The Wandering Jew

Shana Tova!

שתהיה לך שנה מתוקה נפלאה ומלאה בדברים טובים

The Pope Vs. Islam

From Understanding Benedict by Daniel Johnson (The New York Sun, September 18, 2006):

Yesterday, the pope insisted that he did not agree with Manuel. But it is clear that he sympathized with this monarch of a doomed Christian civilization enough to use him as a mouthpiece through which he could pose his own implicit questions to Islam. Does the Muslim understanding of Allah allow rational debate about the morality of violence, given that the doctrine of jihad is a central pillar of Islam? If Allah is above reason, might violent jihad, including terrorism, be not merely justifiable but obligatory, as many Muslim scholars argue?

By now, the answer to these questions is clear: churches firebombed in the West Bank and Gaza, a nun murdered in Somalia. Such persecution is, alas, routine in many Muslim lands, and Catholics are not the only victims. But it is clear that Muslim leaders — even those of "pro-Western" countries such as Turkey or Pakistan — are not yet ready for the "frank" dialogue proposed by the pope. By pointing out that violence is a part of medieval Islam, not a "distortion," as Western liberals like to think, Benedict has touched a raw nerve.

No, this pope is not naïve. It is our liberal, theologically illiterate politicians who are naïve. We are already at war — a holy war, which we may lose.

Here's more on the subject from TigerHawk, who writes about Infantilizing Muslim "Rage":

...[Islam] is so insecure in its faith that the slightest criticism from a non-believer propels thousands of clerics and millions of followers into paroxysms of rage. Yet Islam needs jihad, which I understand means "struggle." It needs a jihad against illiteracy. It needs a jihad against ignorance. It needs a jihad against sloth. It needs a jihad against corruption. It needs a jihad in support of women, without whom it cannot succeed in the modern world. It needs a jihad against the clerics who have — allegedly, according to "moderates" — perverted the truth of its religion. It needs a jihad against its governments — secular and Islamic — who have destroyed the future for more than a billion people. It needs a jihad against despair.

Until I see the arsonists and rioters among Muslims embracing these jihads, I will hold them responsible for the bad choices that they make, including the choice to reject secular education, the choice to destroy rather than construct, the choice to dwell in the past instead of dream about the future, the choice to obsess about Jews rather than wonder how they might emulate the Jews, and the choice to have so little confidence in the power of their own religion that they oppress and condemn and kill those who choose otherwise.

(via Watch)

Tradition (Japanese Style)

Photo: David Allen

Click here to view a Japanese version of Fiddler on the Roof.

(via Yourish)

September 11

Photo: Thomas Hoepker/Magnum Photos

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

— Edna Vincent Millay

The New Scouts

A Scout is Helpful, 1941, Norman Rockwell

Meet the Mahdi Scouts. Like the Boy Scouts, their motto is also "Be Prepared" — prepared not to save lives or help others but for martyrdom.

From MEMRI:

"Hizbullah has recruited over 2,000 innocent children aged 10-15 to form armed militias. Before the recent war with Israel, these children appeared only in the annual Jerusalem Day celebrations, and were referred to as the 'December 14 Units,' but today they are called istishhadiyun ['martyrs']..."

..."The children are selected by Hizbullah recruitment [officers] based on one criterion only: They must be willing to become martyrs."

..."The children are educated from an early age to become martyrs in their youth, like their fathers, and their training is carried out by the Mahdi Scouts youth organization... [This organization], which is affiliated with Hizbullah, teaches the children the basic principles of Shi'ite ideology and of Hizbullah's ideology... The first lesson that the children are taught by Hizbullah is 'The Disappearance of Israel,' and it is always an important part of the [training] program...

"The Mahdi Scouts organization was founded in Lebanon on May 5, 1985... According to the organization's website, the number of [scouts] who had undergone training by the end of 2004 was 1,491, and the number of scout groups which had joined [the organization] was 449, with a membership of 41,960. According to the organization's most recent statistics, since 2004, 120 of its members have been ready to become martyrs.

"The organization's goal is to train an exemplary generation of Muslims based on the [principle of] 'the rule of the jurisprudent' [a founding principle of the Islamic Revolution in Iran], and to prepare for the coming of the Imam Mahdi [the Shi'ite messiah]. Its members, including the children, undertake to obey their commanders, to bring honor to the [Muslim] nation, and to prepare themselves for helping the Mahdi [when he comes]."

According to the article, Na'im Qasim, deputy to Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview on Radio Canada: "A nation with child-martyrs will be victorious, no matter what difficulties lie in its path. Israel cannot conquer us or violate our territories, because we have martyr sons who will purge the land of the Zionist filth... This will be done through the blood of the martyrs, until we eventually achieve our goals."

Emma Lazarus

The New Ezekiel

What, can these dead bones live, whose sap is dried
By twenty scorching centuries of wrong?
Is this the House of Israel whose pride
Is as a tale that's told, an ancient song?
Are these ignoble relics all that live
Of psalmist, priest, and prophet? Can the breath
Of very heaven bid these bones revive,
Open the graves, and clothe the ribs of death?
Yea, Prophesy, the Lord hath said again:
Say to the wind, Come forth and breathe afresh,
Even that they may live, upon these slain,
And bone to bone shall leap, and flesh to flesh.
The spirit is not dead, proclaim the word.
Where lay dead bones a host of armed men stand!
I ope your graves, my people, saith the Lord,
And I shall place you living in your land.

— Emma Lazurus, 1882

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

Click here for a Nextbook podcast at the Statue of Liberty ferry terminal.

Also from Nextbook: American Iconoclast, an interview with Princeton professor Esther Schor on the life of Emma Lazarus. Here's an excerpt:

You also mentioned that she had some sort of vision of the "modern" Jew as being more "human" than Jews had ever been. 

Her metaphor is one of deformation, that being a Jew in a society with anti-Semitism, however nuanced, is very deforming; it warps the soul and it warps one's ambition, one's identity. And her idea that Jews had to have a kind of physical presence, they couldn't just be the people of the Book, they couldn't just be pale students, that they had to be physically robust, anticipates muscular Judaism by a couple of decades. She just thought that Jews needed to be fully human, that they needed to have every opportunity and not to be cramped, in a way. And so, being literary, being physical, being out in the world, speaking to different audiences, this was her way of living that.

A Journey to Suzhou

Painting by Mao Yi Gang

A lazy Saturday afternoon — perfect time for a slow boat ride down one of Suzhou's canals.

Click here to begin the journey.

Photo of the Day

After the tsunami, Sri Lanka, January 6, 2005 — A girl holds a blue lotus, Sri Lanka's national flower, as she prays at a temple.
Photo by Chang W. Lee

Click on the image to enlarge it.

Quote of the Day

From Doron Rosenblum:

With all the acute importance of military might, Israel cannot be solely a derivative of victories or tactical defeats on the battlefield. Its existence is far richer and far more meaningful and varied than that.

If the Israeli mentality is "inferior" to that of Hezbollah, Iran and Hamas in that it does not seek suicidal death, the virgins in Paradise and genocide for its neighbors; if Israel has pity on the lives of its sons, on its comfort, on the nurturing of its landscapes and even on bed and breakfasts, wineries and the pleasures of life, it is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary: We shall proudly bear our weaknesses as fragile, vulnerable human beings.

Israel is not Sparta, and this is a good thing. It was not established in order to be a spearhead against global Islam, or in order to serve as an alert squad for the Western world. It was established in order to live in it. And after the obvious is stated — with respect to the importance of might and strength — this too shall be said: Unlike some of its enemies, Israel has a far more means of existential solace — in vitality, culture and in creativity — than the planting of a flag of victory among the ruins.