Happy Hanukkah, 5777

Wishing a happy Hanukkah to those of my readers who celebrate that holiday.

In lieu of writing a new piece, I'll just share this image of a menorah from last year.

Israel Hanukkah coin, 1973, depicting eighteenth-century Iraqi menorah

Full background on the coin and its subject matter here.

Happy Hanukkah To My Readers (and a reminder of the legacy of the Jews from Arab countries)

Wishing a happy Hanukkah to all my readers who celebrate the holiday!

Israel Hanukkah coin, 1973

Nominal value: 5 Lirot [pounds], Silver proof (34 mm., 20 g)

Catalogue C/177; quantity: 45,000

The coin, the eighth in the annual series, depicts a menorah from eighteenth-century "Babylon[ia]" (Iraq) from the Israel Museum.



The choice might at first seem surprising to Americans, accustomed as we are (because of immigration patterns and cultural assumptions) to associate Judaism almost exclusively with eastern Europe. In fact, as late as the fifteenth century, the majority of Jews lived in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

That situation changed as a result of improvements in social and political conditions in Europe. By 1880, fully 75 percent of world Jewry lived in eastern Europe alone, and only 8 percent in the Near East. Those 8 percent comprised some 620,000 Jews.

A century later, the picture had radically changed again. By 1992, MENA accounted for over a third of the world total. The Holocaust had murdered some 72 percent of European Jews, and immigration to Mandatory Palestine and then the new State of Israel had shifted the balance. Although we instinctively think of Holocaust survivors, that group and immigrants from MENA in fact each accounted for roughly 48 percent of the total in the first three years of statehood.

Whereas the plight of the 750,000 Palestinian refugees from the War of Independence is deservedly familiar to any educated person or reader of the news, it is less well known that some 850,000 Jews--almost the entirety of the populations from Arab lands of the Near East--were forced to emigrate since 1948. This unacknowledged, involuntary exodus has gradually been gaining attention, for example, through the work of organizations such as Justice for Jews from Arab Countries and the blog, Point of No Return: Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries. Whether it will become a factor in regional peace talks remains to be seen. Justice for Jews from Arab Countries stresses that its effort "is not a campaign against Palestinian refugees" and, rather, simply seeks to "ensure that the rights of hundreds of thousands of Jews displaced from Arab countries be similarly recognized and addressed."



The middle of the twentieth century thus witnessed the destruction of both traditional cores of the world Jewish population, and all that they had contributed to the nations in which they had lived. The depiction of the menorah on the coin was, in the words of the Israel Coins and Medals Corporation, intended as a tribute to the legacy of one of those lost cultures and its descendants:

It has been chosen as being symbolic of the spiritual strength and belief of Jews, in Arab countries, in their return to Zion and in our days of their leaving "the rivers of Babylon", from dark to light, from oppression to prosperity and from bondage to redemption in the Land of Israel.

* * *

A footnote about food:

Fun facts about food: Not just populations, but also Hanukkah culinary traditions vary from region to region. Although Americans think of latkes (potato pancakes) when they think of Hanukkah food: well, . . . think about it.

1) The origin of the festival derives from the supposed miracle of the oil. Therefore, the essence of the festival foods is not their basic substance, and rather, the fact that they are fried in: oil.

2) In any case, the potato could not have been part of that tradition because it is indigenous to the Americas, reached Europe only after the Spanish and Portuguese voyages of discovery as part of what Alfred Crosby famously called "The Columbian Exchange," and did not become popularized until much later. It is therefore a nineteenth-century addition to the menu (however welcome).

In the Near East and premodern Europe, the festival food was thus fried dough (in some cases: cheese), typically, a kind of proto-doughnut known as sufganiyot. In the Sephardic tradition: fried batter with syrup (bimuelos in Spanish: [recipe]); in modern Israel: jelly doughnuts (recipe).

Donald Trump vs. George Washington on Muslim Immigrants

"Religious Freedom in America" canceled?
stamp commemorating the
Flushing Remonstrance, 1957

The bizarre political candidacy of billionaire developer Donald Trump continues to generate amazement: After each outrageous statement, pundits declare him politically dead, only to see his popularity continue to grow. If his mocking of Vietnam War hero John McCain did not do him in, what could?

A gaffe too far?

It was bad enough when Trump assented to a reporter's goading suggestion to establish a database to register Muslims. And his comment about Syrian migrants as potential "great Trojan horses" was among the flood of nationwide anti-refugee sentiment that prompted the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to make a rare entry into the political sphere and issue a sharp warning. This week, commentators are wondering whether he has finally gone too far.

Yesterday's call for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" provoked outrage across the political and cultural spectrum. Fellow Republican candidates Christie, Graham, Rubio, Kasich, and Bush castigated the remarks as "ridiculous," "dangerous," "offensive and outlandish," "outrageous," and "unhinged." Democratic candidate Martin O'Malley for the second time branded Trump's ideas as "fascist." (1, 2)  Jewish groups joined in the condemnation. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, not known for being squishy on issues of national security, said, "this whole notion . . . goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from." This morning, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan made an unusual intervention, saying Trump's plan "is not conservatism . . . is not what the party stands for and more importantly is not what the country stands for."


"to bigotry no sanction"

What else need one add? Perhaps it will suffice to contrast Mr. Trump's views with those of the first man to hold the office he seeks.

George Washington, though a slaveholder, to be sure, was celebrated for his commitment to both Enlightenment values and democracy. In 1790, as the states were debating the amendments that would constitute the Bill of Rights, he received a letter of greeting from the Jewish congregation of Newport. The new President responded:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support. . . .

May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants—while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.

The letter is today an iconic document of pluralism: oft-cited, and ceremoniously read from the pulpit of Newport's Touro Synagogue each year.


"They may be Mahometans, Jews or Christian of an Sect, or they may be Athiests"

By contrast, Washington's attitudes toward Islam and Muslims are less familiar. There were no large formal Muslim American congregations akin to the Touro synagogue, but there were Muslims aplenty among the captive African workers of the South, a fact now coming to be recognized in the interpretation of historic sites such as Mount Vernon, but only gradually making its way into popular consciousness. Diversified agricultural enterprises such as Mount Vernon depended upon a large labor force, free as well as slave, and Washington, for whom this property was his life's work, was ever on the lookout for skilled artisans. Upon learning that German immigrants ("Palatines") were arriving, he wrote to Tench Tilghman in 1784:

I am informed that a Ship with Palatines is gone up to Baltimore, among whom are a number of Trademen. I am a good deal in want of a House Joiner and Bricklayer, (who really understand their profession) and you would do me a favor by purchasing [=hire on contract; JW] one of each, for me. I would not confine you to Palatines. If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans, Jews or Christian of any Sect, or they may be Athiests. I would however prefer middle aged, to young men.

Washington may have been exaggerating in order to make the point that he judged a man only by his skills, but it was clear that the principle of toleration would extend to free Muslims including voluntary immigrants. When Washington wrote his letter to the Newport congregation, the United States was unique in guaranteeing full civil and political rights to citizens of all faiths (even the French revolutionaries were still grappling with the issue). Traditional New Englanders had worried that religious "toleration" "opened a door for Jews Turks & infidels" as citizens, but that was exactly the point. Richard Henry Lee, though an advocate of tax-supported religion, wrote to James Madison in 1784: "True freedom embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion." And, addressing Irish immigrants the previous year, Washington declared, "The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations And Religions."

Now, which attitude seems more presidential, more American?

A Tale of Interfaith Cooperation and Historic Preservation from Old Jerusalem

The seventh-century Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem is arguably the archetypical emblem of the city. And because it stands on the Temple Mount, it has since medieval times served as a representation of the Temple of Solomon in Christian art.

Scottish artist David Roberts depicts its dominant place on the skyline in "Jerusalem From the Mount of Olives" (color lithograph; London: Day & Son, 1855).

(late 19th-century engraving)

Because the month of Ramadan is traditionally a time of introspection and charity, it seems appropriate to relate an interesting tale of interfaith cooperation on the Temple Mount in the service of what we would nowadays call historic preservation or restoration.

Some years ago, Yehuda Litani recounted a fascinating discovery made in 1992-93, when a team of artisans from Northern Ireland was refurbishing the dome in a project funded by King Hussein of Jordan:

On a visit to the site during those renovations I discovered a story that wasn’t known until then, regarding the Jewish-Ottoman-Palestinian connection to the mosques on Temple Mount.


Story of the iron panel

The Dome of the Rock was surrounded with scaffolding, and before ascending one of them a friend of mine drew my attention to an iron panel that lay on the floor and was inscribed in French. The foreman of the Irish construction company said the panel had been found between the two halves of the crescents at on top of the mosque, and was temporarily dismantled so that the dome could be coated in gold.

The words in French revealed that the Mosque had been renovated in 1899 during Turkish rule, and that the works had been assisted by the Jewish community in Jerusalem led by a public figure called Avraham (Albert) Entebbe, who among his numerous other activities was also the principal of the city's "Kol Israel Haverim" school.

Entebbe, who was the undersigned on the French inscription, was known for his courageous ties with the heads of the Ottoman rule, and the inscription noted that for the purpose of renovating the mosques on the Temple Mount five acclaimed Jewish artists had been invited to Jerusalem. The Jewish stone carvers, wood carvers and iron mongers from various cities in the Mediterranean basin, shared their skills with their Muslim brothers during months of work.


Zenith of Jewish-Muslim cooperation

The inscription also noted that all the students at Entebbe's school were given a three-month leave in order to assist their Muslim brothers in the renovations works on Temple Mount. In the last lines of the inscription, Entebbe described the ideal cooperation and understanding that prevailed between Jews and Muslims in the Holy City, which reached its zenith when the Jews undertook renovations of the Temple Mount mosques in 1899.

Of course, not every story has a perfect happy ending.  When Litani returned to make a photograph, as he had requested, the foreman explained that the Waqf (Islamic trust that administers the holy sites) had taken the panel. When he went to the officials of the Waqf, they denied knowing anything about it.


As for the experience of visiting the site today: physician, scholar, and Muslim feminist activist Qanta Ahmed has written a moving four-part account of her pilgrimage:

The Dome of the Rock: A Muslim’s requiem
Part 2: Reaching the Dome
Part 3: Inside the Dome
Part 4: The farthest Muslims

My Two Cents' Worth for Columbus Day. A Postage Stamp as Metaphor

12 October

This year, the United States celebrated the legal Columbus Day (Monday) holiday on October 8, but the historical date of the holiday—corresponding to the explorer's first sighting of land in the "New World"—occurred on October 12, an occasion first marked in 1792.

[enlarge image]

It's the familiar Romantic scene from old engravings and textbooks (perhaps no longer familiar to the current generation), based on the 1847 "Landing of Columbus" in the US Capitol by John Vanderlyn: European arrivistes (illegal immigrants?) variously grateful or militant, kneel or exult, as indigenous Caribbean Americans (left foreground; background) are torn between cowering and curiosity. And the small crosses on the banners in the center have vanished (though the coat of arms on Columbus's remains). Whether reflecting the pragmatic needs of the engraver's burin or some more deliberate decision, the resultant horizontal lines at least implicitly suggest the flag of the new American nation.

This postage stamp, retrieved from my childhood collection, has had a rough time of things since it was first issued. Thankfully, though, what is a bane to the collector can be grist for the mill of the cultural historian. As if an omen, a seemingly unnecessary and heavy, cloud-like blot of ink from the cancellation (could the letters at left represent Springfield, betokening my future New England life?) neatly and nearly obliterates the figure of the heroic explorer. At some point (presumably since then), the stamp acquired a crease and tear that cut him in half and seem, like a lightning bolt, to pierce his vitals. Today, that stamp looks fussy and outdated, in more ways than one.

It could all be a metaphor for the fate of poor Cristoforo Colombo himself since that apogee of his reputation.

Pity him—and the hapless Italian-Americans, too. Already back at the time of the great Columbian Exposition of 1893, the assault of the Scandinavian-Americans from my native Midwest had begun, for the latter provocatively sailed a replica Viking ship up to the fairgrounds in Chicago. (In our day, it poses a challenging problem of historic preservation. 1, 2.) 75 years later, as chance would have it, Leif Erikson had earned his own postage stamp, after it became clear that Columbus had not been the first European to reach the New World. (And he in any case of course never set foot on the North American continent, whose existence he was not even aware of.)

For a while, the theory that Columbus was a Jew was in vogue in some circles, but by the time the 500th anniversary of his first voyage rolled around, in 1992, when he was increasingly associated only with conquest, forced conversion, enslavement and genocide, rather than "discovery" and heroism, no one in America of any ethnicity seemed particularly eager to claim him. He had become, in the phrase just coming (back) into vogue in that decade, "politically incorrect." (1, 2, 3, 4)

from my office door: humorous take on Columbus as villain, 1992

Anyway, as Newsweek noted in its coverage of the non-celebration in that anniversary year, the fellow who popularized the original "Jewish" theory was a Spanish fascist of the Franco era, and among the "evidence" he cited was Columbus's love of gold. Nuff said. A far more sophisticated variant of that theory (which has its own more respectable antecedents) based on putative further evidence has resurfaced in the last few years, but emphasizing Columbus's alleged desire to find a refuge for "his" persecuted "people," and thus giving his ventures a political-moral motive in keeping with modern sensibilities rather than emphasizing the traditional "discovery" in the service of empire. (e.g. 1, 2, 3)..

It is always fascinating to sit on the elevated shores of historical scholarship and watch the shifting tides of opinion ebb and flow. As I teach my students, history, like literary criticism, is a science of evolving interpretation. And because so many individuals and communities have a stake in it, the historical discipline tells us as much about ourselves as about the past. History, as we nowadays understand it, is about scholarship (as objective as we can make it, though recognizing the unavoidable limits of our necessarily limited perspectives), but also about public consciousness and the inevitable appropriation of the past for present purposes. Thus the rise of fashionable "memory" studies alongside history as such. Not surprisingly, Columbus looked very different to the Americans of 1492, 1792, 1892, and 1992.

Regardless of political persuasion, most historians nowadays would agree: whereas previous generations tended to venerate Columbus by accentuating the "modern" as well as the positive (and we do not wish to take away from his navigational skill and courage), we nowadays tend to see him (like some other figures of that "Renaissance"—or as we more commonly say in the profession—"early modern era") as more complex: more medieval and more transitional, less "modern": less the bold rationalist admiral of the ocean sea, and more the mystic and crusader.

I'll list just one example from this year's more substantive political controversies:

Over at Good, in "Rethinking Columbus: Toward a True People's History, Bill Bigelow explains:

This past January, almost exactly 20 years after its publication, Tucson schools banned the book I co-edited with Bob Peterson, Rethinking Columbus. It was one of a number of books adopted by Tucson's celebrated Mexican American Studies program—a program long targeted by conservative Arizona politicians.

The school district sought to crush the Mexican American Studies program; our book itself was not the target, it just got caught in the crushing. Nonetheless, Tucson's—and Arizona's—attack on Mexican American Studies and Rethinking Columbus shares a common root: the attempt to silence stories that unsettle today’s unequal power arrangements.

For years, I opened my 11th grade U.S. history classes by asking students, "What's the name of that guy they say discovered America?" A few students might object to the word "discover," but they all knew the fellow I was talking about. "Christopher Columbus!" several called out in unison.

"Right. So who did he find when he came here?" I asked. Usually, a few students would say "Indians," but I asked them to be specific: "Which nationality? What are their names?"

Silence.

In more than 30 years of teaching U.S. history and guest teaching in others' classes, I've never had a single student say "Taínos." So I ask them to think about that fact. "How do we explain that? We all know the name of the man who came here from Europe, but none of us knows the name of the people who were here first—and there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of them. Why haven't you heard of them?"

This ignorance is an artifact of historical silencing—rendering invisible the lives and stories of entire peoples. It's what educators began addressing in earnest 20 years ago, during plans for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the Americas, which at the time the Chicago Tribune boasted would be "the most stupendous international celebration in the history of notable celebrations." Native American and social justice activists, along with educators of conscience, pledged to interrupt the festivities.

In an interview with Barbara Miner, included in Rethinking Columbus, Suzan Shown Harjo of the Morning Star Institute, who is Creek and Cheyenne, said: "As Native American peoples in this red quarter of Mother Earth, we have no reason to celebrate an invasion that caused the demise of so many of our people, and is still causing destruction today." After all, Columbus did not merely "discover," he took over. He kidnapped Taínos, enslaved them—"Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold," Columbus wrote—and "punished" them by ordering that their hands be cut off or that they be chased down by vicious attack dogs, if they failed to deliver the quota of gold that Columbus demanded. One eyewitness accompanying Columbus wrote that it "did them great damage, for a dog is the equal of 10 men against the Indians."

(Arizona's policies in areas ranging from border enforcement to education have raised charges of bias against legal immigrants and other members of the Latino@ population. The Amherst Select Board in 2010 approved a boycott of Arizona based on its in our view discriminatory immigration law.)

As in past years, students at Hampshire College vented their rage against Columbus by reducing the above argument to provocative but ultimately simplistic (and of course harmless) denunciations:

Fuck Columbus, Celebrate Indigenous Resistance

Columbus Slavery

Columbus Genocide

(and once more, for good measure) Fuck Columbus, Celebrate Indigenous Resistance

Bill Bigelow's point is well taken, but the reductionist chalk slogans on sidewalks cannot capture the complexity of either his critique or Columbus's achievement and legacy, which were necessarily more mixed and nuanced. The so-called "discovery" was fraught with moral shortcomings and consequences, short-term and long-term, of which we are nowadays all too aware. At the same time, it was of epochal significance on a historical, cultural, and even biological level. It is not simple to separate the two categories.

Already back in the 1970s, for example, in the great novel, Terra Nostra, the celebrated Mexican author and diplomat Carlos Fuentes argued that Latin America could not be made whole until it fully acknowledged its Spanish as well as indigenous roots: or, as he put it, erected a monument to Cortes as well as Montezuma. He and Octavio Paz managed, controversially, to come together on that general point on the occasion of the 1992 anniversary.

History may indeed be in many ways (to cite Gibbon paraphrasing Voltaire) "the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind," but to reduce it to that would be to render it one-dimensional.

A three-dimensional rendering of Columbus from the heyday of his popularity was also in the news on the occasion of the holiday. Whereas the artist Christo calls new attention to familiar sights by "wrapping" them, Japanese artist Tatzu Nishi achieves a similar effect by "fabricating domestic environments around artworks and public monuments." His latest project, sponsored by the Public Art Fund: construction of a living room around the 1892 Gaetano Russo statue of the explorer that, atop a pillar, dominates New York's Columbus Circle.




Visitors who ascend the scaffolding enclosing the monument can thus behold it at eye-level rather than from 70 feet below. (The scaffolding also serves a practical purpose: when the exhibit closes, conservation of the monument, at a cost of one million dollars, will begin.) Nishi's purpose, he said, involved art, as such, rather than history and politics:

"It's not my intention to say something about Columbus; rather, I want to change the sculpture from public sculpture into a completely different thing," Nishi said.

Others saw it differently. I was surprised (though perhaps I should not have been) to see that an Italian-American organization, rather than applauding the attention (not to mention, the originality of the artistic conception), chose to criticize the installation:

Rosario Iaconis, chairman of the Italic Institute of America, commented on the project before it opened.

"Columbus was a man of the Renaissance, an exemplar of that civilization. This, is foolishness. This is not art. If it's his particular vision, it's a skewed vision, so I, again with due respect to Mr. Nishi, I think he stumbled on his project. 

He was not alone:

“Why did they have to choose such a beautiful and symbolic landmark for such a trivializing display and then obfuscate its absurdity by calling it 'art'?” asked Andre’ DiMino, president of the One Voice Coalition, an Italian-American non-profit dedicated to combating discrimination within the community.

“It just adds insult to injury to cover it up on Columbus Day – a day of national pride,” he said.

While the Consul General of Italy is personally interested in this exhibition, she understands that some people won’t embrace it.

“It's normal,” said Natalia Quintavalle. “It happens every time when you have a sort of expression of contemporary art like that which intervenes on something old which represents much for Italians and Italian Americans in New York."

Others argue that from a civic participation point of view the exhibit is out of character artistically with the area.
“Covering it up entirely obscures it from people walking by who wish to see it on the street,” said Frank Vernuccio, a board member of the Enrico Fermi Cultural Committee, a Bronx non-profit that promotes Italian culture. Vernuccio does not intend to visit the exhibit and he encourages the city to take it down as soon as possible.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg disagrees with the objections. “You can't see it from the street and here you can get your eyes 10 inches away,” he said at the opening preview in September. “We would have had to cover it to do the restoration anyways.”

It's somehow fitting: even on a purely aesthetic plane, a reminder of the earlier veneration of Columbus cannot escape controversy—even if it now comes from his admirers.

* * *

Resources

The result of the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas, as brutal and thorough as they were, was not a matter of the mere obliteration of one culture and "imposition" of another. One way to experience and understand the resultant fusion of indigenous and European cultures is through the music. Herewith a small selection:

• Hesperus, "Spain in the New World: Renaissance, Baroque and Native American Music from New Spain" 
• Chanticleer, "Mexican Baroque"
• Ex Cathedra, "New World Symphonies: Baroque Music from Latin America"

A Tip for You: My Penis Piece

Those of you who were focused on the Olympics or the presidential campaign over the summer may be excused for having missed the other dramatic contest of the season: the great circumcision controversy.

A German regional court, considering a case involving a Muslim family, ruled that circumcision, as a form of grievous "bodily injury," violated the physical "integrity" of the child, and was thus a punishable offense. A legal expert expressed the hope that the verdict might now lead Islam and Judaism to reform their atavistic rituals. As attempts to extend the ruling throughout Germany and even other nations increased, Muslims and Jews came together to protest what they saw as an assault on their fundamental religious liberties and identities. (And they did so peacefully: no buildings were burned, no death threats issued.)


You want me to cut off my what?

Now, circumcision is indeed a peculiar custom, certainly worth considering from the detached standpoint of modern science and human rights. My former colleague, Len Glick, has written a provocative book detailing the history of the practice and arguing for its abolition (1, 2, 3).

Still, for better or worse, the reality is that our society accords non-rational religious beliefs and practices a deference that it would never extend even to less peculiar or problematic ones in the secular realm. Witness the daily and cretinous assaults on established scientific truths by powerful politicians. On a purely pragmatic level, religious beliefs are the subject of great sensitivity on the part of adherents, and the conflicts that arise from "offenses" against them at times threaten the social peace. (Just look at the reaction by outraged believers to the vulgar anti-Muhammad film, and the rush of western religious and political leaders to condemn it as well as the resultant violence.) Above and beyond that, the objective right to free debate of ideas may be tempered by the awareness of historical prejudice and risk of misappropriation of legitimate criticism by contemporary bigots (1, 2).

Even if some reactions to the circumcision verdict were intemperate, you therefore just knew it could not be a good thing when Muslims and Jews charged that it was becoming impossible for them to live in Germany and the Chancellor had to declare, "I do not want Germany to be the only country in the world in which Jews cannot practise their rites." Talk about a public-relations disaster.

Circumcision of Christ (1466)

[source: Wikimedia Commons]

I followed the unfolding controversy for several months. Finally, when a Norwegian children's ombudsman helpfully suggested that Muslims and Jews just devise a new nonsurgical ritual (damn! now why didn't Moses and Muhammad think of that?), I decided to share a few thoughts on the topic in my Times of Israel column: "The most unkindest cut of all? A modest proposal for the circumcision crisis."

Every possible angle of the question had already been thoroughly debated, so, rather than going again into the details of law and human rights, or the medical arguments for or against the practice (though new studies tip the balance in favor), I thought I would merely contemplate the wisdom of the secular authorities' precipitous and quixotic attempt to correct the centuries-old doctrines of religious communities, especially communities that are or have been the object of discrimination.

Basically, I just wanted to ask what would happen if we pursued the reasoning of the zealous secular reformers to its ultimate conclusion (maybe even ad absurdum) and applied it across the board.


Not Too Swift

Judging by the talkbacks and other responses, most people understood the piece in the spirit in which it was intended and found it reasonably amusing. The notable exception was one British dullard who accused me of engaging in an illogical argument, and above all, of attacking Christianity.

As anyone who knows me can tell you, this is ludicrous. I spend a good deal of time in the classroom attempting to teach students to take religion—and Christianity, in particular—seriously as intellectual traditions and forces in the history of world civilization rather than condemning them out of hand according to modern standards of intellectual sophistication and political correctness.

In any case, this otherwise amiable fellow must be "as thick as a whale omelette" not to have seen that the piece was intended humorously and satirically. The words, "a modest proposal," should have been a dead giveaway to the culturally literate. (I was freshly returned from a conference in Dublin, where I had made a pilgrimage to Jonathan Swift's cathedral and grave, so the phrase just came to naturally to mind.)

As for logic, that was exactly my point, and one that would presumably have been sympathetic to my critic: seen from the outside, many religious doctrines and practices seem (or can be made to appear) ridiculous or harmful. Taking seriously the charge that they are not compatible with our modern values, where would that lead? Those who applauded the outcome in the case of circumcision might not be so sanguine in others.

Still, could it be that the fault of these zealous reformers lay not in having gone too far, and rather, in not having gone far enough?

Anyway, you can see for yourself where I ended up.


Updates

Of course, the story just keeps growing.

• Even before the appearance of the latest reports supporting claims for the hygienic advantages of circumcision—especially in the fight against AIDS in the Third World: it is said to cut the risk by fully 70%—fringe opponents of the practice vented their ire on a book about HIV prevention that essentially blamed European imperialism for the problem (the discussion of circumcision accounted for only 10% of the content) and "launched a smear campaign to discredit the book and its authors by spreading misinformation on Amazon." Namely, in a concerted effort, they posted ultra-negative reviews and then rated one another's reviews as "helpful" in order to drive down the book's ratings.

Joya Banerjee, "Amazon Warfare: How an anti-circumcision fringe group waged an ideological attack against AIDS scholarship." Slate, 24 Sept. 2012.  (hat tip: Evgeny Morozov)

• And, as chance would have it, we appear to be ahead of the game. Writing on the eve of the first great matchup of the Presidential election, journalist and pop culture critic Virginia Heffernan's provocative and witty piece declares: "Obama and Romney should get a circumcision question at he debate. Really." (Yahoo! News, 2 Oct. 2012). Citing the aforementioned pieces on the foreskin controversy, she says,

For starters, neither candidate will mention it—ever. As long as he’s in politics. As long as he lives.

Circumcision is repressed as a subject because, at this very moment, it’s that hot to the touch.

and

What a tangled psychosexual web we weave. As with abortion, transvaginal this and that, or the dozen issues surrounding sexual orientation, what seems natural to one side horrifies the other. Religion and ethnicity come into play, and ancient rivalries, and lizard-brain subjects involving physicality and sex and death and what disgusts you and what makes you feel free

She moreover legitimately asks whether it is a right- or left-wing issue, a feminist or religious or human-rights issue, an ethnic or anti-ethnic issue, and so forth (even manages to work in Ron Paul and crypto-Nazi hostility to the pricks of the Federal Reserve).

Curiously, she has nothing to say about the European controversy that is the subject of this post. (I'll give her a pass on that one. We all have our areas of particular interest.) Still, she has a rather narrow view of what should be an expansive topic. It is therefore perhaps more curious that she frames the question as: "is circumcision a religious and ethnic issue, one that divides Jews and Americans from the rest of the world . . . ?"

Kudos and all that, but I guess an English literature degree gets you only so far. It is, as they say, a teachable moment, and not only regarding quantitative skills. There are approximately 14-15 million Jews in the world, and nearly 312 million Americans (though their circumcision rate has dropped considerably in recent years.) There are in addition, however, some 2.1 billion Muslims, whose religion also mandates circumcision.

A little multiculturalism, anyone? 

Interfaith Relations and Genuine Multiculturalism: 2011 vs. 1723

It is all too easy to dismiss our modern gestures of religious pluralism as just that: empty and often automatic if not altogether cynical gestures. Want to show you are a good person and inoculate yourself against all criticism without having to think (or even acknowledge what you yourself believe)? Hold an "interfaith" service, of the sort that we saw here and all over the country on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Much easier to invite your Muslim and Jewish neighbors to a one-off politically correct lovefest than to take the trouble to get to know their actual beliefs and engage in real and sustained dialogue.

We are entitled to an ounce of skepticism or cynicism today because those gestures are cost-free and thought-free. That was not always the case. It is good to remind ourselves that even these hollow or pro forma acts are far preferable to what came before (and, for that matter, still exists in all too many places and minds).

The two illustrations of Jewish holidays that I used in a recent post are a case in point. They come from a book published in London in 1780: William Hurd's immensely influential, A New Universal History of the Religious Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs of the Whole World: or, a complete and impartial view of all the religions in the various nations of the universe.

They did not attract our attention precisely because they were neutral or positive in tone. The figures depicted therein look like, well, "ordinary" Europeans. They are not caricatures. Their activities are rendered realistically and without satirical or hostile intent. However, therein lies a tale.

Hurd basically ripped off the illustrations from a famous and pioneering predecessor, the nine-volume Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-1743) by Jean Frederic Bernard and engraver Bernard Picart. (That's one reason that I was able to afford these engravings. The originals by Picart are much more sought-after and thus a good deal more pricey.) In their recent provocative study of that work—The Book That Changed Europe...(Harvard, 2010)—Lynn Hunt, Margaret Jacob, and Wijnand Mijnhart describe Hurd as "The English hack" who produced "a clever plagiarism" because "almost all his plates were crude copies of original Picart engravings" while "The text told a completely different story": the victory of Protestantism and the basic denigration of other beliefs and traditions, from the antiquated Jews, Greeks, and Romans, to the irredeemably superstitious savages. (pp. 306-7)

It was a far cry from the radical original, which, they argue, "made readers . . . see religion in a new way":

Despite being the work of two French Protestant refugees who had fled to Holland, the book attempted to accurately depict even Catholic customs, and it gave more favorable and extended attention to Islam than anyone had before. Picart and Bernard devoted so much space to the “idolatrous peoples” of the New World, Asia and Africa because they sought in comparison of the world’s religions fresh evidence for new universalist arguments about the origins and development of religion. They themselves were more interested in what religions had in common – and perhaps even in an heretical religious syncretism – than in how they differed.

Peter N. Miller recently wrote a nice review of this study as well as a complementary one, Guy Stroumsa's A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Harvard again), for the New Republic. (Because the piece is behind a paywall, I'll quote the relevant passages.) There, he analyzes the authors' research agendas and conclusions in the context of both cultural history and the history of the book.  The authors persuasively argue that the Picart volume “helped create the field of the comparative history of religion." Miller does not disagree:

By approaching the book as a world in itself, and then leading out from it back into the wider world, they make a strong argument for the significance of this work and its makers. Contextualization and celebration do not always go hand in hand, and while the larger claim—changing the world—does not always come off, it is incontrovertible that the process in which this book participated, if not the book itself, did indeed change the world. For this book represents, in microcosm, nothing less than our scholarly generation’s answer to the old question, “What is Enlightenment?” . . . .

Toleration is central to this new vision of enlightenment. Its motto is not “dare to know” so much as “dare to allow others to know in their own way.” And so we are told that Religious Ceremonies of the World “marked a major turning point in European attitudes toward religious belief and hence the sacred. It sowed the radical idea that religions could be compared on equal terms, and therefore that all religions were equally worthy of respect—and criticism.” The importance of religion in our current world, and the presence in it, or absence from it, of toleration, is what on some level makes works such as this, or Jonathan Israel’s series of mega-tomes on the Enlightenment, monuments to our own concerns. Not only did Religious Ceremonies win a wide readership—and make a lot of money for Bernard the printer—but it also, according to Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhardt, “helped create the field of the comparative history of religion, and to this day its engravings still appear in museum exhibits as documentation for religious customs.”

At the same time, he finds in Stroumsa's book "a useful corrective" to the ghost of the old "secularization thesis" in the work of Hunt, et al.:

By focusing on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century antiquarian scholarship on religion, which swiftly moved to incorporate the latest ethnographic data on the principle that going far away in space helped one go back far away in time, he shows that Picart and Bernard were in fact the end point of a much longer transition. And this was a transition spearheaded by the Casaubons of European scholarship, the “dead from the waist down” researchers who wrested all sorts of obscure details from the claws of ever-ravenous time. To understand Picart, Stroumsa implies, we need to understand the revolution in Renaissance philology and comparatism. And Stroumsa makes the point that the philological comparison comes before the comparison between manners and mores, and that the sequence is necessary.

The specific way in which Religious Ceremonies of the World functioned as an agent of change was by focusing on rituals—and hence depiction becomes not only possible, but desirable. If everyone has some ritual for birth or death or marriage, then religion appears as a universal phenomenon, and a given religion but a local manifestation of it. Comparison could work to diminish feelings of uniqueness and superiority. Toleration, we are told, followed from this.

He thus concludes by praising Hunt, et al. for providing a new "model of how historians may read images." (one wonders: Is he familiar with Lynn Hunt's earlier work on the French Revolution and similar endeavors?).

The view of its authors is that the engravings are linked to the text, “but they are not just auxiliaries to it.” Hunt and her colleagues are very good at reading Picart to show the subtlety involved in how he chose the image to give to readers. His approach is essentially to “Europeanize” the natives. Even where the text went down arcane byroads, the images stayed focused on the high road: birth, marriage, death, and processions. Thus, in the section on Islam, twenty-two of the twenty-six folio-page engravings illustrate customs and religious ceremonies, even though they cover only 47 of the 291 pages. In this way the images shifted the discussion from a question of truth revealed to a select few to an issue of wider comparative practices.

Why are the images so necessary? If we compare this book to the seventeenth-century literature discussed by Stroumsa, the answer becomes clear. The same project of popularization that moves away from a learned language (Latin) and audience (professors) makes the use of images desirable: they offer a direct connection to the imagination. The broader social process that gave birth to what people today call the “public sphere,” “civil society,” or “commercial society” broadened the reading public, and gave a new meaning to “society.” Publishing was a huge engine of this development. New literary genres such as travel writing, biography, and the novel, and new kinds of books, especially illustrated ones, were essential means of communication.

Here is the illustration from the introduction to the Bernard-Picart book (from my collection; this one, I was able to acquire). It depicts members of four religions worshiping the divine, each in his way. From left: the Jew (with prayer book and what is presumably  a Torah scroll; though none could ever be read in that manner), the Catholic priest before an altar, the "Mohammedan" (shoes removed and holding prayer beads in an attitude of worship), and the "Idolater" praying to the sun and nature. The engraving, by F. Morelon la Cave, lacks Picart's vaunted accuracy but is faithful to his respectful spirit.

If it is good to recognize that many of our multicultural and interfaith activities are less than profound, it is likewise good to remind ourselves of the predecessors who helped to make even such slight gestures cost-free rather than life-threatening. Not least, it is worth realizing that those pioneers of the eighteenth century still just may have something to teach us in the twenty-first.



Resources

• the web site devoted to the book by Hunt, Jacob, and Mijnhart, which includes explanatory material, bibliography, illustrations, and a digital reproduction of the early editions in Dutch, French, English, and German.

• the electronic, searchable Dutch text, from the Digital Library of Dutch Literature

Intolerance Update

As if recent reports of inter-religious desecration of places of worship were not bad enough, we now learn that ultra-orthodox Jews ("Haredi") in Jerusalem have been demeaning and intimidating Armenian Christian clergy: typically, by spitting on them. It's not a new phenomenon; witness this report from 2004.

Old or new, it's a disgrace. It's also a shame that the thuggish young perpetrators do not sufficiently know and value their own tradition. Or to be more precise, they unknowingly perpetuate only part of it.

Although Jews at first understandably tended to regard members of the dominant and hostile Christian culture as idolaters (because of the Trinity and graven images), that eventually changed. And in any case, Judaism, unlike Christianity, did not insist that it was the only path to salvation. It had long held that anyone—even a pagan—who observed the seven moral commandments dating from the time of Noah would earn a place in the "world to come." As Israel Abrahams told us over a century ago in his marvelous compilation on Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (1896):

Such tolerance goes far back in Jewish history. 'He who communicates a word of wisdom, even if he be a non-Jew, deserves the title of wise.' [a citation from the Talmud; JW] 'Christians are not idolaters' was the burden of many Jewish utterances . . . 'He who sees a Christian sage,' says the Shulchan Aruch [code of ritual law; JW], must utter the benediction: 'Blessed art Thou, O Lord, King of the World, who has bestowed of Thy wisdom on man.' (415)

He notes: "though the greatest Jewish authorities of the middle ages unanimously declared that the term 'idolater' did not include Christian or Moslem, many of these ceremonial laws remained in force with the masses." (411) Ironically, "the Christian masses were on the whole more tolerant than their priests and rulers. But the Jewish masses were less tolerant than their spiritual and intellectual heads." 

The authoritative tradition thus commands that one should respect and honor a priest. Spitting on "idolaters"? Truly, a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance.



Update

O Rosenberg, "Israeli public figures apologize to Greek patriarch for ultra-Orthodox spitting incidents," Haaretz, 23 Nov. 2011

Season of Tolerance, Season of Intolerance: Vandalism of Sacred and Historic Sites in the Middle East

During the season of the Jewish High Holidays, we heard the shocking news that vandals—apparently Jewish extremists—had set fire to and vandalized a mosque and its holy books in Tuba-Zangariyye, in northern Israel (video here). Israeli political and religious leaders were swift to condemn the crime in the strongest terms. President Shimon Peres spoke out against the incident in the context of a High Holiday message, and then visited the site in the company of an interfaith delegation, declaring,

I am filled with shame for this hateful act. I came here, to this burnt Mosque, and I am shocked to the depths of my soul. This is desecrating the holy. One cannot put up with this abomination and I believe that there is not one Israeli who is not ashamed by this arson attack. This evil act is not only against the law, it is against Judaism, morality and spirit. We will not rest and will not be silent until we apprehend the culprits and they will be punished.

The Sephardic Chief Rabbi said, "This is a desecration of God's name, a desecration of the State of Israel, and a desecration of all peoples and religions. All of us must raise our voices against terror." The Prime Minister's office described Benjamin Netanyahu as "furious," quoting him as saying, "The pictures are horrifying and have no place in Israel," whose values of "freedom of religion" the incident flagrantly contradicted.

Arab voices, both in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority, laid the ultimate blame at the foot of what they saw as an insufficiently sharp response to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incitement. Some commentators thought they saw a reflection of that concern in Peres's remarks, as well. And opposition leader Tzipi Livni said, "Such serious incidents obligate us to conduct a national self-examination."

The situation seemed to worsen when, soon afterward, there were reports of vandalism of Muslim and Christian cemeteries in Jaffa, followed by the firebombing of a synagogue there. Political and religious leaders from all communities condemned the new attacks and called for calm. (1, 2)  (Although some foreign publications such as the Guardian were quick to ascribe blame to "settlers," the actual scenarios and identities of perpetrators were not clear 1, 2, 3).

What got far less attention was the desecration of the Jewish sanctuary at Joseph's Tomb, in Nablus (Palestinian Authority). IDF troops preparing the site for worship during the High Holidays found the interior defaced with swastikas. The Nablus area has been identified with the biblical Shechem, where, according to tradition, key episodes in the lives of the Patriarchs Abraham and Jacob took place and Joseph was buried after his descendants brought his body out of Egypt during the Exodus.

Joseph's Tomb: lithograph by David Roberts (Brussels, 1849)

Most scholars question the identification of the edifice with Joseph, though that is beside the point in this context. The historical veracity of traditions associated with many holy sites of various faiths is, after all, tenuous at best.

The left-wing peace activist group Gush Shalom condemned the attack as follows:

“The swastika is a vile symbol of racist, murderous ideology, and it is clear that drawing this symbol anywhere in the world is a vile deed – especially in a Jewish religious holy place,” Gush Shalom spokesperson Adam Keller said.

“Joseph’s Tomb in the heart of the city of Shechem is a holy place for Judaism and the desire of religious Jews to visit it is perfectly legitimate,” he added.

Keller went on to note that some such sites, especially those located in the Palestinian Authority, were sacred to more than one faith, and that Jewish worshipers needed to be sensitive to local rules.

Although the vandalism was quickly repaired and the building was not permanently harmed, the incident was nonetheless at least as noteworthy as the attack on the mosque. First, by contrast, it earned no public criticism from leading Palestinian and Muslim figures (a call from the ADL for a condemnation notwithstanding), and no comparable outcry—or even coverage—in the world press. Second, it formed part of a long-standing pattern affecting both the Tomb and Jewish sacred and historic sites in general.

Joseph's Tomb has been the site of repeated vandalism and even violence (photos of the most recent incident, half a year ago, here). The Palestinian Ma'an News Agency, citing AFP, summarized:

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, the site was to remain under Israeli control. But the Israeli army evacuated the premises in October 2000 shortly after the start of the second intifada, or uprising, and it was immediately destroyed and burnt by the Palestinians.

The restoration of the tomb was completed recently, and following improved security cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, the army allows Jewish worshipers to make monthly nocturnal pilgrimages to the site.

In 2001, Columbia anthropologist Nadia Abu El Haj provoked controversy with a book on the politics of Israeli archaeology that won plaudits in some fashionable political and non-specialist academic circles but little respect from serious field archaeologists and historians of the topic. Among its most controversial aspects was her willingness to legitimize what she coyly calls "looting" of historic and archaeological resources as: "a form of resistance to the Israeli state and an archaeological project, understood by many Palestinians, to stand at the very heart of Zionist historical claims to the land.” Exhibit number 1, cited in her conclusion:  the destruction of Joseph's Tomb. Abu El Haj's book is but the hyper-theoretical, sophisticated, and "kinder, gentler" form of a disturbing tendency toward denial of the historical and archaeological record of an ancient and continuous Jewish presence (e.g. 1, 2, 3).

An ironic pendant to the Tomb desecration was the story of a Libyan Jew who returned from exile in Italy to support the ongoing revolution. When, citing the long heritage of the Jewish community, he also announced plans to renovate and reopen an abandoned and desecrated historic synagogue, he was threatened, told that he was persona non grata, and forced to leave.

The point, of course, is not to cite one example in order to diminish the others, and on the contrary, to reaffirm the simple truth that all such attacks and desecrations are hateful and equally deserving of attention and condemnation. It is alarming that, in a conflict in which competing political claims are closely linked with competing historical narratives or complicated by outright historical denial, irreplaceable historical and archaeological resources have increasingly become the focus of violence and erasure.

Just this week, conflict flared up again over the revived Israeli plan to construct a new access ramp (said to be necessitated by earthquake damage) to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The controversy dates to 2007, when the initial proposal and concomitant archaeological salvage excavations provoked a firestorm of criticism. Then as now, there was room for debate: The public process has arguably been truncated and bungled. Some Israeli archaeologists have expressed the professional concern that large-scale new construction is unnecessary and would jeopardize historic resources in the ground. Muslim and Arab leaders, by contrast, raise the by now predictable charge that this is all part of a sustained plot to destroy the Al Aqsa mosque and pave the way for the building of a synagogue or even the restoration of the Temple. The Al Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage is described as saying the latest plan "would lead to the demolition of a section of the mosque itself." Israeli journalist Nadav Shragai cites such charges as yet another example of the vociferous and increasingly entrenched Muslim "denial of the Jewish bond to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and the Temple." (further background: 1, 2, 3, 4)

It need not be this way, for it was not always this way. Although neither the recent nor the distant past was some idyllic interfaith paradise, the fact remains that such acts of outright denial and destruction, like fundamentalism itself, are a modern rather than an ancient phenomenon.

Back in 2007, Israel scaled back and then postponed the Mughrabi Bridge project, but it first took several unusual steps to address the concerns. In addition to inviting the public to witness the salvage work in person and via webams, it sought the mediation of Turkey, then still a friend. This prompted the following recollection from Yehuda Litani about a hitherto unknown but typical episode of Jewish-Muslim cooperation under Ottoman rule. In 1992-93, when Jordan financed the restoration of the spectacular golden cupola of the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount, he was privileged to view an artifact that had not seen the light of day for nearly a century:

The Dome of the Rock was surrounded with scaffolding, and before ascending one of them a friend of mine drew my attention to an iron panel that lay on the floor and was inscribed in French. The foreman of the Irish construction company said the panel had been found between the two halves of the crescents at on top of the mosque, and was temporarily dismantled so that the dome could be coated in gold.

The words in French revealed that the Mosque had been renovated in 1899 during Turkish rule, and that the works had been assisted by the Jewish community in Jerusalem led by a public figure called Avraham (Albert) Entebbe, who among his numerous other activities was also the principal of the city's "Kol Israel Haverim" school.

Entebbe, who was the undersigned on the French inscription, was known for his courageous ties with the heads of the Ottoman rule, and the inscription noted that for the purpose of renovating the mosques on the Temple Mount five acclaimed Jewish artists had been invited to Jerusalem. The Jewish stone carvers, wood carvers and iron mongers from various cities in the Mediterranean basin, shared their skills with their Muslim brothers during months of work.

The inscription also noted that all the students at Entebbe's school were given a three-month leave in order to assist their Muslim brothers in the renovations works on Temple Mount. In the last lines of the inscription, Entebbe described the ideal cooperation and understanding that prevailed between Jews and Muslims in the Holy City, which reached its zenith when the Jews undertook renovations of the Temple Mount mosques in 1899.

When he asked to have a photograph made and returned the next day, the panel had disappeared. (Read the rest: "Friendship on the Temple Mount. The wonderful story of Jewish-Muslim cooperation under Turkish rule."

On the one hand: an inspiring story from the past. On the other: yet another crucial historical artifact needlessly lost, and with it, both evidence and the lesson that it could teach. It's tragic in more ways than one.





[update: new arrest in mosque arson attack]

Prophet Isaiah: Occupy Jerusalem!

No, I'm not talking about that issue. (In "The Occupy Movement's Branding Problem" Adam Clark Estes observes, "As the name for a protest, the word 'Occupy' works okay when you put it in front of "Wall Street," but as it becomes a worldwide political movement, it's pretty iffy. Try out: 'Occupy Poland.' Or 'Occupy Palestine.'")

As I recently noted, it was interesting to see how the "sophisticated" readers of the Guardian mostly missed the point of an opinion piece by a British rabbi, attempting to explain the importance of the notion of repentance.

One need not believe in any particular religion, or even God, or for that matter, any sense of "purpose" in life, in order to acknowledge that the world's religions arguably represent the most sustained historical record of our attempt to make sense of our place in the universe and our relation to one another.

The teachings of Judaism pertaining to the High Holy Days and immediately following festivals seem particularly relevant to current debates about economic crisis and social justice, especially in these days of the renewed "J14" and "Occupy Wall Street" movements.

Yom Kippur (copperplate engraving; London, 1780)

As I mentioned in the post on the "Days of Awe," it is striking that the reading from Isaiah for the fast day of Yom Kippur provocatively questions the meaning of such outward piety in the absence of equal obedience to the commandment to do social justice:

Chapter 57
14 [The Lord] says:
Build up, build up a highway!
Clear the road!
Remove all obstacles
From the road of My people!
15 For thus said He who high aloft
Forever dwells, whose name is holy;
I dwell on high, in holiness;
Yet with the contrite and the lowly in spirit —
...
20 But the wicked are like the troubled sea
Which cannot rest,
Whose waters toss up mire and mud.
21 There is no safety— said my God —For the wicked.

Chapter 58
...
2 To be sure, they seek Me daily,
Eager to learn My ways.
...
3 "Why, when we fasted, did You not see?
When we starved our bodies, did You pay no heed?"
Because on your fast day
You see to your business
And oppress all your laborers!
4 Because you fast in strife and contention,
And you strike with a wicked fist!
your fasting today is not such
As to make your voice heard on high.
5 Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies?
Is it bowing the head like a bulrush
And lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call that a fast,
A day when the Lord is favorable?
6 No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
To let the oppressed go free;
And untie the cords of the yoke
To break off every yoke.
7 It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.
8 Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly;
Your Vindicator shall march before you...

The High Holy Days are followed by the pilgrimage and harvest festival of Sukkot (Feast of Tabernacles), which commemorates the period in which the Israelites, according to tradition, dwelled in "tabernacles" or "booths" (Sukkot) while wandering in the wilderness after the Exodus.  Because the holiday involves a ritual meal and the construction of a temporary and vulnerable shelter, it naturally lends itself to meditations on the theme of hunger and homelessness.

Sukkot (copperplate engraving; London, 1780)

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, citing a tradition that echoes Isaiah's warning, comments:

We celebrate by eating our meals in colorfully decorated succot which remind us of God’s protection in the desert. Our prayers in the synagogue are punctuated by the waving of the Four Species, by which we thank God for His agricultural bounty.

From this description, it might seem that the emphasis during Succot is on religious rituals connecting God and Israel. However, the great legalist-philosopher Maimonides makes the following comment in his Laws of Festivals: “During the days of our Festival, it is incumbent upon every individual to rejoice and to be glad of heart, parents, children and extended family. However, when one eats and drinks in a festival meal, we are commanded to offer hospitality to the stranger, the orphan and the widow together with other poor and needy individuals.

“He who closes the doors of his home or succa booth and only shares his meals with his personal family – without including around his table the poor and bitter of soul – is not rejoicing in a commandment, but is rejoicing in his stomach. About such individuals it is said, ‘Their sacrificial offerings are like the bread of the dead and those who eat in such an environment become defiled....’” The Four Species are symbolically described by the Sages of the Midrash as representing four types of Jews: The “etrog [citron] Jew” is both learned and filled with good deeds; the “lulav [palm branches] Jew” has learning but no good deeds; the “hadas [myrtle] Jew” has good deeds but no learning and the “arava [willow-branch] Jew” has neither learning nor good deeds. We are commanded to bind these four together, in order to remind us that a Jewish community consists of many types of Jews all of whom must be accepted and lovingly included within our Jewish community.

From examples like these, we see that a festival which superficially seems to be oriented solely toward religious ritual actually expresses important lessons in human relationships. (read the rest)

Haim Shine goes even further:

Over the past few years, Jewish holidays . . . have acquired an additional meaning beyond their religious foundation. It is in mankind's nature to seek meaning, and the incredible pace of modern day life puts us in a never-ending quest for more meaning.

The recent Jewish New Year will always be remembered as the day when the false idol of capitalism disintegrated, and its fragments were strewn about the entire universe. Even the waters of many rivers could not wash away the clouds of dust that resulted from the collapse of the modern Tower of Babel. Wall Street's walls fell in minutes, signalling the end of capitalism, just like the fall of the Berlin Wall symbolized the end of communism.

.... A modern day association with Sukkot can be this past summer, when Israeli masses rallied together and answered the call of the disenfranchised throughout the country.

Judaism has a unique and ancient answer to the existential economic crisis - a beautiful and wonderful holiday, Sukkot. For centuries Jews have upheld the tradition of leaving the comfort of their concrete or wooden homes and moving in to a temporary tent-like home for eight days. The tradition calls for a small "Sukkah," with branches and leaves for a roof and walls of fabric. It is a structure that is hardly secure, and to which Ushpizin (guests) are invited, enabling every Jew to get to know their neighbor. It is a Sukkah that creates equality among mankind and binds us like the four species that are bound and presented during the holiday prayers.

Sukkot is a holiday in which we pray for rain and return to nature due to our commitment to environmental preservation and the preservation of our resources which ensure our existence. In the Sukkah we experience the temporary nature of our existence and are forced to act responsibly towards the coming generations. It is a wonderful time in which we conclude that our security does not lie in our strength, protection, or our egos, but rather in a life filled with values and respect for human life and honor, as well as a commitment to values, justice and morality.

We can only hope that upcoming events will lead Israelis and all of humanity to ponder the meaning of life beyond material assets.

Of course, holidays and campaigns for social justice, no less than the stock market, can produce outbursts of "irrational exuberance." Last I checked, the Sukkah had come down, and capitalism was still standing. But you get the point. There is much that even radicals can learn from tradition.

Religion is able to propose values, and that's a matter of ethics. How we attain those goals remains a matter for debate. That's the realm of politics.