Agnon the Yiddish novelist

It turns out, to no one's surprise, that I'm a book schnook. For some reason, I already feel guilty about not posting a cogent, witty, wide-ranging (i.e. Baraita-style) review of Shmuel Yosef Agnon's A Simple Story. I do have the perfect excuse: I haven't read the book yet, and my copy is still winging its way to me over the great seas separating me and the Holy Land.

I have read some Agnon, though not enough. Thus my first installment, in which I will reveal to you the secret to getting the most entertainment out of your Agnon dollar, providing you can read him in Hebrew.

What's that, you ask? Read him in the Ashkenazic accent of your childhood, or, if you didn't have that sort of childhood, learn the accent (like I did) or find someone whose Ashkenazis you can imitate. The fact is that Agnon is the best prose writer in Yiddish of the twentieth century, so you might as well read him with an appropriate inflection.

Agnon wrote in Hebrew! True. But the English word "Hebrew" generalizes a great number of different sorts of language available in traditional Jewish life both yesterday and (perhaps even more so) today. In the big grab-bag "Hebrew," I mean, are found all of the following: Biblical Hebrew (in all its varying strata and literary registers), Rabbinic Hebrew, both early and late, Medieval Hebrew, modern literary and spoken Hebrew (starting around the 19th century), and, most recently, modern Hebrew as spoken in Israel, called "Ivrit."

When I separate "modern Hebrew" from "Ivrit, " I'm trying to make clear that it was possible to write Hebrew, and even to some extent to speak Hebrew, before the founding of the state of Israel. This Hebrew, though a modern language, sounded quite a bit different than modern Israeli Hebrew sounds to us. In the Eastern-European, Yiddish-speaking context, and to a lesser extent today as well, such allusive, literary Hebrew is called loshn-koydesh, or, more academically, Ashkenazic Hebrew. I would argue (though I don't have the time or the expertise to do so here) that Agnon wrote in this very language. (I don't know how Agnon spoke Hebrew in the pre-war-milieu [1935] in which A Simple Story was written.) If one maintains that Yiddish and Ashkenazic Hebrew form a continuous cultural-linguistic system, then it's not too much of a stretch to say that Agnon wrote in Yiddish. In fact, some linguists hold that modern Israeli Hebrew is a "relexification" of modern Yiddish. I'm still not clear what that word means, but I think it refers to some sort of one-to-one replacement of Yiddish words by Hebrew equivalents. I'm no linguist, so I can't judge whether this is true. However, it is the case that a reader of Yiddish -- who can also read Hebrew -- feels completely at home in Agnon. It is a through-the-looking-glass world in which the Yiddish cultural idiom is rendered somehow more monumental and imposing through its Ashkenazic Hebrew transcription.

Ashkenazic Hebrew is a complicated language, and an entire book on the topic, edited by Lewis Glinert, appeared some years ago. Particuarly fascinating is Dovid Katz's article on penultimate stress, one of the markers of Ashkenazic Hebrew -- when, where, and in what contexts it appears. (For example, the first verse of the Bible starts, in Israeli pronunciation, bereyshit bara elohim. The Ashkenazic Hebrew pronunciation might be berey'shis bo'ro eloy'him, or bereyshis' boro' eloyhim', depending on the context; the latter more formal, in communal Torah reading, the former more colloquial, for example, in the context of Torah study.)

These days, Ashkenazic Hebrew is no healthier than Yiddish, sad to say. If you look carefully, though, you can still see traces. There are people who still write loshn-koydesh poetry (including you host), of higher or lower quality. Many of this falls under the category of payet, or religious poetry. Or even closer to the ken of most modern Jews: listen to the way Israelis (and everyone else) sing "Hatikvah": "...Ne'fesh yehu'di homi'ah. Ulefa'atei miz'rach kadi'mah, ay'in letsi'on tsofi'ah." That's right, it's sung with Ashkenazi stresses, though with an Israeli, "Ashkesfard" pronunciation.

So if you can stumble through a page of Agnon in Hebrew, try reading it in Ashkenazis. You might be glad you did!

(Another example of a great writer in modern Ashkenazic Hebrew: Bialik. Even more interesting is the fact that a number of his later poems were specifically written to be read in "Sefardic" (actually "Ashkesfardic") pronunciation. Yet another category of writers, who I hope to talk about at some later date, are those who write in both Yiddish and modern Israeli Hebrew. Perhaps this category's greatest, though hopefully not its last practitioner, was Yosl Birshtein, who died a month ago.)

Postcript: Kobi Haron, who has relatives from the Second Aliyah (and more knowledge about Agnon than I do) informs me that very few Hebrew-speakers in Israel, even in the early days of the twentieth century, actually spoke Hebrew with an Ashkenazi accent. Any other relevant reminiscences out there?

Enentation comments

In which I answer to a lower authority

The next time I go to the Associated grocery store on 23rd Street and Second Avenue, I can either buy the premium kosher meat that's recently appeared there -- a variety of tempting cuts, quite pricey, but a lot more convenient than the nearest proper butcher -- or I can eat something I've never eaten before: Hebrew National.

I have mixed feelings about this new possibility. For many years, Hebrew National was considered kosher enough to eat by an ever-shrinking slice of the Jewish pie. I don't know how long Hebrew National has been a brand unto itself, though now it seems to be part of some food monolith with the unappetizing name of ConAgra. In any case, though, until recently, it was possible for a product to be kosher without being certified by some large national organization. Indeed, kosher certification by those organizations (e.g. the O-U), is only eighty-some years old, if this on-line history is reliable. Widespread use of these hechsherim as the gold standard is even more recent.

What is the effect of this ever-broadening appeal to organizational hechsherim? As with any organizational convergence, the end result is more conservative (with a small "c") -- the national supervising organizations are more liberal than some other alternatives (like some ultra-Orthodox hechsherim often seen on Israeli products), and more stringent than others.

The problem for Hebrew National is that, for whatever reason, what one might call the "stringency curve" for traditional Jewish religious observance is sharply right-shifted. In English: most observant folks are on the rightward end of the spectrum. It used to be that the imprimatur of Rabbi T. Stern (the name on Hebrew National products until the recent change) was enough for many people who kept kosher. But as this right-shift began to take effect over the past few decades, a premium was placed on mass-market hechsherim. Loyalty to rabbis known personally in one's community ceded pride of place to brand loyalty, rigorous attention to the most stringent halachic detail, and a new industry of kosher supervision. One proof of this can be brought from the reasons I heard given for people refusing to eat Hebrew National when good old Rabbi Stern was its certifying rabbi -- the only evidence adduced was darkly whispered "leniencies," and rarely anything more specific than that.

All this means that for the duration of Rabbi Stern's Hebrew National hechsher there was a gap between national brand-name hechsherim and a smaller-scale, non-hegemonic definition of kashrut. It would have been perfect for the Conservative movement to take advantage of, an opportunity to explain the difference between Jewish law and tradition and standardized Orthodox stringency. National kashrut organizations encourage stringent observance - but that is not the only variety of kashrut. There is a community standard, independent of the kosher industry, which has not yet been completely coopted. Unforunately, while many Conservative Jews probably did eat Hebrew National, they weren't the sort that were likely to keep kashrut in general. Thus, while I approved theoretically of Rabbi Stern's hechsher, I never ate of it myself, since I never found a kosher-keeping community that approved of it.

With not a completely light heart, then, but with a curious palate, I'm going to buy myself some Hebrew National hot dogs next time I'm in the store, with the triangle-K brand of hechsher. For those of you who find these fine distinctions faintly ridiculous, consider them another reason to be vegetarian.

Postscript: The Kosher Blog has links to more information about the late Rabbi T. Stern, the lone certifier. (I got his name wrong, but I've corrected it above.) Also, it seems I missed the number-one reason why the right-shift rendered Stern's certification not kosher enough: it wasn't glatt kosher.

Enentation comments

Why the birds are getting the flu

In fact, the outbreak began as early as the first half of 2003, probably in China, health experts have told New Scientist. A combination of official cover-up and questionable farming practices allowed it to turn into the epidemic now under way.

The Passion done Crown Heights style

So I saw this play. (NB: I know Yankel Rosenbaum is not a Chasid. Blame The Man, or my editors. On second thought, don't blame my editors. They were very kind to the piece.)

What I wanted to say about Lenora Fulani is that she has called Jews "mass murderers." Either the Forward didn't want to be inflammatory, which I understand, or they don't consider the Anti-Defamation League a reliable source. Sez the ADL:

Despite its self-proclaimed multicultural vision and its avowed dedication to fighting racism and anti-Semitism, NAP has repeatedly bombarded its members with anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist rhetoric. Taking the podium in 1985 at NAP’s regional convention in Harlem, Newman announced his views on the behavior of Jews after the Holocaust:

"As a people we [Jews] responded to that genocide by selling our souls to the devil.... The contract with the Jewish people, with the Jewish leadership, has been: 'We’re going to let you live. We’re going to let you survive. We’re going to make sure it never happens to you again as long as you function as the stormtroopers of decadent capitalism against people of color the world over!….' Jewish people, my people, profoundly oppressed for thousands of years, capitulated — not all Jews, but the Jews as a people."

Newman’s "deal with the devil" theory appears to have achieved the status of NAP gospel in the years since that initial speech. Variations on the theme have cropped up on numerous occasions. In 1989, Lenora Fulani told the National Alliance that Jews "had to sell their souls to acquire Israel and are required to do the dirtiest work of capitalism—to function as mass murderers of people of color—in order to keep it."

The Jew of New Haven

A friend of mine, Michael Wenthe, who's a graduate student at Yale (among other more exceptional and admirable qualities of his) has published a perceptive essay on Ben Katchor's graphic novel The Jew of New York. Katchor gave a talk a few years ago which included a deadpan reading of a list of names of small businesses and economic oddities of the sort that he favors in his regular comic, "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer":

On a cold Wednesday evening in late January, Ben Katchor stood at a podium before a few dozen people in the Proshansky Auditorium of the City University of New York, and read aloud a few entries from a 1960 edition of the Chicago Yellow Pages. “Artificial Flowers and Plants,” he began, in a somewhat gravelly deadpan. “Ionian, Illinois Trading Corporation, Importers of Polyethylene: Completely Washable Flowers and Foliage; They Look Real, They Smell Real. Lee Schubert Floral Arrangements: Trees, Hedges, Any size, Any shape; Nature's Plant and Floral Beauty Reproduced; Free Estimates.

“Coin Changing Devices," he continued. "Meyer and Wenthe Incorporated: Official Money Changers; Multiple Tubes; Any Throw Arrangements; Slug Rejecters.”

That's right, Meyer and Wenthe Incorporated. As Mike said in an e-mail:

Well, I'm the man to explain that! I have a freakin' Meyer and Wenthe ruler in my art table! For I am a lineal descendant of Gustav A. J. Meyer and Herman Wenthe, proprietors of said store!

I feel strangely proud . . .

Post-Modernism Is Serial Killing

That's the title of the second installment of Arik Glasner's series in Haaretz justifying higher literature. (I called him Eric in my last post on his article. How many Israelis do you know with that name?) I had hoped that Glasner would rather more closely and cogently justify literature's contribution to the world. He doesn't quite do that, choosing instead (as you can tell from his title) to attack post-modernism; I suppose Israelis haven't gotten the Derrida is Dead memo yet. Still, Glasner writes well in a general way about what literature (and, in particular, novels of the realist school) can contribute:

What is customarily called post-modernism is serial killing. It's the heir to the full severity of concepts like the "death of God." Emphasizing the "destruction of hierarchy," it also announced the "death of the subject," the "death of the author," and even the "death of art." Nevertheless, wonder of wonders, people keep being born and wanting to express themselves in complicated ways which will enrich their life. Literature's heroic experiment is the attempt to give some sort of order, to provide meaning to the world. Even if this attempt is doomed to failure, the very writing of the history of this struggle, the struggle for meaning and narrative, is better than yielding to chaos.

More birds and flu
Via ProMED-mail

Date: Thu 22 Jan 2004
Source: Bangkok Post online, Thu 22 Jan 2004 [edited]


Thailand: Three Suspected Human Cases of Avian Influenza in Three Provinces

Three Thais with pneumonia-like symptoms are being tested for avian
influenza, Public Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan said yesterday [Wed 21
Jan 2004]. Tests on blood and sputum samples were being run at the Medical
Sciences Department. Mrs Sudarat's admission follows rumours of confirmed
cases of avian influenza which were believed to have caused the drop in the
stock market index yesterday.

The government has repeatedly said Thailand is free of avian influenza
which has killed five people in Vietnam and devastated poultry populations
in several parts of Asia. Officials say thousands of local chickens are
dying of poultry cholera and respiratory disease, but some farmers accuse
the government of a cover-up.

The minister called an urgent meeting yesterday evening with senior
officials of the Disease Control Department, the Food and Drug
Administration and the Medical Sciences Department. She insisted that no
case of avian influenza [in birds], also known as fowl plague, had been
confirmed and that the country was still considered free of it. Results of
laboratory tests on the three suspected human cases, who had been
hospitalised, would be available in three days.

The three are a butcher from Nakhon Sawan, a child from Suphan Buri and a
farmer living in Kanchanaburi. The three provinces are reeling under
widespread chicken deaths which the authorities insist were not caused by
bird flu but fowl cholera and bronchitis. The Nakhon Sawan butcher has
suffered a high fever and lung infection since 7 Jan 2004, occurring after
the deaths of 70 chickens on his farm. He is in a private hospital in the
Central Region. The Suphan Buri patient was taken to a state hospital in
the province two weeks ago. The Kanchanaburi case was admitted to a public
hospital in Bangkok a few days ago.

The ministry initially listed 17 pneumonia patients who had come into
direct contact with chicken, either at farms or slaughterhouses, but 14
were excluded after tests confirmed their illness was caused by bacteria
and not a virus. Health authorities have expressed concern about the lack
of information from the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry and what they
see as its reluctant cooperation. The Public Health Ministry recently
launched its own monitoring system. "We don't know what has caused the
illness and death of chickens because that is the responsibility of the
Agriculture Ministry," Mrs Sudarat said. We are, however, concerned about
human health and have closely monitored the possible occurrence of bird flu
even though there was no earlier indications of it." She admitted that
farmers and butchers who came into direct contact with [infected] chickens
were at risk of being infected with bird flu. "We issued a list of initial
precautionary measures that need to be taken to the Agriculture Ministry
last week, but it seems the warning has not reached farmers," she said.
Poultry raisers were advised to wear gloves, shoes and masks every time
they come into direct contact with chickens, and to take a bath or shower
immediately afterwards. People should not fear catching the disease by
eating chicken because bird flu was not contracted this way, Mrs Sudarat said.

The Foreign Ministry would keep other countries informed about the
situation, spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow said. Singapore has already
banned live chicken imports from Thailand, Cambodia which has banned
imports of poultry from neighbouring countries, and Laos which has banned
all poultry from Thailand and Vietnam. China has banned chicken imports
from South Korea and Japan, where there is confirmed bird flu, but not from
Thailand.

(By Aphaluck Bhatiasevi and Achara Ashayagachat)

[ProMED-mail acknowledges receipt of a similar press report forwarded by
EVER which is enigmatically entitled "Thailand
has three official confirmed suspect case of human avian flu". Since all
cases of human infection by avian influenza A (H5N1) virus in Vietnam are
considered to have occurred by direct transmission from infected poultry,
rather than by human-to-human transmission, confirmation of the human cases
in Thailand would be indicative of the presence of avian influenza in
poultry in Thailand. - Mod.CP (ProMED-mail moderator)]

Revisionist poetry?

Who knew Jabotinsky translated poetry from the Italian into Hebrew? Actually, that wouldn't be so interesting in itself, except his translation is impressively good. (Via Antinous.)

Why literature?

I don't have the answer. (For refunds, go around back, near the restroom with a lock on the door and the sign that says Beware of the Blog.) However, Eric Glasner, writing in this past week's Culture and Literature section of Haaretz, girds himself to take on the question in an article entitled "Why Do We Need Higher Literature? Because That's What Particular People Make." (It's in Hebrew, and unfortunately the English cult-and-lit section does not include a translation.)

His argument is somewhat scattered, and a full understanding (which I don't think I have) is dependent on an appreciation of the history of modern Israeli literature, and in particular the character, typical of a certain school of novel, of the talush or outsider. Glasner says that a number of new novels, written in the past few years, have returned to the talush from a new direction, as an escape route from the Scylla and Charybdis of contemporary Israeli society: overidealistic Zionism and fundamentalist Orthodoxy.

After some paragraphs about critics and criticism, Glasner finally asks the question of the title. He considers and rejects two other answers (belles lettres are enjoyable; they're better than best-sellers) before settling on the third. Higher literature is necessary because it's the product of a certain professional class, novelists and such, who are engaged in it: a craft from the pens of craftsmen.

Though I'm not doing justice to the argument -- after all, I'm not translating the article verbatim or in full -- I'm not exaggerating its weakness all that much. It's a Wittgensteinian view, one might say, just as religion (according to such a view) is defensible because it's connected to a certain world, particular and unique. But Glasner never really gets around to saying what the purpose of function of this literature-producing class might be.

The article is continued next week, but I have a hunch that my favorite answer, or attempt at an answer (since I haven't thought about this in any detail) won't be addressed: higher literature is a moral agent, and the success of its calling depends on the seriousness and boldness with which it addresses moral questions, no matter at what level or with what philosophical suppositions. As I said, this wouldn't be an answer, merely a start at an answer. It's what many lay readers in the U.S., and probably in Israel too, would give as a fumbling intuitive stab at an answer. However, it might be asking too much for an Israeli critic, even with all the cultural and religious riches at his disposal, to explicitly link literature and moral aspirations. Too many associations, too many demons might be called up.

I might be proven wrong by this coming week's continuation. I hope so.

Blanca Berger Sollod!

Or, in Jewish: Beyle Nekhome bas Kale Khane!

Today, Sunday (24 Teves in the Jewish calendar), we gave her a name and had a party. She is named after two folks, olevasholem, worthy of esteem. Blanca (or Beyle) Seifter was a elderly Czech-Jewish woman who lived with her husband Dalek next to my wife Celeste while she was growing up in San Francisco. Celeste and the Seifters adopted each other: they were her surrogate grandparents, and since they had no children, she became their surrogate grandchild. It seems they had lived a hard life, and did not find the world a congenial place to bring new people into.

Celeste would flee to them when the burden of parental rule -- homework, for example, or being made to eat foods she didn't like -- became too much. The Seifters would ply her with pound cake, bananas, and tea, this last served in a little orange mug-and-saucer. The mug and saucer now have pride of place in our kitchen. We save used tea bags in it so that Blanca can go to college. (This is Celeste's theory of waste-not-want-not. You didn't hear it from me.)

My grandfather, Nathan (Nachum) Nemirow, was a hard worker of practical intelligence who made his living in different ways. Among other things, he was a navigator in a bomber during the Second World War (competing with other crews to see who could calculate the fastest), and owned a bar in Denver for some decades after the war. He liked a joke and a Scotch. He used to complain, "How can you be so good at school and so awful at chess?" It should be only days before Beylke will be able to beat my pants off.

As they say in Yiddish, I hope that they will be good intercessors for our child, and I hope she distinguishes their names as much as they did in their lifetimes.

You can skip the following if you don't need more details about the people in the photos. Incidentally, pictures of the party are thanks to my friend from Caltech, Andrew Grangaard. Thanks, Andrew! (Though NB: Berger Sollod is her last name.)

Pictures 1, 2, and 3: various views of the social hall downstairs at our shul. Picture 4: me 'n' her. (More pictures of her passim.) Picture 9: your host and his wife.

Thanks, readers, for indulging me. Hope to see you by her wedding canopy.

Enentation comments

Seder Shel Newborn

Kadesh: Kiddush over milk (or formula, bedieved) -- מלא לוגמיו. That is, until it dribbles down her chin.

Urkhatz: Wash the milk off her chin.

Karpas: What else is greenish (or yellowish) and sharp-smelling? די לחכּימא . . . (i.e. Verbum sap).

Yakhatz: Get the diaper apart. (Its tape is made to stick, not to separate.)

Magid: Tell her why she's crying. I.e., בכייה לדורות.

Rakhtzah: Wash her again. With a brachah, if you can figure out which one.

Motzi matzah: Find something to eat.

Maror: See Karpas, above.

Korekh: Diaper sandwich!

Shulkhan orekh: Hereby most strenuously resolve to finally outfit the changing table with the changing-table covers you bought at the nauseatingly overstocked baby department store. If only the table weren't used so often . . .

Tzafun: Where'd I put the last bit of her bottle?

Barekh: If she's not crying, and you've managed to eat, bentch as if you're being chased by something fast and fanged.

Hallel: "A happy mother of children"! Praised be, indeed.

Nirtzah: "The order of the seder is now finished." Until the second-night seder. And the third ...

Birds and the flu

From: ProMED Digest V2004 #19
Source: World Health Organization (WHO), WER and Epidemiological Bulletin
online, Tue Jan 13 2004 [edited]

Viet Nam: avian influenza A(H5N1) in humans and poultry
--------------------------------------------------------
Laboratory results received on Sun 11 Jan 2004 have confirmed the presence
of avian influenza virus strain A(H5N1) in samples taken from humans. The
samples were taken from 2 children and one adult admitted to hospital with
a severe respiratory illness in Hanoi.

Since the end of October 2003, hospitals in Hanoi and surrounding provinces
have admitted 14 people with severe respiratory illness. The cases are 13
children and one adult, the mother of a deceased child. To date, 11 of the
children and the adult have died. It is not known whether all of these
cases were caused by the same pathogen.

At present, there is no evidence that human-to-human transmission has
occurred. No reports indicate that health care workers have been infected.
The presence of avian influenza A(H5N1) in samples from 3 of these cases
was confirmed by Hong Kong's National Influenza Center, which is a member
of the WHO Global Influenza Surveillance Network. Samples have also been
sent for analysis to Japan's National Institute for Infectious Diseases,
another member of the WHO influenza network. Results are awaited shortly.
WHO is providing support to Vietnamese health authorities in their
investigation of the cases and in the prevention of further spread to humans.

Avian influenza strains normally infect birds only. The first cases of
human infection with avian influenza A(H5N1) were identified in 1997 in
Hong Kong. The virus infected 18 people and caused 6 deaths. Genetic
studies subsequently linked the outbreak in humans to an outbreak of highly
pathogenic avian influenza in poultry. The immediate culling of around 1.5
million poultry in Hong Kong is thought to have averted a larger outbreak
in humans.

Other recent outbreaks of avian influenza in humans have caused limited
disease. An outbreak of H5N1 in Hong Kong in February 2003 caused 2 cases
and 1 death. An outbreak of H7N7 avian influenza in the Netherlands caused
the death of one veterinarian in April 2003, and mild illness in 83 humans.
Mild cases of avian influenza A(H9N2) in children occurred in Hong Kong in
1999 (2 cases) and in mid-December 2003 (one case).


Highly pathogenic avian influenza in poultry
- --------------------------------------------
Last week, avian influenza virus A(H5N1) was identified as the cause of an
outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza in two southern provinces of
Viet Nam. To date, the virus, which spreads rapidly and has a mortality in
chickens approaching 100 per cent, has resulted in the deaths of 40 000
chickens and the culling of 30 000 more.

The relationship between the human and poultry outbreaks of avian influenza
A(H5N1) in Viet Nam is not fully understood at present. WHO and Viet Nam's
Ministry of Health are undertaking investigations to determine the source
of the human cases and whether human-to-human transmission has occurred.
The situation is also being followed closely by the country's Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development.

An outbreak of avian influenza A(H5N1) occurred in South Korea in December
2003. On Monday, Japanese authorities announced the death of 6000 chickens
at a single farm as due to infection with the same strain of the virus.
These outbreaks mark the first cases of avian influenza in South Korea, and
the first cases in Japan since 1925. No human cases of infection with the
avian influenza virus have been reported in either of these outbreaks.

WHO regards every case of transmission of an avian influenza virus to
humans as a cause for heightened vigilance and surveillance. The
circulation of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses in large numbers
of poultry in a growing number of countries is of particular concern.
Influenza viruses are highly unstable. The co-circulation of highly
pathogenic animal viruses with human viruses could create opportunities for
different species-specific viruses to exchange genetic material, giving
rise to a new influenza virus to which humans would have little, if any,
protective immunity.


[A ProMED-mail correspondent in Japan has forwarded the information that
Japanese media are reporting today that the Japanese Ministry of
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries has announced that the highly
pathogenic avian influenza virus responsible for the current outbreak in
Japan has been typed as avian influenza A (H5N1)virus. The recent spread of
avian influenza A (H5N1) virus through east Asia is an increasing cause for
concern, as are the isolated instances of transmission to humans. This may
reflects the expansion of poultry farming and greater opportunities for
contact between humans and domestic poultry. Although the present situation
is fairly stable, it may only be a matter of time before a reassortant
virus or mutant virus capable of human-to-human transmission evolves. -
(ProMED-mail moderators)]

Two poems
from Lila Zemborain's book Usted (Buenos Aires, Ediciones Ultimo Reino, 1998)
(translation by your host from the Spanish)

One thousandth

From one thousandth of his tangible body
escaped a drop with millions
of particles that could have been not me

And one of these was me

And one of these am I

* * *

Oh splendid night

1.

Oh splendid night
who loved even the last fragment of his body
given over to life's deliriums

How many nights we stopped
in the light of your shadow to gaze
ecstatic at satellites

Oh night I gaze at you and gaze at you
with the sunstruck hope of meeting him
in some trace of my intermittent sleep

2.

Oh night!
Empty the light of your concrete words
You evolve into afternoon like a sure blemish

You were there, it was daytime
but you were there
in the tremor of my writing

You were there while
the breaches of unloosed sleep
opened in my body

On that infinite night I wrote this poem
with voice in memory
and dreams in your grasp

It was a voice that talked of night and stars
and of his splendid death

It was a voice that talked of his
splendid death

And I understood
something unsaid

It was talk of moon
and of a fluid splendor

3.

We walked hand-in-hand on that moonlit afternoon
and looked together at the sea

We looked together at the sea

Oh splendid father

The Gretsch Building done brisk 'n' breezy

For an entertaining and irreverent, yet balanced look at the hipsters-Hasidim hulabaloo in Brooklyn, take a look at this new article in New York Magazine by your host and Steven I. Weiss. Any light and airy qualities, mind you, are due more to editing (and I.'s contributions) than to my own writing. Myself, I prefer thousands of words of exhaustive pedantry. (It seems that the more prestigious and widely-read the publication, the fewer words one is allowed to squeeze in.)

A joyful aside

As I write this post, my daughter's lying in a nursery on the 13th floor of a local hospital. She's nearly twelve hours old.

My wife is sleeping soundly down the hall from her.

As for me, I feel a sudden sharp desire to change diapers.

Enentation comments

A revived interest in death

This week's Forward includes an article of mine on the resurgence of Jewish burial societies in North America. Your comments are encouraged.

The “Artists” and the Chasidim:
The reasons behind a culture war in Williamsburg

[A translation of my article in Forverts from a few weeks ago.]

How many Satmar Chasidim live in the U.S.? Their number is variously estimated between fifty and one hundred thousand – but everyone knows that a significant proportion live in Williamsburg, known by some as “Jerusalem of America.” Where do these thousands of Jews hang their shtreimels, and how can there be enough room in Williamsburg for all of them?

When the Satmar Chasidim, then not yet a mass movement, moved into Williamsburg in the 1950s and 60s, the economic decline of Brooklyn had just begun to gather speed. The reasons are many, but the story began with the construction of the BQE in 1954, an expressway which lowered property values across the area, particularly in Williamsburg. A three-fold crisis – economic collapse, drug use, and crime – embraced the region, and both business and middle-class apartment dwellers took flight.

This exodus was a favorable development for several ethnic groups, which took advantage of the depressed property values and began to move in en masse. But a sort of social paradox here came into play: although City Hall, in an attempt at urban renewal, had knocked down a number of dilapidated apartment buildings in the 1950s and 1960s – the plan was to build new ones – the number of new apartment houses was not enough to fill the needs of new arrivals. So it was that the residents of Williamsburg were forced to compete over a limited number of apartments.

From the 1950s until the mid-1970s, the Democratic political machine gave the upper hand to the Chasidim over Hispanic residents. That period also saw the development and maintenance in the Satmar community of a high level of political discipline, which voted en bloc according to directions from their rebbe. But when the Hispanics began to organize politically, and the Voting Rights Acts forbade excluding voters on the basis of English proficiency or education, the balance began to shift. The Chasidim and the Hispanics were at something approaching political equilibrium.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Chasidim and the Hispanic community were the political bosses of Williamsburg, and their frequent conflicts spilled over more than once onto the front pages of New York newspapers. The groups clashed over a matter of life and death (or at least real estate): where can you live, and how can you get the government to sponsor housing projects that are appropriate for your group (and not, God forbid, the other guy)?

The 1980s: the beginning of the end?

Several factors in this period noticeably worsened the real-estate situation for Williamsburg Chasidim. First, in 1979, came the demise of the then-Satmar rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum. Though his nephew took over the leadership of the community, the grandchildren (Aharon and Zalman Leib) began quarreling some years after, driving a suspenseful soap opera that’s going on even now in Kiryas Yoel, Jerusalem, and Williamsburg. That Satmar split, together with the growth of other Williamsburg Chasidic groups (for example, Belz and Klausenberg), weakened the control of Satmar.

Secondly, “pioneering” bohemians, refugees from overpriced Manhattan real estate, began to move into Brooklyn. And third – perhaps itself caused by the bohemians’ “first wave” – came the legalization, in 1985, of loft rentals in Williamsburg. It may be that future historians of Chasidic Williamsburg will record that change as the beginning of the end of the community in its ultra-Orthodox incarnation.

The newest Williamsburg Kulturkampf: The War of the Artists

Those bohemians who began moving into Williamsburg in the mid-80s have one name in the Chasidim’s Yiddish. They’re called “artists,” and many Chasidim (who wish to remain anonymous) are suspicious of their ways. The “artists,” on the other hand, pay the Chasidim the same compliment. Any Web surfer literate either in Yiddish or the ways of Williamsburg hipsterdom can quite easily find Web sites, where young hipsters insult their Chasidic landlords, or Chasidim drop juicy hints about the undomestic habits of the artists.

Who are these “artists”? The group includes two types of people: first, actual practitioners of the visual or performing arts, real artists who’ve moved into Williamsburg to take advantage of the gallery, exhibit, and fellow-artist scene: all for prices that would be impossible in Manhattan. Artists, of course, want to be with other artists, and New York (and its various far-flung neighborhoods) is famous as a city which makes such communities possible and affordable. But the category “artists,” as understood by the Chasidim, also includes plain ol’ hipsters, young folk drawn to Williamsburg by a free-and-easy and entertaining way of life, full of clubs, bars, and all sorts of partying.

The current controversy centers precisely on this contrast between this youth culture and the culture of the Chasidim. In the past few weeks, small, independent (one could even say “marginal”) groups of Chasidim have mounted several demonstrations against the “artists,” or, to be more exact, against the owners of the apartment houses that are renting out to the outside hipsters. When one asks Chasidim why they do not approve of the “artists,” the responses are various: some say, that they are just “too different” – for example, they don’t have curtains on the windows, they have outlandish art on the walls, they walk dogs on the streets. Some say, on the other hand, that they’re “generally honest people” (“not like the criminal element” of other ethnic groups), but they’re taking over potential living spaces of Chasidim. They’re replacing Chasidic Williamsburg with theirs – a hipster-bohemian variety.

The demonstrations, and the future

It’s hard to get representative responses from the “artists” themselves, because they’re a variegated community. It’s quite plausible that they want the same thing that every New Yorker wants: cheap, attractive apartments that are fitted to their way of living. The problem is just that their lifestyle is quite different from that of the Chasidim – and that the owners of apartment buildings earn quite a bit more money by renting lofts to multiple occupants then they do by renting entire apartments to large families.

The demonstrators (who are actually small, non-official groups, “two or three people with a fax machine,” as one highly-placed Chasidic source put it) chose as their main target the Gretsch Building, the only one of the major Williamsburg apartment buildings whose owner is a non-Chasidic Orthodox Jew. It seems that the protests have indeed accomplished some of their mission: they prevailed upon the owners to assure that only “normal” businesses (i.e. no bars or clubs) occupy the lower floor, that no terraces be built, and that no swimming pools be visible from other buildings. But protesters have also attempted to influence other owners, non-Jews or non-religious Jews, who are likely to be less impressed by scrawled signs in imperfect English.

In certain Chasidic chat rooms people are waxing nostalgic about the “good old days” of Chasidic Williamsburg. Perhaps the invasion of the artists is only the first wave of the new population which will drive out the Chasidim, leaving them to wander in the desert until they find a new home.

Getting rid of polio

In the current issue of The New Yorker, Atul Gawande has an enlightening, compassionate article chock-full of local color called "The Mop-Up." It's about the World Health Organization's campaign to eradicate polio through en-masse vaccinations. (Unfortunately, it's not available on-line.)

Near the end of the article, Gawande voices some qualms about the project. It's a massive endeavor, after all -- couldn't the billions of dollars spent be put to better use in strengthening basic health care in the countries, such as India, where polio is still common? His conclusion involves a certain amount of hand-waving: eradicating polio is the Great Wall or pyramid of our age, a testament to our collective enterprise.

This last argument can be easily disposed of. If eradicating polio would be a Triumph of the Human Spirit, so then would any number of other significant health-care goals that might be achieved through appropriate initiatives: increasing life expectancy by five years for men and women of all races by the year 2025. Or reducing by a half the number of smokers. There is nothing unique about polio, by this aeshetic argument, which would put it at the top of the heap.

On the other hand, Gawande's cost-benefit concerns are quite relevant. Making them somewhat more specific than their formulation in the article is more difficult than it might appear, since they involve the complications associated with any such calculations. Which costs are counted? Which benefits? Over what time scale?

I found this article by K.J. Bart et al. of the Department of Health and Human Services, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. For those disinclined to read the whole thing, here's the abstract:

A benefit-cost analysis of the Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative was undertaken to facilitate national and international decision-making with regard to financial support. The base case examined the net costs and benefits during the period 1986-2040; the model assumed differential costs for oral poliovirus vaccine (OPV) and vaccine delivery in industrialized and developing countries, and ignored all benefits aside from reductions in direct costs for treatment and rehabilitation. The model showed that the "break-even" point at which benefits exceeded costs was the year 2007, with a saving of US$ 13 600 million by the year 2040. Sensitivity analyses revealed only small differences in the break-even point and in the dollars saved, when compared with the base case, even with large variations in the target age group for vaccination, the proportion of case-patients seeking medical attention, and the cost of vaccine delivery. The technical feasibility of global eradication is supported by the availability of an easily administered, inexpensive vaccine (OPV), the epidemiological characteristics of poliomyelitis, and the successful experience in the Americas with elimination of wild poliovirus infection. This model demonstrates that the Poliomyelitis Eradication Initiative is economically justified.

Economically justified, that is, in the context of this paper's assumptions. There's nothing wrong with such assumptions, of course -- every piece of research is based on certain definitions and restrictions -- but it's nice to know where we stand before we agree with the conclusion of the abstract.

The big question mark in the study is this: while the benefits of eradicating polio are underestimated, so are the costs. Each "cost-dollar" is counted equally whether it is spent for polio eradication or for something else. But that begs the question. Is money more wisely invested in basic health-care than in large-scale eradication projects? I would like to see studies that compare, say, the results of a billion dollars of world-wide basic health expenditures with the benefits of a billion-dollar disease-eradication program.

The polio eradication project is a large and noble one, but I don't think that we know enough yet about its costs and benefits to be confident about further such endeavors.

Reddish-white nights

Here's a poem about St. Petersburg, Russia. I translated it from the Yiddish.

A White Night
Yisroel Nekrasov

Red evening drags quietly
till the dawn.
The milk, sticky, whitish,
drips on.
After the last streetcar,
The city frozen,
Maybe one can restart
What was gone.
No: again it's far
away, a space unfilled.
A girl stops a car
for a hundred-ruble bill.

Why don't you live with your own kind?

What follows is inspired by a post of Naomi Chana's.

On Sunday I attended a Chasidic protest in Williamsburg as research for a story that Steven I. Weiss (of Protocols) and I are working on. More on that later. From a sociological and psychological point of view, though, the visit provided yet another opportunity to marvel at how one can have a great deal in common with a group yet feel completely out of place among them.

No, this is not going to be an omphalocentric meditation on Identity, the Mystery that is Me. But I am going to talk about one of my preoccupations: the creation of an ideology that takes advantage of contradictory ideas without being beholden to the entirety of their sources.

Let me be more specific. I would like more Jews to appreciate the Yiddish language, and I would like to help strengthen and expand our almost nonexistent (but what an "almost"!) community of secular-minded Yiddish speakers. "Secular" is meant not as an exclusion of religion (I am observant myself), but as a denial of fundamentalism.

Since I am a Yiddishist, I am fascinated by the particular brand of the language characteristic of American Chasidim, both in its colloquial and literary registers. As Joshua Fishman has pointed out time and again in his articles in the Yiddish Forward and elsewhere, secular Yiddishists have one large thing to learn from the Chasidim: that speaking a language in the home-family-neighborhood nexus, not theater, newspapers, or literature, is what makes a spoken language intergenerationally transmissible.

So why don't I move to Borough Park or Williamsburg, where spoken Yiddish is a lot more secure than in downtown Manhattan? An acquaintance of mine, an intelligent ultra-Orthodox woman, asked me more or less this question after a talk I gave a few months ago at a conference in Baltimore of the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. In response, I said, "I'm not a Chasid. I am not against Chasidim; I appreciate their use of Yiddish. But my religious observance and philosophical approach to Judaism is quite different, and I think it worth my while to try and build a liberally Jewish, philosophically cogent, Yiddish-speaking community where I live."

In other words, I am devoting time and frustration to a near-impossible contradiction in terms. I am a traditional Jew in an egalitarian Conservative congregation speaking Yiddish with my family. Such traditional Judaism, in my personal context, raises another contradiction. I am observant of the Sabbath and holidays and kashrut, and I study Torah regularly, albeit with a critical eye. Regular readers of this blog already know that I frequently despair about the Conservative movement's many flaws. Why then -- some of you might ask -- do you not flee to the Orthodox movement, or even take advantage of the Reform movement's increasing observance?

Such questions could be asked of many contradictions I live with. How can I support Israel while realizing more and more that American Jews need to find other, extra-Zionist preoccupations that invigorate their own community? How can I study epidemiology while retaining a healthy skepticism about the risk-free messianism peddled by so many advocacy groups?

To create an ideology, and then to try and convince others of its usefulness, one needs a modicum of stability. One cannot constantly migrate from group to group, even on the basis of deep-rooted frustration, until one is sure that the most fruitful frustrations are not to be found in one's current home. If I am dissatisfied by the multiple contradictions I negotiate, I am also inspired by what is possible precisely because of these contradictions. If I were completely satisfied by my community, something would be terribly wrong.

Dog bites man

If you were around when I was posting about rabies in China, and found the topic interesting (I do, but then again I'm an epidemiologist), you should check out this WHO dossier.

Saprophytic poets

Molds and bacteria feed on dead animals; that’s why the carcasses disappear after a while. But there might be a penultimate stage in the ecological cycle: the poet, notebook in hand, piling up metaphors on the lifeless creature.

I’m talking about the recent run in Slate of dead-animal poems. Dan Chiasson mused on the departed cockle in November. Then, on December 2nd, came Rick Barot’s dead, frozen gull. Barry Goldensohn, not to be outdone, meditated yesterday on toad skin.

I don’t know if this officially counts as a trend, and certainly these poems might have been written months or years ago. But Robert Pinsky, the official poet anointer of Planet Slate, seems to be awfully partial to memento mori.

I wonder why that is. My unfounded theory is that such dissection is a projection of the confessional impulse. I know, thinks the poet, that poetry is meant to plumb the Depths of the Soul, all the rotting-away and disease-unto-death that’s found there – what better objective correlative than an actual-factual animal, just like me, moldering away there where my pencil is pointing?

In the final analysis, thematics are independent of a poem’s quality. Barot’s poem is lovely and lyrical; Goldensohn’s is crude, verging on obscene (“How much of us will last, tough, stiff,/cured by summer sun. Our better towels/outlast our flesh. Are Nazi lampshades/holding up? Shrunken heads? Mummies?/Count on bones. Stone monuments. A few poems.”). But the general trajectory of these poems can be roughed out:

1. Description of the deceased;

2. Connection of the departed to some larger trend (death in general; natural decay; royal purple); and then the obligatory

3. meditation on our own unavoidable passing.

In any case, the next time I read another of these I wouldn’t be surprised if I were to shout out, “For God’s sake, leave the poor animal alone!”

The primordial soup

Today we went to B&H Dairy, an unassuming temple of the vegetarian palate on 2nd Avenue between 8th and 9th with lunch specials for under seven dollars. Width: a table plus a lunch counter; length: about eight tables. We sat in the back, and after we had finished eating (lox and bagel for Her, kasha varnishkes for Your Host), we were treated to a culinary renactment of the creation myth. A sturdy woman, not large but broad and solid of beam, made different sorts of soup in a number of sizeable plastic cans.

She did it like this. Each canister seemed to have a base of some sort (beets, I suppose, for the borscht, potatoes for the potato soup, and so on). She boiled an awful lot of boiling water in a very large metal pot and doled out steaming potfuls to each canister. She did the same thing with an impressively large quantity of noodles, which only some soups were favored with, and then made the rounds with various spices in small dishes, from which she dumped generous portions into each soup -- salt first, then something yellow. The borscht got a dollop of a concoction from a brown bottle labeled Seasoning.

All of this work with hot pots, boiling water, and confined spaces was done in sandals and ungloved. Such unceremoniousness producing such ambrosial results: Whitman, you should be living at this hour!

So (lehavdil and all that) that's what I think creation was like: no fireworks, no unfolding of some Rosenzweigian revelatory flower, just some simple orders: "Light! Darkness!" Then later: "Plants! Animals!"

Not that all of creation is as tasty as B&H. But we can certainly try.

"Then indeed would the human race be plunged into madness and despair"

We find ourselves in the midst of the Seven Days of Repentance, that hallowed period between the two High Holidays of Christmas and New Year's.

(I am inspired to make this remark in part by a recent post of Katle Kanye's. Among other things, he says: Every year I torture myself trying to understand what [Christmas] is. Is it like Purim, or is like Yom Kippur? Or Sukkos? Or possibly even Shavuos? Let me explain. The trees on the street and in the houses are definitely like the leaves of Shavuos, but many put their trees out by the window and that's a little like Chanukah, since that's pirsumei nisa. On the other hand the pretty blinking lights are leftover sukkah decorations, so it's Sukkos, and the trees are like schach, "so that your future generations will know." But then the midnight mass and the holy choral singing is like Kol Nidrei. Once the day comes, though, everyone gets drunk and puts on red hats, and it's a Purim-like atmosphere. With the turkey, of course, there's a taste of Simchas Torah. [...])

In this time of year, when the nation is in a fever of commercial intent, it might be useful for my non-Christian readers to try and understand a bit of the more interesting intellectual and spiritual meaning of Christmas. Our man Wystan (as Sarah Beck might call him) has thoughtfully provided us with his Christmas oratorio, "For the Time Being," and I thought there might be no better time to excerpt a goodish chunk of Herod's monologue. (Well, an even better time might have been on the 25th, but this isn't exactly a current-events blog, is it?) Of course, there's nothing whatsoever to learn about Judaism from this stuff. Not a thing.

If you wonder when I'm going to be blogging on more strictly Jewish topics, wait for my blockbuster post on the Tenth of Tevet, which I have no intention of writing.

HEROD

[. . .]


I have tried everything. I have prohibited the sale of crystals and ouija-boards; I have slapped a heavy tax on playing cards; the courts are empowered to sentence alchemists to hard labour in the mines; it is a statutory offence to turn tables or feel bumps. But nothing is really effective. How can I expect the masses to be sensible when, for instance, to my certain knowledge, the captain of my own guard wears an amulet against the Evil Eye, and the richest merchant in the city consults a medium over every important transaction?

Legislation is helpless against the wild prayer of longing that rises, day in, day out, from all these households under my protection: "God, put away justice and truth for we cannot understand them and do not want them. Eternity would bore us dreadfully. Leave Thy heavens and come down to our earth of waterclocks and hedges. Become our Uncle. Look after Baby, amuse Grandfather, escort Madam to the Opera, help Willy with his home-work, introduce Muriel to a handsome naval officer. Be interesting and weak like us, and we will love you as we love ourselves."

Reason is helpless, and now even the Poetic Compromise no longer works, all those lovely fairy tales in which Zeus, disguising himself as a swan or a bull or a shower of rain or what-have-you, lay with some beautiful woman and begot a hero. For the Public has grown too sophisticated. Under all the charming metaphors and symbols, it detects the stern command, "Be and act heroically"; behind the myth of divine origin, it senses the real human excellence that is a reproach to its own baseness. So, with a bellow of rage, it kicks Poetry downstairs and sends for Prophecy. "Your sister has just insulted me. I asked for a God who should be as like me as possible. What use to me is a God whose divinity consists in doing difficult things that I cannot do or saying clever things that I cannot understand? The God I want and intend to get must be someone I can recognize immediately without having to wait and see what he says or does. There must be nothing in the least extraordinary about him. Produce him at once, please. I'm sick of waiting."

To-day, apparently, judging by the trio who came to see me this morning with an ecstatic grin on their scholarly faces, the job has been done. "God has been born," they cried, "we have seen him ourselves. The World is saved. Nothing else matters."

One needn't be much of a psychologist to realize that if this rumour is not stamped out now, in a few years it is capable of diseasing the whole Empire, and one doesn't have to be a prophet to predict the consequences if it should.

Reason will be replaced by Revelation. Instead of Rational Law, objective truths perceptible to any who will undergo the necessary intellectual discipline, and the same for all, Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions -- feelings in the solar plexus induced by undernourishment, angelic images generated by fevers or drugs, dream warnings inspired by the sound of falling water. Whole cosmogonies will be created out of some forgotten personal resentment, complete epics written in private languages, the daubs of school children ranked above the greatest masterpieces.

Idealism will be replaced by Materialism. Priapus will only have to move to a good address and call himself Eros to become the darling of middle-aged women. Life after death will be an eternal dinner party where all the guests are twenty years old. Diverted from its normal and wholesome outlet in patriotism and civic or family pride, the need of the materialistic Masses for some visible Idol to worship will be driven into totally unsocial channels where no education can reach it. Divine honours will be paid to silver tea-pots, shallow depressions in the earth, names on maps, domestic pets, ruined windmills, even in extreme cases, which will become increasingly common, to headaches, or malignant tumours, or four o'clock in the afternoon.

Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish. Every corner-boy will congratulate himself: "I'm such a sinner that God had to come down in person to save me. I must be a devil of a fellow." Every crook will argue: "I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving them. Really the world is admirably arranged." And the ambition of every young cop will be to secure a death-bed repentance. The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums, and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Tragedy when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

Naturally this cannot be allowed to happen. Civilisation must be saved even if this means sending for the military, as I suppose it does. How dreary. Why is it that in the end civilization always has to call in these professional tidiers to whom it is all one whether it be Pythagoras or a homicidal lunatic that they are instructed to exterminate. O dear, Why couldn't this wretched infant be born somewhere else? Why can't people be sensible? I don't want to be horrid. Why can't they see that the notion of a finite God is absurd? Because it is. And suppose, just for the sake of argument, that it isn't, that this story is true, that this child is in some inexplicable manner both God and Man, that he grows up, lives, and dies, without committing a single sin? Would that make life any better? On the contrary it would make it far, far worse. For it could only mean this: that once having shown them how, God would expect every man, whatever his fortune, to lead a sinless life in the flesh and on earth. Then indeed would the human race be plunged into madness and despair. And for me personally at this moment it would mean that God had given me the power to destroy Himself. I refuse to be taken in. He could not play such a horrible practical joke. Why should He dislike me so? I've worked like a slave. Ask anyone you like. I read all official dispatches without skipping. I've taken elocution lessons. I've hardly ever taken bribes. How dare He allow me to decide? I've tried to be good. I brush my teeth every night. I haven't had sex for a month. I object. I'm a liberal. I want everyone to be happy. I wish I had never been born.

The City of God

What thou lovest well is felt violently.
Stays on in us. I know Paradise is not
the cypress tree God showed me as his heart.
Is not the country, is not beautiful.
It is the city streets in bad weather.
Small dirty shops with custard pastries
and coffee and steam-covered windows.
I do not speak the language of that paradise.
Why am I so happy to be going there?
Something rings and cries and shines
and is black in me. I am walking with it
into the City of Heaven. I will smell
all the people, my body hot inside the shop.
Rain will be falling heavily outside.


Chosen by the Lion

I am the one chosen by the lion at sundown
and dragged back from the shining water.
Yanked back to bushes and torn open, blood
blazing at the throat and breast of me.
Taken as meat. Devoured as spirit by spirit.
The others will return quickly to drink again
peacefully, but for me now there's only faith.
Only the fact that the tall windows I lived
with were left uncovered halfway up.
And the silence of those days I lived there
which were marked by your arrivals like
stations on a long journey. You write to say
you love me and lie awake in stillness
to avoid the pain. I remember looking
at you from within at the last moment,
with faith like a gift handkerchief, delicate
and almost fragile. This is the final thing.
Purity and faith, power and blood. Is there
nothing to see? Not memory even of forgetting?
Only the body meeting the body? What of faith
when it meets death, being when it is hard
to account for? The nipples you bit
and the body you possessed lie buried in you.
My faith shines as the moon in the darkness
on water, as the sky in the day. Does it hover
in the air around you? Does it come like
a flower in your groin? Or is it like before
when you were alone and about to fall asleep
saying out loud in the darkness, "Linda,"
and hearing me answer immediately, "Yes!"

-both by Linda Gregg
from Chosen by the Lion (Graywolf Press, 1994).

Is there a Chinese speaker in the house?

If so, can you tell me what this says? Especially the part near the bottom that mentions a certain Yiddish-speaking hatted cat.

Please e-mail me if you have any idea at all. Thanks!

Tony Judt is not entirely wrong

I am reluctant to write about matters Israeli-Palestinian: first, because of all the incoherent shouting on the right and left; and second, because the mammoth Middle East overshadows other, more subtle questions which are perhaps more important to leading a considered Jewish existence. Occasionally, however, an opportunity for staking out the middle ground presents itself. Thanks to Kesher Talk for providing a link to the relevant material.

Tony Judt's original essay in The New York Review of Books received much hostile press, and I can't say that it was undeserved. In defending himself against his critics, he repeats his main claim, which (as I discuss below) I find wholly false. On the way there, however, he makes some worthwhile points which are not commonly addressed by those who care about Israel. It is a pity that those points can only be made from those on Judt's end of the spectrum.

The core of his argument (as Judt himself states) is this: "This, then, was the core of my argument: it is not the state that is anachronistic (pace Walzer's misreading of me), but the Zionist version of it." I suspect that Walzer's "misreading" (actually quite a plausible reading) was an attempt to find the least objectionable construction of Judt's argument. For if we are meant to take Judt at the face value of this, his newest claim, there is something about the Zionist state which is "anachronistic" enough (read: "immoral enough," for the "anachronistic" state is one which does not conform to modern notions of political right) for the world to be rid of it.

It is theoretically possible (though, of course, quite improbable, and one pales at the thought) that a Zionist state, by the very immorality of its foundations, could cede the right to exist -- just like there have been actual states in history which should not have existed. Judt errs, however, in thinking that Israel, in its present incarnation, is immorally constructed. The important error in his argument is this. Israel is indeed flawed, and deeply so, but not in a more fundamental way than all nation-states are flawed. Michael Walzer, whose thought I am happily biased towards, makes this point in his response to Judt.

Let me explain further. According to Judt, while the European nation-states do indeed discriminate among applicants for citizenship, they do not discriminate in a fundamental way among all those who become citizens. It is only Israel, he writes, which discriminates between citizens based on their ethnic origin.

I don't think this is true. The alarm bells start ringing when one reads his description of the nature of Frenchness, a rush-job at the speed of special pleading ("But if someone is a citizen of, e.g., France, he or she is French and that is all there is to the matter, at least as far as the law is concerned."). As Daniel Boyarin pointed out in a talk of his I attended today, the French view of different minority religious communities is precisely that: a French view, strongly conditioned by Christian ideas of religion as distinct from ethnicity and nationality. For example, in its recent outlawing of "religious symbols" in schools, the French government made a serious category mistake, assuming that yarmulkes and head-scarves for Jews and Muslims serve just the same function as crosses for Christians: religious symbols. This Christian approach in the name of the French government (which does not even realize that its policy is conditioned in such a way) puts the lie to Judt's naive assumptions of a "neutral" Frenchness. Indeed, as Michael Walzer points out, it is only the United States which attempts to create in its political-cultural sphere a "neutral space," not beholden to any particular founding religion.

This is only one, comparatively minor example. The point is that many of the European states do indeed discriminate among their citizens -- and that Israel can do so in the same way, without jeopardizing the fundamental moral nature of its society.

Israel discriminates between Jews and non-Jews in two different ways. The first way, and most troubling, is discrimination not in keeping with any fundamental political values appropriate to a democratic state -- I mean those stated quite clearly in Israel's declaration of independence, according to which citizens are granted rights without regard to race or religion. It is in this category that Judt makes necessary points, for there exist those forces in Israeli society that would discriminate against Arabs in a fundamentally unjust way -- e.g., by denying them the right to live where they choose, through unjust search and seizure, through unjustifiable military persecution of innocents.

Judt is wrong in his assumption that such unjust discrimination is at the very foundation of Israeli society. The vital political culture that includes energetic defenders of and advocates for Israeli Arabs and Palestinians, and the political institutions which guarantee Arab participation, make it clear that such unjustice is the system's imperfection rather than its goal. Judt is right, however, to point them out. As we see in the unreflective Israel cheerleading of Abraham Foxman (who also responds to Judt), there are far too many leaders of the Jewish community who cannot bring themselves even to admit that Israel's political culture is capable of injustice!

There is another way in which Israel discriminates. "Discrimination" is perhaps not the right word for this activity, the characteristic of most nation states and one that Judt wishes to deny. France gives special treatment to French Catholics -- not in granting them a higher class of political privilege, but in granting them the status of majority. Those French who are defined this way, in terms of their culture and nationality (and who can deny that this is what comes to mind when thinkng of "the French"?), are differently treated by the political culture than French Muslims. Similar observations can be made about other European nation-states, including Poland, Spain, Italy.

Israel is founded on democratic, majority-Jewish principles, a nation-state in the tradition of other nation-states. It is also imperfect and capable of injustice. It is disheartening that so few public intellectuals seem able to accomodate these multiple truths.

The flames of speculation

In the tractate Horayos (or Horayot, for those of you allergic to Ashkenazic pronunciation), page 11b, there is an extensive discussion, one among many in the Talmud, of the ingredients and fabrication of the oil used to anoint the high priests. R' Yehudah is quoted as saying: "A certain miracle occured [נס אחד נעשה] with regard to the anointing oil: there were only 12 login, yet from that oil was anointed the Tabernacle and its vessels, and Aaron and his sons, through all the seven days of priestly initiation."

Does that story remind you of any other miraculous oil? Could it be that the Hanukkah tale (in Shabbos 21b), which includes the similar phrase "יום אחד נעשה בו נס" (on a certain day a miracle occured), was itself based on the story on Horayos, so that the Rabbis could forge a connection between Hanukkah and other holidays of Temple dedication (e.g. Sukkos)?

This is unfounded speculation, but for the life of me I can't figure out why it's wrong.

Maybe, if I get my gumption up, I can ask Daniel Boyarin. That's right, he of Carnal Israel is speaking tomorrow at 3 pm in the City of All Sins, at the 6th St. Synagogue.

(Whoops, I suppose tomorrow is today already. Yes, he's speaking on Sunday: Hayom hayom hayom.)

"Not to gaze at them like a fool"

(From Spinoza's The Ethics, Part I. The Samuel Shirley translation reads better, but this is what I found on-line.)

We must not omit to notice that the followers of this doctrine [of final causes], anxious to display their talent in assigning [such] causes, have imported a new method of argument in proof of their theory—namely, a reduction, not to the impossible, but to ignorance; thus showing that they have no other method of exhibiting their doctrine. For example, if a stone falls from a roof on to some one's head and kills him, they will demonstrate by their new method, that the stone fell in order to kill the man; for, if it had not by God's will fallen with that object, how could so many circumstances (and there are often many concurrent circumstances) have all happened together by chance? Perhaps you will answer that the event is due to the facts that the wind was blowing, and the man was walking that way. "But why," they will insist, "was the wind blowing, and why was the man at that very time walking that way?" If you again answer, that the wind had then sprung up because the sea had begun to be agitated the day before, the weather being previously calm, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will again insist: "But why was the sea agitated, and why was the man invited at that time?" So they will pursue their questions from cause to cause, till at last you take refuge in the will of God—in other words, the sanctuary of ignorance. So, again, when they survey the frame of the human body, they are amazed; and being ignorant of the causes of so great a work of art conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt another.

Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the interpreters of Nature and the gods. Such persons know that, with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only available means for proving and preserving their authority would vanish also [. . .]

Department of Unsolicited Medical Advice
or: I Suppose That's What's Been Going Around At Shul Lately
or: Doctor Doctor, Gimme the News, I Gotta Bad Case of Diaspora Jew
or: I'd Hate to See What He Said At His Private Appearances

(The summary below is from YIVO News, Winter 2003.)

A. B. Yehoshua Prescribes Zionism as Cure for Diaspora "Disease"

Author A. B. Yehoshua maintains that Zionism's mission is to recast a historic Jewish fear of national sovereignty and power. Participating in YIVO's Distinguished Lecture Series [...], the Israeli novelist and intellectual prescribed Zionism as the medicine to treat what he sees as the Jewish disease called Diaspora. "Ultra Orthodox and Modern Orthodox, liberals and socialists, nationalists and bourgeois . . . the medicine has to be adjusted to each of them with regard to dosage, but basically the same medicine for everybody."

Addressing the topic, "The Future of the Zionist Revolution," Yehoshua insisted that the Jews' 2000-year exile from Israel was not imposed on them by non-Jews, but reflected instead "a neurotic choice that, despite the danger, anguish, and humiliation it entailed, helped alleviate the Jews' identity conflict."

For Yehoshua that conflict -- between universal religious faith in the creator of the cosmos and the narrow demands of nationalist identity -- began at Mount Sinai. The challenge to Zionism, he contends, is "to correct the aspiration that was established at Sinai, an aspiration full of pain and contradictions."

The author suggested that the correction is already taking place. In Israel, it is expressed through a tendency to secularize Jewish identity by emphasizing Israeli citizenship -- now being granted to increasing numbers of Christians, especially from Russia -- over religious faith. Conversely, in the Diaspora, he maintains, increasing numbers of ethnic non-Jews are being drawn to univeral elements of Jewish religious tradition, such as Kabbalah.

Some audience members felt that Yehoshua was advocating divorcing religion from nationality, and a future in which all Jewish nationalists in Israel would be known as Israelis, while Jewish spiritualists in the Diaspora -- both ethnic Jews and non-Jews -- would be called "adherents of the Jewish faith."

The lecture was the author's sole public appearance during his recent visit to the United States.

The Tragedy of the Tulsa Fullback (excerpt)

After the [poetry] class ended, a student who plays on the [University of Tulsa] soccer team stopped to tell [Yevgeny] Yevtushenko about the mixed emotions he felt after a coach refused to let him play in the team's final game. When he finished, Mr. Yevtushenko flung his arms out wide and commanded: "You must write about that feeling. Do not squeeze it inside."
from today's New York Times

"Play me, please, Coach! I'll burn up the net!"
My glory-dream's denied. The bastard said nyet.

Of fish and fetuses

(If you're not up to speed on the latest flap about fish and mercury, please see the articles here and here. Then return to the next paragraph. Happy reading! A special award will be given to the alert reader who figures out what the FDA is actually going to announce in the spring -- i.e. whether they will be making their advisory more or less stringent. There seem to be contradictory reports on the matter.)

I am an epidemiologist, but I'm no expert on the effects of methylmercury expsure. But in looking through the National Academy of Sciences sober and thoughtful 2000 report on the matter, it appears that we have here a classic problem of epidemiology and public health: how do we translate risk assessment into legislation?

There are several parts to this controversy. One involves the "action standard" of the FDA -- this is the methylmercury dose that would require the agency to take legal action -- and whether this is to be based on the EPA's advisory. In April, the FDA indicated that this would indeed be the case, making its own action standards some five times stricter. But two other relevant pieces of the problem should not be overlooked: the wording of the FDA's warning itself, and, perhaps most important, how we should implement public policy based on these advisories.

Of course, these different parts of the problem are interdependent. The "action standard" of the FDA, like the advisory level of the EPA, demands legal action on the part of the agency. So one cannot agitate for the highest possible level of protection without taking into account the results that such protection will have.

Let us assume, for the moment, that the EPA advisory level is scientifically justified, albeit the matter is actually quite complicated. The NAS report fairly characterizes as "strong" the evidence for neurological effects due to methylmercury. These effects are strongest, states the report, also reasonably enough, in fetuses and newborns, whose neurological development is still proceeding. However, this evidence is based almost entirely on either animal studies or studies of populations affected by acute mercury exposure. The several epidemiologic studies concerned with chronic exposure to low levels of mercury (more relevant to us tuna-fish folks, for example) give a mixed picture, and in fact the largest of these studies (the so-called Seychelles study) finds very few significant neurological effects. The NAS report further states (in its conclusion) that the average exposure in the United States is quite low in comparison to the recommended standards.

In short, the EPA advisory is based on scientific conclusions which find their strongest base not among common, everyday levels of exposure, but in above-average, acute exposure, and in animal studies. If the FDA adopts the EPA level, we need to understand that we are setting the bar of protection higher, erring on the side of biological effects that, while plausible, might not be commonly found in daily life. If, for example, the new data on mercury levels in tuna suggest that exposure in fetuses, newborns, and perinatal women might be higher than previously thought, one must still compare this increased exposure with the recommended standard -- which is in turn set as low as possible, in keeping with a standard of maximum protection.

In other words, we are dealing with a strong, plausible biological connection, which might or might not be plausible given chronic exposures of an average intensity. It's not implausible to suggest that the FDA mandates exposure levels so low as to be incapable of causing any measurable effect.

Here's where the hard part starts. A price is paid for every legislative intervention, and someone, somewhere, will be paying the price of that intervention. Is it worth it? Is it worth assuring that tens of thousands of children a year have their mercury exposure reduced to levels that could not possibly have any physiological effect? How much do we value, say, a variegated diet during pregnancy, or the health values of different sorts of fish, or a non-panicked approach to dietary recommendations?

A spokesman from the Environmental Working Group (the chief critic of the FDA's less stringent recommendations with regard to tuna) accused the FDA of abdicating its responsibility to "protect the public." But protection against what, and at what cost? Are we to be protected against a minimal risk, even if such protection incurrs costly and possibly unwarranted intervention?

I would encourage all my readers (my Daily Dozen) to forward my speculations to those more expert in the matter than I am, so I can help clear up my thoughts and the suggestions of this blog.

Khayele the Baptized

Below is my translation of an entry in Noam Starik's Yiddish blog. Any historical novelists out there?

A terrible tragedy occurred on June 5th, 1814, in the house of Dovid Slutski, the rabbi of Kiev. After the Sabbath meal, Khayele, the thirteen-year-old daughter, suddenly disappeared. By the next day the whole city knew that priests had kidnapped the rabbi's daughter and were planning to convert her to Christianity. Her father protested to the churches and their responsible authorities. The priests, for their part, stood their ground, claiming that the girl had freely converted to the Orthodox faith, and that therefore they could not help the rabbi.

The priests moved Khayele to a fanatic Orthodox family in Kiev that was known for baptizing Jewish children. They paired her off with a Christian named Ivan Popov, and gave her the name Maria; so it was that Khayele became Maria Popov.

But on June 25th, her 12th day in captivity, she managed to smuggle out from under the noses of her guards nine dramatic letters she had written on tattered green paper. From the letters themselves -- heart-rendingly naive in tone, in a childish spelling -- it also seems that she managed to receive the responses from her family.

[I have made no attempt to preserve the original variations in spelling. ZShB]

Letter 3:

Darling father dearest, please take me out of this house. God should let me get away from these Christians, and I ask you, father, get me out of here fast, you must come quickly because I am so weak I don't eat and I can't eat and sleep. God should let you come soon with health and joy and we should all see and we should all be happy together Amen. Darling father dearest, my mother is too weak to get through this, please come and don't delay, you should come soon with joy Amen. Dear sister Hedele, write me dearest in good health. God should let me see you soon in good health and joy Amen.

Letter 5:

Darling sister-in-law dearest, I received your note that you wrote. I thank you very much for it. Please, please get me out of this unclean house. Darling brother dearest, please write me about your health and my darling sister. It's awful that I am away from you and that they don't let me out of here to see my dear mother. God should let my darling mother get through the troubles that have happened. How awful it is that I left my father and that my father is not there and I am with the Christians. God should let us see each other in health.

I allow myself to speculatethat the rabbi's daughter, the 13-year-old, tried to get herself converted by her own free will, but afterwards she realized what she had done and felt awful. She tried to run away (say the historical documents) from her home, and sent the sad notes to her family, but by then it was no help. Since she had already converted, the priests were able to hold her. From the above-quoted letters ("How awful it is that I left my father") it seems that she went to the church willingly and volunteered to be baptized. She quickly awoke from her dream and some days later she wrote the desperate letters. Perhaps she became frightened when she was matched with Ivan -- she had not expected that much.

We don't know the end of the story -- the documents don't tell us. We've found out about this history through searching the archives of the Orthodox church. From the same documents we know that a legal case was begun against the father for accusing the priests of lying, kidnapping, and baptizing the daughter against her will. We have no written evidence of the outcome of the trial.

[The article is based on Shoel Ginzburg, A terrible page of history, Di Tsukunft, July, 1932, pp. 423-427.]

Gold, frankincense, and sambar: or, tasty ironies of the Diaspora

A professor told me yesterday that the department is considering having its Christmas party at a kosher Indian vegetarian restaurant. How often, I ask you, do one's culinary fantasies come true?

Now let's see: did Mary and Joseph prefer dosas or utthapam?

The other thing I'm wondering, going through in my mind all the members of the department, is how many Christians will be at this Christmas party. Maybe a token two or three.

Sensitive compression

Some do indeed get their due, though it takes a few decades. Kay Ryan, a Californian poet and the author of a half-dozen books, has fashioned her art not in the groves of M.F.A.-academe, but in the unregarded and unsheltered Mojave. She has whittled and shaped, whittled and shaped her words down to such gems as the poem published a few days ago in Poetry Daily:

The Light of Interiors
Kay Ryan

The light of interiors
is the admixture
of who knows how many
doors ajar, windows
casually curtained,
unblinded or opened,
oculi set into ceilings,
wells, ports, shafts,
loose fits, leaks,
and other breaches
of surface. But, in
any case, the light,
once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often-handled, muffled
in carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways,
baffled equally
by the scatter and order
of love and failure
to an ideal and now
sourceless texture which
when mixed with silence
makes of a simple
table with flowers
an island.

Poetry
Volume CLXXXIII, Number 2
November 2003

Among its virtues are the many internal rhymes; the idiosyncratic use and non-use of meter; the fact that the entire poem is 2 (!) sentences long; and the theme itself, which many a poet has tilted at and failed. (The only thing I'm not sure about is the imprecise, nearly cliched "love and failure.")

To learn more about Ryan's work, take a look at this fine essay by Dana Gioia. You might also like to look at her new poem Hailstorm in The Atlantic (though I believe it's inferior to the one above).

Back to the book(s)

I'm usually reading a number of books at once (my attention span is solitary, poor, etc.), and there are some I've been in the middle of for ages -- who knows if I'll ever make it through Proust? On occasion, though, I am moved to have another try at a tome that's been intimidating me from across the room.

A recent article in the new issue of Conservative Judaism got me to pick up an old unfinishable standby.* (The "new" issue that came in the mail is dated summer, 2003. A delay like that doesn't make it any newer, but it does lend an air of nonchalant, old-world charm, like the Yiddish journals I get in the mail dated many months ago.)

There are several essays of note. Eugene Borowitz, in "The Pivotal Issue in a Century's Jewish Thought," remarks on the contemporary force of the ethical model of Judaism even after the crumbling of its philosophical (read: Kantian) foundations: "the continuing power of the ethical vision even without a sustaining contemporary intellectual theory of ethics." In his concluding section, the author (himself a Jewish philosopher) well-nigh throws up his hands and leaves the field:

As one devoted to thinking and to the unity of God, I hope that one day our Jewish religious commitment to the ethical will come to a Jewish religious intellectual paradigm as widely accepted among us as was the modern one for much of the past century. But for the moment, it seems far more likely that we shall have many theologies expressing the diverse religious intuitions in our community, a situation not unlike the experience of most centuries in our long history.

Yes, well, we can always hide our face in the skirts of history: someone, somewhere, during some century of the interminable Exile, has done something comparable to what we are doing now. But that's cold comfort, especially when you have a good, long think about the "diverse religious intuitions" in our community. I might be an elitist, but I can't help but think that these intuitions, often poorly expressed and completely contradictory, are a mightly slim reed on which to build a theological infrastructure.

Not being a philosopher (nor even playing one on TV), I can't presume to offer the alternative, unifying religious-intellectual paradigm which Borowitz seeks. I am puzzled, however, that he doesn't mention the interesting developments in Christian philosophical theology. I am thinking of the well-received and widely-read (well, comparatively widely-read, at any rate) work of Alvin Plantinga, who's written some very interesting philosophy on belief in God -- how can such belief be warranted, given the obvious and manifold difficulties?

But about the book I was moved to pick up again: Borowitz refers to Franz Rosenzweig as a possible saving philosophical grace for Jewish thought in the coming century. This made me wonder if anyone (who's not writing their doctoral thesis on the book) has ever read The Star of Redemption all the way through. Then I realized that the book had been sitting on my desk for the better part of a year, a bookmark stuck somewhat forlornly near the end of the first Gate (if I'm remembering rightly what he calls the larger divisions).

Last night, while being the only person of two in the house not watching The Practice, I gave old Franz another try. Suffice it to say that I find it no easier going than the first time, but now I have a different approach. I think it might be the perfect book for the intelligent layperson: the Jew interested in theology not so much as a universe of philosophically defensible assertions, but as a rich, funky, literary raw material open for the soul's browsing. In other words, just the sort of various intuition which Borowitz is talking about.

There are some books, I think, which can only be read in this way, because trying to pin down the twists and turns of the argument might not be worth it, and even inimical to the spirit of the work. I think of Rosenzweig and (for example) Kook more as poets than rigorous philosophers, perhaps because I myself am more a poet than a rigorous philosopher. Their books should be not so much closely read as surfed, riding lightly on the waves of fever-pitch prose without paying so much attention to every questionable lemma.

*You'll note that the Web site hasn't been updated for a few years. Par for the course as far as the Conservative movement's Web presence goes, I'm afraid -- lots of muticolored gimcracks but a paucity of solid material.