Spain the High School Dropout

Clarissa has a short post on an analogy by one of her students, comparing Spain to a high school dropout:

After Spain expelled the Jews, it became similar to a high school dropout who constantly lags behind everybody else, can't keep up with any intelligent conversation, and has to do trivial things just to survive.

I am reminded of the rhetorical trope used by many rabbis in my youth that any country that expelled its Jews immediately went into decline. Spain (really Aragon and Castile) expelled its Jews and it fell from being a great power. Unfortunately for this theory 1492 was also in the year that Spain began its conquest of the New World. The wealth of the New World (particularly the world's largest silver mine in Peru) would eventually fund Spain's domination of the European continent for the next century.

Of course in an exercise of the power of unforeseen consequences, this conquest of the New World would eventually become the downfall of Spain, causing Spain to fail to industrialize. Worse, this wealth ended up strengthening the monarchy making it impervious to democratic reform (much as oil in Saudi Arabia protects the Saudi monarchy).

In the end, I do think the Early Modern Spanish government can be compared to a modern high school dropout, not because it expelled its Jews, but in how it was corrupted by outside funding. Like the modern high school dropout who assumes that he can live off of public welfare as if money could simply be produced and has no incentive to knuckle down and get an education, the Spanish monarchy saw money as something that could just be produced out of the ground and never bothered to reform itself until it was too late.   

(See Secular Theodicy.)

Tax Breaks for a Noah’s Ark Theme Park

  In what should have exemplified all that is wrong with the Republican Party, Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky, a democrat, is offering tax breaks to the folks over at the Creation Museum for the building of a Noah's Ark theme park. The excuse for this is that the park will create jobs and help out the economy.

While most people would object to such tax-breaks on the grounds of separation between Church and State, I object on the grounds of there being special tax-breaks in the first place. What, you might ask? Should I not, as a libertarian, be supportive of big business interests? Libertarianism has nothing to do with being pro business and this is a good example of that. For a libertarian, the purpose of government is to protect people from direct physical harm caused by other people without their consent. The government is assumed to be competent enough (if barely) to deal with something relatively simple like stopping terrorists trying to set off a nuclear bomb on our soil. The government is most certainly not competent enough to handle something as complex as the economy any more than we are going to take them seriously when it comes to leading the moral life or getting into heaven. If the economy is assumed to be beyond the understanding of government, we have no choice but to label any attempt by government officials to offer special deals to businesses as a conspiring with a special interest against the general public.

I put the challenge to my readers. If Gov. Beshear is correct in his premise that it is possible for the government to help boost the economy by providing special tax breaks to businesses for building theme parks, what grounds do you have for objecting? Surely you would not hold the Noah's Ark theme against such a project. Would you let such a minor thing as the separation of Church and State get in the way of creating jobs for the people of Kentucky? I reject his premise so this can never become an issue for me.  

Who Owns Aslan, the Author or the Voice Actor?

There is a public furor shaping up over Liam Neeson, the actor who does the voice of Aslan in the recent Narnia movies, saying that Aslan could be any spiritual leader even Mohammad or Buddha. The Narnia books of course were written by C. S. Lewis as Christian allegories with Aslan intended to represent Jesus. Similarly, I recall back when the first film came out Tilda Swinton saying that she felt her white witch character represented Aryan supremacy as opposed to the Devil as Lewis intended. I would see this as an excellent example of the post-modern question of authorship. According to post-modern thought, a text is its interpretation. From this perspective there is really no such thing as authorship and an author has no special power over his own work. The author is simply the person who incidentally performed the labor of creating the text. He may have his own personal interpretation of his own work, but that interpretation is in no way more valid than the interpretation of any of his readers. Readers in turn are free to craft an interpretation from their own personal act of reading without concern as to original authorial intent.  

So who maintains interpretive control over Aslan, C. S. Lewis, who wrote the novels, or the millions of people who have read them, including Liam Neeson? Legally of course Neeson is free to craft any "false" or "heretical" interpretation he chooses and post-modernism says that he is on solid ground for doing so. I doubt Lewis would have really objected. My sense of the man was that he was not the sort to get worked up about anything. If Lewis had a Christian message to his work, he showed little concern to force that message to others. 

As a Jewish C. S Lewis fan, I feel no emotional qualms about accepting Aslan as Jesus. (I accept both of them equally as not my personal savior.) Part of this I think comes from my experience as a historian. Historians are unable to follow the post-modern path to its fullest extreme. We require texts to have hard meanings, otherwise the historical method would be just another form of subjective literary interpretation. We also do put a special value on authorial intent. Want to understand a text? Compare it to the author's other writing and then to ideas in general currency at the time. Under no circumstances are you to bring into play concepts that did not come about until later; that is an anachronism. That being said we historians do recognize that in practice texts do evolve. People do take texts and refashion them for their own purposes. So part of the story of any text is a "post-modern" defeat of authorial intent at the hands of public reception.

I accept as historical fact that Narnia is a Christian work and that Aslan represents Jesus. Even though I am Jewish, this does not have to get in the way or my enjoyment of Narnia or force me to fashion a Narnia to better suit my own personal beliefs. My pleasure is in trying to understand texts as the author might have and seeing how other people refashion it. If Aslan becomes Mohammad to suit our more ecumenical age, that too is a topic worthy of historical study.     


 

Here is a Religion I Could Go For

From China Mieville's Perdido Street Station:

Palgolak was a god of knowledge. He was depicted either as a fat, squat human reading in a bath, or a svelte vodyanoi doing the same, or, mystically, both at once. His congregation were human and vodyanoi in roughly equal proportions. He was an amiable, pleasant deity, a sage whose existence was entirely devoted t the collection, categorization, and dissemination of information.

Isaac worshipped no gods, He did not believe in the omniscience or omnipotence claimed for a few, or even the existence of many. Certainly there were creatures and essences that inhabited different aspects of existence, and certainly some of them were powerful, in human terms. But worshipping them seemed to him rather a craven activity. Even he, though, had a soft spot for Palgolak. He rather hoped the fat bastard did exist, in some form or another. Isaac liked the idea of an inter-aspectual entity so enamoured with knowledge that it just roamed from real to realm in a bath, murmuring with interest at everything it came acrosss.

Palgolak's library was at least the equal to that of the New Crobuzon University. It did not lend books, but it did allow readers in at any time of the day or the night, and there were very very few books it did not allow access to. The Palgolaki were proselytizers, holding that everything known by a worshipper was immediately known by Palgolak, which was why they were religiously charged to read voraciously. But their mission was only secondarily for the glory of Palgolak, and primarily for the glory of knowledge, which was why they were sworn to admit all who wished to enter their library. (pg. 60)  

I guess, though, my question would be how such a religion might have been able to evolve. In a pre-literate society such a religion would have excluded the vast majority of people from "salvation." (One of the reasons why Maimonidean rationalism failed to take control of Judaism during the Middle-Ages.) Also there is the problem of allowing people to read books. The problem is not heresy, per se, but the granting of authority to lay individuals to interpret ideas for themselves. How could a religious establishment maintain itself as a coherent set of beliefs under circumstances in which every man reads for himself and forms his own ideas? Protestantism learned this the hard way when they encouraged people to read just the Bible.

(See also Sazed's School of Religion.)

Why Israel Needs to Earn a Spot at the 2022 World Cup

Israel may not be a major soccer power in the world having only been to the World Cup once in 1970. But now the World Cup in 2022 is going to be held in the Arab country of Qatar. What might happen if Israel were to earn a spot? Would Qatar even allow the Israeli team to enter the country? One way or another having Israel take part should be enough to put egg in the faces of the entire Arab world much as Jesse Owens winning gold at the Berlin Olympic of 1936 was a slap at Hitler. Israelis love soccer so why not make it a national drive to get that spot. Young Israeli soccer fans can now dream of growing up and representing their country in a way that the world will not soon forget.  

The Yiddish Karate Kids

I ran into the following poster in a synagogue this past weekend in Queens NY.



The Yiddish heading reads as follows: "The Yiddish Karate Kids."

I would see this as an interesting example of acculturation going on even actively within the Haredi community. The fact that the poster has Yiddish and features a Haredi looking kid leads one to conclude that the group is designed for and run by Haredim. Whether or not Jacob used martial arts to defeat the angel in Genesis, karate is not part of the Jewish cultural tradition. (We shall see what happens to Krav Maga.) Nor is karate a ubiquitous part of American culture like baseball or football that it would be impossible to ignore it. I would also point out that other forms of loose clothing can be used in karate besides for the distinctively non-Jewish gi garment. If you are going to take a stand against not engaging in gentile practices and wearing their clothing, this would be a logical place.

So we have Haredim reaching out and taking a product not only from a gentile culture, but one that is actually pagan (something that, unlike American culture, actually does raise legitimate halachic issues). Far be it from me to encourage Haredim to ban things, but there are too many obvious issues for someone not to notice. I wish this group best of luck. It would, though, be in their best interest to be honest as to what they are doing so not to give the banners a chance to create a moral high ground for themselves. If you openly support acculturation then no one can use it to discredit you. Up front intellectual honesty is always the best form of self defense.   

Debate/Discussion with Baruch Pelta I

Baruch Pelta invited me to a discussion of the issue of whether parents should indoctrinate their children with an Orthodox religious identity. The idea for this discussion came out of a post of mine in defense of parents raising their children with a religious identity. Our intention is to do this via video. Baruch made the first video before Thanksgiving. Here is my video; I am sorry for the delay.

If there is one thing I wish to come out of this discussion is that it be conducted in a respectful manner. So feel free to comment on my video and please watch and comment on Baruch's original video and what I hope will be many future videos, but I ask you to respect Baruch as someone whose opinion deserves to be heard and considered.  

Do You Trust a Politician When He Claims to Act for the Public Good? A Lesson from Cicero

If history does not teach lessons as to what to do, it does teach lessons as to how to read texts and interpret people. One of the things that I try to put across to my students is to read the statements of historical figures with a critical eye. In my 111 class, we have spent a lot of time talking about the Roman orator Cicero. If Cicero tells us that he selflessly put himself in harm's way in order to fight against corrupt officials like Verres or to save Rome itself from being taken over by Catiline we should not immediately swoon at Cicero's honesty, patriotism, and love of liberty. I wish for my students to wonder if the Sicilians, who came to Cicero for help against Verres, turned to him for his courage or because they knew him personally from his time in Sicily. Was Cicero helping foreign strangers in the cause of justice or some wealthy friends of his? Cicero charged into the Senate to finger Catiline as the ringleader of a vast conspiracy to violently take over the Roman Republic. Was Cicero the one man in Rome willing to stand in defense of the Republic or was the evidence against Catiline less than convincing to anyone who had not, like Cicero, run against Catiline for Consul the previous year? Cicero held the rights of Roman citizens to be sacrosanct and was horrified that Verres could have executed Roman citizens without trial on charges of treason. Of course, Cicero would have Catiline's followers executed without trial, but that was a "national emergency" and the men were so clearly guilty anyway. Later on, Clodius briefly forced Cicero into exile on account of him murdering Roman citizens. Once Cicero was back he defended his friend Milo on the charge of murdering Clodius, arguing essentially that Clodius deserved it. Cicero truly believed in law and order and not executing Roman citizens (unless they really deserved it or otherwise annoyed him).

These points are obvious to any classical scholar and I am grateful to Dr. Louis Feldman for teaching them to me and it is an honor to pass them on to others. In evaluating people, we historians employ a simple rule. You are automatically suspected of acting for base self-serving motives and the burden of proof is on you to show otherwise. This is done by demonstrating that the resulting action is different from what one might expect if one was acting from more self-serving motives. If an action proceeds logically from self-serving motives then you are guilty, case closed, no further questions asked.

If all I accomplished was to teach my students to chuckle at Cicero's pretensions of acting for the public good, my class would be of antiquarian interest, but with little practical relevance. The real target is not Cicero, but every politician today, whether liberal or conservative, who stands in front of the public and tries, like Cicero but without his genius, to claim that they are acting for the public benefit. If we are serious in applying our historical rule then, by definition, the only time a politician can be believed to act for the public good is when his solution involves giving less power to the government.

Considering this, can a historian be anything but a libertarian? What does it say about the intellectual honesty of those who are not?

(See Historians as a "Special Interest Group.")

And the Winner is ...

Miss S.

Congratulations and please contact me so we can arrange for your $25 gift certificate from Oh Nuts.

Isaac Abarbanel Complete with Yarmulke and Full White Beard

Believe it or not, the following passage does not come from a Haredi publication. It comes from James Reston Jr.'s Dogs of God: Columbus the Inquisition and the Defeat of the Moors.

"In King Alfonso's court, Don Isaac [Abravanel] was a popular figure, for he was urbane and voluble. He cut a striking figure: round moonface, piercing eyes, sharply defined nose, high forehead crowned with a yarmulke, and full white beard that covered his expansive chest."


The picture we have of Abarbanel is from after his lifetime. Head coverings were not ubiquitous in traditional Jewish circles until modern times even among Ashkenazic Jews, let alone Sephardim who even today do not insist upon it. So it is highly questionable if Abarbanel wore one around the Portuguese court. Furthermore in the 1470s, when Abarbanel was at the court of Alfonso V of Portugal, he was in his thirties. When Alfonso V died in 1481 Abarbanel would have been about 44. One thing about Abarbanel that we can say with confidence, barring him suffering from premature graying, he did not have a full white beard while in Portugal. Perhaps he grew one at the end of his life in Venice.

History on the Free Market

As should be clear from many of the posts I have done on the field of history, I have a particular interest in the continued relevancy of history. (See Method Thinking.) While history may not offer concrete moral lessons for us to learn from and avoid repeating, history does provide a lens and context for examining our present world and even a method with which to critically confront it.

As a libertarian, I oppose the idea of mandatory education and even publically funded schools, whether elementary, high school or college. (Publically funded education is really just another form of mandatory education as those who choose to opt out are still taxed regardless of their willingness to forgo the benefits.) People (or in the case of children their parents) should be left to decide what sort of education, if any, they wish to pursue. They should then be left to pay for it themselves or by persuading other private individuals to pay for it as an investment or as charity. As an extension of this, I also oppose the idea of general requirements. It is perfectly reasonable for someone to invest money in studying biology with the goal of receiving a piece of paper from a recognized institution to increase his chances of being hired and the salary he might command. While a private institution should be left to impose any requirement that suits them in order to receive their pieces of paper, I see no reason why there should be general requirements (like history). What does a knowledge of history have to do with competency in biology? While I believe (as it will be clear by this end of this piece) that a well rounded education in the humanities is important, that has nothing to do with the granting of a degree. I can only conclude that the insistence of general requirements is a form of "special interest" kickbacks to the departments in question to be paid for by students. (See Historians as a Special Interest Group.)

Such an ideology puts me in a funny position working at The Ohio State University, a public university, and teaching History 111, a general requirement. So here I am, a government employee, even though I am not a politician, a judge, a police officer, a member of the armed forces or holder of a position even remotely connected to protecting people from physical harm; I am standing in front of a class full students, many of whom are sane and rational, but almost none of whom actually desire to be here whether out of love for what I teach or out of a belief that it will help them become more capable of holding down a higher paying job. Neither the students nor their parents are paying the full cost of attending the university, which is being subsidized by tax payers. (In OSU's favor it should be pointed out that there are a high percentage of non-traditional students holding down jobs to pay for at least some of the cost.) On top of this, almost none of these students are history majors or even have any particular interest in history. How many of my more than forty students would have actually signed up for my class if it were not a general requirement, ten or five?

My solution to this dilemma is to teach as if mandatory education and history requirements did not exist; to pretend that the students in my class were paying for school with their money and had a choice whether or not to take History 111. In such a situation my job would be to convince those sane and rational students (the others I would be hunting down and shooting like rabid dogs for the protection of society) that I have something worth hundreds of dollars and they should spend that money plus the time required to take my class. As such my class is less about names and dates (what use is it to the cause of history if students memorize names and dates and then go on to ignore it) and more about the purpose of studying history.

This is the real test of whether I succeed as a teacher. Will students walk away from my course believing that the course was money and time well spent, recognizing that a knowledge of history is important and a desire to learn more? It is unlikely that many of them will become history majors, but perhaps some of them will become viewers of the History Channel or even just readers of historical novels. Practiced on a large scale, this will place history on solid economic ground as an industry with willing consumers able to support the continued efforts of historians.

Bomb Threat at Ohio State and I am Insulted

On Tuesday, The Ohio State University was rocked by a bomb threat that closed down four buildings, including the Thompson Library and Scott Laboratory. The closing of Thompson was mightily inconvenient for me as I had a bunch of books to pick up. Scott Laboratory is right next door to Dulles Hall, the history building, where I work. I must say these terrorists (whether they are Al Qaeda or undergraduates trying to get out of midterms) have some nerve to do something like this; it was downright insulting for them to target Ohio State science programs and ignore the history department. Don't these people realize that the history department has people hard at work to bring back medieval surgery and start messianic revolutions? It is almost as if these terrorists think our work as historians has no practical relevancy. What can be more insulting then to be declared unworthy of notice even by a bunch of loser terrorists?

I insist that these terrorists apologize to historians and promise to make sure we are included in all attacks in the future.

Oh Nuts Hanukkah Giveaway

My friends at Oh Nuts are offering readers of this blog a chance to win a $25 gift certificate. You can enter in one of three ways:


1. Go to the Oh Nuts Hanukkah gifts page and choose your favorite Hanukkah Gift and leave a comment on this blog post with the name and url of the gift you like the most.


I will pick a random winner and Oh Nuts will email him or her a $25 gift certificate.





2. Go to the Oh Nuts facebook page  and post on the wall the url and name of their favorite Hanukkah Gift. You should also write "I am here via Izgad." 




3. Follow @ohnuts and on Twitter and Tweet "Win a free Hanukkah Gift from http://bit.ly/6nIsCi Follow @ohnuts & Retweet to enter."




I will randomly choose a winner on Nov. 23. Considering the limited number of readers of this blog, I certainly encourage everyone to give option one a shot. (No you do not have to be Jewish to enter. Oh Nuts does not discriminate in being delicious.)