There was no reason to make Dumbledore gay and doing so seriously harms the character. Why did Rowling feel that she had to give Dumbledore a sexual side? The fact that she felt that Dumbledore must have a sexual side, to me, shows a fundamental misunderstanding, on the part of Rowling, as to nature of fantasy.
In fantasy characters are faced with temptations beyond mere sex. In the Twilight series, Bella asks Edward if vampires were capable of having sex as humans do. Edward responds “… most of those human desires are there, just hidden behind more powerful desires.” (Twilight pg. 310) Normal vampires focus on their thirst for blood. The Cullens, who one can argue are meant to stand in for the Ex-Gay movement, are focused on being able to transcend their nature and avoiding causing harm to anyone. I would see this confrontation with power, as encapsulating what happens to almost all characters in fantasy. Fantasy, more than any other genre, is about characters dealing with extreme powers and extreme responsibilities. It is normal in fantasy to have characters, who possess supernatural powers and or find themselves in situations where they quite literally find themselves carrying the fate of the world. Such characters have far greater temptations and far greater concerns than mere sex. As such, it makes perfect sense for characters in fantasy to not be particularly concerned with sex. Not only that but to have them become interested in sex “just like any normal person” would in most cases be a letdown.
Take Lord of the Rings for example. I never seriously wondered about the sex lives of Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins. If the hobbits had been living in any other genre of fiction, the fact that both of these characters live by themselves as bachelors for decades in Bag End would raise questions. What precisely was the nature of Bilbo’s adoption of Frodo? What precisely is Frodo’s relationship with Sam? The reason why I never wondered about such things is because both Bilbo and Frodo have to deal with the Ring of Power. I do not imagine Bilbo and later Frodo, during all the decades that they spend alone in Bag End, scoring on young hobbit girls or boys, jerking off or reading porno. I imagine them obsessing about the Ring. Either sitting around and looking at it or thinking about it. Once the story gets going and Frodo finds the fate of the entire Middle Earth resting on his shoulders and the Ring literally eating his soul out, Frodo is not in a position to consider wither he has sexual feelings for Sam or anyone else in the Fellowship. Sam can still dream about going home and marrying Rosie. Destroying the Ring is not his responsibility and the Ring is not destroying his soul.
Now imagine if J.R.R. Tolkien would have gotten up in front of a crowd of his adoring hippie fans and told them: You all thought I was some stuffed up professor of Anglo-Saxon but guess what. Frodo was gay and he really had a crush on Sam. So you see I am really a hip person, bravely fighting against the Man. Besides for thinking that Tolkien must have been smoking too much of the hobbit’s pipe-weed, I would feel let down because now the whole character of Frodo makes so much less sense. The whole point of Frodo was that he finds himself utterly consumed by the quest and his struggle with the Ring. If Frodo is able to take a time out and indulge in having a sexual nature then we have no all-consuming struggle and I have no reason to be interested in him.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Sex, Power and Albus Dumbledore I
At a recent book reading, J.K Rowling announced that Albus Dumbledore, the Dr. Middos character of the Harry Potter series, was in fact gay. (link) I am in middle of mulling over the news trying to decide if I am in any way bothered by this revelation. Should I be bothered and does this in any way affect my opinion of the series. In theory, I should not be bothered in the least by this. I have no objection what so ever to people having such inclinations. Five to ten percent of the population is this way. That is the way the world works. I do not even have any personal objections to the action itself. It just happens to be forbidden by my religion. I no more object to non-Orthodox Jews engaging in homosexual sex than I object to non-Orthodox Jews eating pork or violating any of the commandments. Rowling did not say if Dumbledore ever actually consummated any homosexual relationship. She just said that he was in love with Grindelwald. Even if Dumbledore was involved in an actual homosexual relationship, it should not be a problem. I never was under the impression that Dumbledore was an Orthodox Jew, despite his long white beard.
For me, this decision on Rowling’s part perfectly illustrates what I had long suspected of her, that she is a shallow liberal. Her liberalism consists of declaring her creeds of tolerance and questioning authority, without truly comprehending what that entails. This is not an attack on liberalism. I have a problem with any intellectual position that is turned into a series of talking points to be mouthed by its adherents like a catechism. (At least a small part of what is wrong with Orthodox Judaism today can be laid at the feet of whoever bowdlerized Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith into the thirteen ani mamins.) Does Rowling really believe that by making Dumbledore gay she is helping to stop the persecution of gays, particularly when she waited until after she finished the books to tell anyone? What active intolerance against gays is there in the western world that Rowling feels she has to fight? (Clearly, she is not trying to help the gay community of Iran since, as we all know, there is no such thing.) Ultimately, for Liberals, gay rights is not really about tolerance. The intellectual left rejects the notion of the hegemonic traditional family because it sees that as one of the major thought structures behind patriarchy. For them the gay rights movements is about the normalization of homosexuality as a means of deconstructing the traditional family. For most of the left, those unable to comprehend the very conceptual debates over family and patriarchy, gay rights are a creed to rally behind. As with any religious creed, the point is not that people should intellectually comprehend and believe, but that they should accept the creed as a something to declare and come to believe that they are superior to those who do not declare their belief in it. Most Liberals, in my experience, talk about their belief in gay rights, not as an intellectual position, but as words to be mouthed in order to make themselves superior to those who do not mouth the same words. What Rowling was essentially saying to her audience was that she was one of the brave tolerant people, unlike those nasty Christian fundamentalists out there. She even has a gay character in her books, albeit one that no one knew about. Three cheers for J.K Rowling for really sticking it to those intolerant people out there.
(To be continued.)
For me, this decision on Rowling’s part perfectly illustrates what I had long suspected of her, that she is a shallow liberal. Her liberalism consists of declaring her creeds of tolerance and questioning authority, without truly comprehending what that entails. This is not an attack on liberalism. I have a problem with any intellectual position that is turned into a series of talking points to be mouthed by its adherents like a catechism. (At least a small part of what is wrong with Orthodox Judaism today can be laid at the feet of whoever bowdlerized Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith into the thirteen ani mamins.) Does Rowling really believe that by making Dumbledore gay she is helping to stop the persecution of gays, particularly when she waited until after she finished the books to tell anyone? What active intolerance against gays is there in the western world that Rowling feels she has to fight? (Clearly, she is not trying to help the gay community of Iran since, as we all know, there is no such thing.) Ultimately, for Liberals, gay rights is not really about tolerance. The intellectual left rejects the notion of the hegemonic traditional family because it sees that as one of the major thought structures behind patriarchy. For them the gay rights movements is about the normalization of homosexuality as a means of deconstructing the traditional family. For most of the left, those unable to comprehend the very conceptual debates over family and patriarchy, gay rights are a creed to rally behind. As with any religious creed, the point is not that people should intellectually comprehend and believe, but that they should accept the creed as a something to declare and come to believe that they are superior to those who do not declare their belief in it. Most Liberals, in my experience, talk about their belief in gay rights, not as an intellectual position, but as words to be mouthed in order to make themselves superior to those who do not mouth the same words. What Rowling was essentially saying to her audience was that she was one of the brave tolerant people, unlike those nasty Christian fundamentalists out there. She even has a gay character in her books, albeit one that no one knew about. Three cheers for J.K Rowling for really sticking it to those intolerant people out there.
(To be continued.)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Dr. Tony Attwood’s Definition of Asperger Syndrome
I am a big fan of Dr. Tony Attwood and his work on Asperger Syndrome because he is so insistent on viewing Asperger Syndrome, not as a disease or a mental handicap, but as an equally valid mode of viewing the world. Here is Dr. Attwood’s definition of Asperger Syndrome. (My comments as to how these things relate to me are italicized.)
From my clinical experience I consider that children and adults with Aspergers Syndrome have a different, not defective, way of thinking.
I definitely do not see myself, in any way, as having a problem. If anything it is everyone else who has a problem. The world around me is full of boring, dull and unintelligent people. I am the smart, interesting one. I should be the character you so often see in movies, who comes in to the lives of ordinary people and helps them see the true beauty of the world. The problem, of course, with this perspective is that, while it is perfectly reasonable, it leaves one trapped. If you are not defective then why change? If you have no intention of changing then what is the point of seeking help?
The person usually has a strong desire to seek knowledge, truth and perfection with a different set of priorities than would be expected with other people. There is also a different perception of situations and sensory experiences. The overriding priority may be to solve a problem rather than satisfy the social or emotional needs of others.
I have a reputation for being argumentative. I have no interest in simply talking to people as a means of being sociable. Talking for me is a way to engage in a discussion, usually about ideas and usually quite theoretical at that. I argue in a very forceful manner that many people find intimidating. The truth is that the only way I know how to socially relate to people is by engaging in intellectual brawls with them.
The person values being creative rather than co-operative.
I view life as an intellectual experiment in which I get to push the boundaries of sanity. The 19th-century historian, Jacob Burckhardt, in the Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, defined the shift from the medieval world to the modern world, ushered in by the Renaissance, in terms of the discovery of the individual. The individual was no longer to be viewed simply as a product of his class, who should meekly accept his station in life assigned to him by God, but as a being who could create his own purpose and meaning. The individual was a canvas upon which one creates one’s own unique piece of art. If we are to believe this, and our modern world’s celebration of the individual gives us every reason to, then I should be viewed as hero of modernity even by those who have never heard of Burckhardt. For some strange reason, this has not happened. I suspect this has to do mainly with mass societal hypocrisy.
The person with Aspergers syndrome may perceive errors that are not apparent to others, giving considerable attention to detail, rather than noticing the “big picture”.
All I ask is that, unless you are intentionally being absurd and ironic for the sake of an intellectual joke, what you say should be coherent. I take the failure to do so as a personal insult.
The person is usually renowned for being direct, speaking their mind and being honest and determined and having a strong sense of social justice.
I am not much into social justice in its modern sense. I am, though, a person with strongly held Kantian sensibilities. One needs to have principles and keep to them, especially when they turn against you. Anything else is hypocrisy.
The person may actively seek and enjoy solitude, be a loyal friend and have a distinct sense of humour.
I spend the vast majority of my time alone in my own thoughts, where I play my intellectual games. In a sense, my conversations with other people are simply an extension of these games. It is much more interesting to play the game against someone else instead of having to play both sides by yourself. This is of course assuming that the other person understands the game and is capable of some basic level of intelligent thought.
However, the person with Aspergers Syndrome can have difficulty with the management and expression of emotions.
I am very good at expressing certain emotions, such as rage and frustration. When I get angry I raise my voice and gesticulate furiously with my hands. This is perfectly reasonable. You did something to get me angry so what should you expect me to do but get angry.
Children and adults with Aspergers syndrome may have levels of anxiety, sadness or anger that indicate a secondary mood disorder. There may also be problems expressing the degree of love and affection expected by others. Fortunately, we now have successful psychological treatment programs to help manage and express emotions.
I have a running issue with depression. There is most probably a genetic component to it. I suspect that living in a world in which everyone else possesses such different thought patterns from my own has not helped. I have a love/hate relationship with my depression. It is a major source for my creativity, and much of what makes me interesting. I pay a heavy emotional price for these things. I tend to think that the price I pay in pain is worth it and if I had to choose between my suffering and being dull and ordinary I would choose my suffering, at least on most days.
One of the interesting things I have found in learning about Asperger Syndrome is how much of how I operate so neatly fits into standard Aspie patterns of behavior. Sitting down and reading Tony Attwood’s case studies of Asperger children is for me like reading the story of my own childhood. I keep on thinking to myself: yes that’s me, I did that. This raises an important challenge. I like to think of myself as a rational individual, not as the victim of funny brain chemistry. Does being an Aspie undermine my claims to being a rational individual? In dealing with society, it is in my interest to portray myself as an Aspie. People are far more willing to put up with the shenanigans of minority groups or of the mentally handicapped than the shenanigans of eccentrics bent on playing out their own private games with reality.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Oh Boy I Am Now Rich
I just received an email informing me that I am now worth over one million Euros. Finally I can now abandon my life of crime/studenthood and live up to my most decadent dreams. (Mainly the ones involving me owning a massive library.)
THE ROYAL DUTCH STAATSLOTERIJINTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT REF Number: STT/231-ILGI0431/05
BATCH No: DH/15/096/TVFS TICKET No: 20511465463-7644
SERIAL No: 472-9768-98 LUCKY No: 79-2-15-24-34-40-11
THE CLAIMS DEPARTMENT: Mr. Steve MeijerTel: +31-647-230-404
Fax: +31-847-131-515
Email: theclaimsdepartm@aol.comWebsite: http://www.staatsloterij.nl/
Dear Winner, THE ROYAL DUTCH STAATSLOTERIJ PRIZE AWARDS We are pleased to inform you of the result of our Seasonal Lottery Winners International programs held on the 10th of October, 2007. Your E-mailaddress attached to ticket number 20511465463-7644 with Serial number472-9768-98 drew the lucky numbers 79-2-15-24-34-40-11, which consequentlywon in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sumpayout of €1.280.000. (One Million, Two Hundred and Eighty Thousand EuroOnly).This is from a total cash prize of €6.400, 000 (Six Million, Four Hundred Thousand Euro) shared amongst Five Lucky Winners of the firstcategory. CONGRATULATIONS!! This is a promotional program by The DutchAuthorities and this happens to be the biggest lottery program in theNetherlands.All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn fromover 200,000 companies and 5,000,000 individual email addresses from allover the world, as part of our international promotions program, which weconduct several times a year. Be informed that your documents must pass through the authorities to obtaina clearance, which shall be attached to your document in readiness for the subsequent onward transfer of your winnings into your nominated bank accountwithin 48 hours of completion of the authentication. Due to the possibilityof unscrupulous individuals filing a double claim, we suggest that you keep this award strictly confidential until your claim has been processed and notarized and your certificate of award obtained. This is in conformity withthe lottery claim regulations and security protocol of the Netherlands Gaming Control Board. All winnings must be claimed not later than 26th of October, 2007. After this date all unclaimed funds will be channeled to the Dutch SecurityVault as unclaimed funds. Anybody under the age of 18 is automaticallydisqualified. All winnings must be notarized and a certificate of award mustbe obtained from the Netherlands Gaming Control Board to complete the claims process. For further information on this, please contact the above mentioned claims department.Also ensure that you take proper note of every correspondence as we will not be held responsible should there be any complications in this transaction due to laxity on your part. Congratulations once more from the Royal Dutchland. Yours truly,Mrs. Marie de Boer Games/ Lottery Coordinator. The Royal Dutch Staatsloterij (Staatsloterij is a registered program lottery program of the Royal Dutch Authority. Est.1876, Kvk.699472.Act120/99) All rights reserved.
NOTE: BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY ON THE PART OF THE WINNERS WILL RESULT TOIMMEDIATE DISQUALIFICATION. (TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY)
For me information please see http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/lottery_scams.html and http://www.stopecg.org/lottery.htm.
THE ROYAL DUTCH STAATSLOTERIJINTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT REF Number: STT/231-ILGI0431/05
BATCH No: DH/15/096/TVFS TICKET No: 20511465463-7644
SERIAL No: 472-9768-98 LUCKY No: 79-2-15-24-34-40-11
THE CLAIMS DEPARTMENT: Mr. Steve MeijerTel: +31-647-230-404
Fax: +31-847-131-515
Email: theclaimsdepartm@aol.comWebsite: http://www.staatsloterij.nl/
Dear Winner, THE ROYAL DUTCH STAATSLOTERIJ PRIZE AWARDS We are pleased to inform you of the result of our Seasonal Lottery Winners International programs held on the 10th of October, 2007. Your E-mailaddress attached to ticket number 20511465463-7644 with Serial number472-9768-98 drew the lucky numbers 79-2-15-24-34-40-11, which consequentlywon in the 1st category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sumpayout of €1.280.000. (One Million, Two Hundred and Eighty Thousand EuroOnly).This is from a total cash prize of €6.400, 000 (Six Million, Four Hundred Thousand Euro) shared amongst Five Lucky Winners of the firstcategory. CONGRATULATIONS!! This is a promotional program by The DutchAuthorities and this happens to be the biggest lottery program in theNetherlands.All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn fromover 200,000 companies and 5,000,000 individual email addresses from allover the world, as part of our international promotions program, which weconduct several times a year. Be informed that your documents must pass through the authorities to obtaina clearance, which shall be attached to your document in readiness for the subsequent onward transfer of your winnings into your nominated bank accountwithin 48 hours of completion of the authentication. Due to the possibilityof unscrupulous individuals filing a double claim, we suggest that you keep this award strictly confidential until your claim has been processed and notarized and your certificate of award obtained. This is in conformity withthe lottery claim regulations and security protocol of the Netherlands Gaming Control Board. All winnings must be claimed not later than 26th of October, 2007. After this date all unclaimed funds will be channeled to the Dutch SecurityVault as unclaimed funds. Anybody under the age of 18 is automaticallydisqualified. All winnings must be notarized and a certificate of award mustbe obtained from the Netherlands Gaming Control Board to complete the claims process. For further information on this, please contact the above mentioned claims department.Also ensure that you take proper note of every correspondence as we will not be held responsible should there be any complications in this transaction due to laxity on your part. Congratulations once more from the Royal Dutchland. Yours truly,Mrs. Marie de Boer Games/ Lottery Coordinator. The Royal Dutch Staatsloterij (Staatsloterij is a registered program lottery program of the Royal Dutch Authority. Est.1876, Kvk.699472.Act120/99) All rights reserved.
NOTE: BREACH OF CONFIDENTIALITY ON THE PART OF THE WINNERS WILL RESULT TOIMMEDIATE DISQUALIFICATION. (TERMS AND CONDITIONS MAY APPLY)
For me information please see http://www.fightidentitytheft.com/lottery_scams.html and http://www.stopecg.org/lottery.htm.
Monday, October 15, 2007
A Confession of Personality
Over the Succot holiday I had a deep heart to heart conversation with my grandmother, who happens to be a reader of this blog. (So I think that brings the readership of this blog up to at least two.) My grandmother was critical of the fact that this blog tends to be about my feelings and that I expose too much of myself by doing this. She was also very concerned about a piece I had written earlier about the Temple in which I implied that I did not want the Temple to be rebuilt. As to the topic of the Temple, let me clarify. It is not that I do not want the Temple built it is simply the fact that I have no idea how I would integrate a sacrificial cult into my spiritual life. From my discussions with other people, I suspect that I am not alone in this. If you feel that you could integrate a sacrificial cult into your daily worship of God please enlighten me.
I must admit that my grandmother made a valid point when she pointed out how much my personality comes into play with what I write here. She urged me to take myself out of things and write from a more distant perspective. She also wondered what I would do in twenty years if my views change. Would I not potentially be embarrassed by some of the things I wrote? Upon rereading some of my posts I myself was surprised as to how much of this blog is about me as and not straight impersonal arguments. I like to view myself as a deeply rational and analytical individual so in theory I should be keeping my personality out of this.
Part of the problem lies within the very nature of blogging itself. It is both a personal and a public act. One agrees to put ones private thoughts out for the public to see. It is a 21st century version of the Enlightenment’s confessional autobiographies such as the ones written by Rousseau and Solomon Maimon. The personality of the blogger, particularly his status as a common man is paramount. I see this blog as an intellectual diary narrating the evolution of my thought. I expect my thoughts and interests to evolve and I have no intention of ever feeling ashamed of any past positions I have held. The original reason why I started writing this blog last December was, as with most things in this world, because of a girl. She asked me to start a blog as she was curious as to what I would sound like as a blogger. A few days later she decided that it would be best if she never spoke to me again. (This seems to be a pattern with the women who enter my life.) I miss talking to her. I guess she sort of became my Beatrice and this blog came to life as half of the conversation that I wish that I could have had with her.
I am not sure if I should take myself out of my writing and if I should how to go about it. If anyone has any words of enlightenment feel free to share them with me.
I must admit that my grandmother made a valid point when she pointed out how much my personality comes into play with what I write here. She urged me to take myself out of things and write from a more distant perspective. She also wondered what I would do in twenty years if my views change. Would I not potentially be embarrassed by some of the things I wrote? Upon rereading some of my posts I myself was surprised as to how much of this blog is about me as and not straight impersonal arguments. I like to view myself as a deeply rational and analytical individual so in theory I should be keeping my personality out of this.
Part of the problem lies within the very nature of blogging itself. It is both a personal and a public act. One agrees to put ones private thoughts out for the public to see. It is a 21st century version of the Enlightenment’s confessional autobiographies such as the ones written by Rousseau and Solomon Maimon. The personality of the blogger, particularly his status as a common man is paramount. I see this blog as an intellectual diary narrating the evolution of my thought. I expect my thoughts and interests to evolve and I have no intention of ever feeling ashamed of any past positions I have held. The original reason why I started writing this blog last December was, as with most things in this world, because of a girl. She asked me to start a blog as she was curious as to what I would sound like as a blogger. A few days later she decided that it would be best if she never spoke to me again. (This seems to be a pattern with the women who enter my life.) I miss talking to her. I guess she sort of became my Beatrice and this blog came to life as half of the conversation that I wish that I could have had with her.
I am not sure if I should take myself out of my writing and if I should how to go about it. If anyone has any words of enlightenment feel free to share them with me.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Who is Afraid of Ann Coulter
The news world in general and the Jewish community specifically have been abuzz over the fact that Ann Coulter, a right-wing Christian political commentator, said, on CNBC, to Donny Deutsch that Jews should convert to Christianity. (See here.)
For some strange reason, I fail to see why anyone is concerned. As someone, who studies medieval and early modern Christianity, I will tell you that what Coulter said was positively Philo-Semitic. If any of you are bothered by what Coulter said I would suggest that you read some John Chrysostom, Martin Luther or simply open up the Gospel of John. Coulter did not accuse us of murdering her Savior, little innocent Christian children or of worshiping Satan. She did not even accuse us of being big nosed greedy bankers out to control the world. Coulter was nice enough to invite Deutsche to come to church with her without even the barest hint of threatening violence. She repeatedly described Christianity as the fast track to heaven. Notice that she did not say that Christianity was the only way to get into heaven. So if we are to take her at her word it would seem that she believes us Jews can still, in theory, get into heaven despite the fact that we have not accepted Jesus as our personal savior. Another thing that seems to have gone unnoticed is that Coulter said that “you can be a practicing Jew.” When Deutsch replied that he was, she said: “no you are not.” Again, to take her at her word, it would seem that she believes that Orthodox Jews are completely in the clear. This is positively, dare I say it, liberal of her. I practically agree with her on this. I greatly prefer religious Christians to secular Jews. Religious Christians, for the most part, believe that the State of Israel is allowed to defend itself.
Ann Coulter is a practicing Christian so it should be taken as a given that she thinks that Christianity is better than Judaism. One assumes that the reason why someone practices a religion is because they believe it is better than the alternatives out there. If you are a Christian who does not think that Christianity is better than Judaism then why are you not converting? As an Orthodox Jew, I certainly believe that Judaism is better than Christianity and that the world would be at least a slightly better place if all Christians would convert to Judaism or at least simply be Noachides.
While I am not in the least bit concerned with Ann Coulter, I am very concerned about the popular reaction to this whole affair. It would seem that the new line for bigotry is anyone who thinks that their way of living is better than other people’s. This is as much a threat to Orthodox Judaism as it is to Christianity. If Christians are being bigoted for believing that their religion is better than other people’s then certainly Orthodox Jews are bigoted for believing that their religion is better. So you have to wonder, who is being Anti-Semitic here.
I would even argue that this is a bigger threat to Orthodox Judaism because we do not have the excuse of saying that we are simply practicing traditional American values. The fact that we, as Orthodox Jews, live in America and do not practice good traditional American Protestant Christianity is a snub against general society as we are actively choosing not to practice like everyone else. When a Christian puts up a Christmas tree he is not actively making a decision to not put up a menorah. When a Jew puts up his menorah and does not put up a Christmas tree he is actively choosing to not put up that tree. To be a Jew in America, and particularly to be an Orthodox Jew, means that you have actively made a choice to turn your back on many of the practices of the culture around you because you believe that what you do is better.
Ann Coulter may be a far right-wing nut, who has said her share of inappropriate things. This here is one of her saner moments. She should be congratulated here for helping edify the public discourse, for once. We need to distinguish between the crazy people who want to use nuclear weapons against us and the crazy people who simply want to take us to church. Maybe Columbia University could invite Ann Coulter to speak. At least she believes that there are homosexuals in this country.
For some strange reason, I fail to see why anyone is concerned. As someone, who studies medieval and early modern Christianity, I will tell you that what Coulter said was positively Philo-Semitic. If any of you are bothered by what Coulter said I would suggest that you read some John Chrysostom, Martin Luther or simply open up the Gospel of John. Coulter did not accuse us of murdering her Savior, little innocent Christian children or of worshiping Satan. She did not even accuse us of being big nosed greedy bankers out to control the world. Coulter was nice enough to invite Deutsche to come to church with her without even the barest hint of threatening violence. She repeatedly described Christianity as the fast track to heaven. Notice that she did not say that Christianity was the only way to get into heaven. So if we are to take her at her word it would seem that she believes us Jews can still, in theory, get into heaven despite the fact that we have not accepted Jesus as our personal savior. Another thing that seems to have gone unnoticed is that Coulter said that “you can be a practicing Jew.” When Deutsch replied that he was, she said: “no you are not.” Again, to take her at her word, it would seem that she believes that Orthodox Jews are completely in the clear. This is positively, dare I say it, liberal of her. I practically agree with her on this. I greatly prefer religious Christians to secular Jews. Religious Christians, for the most part, believe that the State of Israel is allowed to defend itself.
Ann Coulter is a practicing Christian so it should be taken as a given that she thinks that Christianity is better than Judaism. One assumes that the reason why someone practices a religion is because they believe it is better than the alternatives out there. If you are a Christian who does not think that Christianity is better than Judaism then why are you not converting? As an Orthodox Jew, I certainly believe that Judaism is better than Christianity and that the world would be at least a slightly better place if all Christians would convert to Judaism or at least simply be Noachides.
While I am not in the least bit concerned with Ann Coulter, I am very concerned about the popular reaction to this whole affair. It would seem that the new line for bigotry is anyone who thinks that their way of living is better than other people’s. This is as much a threat to Orthodox Judaism as it is to Christianity. If Christians are being bigoted for believing that their religion is better than other people’s then certainly Orthodox Jews are bigoted for believing that their religion is better. So you have to wonder, who is being Anti-Semitic here.
I would even argue that this is a bigger threat to Orthodox Judaism because we do not have the excuse of saying that we are simply practicing traditional American values. The fact that we, as Orthodox Jews, live in America and do not practice good traditional American Protestant Christianity is a snub against general society as we are actively choosing not to practice like everyone else. When a Christian puts up a Christmas tree he is not actively making a decision to not put up a menorah. When a Jew puts up his menorah and does not put up a Christmas tree he is actively choosing to not put up that tree. To be a Jew in America, and particularly to be an Orthodox Jew, means that you have actively made a choice to turn your back on many of the practices of the culture around you because you believe that what you do is better.
Ann Coulter may be a far right-wing nut, who has said her share of inappropriate things. This here is one of her saner moments. She should be congratulated here for helping edify the public discourse, for once. We need to distinguish between the crazy people who want to use nuclear weapons against us and the crazy people who simply want to take us to church. Maybe Columbia University could invite Ann Coulter to speak. At least she believes that there are homosexuals in this country.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Alice Cullen Learns About Mormonism II
(In an earlier post I talked about my experience meeting with a pair of Mormon missionaries and getting a copy of the book of Mormon. See here. For more on the subject of Alice Cullen see here and here.)
At the end of our discussion Elder G presented me with my own personal copy of the book of Mormon and bade me to make good use of it. I should read it and ask God to tell me if this book was true. If I open up my heart to God he will open up my eyes and I will see the truth of this book. I asked Elder G if he thought we should apply this method of verification to other fields of human endeavors such as history or science. I will open up the Principia Mathematica and pray: God open up my eyes and let me know if Newtonian mechanics is true or if I should stick to Aristotle like a good Catholic.
Later that night, while reading St. Teresa de Avila’s Interior Castle, I realized that there is a far more basic flaw with what Elder G was telling me. Teresa was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun who had all sorts of mystical visions. Her books are descriptions of her visions and a guide to how to go about achieving such experiences. One of the major concerns running through her thought is how the devil sets traps for people along the mystical path to mislead them. Teresa questions herself as to whether she really is experiencing the presence of Jesus or if this is just Satan deluding her. For Teresa, this was more than just an academic question. She had to justify herself before priests, who were investigating her to see if she was truly in contact with God or if she was with the devil. Many of these priests happened to have been members of the Inquisition. A negative answer could get someone imprisoned or even killed. In fact, one of her followers, St. John of the Cross, did end up spending several years in jail.
I am a spiritual novice. I have not spent decades in prayer and meditation. I am way too easily distracted over such things as the escapades of teenage vampires at the expense of my immortal soul. To the best of my knowledge, I have not had any genuine mystical experiences. I would have no idea what one would be if it hit me on the head. So when I open up the book of Mormon to delve into it how do I know that God is opening up my mind to its truth? What if it is Satan trying to trick me? Alternatively, as I do not believe in the sort of Satan who haunted sixteenth century Europe, how do I differentiate between God opening up my eyes and me simply wanting to believe something? These Mormons are really nice people. They definitely are the sort of group that I would love to belong to. What about the hundreds of other students that Elder G will be talking to this year? They will likely be even bigger spiritual novices than I am and have spent even less time thinking about their immortal souls. How are they going to be able to tell if God is speaking to them?
To all my haredi friends and relatives, who have lectured me about the value of emunah pshuta, simple faith and about how Judaism does not require that you make coherent arguments in support of it. You should be very thankful that I never bothered to listen to you. If I did I might actually have to take the book of Mormon seriously. Clearly, if Judaism does not have to make sense then I should not expect Mormonism to have to make sense either.
At the end of our discussion Elder G presented me with my own personal copy of the book of Mormon and bade me to make good use of it. I should read it and ask God to tell me if this book was true. If I open up my heart to God he will open up my eyes and I will see the truth of this book. I asked Elder G if he thought we should apply this method of verification to other fields of human endeavors such as history or science. I will open up the Principia Mathematica and pray: God open up my eyes and let me know if Newtonian mechanics is true or if I should stick to Aristotle like a good Catholic.
Later that night, while reading St. Teresa de Avila’s Interior Castle, I realized that there is a far more basic flaw with what Elder G was telling me. Teresa was a sixteenth-century Spanish nun who had all sorts of mystical visions. Her books are descriptions of her visions and a guide to how to go about achieving such experiences. One of the major concerns running through her thought is how the devil sets traps for people along the mystical path to mislead them. Teresa questions herself as to whether she really is experiencing the presence of Jesus or if this is just Satan deluding her. For Teresa, this was more than just an academic question. She had to justify herself before priests, who were investigating her to see if she was truly in contact with God or if she was with the devil. Many of these priests happened to have been members of the Inquisition. A negative answer could get someone imprisoned or even killed. In fact, one of her followers, St. John of the Cross, did end up spending several years in jail.
I am a spiritual novice. I have not spent decades in prayer and meditation. I am way too easily distracted over such things as the escapades of teenage vampires at the expense of my immortal soul. To the best of my knowledge, I have not had any genuine mystical experiences. I would have no idea what one would be if it hit me on the head. So when I open up the book of Mormon to delve into it how do I know that God is opening up my mind to its truth? What if it is Satan trying to trick me? Alternatively, as I do not believe in the sort of Satan who haunted sixteenth century Europe, how do I differentiate between God opening up my eyes and me simply wanting to believe something? These Mormons are really nice people. They definitely are the sort of group that I would love to belong to. What about the hundreds of other students that Elder G will be talking to this year? They will likely be even bigger spiritual novices than I am and have spent even less time thinking about their immortal souls. How are they going to be able to tell if God is speaking to them?
To all my haredi friends and relatives, who have lectured me about the value of emunah pshuta, simple faith and about how Judaism does not require that you make coherent arguments in support of it. You should be very thankful that I never bothered to listen to you. If I did I might actually have to take the book of Mormon seriously. Clearly, if Judaism does not have to make sense then I should not expect Mormonism to have to make sense either.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Terry Jones at Ohio State
Yesterday Terry Jones came to speak at Ohio State. For those who are not familiar with him, Terry Jones was a member of Monty Python, without question the greatest comedy group of all time. Jones had a particular talent for playing cranky old ladies. Here are my notes on the lecture. Any mistakes are my fault.
Translating Richard II
Introduction: We would like to welcome Terry Jones. In his youth he made fun of the great age of chivalry. It appears that he is now reformed. He is a serious scholar in his own right he wrote two books on Chaucer, Chaucer’s Knight and Who Murdered Chaucer. Chaucer’s patron was Richard II.
Terry Jones: One of the big problems about talking about Richard II is that most people do not know who he was. He is not Richard I. He did not murder Muslims and denigrate England. He is not Richard III. I googled Richard II and was asked if I meant Richard III. Richard II and Richard III have something in common in that they were the victims of spin.
So who was Richard II? Richard II ruled from 1377-99. He was overthrown and murdered. Shakespeare wrote a play about him. He portrayed him as ineffectual and mad. Historians have tended to portray him as a tyrant. He put his own people in power. He abolished legislation to curb his household expenses. Most have been a very rich court. He censored foreign correspondence. Made people pay bribes for pardons.
Now Richard thought of himself as a defender of the people. He and the king of France were the most valiant knights in all of Europe. What is the difference between a tyrant and a king? The Middle-Ages was full of books of rules for princes. They all stem from Aristotle. According to Aristotle kingship looks to the common interest. Tyranny looks to the interest of a single person. We can see this view of kingship in Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. Nothing to do with how much power you had. Machiavelli is the exception to this rule. He wrote a book of rules for tyrants not princes. He was a very naughty boy. (Brian’s mother’s voice as in “He is not the Messiah. He is a very naughty boy.”) Aristotle believed that theoretically a king was the best. Aquinas was writing for Hugh of Cyprus. It would not have been appropriate for Aquinas to say that middle class was the best form of rule.
Concentration of power was seen as a good thing. The king was the good father of the nation. Being the father meant submission and obedience. From this perspective we can understand Richard’s actions. They were about submission to the king. Once you submit to the king you can have mercy. Even the peasants were echoing the ideas of the court. It seems that Richard had a lot of support from that quarter. You cannot equate the rulers of the 14th century with modern day tyrants.
The aim of good government was peace. We can see this in such writers as Giles of Rome and Bartolus of Sassoferrato. In 1381 Richard II attempted to negotiate a peace treaty with France. In the period of 1377-81 quarter of a million pounds were spent on the military. Richard recognized that the war was bleeding him dry and wanted to end it. This put him in conflict with the military hawks of his day, Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel. Imagine if Jimmy Carter had Rumsfeld and Cheney as his advisors.
A truce was eventually achieved in 1396. Richard II married Isabelle, the seven year old daughter of the king of France. He was willing to put his sex life on hold.
According to Dante, as long as you have barons fighting at home you cannot have power rule.
Arundel was a pretty nasty piece of work. Richard attacked Arundel in parliament because Arundel attacked him. We see a constant pattern of calculated insults all through his reign. Arundel missed the funeral of Ann and then said he had to go. Richard struck him.
Richard was scared of Gloucester, his uncle. Gloucester also was a traitor. He worked against Richard’s attempts at peace. He would only accept an “honorable” peace which meant France giving England everything they wanted.
Not only were Gloucester and his allies plotting against the peace with France. They also violently rebelled. They demanded the right to investigate Richard’s household. 1387 they rebelled. This led to the Battle of Radcot Bridge. They killed many of Richard’s supporters. In 1388 we have the Merciless Parliament. In 1397 when Richard arrested these people he was taking out the ringleaders of 1388. Arundel was executed, Gloucester was exiled. Richard was very brave in personally going out to arrest his uncle.
Was Richard a megalomaniac as Henry IV claimed? It was claimed that Richard wasted money. He may have been a spoiled brat. Considering his upbringing he probably was. He had to act as he did. That was the fashion of royal courts. He had to keep up appearances. His first father in law was the Holy Roman Emperor. We cannot say he was vain. According to John of Salisbury, the king is God on earth. According to Thomas Aquinas, the king is the soul of the body. It was disingenuous for Walshingham in his chronicles to attack Richard. He knew that kings were expected.
Archbiship Thomas Arundel was sacked by Richard but came back into power under Henry IV. He gave a speech to parliament saying that now a man is going to be in power. This has been the spin for the past six hundred years.
If you compare Richard’s tomb to that of Henry IV you will see that Richard’s is much plainer.
Was Richard really so extravagant? He spent only 12,000 pounds during the 1386-89 period. He put up a lot of taxes such as the Wool tax in 1398. These taxes though were linked t o pardons for past rebellions.
Richard II has been accused of having poor counsel. The truth is that Richard chose intelligent people. He put in older people, expert men. The problem was that these people were not great nobles. They had middle class backgrounds. One was the son of a butcher another was the son of a merchant.
Was Richard II really unpopular? You have to keep in mind that Henry IV was a usurper. He murdered his own cousin. He wanted to make himself out as well respected. So he hired new scribes to write chronicles and he got the old ones to revise what they had written. Adam of Usk’s Chronicle was written in 1401. Dieulacres was a new scribe. Kirkstall worked for Richard II but he changes his tune once Henry took power. Letter Book H has several pages taken out. We can easily imagine what they contained. Henry tired to recruit Christine of Piza for his propaganda machine by arresting her son and blackmailing her. Christine refused to go along with this. You can see the revision of texts in the Vox Clamantis by John Gower. You can see Arundel’s hand. Gower liked Richard in the Confessions. He later though changed the dedication to Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV). But Henry was not yet the Duke of Lancaster in 1392.
Richard let people off who rebelled against him with simple fines. The peasants seemed to have liked him. During his campaign against Scotland Richard refused to take his men further because he knew his men did not have enough supplies. In doing this he went against John of Gaunt. People of London did not come to Henry’s side until Richard was caught. Six weeks. We have the example of Jencio the squire who refused to take off his badge of support for Richard and was jailed for this. Richard knighted the future Henry V. Henry V hated his father and was close to Richard. Even after Richard was captured and was clearly finished, people held on hope that he would somehow come back to power.
As to the issue of censorship. It was Henry IV who went after heresy in 1401. Thomas Arundel took the lead in this. Arundel made it a crime to read or even think anything heretical. He even had people quizzed as to their beliefs on a monthly basis.
After the speech I got the chance to say hello to Terry Jones. He, very nicely, autographed the inside sheet of my Holy Grail DVD.
Translating Richard II
Introduction: We would like to welcome Terry Jones. In his youth he made fun of the great age of chivalry. It appears that he is now reformed. He is a serious scholar in his own right he wrote two books on Chaucer, Chaucer’s Knight and Who Murdered Chaucer. Chaucer’s patron was Richard II.
Terry Jones: One of the big problems about talking about Richard II is that most people do not know who he was. He is not Richard I. He did not murder Muslims and denigrate England. He is not Richard III. I googled Richard II and was asked if I meant Richard III. Richard II and Richard III have something in common in that they were the victims of spin.
So who was Richard II? Richard II ruled from 1377-99. He was overthrown and murdered. Shakespeare wrote a play about him. He portrayed him as ineffectual and mad. Historians have tended to portray him as a tyrant. He put his own people in power. He abolished legislation to curb his household expenses. Most have been a very rich court. He censored foreign correspondence. Made people pay bribes for pardons.
Now Richard thought of himself as a defender of the people. He and the king of France were the most valiant knights in all of Europe. What is the difference between a tyrant and a king? The Middle-Ages was full of books of rules for princes. They all stem from Aristotle. According to Aristotle kingship looks to the common interest. Tyranny looks to the interest of a single person. We can see this view of kingship in Thomas Aquinas and Giles of Rome. Nothing to do with how much power you had. Machiavelli is the exception to this rule. He wrote a book of rules for tyrants not princes. He was a very naughty boy. (Brian’s mother’s voice as in “He is not the Messiah. He is a very naughty boy.”) Aristotle believed that theoretically a king was the best. Aquinas was writing for Hugh of Cyprus. It would not have been appropriate for Aquinas to say that middle class was the best form of rule.
Concentration of power was seen as a good thing. The king was the good father of the nation. Being the father meant submission and obedience. From this perspective we can understand Richard’s actions. They were about submission to the king. Once you submit to the king you can have mercy. Even the peasants were echoing the ideas of the court. It seems that Richard had a lot of support from that quarter. You cannot equate the rulers of the 14th century with modern day tyrants.
The aim of good government was peace. We can see this in such writers as Giles of Rome and Bartolus of Sassoferrato. In 1381 Richard II attempted to negotiate a peace treaty with France. In the period of 1377-81 quarter of a million pounds were spent on the military. Richard recognized that the war was bleeding him dry and wanted to end it. This put him in conflict with the military hawks of his day, Gloucester, Warwick and Arundel. Imagine if Jimmy Carter had Rumsfeld and Cheney as his advisors.
A truce was eventually achieved in 1396. Richard II married Isabelle, the seven year old daughter of the king of France. He was willing to put his sex life on hold.
According to Dante, as long as you have barons fighting at home you cannot have power rule.
Arundel was a pretty nasty piece of work. Richard attacked Arundel in parliament because Arundel attacked him. We see a constant pattern of calculated insults all through his reign. Arundel missed the funeral of Ann and then said he had to go. Richard struck him.
Richard was scared of Gloucester, his uncle. Gloucester also was a traitor. He worked against Richard’s attempts at peace. He would only accept an “honorable” peace which meant France giving England everything they wanted.
Not only were Gloucester and his allies plotting against the peace with France. They also violently rebelled. They demanded the right to investigate Richard’s household. 1387 they rebelled. This led to the Battle of Radcot Bridge. They killed many of Richard’s supporters. In 1388 we have the Merciless Parliament. In 1397 when Richard arrested these people he was taking out the ringleaders of 1388. Arundel was executed, Gloucester was exiled. Richard was very brave in personally going out to arrest his uncle.
Was Richard a megalomaniac as Henry IV claimed? It was claimed that Richard wasted money. He may have been a spoiled brat. Considering his upbringing he probably was. He had to act as he did. That was the fashion of royal courts. He had to keep up appearances. His first father in law was the Holy Roman Emperor. We cannot say he was vain. According to John of Salisbury, the king is God on earth. According to Thomas Aquinas, the king is the soul of the body. It was disingenuous for Walshingham in his chronicles to attack Richard. He knew that kings were expected.
Archbiship Thomas Arundel was sacked by Richard but came back into power under Henry IV. He gave a speech to parliament saying that now a man is going to be in power. This has been the spin for the past six hundred years.
If you compare Richard’s tomb to that of Henry IV you will see that Richard’s is much plainer.
Was Richard really so extravagant? He spent only 12,000 pounds during the 1386-89 period. He put up a lot of taxes such as the Wool tax in 1398. These taxes though were linked t o pardons for past rebellions.
Richard II has been accused of having poor counsel. The truth is that Richard chose intelligent people. He put in older people, expert men. The problem was that these people were not great nobles. They had middle class backgrounds. One was the son of a butcher another was the son of a merchant.
Was Richard II really unpopular? You have to keep in mind that Henry IV was a usurper. He murdered his own cousin. He wanted to make himself out as well respected. So he hired new scribes to write chronicles and he got the old ones to revise what they had written. Adam of Usk’s Chronicle was written in 1401. Dieulacres was a new scribe. Kirkstall worked for Richard II but he changes his tune once Henry took power. Letter Book H has several pages taken out. We can easily imagine what they contained. Henry tired to recruit Christine of Piza for his propaganda machine by arresting her son and blackmailing her. Christine refused to go along with this. You can see the revision of texts in the Vox Clamantis by John Gower. You can see Arundel’s hand. Gower liked Richard in the Confessions. He later though changed the dedication to Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV). But Henry was not yet the Duke of Lancaster in 1392.
Richard let people off who rebelled against him with simple fines. The peasants seemed to have liked him. During his campaign against Scotland Richard refused to take his men further because he knew his men did not have enough supplies. In doing this he went against John of Gaunt. People of London did not come to Henry’s side until Richard was caught. Six weeks. We have the example of Jencio the squire who refused to take off his badge of support for Richard and was jailed for this. Richard knighted the future Henry V. Henry V hated his father and was close to Richard. Even after Richard was captured and was clearly finished, people held on hope that he would somehow come back to power.
As to the issue of censorship. It was Henry IV who went after heresy in 1401. Thomas Arundel took the lead in this. Arundel made it a crime to read or even think anything heretical. He even had people quizzed as to their beliefs on a monthly basis.
After the speech I got the chance to say hello to Terry Jones. He, very nicely, autographed the inside sheet of my Holy Grail DVD.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Alice Cullen Learns About Mormonism
For all those people like me who cannot say no to free books, you can go to the LDS Church's website and give them your name and address and they will send you a free copy of the book of Mormon. When I was in high school I got myself one through them. I am not sure what happened to it but it disappeared for some strange reason. Either I lost it or, more likely, my parents found it and threw it out. I recently decided that, considering all the time I am spending studying Christian theology, I should get myself another copy. So I went to the website and put my information down. Then I figured, since I have no real interest in telling the LDS Church about myself, that I might as well have some fun with this. So I decided I was a 27 year old female named Alice Cullen and that my phone number was (614) 770-6660. As readers of this blog know, Alice Cullen is one of the vampires in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. I was thinking of doing Esme Cullen since Esme was originally from Columbus. Alice though is the character that I am really in love with. I figured that since the Twilight books were written by a Mormon anyone in the church looking closely at my information would get the joke.
I come back to my room after the first days of Succot and find a post-it note on my door saying:
Alice,
We stopped by to drop off your free copy of the Book of Mormon that you ordered. Please give us a call when you know of a good time for us to come back.
Thanks,
Elders G_
& M_
It seems that instead of simply delivering a copy of their holy books to Alice they had sent missionaries to deliver it to her in person. How nice of them.
Still wanting my book of Mormon I called the phone number they had left. But what to do about Alice? I am in no position to pass as a female even over the phone. So I told them that my name was Ben and that I was a friend of Alice’s and that as a joke she had ordered a book of Mormon and sent it to my address. I then asked them if they would be so kind as to send me a book of Mormon so that I could give it to her.
Elder G suggested that I come down to the Mormon center on campus. Oh Goodie, an opportunity to expand my religious horizons and talk to two friendly Mormons! Maybe the answers will surprise me. So I went down there and talked to Elders G and M. I tend to wear an OSU baseball cap around campus so it is usually not immediately obvious that I am Jewish. When I sat down to elders G and M they asked me what I knew about Mormonism. I think I did a pretty good job at going through the basics. I then started asking them about their theology. This is a game I often play with Christians, who usually do not have a clear idea what such notions as grace, transubstantiation and the incarnation are supposed to mean. Since one of my areas of interest is medieval Christian thought, I usually can count on knowing more on the topic than they do.
What I was not counting on was for my two Mormon missionaries to know nothing about predestination, Augustine of Hippo or John Calvin. So I took it as my good Christian duty to fill them in. I even went into a whole defense of the doctrine of predestination. Despite its very cynical view of human nature, that we are all such corrupt sinners that we are incapable of even accepting Jesus as our savior on our own and that God simply chooses to bestow grace on certain individuals allowing them to be saved, believing in predestination allows you to be very tolerant of non-believers. While they may be going to Hell, it is not their fault. They are not actively choosing to follow Satan. Because of this, despite the fact that Calvin himself was a rabid anti-Semite, there is a long history of Calvinist philo-Semitism. Predestination also very neatly solves the problem of little black unbaptized babies dying in Africa. For some strange reason, my Mormon missionaries had no idea what I meant by this. This is a very famous challenge posed to Christians. What do they do with babies in Africa where it would have been physically impossible for them to have been baptized before they died? If you accept predestination, this is not a problem. Those babies were not amongst the chosen elect, who receive grace, and are therefore doomed with the rest of humanity.
Now, these Mormons have an excuse to be so ignorant of Christianity. Mormons believe, to quote a Mormon friend of mine, that the entire Church went to pot soon after Paul anyway. So Augustine and Calvin are not part of their religious tradition. This though raises an interesting challenge to the claim that Mormons are Christians. Mormons are completely outside the Christian tradition. Protestants and Catholics, despite their doctrinal differences, have a common religious tradition. They can sit down together over an Origen, a Tertullian, an Augustine or an Aquinas just as Orthodox Jews can sit down with Reform and Conservative Jews over a Gemara, Rashi and Tosfot. What do Mormons mean when they call themselves Christians? It would seem that, as they purposely put themselves outside of the Christian tradition, they should drop the label of Christianity and that it is dishonest of them to maintain it.
I come back to my room after the first days of Succot and find a post-it note on my door saying:
Alice,
We stopped by to drop off your free copy of the Book of Mormon that you ordered. Please give us a call when you know of a good time for us to come back.
Thanks,
Elders G_
& M_
It seems that instead of simply delivering a copy of their holy books to Alice they had sent missionaries to deliver it to her in person. How nice of them.
Still wanting my book of Mormon I called the phone number they had left. But what to do about Alice? I am in no position to pass as a female even over the phone. So I told them that my name was Ben and that I was a friend of Alice’s and that as a joke she had ordered a book of Mormon and sent it to my address. I then asked them if they would be so kind as to send me a book of Mormon so that I could give it to her.
Elder G suggested that I come down to the Mormon center on campus. Oh Goodie, an opportunity to expand my religious horizons and talk to two friendly Mormons! Maybe the answers will surprise me. So I went down there and talked to Elders G and M. I tend to wear an OSU baseball cap around campus so it is usually not immediately obvious that I am Jewish. When I sat down to elders G and M they asked me what I knew about Mormonism. I think I did a pretty good job at going through the basics. I then started asking them about their theology. This is a game I often play with Christians, who usually do not have a clear idea what such notions as grace, transubstantiation and the incarnation are supposed to mean. Since one of my areas of interest is medieval Christian thought, I usually can count on knowing more on the topic than they do.
What I was not counting on was for my two Mormon missionaries to know nothing about predestination, Augustine of Hippo or John Calvin. So I took it as my good Christian duty to fill them in. I even went into a whole defense of the doctrine of predestination. Despite its very cynical view of human nature, that we are all such corrupt sinners that we are incapable of even accepting Jesus as our savior on our own and that God simply chooses to bestow grace on certain individuals allowing them to be saved, believing in predestination allows you to be very tolerant of non-believers. While they may be going to Hell, it is not their fault. They are not actively choosing to follow Satan. Because of this, despite the fact that Calvin himself was a rabid anti-Semite, there is a long history of Calvinist philo-Semitism. Predestination also very neatly solves the problem of little black unbaptized babies dying in Africa. For some strange reason, my Mormon missionaries had no idea what I meant by this. This is a very famous challenge posed to Christians. What do they do with babies in Africa where it would have been physically impossible for them to have been baptized before they died? If you accept predestination, this is not a problem. Those babies were not amongst the chosen elect, who receive grace, and are therefore doomed with the rest of humanity.
Now, these Mormons have an excuse to be so ignorant of Christianity. Mormons believe, to quote a Mormon friend of mine, that the entire Church went to pot soon after Paul anyway. So Augustine and Calvin are not part of their religious tradition. This though raises an interesting challenge to the claim that Mormons are Christians. Mormons are completely outside the Christian tradition. Protestants and Catholics, despite their doctrinal differences, have a common religious tradition. They can sit down together over an Origen, a Tertullian, an Augustine or an Aquinas just as Orthodox Jews can sit down with Reform and Conservative Jews over a Gemara, Rashi and Tosfot. What do Mormons mean when they call themselves Christians? It would seem that, as they purposely put themselves outside of the Christian tradition, they should drop the label of Christianity and that it is dishonest of them to maintain it.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Izgad is Living in Poverty
Last May, while coming back from a Cirque De Soleil show, I was jumped by a group of youths, who attempted to rob me. I was knocked off of my bike and suffered a fractured clavicle otherwise known as a broken collarbone. I was taken to Riverside Methodist Hospital where I was given a shot of cortisone for the pain, an MRI to make sure I had not suffered any head injuries, a slink for my arm, and an icepack. I spent about three hours in the hospital before going to bed and teaching the next morning. Due to the wonders of our health care system, I got handed a bill for over $5000. I have been going through the hoops of my insurance company in order to get them to cover as much of this as possible. I also applied for aid under the Ohio Victims of Crime Compensation Program.
A few days ago I received a letter from the Attorney General of Ohio, Marc Dann, that I was exempt from paying over $2000 worth of bills due to the fact that I live below the Federal poverty line. It seems that according to our government I am living in poverty due to the fact that I supported myself on under $10,000 last year. This is news to me I have never considered myself poor. I eat three meals a day. I regularly have meat in my diet. I have plenty of clothes and I even own two suits. I have a room to myself, which I pay about $400 a month for. I regularly purchase such luxury items as books, CDs, and DVDs. I am typing these words on a laptop which I purchased last year. I even have health insurance. I confess I do not own a car. I get around on my bike and the bus system. I will grant you that most people have more than I do. I have made certain lifestyle choices. I want to be a historian and I am willing to live on little in order to achieve this.
I certainly do not need any major government programs in order to help me. Could someone just fix the health care system? There is something off when a trip to the hospital that did not require any surgery costs over $5000.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Theistic Athiests
I am looking at this ad for an upcoming event sponsored by the Students for Free Thought titled Ask an Atheist. The ad goes as follows.
Ask an Atheist
Why not believe in God?
Do Athiests have morals?
Does life have a purpose?
Isn’t life without belief in God just dreadful?
Do you know someone who is an atheist?
Want to know what atheists REALLY believe? Ask questions and get answers from our panel of five friendly atheists. It might not be what you expect.
What am I not supposed to expect. Yes one can make a rational case that God does not exist. Yes there are atheists who are extremely moral people. Yes one can still find purpose in life without believing in God, it is called Existentialism. As your life can still have meaning even without God, no life will not become just dreadful without God. And now for the big shocker Atheists Can Be Friendly. You can even see five of them on display.
Is it just me or do these atheists sound a lot like Christian missionaries? I am quite certain I have seen ads for Christian groups amounting to the same thing.
Ask a Christian
Why believe in God?
Can Christianity Help Me Lead a More Moral Life?
Does Life Have a Purpose?
Doesn’t believing in God make life dreadful?
Want to know what Christians REALLY believe? Ask questions and get answers from our panel of five friendly Christians. It might not be what you expect.
Take a look at the Mormon Church’s website and this is almost exactly what you will find.
If atheists really want to claim intellectual superiority over theists then why are they offering the same sort of sentimentalist claptrap that that theists tend to offer? Why do the Students for Free Thought not offer weekly study groups on David Hume or Nietzsche? Instead what we have is the traditional appeal to emotions as opposed to reason. Come to our group. Our people are friendly. We offer you a belief system to give order to your life and will help you become a more moral person. Why should we care if atheists are friendly or that they are moral? Either there is a good case against God’s existence or there is not. If we do not have any reason to assume that God exists then we are obligated to give a good Richard Dawkins style stiff upper lip and accept the fact that God does not exist. If atheists were a pack of murderous Huns out to use your scalp as a loin-cloth that would still not make God any more real. If, on the other hand, we were to decide that there is a good case for assuming that God exists then we would have to keep that same stiff upper lip and accept that he exists. Being a believer in God gives you an advantage here because you can still declare yourself in opposition to him. If God were simply an immoral Mafia Don threatening to destroy anyone who did not serve him then we could take the moral stance and reject his rule.
Ask an Atheist
Why not believe in God?
Do Athiests have morals?
Does life have a purpose?
Isn’t life without belief in God just dreadful?
Do you know someone who is an atheist?
Want to know what atheists REALLY believe? Ask questions and get answers from our panel of five friendly atheists. It might not be what you expect.
What am I not supposed to expect. Yes one can make a rational case that God does not exist. Yes there are atheists who are extremely moral people. Yes one can still find purpose in life without believing in God, it is called Existentialism. As your life can still have meaning even without God, no life will not become just dreadful without God. And now for the big shocker Atheists Can Be Friendly. You can even see five of them on display.
Is it just me or do these atheists sound a lot like Christian missionaries? I am quite certain I have seen ads for Christian groups amounting to the same thing.
Ask a Christian
Why believe in God?
Can Christianity Help Me Lead a More Moral Life?
Does Life Have a Purpose?
Doesn’t believing in God make life dreadful?
Want to know what Christians REALLY believe? Ask questions and get answers from our panel of five friendly Christians. It might not be what you expect.
Take a look at the Mormon Church’s website and this is almost exactly what you will find.
If atheists really want to claim intellectual superiority over theists then why are they offering the same sort of sentimentalist claptrap that that theists tend to offer? Why do the Students for Free Thought not offer weekly study groups on David Hume or Nietzsche? Instead what we have is the traditional appeal to emotions as opposed to reason. Come to our group. Our people are friendly. We offer you a belief system to give order to your life and will help you become a more moral person. Why should we care if atheists are friendly or that they are moral? Either there is a good case against God’s existence or there is not. If we do not have any reason to assume that God exists then we are obligated to give a good Richard Dawkins style stiff upper lip and accept the fact that God does not exist. If atheists were a pack of murderous Huns out to use your scalp as a loin-cloth that would still not make God any more real. If, on the other hand, we were to decide that there is a good case for assuming that God exists then we would have to keep that same stiff upper lip and accept that he exists. Being a believer in God gives you an advantage here because you can still declare yourself in opposition to him. If God were simply an immoral Mafia Don threatening to destroy anyone who did not serve him then we could take the moral stance and reject his rule.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
And Now a Taste of Something Whigish
A friend of mine, who works as an archivist and has an interest in the history of science, sent this to me before Yom Kippur. It is from the introduction to a book published in 1883 titled: Zoological sketches: a contribution to the outdoor study of natural history. The name of the author was Felix Leopold Oswald
"The tendencies of our realistic civilization make it evident that the study of natural science is destined to supersede the mystic scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and I believe that the standards of entertaining literature will undergo a corresponding change. The Spirit of Naturalism has awakened after its long slumber..."
"...Whatever is natural is wrong, was the keystonedogma of the mediaeval schoolmen...The worship of joy yielded to a worship of sorrow, the study of living nature to the study of dead languages and barrensophisms...The moralists that had suppressed the Olympic festivals compensated the public with autos-da-fe. The whole history of the Middle Ages is, indeed, the history of a long war against nature.
[Note that he doesn't blame religion or even Catholicism but the scholastics for everything wrong in Western thought! Safer in England and America to do that]
"But nature has at last prevailed. Delusions are clouds, and the storm of the Thirty Years' War has cleared our sky...Ghost-stories are going out of fashion...And, moreover, the progress of natural science tends to supersede fiction by making it superfluous-even for romantic purposes."
What I find interesting about this piece, besides for its total distortion of the Middle Ages, is its assumption that modern civilization would have no need for fantasy. As we know so well, stories about boy wizards do not sell over 300 million copies in our modern civilization. This does raise an interesting question though as to what is the relationship between the writing of fantasy fiction and belief in the supernatural? It would seem to be reasonable to classify fantasy as a genre for religious people and science fiction as a genre for secularists. Religious people, who put their hopes in a supernatural world, should find it very easy to suspend their disbelief when confronted with fantasy supernatural. Secularists, who place their hopes in science should be open to suspending their disbelief at the scientific fantasies of science fiction. Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia were written by Tolkien and Lewis, who were both deeply religious individuals. On the other hand science fiction was pioneered by the likes of H.G Wells, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, all quite hostile to organized religion. The only problem with this theory is that it does not pan out in reality. Orson Scott Card is one of the greatest science fiction writers today and he is a Mormon. Not only that but his science fiction has very explicit religious overtones. One of the greatest fantasy writers today, Philip Pullman, is militant atheist. His Dark Materials, besides for turning Paradise Lost on its head, is an atheist allegory written to open children up to the idea of overthrowing God and all those who claim to speak in his name. (Its a brilliant series of book, so please do not let any religious qualms you may have get in the way of reading it.) Furthermore, as we saw with Harry Potter, fantasy, even when it is not explicitly hostile to religion, can still raise its ire.
I happen to be a fan of both science fiction and fantasy. I believe that these forms of fiction have an important role to play in society in that they force us to think outside of the normal box of our reality. They tyranny of everyday expectations and of the society around us is one of the hardest things to fight against. It is only by being able to break outside of the box of what our own preconceptions of reality that we can truly become free thinkers.
"The tendencies of our realistic civilization make it evident that the study of natural science is destined to supersede the mystic scholasticism of the Middle Ages, and I believe that the standards of entertaining literature will undergo a corresponding change. The Spirit of Naturalism has awakened after its long slumber..."
"...Whatever is natural is wrong, was the keystonedogma of the mediaeval schoolmen...The worship of joy yielded to a worship of sorrow, the study of living nature to the study of dead languages and barrensophisms...The moralists that had suppressed the Olympic festivals compensated the public with autos-da-fe. The whole history of the Middle Ages is, indeed, the history of a long war against nature.
[Note that he doesn't blame religion or even Catholicism but the scholastics for everything wrong in Western thought! Safer in England and America to do that]
"But nature has at last prevailed. Delusions are clouds, and the storm of the Thirty Years' War has cleared our sky...Ghost-stories are going out of fashion...And, moreover, the progress of natural science tends to supersede fiction by making it superfluous-even for romantic purposes."
What I find interesting about this piece, besides for its total distortion of the Middle Ages, is its assumption that modern civilization would have no need for fantasy. As we know so well, stories about boy wizards do not sell over 300 million copies in our modern civilization. This does raise an interesting question though as to what is the relationship between the writing of fantasy fiction and belief in the supernatural? It would seem to be reasonable to classify fantasy as a genre for religious people and science fiction as a genre for secularists. Religious people, who put their hopes in a supernatural world, should find it very easy to suspend their disbelief when confronted with fantasy supernatural. Secularists, who place their hopes in science should be open to suspending their disbelief at the scientific fantasies of science fiction. Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia were written by Tolkien and Lewis, who were both deeply religious individuals. On the other hand science fiction was pioneered by the likes of H.G Wells, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, all quite hostile to organized religion. The only problem with this theory is that it does not pan out in reality. Orson Scott Card is one of the greatest science fiction writers today and he is a Mormon. Not only that but his science fiction has very explicit religious overtones. One of the greatest fantasy writers today, Philip Pullman, is militant atheist. His Dark Materials, besides for turning Paradise Lost on its head, is an atheist allegory written to open children up to the idea of overthrowing God and all those who claim to speak in his name. (Its a brilliant series of book, so please do not let any religious qualms you may have get in the way of reading it.) Furthermore, as we saw with Harry Potter, fantasy, even when it is not explicitly hostile to religion, can still raise its ire.
I happen to be a fan of both science fiction and fantasy. I believe that these forms of fiction have an important role to play in society in that they force us to think outside of the normal box of our reality. They tyranny of everyday expectations and of the society around us is one of the hardest things to fight against. It is only by being able to break outside of the box of what our own preconceptions of reality that we can truly become free thinkers.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Derrida, Forgiveness and the Peace Process
This is a paper that I wrote a few years ago dealing with forgiveness within the context of politics. As we are about to enter Yom Kippur and as I am in the ongoing process of writing about the underlying philosophies of America's and Israel's war against terrorism I thought that this peace is appropiate.
“What do we call forgiveness? What calls for forgiveness? Who calls for, who calls upon forgiveness?” (pg 27) In his essay “On Forgiveness,” Jacques Derrida argues that true forgiveness is to forgive the unforgivable. Derrida defines forgiveness as the willingness to allow the injustice that has already been done to oneself by another to stand. Once a wrong has been made up for it does not make any sense to speak of forgiveness. If someone owed a debt and paid it back then neither of the parties owes the other anything; it would be foolish of the lender to say that after receiving his money back that he forgives the borrower. It only makes sense to talk about forgiveness when that debt cannot be paid back, such as in situations of persecution and particularly mass murder.
Derrida sees the act of asking for and of granting forgiveness as one of the key underlying foundations of modern international politics; the Abrahamic notion of forgiveness has been internationalized[1] and secularized in order to serve the needs of the modern state and society. The main actors in this new politic of forgiveness are not individuals but states. There are two reasons for this. Firstly by focusing upon the state we can avoid the question of: is the apology or forgiveness really meant or is it just feigned? By keeping forgiveness within the dominion of the state we are able to avoid prying into this “secret” and as such we do not interfere with the process of national memory. The second reason is that “all Nation-States are born and found themselves in violence.”(pg. 57) The state itself, in order to justify its own legitimacy, needs to be able to get everyone else to agree to take its own sins off of the table. Since all states have some guilt everyone is agreeing to allow everyone else’s guilt to be covered up in exchange for their guilt also covered over and kept a secret.
Derrida’s theory of forgiveness offers an interesting angle as what the peace-process means and as to why it has so far failed so miserably? The peace-process, in the schematic of forgiveness, can be seen matter of both the Israelis and the Palestinians agreeing to ask and, in return, grant forgiveness for past “misdeeds.” With Oslo, the Israelis were agreeing to renounce their claims over the West Bank and Gaza and forgive the Palestinian Authority for its acts of terrorism. The Palestinian Authority was agreeing to renounce terrorism along with any claim over the pre-1967 Israel and forgive Israel for having occupied “their” land. The reasoning behind both side’s actions was not moral contrition but simple political expediency. Israel wanted an end to Palestinian violence and the Palestinian Authority wants a state. Furthermore each side felt that it needed the support of the European Community and the United States and coul not afford to be seen as being the ones holding back peace.
The peace-process failed because the whole mechanics of forgiveness broke down. Neither side was capable of asking for forgiveness or granting it because doing so would undermine the legitimacy of either side and run counter to the politics of memory from which they have built an edifice to justify their own existence. In discussing the failures of Oslo there has been a lot of emphasis on the religious problems. I think this aspect has been overemphasized. Remember, it has been Israelis, who are by and large secular Jews, and Palestinians, who are by and large secular Muslims, if not Christians, who have failed at the negotiation table.[2] As to why there has been such an emphasis on the role played by religious extremists in bringing about the current crisis, I would suggest that the religious want the credit and the secular want to give them the blame. Most of the religious factions opposed the peace-process, so the narrative that their actions have stopped the peace-process appeals to them. As for the Western secular media, the narrative that they want to tell is of a Middle-East caught in an endless cycle of medieval religious wars, to which the only hope is for there to be a spirit of “Enlightenment,” “tolerance” and “understanding,” i.e. secularism.
The problem with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that which distinguishes it from almost any other conflict in history is the fact that the legitimacy of each side’s claims is almost totally mutually exclusive. If it was legitimate for the state of Israel to have been created in 1947 and for Israel to have fought its various wars with the neighboring Arab states, then the Palestinian Authority becomes a terrorist organization and can therefore claim no legitimacy. If the Arab states were the aggressors in 1948 then it is their fault that so many Palestinians became refugees and the onus for solving the problem would lie with them and not with Israel. If on the other hand the Palestinian cause is legitimate and the PLO can be considered to be freedom fighters then by necessity the state of Israel is an imperialist state, imposed upon the Arab peoples by the West, with no right to exist and as such the Jewish people have no right to the land of Israel.
In most conflicts what is at stake is not the inherent legitimacy of a state. More importantly most conflicts do not involve the legitimacy of the claims of private individuals to their property. It is possible for the French and the Germans to be at peace with one another despite their conflicts over Alsace and Lorraine because the ownership of Alsace and Lorraine does not affect the intrinsic integrity of either France or Germany. It is possible for Germany to declare that it forgives France for its “wars of aggression,” (the Thirty Years War and World War I) and is willing to let bygones be bygones. Germany can even say that it was wrong of them to have fought the war of 1870 and World War II in order to regain control over Alsace and Lorraine and admit that these were “criminal wars of imperialist aggression.” It would be possible for the German people to ask the French people to forgive them for this without affecting the legitimacy of the governments in Berlin and Paris. It would it destroy the concept of being a Frenchman or a German. More importantly neither of these claims would affect the German or the French citizen’s claim to their homes whither they are in Alsace or Lorraine or Berlin or Paris.
Much of the peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians can be seen in terms of finding a compromise on what and who is to be forgiven. In signing the Oslo accords Israel was in essence agreeing to forgive Yassir Arafat and the PLO. By accepting him as a partner in peace and by agreeing to transfer specific tracts of land to the Palestinian Authority, Israel was agreeing to wash away Arafat’s actions as if they never happened. In exchange Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were agreeing to forgive the state of Israel for the occupation of Arab land and ask forgiveness for their own acts of terrorism. The genius of Oslo was that it was able to give both sides a diplomatic victory and it did not require either side to make any hard sacrifices; all issues such as a Palestinian state, refugees and Jerusalem were pushed off for later “final status negations.” Meanwhile both sides were able to make the case to their own people that Oslo did not mark a surrender on their part. Rabin and Peres were able to make the case to the Israelis that with Oslo they were buying off Arafat; they were getting him to turn on his fellow Palestinian terrorists in exchange for nominal control over Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Even Peres, in those years, was adamant; there was going to be no Palestinian state, no partitioning of Jerusalem and no return of refugees. Arafat on the other hand was able to interpret Oslo as a cease fire in the struggle against Israel to be ended if Israel did not deliver on his demands for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capitol along with the return of the refugees.
The failed Camp David accords, with its offer of a state compromising the Gaza Strip along with almost all of the West Bank, was, in the language of forgiveness, an agreement to say that Zionism and the founding of the state of Israel along with the war in ’67 were legitimate and the Palestinians must ask forgiveness for their attempts to destroy Israel. But that it was wrong for Israel to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza, so Israel must ask forgiveness from the Palestinians for that. Barak and the Labor party was willing to accept this line and the Likud could probably have been forced to go along with it as a matter of practicality. In truth the Camp David accords was not even asking the Labor party to ask for forgiveness for any of their actions. The settler movement was by and large a creation of the right so Barak, was in essence, offering to ask for forgiveness for the sins of his political opponents. (Imagine a President Kerry, after having won the 2004 election, pulling American troops out of Iraq and apologizing for America’s, i.e. Bush’s, war of aggression) Arafat could not accept Barak’s offer of post ’67 in exchange for pre ’67 because to do so would still undermine the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which is the source of Arafat’s legitimacy, was founded in 1964, before Israel had the West Bank and Gaza, and its purpose was the destruction of a state of Israel which did not then occupy the West Bank and Gaza. To accept Camp David would have meant that Arafat himself would have had to admit to being a terrorist.
What the Palestinian Authority needed to be able to do was get Israel to accept that there is a right of return for all Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian Authority claims to represent all the Palestinian people, not just in Gaza and the West Bank but also the Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia etc. If the Palestinian Authority were to make a peace agreement that left all the refugees stranded then they would be admitting that there really is no such thing as a Palestinian people, it was just a scam to get sympathy from the West. Israel though is unable to allow the refugees to come back. If all or most of the refugees were to come back to Israel then Israel could of course be destroyed by democratic means. Even if not a single refugee were to accept the offer to come back to Israel the Palestinian Authority would still de facto be gaining its victory over Israel. By agreeing in principle to allow the refugees back into Israel, Israel would be accepting at least a partial blame for having caused the refugee problem back in 1948. This in turn would in turn undermine the founding of the state of Israel; it would show that having a Jewish state was inherently a detrimental act to the Arab natives and so therefore there existed legitimate reasons for the Arab states to reject the formation of a state of Israel.
For the Israelis the notion of forgiving Palestinian terrorism is a difficult pill to swallow, especially for the right. Such an action requires turning ones back on all the blood spilt and put it out of ones political mind and memory.[3] This goes against the ideology of the Holocaust. The slogans associated with the Holocaust are zachor, we will remember, and “never again.” Crucial to the Israeli self image is the notion that we are dealing with the new Jew. The new Jew, created by Zionism is not supposed to be the Jew of Eastern Europe, who meekly allowed himself to be led to the camps and slaughtered.[4] Instead our new Jew remembers[5] what happened, refuses to follow in that path and will not allow Jewish blood to be spilt unanswered.
The Palestinians have, in regards to forgiveness, even less room to work with then the Israelis. The Palestinians have an even greater need for a collective memory because they do not, as yet, have a country which they could claim as their own and because they have a very ambiguous status as a people. Palestine never existed as an Arab country; it was part of greater Syria, which itself for hundreds of years was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians are trying to create a country that has never existed before.[6] To further complicate matters the Palestinians have to carry around two national memories. They are claiming to be their own separate group and a part of the greater Arab front. They claim that “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and [that] the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”[7] Are the Palestinians their own separate group or are they a part of Pan-Arabism? They need to be both. If the Palestinians are their own separate group then why should the various Arab states help, or even tolerate them? If the Palestinians are just an element of the greater Arab peoples the why should the West help them? The West could say: let the Arabs take in and integrate the Palestinians, since they are the same people. If the Palestinian Authority were to cut a deal with Israel, give up the struggle and recognize Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority would be cutting themselves off from the Pan-Arab cause. If the Palestinian Authority does this then what reason do the other Arab states have for giving it support? The Palestinian Authority needs the Arab support much more then it needs Western support. If the French feel betrayed by the Palestinian Authority they still will not massacre Palestinians by the thousands, as the Jordanians did thirty years ago.
The end result of all this was the Intifadah, which cost thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives. At a tactical level very little has changed these past few years. Israel still has the military advantage; it is capable of hitting any Palestinian target any time and any place. It is only limited by its moral commitment to keep the actions of its military within the bounds of the Western ethical framework and by how far America is willing to allow it to go. The Palestinians are still capable of carrying out act of terrorism. While not all, or even most, of these attacks will succeed, the Palestinians can still take out dozens of Israeli citizens from time to time.
Sharon’s disengagement plan brought to the forefront a deep fracture within Israeli society. Within the language of the schemata of forgiveness, Sharon and the majority of the country agreed to not just unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, but also to unilaterally disassociate the state of Israel from the settler movement. Sharon in affect announced to the world that Israel viewed the settlements not just as a failure but as a mistake that needed to be corrected. Sharon forced Israel to actually swallow the pill that Barak had been willing to accept. Sharon, because he was on the right, was in a better position to do this. He isolated the settler movement and the far right from the rest of the country. This left the settlers pretty much to themselves to fight this issue. It ceased to be an issue of whither or not Israel should take the blame or if even the Israel right should take the blame. Rather it has become an issue of whither or not the settlers should bear the blame and for the vast majority of Israelis the answer is yes. At a fundamental level the settlers were betrayed. They were left as the scapegoats, the stains on Zionism that needed to be expunged. They came to the territories as an extension of the Zionist dream. They were then written off from the Zionist movement not even as failures, for failures are still allowed their martyrs, but as sins for which one has to ask forgiveness for.
From the perspective of the schemata of forgiveness, what is necessary for the peace-process to work is for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza to come to view themselves as a separate entity from the Palestinians in refugee camps and from the Pan-Arab cause. This would make it possible for them to accept some version of the Camp David accords. The reconstructed Palestinian people, through their new leadership, would be able to give up on the cause of the refugees and ask Israel for forgiveness for having tried to destroy it. Israel would in turn be able to ask this new Palestinian people to forgive them for the occupation and the settlements.[8] This would create a situation were both sides would be capable of allowing themselves to back down from the politics of hate and vengeance and enter into the politics of peace and forgiveness.
[1] Even the Japanese, who are not part of the Abrahamic cultural tradition, have been putting the politic of forgiveness into practice. For example the Japanese Prime Minister made a formal request of the people of Korea to forgive the Japanese for the horrendous crimes against humanity that the Japanese had perpetrated against them.
[2] One could object to this by pointing to all the terrorist attacks that have been carried by Islamic fundamentalists. I would counter by reminding you that such acts, for the most part, only happened because Arafat, a man who by all accounts was a secularist, allowed them to do it. Why did Arafat allow this? To simply say that he was an irrational maniac is a cope out; Arafat survived on the international stage for forty years, longer then anyone else besides for Fidel Castro. You do not manage to do that simply by being an irrational maniac.
[3] I am not saying that one has to forget what happened; one just has to be willing to take the event off the table and make it not an issue. For all intents and purposes then, it is as if the even has been forgotten.
[4] This is a myth not historical fact.
[5] Because of the image of Jews allowing themselves to be led to their deaths the Holocaust represented a problem for the early Israelis, who wished to distance themselves from that image. During the forties and fifties even survivors kept mum about what had happened. The day that was chosen as Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorates the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, an image acceptable to Israeli ideology.
[6] This does not undermine their right to create a country Palestine. There are several million Palestinians and it is their right to try to create a state for themselves by all legal means.
[7] Article 1 of the Palestinian National Charter passed June 17th, 1968.
[8] As I mentioned earlier, no one actually has to mean what they say they just have to be willing to accept the implications, political, historical or otherwise, of what they say.
“What do we call forgiveness? What calls for forgiveness? Who calls for, who calls upon forgiveness?” (pg 27) In his essay “On Forgiveness,” Jacques Derrida argues that true forgiveness is to forgive the unforgivable. Derrida defines forgiveness as the willingness to allow the injustice that has already been done to oneself by another to stand. Once a wrong has been made up for it does not make any sense to speak of forgiveness. If someone owed a debt and paid it back then neither of the parties owes the other anything; it would be foolish of the lender to say that after receiving his money back that he forgives the borrower. It only makes sense to talk about forgiveness when that debt cannot be paid back, such as in situations of persecution and particularly mass murder.
Derrida sees the act of asking for and of granting forgiveness as one of the key underlying foundations of modern international politics; the Abrahamic notion of forgiveness has been internationalized[1] and secularized in order to serve the needs of the modern state and society. The main actors in this new politic of forgiveness are not individuals but states. There are two reasons for this. Firstly by focusing upon the state we can avoid the question of: is the apology or forgiveness really meant or is it just feigned? By keeping forgiveness within the dominion of the state we are able to avoid prying into this “secret” and as such we do not interfere with the process of national memory. The second reason is that “all Nation-States are born and found themselves in violence.”(pg. 57) The state itself, in order to justify its own legitimacy, needs to be able to get everyone else to agree to take its own sins off of the table. Since all states have some guilt everyone is agreeing to allow everyone else’s guilt to be covered up in exchange for their guilt also covered over and kept a secret.
Derrida’s theory of forgiveness offers an interesting angle as what the peace-process means and as to why it has so far failed so miserably? The peace-process, in the schematic of forgiveness, can be seen matter of both the Israelis and the Palestinians agreeing to ask and, in return, grant forgiveness for past “misdeeds.” With Oslo, the Israelis were agreeing to renounce their claims over the West Bank and Gaza and forgive the Palestinian Authority for its acts of terrorism. The Palestinian Authority was agreeing to renounce terrorism along with any claim over the pre-1967 Israel and forgive Israel for having occupied “their” land. The reasoning behind both side’s actions was not moral contrition but simple political expediency. Israel wanted an end to Palestinian violence and the Palestinian Authority wants a state. Furthermore each side felt that it needed the support of the European Community and the United States and coul not afford to be seen as being the ones holding back peace.
The peace-process failed because the whole mechanics of forgiveness broke down. Neither side was capable of asking for forgiveness or granting it because doing so would undermine the legitimacy of either side and run counter to the politics of memory from which they have built an edifice to justify their own existence. In discussing the failures of Oslo there has been a lot of emphasis on the religious problems. I think this aspect has been overemphasized. Remember, it has been Israelis, who are by and large secular Jews, and Palestinians, who are by and large secular Muslims, if not Christians, who have failed at the negotiation table.[2] As to why there has been such an emphasis on the role played by religious extremists in bringing about the current crisis, I would suggest that the religious want the credit and the secular want to give them the blame. Most of the religious factions opposed the peace-process, so the narrative that their actions have stopped the peace-process appeals to them. As for the Western secular media, the narrative that they want to tell is of a Middle-East caught in an endless cycle of medieval religious wars, to which the only hope is for there to be a spirit of “Enlightenment,” “tolerance” and “understanding,” i.e. secularism.
The problem with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and that which distinguishes it from almost any other conflict in history is the fact that the legitimacy of each side’s claims is almost totally mutually exclusive. If it was legitimate for the state of Israel to have been created in 1947 and for Israel to have fought its various wars with the neighboring Arab states, then the Palestinian Authority becomes a terrorist organization and can therefore claim no legitimacy. If the Arab states were the aggressors in 1948 then it is their fault that so many Palestinians became refugees and the onus for solving the problem would lie with them and not with Israel. If on the other hand the Palestinian cause is legitimate and the PLO can be considered to be freedom fighters then by necessity the state of Israel is an imperialist state, imposed upon the Arab peoples by the West, with no right to exist and as such the Jewish people have no right to the land of Israel.
In most conflicts what is at stake is not the inherent legitimacy of a state. More importantly most conflicts do not involve the legitimacy of the claims of private individuals to their property. It is possible for the French and the Germans to be at peace with one another despite their conflicts over Alsace and Lorraine because the ownership of Alsace and Lorraine does not affect the intrinsic integrity of either France or Germany. It is possible for Germany to declare that it forgives France for its “wars of aggression,” (the Thirty Years War and World War I) and is willing to let bygones be bygones. Germany can even say that it was wrong of them to have fought the war of 1870 and World War II in order to regain control over Alsace and Lorraine and admit that these were “criminal wars of imperialist aggression.” It would be possible for the German people to ask the French people to forgive them for this without affecting the legitimacy of the governments in Berlin and Paris. It would it destroy the concept of being a Frenchman or a German. More importantly neither of these claims would affect the German or the French citizen’s claim to their homes whither they are in Alsace or Lorraine or Berlin or Paris.
Much of the peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians can be seen in terms of finding a compromise on what and who is to be forgiven. In signing the Oslo accords Israel was in essence agreeing to forgive Yassir Arafat and the PLO. By accepting him as a partner in peace and by agreeing to transfer specific tracts of land to the Palestinian Authority, Israel was agreeing to wash away Arafat’s actions as if they never happened. In exchange Arafat and his Palestinian Authority were agreeing to forgive the state of Israel for the occupation of Arab land and ask forgiveness for their own acts of terrorism. The genius of Oslo was that it was able to give both sides a diplomatic victory and it did not require either side to make any hard sacrifices; all issues such as a Palestinian state, refugees and Jerusalem were pushed off for later “final status negations.” Meanwhile both sides were able to make the case to their own people that Oslo did not mark a surrender on their part. Rabin and Peres were able to make the case to the Israelis that with Oslo they were buying off Arafat; they were getting him to turn on his fellow Palestinian terrorists in exchange for nominal control over Gaza and parts of the West Bank. Even Peres, in those years, was adamant; there was going to be no Palestinian state, no partitioning of Jerusalem and no return of refugees. Arafat on the other hand was able to interpret Oslo as a cease fire in the struggle against Israel to be ended if Israel did not deliver on his demands for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capitol along with the return of the refugees.
The failed Camp David accords, with its offer of a state compromising the Gaza Strip along with almost all of the West Bank, was, in the language of forgiveness, an agreement to say that Zionism and the founding of the state of Israel along with the war in ’67 were legitimate and the Palestinians must ask forgiveness for their attempts to destroy Israel. But that it was wrong for Israel to hold onto the West Bank and Gaza, so Israel must ask forgiveness from the Palestinians for that. Barak and the Labor party was willing to accept this line and the Likud could probably have been forced to go along with it as a matter of practicality. In truth the Camp David accords was not even asking the Labor party to ask for forgiveness for any of their actions. The settler movement was by and large a creation of the right so Barak, was in essence, offering to ask for forgiveness for the sins of his political opponents. (Imagine a President Kerry, after having won the 2004 election, pulling American troops out of Iraq and apologizing for America’s, i.e. Bush’s, war of aggression) Arafat could not accept Barak’s offer of post ’67 in exchange for pre ’67 because to do so would still undermine the Palestinian Authority’s legitimacy. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), which is the source of Arafat’s legitimacy, was founded in 1964, before Israel had the West Bank and Gaza, and its purpose was the destruction of a state of Israel which did not then occupy the West Bank and Gaza. To accept Camp David would have meant that Arafat himself would have had to admit to being a terrorist.
What the Palestinian Authority needed to be able to do was get Israel to accept that there is a right of return for all Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian Authority claims to represent all the Palestinian people, not just in Gaza and the West Bank but also the Palestinians in Lebanon, Jordan and Tunisia etc. If the Palestinian Authority were to make a peace agreement that left all the refugees stranded then they would be admitting that there really is no such thing as a Palestinian people, it was just a scam to get sympathy from the West. Israel though is unable to allow the refugees to come back. If all or most of the refugees were to come back to Israel then Israel could of course be destroyed by democratic means. Even if not a single refugee were to accept the offer to come back to Israel the Palestinian Authority would still de facto be gaining its victory over Israel. By agreeing in principle to allow the refugees back into Israel, Israel would be accepting at least a partial blame for having caused the refugee problem back in 1948. This in turn would in turn undermine the founding of the state of Israel; it would show that having a Jewish state was inherently a detrimental act to the Arab natives and so therefore there existed legitimate reasons for the Arab states to reject the formation of a state of Israel.
For the Israelis the notion of forgiving Palestinian terrorism is a difficult pill to swallow, especially for the right. Such an action requires turning ones back on all the blood spilt and put it out of ones political mind and memory.[3] This goes against the ideology of the Holocaust. The slogans associated with the Holocaust are zachor, we will remember, and “never again.” Crucial to the Israeli self image is the notion that we are dealing with the new Jew. The new Jew, created by Zionism is not supposed to be the Jew of Eastern Europe, who meekly allowed himself to be led to the camps and slaughtered.[4] Instead our new Jew remembers[5] what happened, refuses to follow in that path and will not allow Jewish blood to be spilt unanswered.
The Palestinians have, in regards to forgiveness, even less room to work with then the Israelis. The Palestinians have an even greater need for a collective memory because they do not, as yet, have a country which they could claim as their own and because they have a very ambiguous status as a people. Palestine never existed as an Arab country; it was part of greater Syria, which itself for hundreds of years was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinians are trying to create a country that has never existed before.[6] To further complicate matters the Palestinians have to carry around two national memories. They are claiming to be their own separate group and a part of the greater Arab front. They claim that “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and [that] the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.”[7] Are the Palestinians their own separate group or are they a part of Pan-Arabism? They need to be both. If the Palestinians are their own separate group then why should the various Arab states help, or even tolerate them? If the Palestinians are just an element of the greater Arab peoples the why should the West help them? The West could say: let the Arabs take in and integrate the Palestinians, since they are the same people. If the Palestinian Authority were to cut a deal with Israel, give up the struggle and recognize Israel in exchange for a Palestinian state, the Palestinian Authority would be cutting themselves off from the Pan-Arab cause. If the Palestinian Authority does this then what reason do the other Arab states have for giving it support? The Palestinian Authority needs the Arab support much more then it needs Western support. If the French feel betrayed by the Palestinian Authority they still will not massacre Palestinians by the thousands, as the Jordanians did thirty years ago.
The end result of all this was the Intifadah, which cost thousands of Israeli and Palestinian lives. At a tactical level very little has changed these past few years. Israel still has the military advantage; it is capable of hitting any Palestinian target any time and any place. It is only limited by its moral commitment to keep the actions of its military within the bounds of the Western ethical framework and by how far America is willing to allow it to go. The Palestinians are still capable of carrying out act of terrorism. While not all, or even most, of these attacks will succeed, the Palestinians can still take out dozens of Israeli citizens from time to time.
Sharon’s disengagement plan brought to the forefront a deep fracture within Israeli society. Within the language of the schemata of forgiveness, Sharon and the majority of the country agreed to not just unilaterally withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank, but also to unilaterally disassociate the state of Israel from the settler movement. Sharon in affect announced to the world that Israel viewed the settlements not just as a failure but as a mistake that needed to be corrected. Sharon forced Israel to actually swallow the pill that Barak had been willing to accept. Sharon, because he was on the right, was in a better position to do this. He isolated the settler movement and the far right from the rest of the country. This left the settlers pretty much to themselves to fight this issue. It ceased to be an issue of whither or not Israel should take the blame or if even the Israel right should take the blame. Rather it has become an issue of whither or not the settlers should bear the blame and for the vast majority of Israelis the answer is yes. At a fundamental level the settlers were betrayed. They were left as the scapegoats, the stains on Zionism that needed to be expunged. They came to the territories as an extension of the Zionist dream. They were then written off from the Zionist movement not even as failures, for failures are still allowed their martyrs, but as sins for which one has to ask forgiveness for.
From the perspective of the schemata of forgiveness, what is necessary for the peace-process to work is for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza to come to view themselves as a separate entity from the Palestinians in refugee camps and from the Pan-Arab cause. This would make it possible for them to accept some version of the Camp David accords. The reconstructed Palestinian people, through their new leadership, would be able to give up on the cause of the refugees and ask Israel for forgiveness for having tried to destroy it. Israel would in turn be able to ask this new Palestinian people to forgive them for the occupation and the settlements.[8] This would create a situation were both sides would be capable of allowing themselves to back down from the politics of hate and vengeance and enter into the politics of peace and forgiveness.
[1] Even the Japanese, who are not part of the Abrahamic cultural tradition, have been putting the politic of forgiveness into practice. For example the Japanese Prime Minister made a formal request of the people of Korea to forgive the Japanese for the horrendous crimes against humanity that the Japanese had perpetrated against them.
[2] One could object to this by pointing to all the terrorist attacks that have been carried by Islamic fundamentalists. I would counter by reminding you that such acts, for the most part, only happened because Arafat, a man who by all accounts was a secularist, allowed them to do it. Why did Arafat allow this? To simply say that he was an irrational maniac is a cope out; Arafat survived on the international stage for forty years, longer then anyone else besides for Fidel Castro. You do not manage to do that simply by being an irrational maniac.
[3] I am not saying that one has to forget what happened; one just has to be willing to take the event off the table and make it not an issue. For all intents and purposes then, it is as if the even has been forgotten.
[4] This is a myth not historical fact.
[5] Because of the image of Jews allowing themselves to be led to their deaths the Holocaust represented a problem for the early Israelis, who wished to distance themselves from that image. During the forties and fifties even survivors kept mum about what had happened. The day that was chosen as Holocaust Memorial Day, commemorates the start of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, an image acceptable to Israeli ideology.
[6] This does not undermine their right to create a country Palestine. There are several million Palestinians and it is their right to try to create a state for themselves by all legal means.
[7] Article 1 of the Palestinian National Charter passed June 17th, 1968.
[8] As I mentioned earlier, no one actually has to mean what they say they just have to be willing to accept the implications, political, historical or otherwise, of what they say.
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