Holocaust Memorial Day

Following a post by a drunk trot here, in which Holocaust Memorial Day, is mentioned by remembering the Jews of Greece who perished at the hand of the Nazis, I thought I might talk a bit about my father-in-law. He is ninety years old and lives in Yehud, a town near Tel Aviv. "Yehud", ironically enough, used to be an Arab village, abandoned in 1948. The irony is in the name of the place, of course. Yehud, which replaced the Arab Yehudiyya (in literal Arabic: "place of the Jews").

My father-in-law was the eldest son in a family of ten. He had parents, three brothers and four sisters. They all lived in Salonika, Greece. The mother was either a Bulgarian Jew or a convert to Judaism, upon her marriage to my husband's grandfather. This detail is not quite clear. She had blond hair and very blue eyes, which my father in law inherited from her. My father-in-law , as a young man of eighteen, was conscripted into the Greek army and sent to the front with Italy. He was due to be released in a few days when war broke out, and he was taken prisoner of war by the Italian army. Along with other Jewish soldiers. Two years in an Italian prison camp and then when the Germans invaded Italy, his Italian guards released all the Jewish prisoners, fearful that the Germans would transport them to concentration camps. They advised them to head into the countryside rather than into the cities. My father-in-law attended this advice. He roamed the Italian countryside for four years, working on farms, anywhere he could find some shelter. He spent a year in the basement of a monastery. Some of those who gave him shelter knew he was Jewish, some did not. When the war was over, he headed back to Greece, to Salonika. He found one sister, who had converted to Christianity and married a policeman. She was saved because her husband's family concealed her identity. The rest of the family had been transported to Auschwitz, and that's the last that was known of them.

He boarded a Jewish Agency ship, which was clandestinely taking Jewish refugees from Europe to British Mandate Palestine. Again he had to put on a soldier's uniform and continue to fight. He was not an educated man, and worked wherever he could find someone to employ him. As a cobbler, a gardener, an unskilled worker, even a shepherd, for a time. He always voted for his economic interests. Whichever party offered him to keep a larger part of his meagre earnings, would have his vote. His two sons were named after his father and one brother. He has six grandchildren.

His memory is as sharp as his eyesight. Only in more recent years has he started talking about his family with strange frequency, taking out and showing whatever faded photos he had salvaged from his old house in Salonika. The surviving sister had two sons who immigrated to Venezuella. The two surviving branches of the family have not kept in touch.

In the post that triggered this little history, the author offers a traditional Sephardic romance by way of a tribute to a vanished community. But my father-in-law, who speaks Ladino, Hebrew, Greek, Turkish, Italian and some French, prefers to listen to rebetico, the music of the Greek urban working class. As do many of the Israeli Sepharadim, such as my parents.

Yehuda Poliker is an Israeli singer of Greek origin, son of Holocaust survivors. One of his first critically-acclaimed musical efforts was a recreation of rebetico in Hebrew. Here he sings "Apple of my eye", a love song, translated and adapted from the Greek.

When I met my husband at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he introduced me to Mikis Theodorakis' "Mauthausen cyclus", a composition describing in music the horrors of the German camp in Austria during WW2.

The ballad of Mauthausen is based on the experiences of the Greek/Jewish playwright Iakovos Kambanellis. He wrote four poems that Theodorakis set to music.

I mention Theodorakis in conclusion to this post and to this day, because it is fitting to do so, because in recent years he went from the gifted and cherished artist who created something beautiful that expressed profound sadness for Jewish fate, to making proclamations of this type:

We are two nations without brothers in the world, us [Greeks] and the Jews, but they have fanaticism and are forceful

Today we can say that this small nation [i.e., the Jews--not Israel] is the root of evil, not of good....

Talking of cycles.

Recognizing Righteousness: Italians and Jews


1. Gino Bartali

Gino Bartali was a famous Italian cyclist; he won the Giro d'Italia three times and the Tour de France twice. But these weren't his only achievements. Described here as 'one of cycling's all-time greats', Bartali is being considered for the honour of Righteous Among The Nations - awarded by Yad Vashem in Jerusalem - for the part he played in rescuing Jews in danger during the Second World War. One of those testifying to his efforts is Giorgio Goldenberg, now 78, whose family was saved by being hidden in Bartali's cellar in Florence:

The cellar was very small... A door gave way onto a courtyard, but I couldn't go out because that would run the risk of me being seen by the tenants of the nearby apartment buildings. The four of us slept on a double bed. My father never went out, while my mother often went out with two flasks to get water from some well. (Via: Normblog)

2. The Greek Lawyer (from "A Tale of Two cities" by Moris Farhi)

To date, the Germans had dispatched most of the men who had assembled on that Saturday to build roads and airfields. What the future held for other Jews, the lawyer dared not imagine. Reports from eastern Thrace and Macedonia augured the worst. The Germans had delegated the administration of these territories to their ally, the Bulgarians, but since the latter kept prevaricating on the matter of surrendering their own Jews, the Germans had decided to deal with the Jews of Thrace and Macedonia themselves. Lately there had been rumours that these unfortunates would be deported en masse to Occupied Poland. All of this made the lawyer look back regretfully to the time when the Italians had been the occupying power. The Italians had been humane, often in defiance of Mussolini's edicts. Throughout their occupation, they had persistently warned the Jews of the Nazis' racist policies and urged them to leave the country; on many occasions they had even granted Italian passports to those who heeded their advice. Ester might remember one Moiz Hananel, a distant cousin from Rhodes: he was now safe in Chile. But, alas, ester's father, Salvador, disinclined to liquidate his considerable investments, had procrastinated. Now the Italians had gone and Salvador's wealth had evaporated.

There the lawyer's letter ended.

3. Peretz

My father-in-law was the eldest son in a family of ten. He had parents, three brothers and four sisters. They all lived in Salonika, Greece. The mother was either a Bulgarian Jew or a convert to Judaism, upon her marriage to my husband's grandfather. This detail is not quite clear. She had blond hair and very blue eyes, which my father in law inherited from her. My father-in-law , as a young man of eighteen, was conscripted into the Greek army and sent to the front with Italy. He was due to be released in a few days when war broke out, and he was taken prisoner of war by the Italian army. He spent two years in an Italian prison camp and then, when the Germans invaded and occupied Italy, his Italian guards released him along with all the Jewish prisoners, fearful that the Germans would transport them to concentration camps. The guards advised them to head into the countryside rather than into the cities. My father-in-law attended this advice. (His fellow Jewish POW's disregarded the advice and decided to try their luck in the cities. as far as my father-in-law knows, none of them survived the Germans).

Peretz roamed the Italian countryside for four years, working on farms, wherever he could find some shelter. He spent a year in the basement of a monastery, urged by the monks not to even step outside for fear that he might be sighted, suspected, and reported to the Germans. Some of those who gave him shelter knew he was Jewish, some did not. When the war was over, he headed back to Greece, to Salonika. He found one sister, who had converted to Christianity and married to a local Greek policeman. She was saved because her husband's family concealed her identity. The rest of the family had been transported to Auschwitz, and that's the last that was known of them.

4. Giovanni

My Italian friend, Giovanni, grew up on a farm in Avelino. At some considerable distance from the farmhouse where the family lives there is a large pit, the size of a very small room, covered by some makeshift trap-door. Giovanni's father remembered working side by side with his own father digging this hole in the ground which was then used to shelter a couple of Italian Jewish families during the time when it was more dangerous to be Jewish and be known for it. Until he told me this story, Giovanni had no idea what an unusual account he was carrying in his memory. Which goes to show that for some people it never occurred that helping Jews avoid or escape the Nazis was the exception rather than the rule.

A pattern of decency emerges from these disparate examples, a certain self-evident and intuitive moral imperative that transcends, discards, disregards, any inclination, fed by millennium of religious indoctrination and antisemitic suspicion, to avert the gaze at one's own convenience. The people involved in these acts of kindness, were not educated on the lofty academic ideals of universal justice and the philosophy of mutual responsibility. They were as ordinary as all the other peoples among whom the Holocaust was taking place.

And this makes you think that if indeed there was a banality of evil loosed upon the world during those benighted years, perhaps there was also a partial antidote, the banality of the good.

The Archbishop and the Sharia

Everyone is talking about it so I might as well create a post, even though I have nothing in particular to add to Mick's post Or Bob's

which more or less sum it all up.

But this little ditty from George Szirtes is the cutest of them all:

Archbishop and Mullah agreed
to go halves on the gown and the creed,
remixing the Ave Maria
with I've just met a Girl called Sharia.

_______

Update:

Rowan William’s friends have argued that he didn’t mean to suggest that Sharia law should have equal status, or be an alternative to, British law, or be in any way legally enforceable in Britain: simply that it be recognised as a form of “dispute resolution”, in the way that ACAS and other bodies settle disputes without recourse to the courts. And that Sharia would be limited to financial and marital matters: the favourite comparitor now being used by Dr Willians’ friends, is the ‘Beth Din’ courts used by some orthodox Jews to settle disputes.

This is a false comparison: The Beth Din courts operate within the framework of existing British law; they do not exercise any form of alternative jurisdiction; participation is entirely voluntary and participants retain the right to revert to ‘normal’ British law at any time. it is the distinction between allowing for cultural differentiation within civil society, and allowing different state legal systems to co-exist and be applied to different members of the population. These are quite distinct matters, as Rowan Williams (who, everyone seems to agree, is highly intelligent) surely ought to realise.

The blogger illustrates his point:

.... then recieved a phone call: it was from a local Muslim activist, who is also a relative of this woman. He said -very friendly- “I’m sure we can sort this matter out: just tell us where she is, and we’ll deal with her; the charges will be dropped, and you lot will have no more trouble.”

(From: Shiraz Socialist)

And from the other side of the divide, The Iconoclast:

I have mentioned before my Father-in-law's comment some years ago on naïve (usually but not exclusively Anglican) clergy entering into well meant inter faith dialogue with their town’s Muslims

They think they are dealing with other Anglicans, just without Hymns Ancient and Modern. They are not.

Father-in-Law’s view being formed by experiences in Egypt and Sudan during the war and in Dewsbury in the early 70s.

To paraphrase I fear the Archbishop believes that he is dealing with the Beth Din but without the salt beef sandwiches.

In which he is very wrong, the workings of the Beth Din being based on our shared Old Testament heritage and other common values.

One interesting side issue is that for once I find myself in agreement with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent. Not however complete agreement as she insists that sharia as practised is not sanctioned by a correct interpretation of the Koran.

What Rowan Williams wishes upon us is an abomination . . . Dr Williams says Muslims want the choice to opt for sharia. What he believes to be choice is, in truth, inner compulsion, the result of brainwashing which begins in the madrassas when girls and boys are young enough to mould.
I have often admired the Archbishop's lofty thoughts, his intellectualism, the passion for human rights, his guts when the Government needs to be chastised. But this time his kind indulgences betray his own invaluable principles and deliver Muslim women, girls and dissidents into the hands of religious persecutors – an unforgivable intervention, which I hope he now sincerely regrets.

NogaNote:

Here is a proposition I fully endorse:

Bill would recognize Judaism through father

By Shahar Ilan

A bill to recognize as Jewish those in Israel with a Jewish father and a process of secular conversion will be discussed today by the Ministerial Committee on Legislation. Meretz-Yahad Chairman MK Yossi Beilin proposed the bill, which is the first time a political party has sought to intervene in the question of who is a Jew in this way, and he says he believes the committee will vote it down. Beilin's bill would amend the registration law for the Population Registry and for identity cards, but has no effect on the Law of Return, granting of citizenship or immigrant benefits. The proposal states that "for the purposes of the Population Registry Law and all registration or legal certificate," an individual will be considered Jewish if at least one of his or her parents is Jewish or he or she joined the Jewish religion in a religious process or has joined the Jewish people in a non-religious process and has linked his or her fate with the Jewish people, and is not a member of another religion."

Beilin says the amendment will mean that 300,000 Jews from the CIS who at present are not considered Jewish will be able to register as Jews is they so desire. "In a world of DNA, it is so old-fashioned to talk about a chain of motherhood," says Beilin. If people see themselves as Jewish, and certainly if one of the parents was Jewish, he adds, why should the state define them as not Jewish?" Beilin's bill does not change the present situation, but rather would anchor in law a series of High Court rulings on the matter. Beilin's idea of secular conversion, which he first raised in 1999, involves joining the Jewish people by means of activities in the Jewish community and maintaining a Jewish lifestyle. Committees would be established to determine what demands would be made of those who wished to join the Jewish people, Beilin proposes, "such as elementary knowledge of Hebrew and checking there are no extraneous interests." Beilin said the central consideration in accepting people to Judaism by means of secular conversion would be a family tie to Jews.

Though, unfortunately, it is not likely to pass, at this point in time, it is a good formulation that people mull over and consider seriously. I am mindful of the fact that such proposition will be mightily opposed by religious parties in Israel and elsewhere. However, in my opinion, it is absolutely essential, for the future thriving of Judaism, to correct the Halachic law that determines who is a Jew. Since, as Beilin says, at the age of DNA, the rationale for matrilineal affiliation is no longer valid or necessary, and since cultural and other historical compulsions have rendered the Jewish definition insufficient. Suppose that Israel was formally already in existence during Nazi times and its Law of Return applied only to those who could produce proof of a Jewish mother. Would that mean that all those deemed Jewish by the Nazis, going back 8 generations, would have been ineligible for immigration to Israel? The fact that there are 300,000 Israelis from Russia who are now in Israel due to their Jewish affiliation yet are not recognized as such by religious authorities (and consequently, by certain secular authorities) creates an untenable tension between the civil idea of what makes a person Jewish and the religious law which opposes it.

It is also untenable to insist all these people, who have grown up in some sort of a Jewish identity, to undergo orthodox conversion, or even a reformist conversion. It seems like an excessive demand to be made upon people who are probably very little interested in the religious aspect of Judaism and feel Jewish by virtue of shared history and core moral values.

I found that Judaism is very difficult to live down, even after conversion or total assimilation, as we can see in the case of conversos in Spain and voluntary conversion for social convenience in nineteenth century Germany. Heinrich Heine, almost as soon as he converted, began to write about Jews extensively. Famous conversos like Luis de Leon, Cervantes and Montaigne have preserved in their writings much of the universal values that define Jewish ethos. Even when all aspects of ritual Judaism have gone from their life and education, some kernel of the essential identity remained.

Why would Judaism, in its nearly extinct condition, want to do away with these precious remains, due to an ancient law of belonging which is no longer even required?

It appears to me that both the interests of the individuals whose status is considered doubtful and of general Jewery converge here. People who genuinely feel like Jews need to be able to join easily. It's a human right of self-determination (somewhat problematic, I agree, but that's a different discussion). And Jewery will benefit by growing and expanding its ranks. Very important, in my opinion.

Peretz (1919-2010)
"May his soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life". .

We have been expecting the late telephone call for a few months now. My mother-in-law reported that he was fading away, gently, like a candle with a very tiny flame. Friday night they called to say that Peretz had passed away earlier that evening, in a hospital in Petah-Tiqva. He was alone. No one was there in the hospital to bid him a final good bye.

I saw him last August. We were sitting outside in the garden that he loved so much but was too frail and damaged to work it anymore. Some of his grandchildren were running about. Someone made coffee. He could not speak because his vocal chords had been removed some twenty years ago, due to cancer. His neck was badly twisted, causing him great pain. I think he would have preferred to stay in his bed, where it was probably the most comfortable for him but it was our last night in Israel and he wanted to be sociable. When we got up to leave he tapped two fingers on his cheek, indicating that he wanted me to kiss him good bye. He held my hand and whispered in his voiceless voice that he thought it would be the last time he ever saw me. He then struggled to get up, a very thin, shrunken old man and in shuffling, small steps walked to the gate to see us into our car.

I wrote about my father-in-law's story here.

He loved Greek music and some of his favourite songs were performed by Stelios Kazantzidis, about whom Wikipadia says:

In Israel, he was a musical icon. Many of his songs were translated into Hebrew and performed by the country's leading singers. Yaron Enosh, an Israel Radio broadcaster who often plays Greek music on his programs, described the singer's ability to combine joy with sorrow: "This is the task of music: to touch the entire range of feelings...Kazantzidis could do this; he played on all the strings." [3] To the Greek Jews who immigrated to Israel, Kazantzidis was "the voice of the world they left behind, for good or for bad." According to the operator of Radio Agapi, a station that plays Greek music 24 hours a day, "Kazantzidis was the voice of the people, of the weary, the exploited, the betrayed. And the voice of the refugee and the emigre, too."

Here are two of Peretz's old favourites. I think you can hear in the music "the voice of ..the weary, the exploited, the betrayed... the refugee and the emigre..." of my late father-in-law. But also the courage and stubborn will of a man who simply refused to be defeated:

Mandoubala

Zinguala

It's for you, Peretz, who knows, as you keep company with the Master of the Universe, sipping Turkish coffee and enjoying a small glass of Ouzo..

A Stroll in the Arab street

I.

@ Dubai Jazz: The blogger expresses an admiration for a Holocaust survivor which is an interesting turn of sentiment, considering his previous record: here or here.

I left the following comments:

here :

"While it is true that Epstein lost family in the camps (she mysteriously has photos that she cannot account for as to who took them, it would be interesting to find out if they are even genuine, but let's say they are), she nevertheless spent the war in safety in England as a child. Calling oneself "a Holocaust survivor" connotes images of someone who was in the camps him or herself, starved, beaten and ultimately facing a gas chamber. Ms. Epstein was none of these.

The International Solidarity Movement that employs and sends Ms. Epstein around has only one goal: To send a message that "See? The Jews have no right to a Jewish homeland. We can parade around a Jew who will agree with our aims and mitigate everything we say and do." She’s a world traveler, staying in nice hotels, putting out the ISM party line and getting paid for it. Nice work if you can get it."

http://simplyjews.blogspot.com/2009/12/santa-galloway-not-thirsty-in-desert.html

And here:


"LOL @ Contentious Centrist suggesting that a woman as great as Hedy can be discredited just because she managed to survive the camps."

Well, let me explain it to you a little more simply: my father in law's family was exterminated in Auschwitz. He managed not to be exterminated because he was a prisoner of war in Italy. He managed to survive wandering the Italian countryside, being hidden in monasteries and due to the goodness of the Italian people. When he returned to Salonika at the end of the war, he found out that his entire family, save one sister, perished in the Holocaust. He is not considered a Holocaust survivor because he was not in the camps.

Your hero Hedy Epstein had it much easier than he did during the war years. Her family perished in the camps. She was transferred to Britain where she spent the war years, like all British children did. So, she is not a Holocaust survivor. Because she did not survive the camps. She survived the war. And in much better conditions that my father in law, and thousands of others, did.

What baffles me is how eager you are to allocate this "saintly' label to a Jewish woman while in all other instances, when you speak of the Holocaust, you speak dismissively with an attempt to belittle this genocide and its meaning for Jews and humanity.

As you did here, for example:

http://dubai-jazz.blogspot.com/2009/04/dubai-jazz-marks-holocaust-remembrance.html

Or when you make your blog a platform from which to publish the work of a Holocaust-denying cartoonist.

Admiring a Holocaust survivor, then, seems to be a very dubious choice for someone like you, a self-serving propaganda which has nothing to do with any feeling you might have for historical accuracy or justice. Whatever is offered to demonize Israel, you are an eager buyer.

You are also a coward who cannot really counter argument and facts with counter-arguments and facts. All you can do is to offer this mono-maniacal laughter by way of response. People with brains and some discernment realize this very simple truth.

And here (comment #8):

I will say it again, Dubai Jazz, that you have a very poor grasp of history, recordable truth, and plain common sense.

I notice that you do not quibble with anything I wrote in my comment. It seems you have nothing to say for yourself or on behalf of this old lady except hurl curses and insults which are completely irrelevant. In response to facts and substance you indulge in a tantrum, and generate as much noise as possible, but very little meaningful signal.

Your inability to deal with facts and definitions and your tangible ignorance of historical accuracy serve "cheap Zionist propagandists" as nothing else does. All they need to do is simply to quote you and like-minded posters in order to show the futility of attempting a reasonable conversation with you people... :)

_____________

II.

Some of my readers may wonder why I bother reading these blogs in the Arab blogosphere, why I keep the record of my visits there and the exchanges that takes place following my comments. I look upon my blog quite literally as a web log, that is, a combination of the two meanings of "log": a written record of messages sent and received and a written record of events on a voyage of reconnaissance. I want to acquaint myself with the dominant narratives in different places in the world, and what gets merchandised and disseminated in the "Arab street" is one such cyberspace region in which I have an interest.

Why the interest?

Because:

A:

Jews are caught up in a perfect storm: In Western societies, real danger to Jews no longer comes from Christian hatred of Judaism or from Nazi-like animus against our "race"; it comes instead from a hatred of the Jewish state and its Jewish supporters. That this animus comes mostly from the ideological left, with which a majority of Jews identify, is painful and confusing to many.

At the same time, blowing in from the Muslim world is a different sort of anti-Semitism, one which combines modern anti-Zionist themes with primordial Islamic theological hatred. Jew-hatred now drives countless masses around the globe. Imbibing this poison, Muslim radicals have attacked and murdered Jewish people from Israel to Europe, from India to Seattle.

Islamic hatred has indeed come to America. In 1999, Sufi Sheikh Hisham Kabanni, head of the Supreme Islamic Council, testified to the State Department that 80 percent of American mosques are in the hands of radicals. A study by Freedom House, a Washington, D.C. policy center, found Saudi-produced anti-Semitic literature in Islamic Centers around the country. "Close Guantanamo, Re-open Auschwitz" has been shouted by Muslims at anti-Israel demonstrations in Fort Lauderdale and posted on Boston based Muslim Web sites.

And B:

The Palestinian issue remains a core unsolved problem of the Arab period under colonial control. I do not see Zionism as a colonial movement but I do see that the Arabs not only consider the Palestinian question as the most prominent and important remaining vestige of colonialism but that they also blame Zionism as the core of what helped to create a smooth transition between British colonial policy and the American search for a dominant role in the region.

Mr. Rosner, many writers on the Middle East want to de-emphasize the Palestinian question in order to deflect any major responsibility for its solution to Israel. The uniqueness of the Palestinian question is the way that it consistently retains its emotional significance for the Arab masses. The Arab satellite media have chosen to become the televisor of incidents of violence against Palestinians and of the restriction on their freedom of movement. These news clips are repeated incessantly. This immersion of Arab satellite television in imaging Palestinian suffering in almost every newscast puts this issue on the popular mind again and again so that popular consciousness becomes a burden on the regimes.

Public opinions in Middle East countries hold their own regimes responsible for the suffering they see by blaming their own regimes for weakness and for maintaining a strong relationship with the United States even while the U.S. supports Israel and is the essential basis of Israeli continued military control over Palestinian life and military occupation of Palestinian land. In this way, the Palestinian issue not only maintains the conflict between the Arabs and Israel but also exacerbates tensions between the U.S. and virtually every Arab country.

So I try to find out for myself just how entrenched are these trends and positions by monitoring a few of the English-written Arab blogs which I encountered on my Internet travels and marking a trail of my voyage.

Clearly, my experience is very limited and anecdotal, but so far I have not encountered any position which challenges the analyses made in the two excerpts I quoted above.

This comment placed following an article in the National Post about Toronto’s Reviving the Islamic Spirit convention sums up nicely both the cognitive dissonance and the almost schizoid distortion in the perception of reality that are symptomatic of the kind of opinions I met in the Arab blogs:

it saddens me to read such a baseless, garbage comments posted on such a respected news paper by bunch of misguided, hate mongers. As a proud Canadian Muslim I have so much respect for Christianity and Judaism. It would be unfair for me to suggest blood thirsty leaders such as Bush, tony Blair, Hitler, and war criminal Israeli leaders action represents Christianity or Judaism.

The stroll continues...

NogaNote

The Genesis of Justice

Cain murders his brother--and walks . . . God gets angry--and millions die in flood . . . Abraham commits attempted murder--and is praised . . . Jacob deceives his father, then robs his brother--and gets away with it . . .Who among us has not questioned the "justice" found in the Book of Genesis? .. Alan M. Dershowitz.. casts new light on these ancient tales. What he finds is . . . THE GENESIS OF JUSTICE Violence, lust, deception, murder, incest, and vengeance: These are the subjects of the biggest--and perhaps the juiciest--bestseller of all time, the Book of Genesis... Its oft-told tales ..[were] never before.. examined .. so provocatively from a modern legal perspective. Based on Alan Dershowitz's class at Harvard Law School, The Genesis of Justice shows how the Good Book is also a remarkable law book. According to Dershowitz, these seminal stories describe a people--and a God--struggling in a world before the invention of systematic rules, a primal place that predates our notions of fairness, honesty, and rights. Yet here in Genesis we can see these concepts--and the need for them and for their embodiment in a formal legal system--evolving in front of our eyes. Using ten of the most intriguing biblical narratives and drawing on not only his own observations but those of biblical commentators throughout the ages, Dershowitz evaluates the actions of biblical heroes, even God Himself. And together with concluding discussions on "The Injustice of Genesis," he shows us how the flawed behavior of its flawed protagonists led to the Ten Commandments and a deeper, richer sense of justice than any mere legal code could ever provide. From the time he was a kid--and was nearly tossed out of Hebrew school for asking one pesky question after another--

A while ago, I got to read parts of the book at Barnes and Noble, which is the funnest place for stumbling upon all kinds of treasures. They have an entire section of second-hand books. I was quite delighted with Dershowitz' approach to the stories of Genesis, because he uses the kind of thinking that I apply when I read those incredible stories of the most stupefying examples of fundamental human transgressions.

In his discussion of the story about the sacrifice of Isaac, Dersh seems to have hit upon the same connection that I made: that Abraham twice was in a position to cause great harm to his sons. Once, with Ishmael whom he cast out and again, with Isaac, whom he actually tried to kill with his own hands, until stopped by God. I suppose it all depends on how you tell the story. I liked the way Dersh interpreted the story of the Tower of Babel. He referenced it back to the story of Adam and Eve, who tried to become more like God than God was willing to accept. In the Babel story, the people also tried to reach equality with God, so God confounded them by sabotaging their communication apparatus, their language. Dersh interprets it as God forcing people to slow down the pace of the development of technological knowledge in order for wisdom to catch up with it. Without wisdom (knowledge with ethics) there can not be justice or law.

The book is written in a very accessible language, not high-faluting at all. What I find refreshing about his approach is that he tries to understand in what way these stories of every possible crime and transgression known to man serve the people who read the Bible as a holy book get a grasp of what justice means? He points to the motif that the God in Genesis is a learning God, a God who goes from extreme vengeance (the flood) to repentence, from stark justice to mercy. And how the ideas of what constitutes morality, fair play, rights, mutual responsibility, etc, have evolved in a time which was mostly unaware of such things?Of course what I'm aiming at is an understanding of what justice means.

Tthe God that acts in Genesis is a learning God. He miscalculated with Adam and Eve: when He told them about the tree of Knowledge and the tree of Life, and forbade them from touching their fruits, he underestimated their human will to power. He demanded total, unquestionable obedience and predictably, got a rebellion in consequence. He had to punish them, but He also learned that there is a limit to what God can demand from humans.

With Cain and Abel, He made another mistake. He thought he could play favourites with impunity, make an explicit gesture of affection and acceptance towards Abel while rejecting Cain's offering. Again, He miscalculated the monstrous reactions that such explicit discrimination and humiliation can invoke. Cain's wrath was instigated by God's preference for Abel. I believe the story means to tell us that evil deeds (not necessarily evil hearts) are often the direct consequence of an unfair system. God understood that the onus He put on Cain was not humanly bearable which is why he allowed him to live and make amends. Cain became "the builder of cities". No one remembers that, though. What we all remember is that he murdered his brother and never knew a moment's peace afterwards.

Justice sometimes looks too much like revenge. Justice needs to be tempered by mercy, or it becomes irrelevant. The Law is coercive and teaches by punishment. Justice is an ideal that strives to go beyond the principle of fitting the punishment to the crime. Its aim is to teach by example, to give people second chances, not doom a person for perpetual exile because of mistakes and human weaknesses. I think if anything, that is the lesson we can learn from the Book of Genesis. We are supposed to follow God in His learning arc and emulate His ability to acknowledge his excessive demands of humans, and ultimately, the respect He cultivates for the human being that He Himself created.

Consider how different the Biblical stories are from the Greek tragedies which deal with the same frightening human materials. The Biblical stories lay it all out, staring at the horrors straight on. The Greek tragedies keep the horrors off stage. Also, as in the case of Oedipus Rex, Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, but he is not aware of the relationship until after the fact. In the Biblical stories no such mercy is granted to the protagonists: Abraham knowingly tries to kill his son, Lot's daughters knowingly commit incest, etc. I wonder if we can deduce something from this comparison about the difference between what Matthew Arnold called: "Hellenism and Hebraism", two of the determinant factors that inform much of Western thought.

The memory of a goldfish

Abravanel is a blog about the Jews of Greece. I have a special interest in the subject because my father-in-law, whose story I mention here, was Greek.

In this post he talks about the shortness of Greek memory and the real historical reason why there are so many streets in Greece named "Palestine Street":

"Cephalonia may not have forgotten but some deem that gratitude may have an expiration date, but ungratefulness never. I am talking about Dionisis Georgopoulos, president of the Teachers association of Cephalonia-Ithaca which asks to “Rename Israel Street in Argostòli in Palestine Street”.

Somebody might ask what do I care: that’s where the memory of a goldfish comes in, which I mentioned in the beginning and the abysmal ignorance which exists for the recent past of our country.

“Palestine Street(s)” already exist and in quantity in our country, Greece. We have them in Volos, in Athens, in Larisa and in other cities. We also had one in Salonica in the Hirch Quartier but the Municipality of Salonica erased all jewish names from the streets in 1943, taking advantage of the opportunity that his undesirable Jewish citizens were murdered in Auschwitz and refused to restore them after the war.

The unsuspecting wayfarer may think that these are the material proof of the muslim-friendly sentiments of our country but alas, they do not know these are the expression of the unadulterated philo-zionism in Greece. Greece philo-zionist and unadulteratedly on top ? Let’s make a small trip into the history of “Palestine Street”."

The rest is here (scroll down for the English version).

The Forest, the Axe and the Trees

This image was sighted in one of the social media networks, an admonition about Israel's very existence as the root of all evil in the Middle East:









It was accompanied by a somewhat nostalgic longing for "more responsible" powers to be in charge of the Middle East. A power like the long defunct Ottoman Empire.

The poster is a highly intelligent, thoroughly educated person. Which gives one pause to ponder what can have they been thinking about?

A few points:

I. Quoted from wikipedia:

"The Hamidian massacres (Armenian: Համիդյան ջարդեր), also referred to as the Armenian Massacres of 1894–1896[1] and Great Massacres,[1] refer to massacres of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-1890s, with estimates of the dead ranging from 80,000 to 300,000,[2] including at least 50,000 orphaned children.[3] The massacres are named after Sultan Abdul Hamid II, who, in his efforts to reinforce the territorial integrity of the embattled Ottoman Empire, reasserted Pan-Islamism as a state ideology.[4] Although the massacres were aimed mainly at the Armenians, they turned into indiscriminate anti-Christian pogroms in some cases, such as in Diyarbekir Vilayet where some 25,000 Assyrians were killed (see also Assyrian genocide)"

Considering the record of this Sultan it becomes something of a puzzle as to why anyone at all would like to quote his views about bloodshed after the removal of the Ottoman power from the Middle East.

II. The nostalgia for fascist like systems as exemplified in the Ottoman empire's system of rule is by no means a marginal or dismissible as one person's eccentricity. Here is a quote from by Slavoj Zizek, a much admired philosopher very popular in academic circles:

  "Regarding Islam, we should look at history. In fact, I think it is very interesting in this regard to look at ex-Yugoslavia. Why was Sarajevo and Bosnia the place of violent conflict? Because it was ethnically the most mixed republic of ex-Yugoslavia. Why? Because it was Muslim-dominated, and historically they were definitely the most tolerant. We Slovenes, on the other hand, and the Croats, both Catholics, threw them out several hundred years ago.

This proves that there is nothing inherently intolerant about Islam. We must rather ask why this terrorist aspect of Islam arises now. The tension between tolerance and fundamentalist violence is within a civilization."

The "prediction" by the venerable Sultan reminded me of this particular scintillating insight.

I was thinking that if we take into consideration what we know about Islamic regulations concerning minorities, this observation that "historically [Muslin rulers] were definitely the most tolerant" makes some sense.

There was not an ongoing state of perpetual agitation and attrition of minorities and therefore violent confrontations and pogroms were relatively less common than in Christendom. Which led to a perception of social  harmony. But what kind of harmony and at what cost?

Minority members knew who they were, in relation to the dominant majority, that they were legally bound by a set of laws and rules which dictated to them every nuance of their obligations, conduct and rights relative to the Muslim owners of the land. When your own inferiority is inscribed into law, and when you know that any breach of it may entail painful judgements, and maybe death, you are not likely to walk with your head held high when you pass your Muslim neighbour in the street. Nor are you likely to pursue justice in court when your Muslim partner cheated you, since by law, your testimony counted for half the value of your adversary's. When a system is slated against you, legally, you adjust your ways and expectations and forgive a multitude of insults, slurs and crimes committed against you. It is an excellently efficient way to maintain the "tolerance" of a bellicose majority.

Hugh Fitzgerald explains how the kind of tolerance, suggested by the oft repeated Koranic injunction: "There is no compulsion in religion" really worked:

"... the observable behavior of Muslims over 1350 years. What have Muslims done, when they have conquered, by force or otherwise, non-Muslim lands and peoples? They offer three possibilities: death, conversion, and, at least to those who can be classified as ahl al-kitab or "people of the book," permanent status as dhimmis, with a host of political, economic, and social disabilities which together added up to lives of humiliation, degradation, and physical insecurity, at times relieved -- but only at times -- by the occasional mollitude of a particular Muslim ruler. A slim reed on which to base one's happiness. And so, over time, many non-Muslims, in order to avoid this condition of degradation, humiliation, and physical insecurity, converted to Islam. "

My father grew up in Turkey, a secular Muslim country. Turkey is known for its tolerance towards Jews and Christians. Over the years he visited his native land many times. Turkish Jews speak Ladino amongst themselves. When he was out in the street walking with his brother, he was admonished to speak only in Turkish, and in a low voice, so as not to attract attention to his "Jewish" accent.

He was shocked when I told him about a friend of mine, a Turk, who had converted to Judaism. "We used to have good relations with the Muslim neighbours" he told me "they always respected my father and showed us great hospitality. But this is unheard of. It would never have been tolerated".

Jewish Turkish woman I recently met told me that as she was growing up, her parents had forced her to speak only Turkish at home, so that their Ladino-Jewish accent would not expose them as Jews in school.

These anecdotes, such as they are, only re-enforce my understanding of what constituted the livable reality of that "most tolerant" Muslim rule that Zizek admires in the quote above. Fear, intimidation, violence to your identity, when your private sphere is porous and totally dependant on the whims of a religiously volatile majority.

III.  How come this Sultanic prediction was not recalled to public edification before the the current war in Gaza? I mean, 170,000+ dead Arabs in Syria do not count as "bloodshed"?

What can one conclude from such a selective "told you so" ?

Perhaps it is appropriate at this juncture to invoke the Turkish proverb:

 "When the axe entered the forest, the trees said to each other: The handle is one of us".

Enough said.

NogaNote:

Silence,Violence, language, Being

In reading the following quotes, please consider the questions:

How does the verb "to be" render language violent?

Predication, after all, is agency, action, movement of one object in relation to another. Can we use language in a world which is constantly dynamic, changing, fluctuating, without inserting selfhood into it? Am I correct in assuming that the verb to "be" is about "self" (I, you, he..)? What happens when the "self" is removed, completely, from a text? If there is no "to be", then there are no selves.

What are we, then?

Without selves, there are no subjects, and without subjects, there are no objects.

What would we be, then?

Ghosts in a world that happens around us? A kind of Borg, absorbing and absorbable into one huge entity? And how can there be responsibility without the "being", the self?

Any system as a system implies a beyond it by virtue of that which it excludes. Language as a system exists through a regulated process of re-iteration, so that all signification takes place within this frame of compulsory repetition. Every concept gains significance through a process of exclusion, as language in its attempt to represent reality simultaneously homogenizes it.

Beware, my friend, of the signifier that would take you back to the authority of a signi-fied! […] "Common" nouns are also proper nouns that disparage your singularity by classifying it into species" (Cixous 1976: 892).

Thus, language itself produces silences since every word, every concept run the risk of violence through the exclusion or assimilation of multiplicity. Critical discourses (like feminism and postcolonialism) seek to focus on this beyond that exceeds the limit of a system of representation that is persistently sought to be assimilated to the system by violence. According to Derrida all discourse is originally violent, whereby "a speech produced without the least violence would determine nothing, would say nothing, would offer nothing to the other […] it would be speech without phrase" (1978: 147). For Levinas, Derrida tells us, "nonviolent language would be a language which would do without the verb to be, that is without predica-tion. Predication is the first violence", whereby "violence appears with articulation" (ibid: 147f.). This raises the question of whether a non-violent responsiveness to that which remains irreducibly 'other' to any structure of representation is possible? Or is violence inscribed in the very mode of discourse as assimilation of alterity? To open the possibility of a non-violent relation to the other demands responsibility."[…] by the ethical relation I mean to indicate the aspiration to a nonviolent relation to the Other, and to otherness more generally, that assumes responsibility to guard the Other [sic] against the appropriation that would deny her difference and singularity" (Cornell 1992: 62)

A critical and utopian perspective on non-violence explores possibilities of overcoming the 'internalised' violence that structure socio-cultural relations. Responsibility, for Derrida, is composed of 'response' plus 'ability', that is, the ability to respond, to hear, whereby it is a play of listening and speaking. This would entail listening to that which has been silenced in speech

.http://www.atopia.tk/silence/dhawan.htm ...

Here is this poem ( from Normand de Bellefeuille's "Categoriques 1 2 3" and istranslated by Doug Jones) :

The father. The predicate.

The family.

Sometimes, the shambles."

Nouns only. No verb "to be" anywhere in sight. Instead, we have an explicit naming of the verb action in language: The predicate. The agent of action.

Who is the agent of action?

There is the father who is the law. Then there is the mother who is the predicate of the law. Who does she act upon? The family. And families are often the scenes of butchery.

So, can we say that a text without the verb "to be" is always non-violent? Or maybe the verb "to be" is hidden somewhere, concealed from the naked eye of the reader. It is concealed in "The father". The father is. The mother acts. The family suffers.

Is this what they mean when they speak of the violence of silence, when it is between words? Is violence more violent if it is muted, silent, concealed?

Another Tale from the Saudi Creept

Here:

"A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty, a lawyer involved told AFP.

"The judge has dismissed the plea (filed by the mother) because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," lawyer Abdullah Jtili told AFP in a telephone interview after Saturday's court decision.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 220 kilometres (135 miles) north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.

Relatives who did not wish to be named told AFP that the marriage had not yet been consummated, and that the girl continued to live with her mother. They said that the father had set a verbal condition by which the marriage is not consummated for another 10 years, when the girl turns 18.

The father had agreed to marry off his daughter for an advance dowry of 30,000 riyals (8,000 dollars), as he was apparently facing financial problems, they said.

The father was in court and he remained adamant in favour of the marriage, they added.

Lawyer Jtili said he was going to appeal the verdict at the court of cassation, the supreme court in the ultra-conservative kingdom which applies Islamic Sharia law in its courts.

Arranged marriages involving pre-adolescents are occasionally reported in the Arabian Peninsula, including in Saudi Arabia where the strict conservative Wahabi version of Sunni Islam holds sway and polygamy is common.

In Yemen in April, another girl aged eight was granted a divorce after her unemployed father forced her to marry a man of 28."

_________

A previous tale from the Saudi Creept:

Jewish trees

Three prisoners, two child-terrorists
and one righteous resister:
For whom the bells toll?

"The opposite of religious belief is not atheism or secularism or humanism.
It is not an 'ism'. It is independence of mind - that's all." (Martin Amis)

Kurdish teacher and trade unionist is sentenced to death by the Iranian Revolutionary Court, for "enmity against God" and membership in the Kurdish Workers’ Party.

Kamangar himself released a short message from prison saying, “This verdict has been communicated to me, and prison and judgment enforcement officials have asked me to write a letter requesting forgiveness. The problem is that I have not committed any crime to ask for forgiveness.”

I was reminded of another prisoner held in jail for the crime of terrorism: Omar Khadr.

MICHAEL DEN TANDT writes today:

You can set aside much of what has been written and said about young Khadr, now 21, since the release of videos showing him sobbing in his prison cell at Guantanamo Bay. Forget, for example, the broad appeal to public sympathy.
[-]
Here's what we cannot set aside, though. Khadr was taken into U.S. custody in July of 2002, after a firefight at a compound in a village in eastern Afghanistan. He is accused of having thrown a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces trooper, Christopher Speer.

This was a military action, in a situation that's as close to a battlefield as you are likely to get in an asymmetrical, urban war.

That's true, except that Khadr was a Canadian subject. Canada was a US ally, and Canadian troops were fighting alongside American troops. The alliance is such that the two allies defend each other against a common enemy. The scene of the crime may indeed have been as Den Tant defines it, but that hardly takes down a notch the severity of Khadr's crime. It's a crime of murder and treason.

Furthermore, Den Tant, says:

And there's this: Khadr may be a hardened would-be terrorist today, after years of incarceration. But he was a child at the time of the firefight. That matters.

His father was an Islamist zealot and it appears his parents fed him hatred and extremism with mother's milk.... As a boy he played with Osama Bin Laden's children. Condemn the parents. Condemn the man, if as an adult he embraces hatred and violence. But a child coached by his elders to commit violent acts is nevertheless a child.

The claim here is made that a 16-year old committing murder is "a child". And more to the point, a child whose parents are to blame for his murderousness.

Couldn't help remembering the other 16-year old child in the news these days: Samir Kuntar,
who was also a mere 16-year old when "he acted as all the Arab terrorists acted -- the terrorists of the PLO, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah -- when they attack Israelis. He behaved like a mad dog, that is, and he killed first a policeman, and then took a man, Danny Haran, and Haran's four-year-old daughter, to a beach at Netanya, where Kuntar first shot Haran in front of his four-year-old daughter, and then smashed in her head. "

When cases involve singularly odious crimes, the law allows the prosecution of underage defendants as adults. Some crimes so defy our most basic grid of morals and right thinking, that the age of the perpetrator is completely irrelevant. Also, I do not accept that a 16 year old is a "child" except under the strictly legal definition. We do not usually speak of teenagers as "children". There is a reason for that. They are no longer children, mentally or rationally. They are persons who can be reasoned with, who fully understand when they do wrong. If they can be trusted to drive a car, they can be expected to know that murder is wrong.

Still, I think Den Tant persuaded me that Khadr ought to be extradited to Canada. Not because he was a "child", nor because there is any mitigation in the fact that he killed an American in battle. But because there are enough grounds to try him for crimes of treason* and murder in a bona-fide Canadian Military Court and achieve some measure of justice. Khadr's continuing as the US government's guest in Gitmo, thereby accumulating pity-points as an Indecent left's martyr, is not a punishment but a reward. He should be made to stand trial and be properly punished for what he did.

So please don't let me hear the pleadings of a child being unjustifiably persecuted by the evil Americans. We know what a "child" reared on a diet of pure hatred can do. He should not be allowed to live free of consequences and be a menace to the people, cultures and systems he was taught to hate.

I'm quite puzzled by the disproportionate news coverage and sympathy going to this "child-terrorist". I do hope I will not see fellow Canadians emulating the Lebanese example of welcoming back this wretched criminal as a hero. Though after "we are all Hizballa" rallies of two years ago, I wouldn't rule out the possibility of it happening.

Perhaps Canadians need to get their humanitarian values in the correct order of priority. A lot more emphasis and sympathy should go to Kamangar, who is about to be executed for being a Kurdish unionist and a religious agnostic. The most basic human right is the right to life, and it certainly comes before any civil right, including the right to a fair trial.

___

And relevant to my point here is this post by The New Centrist:

כל מי שנעשה רחמן במקום אכזרי סוף שנעשה אכזרי במקום רחמן

All who are made to be compassionate in the place of the cruel
In the end are made to be cruel in the place of the compassionate
Qohelet Raba, 7:16 [Thanks to Rishon Rishon for the translation.]

The more colloquial version is, “If you are kind to the cruel, you will end up being cruel to the kind.” I’ve been thinking about the relation of this statement to public policy, from schools to welfare to jurisprudence and prisons. Is our society kind to the cruel? Think about it…

>>>>>>>>>>>

* Treason in Canadian Law

Section 46 of the Criminal Code of Canada has two degrees of treason, called "high treason" and "treason." However both of these belong to the historical category of high treason, as opposed to petty treason which does not exist in Canadian law. Section 46 reads as follows:

"High treason

(1) Every one commits high treason who, in Canada,

(a) kills or attempts to kill Her Majesty, or does her any bodily harm tending to death or destruction, maims or wounds her, or imprisons or restrains her;
(b) levies war against Canada or does any act preparatory thereto; or
(c) assists an enemy at war with Canada, or any armed forces against whom Canadian Forces are engaged in hostilities, whether or not a state of war exists between Canada and the country whose forces they are.

Treason

(2) Every one commits treason who, in Canada,

(a) uses force or violence for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Canada or a province;
(b) without lawful authority, communicates or makes available to an agent of a state other than Canada, military or scientific information or any sketch, plan, model, article, note or document of a military or scientific character that he knows or ought to know may be used by that state for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or defence of Canada;
(c) conspires with any person to commit high treason or to do anything mentioned in paragraph (a);
(d) forms an intention to do anything that is high treason or that is mentioned in paragraph (a) and manifests that intention by an overt act; or
(e) conspires with any person to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) or forms an intention to do anything mentioned in paragraph (b) and manifests that intention by an overt act."

It is also illegal for a Canadian citizen to do any of the above outside Canada.

More on Kundera affair
and the meaning of truth

from sign and sight:

Salon.eu features an English translation of an article by Martin Simeka, editor-in-chief of Respekt, in which, with the Kundera affair in mind, he remembers his father Milan, "a committed communist in the fifties, a reformed communist in the sixties" who needed the Prague Spring to turn him into a dissident. His son remembers going with his father to meetings of banned Czech writers where people like Karel Pecka and Zdenek Rotrekl who were imprisoned in the fities rubbed shoulders with those who had enjoyed years of privileges in the communist system before changing their tune and finally looking back in literary form at the system they had helped to create. "The Kundera affair is explosive because it destroys this generation's domination of literature that was meant to explain the past in a more truthful way than life itself with its banal and embarrassing truths such as those represented by a crude police document stating that a Mr. Kundera informed on a Mr. Dvoracek. In Czech society literary fiction has effectively replaced real memories that nobody wanted in the past and nobody wants to hear and evoke today. Incidentally, Kundera's novels were particularly successful in fulfilling this task of literature.

"There is also an English translation of the conversation between Vaclav Havel and Adam Michnik from last week's Gazeta Wyborcza. Here, too, the talk turns to Kundera. Michnik asks Havel why the media was so bent exposing Kundera with such schadenfreude. Havel replies: "The media are out to make a profit. And as we know, 'small earthquake in Chile, not many dead', is not news. But if the media can say that 'XY' was an informer or that he got divorced or raped someone, they will do it because it brings them profit. And to some media profit matters more than substance or truth."

From the Conversation with Vaclav Havel

Q: I can’t avoid the case of Milan Kundera. I read your contribution to the debate and completely agree with your point of view. In all our post-communist countries we have drug warehouses, that is, secret police archives. And we have drug addicts who are supposed to look after them but instead they keep taking the drugs and then get up on the stage to expose yet another informer. How does this mechanism work: someone discovers a piece of paper that does not bear Kundera’s signature and suddenly the Czech papers say in unison: “Kundera is no longer God!” He has never been God, just a writer. What does all this mean?

A: This matter has not been properly resolved in any post-Communist country. Some managed it better, some worse, but none has managed it well. Clearly, something needs to be done about it. We can’t just lock it up and say we’re not interested because, after all, it concerns our past lives.

Following the Velvet Revolution I suggested that a group of five trustworthy, intelligent people from the dissident movement should be brought together and given one year to think of a solution. But instead of this, hasty decisions were taken: first came the law of lustration, then its amendment, and so on. And as a result, we have an absurd situation when a list of names is read out on TV with millions of people watching, only to find out nobody knows if the names belonged to victims or informers. And then people are advised to go to the archives and check for themselves. But who, out of those millions who watched, will go and check? It’s an absolutely irresponsible way of dealing with it, destroying someone’s life but putting everyone into the same bag.

Q: But it does say something about a society that has the need for this sort of thing.

A: This matter is also linked to the progress of civilization. The media are out to make a profit. And as we know, “small earthquake in Chile, not many dead”, is not news. But if the media can say that “XY” was an informer or that he got divorced or raped someone, they will do it because it brings them profit. And to some media profit matters more than substance or truth.

Q: If a 20-year old read your essay “Power of the Powerless” today, what lessons could he learn? If a young person asked you today how to live, what would your advice be?

A: The basic imperative:

“To live in truth”

has its tradition in Czech philosophy but basically has biblical roots - it does not mean just the possession or communication of information. Because information, like a virus, circulates in the air so one person may absorb more and another one less. Truth, however, is a different matter because we guarantee it with our own self. Truth is based on responsibility. And that is an imperative that is valid in every age. Obviously, it takes slightly different forms today. Luckily, you don’t have to hang portraits of a Havel, or a Klaus or a Kaczyński in the shop windows anymore and of course we no longer live under totalitarian pressure -- but that doesn’t mean we’ve won. We still need what I refer to as an “existential revolution” even though it might look different in different places.

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Previous posts about Milan Kundera