singly has done to irritate the teacher, they have her example. When the teacher engages in hysterical outbursts of uncontrolled anger and bullying, how is it a surprise that the class then finds it difficult to respect her?

Of course, if they don’t respect her, they forbear to listen to her injunctions and have a tendency to ‘act out’. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And an endless circuit of dysfunctionality.

And take, for example, a principal of the school who, observing these things occurring -- particularly as this particular teacher has a pronounced tendency to send those pupils who have mightily displeased her ‘down to the office’, and occasionally to the attention of the principal, because she is incapable of dealing with them -- tries to understand what is happening. Having spoken tentatively to the teacher, and having received the information that the class is impossible, comprised of halfwits and stubbornly-raucous misfits, she decides to take a different tack.

She sets aside time from her schedule to call a conference. While the teacher takes half of the class off to gym, the principal sits down with the other half, those representing the grade 8 students. And she asks them what is going on, and why. Some of the children are silent, reluctant to say anything. A few do speak up, and relate to the principal that while it is true that some of the students are hard to handle, it’s a very few students who are actually trouble-makers. And one of them is a boy who has an anger management problem. Which the principal well knows, having integrated him into the regular stream.

The other students also know this and are careful to stay out of this boy’s way, although occasionally he will swing out in anger, usually at another boy, but occasionally at a girl. That, however, is not the problem. The problem is, one says, that their teacher cannot control her anger, lashes out at them, and upsets everyone unnecessarily. Her behaviour, one girl claims, is far worse than the obstreperous behaviour of the younger boys who are admittedly sometimes ill behaved.

The principal turns her attention to this girl, and asks her if she will elaborate. And the girl does. She speaks her mind and tells the principal that she resents the fact that the classroom is not one conducive to a good learning environment. She is aggrieved that their teacher will not control her physical outbursts which, when they occur, upset everyone. And only serve to further enrage the teacher herself. If she starts out the day in a bad mood, that mood only seems to increase in feverish accusations and screaming the rest of the day.

The principal listens, quietly, thoughtfully. And when the girl is finished, the principal turns to the others sitting there and asks what they think of what they’ve just heard. They are in complete agreement. The principal ends the session, thanks all of the students, turns to the outspoken girl and asks if she is prepared to say what she just told the principal, directly to her teacher. The girl says she is prepared to do just that.

But it never happens. Although directly after this little conference the students who were in attendance spoke among themselves about whether they would see some changes take place, and some of them thought it would happen, some thought nothing would change. The outspoken girl said she thought it wasn’t likely anything was about to change.

And she was right. And, funny thing that, although the teacher continued abusing the class, bullying them, harassing them, claiming they were idiots all, and if a student approached her to ask for help with a particular subject her reward would be a snarl that if she’d been listening adequately in the first place she wouldn’t be asking for help afterward, nothing was said to the outspoken girl.

Fact is, that outspoken girl seemed to be a favourite target of the teacher. Who would speak to the girl disparagingly of her single mother, unable to come to night-time occasions at the school. And who seemed forever openly critical of everything the girl did. Oh, not always, occasionally there was a flicker of appreciation for something the girl had done. Her marks more or less reflected her impeccable slate of completed assignments, and her interest and engagement with those school subjects she found she could relate to readily.

She hated it when the teacher became personal, remarked on things she had no right to do. It wasn’t bad when she was cited approvingly for helping a shy boy find a place for himself in the class. But when the teacher castigated her for breaking off a long-standing friendship with one of the other students, taking the other student’s side in an issue that had nothing to do with the teacher and everything to do with familial abuse which the affected girl carried over into her personal relationships with others, she took offence.

And then, wasn’t it quite amazing when, several months after that principal-student conference, the outspoken girl was called to the office and given a ‘certificate of appreciation’ for having the courage to speak up and give her version of events as they had occurred, though nothing was done to ameliorate the situation. 

 

 

Dauntless Spirits, Great Adventures

 

Those people who willingly, eagerly venture into unknown territory, geology- or weather-hostile regions of the Globe present as a puzzling anomaly in basic human psyche for Nature has genetically hard-wired us with an irresistible urgency to survive. Yet these dauntless - some might venture -- deliberately heedless adventurers -- seek out danger, defy fear in the intent to confront their inner daemons opposing inherited existential caution.

How many among us is willing to expose ourselves to extremes of danger, privation, disease and the vagaries of chance and happenstance? Do they value life any less than we do? Or has nature tricked them into the belief that some spiritual power, within themselves or beyond, hovers protectively over them?

What irresistible siren of compulsion calls them to their destiny? What indomitable will and iron-strength of purpose propels them to forge on in the very face of Grim Death in defiance of their biological imperative?

They embark on their search for meaning and purpose, meeting head on the capricious neutrality of their maker; Divine Nature. Some live on to marvel at their escape from the uneven contest, some write inspiring narratives of conquest and the majesty of nature; the curious needs of humankind fulfilled.

There are solemn, respectful obituaries recognizing the mortal fallibility of aspirants. And account after revelation of those consumed by their need, who wander from ascent and encounter one after another as though awaiting and inviting the inevitable, leaving mourning loved ones behind, their supra-human exploits their legacy.

This bespeaks an urge of conquest vastly dissimilar to that which took Europeans to horizon-less oceanic stretches fearful to the imagination, in search of wealth and adventure: land, natural resources and the capture of people they thought of as sub-human, in a campaign to enrich their nations by the enslavement of others, through the creation of empire-building.

Leading inevitably to wars and massive blood-letting of both indigenous peoples of those conquered and devastated lands, and competing armies of ascendancy-determined conquerors.
In these searches for discovery and adventure into the great frozen places of the Earth, there is rare intention to discover sources of material wealth, but rather perhaps for some the achievement of fame.

Onlookers, awed by the trials and tribulations facing those resolute souls who venture into those isolated, weather-hostile places wonder who, in their right minds would deliberately seek to inflict excesses of physical misery upon themselves, let alone the psychical torment involved in achieving goals that sometimes elude, sometimes succeed, only to result too often in broken spirits and occasionally death.

Mountaineers face the potential of succumbing to acute mountain sickness which can be morbid depending on the depth of their symptoms, requiring immediate descent. Retinal haemorrhage can result from prolonged high altitude exposure. Diarrhoea related to food poisoning; giardia, amoebic dysentery can be problematic.

Pole trekkers can be exposed to snow blindness, frostbite, boils, bedbugs, fleas, scabies, leaches and blisters, which at extremely low temperatures can be quite different than otherwise. Modern-day mountaineers and pole trekkers have high-tech communication devices and gear and clothing to aid them, but this was not always so.

Douglas Mawson, 1912 expedition to the Antarctic: The awful truth was a blanket of cold fear, invisible, but falling over his entire world, filling the tent, flooding his mind with the terrible, haunting fact. He was alone. All that was human in this accursed place, all that had been alive - friends and dogs - were dead and gone. Loneliness was in the vast wasted land outside in the soughing wind, in the corners of his mind, in his anguish and in the fear for his own safety. He was himself sick, famished and so weak he might collapse at any moment; and he lay stretched out on this floor of snow with the heart-rending truth pinning down his body and his mind. Mertz was dead.
What would he do? What chance had he of living? Very little, he decided. This spot was some 100 miles direct to the hut; ahead ranged the heaving wind-swept-plateau ice, the great, broadly-fractured bed of the glacier, many miles of wicked winding crevasses, and then the long grinding, backbreaking climbs up the steep slopes and ice ramparts to the escarpment near The Crater - to be in sight of Aurora Peak, to leave some record there where they might come seeking his missing party. Yet he was so emaciated that the bitten, snow-clad peak seemed a million miles away. Lennard Bickel

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, June 1911: The horror of the nineteen days it took us to travel from Cape Evans to Cape Crozier would have to be re-experienced to be appreciated; and anyone would be a fool who went again: it is not possible to describe it. The weeks which followed them were comparative bliss, not because later our conditions were better - they were far worse - but because we were callous. I for one had come to that point of suffering at which I did not really care if only I could die without much pain. They talk of the heroism of the dying- - they little know -- it would be so easy to die, a dose of morphia, a friendly crevasse, and blissful sleep. The trouble is to go on ...
It was the darkness that did it. I don't believe minus seventy temperatures would be bad in daylight, not comparatively bad, when you could see where you were going, where you were stepping, where the sledge straps were, the cooker, the primus, the food; could see your footsteps lately trodden deep into the soft snow that you might find your way back to the rest of your load; could see the lashings of the food bags; could read a compass without striking three or four different boxes to find one dry match; could read your watch to see if the blissful moment of getting out of your bag was come without groping in the snow all about; when it would not take you five minutes to lash up the door of the tent, and five hours to get started in the morning...
But in these days we were never less than four hours from the moment when Bill cried "Time to get up" to the time when we got into our harness. It took two men to get one man into his harness, and was all they could do, for the canvas was frozen and our clothes were frozen until sometimes not even two men could bend them into the required shape. From: The Worst Journey in the World

Viscount Milton and Walter Butler Cheadle, 1839: Masses of ice, the size of a man's fist, formed on Cheadle's beard and mustache - the only ones in the company - from the moisture of the breath freezing as it passed through the hair. The oil froze in the pipes we carried about our persons, so that it was necessary to thaw them at the fire before they could be made to draw. The hands could hardly be exposed for a moment, except when close to the fire. A bare finger laid upon iron stuck to it as if glued, from the instantaneous freezing of its moisture. The snow melted only close to the fire, which formed a trench for itself, in which it slowly sank to the level of the ground. The steam rose in clouds, and in the coldest, clearest weather, it almost shrouded the fire from view. The snow was light and powdery, and did not melt beneath the warmth of the foot, so that our moccasins were as dry on a journey as if we had walked through sawdust instead of snow. The parchment windows of our little hut were so small and opaque that we could hardly see even to eat by their light alone, and were generally obliged to have the door open; and then, although the room was very small, and the fire-place very large, a crust of ice formed over the tea in our tin cups, as we sat within a yard of the roaring fire. One effect of the cold was to give a most ravenous appetite for fat. Many a time have we eaten great lumps of lard grease - rancid tallow, used for making candles - without bread or anything to modify it.
Before sleeping, however, it was necessary to secure out of reach of the dogs not only provisions, but snow-shoes, harness, and everything with any skin or leather about it. An Indian dog will devour almost anything of animal origin, and invariably eats his own harness, or his master's snow-shoes, if left within his reach. From: The North-West Passage by Land

Jon Krakauer, 1997: From The Balcony I descended a few hundred feet down a broad, gentle snow gully without incident, but then things began to get sketchy. The route meandered through outcroppings of broken shale blanketed with six inches of fresh snow. Negotiating the puzzling, infirm terrain demanded unceasing concentration, an all but impossible feat in my punch-drunk state.
Because the wind had erased the tracks of the climbers who'd gone down before me, I had difficulty determining the correct route. In 1993, Mike Groom's partner - Lopsang Tshering Bhutia, a skilled Himalayan climber who was a nephew of Tenzing Norgay's - had taken a wrong turn in this area and fallen to his death. Fighting to maintain a grip on reality, I started talking to myself out loud. "Keep it together, keep it together, keep it together," I chanted over and over, mantra-like. "You can't afford to fuck things up here. This is way serious. Keep it together."
I sat down to rest on a broad, sloping ledge, but after a few minutes a deafening BOOM! frightened me back to my feet. Enough new snow had accumulated that I feared a massive slab avalanche had released on the slopes above, but when I spun around to look I saw nothing. Then there was another BOOM! accompanied by a flash that momentarily lit up the sky, and I realized I was hearing the crash of thunder. From: Into Thin Air

Hugh Brody, 1987: Do Inuit live in snow houses? Do they travel by dog team? Do they hunt seals with harpoons? Do they move about, from camp to camp, in a round of seasonal activities? Do they eat raw meat? Do they dry fish in the sun? Do they make igunaaq, "high" meat? Do they wear caribou-skin clothing? Do they speak of weather as the presence of Sila, the air spirit? Do the Dene track moose through the woods on foot? Do they use snares and deadfalls? Do they believe and follow a shamanistic spirituality? Do they think that muskrat played an important role in the creation of the earth? Do Naskapi follow the caribou herds, far inland? Do they dream their way through time? Do they travel in dreams? Do they have summer gathering grounds? Do the Cree move on to winter trapping grounds each year? Do they rely on snowshoes to move through the bush? Do they make hunting cabins each season, and lay spruce boughs as mattresses? Do they make medicines from herbs and roots? Do they use medicine power in spiritual life? Do they trap beaver under the winter ice? Do Innu prepare skins on stretcher frames and boards? Do they depend on the fur trade? Do they wear moccasins? Do they prepare dry meat each autumn as a supply of concentrated protein for the coming seasons? Are children seen as elders reborn?
A simple answer to all these questions is yes. From: Living Arctic; Hunters of the Canadian North

Dr. Jerri Nielsen, 2001: After a few stabbing gulps of thin air I was quickly reminded that I had gained almost two miles in altitude during the three-hour flight from McMurdo. While the plateau was flat as a griddle, it was also as high as the Austrian Alps. The South Pole station rests on a nine-thousand-foot thick slab of ice soaring ninety-three hundred feet above sea level.
...The temperature on the plateau was plummeting. By now it was minus 90 F. and falling, a new record for mid-March. One night I was watching a video with a friend when we heard the most horrible booming noise.
"What's that?" I said.
He said, Oh, it's just the building settling."
It sounded more like the building collapsing. We heard more of these ungodly booms over the next few days as the ice heaved in great cracks under the Dome. People were having more trouble sleeping. Sometimes it sounded like the roof was falling in or the floor was caving or people were stamping their feet overhead. Sometimes it sounded like guns or cannons.
The ice was breaking around us everywhere. Large cracks ran from the front of the galley and then spider-webbed out to the Dome perimeters There was a foot-wide crack over the ice road and a crevasse split what was left of the skiway. From: Icebound

Our Jewish Heritage

There has always been great curiosity expressed with regard to origins; where did it all begin, and how? Geologists, paleontologists, historians, social anthropologists (long before modern science recognized these divisions in intellectual investigation and gave them their present nomenclature) assiduously sifted rock and sand, bones and crockery, deciphered hieroglyphs, pored over ancient writings and tried to make sense of it all. Logically, everything, every phenomenon, be it geologic, biological or cultural-sociographic had to begin somewhere. So where did that peculiar strain of people -- Jews -- originate, and how?

Somewhere in the Middle East, we know. They are grouped, not with Caucasians, but with the Armenids. This originally nomadic, pastoral group had been little documented in the ancient writings of other people, and it is assumed that reference to a group termed 'the Habiru' in casual and brief mention of a group of troublesome nomads is the first recognition of their existence as a distinct group by another and better-lettered early culture.

From that undistinguished beginning we have a people somehow bound together by a common destiny, a gradually enlightened culture, and a homophilic socialization. This group has ascended the heights of human endeavours, both singly and collectively; it has plumbed the depths of human despair and degradation, and somehow, survived intact. An achievement that no other ancient cultural-ethno-social group can claim. From the ranks of this people have come first and foremost, ideas which have revolutionized civilization, concepts which have paved the way to humanistic enlightenment, and moral and legal laws which have fathered those of the entire Western world. Jewish religion, philosophy, art, jurisprudence, medicine has had an impact on the world whose like has not been equalled by any other single group of people.

As humanists millennia ago, it was recognized that all life is sacred, and from that recognition was enacted moral and ethical laws to protect the very quality of life, and life itself. At a time when slavery was common (when it was sometimes a practical economic solution to survival for the chronically indigent) Jewish law proclaimed that every seventh year any person held in bondage should be deemed a free person.

Because of the respect with which the people termed 'the Habiru' viewed life they eschewed common practises seen in casual and brief early cultures that practised human sacrifice as an appeasement to their gods. Jews viewed this practise with repugnance and replaced such sacrifice with animal sacrifice. And to protect animals, strict laws ensuring humane slaughter were encoded.

And though, like most religions a great many prohibitions (meant to protect both the individual and the status of the religion) became ritual dogma, they could be suspended if under special circumstances life would be endangered by their enactment. Jewish law was not meant to be absolutely inflexible. The law-makers recognized human frailty and the need to be elastic in interpretation so that exigencies could be coped with.

Some very early and forward-thinking Jews wrote a wonderful series of literature embodying all possible human conditions, and at the same time they conceived of monotheism, a startling departure from the pantheism (worship of many gods) then customary throughout the early world of religion. Jews, in this context, were enjoined to regard themselves as 'the chosen'. Not particularly 'chosen' as being better or in some manner elevated above their fellow creatures, but as given the responsibility to present a moral example that others might follow and in this indirect way ennoble the world of humankind.

It was a bold decision indeed for a people to determine, even collectively, even involuntarily, to regard themselves as a shining example toward the rest of mankind. Some might term it, with justification, hubristic. But here is where the precept "Act Unto Others" evolves from. If no other guidelines existed for human behaviour, that one alone would suffice.

And the individual was never forgotten. Everyone's 'right' to quality of life was recognized. Welfare or charity then was not the pejorative it has since become. It was the community's responsibility to care for all of its members and this was a responsibility taken seriously, not grudgingly, nor condescendingly.

Children were regarded as a blessing, and they were universally loved, protected and cherished. Education was always held in awe, and avidly sought. Yet the work ethic also was finely ingrained and respected. Uncouth behaviour, which might encompass anything from rudeness to gambling, or a disregard for others, to drinking to excess, was looked upon with revulsion.

Well, it is true that Jews also looked upon themselves, privately, as being distinct, different - other and above. There were Jews, and there were the others - Gentiles. Gentiles could not be presumed to be as steeped in the values and virtues of life as Jews, and therefore, suspect. There was always this great apartness - us and they.

Because of this exclusivity of apprehension, there arose also an exclusivity of thought, and dogmatism crept into the culture, and the interpretation of the popular religion, and Jews often became inward-looking; intellectually and for practical purposes, immune to change. Yet there arose also those who chafed at the bonds imposed and from their ranks came our Thinkers, those who looked further - our two Moseses, our Spinoza, our Marx, our Sholem Aleichem, our Freud, our Herzl, our Einstein, our Chagall.

And there were others - our scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists, writers, philanthropists, jurists, economists, men of medicine, financiers, inventors, industrialists, teachers and yes, even politicians and soldiers. These outstanding and often brilliant people collectively enriched the world with their contribution to the great fund of knowledge being accumulated and utilized.

Although Jewry has produced paragons, it has also produced by far a larger number of quite ordinary folk, the great majority of whom are undistinguishable from those of other backgrounds and traditions. And within the groupings of Jews themselves lie great fractiousness and even bigotry. Social strata have always existed, creating cultural and social ghettos between Jews themselves.

When at one time Sephardim were considered the cultural aristocracy of Jewry, the Ashkenazim were considered the peasantry. With the passage of time that perception has reversed itself, and we see its results in present-day Israel. And Jewish politics is as diverse as the population it represents, further creating internal strife.

Jews, in the collective sense, were in the past imbued with a great vision. Those people have been the progressives, those who stimulate change and progress. Yet these progressives have always been shunned by the established order within the Jewish tradition until the inexorable change occurred and the passage of time softened and blurred their offence, and they were looked upon with pride.

We've produced, as a people, some excellence - and a great deal of dross. Where does the excellence come from, one wonders? As a great amorphous mass of humanity, we've expressed a collective desire to be greater than a mere human might aspire to; greater than the sum of our parts.

We've attempted to be close to a supreme being in our religion; we've tried to behave as the god would have us do. We have tried to better the lot of humankind. Have we succeeded to any great degree? Lamentably, no. The task seems too great. The obstacles placed in the way of fulfillment too overwhelming. Although we have committed ourselves to an ideal which is part way achievable, singly we have not tried to live the ideal nor cared enough for others to strive together to achieve that ideal.

Yet this singular group, with so much potential did return to its roots. A proud and representative number of Diaspora Jews, some by Zionist conviction and zeal, some Holocaust survivors, and others returnees from countries where Jews have not felt comfortable, or have been openly oppressed, live in a state founded in the original land of their forefathers. In that land the ideal was to be realized finally, the dream fulfilled.

For a time it appeared that the original social humanist precepts, the ethics and vision that the prophets of old exhorted; fundamental human values that would enrich the whole while permitting each and every citizen to live with individual grace, would come to pass. The forward thinkers, the socialists, the kibbutzniks, the Labourites, began to fashion the experimental state and the state blossomed, becoming a noble ideal actually fruiting.

Soon, though, the original concept and dedication to egalitarianism gave way gradually to creeping elitism as one social-cultural group disparaged the 'backwardness' of another. And religious fundamentalism with its insistence on strict observance began to force its opinions into state structure.

Hostile neighbours stimulated the siege-mentality which bred militarism, rightist nationalism and xenophobia. In a world that was increasingly perceived as being unsympathetic to Israel, Israel further isolated itself, this time deliberately, by carrying a big stick and using it, and aligning itself with other rightist, nationalist regimes. Once the Labour Party and its socialist precepts was ousted and that of the rightist Likud installed, it could be predicted in which direction Israel, the emotional fount of world Jewry, was headed.

Today an encircled country defies the rest of the world and bitterly denounces its most immediate neighbours. This is bitter gall for a people whose origins, whose roots are so far removed from anti-humanism, from the military ideal, and colonialism.

This situation cannot continue. World Jewry, so possessive and loving of Israel, for the first time begins to caution that country that its focus and mentality must undergo a change and direct itself more in keeping with its traditional view of itself, and its people.

Israelis, stricken by their own hapless direction, ambivalent about their feelings toward their neighbours, uncertain of their country's future, are beginning to re-assess national policy and their own place in the world structure.

There will be a turn-about to the spirit which underlies that elusive, little-understood element, the Jewish soul; sensitivity to one's fellow companions on the earth. And with that change in direction Jews will once more strive to fulfill an ancient precept, and to charge themselves again with the responsibility of the 'example' of the chosen.

This essay was written decades ago. The extent to which Israel finds itself currently in desolation in reflection of the aligned malevolence gathered against its existence dedicated to itself as a Jewish State while still accepting within its borders, its scope of acceptance of non-Jews and offering them citizenship and an equality seen nowhere else in the near geography does fulfill its obligation to itself and to the world at large. The government in power labelled as 'right wing' is an administration with few choices but to persevere and continue to prosecute Israel's case before a hostile world while forced to engage its deadly enemies in an existential battle for survival.

On Being Jewish

 

Why the thumb-sucking introspection, the solemn navel-gazing which appears to leap at one from the pages of declaratory writings, of activity outlines, of goals and achievements? Why is it always so necessary for the writer (for his/her benefit or that of the pre-supposed readers) to declaim Jewishness? As though, by the very fact of being Jewish, there is a subtle (for most) unmistakable entree into the world of goodness, sensitivity, concerned activism, sterling achievements, scholasticism, modesty and intelligence. Is the fact of Jewishness tacitly acknowledged then, as the catalyst for particular sentience and achievement? Would the genetic imprinting and early environment of this person sans Jewishness not have resulted similarly?

Why is it that we metaphorically outline, underline, capitalize on, shout to the world, Jewish! Is it like a child's game proclaiming Head Start?

There's a kind of security blanket of comfort for most in 'belonging' to any group, for we are basically gregarious in character as biological organisms. We derive comfort from 'company'. Biologically we are also somewhat xenophobic. The comfort which we derive is not a bad thing in and of itself. Some individuals feel the need to delve completely into groups comprised of like individuals, all demonstrating (or professing to) similar tendencies. For others, it is merely enough to identify at a distance, taking some comfort from the satisfaction of knowing the group is there, and selecting one's 'contacts' with the focus on tribe being a secondary consideration to others perhaps more compelling in the context of modern society.

The deleterious component of this identification is the smugness involved in feeling oneself part of this 'distinguished' group, which excludes all others (unworthy) from the circle of its intimacy. The degree of smugness can range from a tiny inner feeling of being 'part of', all the way to overt symptoms of personality-elevation - social and moral superiority.

If one believes in old adages, behavioural precepts, morals and biblical injunctions, one should be aware that the Chosen People were a random choice scripturally selected to demonstrate to the world at large moral fibre and uprightness, consideration for the fellow man, and a willingness to live as one with all others.

True, the original goal was to diminish the ranks of those 'not chosen' (anyone outside the immediate tribe). Proselytization was soon recognized as being no means of achieving the goal, but example was. By the very goodness of their behaviour the tribe was meant to gradually impress upon all others its sterling mode of living and values until peace reigned through the prime observation of 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.

Someone, or some far-seeing group with an enhanced sense of universal responsibility and idealism must have reasoned that surely goodness would prevail eventually. The original precept, during the early cultural evolution of which we speak, was quickly subverted to reflect other, far less laudatory imperatives. We haven't come very far, since then.

If, however, the original precept was the unifying factor (however since translated) which held the tribe together, it is nothing short of amazing that these ancient precepts (subverted and often gone badly awry in many respects to be sure) still adhere. But the germ of the idea of 'chosen' and the moral responsibilities incumbent upon a people to render sterling example exists still, however subliminally, within the understanding and the psyche of the group. How much is due to the original purposeful catalyst and how much to intervening happenstance of history, encumbered by tradition, culture, social awareness and an 'idea' of a common root, is a moot point. History and culture remain, of course, the unifying ingredient.

Which brings me right back to my original query... One feels intrinsically 'special' as a Jew. With no affiliations to specific Jewish organizations, no religious acknowledgement, adherence to custom or anything remotely (on the surface, in any event) unifying, one has this gift of existence and it is generally perceived to be very precious indeed. And if one feels that to carry the gift with one honourably one must obey the original injunctions to the best of one's ability, all the better; we have, doubtless, a better human being. Surely not at all better than a Muslim, a Protestant, a Buddhist, a Catholic with similar sensibilities however derived, but a better person withal.

So why insistence on overt identification? All too often one's name, facial features, manner of address, proclaim all too clearly to the world the obvious; why trumpet it out additionally, if not for the purpose of raising the barriers of sensitivity. To ensure the world knows with a certainty that one is proud, unique, and has few equals outside the tribe? Why not be assured the goal at onset can be achieved without diminishing the value of others? It seems obvious that this critical redundancy continues through an errant sense of arrogance, a self-perceived group superiority.

And it is just quite possible that such a distinction has become a great aid at times of need, a comprehensive assurance to one's self that the world outside the tribe which has rejected The Jew -- at times culturally and socially dismissively, and on other occasions with ferocious group violence -- selectively seen as an outlier in any mainstream society where the diaspora has taken them, is a mode of defiance, a declaration of 'We're here -- deal with it!!' And they do.