Hate tirades against Jews and “Zionists” demonically dominate the airwaves throughout the Islamic world; mosque sermons, demonstrations, UN meetings, and university lectures around the world keep up the steady drumbeat: Pigs have descended from Jews—which is why Muslims cannot eat pigs; Israelis are to blame for Palestinian suffering and, until that specific suffering is alleviated, the President of the United States cannot ask Iran to halt its nuclear progress.
I grow weary, disconsolate.
More than seven years ago, when I first sounded the alarm about the new anti-Semitism, I was given a massive brush off by some of the same Jewish organization leaders who are, only now, screaming “gevalt” from the rooftops.
I was certainly not heeded by the Jewish Left which instantly demonized me as a traitor and heretic for having exposed the betrayal of the truth and of the Jews by the world’s progressivist intelligentsia. But then, this group has never met a terrorist they didn’t adore.
Moderate, fashionable American Jews—you know, the kind who risked nothing to protest the recent persecution of innocent AIPAC officials, the obscene imprisonment of Jonathan Pollard, the even more treacherous kidnapping and disappearance of Gilad Schalit, the perpetual shelling of Sderot from Gaza—some of these Jews have now begun screaming for a “two state solution,” as if signing on to this mantra will truly save and redeem us.
Well, perhaps—but only if that “two state” solution includes the huge, uninhabited land of both Jordan and Egypt. Apparently, the West Bank and Gaza do not have enough land to support the number of Palestinians (who have been refused citizenship in every Arab country) who would flood the too-tiny region. However, neither Jordan nor Egypt really want the Palestinians; every Arab knows that they (their terrorist and gangsta leaders, now backed by Iran and Syria) spell Big Trouble. They brutally take over, civilian populations and ruling regimes alike, and are currently advancing an Islamist agenda.
I am weary.
And, the evil at hand is far bigger than what happens only to Jewish Israel. As I’ve written many times: Israel and the Jews are the symbol for all that Islamists fear, hate, and long for in the West. Israel and the West, however imperfect, stand for life, the rule of law, compassion, progress, women’s freedom; al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Taliban stand for death, and the desire to return to the Middle Ages and/or to a new world Caliphate.
While infidels are definitely in the cross-hairs of Islamist desire, their lifetime practice targets are other Muslims. Islamists are honor killing Muslim girls and women; the Islamist Republics of Iran and Saudi Arabia are stoning, whipping, amputating, and hanging Muslim women who allege rape, Muslim women who march for women’s rights, and any Muslim suspected of being gay.
The Muslim Taliban in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are poison-gassing Muslim schoolgirls, beheading their opponents, blowing up innocent Muslim civilians hither and yon—and yet our very charismatic Christian President Obama bows to the Saudi King, (yes, the very man who bankrolls hate propaganda against America and allows the worst human rights abuses to proliferate in the Kingdom), and the Pope insists that he respects Islam, Muslims, and Palestinian leaders. Yes, even as Pakistani Muslims, West Bank Muslims, and Lebanese Muslims are slaughtering and persecuting Christians who are indigenous to the region, the Pope says this, perhaps as a way of trying to save them.
Oy, am I disconsolate.
Where is my consolation? Of course, the very words lead me to my answer: God, music, books, nature, (how old-fashioned can I be?), art, and congenial, soft-spoken, cultured people.
Thus, the other evening, I attended a magnificent art exhibit curated by the Dutch-Jewish artist, Yona Verwer, who founded the Jewish Art Salon together with Holly Wolf, Laura Kruger, Richard McBee, and David Wander. Yona is a friend and a shul-mate.
Yona arranged for a small group of us to have a tour of the intimate, “haimesche” Stanton Street (Anshei Brzezan) Synagogue which welcomed its first members in 1913. By the way: A “synagogue” or a “temple,” is also known as a “shul,” a word which retains more of an Eastern European family feeling.
The wooden benches are incredibly small and worn—used, scratched, faded—remarkably dear. I tried out one of the tiny single seats in the women’s balcony and wondered whether our early twentieth century ancestors were that much smaller than we are. There are stained glass windows and at least twelve wall murals which are faded and decomposing—but, with the help of conservators from the Metropolitan Museum, will be carefully restored. So sayeth our excellent tour guide, “Esther Malka,” aka Elissa Sampson. And what unusual wall murals they are!
They are known as “Mazoles” (as in Mazel! Luck), and consist of Jewish Zodiac renditions which were once prevalent throughout the Lower East Side and all over eastern Europe. They represent a nearly two thousand year old tradition and date back to synagogues in Roman times. Such murals may be found in synagogues near Tiberias, Hebron, Nazareth, Turkey, and in Poland and the Ukraine, often in small towns. Most were destroyed in the Holocaust. The human form is never shown. But, in addition to the scales, two birds, a bull, an archer’s bow, a goat, a fish– a decidedly non-kosher lobster is, amazingly, depicted! (Some say that the artist believed this was what a scorpion looked like). For more information, you may visit Elissa Sampson’s website.
The art exhibit took up two floors and was simply splendid. It distracted me from my gloomy contemplations of politics and human destiny. By the way, not every artist is Jewish but the themes are. The Akeida (near-sacrifice of Issac) is depicted in unexpected ways, as is the story of Adam and Eve, Ruth and Boaz, Judah and Tamar, the death of Cain, etc. Yona’s “Temple Talismans: Stanton Shul Amulets” are beautiful and the concept appealing, perhaps even practical.
For my part, I have begun to wear a beautiful, artistic engraving of the “Sh’ma,” (a prayer central to Judaism), on a gold chain around my neck. Can’t hurt.
Information: The art at the Stanton Street Synagogue is for sale and if I were you, I’d hurry down to 180 Stanton Street between Clinton and Attorney Streets. The exhibit: “Tzelem: Likeness and Presence in Jewish Art” will be open Wed, Thurs, and Sunday through May 17th and is presented in conjunction with LABA, the National Laboratory for New Jewish Culture at the 14th Street Y.
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14 Comments
1. George Jochnowitz:The following dialgue is taking place between jihadists and the Left:
Jihadists: Kill the Jews.
May 15, 2009 - 10:28 am 2. Fern Sidman:The Left: We understand you. You want an end to settlements.
Jihadists: Kill the jews.
The Left: Of course. You want freedom of movement without checkpoints.
Jihadists; Kill the Jews.
The Left: How poetic your language is. You want an independent state.
Jihadists: Kill the Jews.
What a great post!! As to the progressivist intelligentsia that is the vanguard of the Jewish Left, you hit the proverbial nail on the head when you say that they’ve “never met a terrorist they didn’t adore.”
What a tragic and perverted rendition of what they believe to be Jewish values.
Now, on to other subjects of similar importance. Where can I get the Shema amulet that you mention that you wear around your neck? Any form of Mazal at this juncture would be exceptionally helpful.
May 15, 2009 - 10:30 am 3. Norman Simms:Dearest Phyllis
You have every right to feel weary and despondent, and you have the deeper personal, cultural and spiritual resources not to give in to those feelings.
Yes, I agree that art and literature, music and dance, architecture and city-planning, in other words, civilization is our only way out of the deep morass, this seeemingly bottomless pit of despond.
But such a moral and ethical civilization cannot be a mere dream or idealized memory: we all have to work hard, every day of each one of our lives, to keep it functioning, growing and expanding.
Oh, God Almighty, it is a monumental and eternal struggle!
Thank you, Phyllis Chesler, for being there for all of us. T
Thank you, my dear friend and mentor, for your insight, your courage, and your articulation of all the things we feel but so often cannot find the words to speak.
Norman
May 15, 2009 - 11:16 am 4. A.Nonymous:Phyllis:
May 15, 2009 - 11:29 am 5. Howard Rotberg:You said, “…But then, this group has never met a terrorist they didn’t adore.” If you’re right (as I suspect you are) the answer is simple: We need to become terrorists!
To my dear (sister) Phyllis: I feel like you are my sister because although we have exchanged many emails, we have never met. You gave me consolation when my novel The Second Catastrophe was banned and when the Canadian Jewish community and the author’s rights community, and the civil rights community all shunned me because I challenged their idiotic cultural relativism and moral equivalency. You wrote about me, when the print media in Canada were too afraid. You wrote to me, wrote about me, and that STRENGTHENED me.
The least we can all do is write you and consol you. You are a righteous woman who has demonstrated the moral courage to go along with your intellectual gifts.
You have close friends and grateful readers, who have never met you. You have restored our faith that there remain intellectuals who understand that all morality stems from values of the Torah, and not the nonsense of the liberal left that we must only be “tolerant”. You remind people that “Justice, Justice shall you pursue” in the Torah refers to individual rights and leftists who assert communal rights and cultural relativism are our enemies, not our friends, even if they happen to be Jewish. Console yourself, sister, you are right; there is no more any Left vs. Right, there is only “right” as in “correct”, and you are right.
May 15, 2009 - 1:35 pm 6. MiamaMan:[I grow weary, disconsolate.]
1) Yes, go ahead Phyllis, you are not alone. We can cry a little together, or else.
2) Jews must understand that their Holocaust is not unique. Unique is the Shoa (a very pregnant Hebrew world that belongs to Jews).
3) Perhaps the 4 greatest crimes of the 20th century besides the Shoa and Stalinism, are the Armenian genocide, the Porrajmos, the Pol Pot affair, and the Rwanda genocide. All 4 are not well known. On the Armenian genocide, Turkey has spent, and continues to spend, millions of dollars on cover up, and that was 100 years ago.
4) We now know that a genocidal holocaust must have at least 2 main ingredients: a) Purpose b) Planning. All those mentioned above comply. There are more.
5) But if I were to measure the different holocausts using the assessment by Shoa survivor Rabbi Emil Fackenheim of “Absolute Evil”, I must say that it is the Porrajmos. This word in Romani (main gypsy dialect in Europe), means “the great devouring”.
6) Devoid of support, hated by their neighbors, abandoned to the follies of Nazi racial laws, like children in a Maelstrom, 400,000 gypsies were exterminated (Vernichtung!) by the Nazis. I can’t remember a Jew raising his voice about them, nor even the Pope. No, no, that probably diminishes the Shoa.
May 15, 2009 - 5:15 pm 7. Max Friedman:Re “the Jewish left” and “moderation, fashionable American Jews”.
The first group are traitors to Judaism, to Israel and to America – their own country. Let’s stop beating around the bush and call them what they really are – communists (belong to a Party), marxists (belong to a movement or thought cult), partyless socialists (or marxist-lites), and nasty SOBs. If you want to understand the word “slime”, talk to them – I.F. Stone (KGB and CPUSA); Leonard Bernstein (CPUSA); Victor Navasky (the worst of the slimeballs, a CPUSA protector); Rabbi Balfor Brickner (what was he doing supporting Wilfred Burchett, a Soviet KGB agent, Australian Communist Party member, and possible Red Chinese military officer – re Korean War); Michael Lerner (Seattle Liberation Front/SDS/ Tikkun, etc). Arthur Waskow (Institute for Policy Studies) along with IPS marxist Marcus Raskin; Cora “I’m just a Jewish housewife from Brooklyn” Weiss (and my father was a Comintern agent/CPUSA member, and my husband is and was a German communist and we all support IPS); etc.
As Madelaine Kahn sang in “Blazing Saddles”, “I’m tired, so tired” of all this Bullsh*it.
“Progressive Jews” was just communist talk for Party members and their sympathizers and dupes. Some grew up and left the Party, but the Party didn’t leave some of them. They are still around in a newer generation of Israel-haters, Castro-lovers such as Jodie Evans and Media Benjamin of Code Pink(o), a hardcore communist sympathizing group who supports Castro, Chavez and Ortega, just to name a few Israel and Jew-hating communist dictators.
The same for the International Solidarity Movement Jews.
They get a lot of press while decent pro-Israel Jews are called fascists and genocidists.
As for the “moderate, fashionable American Jews”, they are useless cowards, sheep for the shearing, the lemming of Lvov, those who refused to read and believe “Mein Kampf.” I’m afraid my relatives were among those because they died in Lvov/Lemberg, or Belzec or Auschwitz (because they stayed in Austria when they were warned to leave).
Among these fashionable American Jews are many of Obama’s key advisors – Rahm Emanuel, who used to belong to my shual; David Axelrod (whose whole story has not yet been revealed); and others who are detroying America, one piece at a time – the banks; mortgage companies; the auto industry; the coal industry; defense projects; Gitmo; war crimes investigation threats; the food industry; etc.
And who is going as representatives of Obama to Syria – two Jewish foreign service officers, that’s who. Ain’t that sweet?
We are in an age of the “New KAPO”, often funded by an old KAPO, George Soros, and the Jewish Left and fashionable Jews think that everything is fine.
Why doesn’t the concept of “Germany and the 1930’s” ring warning bells anymore? We are running out of “Jewish canaries in the coal mines” of the world – Jews should be put on the Endangered Species List – because we are. Check any historical map of the world between 1930 and 2009 and see where Jews are NO LONGER PRESENT. Then get back to me if you want to argue.
We can no longer afford to have “a progressive, Jewish Left” or “moderate fashionable American Jews”. One will betray you thru guile and design; the other thru gullibility and stupidity. Either way, we lose unless what is left of American Jewry wakes up and start to shake the foundations of heaven and earth.
May 15, 2009 - 8:07 pm 8. George Jochnowitz:MiamaMan,
Among the very many books by Jews who have written about the Holocaust, you might want to read the following:
Gilad Margalit, GERMANY AND ITS GYPSIES
Henry Friedlander, THE ORIGINS OF NAZI GENOCIDE
Ina Friedman, THE OTHER VICTIMS
I don’t know whether you have ever gone to a Save Darfur rally, but if you have, you certainly must have seen that a disproportionately large percentage of the demonstrators are visibly Jewish.
Nevertheless, the Holocaust was indeed unique, since the Nazis had no conflict of interest whatsoever with the Jews. Nazis loved musicians and academics, and Jews were highly represented in both groups. They desperately needed atomic scientists and knew it, but they drove all the atomic scientists from Germany and its allies (Italy, Hungary) to America, where Einstein, Teller, Szilard, and Fermi (married to a Jew and therefore Jewish under the Nuremberg Laws) could share their knowledge about nuclear weapons. When the Soviet Army was advancing, Hitler decided it was more important to use trains to transport as many Jews as possible to Auschwitz before the end of the war rather than utilizing the railroads to support (or evacuate) his troops.
Hitler, who talked about the superiority Aryans, didn’t care that the Gypsies were Aryans. Once the death camps were operating, he was ready to use them for unpopular minorities. But if Hitler hadn’t decided to exterminate the Jews, he never would have attacked the Guypsies.
Hitler talked about the biological inferiority of Semites, but he cooperated with Arab leaders, most notably the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
We live in a world where everybody hates everybody else. Nevertheless, anti-Semitism is the most prevalent, the most lasting, and the most pointless of prejudices.
May 15, 2009 - 8:49 pm 9. MiamaMan:8. George Jochnowitz:
I agree with most of what you wrote, but still think there have been, before and after Hitler, several episodes that qualify as a Holocaust.. For me, the litmus test is whether there was a purpose and planning. Take the Armenians, the Turks killed have their population at the time. Purpose and planning here? Definitely. The Porrajmos again, also qualifies as well.
I have read many books on the Shoa, and specialize in “Aktion Reinhard” (Belzec – Sobibor – Treblinka – Chelmno) under SS Gruppenfuhrer Odilo Globocnik (BTW, Odilo did not have German blood, he was a Germanized Slovenian). That’s why I keep in contact with Sobibor survivor Thomas Blatt. The will behind Aktion Reinhard set up was an obscure Nazi who I consider probably the worst of the worst: Krimminal Kommissar Haupmant Christian Wirth from Stuttgart who had been in charge of the Euthanasia program in Germany. Interestingly enough, even though Wirth was supposed to report to Odilo, he had access directly to the Fuhrer Chancellery through Phillip Bouler, what corroborates that Hitler was totally involved and pushing behind the scenes. Michael Tregenza lives in Lublin and he is the real expert. Also, retired Scotland Yard detective Robin O’Neil in England has written extensively on the subject, and the info is available through the Internet.
There is not such a thing as an Aryan race, by the way. The gypsies migrated from India, Aryan is a term used in the Vedas as an adjective for a certain condition for individuals that followed the Dharma. The Nazis distorted the term, as they did with the Swastika, which is also a Indian symbol.
Yes, we live in that world you described, on that you seem to accept Blaise Pascal’s pronouncement that there is very little good deep down in the human being, that’s why a leap toward a new Supramental man or Gnostic species is of the essence. Mind you, this would not be an aggrandized man, for then you get again the Nietzsche ubermensch, the SS man, and we know what happened. No, this must be a spiritualized being that manifest the Divine on earth.
May 16, 2009 - 5:14 am 10. MiamaMan:7. Max Friedman:
Max, right on the money.
The only thing I can add is the believe by Eric Hoffer that Western Jews at the turn of the 19th century had lost their identity, were frustrated, and flocked to mass movements. Notice the number of Jews around Lenin *who himself was 1/4 Jew). Trotsky, Livinov, Kaganovish, and many others.
The mass movement in question here is one that uses the 2 most charged, and empty, slogans that probably has been used to deceive the masses since time immemorial: HOPE and CHANGE. The same movement that is trying to restructure organizations like Acorn, and community organizers of different caliper, followers of Saul Alinsky (also Jew), to intimidate by showing up unannounced at your home to bully you if you dissent with them. Remember Obama reminded those CEOs that “I am in between you and the pitchforks”, a very troublesome statement for a president to make, not unlike the slip of the tongue he had with Joe the Plumber that almost cost him the elections.
May 16, 2009 - 5:35 am 11. George Jochnowitz:MiamaMan,
I believe people are good, as I explain in my essay
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Blessed.html
and in my book, THE BLESSED HUMAN RACE.
It is blind faith, whether religious or political, that leads good people to do bad things because they think they are being virtuous.
“Semitic” and “Aryan” are terms for language families, but because of Wilhelm Marr, who invented the word “anti-Semite,” people began to use them as ethnic terms, which of course makes no sense. Marr felt he had to create a new word because of the danger that Jews who had become atheists or Christians might no longer be considered Jewish. Marr said they should be hated, whatever their religion, because of their “Semitic race.”
The authors I mentioned in my post #8 were people who wrote about the Nazi extermination of the Gypsies.
May 17, 2009 - 10:46 am 12. ahad ha'amoratsim:Phyllis, the literal meaning of Mazal IS constellation — a favorable constellation (literally a “Mazal Tov”) was thought to bring good fortune. Hence the name Mazoles for pictures of constellations.
May 18, 2009 - 1:30 pm 13. MiamaMan:11. George Jochnowitz:
George;
Whereas Semitic could be ascribed to a certain family of languages, “Aryan”, in my opinion, cannot. For the latter, you were probably referring to the Indo-Iranian family of languages. There is also a Sanskritic family of languages that includes Bengali, Hindi, and Gujarati.
The term “Aryan” is specifically a Vedic term. Max Muller, principally, and other Indologists, created the myth of the Aryan Invasion theory out of several dubious passages in the Rg Veda and because it served their opinion of the supremacy of the white race, thus the so-called Aryan race was born. This theory has been largely debunked. The British used this myth to create as much divide as possible between the lighter northern Indians and the darker Dravidians from the South.
Then the Nazis readily accepted the so-called “Aryan race” that never existed. That was my contention when you wrote that “the gypsies were Aryan”. Actually, Heinrich Himmler, in his ignorance, thought so too. The gypsies came from India.
The definition of Aryan in the Rg Veda is: Those who have accepted a particular type of self-culture, of inward and outward practice, of idea and aspiration. Also reflected well-governed life, candor, courtesy, nobility, straight dealing, courage, gentleness, purity, humanity, compassion, protection of the weak, liberality, observance of social duty, eagerness of knowledge, respect for the wise and learned, the social accomplishments. It was the combined ideal of the Brahmana (religious) and the Kshatriya (warrior).
May 19, 2009 - 8:03 am 14. MiamaMan:11. George Jochnowitz:
I believe people are good, as I explain in my essay
http://www.jochnowitz.net/Essays/Blessed.html
As for your contention that people are good, it seems to be in opposition to what you wrote above, quoting your post # 8: “We live in a world where everybody hates everybody else”.
That why I thought it was a Pascalian statement.
As per your essay although is very humanist, does not concur with my views of things. Eric Hoffer also wrote that the only solution of humanity is to become more human. But there is a limit to humanism or humanization. There is nothing new under the sun. Humanity goes around in a widening circle.
The Mundaka Upanishad I.2.8 states:
“They live and move in the Ignorance and go round and round, battered and stumbling, like blind men led by one who is blind.”
And the Rg Veda, VII 60.5 says:
“These are they who are conscious of the much falsehood in the world; they grow in the house of Truth, they are the strong and invincible sons of Infinity.”
We must admit the necessity of evil and falsehood in the workings of the Divine. Man is a mixture of both. It is sometimes reasoned that as Truth and Good have their absolutes, so Falsehood and Evil must also have their absolutes, or, if it is not so, then both must belong to the relativity only.
But whereas Truth and Good are absolute and eternal, falsehood and evil are not.
The origin of evil is Avidya, Ignorance, which is THE PERCEPTION OF THE NON-EXISTENT, AND THE NON-PERCEPTION OF THE EXISTENT.
For Humanity to save itself, it must leap above and beyond itself.
May 19, 2009 - 8:23 am