normblog

Online Jewish encyclopaedia

Here's a new resource: The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. You can look up Janusz Korczak, fighter for children's rights who, when the Warsaw ghetto was liquidated, 'turned down an opportunity to escape and accompanied his charges to the Treblinka death camp'. You can look up Simon Dubnow, historian, about whom this story is told. Or Yitsḥak Katzenelson, Hebrew and Yiddish poet. You could read about the Lodz ghetto; about the Jews of Warsaw, the Warsaw ghetto and the Warsaw ghetto uprising. You could read about Chaim Rumkowski or Mordekhai Anielewicz - and much more. (Thanks: HG.)

The Momma 'n' Daddy Collection 119

Talking of which, it's nearly two months since I've had one of these. High time to add another - the Momma 'n' Daddy presence in the world never sleeps, just like there are times that Momma 'n' Daddy themselves seem never to sleep.

This is, you know, a series devoted to celebrating the inter-generational link. But it can't all be hugs and kisses. Life sometimes casts a more sombre shadow. Here as elsewhere it is necessary to reflect that truth. The song is 'Jack Killed Mom':

When Jack was born
He winked at Mom
Her pretty face
Was the first he saw

Was Jack wrong cause he loved Mom?

Things went bad
Before they got worse
Momma pinched Jack
Until it hurt
Momma thought
Her boy was cursed

You leave, leave, leave that boy to me
Oh, Jack, I love him
You leave that boy to me
You leave, leave, leave that boy to me
I know his condition
And soon he'll be set free

Off at school
Jack was cruel
He'd become
The bully's bull
Was Jack wrong to mimic Mom?
And after school
From the corner stool
Mom was kissin'
On the golden rule
Jack had become a teacher's fool

You leave, leave, leave that man to me
Oh Mom I love you
And soon you will be free
With my will, my hands, like old Solomon
And in your honor, I'm gonna cut that man in half

All the lessons that Momma would teach
Books from Rome and ancient Greece
Men who pushed rocks from stony mountains
Turnin' one fish into five thousand
A king who went blind from a mother's love
Till a rage came over Jack
With Momma lyin' on her back
The one who taught him right from wrong
Who'd known better all along
She got rammed through when Jack killed his mom

Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave this world to me
Oh Mom I love you
I didn't mean to set you free
With my will, my hands, like old Solomon
Oh Mom I love you
I didn't mean to set you free

Was Jack wrong? (Jack killed Mom)
Was Jack wrong? (Jack killed Mom)
Was Jack wrong? (Jack killed Mom)

Jack killed Mom [repeated...]

When Jack killed his mom

Singing this strange and terrible tale is Jenny Lewis. (Thanks: CL of Talking Squid.)

[The Momma 'n' Daddy Archive, containing all the details of the series, is here.]

In the country of country

Sophie Hannah, crime writer, poet and the older daughter of me and WotN, has been 'singing her way' through the US during the last few days. This is what she writes at Penguin.com (usa):

Something must have gone weirdly wrong with my education at some point. I am British - English, to be specific. I ought to know more about my own country than I do about America. On a six-city tour of the US, however, I find that the opposite's true, particularly when it comes to geography. I have had many opportunities to peruse the United Airlines magazine, with its double-page map of the States, and I find I know all sorts of interesting facts about this country I'm visiting, without having realised I knew them. How do I know these facts? Well, it's mainly a result of having been a country music fan for as long as I can remember.

For example, looking at South Carolina on my map (which I have now torn out of the United Airlines magazine), it occurs to me that there are many tall pines there - I know this because of Gram Parsons' Hickory Wind. There is also at least one oak tree in South Carolina, because Gram used to climb it. And that's not all I know about the distribution of American trees. Thanks to Dwight Yoakam, I know that the dogwood trees grow south of Cincinnati...

Trees aren't all I know about, in case you were wondering. I also know there are wild skies in Montana (John Denver) and green rolling hills in West Virginia (Emmylou Harris)...

... I can see all the places Tammy Wynette went in her attempts to follow George Jones' elusive dreams and schemes - Utah, Alaska, Nebraska, Alabama. Poor old Tammy - she must have had to take off her shoes at a fair few airports. I wonder if, like me, she learned after a while (after my second US book tour) to wear slip-on sandals when travelling. My trusty map shows me exactly how far Emmylou Harris would have to walk if she really did try the Boulder to Birmingham slog she keeps telling me she'd happily undertake...

You can, as per the legend, read the whole thing. I don't know about there having been something 'weirdly wrong' with Soph's education. But I reckon you can see clear signs here of a parental influence.

Gray future

When I was young I used to read science fiction. I don't now and haven't for a very long time. So I'm in no position to assess the diagnosis of trends within SF that was recently offered by John Gray in the New Statesman. But the piece does prompt for me a linked pair of questions: (1) How is it possible to be John Gray? (2) How miserable do you have to get in order to be him? In case that should seem rather too personal, I take John Gray in what follows as merely representative of a more general human type.

What Gray writes about the development of science fiction chimes in with his general lack of enthusiasm for the notion of progress. To cut the longer SF story short: it was once the case, Gray says, that at the same time as warning of the dystopian and totalitarian dangers carried by some ideals of remaking the world, SF writers believed 'that human beings can shape the future', change things for the better. 'Even at its most pessimistic, science fiction has always been a humanist genre.' Or, again: '[f]antasy was understood as an exercise in which alternative worlds were imagined in order to create new possibilities of action'. Not any more, apparently. These humanist assumptions, Gray says, are 'no longer credible even as fictions'.

I mean how, then, does one get out of bed in the morning? Not John Gray himself, since, as promised, I am not going after him personally and, for all I know, he may have the most cheerful of temperaments and fill his day with individually rewarding projects. But taking the view he favours as representative of a category of terminal pessimism about the possibilities of making life better for the species to which one belongs, how keep a smile on one's face and in one's voice? The necessary points are already made (by our 'John Gray' figure himself) and should be conceded by readers of good sense. Certain types of world-reshaping ideal are to be opposed and rejected. If the ideals fail to acknowledge the frailties and limitations of humankind, as well as its legitimate diversity, and its inalienable rights, and rather more than that too, which I'll bypass since this is a relatively short blogpost - then take care; treat them with suspicion. But how set aside the elementary human quality of hope? Of practical hope that to specific problems there may be specific solutions; that, in the light of trends that have already made life better for huge numbers of people than earlier generations used to enjoy, further improvements might now be worked for; that fighting for democratic conditions of political life is a worthwhile enterprise; that fighting against groundless prejudices and hatreds and against injustice is always necessary; and so forth? Not only is this part of a humanist vision; it's a virtually ineradicable feature of human life. You know, you get out of bed, you think about how to improve the dark or shining day.

Or else you don't. You tell the world that such hopes aren't credible any more even as fictions. Well, go on, 'John Gray' - that should be one brilliant party. Here's Primo Levi:

You may be certain that the world is heading for destruction, but it's a good thing, a moral thing, to behave as though there's still hope. Hope is as contagious as despair: your hope, or show of hope, is a gift you can give to your neighbour, and may even help to prevent or delay the destruction of his world.

These words, of course, are informed by an experience in extremis. But even outside of that, a discourse of long-range cynicism and despair is to be shunned. It is more affordable by some than by others. (Via.)

Writer's choice 265: Linda Strachan

Linda Strachan lives with her husband in a village beside the sea, just 20 miles from the vibrant festival city of Edinburgh. She did a variety of jobs but never expected to become a writer, although now she can't imagine doing anything else. Her first published titles were a series of eight books for children with reading difficulties that were published in 1996. She has written books that are used in schools all over the world and books for reluctant readers. With almost 60 books published, Linda writes for children of all ages, from tots to teens, and she has also written a writing handbook for newly published and aspiring writers about all aspects of Writing for Children. Her bestselling series about the cuddly haggis called Hamish McHaggis delights children and adults all over the world. In 2008 Spider, her first teenage novel, was published. It is a story about teenage car crime and has just been shortlisted for book awards, including the 2010 Catalyst Book Award. Her latest, Dead Boy Talking, is another hard hitting story, this time about teenage knife crime. Here Linda discusses Laurie Lee's The Firstborn.

Linda Strachan on The Firstborn by Laurie Lee

When I was thinking about which book to choose I imagined that it would be one of the long, involved, other-world fantasy novels that I enjoy so much - perhaps George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones or something by Guy Gavriel Kay. But as I was looking for inspiration my eyes fell on this slim volume and I recalled how enchanting and moving it is.

A delight to be savoured, The Firstborn is as much a pleasure to read today as it was when I received it as a gift from my mother on the birth of my firstborn. Laurie Lee's eloquent essay about his newborn daughter mirrors the wonder and delight, the fears and realisations that new parents everywhere will instantly recognize.

... her first living gesture was a thin wringing of the hands accompanied by a Hebridean lament.

She arrives late in his life and it is with a sense of disbelief that he tells us about the experience of meeting her for the first time. He describes that first moment in his daughter's life, and with each word you can sense how captivated he is by this tiny baby.

He muses that life will never be the same again and we follow him as he instinctively searches her face for a sense of the familiar. Trying to find some family resemblance in the newborn features he reminds us of our connection to each other and how important the connection to family is - even if at such an early stage the resemblance is minimal and at times imagined.

So much of what he writes is eternally unchanging. The way her first smile has him 'enslaved by her flattery of my powers'. We are all delighted by our ability to make a baby smile or laugh but perhaps it is merely nature's way of making sure that we protect these tiny exhausting miracles, even when as parents we are at our wits' end.

He comments on how at the beginning and the end of life we look physically almost the same, old and bald. He watches as the days go by and the child moves forward in time, filling out and losing that newborn look that so resembles both birth and death at once.

Interestingly the title, The Firstborn, is not entirely accurate as this was his second daughter, the first being the love-child from a much earlier relationship with a married woman. But reading this book you can sense that, for him, this is perhaps the first time he has engaged with these emotions and it is in essence his first experience of real parenthood, with all its wonder and amazement.

His description of her daily routine, the small noises and movements, are evidence of a keenly observed and delightful obsession with his new baby. Every time I read it I am transported back to those heady emotional days and nights when my children were newborn. The frightening responsibility of making sure they were kept safe that would keep me awake despite being desperate for sleep, and when they finally did fall asleep I would prod them to make sure they were still breathing.

But, as with all parents, his thoughts soon turn to her future and he lies watching her, fearing for her, while she is totally self-absorbed and unaware of his fears. His worries echo those that might flit past the consciousness of any new parent and he does not dwell too long on them, but interestingly they also reflect the era when this was written.

In 1964 were we really so absorbed by the potential of nuclear war? It would seem so. But it is still shocking when he makes an effort not to dwell on the possibility that she might be 'merely a receptacle for Strontium 90'. It was a time when young school children were given lessons on how to find a safe room with no windows, and how to fill it with those necessities that would help them survive in the event of a nuclear strike. The threat was not taken lightly but it is quite amazing how strange and unreal it all sounds now.

With a writer's eye he sees that she is unaware of the emotions her face is practising for use in later life, observing her almost like a character in a novel. He recognizes that she is a separate person and, musing on the cycle of life, that she may at some point become his keeper and she may also alter him as he tries to teach her. He calls her 'my tardy but bright-eyed pathfinder'.

A real gem, short, sharply observed and delicious.

[All the pieces that have appeared in this series, with the links to them, are listed in the index here.]

I walk therefore I think

Here's something that's happened to me quite often... I'm sitting at my desk writing and I'm stuck with some kind of problem in moving forward: it might be a conceptual difficulty, trying to figure out the logic of an argument and meeting some obstacle that I can't see how to get round; or it might just be that the thing's not flowing or that, even though I know the argument I want to make, I'm finding it hard to express it in its most compelling form. So after a while of trying, I decide to sack it for the day and go out for my walk. And while I'm walking, sometimes only a few minutes in, bingo! I see something which I've failed to see for whatever length of time it was that I was stuck with the problem at my desk, and it gives me a clear way forward. (For walking here, substitute jogging in other, younger days.)

This may not be strictly relevant, but it seems at least obliquely so; it reports some research showing that memory performance can be improved whilst walking. The researchers aren't sure why that should be, and neither am I. But I tend to think of it - at least for the case as I've described it - as 'clearing the head'.

Orange own goal

My post about the Orange Prize panel having decided this year's award with certain inappropriate criteria in mind hasn't exactly set off a storm of protest. I'm therefore glad to see Susan Hill making the point as well on her Spectator blog. Susan cites one of the rules of the prize: 'The Orange Prize for Fiction is awarded to the woman who, in the opinion of the judges, has written the best, eligible full-length novel in English.' As she goes on to say apropos Daisy Goodwin's remarks (see my earlier post):

The rules do not stipulate that no author may win the prize if they have won another prize, or if their book has sold particularly well, or if the judges think it's time to give someone else... a turn.

You don't even need goal-line technology in this case.

Middlesex on the Mediterranean

Into every area of life, however serious, however disputed about, however potentially dangerous or even lethal it may be, some comedy must occasionally come. For this we have to be grateful, I suppose, since comedy can lighten things up when they're looking dark; it may bring a smile or a belly laugh to relieve the gloom. One must be, accordingly, grateful to Robert Fowke. Robert Fowke is a writer. The reason one must be grateful to him is that last week he posted an item at Comment is Free in which he asked the question why there is such a strong interest, indeed 'a disproportionate interest' - from himself and from others like him - in Israel, and in which he provided a fresh and hilarious answer to it.

It is to his credit - and I mean no irony here – that Fowke doesn't duck or try to flannel away the validity of the question itself, as many another devoted critic of that country does. So why (these others will say on a rising note that suggests they might be about to come up with a reply) pay Israel such sustained, and special, and outraged, attention? Why pay it so much critical attention as compared with the relative lack of attention given (by themselves) to the injustices committed by other countries or movements (if they notice these at all)? Well, because... and then you get some version of: Israel merits criticism, and there you go. The disproportionate interest, the reason for the obsession, has been passed over.

But not by Robert Fowke; it isn't his way. He not only concedes the legitimacy of the question, he jolly well emphasizes it. He does so here in describing his own part in the current Israel-fixation:

[W]hy do I, so far away and so much a product of my own country, take such an interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict? Where does my disproportionate interest come from, considering that other conflicts around the world are equal or worse in their unpleasantness?

I devour articles about Israel-Palestine on Cif; I look at Haaretz, the Jerusalem Post, al-Jazeera and other commentaries. When things heat up, it is close to an addiction. Why am I not so worked up about Zimbabwe? North Korea? Sudan? Tibet? Burma?

I am not alone. Comments posted on the internet by Israel supporters, by Palestinian supporters and by trolls on each side show that there are millions of us around the world, millions upon millions, picking away at this one conflict like it's a giant scab.

The curtain is about to rise, but not quite yet. Fowke first considers whether his addiction might be due to anti-Semitism, and he is confident that it isn't. He harbours no antipathy towards Jews, no more than he does towards the Scots or the Welsh; on the contrary, he says, 'far from being hostile, I rather like the Scots, Welsh and Jews that I meet'. So far so good, but not especially funny. The comedy begins when he starts to explain his reasons for being addicted. The explanation has four components.

The first of them is his very liking for Jews. Because he has many Jewish friends, who are as English as he is, and because at the same time Israel is sort of their country, Fowke thinks of it as also being his country. Chuckle, but he kids you not.

Second, and consequently, Israel is not emotionally foreign 'like Thailand or Uzbekistan'. It is, 'emotionally, almost an English county planted on the Mediterranean shores.' You know, just like Middlesex. From this it follows that Fowke judges things, Israeli things, 'by domestic standards, not foreign ones'. He does not expect Israelis to behave 'like Burmese generals'. He expects them to behave 'like Englishmen, like my friends'. Does this involve singling out Israel for special attention? Too right, it does, says Fowke.

Third, however, Israel's supporters contribute to this singling out by being as vociferous as they are in Israel's defence: 'their sheer ubiquity inflames [his] interest and [his] antipathy'.

And the fourth reason for his special interest in Israel is his feeling of having been 'lied to': when he sees Binyamin Netanyahu and his colleagues putting 'their side of some event', he doesn't see honest men but, rather, 'burglars and con-men'.

If you are not at this juncture laughing helplessly, it may be because the comedy does, I admit, tail off. It's same old same old by the time Fowke has reached point four. But let me talk you through the preceding hilarity, relying as this does on a veritable team of comedians. First we have the Groucho Marx show: Fowke's antipathy (his word) towards Israel is not, you see, any old run-of-the-mill antipathy such as one might dish out towards the regular bunch of errant countries. No, it is the antipathy of love, the antipathy you reserve for your 'friends'. Like not wanting to belong to a club that would have you as a member, you direct your fiercest hostility towards those whom you especially like. If it wasn't so funny, you wouldn't believe it.

Next, we have the Bernard Manning show. Fowke, who 'cannot honestly say' he's 'more hostile to Jews' than he is towards Scotsmen and Welshmen, sure does have a low regard for the peoples of Thailand, Burma, China and Uzbekistan - to say nothing of Zimbabwe, North Korea and Sudan. Englishmen he expects to behave like Englishmen; and Israelis likewise, because Israelis are for him pretty much like Englishmen. (I laughed until my sides began to ache.) So Fowke judges them by domestic standards. He does not judge them by the 'foreign' standards that are fit only for darkies of one kind and another. (I laughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks.)

Third, it's the 'skiet en donner' show. Those supporters of Israel are vociferous and ubiquitous, don't you know? They're loud and they're everywhere. This, too, we are presumably to take as the symptom of an antipathy of love; but in any case notice how in a dispute having two sides and in which there can be found on both of them the whole range of styles of criticism, from moderate and policy-oriented and solution-seeking, on one hand, to rabid and delegitimizing, on the other, Fowke, for whom Israel is like Middlesex, the territory of his friends, can only see that antipathy towards Israel is fuelled by its vociferous defenders; he, strangely, fails to see how some of that defence may itself be inflected by the persistent, one-sided, often demonizing, and sometimes lying, condemnations of Israel by people less friendly to the country than Fowke himself represents himself as being. The fault all lies with Middlesex.

Lastly, it's Donald Duck. Having decided to answer the question that some of his co-antipathists prefer not to answer because they can't, Fowke ends up ducking it for his part too. The present Israeli government, he's discovered, doesn't consist of honest men. Well, Netanyahu and co. have much to answer for, but Fowke should one day set himself to writing a study on the comparative honesty of world governments, with special attention to governments in the region under discussion here, and then try to correlate his findings with levels of left-liberal hostility to the various countries concerned.

After completing that project, he might do some thinking about the way in which prejudice and discrimination exist not only at the level of mental attitudes - though they exist at that level as well, to be sure - but also in modes of conduct; and about the way in which if you treat someone differently and worse without being able to offer any credible explanation why you do it, you are the bearer of unjust and irrational prejudice towards them.

Fowke's four-part comedy is, when all is said and done, a piece of dross that wouldn't deserve the attention I've given it were it not for two circumstances: one, it can sometimes be fun to pick apart something that is very stupid; two, this exercise in stupidity appeared on what has become the primary anti-Israel 'antipathy'-site of the Western liberal left. The fact that, in trying to give an answer to the question which most others of his view dodge, Fowke should produce something so lamentable and laughable is an index, albeit a minor one, of the tenacity with which age-old prejudices are capable of protecting themselves.

Things that don't go bump in the afternoon

Here's one. It comes (or rather doesn't) from Iain Banks. He is co-signatory of a letter to today's Guardian. In this it is said that:

British troops [in Afghanistan] are killing and dying to protect one of the most corrupt governments in the world: a government that condones marital rape, tortures its own citizens and was elected by massive fraud.

Whatever your opinion of this description of the British presence in Afghanistan, you might think Banks would think that killing to protect a government that condones marital rape and tortures its citizens would sufficiently offend against 'simple human decency' to warrant a cultural and educational boycott, such as he was suggesting against Israel only three weeks ago. And you might think that this boycott should, for him, apply to the US as well as to the UK. But no. It just doesn't go bump, as you might think it would.

Astaire way to humanity

People sometimes say that there's no such thing as human nature. Actually, it's not so much people who say it, since they mostly have more sense on this particular matter; it's a narrower category from within 'people' - students of the humanities and social sciences who have got carried away with the (true) thought that culture is enormously important in shaping human attitudes, wants and behaviour patterns, to the point of overlooking the great weight of natural uniformities, and being willing to utter the sort of (false) denial to which I've referred. It's good to see, therefore, evidence of such natural uniformities which have a significance for the cultural life of human beings. This, too, should be obvious anyway from a moment's reflection: since it's not just a need for food or an aversion to physical pain that we share as humans; there's also the small matter of our linguistic capacities. But it's interesting to note, all the same, that one of the universals of human nature, founded in our biology, in the very constitution of the human brain, is dance.