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Apr 17, 2010

Israel Shamir Reply to Wiesel

 

Israel Shamir Reply to Wiesel

Elie Wiesel wrote a letter to President Obama demanding hands off Jewish hold on Jerusalem. He recycled his own letter of January 2001, so here is what I answered him then.

Rape of Dulcinea

  

I

The touching words of Elie Wiesel painted a beautiful portrait of the Jewish people, yearning, loving and praying for Jerusalem over the centuries and cherishing its name from generation to generation.

This potent image reminded me, an Israeli writer from Jaffa, of something familiar yet elusive. I finally made the connection by revisiting my well-thumbed volume of Don Quixote. Wiesel's evocative article is so wonderfully reminiscent of the immortal love of the Knight of Sad Visage for his belle Dulcinea de Toboso. Don Quixote travelled all over Spain proclaiming her name. He performed formidable feats, defeated giants, who turned out to be windmills, brought justice to the oppressed, all for the sake of his beloved. When he decided that his achievements made him worthy, he sent his arms-bearer, Sancho Panza, to his Dame with a message of adoration.

Now I find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position of Sancho Panza. I have to inform my master, Don Wiesel Quixote, that his Dulcinea is well. She is happily married, has a bunch of kids, and she is quite busy with laundry and other domestic chores. While he fought brigands and restored governors, somebody else took care of his beloved, fed her, provided her with food, made love to her, made her a mother and grandmother. Do not rush, dear knight, to Toboso, lest it break your heart.

Elie, the Jerusalem that you write of so movingly is not now and never has been desolate. She has lived happily across the centuries in the embrace of another people, the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who have taken good care of her. They made her the beautiful city she is, adorned her with a magnificent piece of jewellery, the Golden Dome of Haram al Sharif, built her houses with pointed arches and wide porches and planted cypresses and palm trees.

They do not mind if the knight-errant visits their beloved city on his way from New York to Saragosa. But be reasonable, old man. Stay within the frame of the story and within the bounds of common decency. Don Quixote did not drive his jeep into Toboso to rape his old flame. OK, you loved her, and thought about her, but it does not give you the right to kill her children, bulldoze her rose garden and put your boots on her dining room table. All your words just prove that you confuse your desires with reality. You ask why the Palestinians want Jerusalem? Because she belongs to them, because they live there and it is their hometown. Granted, you dreamed about her in your remote Transylvania. So did many people around the world. She is so wonderful and certainly worth dreaming about.

II

Many people have adored this city across the ages. Swedish farmers left their villages and moved there to build the lovely American Colony together with the Vesters, a devout Christian family from Chicago. You can read about it in the works of Selma Lagerlof, another Nobel Prize winner. On the slopes of the Mount of Olives, the Russians built the dainty church of Mary Magdalene. Ethiopians erected their Resurrection monastery amid the ruins left by the Crusaders.

The British died for her and left as their architectural legacy the St. George Cathedral and St. Andrew's. The Germans built the lovely German Colony and nursed the city's sick in the Schneller Hospital. My devout great-grandfather moved into the protection of her thick walls in the 1870s from a Lithuanian Jewish village and threw his lot in with the hospitable Jerusalemites. He found his eternal rest until the day of Resurrection on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. None of them thought to rape their Dulcinea. They just left bouquets of architectural flowers as testament of their adoration.

Those who love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous of Elie Wiesel to reduce the struggle for this city to a tug-of-war between Muslims and Jews. It is a question of coveting property versus having the deed of ownership. The resolution of this case should be based on the Tenth Commandment that our fathers observed. They knew that veneration does not amount to the right of ownership. Millions of Protestants venerate the Catholic-owned Gethsemane Garden, but it does not transfer the garden into their hands. Millions of Catholics visit the Tomb of Mary, but it still belongs to the Eastern Church. For generations, the Moslems have come to kneel at the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the church remains Christian.

III

What water did to the Gremlins in Spielberg's movies, Zionism has inflicted on the jolly Jewish folk of Eastern Europe. It caused them to carry out an ethnic cleansing of Gentiles in West Jerusalem, to convert the Schneller hospital and church into a military base and to build a Holiday Inn on top of the venerated shrine of Sheik Bader. The Jewish State forbids the Christians of Bethlehem to pray in the Holy Sepulchre and bans Moslems below the age of forty from attending Friday prayers at the Aqsa Mosque. This is the rape of the Holy City you profess to love.

In order to justify this rape, you invoke the names of King Solomon and Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the Bible. Let me tell you a Jewish Hassidic tale, one you might have heard in your childhood. A Jewish midrash, a legend, mentions that Abraham had a daughter. A simple-minded Hassid asked his Rabbi why Abraham did not wed his daughter and his son Isaac. The Rabbi responded that Abraham did not want to marry a real son to a legendary daughter.

Legends are the stuff that dreams are made of. Some are charming, some are horrible, and none is valid as a land deed or as a political platform. Elie, you certainly would not like to lose your private home in New York because of a few verses written in the Book of Mormon. This game is rather irrelevant, but I will play one more round with you for the entertainment of the crowd. As every archaeologist will tell you, King Solomon and his temple belong to the fantasy realm of Abraham's daughter. Moreover, not that it matters, but the name 'Jerusalem' does not occur even once in the Jewish Holy Book, the Torah.

Do you want to play some more games? I'll show you more. The Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible. Get that thick book off of your shelf and check it. None of the great and legendary men you named, from King David to the prophets, were called 'the Jews'. This ethnonym appears for the first and only time in the Bible in the Persian story of the very late Book of Esther. The self-identification of the Jews with the tribes of Israel and with the heroes of the Bible is as valid as the story of Rome being founded by the Trojan prince Aeneas. If the modern Turks, who call themselves 'the descendants of Troy' would conquer Rome, dynamite Borromini's baroque masterpieces and expel her inhabitants in order to re-establish the legacy of Aeneas, they would just be repeating the folly of the Zionists.

IV

Our ancestors, the humble East European folk of Yids, whose language was Yiddish, had a tradition of adorning themselves with the impressive heraldic lions of Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent from these legends was as valid as the claims of Thomas Hardy's ambitious farmer girl Tess. But even the fictional Tess did not conspire to evict the lords from their castle and claim the manor for herself.

Once, walking with the Christian pilgrims to the great Church of the Holy Sepulchre, I was stopped by a Hassidic Jew. He inquired whether my companions were Jews, and, receiving a negative reply, exclaimed in amazement: "What are these Goyim (Gentiles) looking for in the Holy City?" He had never heard of the Passion of Jesus Christ, whose name he used as a swear word. I am equally amazed that a Jewish professor from Boston University is as ignorant as the simple-minded Hassidic Jew. Jerusalem is holy to billions of believers: Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Christians, Sunni and Shia Moslems, to thousands of Hassidic and Sephardi Jews. Still, as a city, Jerusalem is not different from any other place in the world; she belongs to her citizens.

Twenty more years of Zionist control of this ancient city will turn her into another Newark and forever ruin her charm. Jerusalem needs to be restored to its inhabitants. The seized properties in Talbieh and Lifta, Katamon and Malcha should be returned to their owners. Professor Wiesel, respect Gentile property rights as you would like Gentiles to respect your right to your lovely house. The holy sites of Jerusalem are regulated by the 150-year-old international statute (Status Quo) that should not be tampered with. The last attempt to touch it caused the siege of Sevastopol and the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. The next attempt could cause a nuclear war.



[i] It was written as a response to a long article by Elie Wiesel,  "Jerusalem in My Heart," New York Times, 1/25/2001.

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Michael Santomauro
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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Gilad has 3 New Videos

 
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Dogma, Double Standards, and Doubt: The Bradley Smith Heresy and Beyond

 




17th April 2010

Here is the Most Recent
issue of Smith's Report

The lead article by Michael K. Smith is titled "Dogma, Double Standards, and Doubt: The Bradley Smith Heresy and Beyond."

We have Robert Faurisson on Israeli writer Gilad Atzmon turning toward Holocaust revisionism.

Thomas Kues on the sources of 1945 report by the World Jewish Congress treating with the "annihilation" of the European Jews.

Jett Rucker, a new writer for this Report, telling us how it affects family life when you get into revisionism.

Carlo Mattogno provides an update on the developing Elie Wiesel mystery.

And an update on the CODOH Campus Project.

--- Bradley

Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
http://www.codoh.com

 

 

Follow the link to Smith's Report. >>>



Peace.

Michael Santomauro
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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US only nuclear criminal

 

Sat, Apr 17, 2010 

Subject: Leader: US only nuclear criminal


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Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
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Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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Comedy and cukture

 


http://web.archive.org/web/20041109085800/http://www.sdjewishjournal.com/stories/cover_aug04.html


What's with Jewish comedy?

By Jeff Berkwits

Comedy may be the Jews' greatest gift to America. The twentieth century is littered with [Jewish garbage] the names of great Jewish comedians: George Burns, the Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen. But after the astounding success of Jerry Seinfeld, where does Jewish comedy go from here?


  Earlier this summer, Max Alexander flew back from a weeklong comedy tour of Israel, and boy, were his arms tired! Ba-Dum! (Insert groan here.)

 Seriously, upon returning from a trip to the Holy Land last June – where the stand-up comic, along with three other Jewish-American jokesters, performed shows in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ra'anana – Alexander had primarily positive memories. Among other benefits, the journey reaffirmed his belief that laughter is a universal language, strengthened his love for Israel and deepened his appreciation of Judaism. Still, happy as Alexander was with the excursion, when he arrived back to America he demanded a refund.

  "I went to the Dead Sea," says the portly comedian with mock sincerity. "I sunk. I want my money back."

  His jibe reveals a mindset that is in many respects quintessentially Jewish. The joke is self-deprecatory and humorous without being hurtful. It's also a bit old-fashioned, as contemporary humor – and the many Jews who practice it – often tends to be much more caustic. Which begs an important question: What defines Jewish comedy, and have traditional comedic values, deeply rooted in Judaism's religious and cultural traditions, become so mainstream they no longer qualify as distinctly Jewish? In essence, have comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David so popularized the cultural aspects of Jewish humor that Jews can no longer claim it as their own?

  Historically, Jewish comedy has been egalitarian. Centuries ago in Eastern Europe, satirical jesters called badchens performed at weddings and other significant social functions, poking fun at and good-naturedly tarnishing the image of important people in the community. At the same time, arguably due to Judaism's tradition of Talmudic study, almost every facet of life was to some degree open to examination. So Jews, who more often than not were politically powerless, could subtly challenge the status quo via humor while keeping their harshest observations amongst themselves.

  "You have a lot of shtoch, or jab, humor, which is usually meant to deflate pomposity or ego, and to deflate people who consider themselves high and mighty," explains Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, coauthor of "The Big Book of Jewish Humor." "But Jewish humor was also a device for self-criticism within the community, and I think that's where it really was the most powerful. The humorist, like the prophet, would basically take people to task for their failings. The humor of Eastern Europe especially was centered around defending the poor against the exploitation of the upper classes or other authority figures, so rabbis were made fun of, authority figures were made fun of and rich people were made fun of. It really served as a social catharsis."

  During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Jewish immigrants settled in the United States and began to assimilate, their humor trickled into mainstream American entertainment. In 1929, Gertrude Berg's "The Rise of the Goldbergs" radio show offered a glimpse into a stereotypical Jewish family (the program was so popular that, 20 years later, it even made the jump to TV, becoming one of the first sitcoms on that fledgling medium). As television developed, Sid Caesar, George Burns and Milton Berle further helped convert Jewish-influenced gags into American laughs.

  "There has been a certain acceptance of Jewish-style humor into American culture, akin to how black-generated jazz is now considered American," notes Waldoks. "It gets transformed when a certain style of humor makes the journey from being within to being in the general public. The group that does that most effectively, and perhaps they're the most well known and successful, is the Marx Brothers. They're really the beginning of the transformation of Jewish humor within the Jewish community to Jewish humor as an urban-style humor that's open to everyone."
"It's like a bagel," observes Alexander. "A bagel was once just a Jewish food. Now, they serve bagels at McDonald's with bacon on them. But anything that's great, people accept. Plus, Jewish humor is not talking about being Jewish…. It's not about saying that a person is Jewish, or that a funny thing happened to me on the way to the shul. That's a Jewish joke, not Jewish humor. Jewish humor is a sensibility, and a lot of comics, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have taken on that Jewish sensibility."

  Still, the broad acceptance of these sentiments has not necessarily signaled an equivalent tolerance for or understanding of Jews. Even today, up-and-coming humorists specifically cite growing up Jewish in a Christian culture as a comedic catalyst.

  "The second I started going to public school, being Jewish kind of became my shtick," recalls "MADtv" alumna and current "Catwoman" costar Alex Borstein, who as a youngster attended an exclusive Jewish day school. "I had gone to a private school up until sixth grade, and you're not different there. You're one of many. Then you hit this area where you're the lone Jew, and everyone else around you has a different experience. So you really start to work your material without even knowing that's what you're doing. By being able to make fun of your own last name the first day in school, the other kids like you a little bit. You've pointed out your difference already, and then you realize you're the only one with that point of view."

  Controversial comedienne Sarah Silverman ("Crank Yankers," "School of Rock"), who was also the only Jew at her high school, shared a similar experience. "I mostly identified as a Jew because everyone around me was gentile," she says. "I've gotten in touch with my Judaism... through my comedy more than anything else in my life, because I'm very focused right now on race and religion, and I examine those things in myself as well as others."

  That propensity to examine life with a Jewish eye is probably best exemplified by Jerry Seinfeld (who will be performing for two nights in San Diego in mid-August). In creating a TV show allegedly "about nothing," Seinfeld doubtless did more to popularize the sensibility of Jewish humor than any other contemporary comic.

  "Even the non-Jewish characters seem to be Jewish, and certainly their parents seem to be Jewish," observes legendary comedy writer Bruce Vilanch, who starred in the traveling Broadway version of "Hairspray" that played San Diego last month and has penned "shtick" for Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Crystal, among others. "Talk about a show that's about nothing – you can do an entire episode about somebody's nail polish not being right! It looks at the minutiae of life, which is certainly a very Jewish thing to do. We love to parse."

  Brimming with verbal jabs, neurotic self-observations and other Jewish-style silliness, "Seinfeld" not only introduced the frequent Jewish need to examine every aspect of a situation, it also familiarized mainstream America with the urban – and often urbane – wit that Jews habitually take for granted.

   "Hearing a blonde with blue eyes saying 'What a schmuck!' or 'I've got to schlep from here to there' cracks me up," says Borstein. "I think Jason Alexander's character in 'Seinfeld' opened up so much of that. Using those terms and being a neurotic little nebbish, people now get that type of person.... It created a kind of shorthand. Woody Allen in the movies is very different than having someone in your living room every week. The TV breaks a barrier that movies don't, so I do think it has made certain things a little more recognizable."

   However, not every comedian agrees that "Seinfeld" was a positive step for Jews and Jewish comedy. One criticism that's often cited is the fact that, despite ostensibly possessing Jewish attributes, other than the show's namesake none of the key players are identified as being Jewish. At the same time, while the characters on the program all analyzed their lives ad infinitum, they never dealt with the serious issues that, along with the admittedly silly topics, many Jews also ponder.

  "In that sense, 'Seinfeld' is the end of the line for Jewish humor," claims Joel Chasnoff, a columnist for the San Diego Jewish Journal and a New York-based stand-up who specializes in Jewish comedy routines. "He's a Jewish comedian who's able to be funny without even mentioning his Judaism. There used to be all these Jewish comedians whose comedy was a way to overcome their Judaism and be accepted. Seinfeld is at the apex in that he doesn't even need to refer to his Judaism yet he's still considered a great Jewish comedian."

  That simultaneous mainstreaming and sublimation of Jewish humor concerns Vilanch. "As the Jewish population shrinks, and as Jews become more assimilated, it will be interesting to see whether the Jewish sensibility holds," he muses. "I don't know if it will. I meet a lot of younger writers, and they still seem to have that quality about them. And you look at a show like 'Will & Grace,' which is written by the next generation of writers, and there's a family sensibility to it. But of course, Grace is also Jewish, so there's a reason for all of those Jewish things to be brought in. I think it's still there, but it may not be as dominant as it was, because we're not as dominant in the [comedy] culture as we were."

  So, what does the future hold for Jewish comedy? Ironically, some pundits see a return to more traditional religious humor as way to save Judaism's unique comedic voice.

  "The only place for Jewish comedy to go is to really be true to Judaism," declares Chasnoff. "I would argue that something like what I'm doing is the new kind of Jewish humor, which is humor based on actual Judaism – humor based on the synagogue, on bar mitzvahs and on going to Israel. In that sense, it's like gay comedy, in that gay comedy right now is not gay comedians talking about mainstream society, but rather gay comedians talking about being gay."

  That redefinition of Jewish comedy is, in some respects, already taking place. "I'm beginning to see very elaborate Purim spiels being done now by some communities," says Waldoks. "They poke fun at the community that people live in, and do it with some smarts and very good parodies. It's a way of using contemporary culture to help preserve this very old Jewish tradition. So it will be interesting to see what the next few years will bring."

  Regardless of whether the Jewish approach to humor becomes utterly commonplace or returns to its roots, there's little question it has already left an indelible mark on American culture. Judaism's compassionate yet undeniably comedic way of exploring the human condition is sure to remain an integral part of the comedic landscape, thus guaranteeing that, wherever Jews live and whatever obstacles they face, humor will remain a common cultural bond.

  Which is, perhaps, the one thing about Jewish comedy that truly is no joke.

 




-- 

Peace.

Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
Call anytime: 917-974-6367
ReporterNotebook@Gmail.com

http://www.DebatingTheHolocaust.com

Amazon's: DEBATING THE HOLOCAUST: A New Look At Both Sides by Thomas Dalton

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