Refugees

Tags

Bashir Assad, Israel, Jordan, Nazi Germany, Palestinian refugees, Syria. Lebanon

 

The general Israeli public is on the whole soft-hearted and empathetic towards those in need. The scenes we see on TV almost nightly of Syrian refugees pouring across the borders into Jordan and Turkey, sheltering from the snow or sweltering in the heat inside the flimsy tents of refugee camps, do not bring joy to any Israeli heart.

The scenes of bombed houses, shattered homes and devastated lives caused by both sides in the conflict arouse a mixture of emotions – horror at the atrocities being inflicted on innocent civilians just a few hundred metres from Israel, shame at the failure of the world community to put a stop to the carnage and mortification at the vicious effrontery displayed by Bashir Assad in bombarding his own population. The retaliatory attacks by his opponents arouse the same feelings of resentment and regret in all those who can do nothing but watch as a neighbouring country obliterates itself.

For political reasons Israel cannot allow itself to become a haven for those unfortunates, but it has allowed its medical services to provide succour to individual cases. To date over three hundred badly wounded Syrian adults and children have been treated in hospitals in Israel. There is evidently some form of tacit cooperation at work here in order to enable these cases to get across the international border between the two countries, with the person accompanying the injured individual also being allowed to enter Israel.

Israel has a long and complex record with the concept and reality of the term ‘refugee.’ Today the word is immediately associated with the Palestinian refugees, who supposedly were driven out of their homes in the course of the 1948 conflict in which the State of Israel was established. Never mind that many of those who left their homes then are no longer alive, and that numbers of them left because they were encouraged to do so by their leaders, it is a fact that the many millions of persons defined today as Palestinian refugees are the second and third generation of descendants of the original refugees and surpass them greatly in number.

When the State of Israel was founded all the Jews living in Moslem countries were expelled and forced to abandon their property. The tiny, nascent State absorbed them, swelling its own population and obliging everyone to drastically reduce their standard of living. Those refugees were also housed in tents and temporary encampments initially, but all the resources of the new State were mobilized to provide permanent housing for them and to integrate them within the wider society.

The Palestinian refugees, by contrast, were kept in their impoverished state by their host Arab countries and deprived of civil status in order to be cynically used as a tool for putting pressure on Israel and the world community. Current demands to grant them the ‘right of return’ into modern Israel is both a distortion of history and a sure-fire recipe for the destruction of Israel – the only Jewish country in the world – while there are dozens of Moslem countries with almost endless resources for accommodating these unfortunates, should they choose to do so.

My own parents were refugees. They fled Nazi Germany and were fortunate enough to find refuge in England, where I was born. After proving themselves to be worthy over the course of several years, they were granted British citizenship and I was a British citizen from the moment of my birth there. Similar stories are prevalent all over the world.

It’s a pity that the morals and standards  of humanity prevalent in the wider world do not seem to have penetrated the minds of those who govern Arab countries.

A Pianist with a Difference

Tags

Angela Hewitt, Bach's English Suites, Beethoven sonatas, Jerusalem YMCA, Stephen Kovachevich

 

 The recital given in Israel by Angela Hewitt, the Canadian-born pianist now resident in England, was an occasion not to be missed. Accordingly, we timed our return from Paris to coincide with the day of the concert. And so we were able to join the audience in Jerusalem’s packed YMCA auditorium to hear Ms. Hewitt play two of Bach’s English Suites (nos. 3 and 6) and two sonatas by Beethoven (nos. 18 and 24).

At a piano recital at the same venue a couple of years ago the distinguished pianist Stephen Kovachevich stopped playing after the first five minutes and complained that he was feeling cold, and that “it’s difficult to play when your fingers are cold.” The heating on the stage was promptly turned higher, and Mr. Kovachevich went on to give a stellar recital.

Consequently, although we felt perfectly warm, we were slightly worried when Ms. Hewitt walked onto the stage wearing a very elegant, and slightly revealing, evening dress. However, the temperature seemed to suit her very well, as she sat down and began to play without demur, much to our relief. I suspect that all that hard work at the piano tends to make one feel quite warm — something like a work-out at the gym.

From the very first moment that Ms. Hewitt’s fingers touched the keys one felt that one was in the presence of a magical being, one who was able to produce sounds that were both powerful and gentle, one who played with a mixture of authority and tenderness that brought an extra quality to the notes. To hear Ms. Hewitt play Bach and Beethoven with a technical virtuosity that seems almost inhuman, combining this with sensitivity and nobility of character, is an experience not to be missed.

In addition to her superb technical mastery, Ms. Hewitt’s warm personality shone through her playing, providing the music with an additional dimension. As she played she seemed to be transported to another world — and so were we.

After the official programme, at the audience’s request, Ms. Hewitt generously played two encores, and the audience would have stayed for more, but as we were taught as children, all good things must come to an end. And so we went out into the snowy Jerusalem night feeling warmed by the golden sounds still rippling in our ears.

 

Vienna in London

From Dorothea's Desktop

 

 London has many delights to offer all year round, but London at Christmas has a special atmosphere. I’m not talking about the sledgehammer-like advertising campaigns to get people to buy, buy, buy, but rather about the decorations all over the city, mainly festive Christmas trees festooned with many-coloured lights, some of which twinkle while others sparkle, producing a cheerful effect. In the pub where we like to eat ‘the best fish and chips in London,’ as they modestly proclaim, the array of lights at the bar was so intense and hypnotic as they flashed on and off that I was afraid it might cause someone (not me) to have an epileptic fit. Still, to be on the safe side I sat with my back to the bar. But Oxford Street at night, with its myriad lit-up trees and other decorations is a sight to be seen—a true Festival of…

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Vienna in London

Tags

Egon Schiele, Freud, Gerstl, Kaufman, Klimt, Mahler, National Gallery, Schoenberg

 

 London has many delights to offer all year round, but London at Christmas has a special atmosphere. I’m not talking about the sledgehammer-like advertising campaigns to get people to buy, buy, buy, but rather about the decorations all over the city, mainly festive Christmas trees festooned with many-coloured lights, some of which twinkle while others sparkle, producing a cheerful effect. In the pub where we like to eat ‘the best fish and chips in London,’ as they modestly proclaim, the array of lights at the bar was so intense and hypnotic as they flashed on and off that I was afraid it might cause someone (not me) to have an epileptic fit. Still, to be on the safe side I sat with my back to the bar. But Oxford Street at night, with its myriad lit-up trees and other decorations is a sight to be seen—a true Festival of Lights, which of course reminds us of the pagan origin of all such festivals seeking to erase the dark of winter.

Apart from lights, great theatre and a myriad other attractions, London excels in its art exhibitions, both permanent and temporary. Thus it was that while there for a couple of days we discovered, quite by chance, that the National Gallery was holding a special exhibition, ‘Facing the Modern,’ consisting of portraits painted in fin-de-siècle Vienna. This was exactly what I wanted to see, having the previous week encountered the Vienna-based Centropa organization at the launch of its book containing interviews with Jews from Vienna whose lives had been affected by the Holocaust, ‘Vienna Stories’ (my article on the subject will appear in the AJR Journal later this year).

Many of the portraits in the exhibition depict prosperous Viennese worthies, merchants, businessmen, society ladies and others, but what strikes the viewer is the number of subjects, not to mention painters, who were Jewish. The names of Egon Schiele, Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg are among the best-known, but there are many others, among them Richard Gerstl, Isidore Kaufman. Of course, as we all know, there were many Jewish artists, musicians, writers and intellectuals in Vienna at the turn of the century, most prominent among them Schnitzler,  Freud, Mahler and Schoenberg. Visitors to the exhibition will be surprised to find that as well as being a radical musician, Schoenberg also painted quite well, and tried to turn his hand at portraiture.

The message that the exhibition seeks to convey is that the traditional imprimatur of social success provided by a painted portrait was adopted by the burgeoning middle class, many of whom were Jews who had succeeded financially after the law restricting the movement of the various national groups within the Hapsburg Empire had been revoked in 1849. This enabled them to move to the capital, where many of them prospered while others sought to fulfil their artistic ambitions. Many of the pictures on show are self portraits, particularly those by Schiele and Gerstl. The latter committed suicide while still a young man, after his affair with the wife of his best friend, Arnold Schoenberg, was discovered. Before killing himself Gerstl painted a portrait of himself in full frontal nudity, as if he were trying to challenge every possible convention simultaneously.

The Secessionist movement of Viennese artists, like that of the Impressionists in Paris, proclaimed to the world its members’ rejection of the conventional painting style that was accepted by the artistic establishment, and sought to establish a new, modern way of representing the world, and the human face and figure in particular. However, according to the brochure accompanying the exhibition, the blossoming of intellectual and artistic life in Vienna all came to an end with the outbreak of the First World War and the subsequent end of the Hapsburg monarchy.

 

Rashi’s Daughters

Tags

crusades, Lillith, Maggie Anton, Middle Ages, Talmud, Troyes

 

  I have just finished reading the last volume of Maggie Anton’s monumental trilogy, ‘Rashi’s Daughters,’ which contains an imaginative reconstruction of the life of a mediaeval Jewish community, and in particular those of three Jewish women. The author has spent many years researching various aspects of life and society in Europe in the Middle Ages, and whoever perseveres with these immensely readable books should come away with a wealth of knowledge about myriad subjects. I certainly did (even though I’m not too certain about how much of it I’ll remember next week).

 Not a great deal is known about Rashi the person. All that is known is that he lived in Troyes, France, in the eleventh century, where he wrote his monumental commentary on the Torah and the Talmud. Here and there in his succinct and insightful comments there are glimpses into the life of the Jewish community of the time, including the fact that he had a vineyard and made wine. It is also known that he had three daughters and no sons. There is a tradition that these daughters put on tefillin, and observed various commandments that were not – and still are not – customary among orthodox Jewish women, but this is not documented.

 Be that as it may, Maggie Anton has given her readers a glimpse into a world that has previously been largely hidden. Thus, for example, the two focal points around which the lives of both Jews and non-Jews were concentrated in northern France were the winter and summer fairs, which served to attract merchants, many of them Jews, from all over Europe. The additional numbers swelled the Jewish community and many of the men came to Rashi’s yeshiva to study with him. We learn a great deal about the way of life of Jewish merchants, and get a vivid picture of the trials and tribulations, as well as the commercial successes, that were often involved. The period was one in which Jews on the whole were not subject to persecution and discrimination, but all that was destined to change not long afterwards.

 But Maggie Anton’s writing focuses mainly on the lives of the women—and what a fascinating kaleidoscope of knowledge, customs and beliefs emerges from the pages of the books. In those days pregnancy and confinement often endangered women’s lives, and an extensive lore of herbalism and superstitious beliefs were employed by the midwives and other womenfolk who tended to women at these times. Thus, we learn how figures were chalked on the floor around the bed, with the names of the protective angels Sanvi, Sansanvi and Semangelaf, in the room where a woman was giving birth, how Adam’s first wife, Lillith, was regarded as a tangible threat, how the tefillin of the woman’s husband were hung on the bedpost and how specific Psalms were recited, all this to ward off the evil eye.

 The processes of viticulture and wine-making in mediaeval times are described in considerable detail, and the reader is made aware of the immense complexity of this undertaking. Other aspects of agriculture are also described, as and when these are relevant to the course of the narrative. Maggie Anton displays a deep knowledge of Talmudic and other sources, and the book contains many such citations. As we read we see how the everyday life of the Jews was dominated by the strictures and commandments contained in these sources.

 Certain days were considered more auspicious than others, whether for setting out on a journey, holding a wedding or bar-mitzva celebration, or having a baby. The most impressive aspect of the three main female characters is, though, that while accepting the restrictions imposed by their religion and gender, they remain strong individuals with independent minds and the ability to think for themselves and stand up for their rights even within the male-dominated society of their time.

 Maggie Anton also attempts to give a picture of the wider, Christian society, as this affected the lives of the Jewish population. The period she writes about also saw the first crusades, with the murder and destruction of the ancient Jewish communities along the Rhine, and these events are also described, rather harrowingly, in the last book of the trilogy. The machinations and dynastic complexities of the local and regional royal houses is also given in not inconsiderable detail, according the reader some idea of the precarious nature of the rule of law at the time.

 In brief, this is a truly monumental effort, providing both entertainment and information. The reader benefits from the author’s extensive research that is served up in a form that is essentially a thoroughly good read.