9 Comments

The City of Light. Moscow labours under the premise that it is the third Rome. Well, as long as the first Rome is doing a better job
than the second or third Rome, in holding up the light of liberty so that more lands may benefit from the benefits of liberty; Rome is more consequential than Constantinople or Moscow.

As long as the measuring stick of someone is who they are at that time, lots of stuff get justified. Even those things outside of Aristotle’s golden mean, or what the far-east referred to as the Mandate of Heaven.

Have you been to the “scola” (shul), Judeo-Italian for “sinagoga” (synogogue), in the old ghetto? I haven’t been there since 1968. The women’s section is at a rather high altitude, but the service is fascinating. I would be curious to know whether the traditional Italian way of pronouncing Hebrew is still used. Perhaps you can go there on Sciabadde (Sabbath). You might ask some of the people there whether anti-Israel sentiment has been growing among the Italian public.

We lived in Rome 1956-58 when my husband had a Fulbright scholarship in music composition. We had a modern furnished apartment (with heat!) near the Porta Latina in the southern part of town and made many Italian friends. One evening while strolling in the ghetto we wondered (in English) if Jews still lived there, whereupon a woman on the top floor of a tenement leaned out and said to us: Shalom aleichem. The Italians are among the most tolerant people on earth so fears of anti-semitism and anti-Israel sentiment are unfounded.
We have accomodated numerous Italians in our B&B in recent years and they are as lively, friendly and open-minded as ever, though they are strongly opposed to Berlusconi and what has happened to Italy under his corrupt rule, to the point where they are considering living elsewhere in Europe. Things must be really bad in Italy for Italians to consider living in another country, to leave the cradle of art and architecture. Meanwhile, anyone lucky enough to travel to Rome should take advantage of the Eternal City and its endless beauty. We lived there for two years and went out sightseeing several times a week, all day, with our guide book, but after two years we still hadn’t seen everything there was to see. I am very nostalgic for Rome and seeing photos of it brings tears. It is without a doubt the greatest city in the world. If you have never travelled abroad and have only one place to go, it should be Rome. (note: a wonderful book by the 19th century American sculptor W.W. Story is called Roba di Roma, meaning Roman Stuff. It is a marvelous book , from the viewpoint of one of the many many artists who went to Rome in the 19th century as the basic part of their education. I highly recommend it if you can find it.)

So glad that you’re enjoying your trip to Italy !! A much needed break from the ubiquitous Wolf/Chesler/Glazov controversy.

You mentioned that you are “reading about what happened to the Jews who came to Italy–protection, followed by ceaseless cycles of persecution, betrayal, exile, flight, and eventual return.”

Here’s something interesting: The great rabbinic sage and kabbalist, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, a/k/a the Ramchal (1707-1746) was from Padua in northern Italy. He was the author of such classic works as Mesillas Yeshorim and Derech Hashem, both of which are still studied today.

Hope you will post your photos !!

“Sic transit gloria mundi”, as the Romans would say..

Would the apostate in question be that journalist who made a rather public farewell with Islam?

Anyways, hope you’ll have pleasant holidays, Ms Chesler!

minor point: jerusalem is the 1st Rome, Rome the 2nd, and Moscow the 3rd with competition from Nazi germany’s Berlin.

I think that is right, although Charle’s capital for his Holy Roman Empire might be the 2nd.

I should just look it up. Ciao.

Phyllis, I saw this in the National Post, and immediately thought of you.

National Post

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Presented by
The politics of the veil

Robert Fulford, National Post

In the 21st century, the Islamic burka, the full-face-and-body veil, adopted by more women every day, has become the most potent human symbol on earth. But what exactly does it symbolize? Many say it stands for piety. No, that’s wrong, says Marnia Lazreg, an Algerian-born professor of sociology at the City University of New York. Piety has little to do with it; the Koran doesn’t even mention the veil. In truth, the veil stands for political ideology and male power.

It also establishes the wearer’s extreme distance from the rest of us. We recognize people by seeing their faces and we acknowledge their humanity by reading what their faces tell us. Without that information humans cannot come alive to each other. A woman wearing a mask is a woman declining to be human. Unable to look anyone in the eyes, lacking peripheral vision, her hearing muffled, she becomes an abstraction. Encouraging a woman to wear the burka is like offering her a portable isolation cell.

In Europe the burka stirs public anger. President Nicolas Sarkozy says it’s unwelcome in France: “We cannot have in our country women who are prisoners behind netting, cut off from all social life, deprived of identity.” Sarkozy understands that he speaks for much of the electorate. Could France actually ban the burka from its streets? That would infringe on individual rights but now begins to seem possible.

Lazreg’s fascinating book, Questioning the Veil: Open Letters to Muslim Women (Princeton University Press), tells us that the veil comes and goes, according to the rise and fall of ideologies and the change in male perceptions of women and women’s beliefs about themselves. Algeria illustrates the point. After women helped achieve independence from France in 1962, many ceased to wear the veil. It lost its political force as a form of rebellion and became an archaic custom of an older generation. Lazreg remembers her mother discarding it.

The revival of the veil among Algerians in recent years coincides with economic failure, a regional cultural identity movement and the war between Islamists and the Algerian government. Today’s Islamists often coerce women to wear the veil. (Surprisingly, Lazreg doesn’t mention the physical harm involved: Women who hide every inch of their skin from the sun often suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and develop early osteoporosis, a syndrome noted by doctors in several countries.)

Lazreg grew up in a Muslim home but she reacts to a burka-wearing woman on the street in the same spirit as someone in the West: It always startles her and she always wonders whether the woman has obeyed her husband or decided on her own to take up the veil. She was shocked when she entered a shop in Damascus and saw two black forms sitting near the counter, their faces entirely covered in black, with no opening even for the eyes. “I felt crushed by their anonymity and the obliteration of their being.”

That same day, she went to a mosque wearing loose slacks, a long-sleeved shirt and a head scarf. A man stopped her at the entrance, carrying a worn gray fabric, with which he proposed to cover her. She refused to wear such a dirty piece of cloth. He replied: “It is cleaner than you!” As Lazreg says, the veil is a man’s problem more than a woman’s.

She has no time for feminists in the West who insist, out of God knows what perverse impulse, that the veil empowers Muslim women. That kind of academic theorizing might provoke interesting conversation but Lazreg believes it’s dangerous. She also argues against Tariq Ramadan, the most influential Muslim theologian in Europe, who believes “the turn to the veil” represents a new Islamic feminism.

She writes carefully, as a scholar who wants to tell the truth but still be taken seriously by Muslims. She thinks the revival of the veil does nothing for the rejuvenation of Muslim civilization; “it degrades Islam” and impoverishes its spirit. But she’s anxious to tell us that abandoning the veil would not constitute a victory for the West. It would be a victory for Muslim women over morally degrading restrictions.

If men approve of the veil, it is women’s job to resist their demands and recreate the independent spirit women showed in the 1950s and 1960s.

Only women can end “the politics of the veil” by making themselves agents of social change. She delivers her argument with passion and coherence but, sadly, everything is going the other way.

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

Andrew, I still stick by my original timeline. Jerusalem is different than Rome, so it can never be Rome. Rome was the first, and then Emperor Constantine concluded that he needed a new capital, because Rome was too stained with the paganism of the past. So, Constantinople was the second Rome. During its time it was a bulwark protecting Europe’s eastern flank from those who followed in the footsteps of what stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula roughly 14 centuries ago.

Plus, roughly about the time Moscow was being liberated from being under the Mongol Yoke, Constantinople was succumbing to those who followed in the footsteps of what stormed out of the Arabian Peninsula roughly 14 centuries ago.

A reputable Russian history book would shed light on Moscow being the third Rome.

“What is it in us that needs to turn the gallows into gaiety?”

Well, I can tell you, it goes the other way too. Prior to the invasion of then Taliban-ruled-Afghanistan, the United Nations in their wisdom had authorized funds for an athletic field to be built. Care to venture a guess what they used the goal-posts for? It was where they hung their executed criminals. It did NOT have the morale lifting effect the UN hoped for.

So, given the choice of moving into darkness or moving into light, I choose light. Wouldn’t you??