Eliyho Matz on The Status of Jewish Women...

THE STATUS OF JEWISH WOMEN, CAMELS

AND THE KETUBAH (MARRIAGE CERTIFICATE)

by Eliyho Matz

In Hindu culture, “the Dharma-Shastras observe that there are three general types of sins.  The first is the bodily type, and the favorite example of it, here and elsewhere, is adultery.  The result of adultery is that you came back as a fixed object such as a stone [on the issue of stones, see below] or a tree stump, and you can see by the number of stones and stumps around that there has been a lot of this going on.”

Edward Cameron Dimock, “Mr. Dimock Explores the Mysteries of the East (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1999),

p. 110.

“It has long been noted that camels possess a sixth sense for traversing the desert.  In the third century AD, the Chinese writer Kuo P’u observed, ‘The camel is an unusual domestic animal; it carries a saddle of flesh on its back; swiftly it dashes over the shifting sands; it manifests its merit in dangerous places; it has secret understanding of springs and sources, subtle indeed is its knowledge!’”

Laurence Bergreen, Marco Polo From Venice to Xanadu (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2007), p. 53.

         The actual history of Jews is complex enough, but the many narratives make it more speculative because we are not exactly sure about the ancient events that preceded Judaism’s origins, and probably we will never know how Judaism all started and emerged as a Biblical text that led to the Talmud and resulted in the rules and rituals that are called Judaism.  Judaism evolved as the interaction between G’d and human activity: tied together in a beautiful narrative, at times crystal clear, but sometimes as opaque as a frosted-up window in which nothing is clear or visible. 

The history of Jews between 500 BCE to 500 CE is extremely dynamic and complex.  The most important texts of Judaism were created during this period when Jews were under the influence of the ancient Persians.  The impact of this Persian experience is reflected in all forms of what we call Jewish life.  Among the most important issues of Jewish life related to women, and, as ancient societies struggled to figure out how to deal with women, Judaism came out with its own solutions. 

         The Persian connection to Judaism is unquestionably clear; it is reflected in the Bible and in the Talmud.  It was through the language, Aramaic, as well as through the customs along with the evolving Persian ideologies and lore that we became Jews.  Furthermore, the Jews acquired from the Persians the art of doing business.  Under the Persians, Jews became merchants and roamed the world as such until the 1600’s.  They learned to conduct business between East and West -- the East was China, and the West was Europe.

         In ancient times, the forms of transportation were many, among them ships, horses, donkeys, and, later and most important, camels.  The camel eventually became the vehicle of transport and, of course, wealth.  The wealthier one was, the more camels he owned.  This leads to the Biblical story of finding a wife for Isaac – it is inconceivable to think of Abraham’s slave Eliezar being portrayed by the Biblicists as coming to fetch Rebecca on donkeys! The debate as to whether the writers of the Bible inappropriately inserted the camel into their narrative is most recently reflected in an article by John Noble Wilford (February 11, 2014, p. D3) in The New York Times.  One explanation for this inapt inclusion by the Biblical writers seems to be a reflection of the place of camels as used by  merchants for long distance travel.  Thus, the camel enters into the literature of the Bible through the back door by reverse engineering to reflect sometimes an anachronism or simply a part of our opaque history.

         With the help of the camel, Jewish merchants conducted trade and traveled long distances, disappearing from home for long periods of time.  Numerous basic laws and customs of Judaism came into being as a result of this lifestyle of conducting business in far-away lands and the consequent disappearance from home by the merchants.  It was a situation that demanded some action on behalf of the women they left behind. 

         That is approximately how the Ketubah (marriage certificate) came to appear in our complex history. The Ketubah is a unique Jewish document; Gentiles do not have such an agreement.  The Ketubah, as translated from Hebrew, is a “written” document, composed in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Persian Empire. This document relates to the well being of a woman, spelling out her rights in case of a divorce, or in other issues of separation between her and her husband.  The long distance trade via camels evolved for more than 1000 years.  Jewish men got involved with other women along the roads, and thus, to protect the wives, rabbis were pushed to create a written document to offer fairness. 

This protracted involvement in long distance trade by necessity gave rise to other important elements in Judaism.  It ultimately changed the status of the Jewish family.  Unlike in previous generations, the mother now came to hold the place of determining the Jewish identity of their children, rather than the father.  Since Jewish merchants traveled the world up until the 1600’s, a rabbi in Europe around the 11^th century, in another landmark decree, ruled that Jewish men could marry only one woman.  Other customs came into being including the wearing of the kipah, an adaptation taken from the Chinese Mandarins.  And the burial custom in which stones are placed on Jewish graves also grew out of necessity -- the stones were used as permanent markers of the burial sites of Jewish and other victims fallen along the long distance paths to China or other places.  Thus the history of Jews transformed itself as a result of livelihood.  

Since at the time of this writing we are approaching Purim, it is worthwhile to remember that the holiday takes its name from Persian, meaning “lots.”  And in his song “Suzanne,” Leonard Cohen sings about “…tea and oranges that come all the way from China” – how can we not connect the use of the citrus, now commonly the etrog, that is a symbol basic to our holiday of Sukkot?    

         I would like to return now to the writer Edward Cameron Dimock, whom I quote in the beginning, to include a few words of his pertaining to Indian religion: “The result of incest is that you come back as grass” (p. 110).  I will stop here, and maybe one day I will continue the story of the merchandising Jews.  The reason for my stopping is because I need to feed the camels their grass and water…. 

One day, I will end this story, somehow.

Eliyho Matz

eliyho_matz@yahoo.com

February 2014

DOWNTON ABBEY DIARY: The Mad Memoirs of Rebecca Eaton--A Review by Laurence Jarvik

MAKING MASTERPIECE: 25 YEARS BEHIND THE SCENES AT MASTERPIECE THEATRE AND MYSTERY! ON PBS, Rebecca Eaton (2013), Preface by Kenneth Branagh, NY: Viking, 285 pp., $29.95

Masterpiece Theatre premiered on American Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) on Sunday, January 10, 1971, some 42 years before Rebecca Eaton's Making Masterpiece was published. It is still on the air. That is a very long run indeed for an American television series, especially a dramatic anthology. For purposes of comparison with other American shows, consider that Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone produced new episodes for approximately ten years; Studio One, also ten years; Playhouse 90, four years; GE Theatre, nine years; Omnibus, nine years; PBS’s American Playhouse, 11 years; and NET Playhouse, eight years. Only Hallmark Hall of Fame has had a longer shelf life as a dramatic anthology—yet although it premiered in 1951 and still produces new programming for American television, more recently episodes have appeared only from time-to-time as occasional specials, rather than as series. Thus, longevity alone makes Masterpiece (as it is now called) a unique television institution in the United States. There is quite simply nothing else like it being broadcast over American airwaves.

Executive producer Rebecca Eaton attempts to explain her program’s remarkable run in a new book, Making Masterpiece: 25 Years Behind the Scenes at Masterpiece Theatre and Mystery! (2013) Interestingly, Eaton combines autobiographical details such as medical and psychological problems, marriage and divorce, the tensions of working motherhood, her relationship with her parents, and own education alongside a discussion of business and artistic developments related to television classics such as Downton Abbey, Upstairs, Downstairs, Pride and Prejudice, David Copperfield, and mysteries including Prime Suspect, Hercule Poirot, Inspector Morse, and Sherlock Holmes, among others. Thus, Making Masterpiece is valuable at once as memoir, history of television, and corporate saga.

Eaton is at times refreshingly frank. She admits that when she became executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre, “I wasn’t a regular Masterpiece viewer—I wasn’t even a Masterpiece fan, really.”  But, apparently that did not matter. As Eaton’s book explains, the reason is fairly simple.  In the beginning, key decisions were made by the sponsor, Mobil Corporation, in conjunction with British television producers. So, WGBH was essentially koshering a commercial series for a non-commercial television network. Thus, placement of the Boston station’s call letters served as a secular hechsher for shows which otherwise would have been banned under PBS guidelines.

The book definitively documents the crucial role of the Mobil Corporation as original sponsor for Masterpiece Theatre. Her account of working with Russell Baker, Alistair Cooke’s successor is intriguing. Unlike Cooke, a veteran television performer and host of Omnibus, Baker was uncomfortable in front of cameras. He fidgeted, and his hands waved uncontrollably at times—so much so, that he took to literally sitting on them while on air. In addition, Baker had to obtain a waiver from his then-employer, The New York Times, for his work on the Mobil-sponsored PBS show violated the newspaper’s existing ethics guidelines.  Apparently, the Times wasn’t worried about conflict-of-interest charges. Baker got approval to host the series, which he introduced for over a decade. Apparently, some ethics guidelines are more binding than others…

Likewise, Eaton’s book is noteworthy for its documentation of the series’ almost complete collapse and fragmentation after the withdrawal of Mobil’s sponsorship—which eventually led up to “rebranding” the series in 2008; split into Masterpiece Classic, Mystery and Contemporary. Eaton’s account of focus groups, corporate consultants, and bickering with a Hallmark Hall of Fame producer over American-themed (as opposed to British) literary adaptations makes for what might have been a Bretts-like behind-the-scenes comedy of the absurd.

After Exxon-Mobil pulled their $10 million annual sponsorship, ratings plunged, the series began a hegira to different days, different times, different formats, and different hosts--and clearly lost its way. De facto, it was no longer a unified television series, just a time slot with a venerable title.  Then, almost uncannily, Eaton reprised PBS’s 1970s rejection of ITV’s original Upstairs, Downstairs (glossed over in her account) with her own refusal to buy ITV’s Downton Abbey, in favor of the BBC’s more pedestrian sequel to Upstairs, Downstairs (which nevertheless achieved a respectable 6.5 rating on PBS, prior to BBC’s cancellation). Ironically, although Downton had been Eaton’s and PBS’s second choice, it proved to be a PBS audience favorite, and garnered the highest Nielsen rating for the series--a reported 8.1. Once more, a British commercial production had become the jewel in the crown of American public broadcasting.

That Downton was written by a Tory aristocrat (Grantham was Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary seat), while Upstairs, Downstairs had been penned by working-class Labour supporters, somehow added to the irony. Downton was Upstairs, Downstairs on steroids. It was bigger, badder, soapier, and more outrageous than the original. In a word: camp. Almost a self-parody. Too big too fail; it was the best Masterpiece Theatre could do to attempt to recover its original formula for success as a show window for British drama in the United States. Needless to say, Up, Down Anglomania once again worked its charms on the PBS audience.

Eaton’s account records the phenomenal success of Downton Abbey, the double nostalgia of which (for Britain’s aristocratic past and the old-fashioned programs of the original Mobil Masterpiece Theater) has provided the secret formula needed to attract two new sponsors: Viking River Cruises (Eaton christened the Viking Long ship Freya in the port of Amsterdam on March 12, 2012) and Ralph Lauren.

Surprisingly to this reviewer, Eaton plainly calls Masterpiece’s new underwriters “sponsors.” Although the term had been one which dare not speak its name when this author wrote about PBS some twenty years ago, officially nonexistent, in her memoir Eaton appears to be perfectly comfortable with Viking River Cruises and Ralph Lauren’s corporate support, and expresses her gratitude without the snarkiness once heard from PBS executives. But if sponsorship is indeed a net positive for the series, then what is the rationale for non-commercial claims by the PBS network? If it is a sponsor-supported corporation; and if that sponsorship was attracted by quality programming such as Downton Abbey, then logic would dictate the conclusion that corporate sponsorship is not opposed to quality—rather, the opposite: that corporate sponsors might indeed wish to be associated with quality television.

In addition to limning a corporate dimension, Eaton’s confessional illuminates the closed shop of American public broadcasting as a manifestly elitist institution redolent of unearned privilege. Her peek behind the PBS station curtain is fascinating to an outsider as a glimpse of an insular institution as formidably insulated from the hoi polloi as the mythical Downton Abbey. Not surprisingly, the author early on declares her blue-blood New England bona fides, complete with Maine family retreat. Eaton’s father, Paul Eaton, was MIT-educated dean of English at the California Institute of Technology. Her mother, Katherine Emery, was a Southern Belle from Alabama, who became a Broadway actress in Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, then a Hollywood star at RKO. Eaton majored in English at elite Vassar College, in 1969 a “seven sister” for the education of privileged females; afterwards worked at the BBC in an exclusive “Anglo-American swap deal” with Oxford University’s Lady Margaret Hall during the “swinging sixties.” No wallflower, Eaton writes of buying hashish in Piccadilly Circus (but claims it was a bag of dirt), and of the influence of Mary Quant, Twiggy, and “my new friends from the British ‘upper class,’ country houses and all.” Her favorite television program, Sir Kenneth Clark’s Civilization (curiously, Eaton misspells his surname as Clarke). Of British country weekends, she says, “As I recall, I was pretty much drunk the whole time.” Yet, she says she became estranged from her aristocratic companions. Like a Henry James heroine, Eaton claims she “felt that I was in the wrong place. I loved my own country. In Britain, I went from being antiwar and anti-U.S. government to realizing how deep my American roots actually were.” Well, let us say, from the account it appears that New England roots may not spread far beyond Boston.

Eaton says she cried on her BOAC flight back to the USA in 1970 (not usually the reaction of one happy to return home). Class privilege and sexism allowed Eaton to quickly obtain a job at WGBH’s National Public Radio station, due to “my Vassar degree, my BBC credentials, and my miniskirt…” Like many American children of privilege, she could afford to work without pay at first (the BBC had paid her $35/week). She was eventually hired for a “public access” television show called Catch-44, produced by Henry Becton (later to head WGBH), and to become a documentary producer.

In 1985, aged 37, Eaton married an artist named Paul Cooper, in a church in Kennebunkport, Maine—home of Presidents Bush, among other American Brahmins. Since 1984, she’d been on a leave of absence from WGBH, co-producing an independent feature film for American Playhouse directed by Jan Egelson (probably The Little Sister (1986), which appears in her IMDB listing, although the title is not mentioned in the book). Becton asked her to read scripts for Joan Wilson, the station’s Masterpiece Theatre producer at the time, who was dying of cancer. “He’d been considering me for the job of executive producer of Masterpiece Theatre in the event of her death.”

And that is how PBS stations worked then and now. It didn’t matter that Eaton had a very slim track record in drama, for she had the right breeding, the right bloodlines, the right schools, the right social formation, to do a PBS job—which, in 1985, was to serve as a glorified go-fer to the Mobil Corporation, by her account. That is the reason Eaton is able to write, without apparent embarrassment, that when offered the Masterpiece job, “I was pretty sure I didn’t want it.” 

That is also why Eaton is free to state that she had “disdain” for Masterpiece. She apparently felt superior to proles in commercial television, as her condescending description implies. That is why Eaton declares taking the helm of the most prestigious program on American television at that time  “would mean becoming an administrator, a manager of other people’s work, rather than a ‘creative’ person who actually made programs.”  For Eaton knew, and everyone at PBS knew, that in 1985, Mobil made Masterpiece Theatre programs with its British partners. WGBH was just a delivery service. She didn’t want the job, she says, and I believe her. Luckily, her then-husband pressured her to take the position. When Eaton applied to Henry Becton, she says that she had been the only person on the station’s shortlist who read The Mill on the Floss.  What does that say about the educational level at an American PBS station in 1985? Not much.

Eaton’s remarkable disdain continues to be expressed in her description of meeting Frank Marshall, a former Xerox speechwriter turned public relations consultant, who owned the trademark Masterpiece Theatre at one point (he later turned it over to Mobil, which eventually turned it over to WGBH). She slams Marshall as a “consigliere” (a Mafia term from The Godfather) to Mobil vice-president Herb Schmertz; describes his Vermont farmhouse as “in the middle of nowhere;” goes into detail about how awful she felt to be considered for the Masterpiece job, and links it to her pregnancy. Now, why would Eaton need to visit the middle of nowhere to see a corporate consultant—unless the consultant had approval rights for personnel hires?  Eaton’s very story establishes that Mobil, as sponsor, was running the show for Masterpiece Theatre at WGBH as late as 1985—not Henry Becton, not WGBH, and not PBS. Mobil had right of approval on personnel.

Which is why Eaton says that she didn’t want the job of executive producer in the first place—working for public broadcasting was, among women of a certain class in America in 1985, “U,” in Nancy Mitford’s terminology. At WGBH, PBS productions meant documentaries like “Frontline” (although a number of those episodes reworked British material). PBS was classy because it was “non-commercial.” Indeed, it was ostensibly above commerce. Such was the legacy of Puritanism in Boston and at PBS. Indeed, the Boston PBS station’s call letters stand for “God Bless Harvard,” a Puritan version of the Tetragrammaton. One could not serve PBS and Mobil, in good conscience; for PBS was doing God’s work, while Mobil was doing Mammon’s. 

Yet Eaton's story of bureaucratic and personal drift and disarray at Masterpiece Theater after Exxon Mobil discontinued funding in 1994, in what might be called its disassociated state, evidences that Mobil's corporate sponsorship made possible, and Viking Cruises and Ralph Lauren may continue to insure, that Masterpiece Theatre remains a Masterpiece of American television. 

Laurence Jarvik is the author of Masterpiece Theater and the Politics of Quality (Scarecrow Press, 1999).

Pam Geller On The Pussies Behind Pussy Riot

I have a real challenge for these brave femmes: Stage a protest in a mosque. Protest clitoridectomies, honor killings, child marriage, forced marriage, women as and chattel. Then let’s see how many of their new friends they have at the end of the day. If Pussy Riot protested inside, say, the Blue Mosque, singing songs calling on Muhammad’s six-year-old wife Aisha to remove President Vladimir Putin from office, would the world be petting and fêting the felines?

They would have been destroyed, smeared, banned. But they protested in a cathedral, so they are worshiped. That was enough to make them become overnight the darlings of the West.

Read more at http://mobile.wnd.com/2014/02/pussy-riot-fever-infects-u-s/#CDsymKqogZ16MXrv.99

Mark Steyn on Barry Rubin

From SteynOnline:

Barry Rubin, a great strategic thinker and cartographer of the emerging post-American world, died today in Tel Aviv. I read him regularly and cited him in After America re the collectively insane urge of almost everyone Nidal Hasan encountered as he wafted upwards through the US Army to look the other way and not see what was staring them in the face:

As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in US history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave it to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors - some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then Captain Hasan was, in fact, "psychotic", the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried "how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents".

I remember when I read Rubin's line about the PowerPoint presentation. Many of us had been groping in the same direction, but he was the one who came up with the perfect, piercing image for the madness that was going on. He did that a lot, right up to the end. Rest in peace.

Richard Kaye Remembers Bob Tashman at the New York Review of Books

A nice memoir of our late friend by one of his co-workers at NYRB:

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/50-years/2014/jan/21/the-room-you-wanted-to-be-in/

The other aesthete—unkempt, straight, Jewish-guy division—was Bob Tashman, as nervously fast-talking as David was mellifluously smooth-talking, an assistant editor for many years at the Review. For some time Bob and I did not get along. It was an office joke, of sorts, our everyday friction and bitchy bickering, and thinking about this now I am not sure why. But then, suddenly, we did get along, a development that may have had something to do with Bob’s basic sweet nature and perhaps my telling our mutual friend Arthur Goldwag at the Reader’s Subscription that I thought Bob was one of the smartest people I had ever met. Heck, he was the smartest man in the office, in the entire Fisk Building. It got back to Bob, as I wanted it to. Usually dressed in a bland preppy blue shirt and jeans, hair sprouting from everywhere, Bob would careen from office to office at the Review and do fiendishly accurate impressions of people, myself included. (Something about me saying “Iknow!” into the phone when I was talking to a friend.) 

Very tough-minded intellectually and yet hilarious in a way that would have served him well in vaudeville, Bob had all sorts of complex, fancy tastes in literature and plays and music and art and he could get quite emotional about some of those opinions. He loved to pick little fights about cultural matters. Wasn’t Orson Welles’s Chimes at Midnight absolutely the best film adaptation of Shakespeare ever made? Wasn’t James Joyce’s story “The Dead” the “greatest piece of fiction in the language”? He would become almost physically taunting about—or alternately physically gratified by—your tastes in books or music, depending on whether your judgments fit his own finely honed refinements. He would rant, cajole, become irritated. Bob was one of those brilliant people who almost always drop out of Ph.D. programs in which they are uneasily enrolled, as I would later understand, because their brilliance invariably is too ornery and unsystematic. Seldom would he yield to another person’s argument or a “school of thought.” Somehow Bob always brought to mind T.S. Eliot’s comment about Henry James having a “mind so fine no idea could violate it.” (Bob passed away from cancer several years ago.)

Eliyho Matz's New Year's Blessings for 2014...

Blessing, Blessings for 2014

A Compilation, by Eliyho Matz

For the past 35 years, I have been working in Manhattan in the Stationery business (i.e., pens and pencils), and it has been my daily habit to read The New York Times.  I cannot testify to my mental condition after analyzing the many complexities and ideas found in this newspaper.  

Following are some interesting pieces I have accumulated over these thirty-five years as a result of my work and my daily meditations on life and the Times.

*******************************

An Ode to “Best” Pencils

 O’, God, give me Black Wings, to fly among the Mongols, to see the Ticonderoga river, and the Velvet birds in the Valley of Lead, where the Best pencils are made.

                                                                                               

E.M.

Of Blintzes, Lox And Poetic Expression

            “The muses on the Lower East Side must have been hungry to inspire such an ode. 

            It is taped to a milk machine at the B&H Dairy Restaurant at 127 Second Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth Streets.  The manager, Raul Morales, promises to keep it there ‘for quite a while.’

            Two patrons, Jonathan Robbins and Peter Lamborn Wilson, handed the poem to Mr. Morales one day after lunch.

Blessings on your counter tops,

Bruchas on your pans and pots,

B&H, the Dairy princes,

Lords of sour cream and blintzes!

Young and fresh or old and gnarly,

All must slurp your mushroom barley;

Even wealthy uptown fogeys

Grab a cab for your pirogies!

If we had a dozen wishes

Never could we wish a dish as

Good as your gefilte fish is!

Though your premises be narrow

You have stuffed us to the marrow;

Still, we cannot leave your table

Till we wheedle or finagle

One more lox or one more bagel!

                                                Susan Heller Anderson

                                                David W. Dunlap

                                                The NY Times: April 8, 1985

Haiku

“One of the most celebrated haiku by the poet Basho, Japan’s Wordsworth and Shakespeare rolled into one, is: ‘furu ike ya/kawazu tobikomu/mizu no oto.’”  Translated: “’old pond/frogs jumped in/sound of water.’…The beauty in Japanese comes from its allusions; to the season, the setting, and the sound of water conveyed by the onomatopoeic ‘oto’.”

                                                      (I do not recall the source – E.M.)

Chinese Poetry

[At age 102, Mr. Qian is back in school, with many like him.]

         “Mr. Qian manages to walk to the class on his own, and he hears and sees well enough to follow the teacher most of the time.  The first class he took was on health care for the elderly, and he says he found it very useful in looking after his wife, who died a few months ago at the age of 100, and his daughter, who is 81 years old and in fading health.

            A lover of traditional poetry, Mr. Qian scarcely paused when asked for a few lines of his favorite poem.  The room fell silent as he recited from memory this ancient Chinese poem:

                        The clouds are wispy this morning,

                                    the breeze is light.

                        As I pass the pond, I see flowers

                                    and willow trees.

                        The passers-by don’t know the joy

                                    in my heart.

                        I’m like a kid at play.

                                                                                    The NY Times:            December 6, 1990           

Papusa

[One of the most tragic poets of the Twentieth Century, Papusa was a Polish Gypsy and an exceptionally great poet who suffered because of her writing.]

                        No one understand me,

                        Only the forest and the river.

                        That of which I speak

                        Has all, all passed away,

                        Everything has gone with it –

                        And those years of youth.

******************************

For a further understanding of humanity, please read Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan.

Following is a short example of The NY Times reports on events:

First Example – On November 19, 1986 (p. A4), The NY Times reported

“’The camel is an extremely smart animal,’ said Dr. D.P. Singh,

a livestock official.  “He can easily recognize his master and his environ-

ment.  He knows how to perform and please his master.  But if you beat

him, he will take revenge, even if he has to wait for a year to do it.’”

Second Example – On February 3, 1988 (p. B3), The NY Times reported in an AP news item titled “Park Fined in Camel Attack”

“JACKSON, N.J., Feb 2 (AP) – The Federal Occupational Safety and

Health Administration has cited the Six Flags Great Adventure Amusement

Park for two safety violations in a camel attack on a worker last July 4,

officials said.  The camel knocked down the employee, Susan Wright, 32

years old, of New Egypt in Ocean County, and sat on her.  Each violation

carries a $1000. fine.”

Dear Reader, please feel free to connect the dots!

New Statesman: Will We Regret Pushing Christians Out of Public Life?

http://www.newstatesman.com/2014/01/new-intolerance-will-we-regret-pushing-christians-out-public-life

Cristina Odone writes:

Without a change, the work that faith groups have carried out for millennia – charities, hospitals, schools, orphanages – will disappear. Communities will no longer be able to rely on the selfless devotion of evangelists and missionaries who happily shoulder the burden of looking after the unwanted, the aged, the poor. Feeling stigmatised and persecuted by the authorities and the establishment, Christians, Muslims and Jews may well become entrenched in the more fundamental shores of their faith.

Equality is already becoming the one civic virtue universally endorsed; equality legislation, the overriding principle of law. In this new scenario, yesterday’s victims are today’s victors. Gays and women, among other scapegoats from the past, now triumph over their former persecutors. But they have learned no lesson from their plight. As they promote a one-sided tolerance, they act as if their rights now include this: to have no one disagree with them.

This is not the sign of a healthy society. Ordinary citizens should not live in fear of saying or doing “the wrong thing”. Diversity means respecting conscientious objections and making reasonable accommodation to let subcultures survive. Erasing God from the public square, and turning religion into a secret activity between two consenting adults in the privacy of their home, leads to what the poet Seamus Heaney calls the hollowing-out of culture. A no-God area can only sustain a fragile and brittle civilisation, a setting worthy of a broken people.

Anti-Israel academic boycotters demand Freedom From Criticism

Anti-Israel academic boycotters demand Freedom From Criticism

Pamela Geller on Israel-Hating Jews in the Los Angeles Times

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2014/01/pamela-geller-jerusalem-post-jews-for-jihad.html# 

Read my column here in today's Jerusalem Post on the execrable Carolyn Karcher, who maliciously flaunts her Jewish birth in a LA Times article to provide cover for her unbridled anti-semitism and vicious hatred of Israel. Truth be told, had she not identified herself as a Jew (which she does almost immediately), the unsuspecting reader might think her a member of a neo-Nazi or jihadi group.

You'll notice that I never mention Karcher's name in the piece. This was at the request of editors who were worried about legal troubles. I understand that, although everything I say in this piece is true and accurate. But it is interesting that Karcher can feel free to libel Israel, but Israel's defenders have to be extra careful, in today's political climate, when responding to such libels.

Happy New Year!

All the best to all our readers in 2014!

Penny-A-Page Press Announces Acquisition for 2014 Publication

Brushstroke: A Novel by Alice Goldfarb Marquis--coming in 2014 from Penny-A-Page Press…

Merry Christmas!

...And a Happy New Year!

Mark Horowitz: A Harvard Professor's Fraudulent History of Hollywood

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/156539/jewish-hollywood-collaboration

It sounds like another cracked, anti-Semitic conspiracy theory dredged up from some Truther website, but it’s the thesis of a recent book from Harvard University Press, The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler, written by a freshly minted young Berkeley Ph.D., now Harvard Junior Fellow, Ben Urwand, and supported by documents culled from German archives, pages of supplemental notes, and back-cover bona fides from respectable historians like Richard Evans, who also reviewed the manuscript for the Harvard Press. “It is time to remove the layers that have hidden the collaboration for so long,” the author writes in his prologue, “and to reveal the historical connection between the most important individual of the twentieth century and the movie capital of the world.”

The Collaboration, however, reveals nothing of the sort. The book’s astounding claims are not only flatly contradicted by more credible accounts the author inexplicably ignores, but his thesis is undercut by evidence, old and new, he himself provides. The author misunderstands classic films, not to mention the social and political history of the period. One can’t help wondering why the Harvard Society of Fellows thought this book worthy of support and what Harvard University Press intended by publishing it.

More on this topic here, from Alicia Mayer: http://hollywoodessays.com/2013/12/18/face-to-face-with-ben-urwand-the-question-i-asked-and-his-reply/ 

Still more here, from Clare Spark:

http://clarespark.com/2013/12/07/ben-hecht-v-ben-urwand-the-un-jewish-left-and-assimilated-jews/

Alan Luxenberg Outs American Studies Association Boycott Leadership

 http://www.the-american-interest.com/articles/2013/12/20/hypocrisy-thy-name-is-asa/

The vote by the 5,000-member American Studies Association to support the academic boycott of Israel, reportedly by a 2-1 margin, has evoked many responses, but none so far has identified the irony at the core of the matter.  To show that irony, and the deeper problem it illustrates, you need to know that a couple of weeks before the ASA vote, the ASA’s 20-member National Council, which administers the ASA and is elected by the ASA membership, pre-voted in favor of the Israel boycott—and did so unanimously.

Can you imagine twenty serious scholars in any discipline voting unanimously on any controversial issue? I can’t, so I thought it worthwhile to examine the composition of the ASA’s National Council and to peruse its members’ academic profiles, as described on the webpages of their home institutions. This simple exercise reveals a stunning lack of diversity of intellectual interests and perspectives in a sector of American society, the university, that explicitly places a very high premium on “diversity.” The apparent obsession with gender, gay and race studies (or of U.S. imperialism) among the members of ASA’s National Council seems to come at the expense of scholarship on just about everything else.

You don’t have to take my word for it. See for yourself or, if you like, scan through the abridged academic profiles below of 18 of the 20 members of ASA’s National Council. All the information is drawn from the faculty profiles as presented on university webpages; none of the language is mine.

Ann Coulter - December 18, 2013 - MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS

Ann Coulter - December 18, 2013 - MENTAL HEALTH LAWS ARE TROUBLE FOR DEMOCRATS

Michael Oren: US Congress Could End Israel Boycott

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/will-congress-stand-up-for-academic-freedom-101379_full.html

But merely protesting this abhorrent decision will not succeed in reversing it or discouraging other similarly bigoted organizations from following suit. What’s needed is a way to fight back, and Congress can do it.

A successful precedent for that fight already exists in the defeat of the Arab economic boycott of Israel. That embargo began in 1945, before Israel's creation, when the Arab League voted to ban "Jewish products." Over the next 30 years, this boycott damaged Israel's economy—until America stood up.

In 1977, Congress passed a series of laws making it illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with any boycott of Israel and imposing stiff penalties on those that did. The boycott, Congress concluded, was not only racist against Israelis but all Jews. In signing the legislation, President Jimmy Carter, though a frequent critic of Israel, pledged to “end the divisive effects on American life of foreign boycotts aimed at Jewish members of our society.” Subsequent bills further underscored America's commitment to safeguard Israel from prejudicial bans.

Predictably, the Arab League dismissed these laws as a "hysterical campaign" imposed on the United States by "world Zionism." But when confronted with American steadfastness, the boycott began to unravel. Companies such as Pepsi, Toyota and Xerox, which had formally complied with the blacklisting, began doing business with Israel. By 1994, six Gulf Arab states announced that they were backing off the embargo, and the following year, Egyptian, Jordanian and Palestinian leaders pledged “all efforts to end the boycott of Israel.”

A similar legislative response could prove effective in quashing the movement to boycott Israel academically. Laws could be passed withholding federal or state funding from any academic program that knowingly blacklisted Israeli scholars or institutions or cooperated with associations that did. While an organization like ASA might prefer punishing Israel to receiving government funds, other academic bodies—including universities—most likely will not. At the very least, lawmakers on the local and national level can go on record expressing their unequivocal opposition to such boycotts.

Opponents of this approach will inevitably claim that it stifles academic freedom and open debate. The contrary is true. Legislation voiding prejudicial boycotts preserves the scholarly interaction essential for academic freedom. Open debate about Israel's—or any other country's—policies must continue unimpeded. What must not be allowed to continue is the isolation of one member of the international community on the basis of bigotry cloaked in academic righteousness.

As Israel’s ambassador to the United States and as an historian who believes in free academic exchange, I often spoke before college audiences and welcomed even those questions critical of Israel. But at the University of California at Irvine in February 2010, protesters tried to disrupt my talk and deprive all those present—students and faculty—of the right to discourse. No other visiting lecturer was singled out, only the Israeli. But 11 of those demonstrators were arrested, tried and found guilty of disrupting free speech. Academic boycotts of Israel aim at the same objective and they, too, can be legally stopped.

If the ASA vote were merely misguided, it might be overlooked. Unfortunately, history teaches us that even small acts of prejudice can multiply and become commonplace. But just as it stood up for American values in 1970s, so, too, today Congress can combat intolerance. By acting decisively now, legislators can assure that high education in American preserves its highest standards.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/12/will-congress-stand-up-for-academic-freedom-101379.html#ixzz2o3eoHNcB

Pam Geller on ASA's Israel Boycott

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2013/12/pamela-geller-the-jerusalem-post-.html

Read my column today in The Jerusalem Post.
Just as the sniveling American Jewish diaspora failed the Jews of Europe, we again witness these swashbucking cowards failing the Jews of the 21st century.
The above 3/4-page ad appeared in the New York Times in 1943. The ad was placed by the Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews (CJA), a pressure group founded by Peter Bergson, Broadway impresario Billy Rose, and Ben Hecht, among others, and was in response to an offer that had been made to the Allies by upper-echelon members of the Romanian government to assist in the transfer of some 70,000 Jews from their fascist state to Palestine or elsewhere.
CJA was denounced by mainstream Jewish organizations as alarmist, unethical, and overly militant.Much the way my work, in particular my savage ads, were denounced by American Jewish leaders. Inaction, submission and cowardice. History repeats itself.

... Israel has not violated international law or UN resolutions, and if these so-called academics had even a rudimentary knowledge of history -- the San Remo resolution, Balfour, the White Paper, and Islamic Jew-hatred -- they would apologize and retreat with their heads hung in shame. The ASA ought to issue a resolution that Islamic anti-Semitism is a violation of human rights, and that calls for a Jew-free “Palestine” are a human rights violation, and the repeated “Palestinian” calls for the destruction of Israel are a monstrous human rights violation.

This boycott should also be a grim wake-up call for those swashbuckling Jewish philanthropists who give over their wealth to colleges and universities -- families like Tisch, Stern, Steinhard, Silver, Kimmel, Wasserman, Levy. What is their legacy? They have built the structures and the machinery that are serving the agenda of the annihilationists and Goebbels-inspired hate propaganda...

Camille Paglia: It's a Man's World

Every day along the Delaware River in Philadelphia, one can watch the passage of vast oil tankers and towering cargo ships arriving from all over the world. These stately colossi are loaded, steered and off-loaded by men. The modern economy, with its vast production and distribution network, is a male epic, in which women have found a productive role — but women were not its author. Surely, modern women are strong enough now to give credit where credit is due!

Read more: It’s a Man’s World, and It Always Will Be | TIME.com http://ideas.time.com/2013/12/16/its-a-mans-world-and-it-always-will-be/#ixzz2nvsFmyfK

ASA Israel Boycott May Violate Federal and State Laws...

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/schooling-the-asa-on-boycotting-israel/

Last week, the American Studies Association’s (ASA) national council, unanimously passed a resolution calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The ASA, which bills itself as the “oldest and largest association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of American culture and history,” then took the unusual step of asking its reportedly 5,000 members to cast their own votes on upholding the anti-Israel policy. While the deadline to reject the resolution runs out today, Sunday, December 15, the ASA scholars, which fancy themselves as the leading authorities on all things American, seem to have overlooked one small matter – a boycott resolution of this nature violates international, federal and state law in the United States. They leave the ASA and its membership open to both civil and criminal liability.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Abbas Opposes Israel Boycott

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4095/abbas-bds

It is ironic that while Abbas is saying no to a boycott of Israel, the American Studies Association, an association of U.S. professors with almost 5,000 members, voted to endorse an academic boycott of Israeli colleagues and universities.

The U.S. professors obviously do not care about what the Palestinian Authority president has to say about the boycott of Israel. The professors, like BDS supporters, apparently believe that Abbas is a "traitor" because he is conducting peace talks with Israel.

Abbas's attack on the BDS movement is a serious embarrassment for the anti-Israel activists, many of whom are not Palestinians.

The statements have enraged BDS activists worldwide, with some calling into question Abbas's right to speak on behalf of the Palestinians.

Prominent Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab noted that Abbas's statement in Johannesburg "naturally has angered many Palestinian and international supporters of the BDS movement."

Kuttab wrote that Abbas's statement "reflects the absence of any clear strategy from the Palestinian political leadership except for negotiations. It is unclear whether the reason behind the Palestinian leader's public attack at the BDS movement is a result of trying to protect the Palestinian elite or not wanting to anger the Israelis and their US allies."

Abbas did, however, call on people around the world to boycott products of settlements. "No, we do not support the boycott of Israel," Abbas said. "But we ask everyone to boycott the products of settlements because the settlements are in our territories. It is illegal."