The Happy Table of Eugene Walter..

My UCLA film school classmate Don Goodman has a new book, The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink. He is featured in this UNC Press interview:

Q: Who was Eugene Walter?

A: Eugene was a creature of the Deep South who expressed his talent and interests in a variety of areas. He identified with a cat's curiosity and a monkey's playfulness. He wrote poetry, short-stories, and novels; translated French, German, and Italian works into English; designed sets and costumes; built and manipulated marionettes; served as editor for a number of literary journals; published a number of books relating to the history and preparation of food as well as being a gourmet chef; and, acted in films produced in Rome.

Q: Why is his legacy important?

A: Eugene Walter's career is an intensely personal vision of what constitutes the good life. Good cooking is a part of it, but only a part. The arts and an appreciation of beauty are crucial. Friends are essential. Good writing is a path to clear thinking. Fame would have been nice, but Eugene's long list of projects which interested him but never found a commercial market are evidence that it was never a driving force. Money, too, would have been convenient, but he never had much of it and managed to live a very happy, productive life anyhow. In a time when people are career driven, fame driven, money driven, Eugene Walter remains an example of what it means to be true to oneself and one's own sense of what's important and how that can lead to a life of substantial achievement.

Q: Although Walter was the author of several cookbooks, including the celebrated American Cooking: Southern Style, which was published in 1971 in the Time-Life Foods of the World series, his New York Times obituary makes no mention of his food writing at all. Why was his reputation as a food writer eclipsed by his reputation as a poet and novelist?

A: Eugene led a multifaceted life with groups of people knowing him and his reputation based on the interest of the group. There may have been an awareness of Eugene's other interests but he was known for many things and mainly the one in which a particular group was interested. For example, in the literary world he was known for his prize winning first novel, The Untidy Pilgrim, and the many books and journal articles published throughout his life. Artists knew him for his paintings and humorous "squiggles" which were pen and ink sketches. Musicians appreciated his collaboration with a number of composers. He was known in the food world as a publisher of several cookbooks and a keen observer of traditional as well as new variations of southern foods. Above all, his humor and wit were appreciated by his many admirers.

Q: This is a posthumous collection of Eugene Walter's recipes. How was it compiled? Have these recipes appeared elsewhere?

A: At the time of his death, Eugene was working on a variety of books. In his personal papers which were collected and boxed was a cookbook titled, "Dixie Drinks." The cookbook was organized into sections with each containing a jumble of recipes and essays. It was our task to make sense of everything and get it organized into a coherent book. Eugene included recipes published previously, primarily in Delectable Dishes from Termite Hall, and essays from Alabama periodicals. Since the recipes and essays were included in this cookbook and no longer available in print we decided to follow Eugene's wishes and leave them in.

Q: What were some of the challenges that you faced when putting this cookbook together?

A: Eugene titled the book, "Dixie Drinks," but it contained not only drink recipes but a wealth of food recipes which incorporated wine or spirits as an ingredient. He had intended the book to be in three sections: Mixed Drinks, Homemade Wine and Cordials, and Food Recipes. We were unable to find pages referring to wine and cordials so that section was dropped. Every recipe had to be examined for obvious errors along with researching what appeared to be mistakes in ingredient proportions. Some essays seemed to be included for further elaboration by Eugene but which we deleted since they were incomplete.

Q: Talk about your editorial collaboration.

A: Tom's wealth of knowledge and history in the food world helped with determining the validity of statements in Eugene's essays about food. I was able to verify Eugene's "voice" throughout the cookbook since I spent countless hours talking with Eugene about southern foods and drinks. Being from Alabama as well as remembering Eugene's tales about southerners he knew, I confirmed names and places associated with various essays and recipes.

Q: What is distinctive about Eugene Walter's voice?

A: His is the voice of the old southern gentleman coupled with the awareness of a modern man who died on the cusp of the 21st century. Humor and wit were constants in his writing.

Q: I was struck by how contemporary Walter's approach to cooking seems. Was he ahead of his time?

A: Eugene's view of cooking might be called "what's old is new again." In the South of his generation and before, everyone had a garden whether it was formal or a patch of rich soil behind the house. Eugene was accustomed to fresh food from the home garden along with seafood just brought in from the Gulf. Many people kept a chicken coop so that eggs were always fresh along with meat available for frying and baking. Grocers and vendors supplied other meats along with freshly churned butter. Most people had ice boxes but not freezers so foods couldn't be kept indefinitely. Before canned foods became ubiquitous, most southerners "put up" their foods by home canning which meant sealing the food in sterilized jars. Many still do. Eugene never forgot the taste of fresh and encouraged using it whenever possible. He had a vast knowledge of herbs and picked those he needed in recipes from his herb garden. Today's use of "fresh" and "free range" reflects earlier southern generations' method of cooking.

Q: And yet he was not above using some convenience foods. Can you give an example?

A: Canned broths, stocks, and consommé were some of the ingredients Eugene recommended for their ease of preparation and use. If time is limited then use canned instead of spending a day preparing a stock. Corn, okra and tomatoes were vegetables Eugene found acceptable when canned mainly due to ease of use versus time spent preparing. Jell-O brand gelatins and instant puddings work as well if not better in specific recipes than their time-consuming relatives.

Q: Which five recipes from the book seem most interesting, and why?

A: Green Gumbo is a departure from what is usually thought of as gumbo. The mix of greens provides a base for the addition of ingredients of the cook's choosing.
Prima Donna Chicken has a variation of a bread sauce made with nuts. It's a southern version of a Middle Eastern dish.
Cold Turkey Pâté is a creative way to deal with leftover turkey from a Thanksgiving meal.
Not Quite Tartar Sauce provides the cook with a variety of uses for the sauce.
Demopolis Caramel Cake is a look back at an old southern favorite.

Q: Do you have any favorite cocktails as presented by Eugene Walter?

A: The Milton Makeover, La Mechante, and Merry Mabel (punch)

Q: Eugene Walter was clearly one of a kind. Does he have any contemporary counterparts?

A: In the 19th century Edward Lear was an author, artist, and poet who was devoted to his cat and chef; Jean Cocteau in the 20th century was an artist, poet, designer, author, playwright, and filmmaker; Steve Martin in the 21st century is an actor, writer, musician, art collector, comedian, playwright, and humorist.

Q: What might a guest in Eugene Walter's home be served? Or, what made his table a happy one?

A: Eugene served wine with an assortment of olives, cheeses, and nuts an hour or so before the meal. There was an enlightening and entertaining discussion on the history of the wine and the assorted appetizers or nibbles as Eugene called them. I never left a meal without learning something interesting about the food. A dish Eugene enjoyed serving was his Patent Leather Pie. This was a savory pie which got its name from the darkened flesh of the baked eggplant which glistened with a coat of olive oil. Dessert was usually fresh fruit, sometimes with cream. After the meal guests were invited into the sitting room and served a digest if along with a bit of crystallized ginger. During this time Eugene solicited information and stories while telling humorous ones of his own. It was a time of enchantment.

Q: Who are some of the luminaries who were part of Eugene Walter's world?

A: Pat Conroy, Federico Fellini, Patricia Highsmith, Anais Nin, George Plimpton, Ned Rorem, Muriel Spark, Alice B. Toklas, Andy Warhol

Q: The photos and illustrations included in the book are quite charming. How were they collected and selected?

A: Eugene left hundreds of photographs and sketches in his estate. Those drawings related to food were selected along with photos from different times in his life.

Q: Do you have a favorite anecdote about Eugene Walter?

A: More than an anecdote is a favorite memory. Eugene was to receive an award in Tuscaloosa for his distinguished career in the Arts in which he represented southern culture and Alabama history. Eugene asked me to drive him to Tuscaloosa and attend the event. Eugene prepared a picnic basket and we set off for the four-hour drive to Tuscaloosa from Mobile. An hour or so out from Mobile we spotted a green field shaded by large oak trees and decided to stop for lunch. We spread out a blanket under a tree and Eugene brought forth our lunch from his large picnic basket. Laid out before us was fried chicken, biscuits, beans, corn on the cob, a fruit cobbler, a bottle of wine, as well as chicken salad sandwiches, nuts, and olives. The weather was agreeable and everything was delicious. While we were eating a small terrier approached out of nowhere which I feared would disrupt the meal. Instead, Eugene spoke calmly to the dog and told him to wait until we finished and he would be rewarded with the leftovers. To my amazement the dog sat at the edge of the blanket and waited for his treat.

Q: What are your favorite Eugene Walter quotes from The Happy Table?

A: "The best advice to cooks is, I feel, seek fresh, avoid chemicals, keep a light hand, rise to the occasion, try what you don't know, have fun . . . and good eating, you-all!"

"Do not under any circumstances, other than a case of lockjaw, use a straw when drinking [a julep], but drink from a tankard."

"Iced tea is never taken with food in most households. It's a midmorning or midafternoon refreshment during warm weather."

"Avoid like the plague those dire synthetic cheeses that become ropey when heated and plug up both children and adults."

"Do your own thing: invent!"

"Miss Ruth and Miss Meta Huger never tired of telling folks to whom they gave copies of their famous shrimp dish, 'If you overcook the shrimp,' they'd say, 'you are offering your guests bits of pink and white rubber, not shrimp.'

"A table without a good pepper mill is a family without a spiritual leader."

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This interview may be reprinted in its entirety with the following credit: A conversation with Donald Goodman, co-editor of The Happy Table of Eugene Walter: Southern Spirits in Food and Drink (University of North Carolina Press, Fall 2011). The text of this interview is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/uncp/media/walter/.

Agustin Blazquez Speaks!

About the plight of Cuban-American artists:

LUISA MARIA GÜELL my decision / mi decisión
En español con subtitulos en ingles / Spanish with English subtitles
 
Synopsis
 
Luisa María Güell was a singer and a child actress before and a popular rising star after the Castro Revolution.  The political aftermath of a society fundamentally transformed by a new ideology had a profound effect on the life and career of the young performer.  The radical changes and intolerance of the communist system presented her, unprepared, with new and dire consequences that could not be ignored.  Stripped of liberty and suddenly unable to allow her creativity to guide her, she found her creativity replaced with fear inside the closed, oppressive new society. Finding no other outlet, she made the devastating decision to leave her country, her family and her singing career at its peak as a teen idol.  Her plan to escape culminated with one year of forced labor before she was allowed to leave Cuba.  Her story continues with her creativity freed to triumph once again as a free human being until she was confronted once again by the ghost of another Marxist experience in Spain, which brought back her Cuban nightmare, forcing her to make the decision yet again to leave everything behind to seek refuge in the U.S.  However, in the U.S., art and politics are as intermingled as in communist countries and while she attained success in her community, the doors remained closed in the American show business field in spite of her great, one-of-a-kind privileged voice and ability to sing not only in English but in other languages. Out of necessity, she also developed her abilities to manage her own career including all phases of arranging complex concerts.  Being a Cuban American exile artist in the U.S. is an extremely difficult handicap to overcome.  my decision presented her with the opportunity to tell her story and for viewers to learn what's behind the hauntingly beautiful music created by Luisa Maria Güell.
 
Luisa María Güell fué una cantante y actriz infantil antes y una popular estrella después de la revolución de Castro. La secuela política de una sociedad fundamentalmente transformada por una nueva ideología tuvo un profundo efecto sobre la vida y carrera de la joven artista. Los cambios radicales e intolerancia del sistema comunista que se le presentaron, sin preparación, con nuevas y horribles concecuencias que no podían ser ignoradas. Despojada subitamente de libertad creativa, esta fué replazada por el miedo dentro del enclaustramiento de la opresiva nueva sociedad. Sin encontrar otra salida, ella tomó la devastadora decisión de marcharse del país, dejando su familia y su carrera en el cenit como ídolo juvenil. Su plan de escape culminó en un año de trabajo forzado antes de que le permitieran marcharse de Cuba. Su historia continua con la liberación de su creatividad y su rotundo triunfo nuevamente como ser humano libre hasta que confrontó nuevamente el fantasma de otra experiencia con el Marxismo en España. Esto le hizo revivir su pesadilla en Cuba, forzandola a tomar nuevamente la misma decisión y abandonandolo todo refugiandose en los EE.UU. Sin embargo, en los EE.UU., el arte y la política estan tan entrelazados como en los paises comunistas y mientras ella obtuvo el éxito en su comunidad, las puertas se mantuvieron cerradas en el mundo del espectáculo norteamericano a pesar de su privilegiada gran voz fuera de serie y no solo su abilidad de cantar en ingles, sino que en otros idiomas. Por necesidad en este país ella desarrolló sus abilidades de administrar su propia carrera, incluyendo todas las faces organizativas de sus conciertos. El ser un artista cubanoamericano exiliado en los EE.UU. es un problema extremadamente dificil de sobreponer. mi decisión le presentó la oportunidad de contar su historia y a los espectadores la oportunidad de aprender lo que hay detras de la encantadora música creada por Luisa María Güell.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

Sad to learn that Christopher Hitchens has died.

I met him twice. The first time, in the last century, in the offices of The Nation magazine in New York City. The last, on February 24, 2006, at the "Stand Up for Denmark!" rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC, which he had organized. Here's a transcript of his remarks at the event, as posted on The Adventures of Chester blog at the time:

Brothers and sisters, I just thought I would thank everyone for coming and say how touching it is that people will take a minute from a working day to do something that our government won't do for us, which is quite simply to say that we know who our friends and our allies are, and they should know that we know it. And that we take a stand of democracy against dictatorship. And when the embassies of democracies are burned in the capital cities of dictatorships, we think the State Department should denounce that, and not denounce the cartoons.

[Cheers of support and applause]

And that we're fed up with the invertebrate nature of our State Department.

[Laughter, cheers, applause]

If we had more time, brothers and sisters, I think that we should have gone from here to the embassy of Iraq, to express our support for another country that is facing a campaign of lies and hatred and violence. And we would -- if we did that we would say that we knew blasphemy when we saw it, we knew sacrilege when we saw it: it is sacrilegious to blow up beautiful houses of worship in Samarra. That would be worth filling the streets of the world to protest about.

[Cheers and applause]

We are not for profanity nor for disrespect, though we are, and without any conditions, or any ifs or any buts, for free expression in all times and in all places

[applause]

and our solidarity . . . [inaudible]

[applause]

So, we said we would, I told the Danish embassy that we would disperse at one o'clock. I hope and believe we've made our point, I hope and believe that today's tv will have some more agreeable features, such as your own, to show, instead of the faces of violence and hatred, and fascism, and I think I can just close by saying, solidarity with Denmark, death to fascism.

Hitchens wasn't afraid to take a stand, and his intellectual courage set an example for us all. He was a mensch.

Here's a link to my first account of Hitchens' pro-Denmark rally, and to another article on Stand Up for Denmark!.

Finally, a link to a review of Hitchens' autobiography, HITCH-22.

ADL Condemns Thomas Friedman's Defamation of Jews

In an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times, dated December 14th:

In leveling his criticism of Israel on its domestic agenda, Mr. Friedman ventures into absurd territory when he "illuminates" the reason Mr. Netanyahu was received with a standing ovation when he spoke before the U.S. Congress. His claim that "the ovation was bought and paid for by the Israel lobby" is insulting to the American people and reads like a page out of "The Israel Lobby," the biased treatise by professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt.

Poll after poll, including a recent one by ADL, shows overwhelming support for Israel by the American public. Congressional support reflects that reality.

Mr. Friedman's allegation is not merely wrong and offensive. It's dangerous. It plays into the most insidious conspiratorial notions about Jewish control of American institutions.

From My Email Inbox (Believe it or not...)

Subject: [ChevyChase] Cultural Revolution Cookbook Monday night, Tenley Library

Foodies, Sinologists, and Politicos unite! Come to Monday's author talk at the Tenley-Friendship Library to celebrate the publication of The Cultural Revolution Cookbook. Authors Sasha Gong and Scott Seligman will discuss the stories behind the recipes and their process of collaboration. The book is beautifully illustrated and the recipes include lots of vegetarian dishes. http://www.amazon.com/Cultural-Revolution-Cookbook-Sasha-Gong/dp/9881998468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323631930&sr=8-1 Copies will be for available for sale before and after the talk (sorry, we can't handle credit cards).

The Tenley-Friendship Library is located at 4450 Wisconsin (at Albemarle Street, across from the Metrorail station). The talk starts at 7pm and will take place in the large conference room on the second floor. Coffee and light refreshments will be served.

Hope to see you there!

Sue Hemberger
for Friends of the Tenley-Friendship Library

NOTE: According to the Necrometrics website, between 2-7 million Chinese were killed in the Cultural Revolution. Other estimates range as high as 30 million. Personally, I'd prefer that the DC Public Library System promoted authors like Sheng Mei-Ma, who wrote CONTRASTING TWO SURVIVAL LITERATURES: ON THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST AND THE CHINESE CULTURAL REVOLUTION, instead.

New Film About My Old Film Premieres in NYC...

Coincidentally, my old film now available online in streaming video from EPIX:

http://www.epixhd.com/who-shall-live-and-who-shall-die/

Meet the 1%

(ht cranky professor)

Free Alan Gross!

Spent lunch hour today in front of the Cuban Interests Section on 16th Street, NW at a protest with Judy (with megaphone) the wife of hostage American Alan Gross, a USAID contractor reportedly arrested for giving computers to members of the Cuban Jewish community so they could surf the internet. He's been in jail two years, serving a 15-year sentence, and is apparently a pawn in some international intrigue. His wife is a member of my congregation at Adas Israel, which had a delegation at today's protest, sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council, that included our former cantor.

Free Alan Gross Vigil Monday, Dec. 5th, Washington, DC

Free Alan Gross Vigil
Monday, December 5

From 12–1 pm, Adas Israel will lead a vigil in front of the Cuban Interests Section, 2360 16th Street, NW. These weekly vigils are coordinated by the JCRC, with many area synagogues participating. Alan Gross is in a maximum security prison in Cuba since 2009 serving a 15 year sentence for undermining "the independence of Cuba." He was in Cuba on behalf of USAID performing humanitarian work for the peaceful non-dissident Jewish community. Alan's health is failing and both his mother and daughter have serious health issues. Come show your support for Alan and his wife Judy who is a member of our congregation....

Happy Thanksgiving!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving

Scenes from Occupy DC, McPherson Square, November 9, 2011

They're certainly not bothering President Obama, since there were no protesters at all to be seen in Lafayette Park, in front of the White House...and not many in McPherson Square, either. However, there was a more genuine sign of protest on display at a nearby bus stop:

IT’S 1776 IN PALESTINE: ON JEWS AND ISRAELIS TOWARD AN ISRAELI REPUBLIC WITH A WRITTEN CONSTITUTION An Interview with Hillel Kook a.k.a. Peter Bergson by Eliyho Matz

(Following is a monologue which Hillel Kook recorded at the bequest of one whose name Kook could not remember when he gave me the tape some years later, concerning the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation.)

Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson): There is something unique, if I have to say it myself, about what we did some 30 or so years ago now. And it isn’t so much what we did, it is what we didn’t do. This is one historical claim I’m very proud of; unfortunately it’s quite unique, and this is that shortly after May the 14th, 1948, we liquidated, we disbanded to my knowledge for the first time, as they say, in 2000 years, a thriving, large mass movement which had on its list – it wasn’t a card-carrying membership organization, but at that point we had close to half-a-million Americans, Jews and non-Jews, but largely Jews. As a matter of principle we were not a Jewish organization (which I will explain in a little while).

We had at that point close to half-a-million people roaring to go. Furthermore, we had half-a-million dollars in the treasury, which was also a unique situation. And we disbanded, liquidated voluntarily, the Hebrew Committee of National Liberation, which was sort of a government-in-exile before Israel was established, which consisted only of what are now Israeli citizens but at that time were Palestinians-in-exile, and the American League for a Free Palestine, which was an American organization supporting them. There was also a Canadian League for a Free Palestine, a French League for a Free Palestine, and even a Latin American one, and these groups between them had about six newspapers and magazines. And all this was shut down and liquidated, true to a promise, and true to the inner purposes of the movement, which was a revolutionary movement, and this is that we were fighting for the independence of our country, that we were not a party, and that once the country is independent it will elect, we hoped in a duly democratic process, its government, and anyone of us who will be a citizen of that country will be free to do as he pleased, or not do as he pleased, at that time. And even though in 1948 only a part of Palestine was liberated and there was partition and there was fighting and God knows there were a million excuses, and I must say that the majority of our leadership here was for continuing the work. And if you think that today in the 1980’s the Jewish National Fund that was founded 100 years ago to buy land from the Turks is still existing and somehow always manages to adapt its existence to the needs -- so it stopped buying land from the Turks, it started buying land from the Arabs, now it’s buying land from the government of Israel, it’s doing something else – it exists. On a theater ticket to a movie in Tel Aviv, if you went there today, you’ll still pay two cents, or Israeli cents, Mas Keren Kayemet, “Keren Kayemet” tax, and nobody knows why it’s there or what’s being done with the money exactly, but it’s there – like many things in our life we are an ancient people and we tend to be anachronistic.

But let me tell you a little bit of what we have done, having told you what we have not done, and this is that we did not continue a reasoned, justified existence, but rather we knew when to quit. Let me tell you what we did when I believe that we knew what should be done. What really happened is like many things in life and in history, accidental to a large degree. I was head of the Irgun Zvai Leumi, which was one of the two then major underground organizations, there was the Haganah and the Irgun, and after a series of splits and all sorts of internal problems I became a member of the high command of the Irgun in 1937, at the ripe age of 21, or going on 22, and found myself at the end of that year for the first time as an adult, more-or-less, in Poland and introduced to the Jewish ghetto and remained in charge of, in command of Irgun operations abroad, which were rather expanded, including the so-called illegal immigration in those years which brought to Palestine some thirty-thousand people until the beginning of World War [II]. And in 1940 I found myself in this country [the USA] as part of these activities of the Irgun, except that when the War broke out there was hardly an Irgun left to speak of. And we were a group of five people here, at the time a “cut-off battalion” as the late great Jabotinsky called us. And we did what we thought was right under the circumstances to serve our country. We were Zionists of course, born or brought up in Palestine, and what we were doing at the time was promoting a Jewish Army to fight alongside the Allies in the war against the Germans. The United States was still neutral in that war at the time. And I remember a man, Mr. Alfred Strelsin, who is now a very important educational business executive (he is the president of a company called C__). He was then a young man, certainly much younger than I am today, and a simple American businessman, not a great intellectual heavyweight, and he said, “Why a Jewish Army? Why not a Palestinian Army?” And I gave him the usual Zionist answer, you know, “We are Jews, and we suffered as Jews, and our nation is Jews, etc., etc; and not a Palestinian army, we are not Palestinians, we are not Philistines, you know, we are Jews! We want a Jewish Army.” And while we were working on a Committee for a Jewish Army, Mr. Strelsin gave in, and my colleagues and I paid no attention to him. The United States got kicked in its south side and into the War through the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the Jewish boys, like all other Americans in the United States, started flocking into Army recruitment centers. And Mr. Strelsin came into an Executive Committee meeting [Committee for a Jewish Army] and said, “Well, what kind of a Jewish Army do you want now? Do you want American boys who are Jews to go to the American Army, or to your Jewish Army?” And suddenly we realized that Mr. Strelsin may have been a businessman, but maybe he was thinking better than we were, and we started scratching our heads. And we came up with an answer like good Jews, a little bit “to the thumb,” and we changed the name to “Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews.” We said, “Aha! That is the difference! You American Jews have a country, it’s called America. You want it and it wants you, you are free and equal, you are here of your choice. But we don’t have a country – our country is Palestine, ‘Eretz Yisrael.’ All the Jews of Rumania, the Jews of Poland, and the Jews of Russia who are wandering throughout Europe, they are stateless Jews: they don’t have a country, they don’t belong to the countries in which they live or have lived; they don’t want them and they’re not wanted there, and this is the difference.” Mr. Strelsin was happy, we were happy. The name was clumsy, but it set in motion some thinking. And, as all young people who read a little, who study a little, and I went to the Hebrew University and studied philosophy, and before that I studied the Talmud in the Yeshiva in Jerusalem. I have in a sense, not in an historical or not in a scientific sense, but in a pragmatic practical sense sort of “discovered America” as one says; I started looking around and I came to the conclusion that there is a big difference between the position of the Jews in Poland, where when I came for the first time as an adult (I came to Palestine at the age of eight, so for all intents and purposes I was Palestinian raised if not born), but when I came to Poland and discovered the masses of four-million Jews there, it suddenly struck me in that year 1941 in New York, ’42, that there’s a basic difference between a Polish Jew and an American Jew. And that the Zionist Movement refuses to recognize this difference, and this difference was never explained to me. And the difference was: a free choice, that the Polish Jew was a Polish citizen and a Pole, so to say, because he couldn’t get out, because his country, Palestine, today Israel, then as we called it in Hebrew Eretz Yisrael, was occupied by the British, who by force refused to let them go there. And the Poles did not regard him as a real equal citizen, nor did he really regard himself as a Pole. Because in Poland when the War broke out certain parts of Poland called “Silesia” where they lived, the Poles of German origin who lived there for 900 years in one day became German again. So they became German overnight, in their feelings, and in the feelings of the Poles towards them and in the feelings of the Germans towards them. In the United States, of course, Mr. Kennedy was the most popular President of the United States after one generation; in Germany Mr. Eisenhower would be regarded German or Swiss or whatever he was, and so I think Mr. Kennedy would be regarded as an Irishman. So this melting pot of the United States is a unique historical thing actually, and totally alien to the European way of thinking, of “ossified” nationalism, and we started talking and discussing and debating and what we came up with is a philosophy, a theory and a program which in my opinion played a very important part, unrecognized – totally – in the establishment of the Republic of Israel – I like the word “republic” better than “state” by the way, which is a limited word – and which still today is probably the only answer to many of the ills that beset Israel, the main one being, of course, the achievement of peace, peace with its non-Jewish populations (so-called Arab population) and peace with its surrounding non-Jewish neighbors (so-called Arab states).

But coming back to the years 1942, -‘3, in Washington and in New York, with the World War raging, with 5- to 10-thousand Jews a day being massacred by the Germans, with our little cut-off group at that time working on a committee called “The Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe,” we came to a realization that what we were doing in effect in Palestine when the Irgun was reorganized by Mr. Ben-Eliezar, one of our group whom we sent there for that purpose and who made Mr. Begin commander, I mean I appointed Mr. Begin as commander of the Irgun at Mr. Ben-Eliezar’s suggestion, as suggestion of the group of senior officers of the Irgun at the time, I being at that time the only member of the high command of the Irgun who was neither dead nor in jail; David Raziel being commander was killed in Iraq in 1941, Abraham Stern split away and formed the Lechi and he was killed by the British, and the other members of the high command were in jail in Eritrea or in the Sudan, wherever they were kept at the time. And I by seniority was at the age of twenty-something the elder statesman of the Irgun, so to say. And also because we were the only organized group here doing things which were of importance and of service, and word of which got to Palestine and gave great cheer and courage to the people there. We came to a conclusion that what we were doing was fighting what today is so easily described as a war of national independence, of national liberation. The war of independence is fought by people on the right of self-determination; a right of self-determination is the right of a person to choose his own identity and to determine his own life. We said we were Jews, Palestine was our country, and we want to have a Jewish government, and not a British government, and we want the British to get out.

And then came the questions. In Palestine there lived some people who were Arabs, who were Moslems, who were Christians, and between this problem and the problem that Mr. Strelsin raised about the role of the American Jews in the Jewish Army, we started then giving some very serious attention, in the year 1941, -‘2, to the character of the Jewish State when it attained its independence. And we were practical young people to whom a Jewish State was not a dream, was not a religious hope, was not “L’shana Haba-ah B’Yrushalayim,” which some of us prayed and all of us said at the [Passover] seder, but which was a practical, pragmatic program which we believed, and God knows there are tens of thousands of people living today in this country who heard me in those years at hundreds of meetings in this country proclaim, that at a maximum within five years after the end of the War Palestine will be a sovereign, independent Hebrew Republic, as we called it, and I’ll come in a minute to why. We started being bothered with the practical questions of sovereign life. And we came to a strange realization, and this is that the long history, the very unique and miraculous history of the Jewish people and our survival of almost nineteen-hundred years, two-thousand years the saying goes, of exile, abnormal, hostile-environment existence, this great historical feat also had some liabilities; like all assets there’s another side of the balance, that if we wanted to achieve independence, if we wanted to have a government of our own and an army of our own and a country of our own, and be a part of a modern family of nations in the twentieth century, that we could not remain, we could not turn the clock back, to the Jerusalem of before Christ, or the first century of Christ, and remain the same kind of a theocratic, unified state-church that we were; the whole world was theocratic at the time, so were we naturally. We said that one has to bring up-to-date the history of the Jewish people, that the existence of the Jews as a combination religion-nation or nation-religion, or people, or “peoplehood” as the late Rabbi Wise used to call it, that all these were palliatives, all these were shallow, superficial answers to deep questions which would work only as long as the anomaly of Jewish existence continues, as long as a Jewish nation normally – a government, a country, a sovereign country – doesn’t exist, then anything goes. That once such a country – and I remember a meeting with both Rabbi Wise and Rabbi Silver trying to convince them of what we were trying to do, and we were maligned and attacked and besmirched and called “defamers of the Jewish people” and God knows what, and I said if President Roosevelt were to call you in and tell you, “All right, you have your Jewish State – go ahead, make it, proclaim it,” I said you won’t call it a Jewish State, you’ll give it a name, I said, because you, Rabbi Silver, are a Jew, you’re a clergyman, you’re an American clergyman, you know, and you couldn’t call Palestine a Jewish State, and its Prime Minister will not be called “the Prime Minister of the Jewish State,” he’ll be called “the Prime Minister of something – Judea….” I didn’t think of “Israel,” I must say, and I don’t like the name by the way; there are too many synagogues called “Israel,” and I respect and love synagogues and I don’t think that a synagogue and a country should have the same name, and I don’t think that a synagogue and a tank, and an army should have the same name, and I don’t think that a synagogue and an air force should have the same name; and the air force of Israel and the prayers of Israel belong to two different worlds, to two different souls; and this is not said in any disrespect, God forbid, neither to the prayers of Israel nor to the air force of Israel, but rather of deep recognition of the paramount importance of either one of them, but separate. We came to the decision then, therefore, that we have to update the meaning, the structure, the political structure of the Jewish people; we didn’t touch the religious part. Religion then, as today I believe, is a matter between a man and his God, it’s a matter of the soul of every one of us, especially in Judaism where no hierarchy was ever recognized. Still today Judaism leads the world in the advancement of its religious basic principles, and the relationship between man and his God – no intermediaries, no hierarchies. “Rabbi,” as you well know, means “a teacher.” A simple, humble Jewish carpenter has as much religious authority as the Chief Rabbi of Israel, and my uncle was the Chief Rabbi of Israel and he was a great man, but he claimed no authority. When an older man than himself walked into his room, he used to rise and get up from his chair, because he said it says in the Bible you should honor older people. And when my father, who was his younger brother, used to walk into his room, he used to get up from his chair in his honor because he said he’s a learned man and it says in the Bible you should honor learned people. And he was the Chief Rabbi! – but he was not a Pope, and didn’t behave like a Pope.

So Judaism as a religion, we did not touch, and we could not touch. But, the Jewish people as a political force – we touched, very much. And we said that the time has come to define the political term and the meaning of the word “Jew” – Who is a Jew? which as you know is still being debated in Israel, and there is a famous Supreme Court decision that says, “A Jew is a Jew.” Period. Something like Gertrude Stein, who said, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” we say for the time being “a Jew is a Jew.” I say that in political terms, a Jew is a person who defines himself as being a member of the Jewish nation and no other nation. And the deciding is to each person and his own choice. And in the case of the identity between a Jew and Israel it is between each person and the laws of the Republic of Israel. And therefore back in the early 1940’s we suggested a distinction to simplify matters a little. We took the term “Hebrew” and said that “Hebrew” denotes the political aspect of the Jew, and “Jew, Jewish” denotes the religious aspect; we could have just as easily done it backwards, it makes no difference. Or it makes no difference whether you use today the word “Israeli,” as they were forced to do finally in 1948. “Israeli” denotes the political aspect of the Jew, “Jewish” denotes the religious. We said then, in establishing The Hebrew Committee of National Liberation as a sort of government-in-exile, we purchased the Iranian Embassy on Embassy Row in Washington (that’s Massachusetts Avenue) in 1944, April, in the middle of the Holocaust, in the middle of the murder, we proclaimed the independence of the Hebrew Republic of Palestine as a free and independent state, republic, and asked the world nations to recognize it. A year later I spent six hours with David Ben Gurion in the home of Dr. Emanuel Neumann, who got us together, who was then President of the Zionist Organization of America, and who was appreciative of the efforts we were doing here, while not exactly agreeing with them. He said, “You must work something out!” That these boys (as we were called) had to be brought into the framework of Jewish life here. And for six hours Ben Gurion and I talked alone (Neumann left), and I told him that the thing to do is not to debate whether or not there should be a Jewish State, which was what the Zionist Organization was doing, and that the debate with Jabotinsky that said that the aim of Zionism is the establishment of the Jewish State, I said that this was passé, that this was “old hat” as you would say today. That the issue was not to call for the creation of a Jewish State, but to establish one and to ask for recognition: the things that people and nations have to do for themselves and can’t ask others to do for them – which is what eventually happened in ’48. We [the Bergson Group] formulated, therefore, then, in the ‘40’s, a simple thing which an American child, Jewish or not (maybe non-Jews easier than the Jews, who were not as confused about the subject), of ten or twelve years could understand; I remember we had a simple slogan. It said, “It is 1776 in Palestine.” Every American knows what is 1776, and the Irgun and we saw to it that the headlines would make everybody know what is Palestine, and we put the two together and it was very simple: we were a nation fighting for our freedom just as the Americans did in 1776, and it so happened we were doing it against the same oppressor. We wanted the British army and the British king out of Palestine just as the Americans wanted the British king and the British army out of the American Colonies in 1776. And just as the Americans, we won.

Blogging v Tweeting...

I haven't posted anything in a while, yet have been tweeting quite a bit...I wonder if Twitter has somehow blocked the blogger in me? I now look at Althouse, Instapundit, CrankyProfessor and others...yet don't post, myself. Too much trouble to come up with more than 144 characters, I guess. We'll see if this changes anytime soon. Meanwhile, I guess Twitter has it. (Also, I don't really like the new template for Blogger all that much, it is a little confusing, somehow.)

An Amazing Citation from a Korean Database

Featured Articles : Representing Islam, Terrorism, and Violence ; An American Reflection: Steven Spielberg, The Jewish Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict ( Shai Ginsburg ) "This paper examines Steven Spielberg`s vision of the State of Israel and, to a lesser extend of the U.S., as presented in Munich (2005). The paper argues that Spielberg mounts a critique of the two states and their security apparatuses. The willingness of the two to resort to violence either in the name of their own protection or under the guise of protecting their citizens, Munich suggests, does not merely undercut their claim as democracies to embody the universal values of liberty and justice, but also the very well-being of their citizens. Spielberg`s mistrust of the state (and of the State of Israel in particular) is already hesitantly suggested more than a decade earlier in his treatment of the Jewish Holocaust in Schindler`s List (1993). I trace this mistrust to two cinematic sources: Otto Preminger`s Exodus (1960) and Laurence Jarvik`s Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die (1982). Whereas the former Hollywood epic sought to align American audiences with the State of Israel and its military campaigns, the latter documentary exposed the inaction of both the Roosevelt administration and the Zionist leadership in the face of the mass murder of European Jews during World War II. Spielberg`s films could thus be seen as a revision－both in plot and in form－of Preminger`s spectacular celebration of the State of Israel in light of Jarvik`s damning revelations. Exodus turns the story of the rise of Israel out of the plight of Holocaust survivors into "spectacular cinema." Spielberg`s films, on the other hand, and Munich in particular, suggest that spectacular cinema conceals the incommensurability between the plight of individuals and the logic that guides the action of the state and its apparatuses. In that respect, Spielberg`s films－considered prime examples of the latest incarnation of spectacular cinema－undercut their own logic of representation. " SOURCE: PaperSearch.net Article: An American Reflection: Steven Spielberg, The Jewish Holocaust and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Old-Fashioned Teaching Works

Even in Silicon Valley... According to today's NY Times.

Occupy Wall Street is Two Minutes Hate, v.2011

George Orwell described Two Minutes Hate, a daily ritual designed to brainwash the population into hating Emmanuel Goldstein and the current enemy of Big Brother in 1984. As Oscar Wilde famously quipped, life imitates art, so now we have Occupy Wall Street, a daily ritual of two-minute clips shown on television news designed to brainwash the population into hating the current enemy of the Obama Administration, intended to bully Wall Street and Republicans into submission much in the way anti-Globalization protestors extracted NGO payoffs from the World Bank and IMF and Starbucks (anyone remember those "broken windows" of a few years back?). As if on cue, Andrew Breitbart has published emails showing coordination between major media and Occupy DC demonstrators, and the "Occupation" has been publicly endorsed by leading Democrats, celebrities, academics, and President Obama himself. The purpose of Two Minutes Hate v.2011 is clearly twofold: 1. To generate hatred against political opponents, most notably Wall Street veteran Mitt Romney and the GOP (despite Obama's own Wall Street support); and 2. To distract public attention from the Obama administration's unsolved political problems, such as wars actual (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Uganda) and potential (Syria, Iran); economic collapse; the Obamacare fiasco, as well as general political stagnation. As George Orwell would no doubt have said more eloquently: You can't make this stuff up.

James Taranto on "Occupy Wall Street"

James Taranto skewers Jesse LaGreca in Best of the Web:

Behold Jesse LaGreca, who boasts of his working-class street cred while speaking the elitist jargon of the professor-cum-president's failing administration. And he does so on ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Co. He's an Audio-Animatronic revolutionary.

All that said, there is some truth to his statement that "we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative." But the truth of it makes his posturing all the more ridiculous.

"Occupy Wall Street" began as a left-wing protest, something about as exceptional as a pigeon in New York. It didn't become a "narrative" until the narrators made it into one. Who are those narrators? They work for companies like Disney, CBS Corp., Comcast Corp. and General Electric Co. (co-owners of NBC), Time Warner, News Corp. (our employer), the New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., the Tribune Co., Thomson Reuters Corp. and Bloomberg LP.

These corporations make their profits (or attempt to) by pushing narratives--by selling stories. Sometimes their narratives are as preposterous as Jesse LaGreca's. An example is yesterday's New York Times editorial that begins: "As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions."

The disdainful reference to "the chattering classes" is just priceless. To which class, pray tell, do New York Times editorialists belong? Though come to think of it, at least the anonymous hack who wrote that editorial got paid for his effort. That makes his claim to working-class status stronger than LaGreca's.

Not Red Square, Moscow--Pennsylvania Ave, Washington...

When I was at Swarthmore, Robert Zoellick was a redneck.