What if…?

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Michel Houellebecq

  

The scenario seems quite feasible. A Muslim political party gains enough votes in the general election in a democratic European country to serve as the key element in the new government. At the same time massive Saudi-Arabian funding is channeled into the greatly depleted coffers of the country’s leading academic institutions. Et voila! The result is Muslim domination of society.

This is the premise behind Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel Soumission, published in France earlier this year. The title, meaning Submission, is the translation of the word Islam, but more of that later.

In the novel, which happened to be published in France on the same day as the murderous attacks by Muslim extremists on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo journal and the kosher supermarket in Paris, Houellebecq describes the rather dull life of a minor academic at the Sorbonne at a time somewhere in the not-too-distant future.

Alongside his descriptions of various locations in and around Paris and other parts of France, as well as his account of his vapid academic work, the narrator gives lurid accounts of his sporadic sexual encounters, whether with female colleagues, former students or paid sex workers. He seems to be unable to work up much enthusiasm for anything or anyone, is used to being told by former lovers that they have ‘met someone else,’ and is torn between his need for sexual congress and his inability to form a close bond with any woman.

Among the strategies to which he resorts in an attempt to dispel his general sense of alienation and unease is a period of retreat in a monastery, but that, too, does little to dispel his sense of general dissatisfaction.

Meanwhile, in the course of the general election the Muslim party gains the ascendancy, and its very capable leader is appointed Prime Minister. It transpires that the academic regime at the Sorbonne is now subject to the laws of Islam. No woman may occupy a teaching post, female students must be covered from head to toe, and male members of the teaching staff are required to convert to Islam and take at least one wife. Those men who are over-occupied with academic life or are unable to find a wife for themselves are helped by matchmakers to make their selection from among the nubile young students.

Although the protagonist has been dismissed from his post and awarded a generous pension, he is envious of the enormous salaries paid to those staff members who have agreed to meet the demands of the new authorities in order to remain in their position. He attends one or two academic receptions and is impressed by the Middle Eastern delicacies on offer, which is hardly surprising since he has been living on a diet of takeaway food or pre-cooked TV dinners from the supermarket. What also strikes him at these events is the total absence of women.

In fact, it finally hits him that short skirts and low necklines seem to have completely disappeared from the streets of Paris, a fact he notes with regret.

A meeting with a senior member of staff, at his luxurious home, during which he is apprised of the fact that the man has at least two wives, one a teenager and the other, older, one a superb cook, seems to constitute the tipping point. His friend expounds on the superiority of Muslim philosophy and the supremacy of family values in Islam, with women owing complete submission to men, and men owing submission only to Allah.

The idea sounds appealing to our rather inadequate male, and so it comes as no surprise to the reader to find that in order to be eligible for the generous salary and prestigious academic position that is offered to him, and to be provided with at least one wife, the nameless protagonist is prepared to undergo the simple ceremony marking his conversion to Islam.

The progression is logical, the ideas propounded convincing, and it would seem to be the author’s contention that it is only a matter of time before all Europe succumbs to the overwhelming logic of male supremacy and the unification of all countries (including those of the Middle East and North Africa) under one set of laws, one language and one religion.

Complete subservience of women to men? Somehow I don’t see that happening in this day and age. At least I fervently hope so.

 

 

Days of Remembrance

 

photo: Yaron Brener

  Jewish and Israeli history is replete with both tragic and joyful events, and in fact the life of a Jew living in Israel is something of a roller-coaster existence, taking us from the depths of sorrow one day to the sublime heights of joy the next, whether it’s to celebrate one of the religious festivals or Independence Day, to mark the fallen in Israel’s wars or to remember those who perished in the Holocaust (not to mention other solemn days such as Yom Kippur).

 

Someone once said that those who do not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them, and no one can accuse the Jews of not being aware of their history. In fact, they have erected an entire set of religious beliefs to commemorate their history. Pesach and the Seder denote the exodus from Egypt, Shavuot marks the giving of the ten commandments at Mount Sinai, and Succot reminds us of the booths the Children of Israel erected in their forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

 

Whether by coincidence or design – probably the latter – those festivals, as well as others, also coincide with salient points in the agricultural calendar. In the farming communities of ancient times the seasons and the times of sowing, planting, reaping and harvesting were the main events of the year. Whether they warrant being elevated to the status of religious events is questionable in this day and age, but Jews being what they are the agricultural festivals have remained embedded in daily life, no matter how urbanized and mechanized our lives have become.

 

By the nature of things, Holocaust Day, Remembrance Day and Independence Day are relatively recent inventions. To make matters still more complicated, the first two take place within one week of one another, and the third on the very next day. So that instead of having time to wind down from the sorrow and emotional depths of remembering personal and national tragedies we are almost immediately thrown into a state of euphoria as we celebrate the fact that after so many centuries of suffering the State of Israel exists.

 

The problem for the individual is how to combine, cope with and also separate all those conflicting emotions. And if this is the case with adults, how much more so must it be the case for children?

 

The outgoing Minister of Education introduced a ruling to the effect that preschool children should be taught about the Holocaust. I am not alone in finding this offensive and totally out of place. Who knows what effect learning about the subject – no matter how it is modulated – can have on a young child’s mind? In last week’s newspaper I read a report of one preschool teacher who sent the little ones home with a yellow star pinned to their clothing. This was roundly condemned by all concerned, but I doubt that there’s any ‘right’ way of teaching this subject to infants.

 

It’s hard even for adults and older children to cope with the emotional burden of what happened in the Holocaust. Recently I encountered a protest on Facebook complaining that the day of mourning for ‘a bunch of Ashkenazim’who were killed long ago and far away’ is being taken to undue lengths in preventing the average Joe from watching a football match on TV on that day.

 

The growing divide between the various segments of the population in Israel, as was demonstrated by the recent election results, seems to have given rise to a situation in which some people are unable to understand why the nation as a whole should commemorate something that happened to other Jews in a distant place.

I doubt that anyone has suggested it, but perhaps it’s time to introduce a day to commemorate the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Maybe then those people who object to commemorating the Holocaust will be appeased.

  

‘The King’s Curse’ by Philippa Gregory

 

 Although I don’t share the enthusiasm that millions of viewers have for the TV fantasy series ‘Game of Thrones,’ I am fascinated by the lives and machinations of real-life monarchs. I recently learned that the idea for that series derives from the actual history of France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and I realized that it also bears a resemblance to the history of England at the same time, the period of civil war known as the Wars of the Roses. This was brought to the small screen in the excellent BBC series ‘The White Queen,’ which itself was based on the book of that title by Philippa Gregory.

 So I was overjoyed when our good friends from the Netherlands brought me a copy of the novel entitled ‘The King’s Curse,’ by the same author. That book deals with the life and times of Henry VIII, the son of the Tudor King Henry VII, whose defeat of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth and subsequent marriage to Margaret of York, Richard’s niece, put an end to tha conflict. It is a large tome, comprising almost 600 pages, so I had to wait until I had a decent period of time in which to devote myself to the book, and I found that once I had started reading it I couldn’t put it down.

 It starts in the year 1499 in London, where Henry VII has just executed the brother of the heroine-narrator of the story, Lady Margaret Pole, another niece of King Richard III. Lady Margaret is cousin to the queen and also her trusted lady-in-waiting and confidante. As a girl, together with her late mother, Elizabeth Woodville, Elizabeth of York had pronounced a curse on whoever had murdered her two young brothers in the Tower of London, thus ending any hopes the Plantagenets may have had of providing a successor to Richard III. Under the curse, the culprit would be left without male issue – the sine qua non for succession to the throne of England. According to Shakespeare it was Richard who was responsible for the murder, but evidently Philippa Gregory does not subscribe to that view.

 From the viewpoint of Margaret Pole, who has been stripped of her royal rank but permitted to remain at court in the position of lady-in-waiting to the queen, we learn about the way the life of the court is conducted, the political maneouvering within the nobility, and the tyrannous hold King Henry’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, has over her son and hence over everything that is decided at court and in the entire kingdom.

 After the death of her own husband, followed by that of her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, Margaret Pole is banished from court and forced to seek refuge in a nunnery, together with her two youngest children, while the two oldest boys are sent to live with a relative and the third son is placed in a monastery while still a child. The vicissitudes of Margaret’s life are described in detail, and eventually she is restored to her former estate and brought back to court.

 English history comes to life through the account Margaret Pole gives of the marriage of the heir to the throne, Prince Arthur, to Princess Katherine of Aragon, the death of the young bridegroom followed by that of his father, Henry VII, and the accession to the throne and marriage to Katherine of the younger brother, who becomes Henry VIII. The vagaries of the relationship between the husband and wife, focusing on the latter’s failure to give birth to a boy, dominate the narrative at this point. Our narrator, Margaret, becomes lady-in-waiting to Queen Katherine and develops a close friendship with her, to the extent that she is appointed governess of her daughter, Princess Mary.

 After Anne Boleyn’s entry onto the scene, first as Henry’s current love interest, later as his wife, the need for a male heir is the overriding subject that dominates that couple’s relations with one another and, eventually, Henry’s attitude to the accepted religion, the Pope and his own role as king. It is this which constitutes the motivation for the dissolution of the monasteries, the Reformation and the establishment of the Anglican church in England, revolutionizing the established social order and the relations between church and state in the kingdom.

 The rise and fall of Cardinal Wolsey, followed by the careers and fates of Henry VIII’s other advisors, Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell, also play a significant part in the book, and through them we gain a better understanding of how and why the various measures were introduced, steps taken and laws introduced, still affecting our world today.

 The reader gains insight into life in Tudor England at the level of the minutiae of individual life as well as at those of national politics and sociological developments. Never writing in a dry, academic way, Philippa Gregory reveals her deep and extensive knowledge of her subject, though her writing is never boring. This book provides the reader with a broad view of a time and place when people’s lives and motivations bore a clear resemblance to those of today, one that still reverberates throughout our current existence but one in which – thankfully – the English monarch no longer wields the power to execute subjects whom he or she regards as disobedient or menacing.

 In an author’s note at the end of the book Ms. Gregory mentions recent medical research which suggests that Henry VIII may have belonged to a rare blood type, inherited from his mother, which was incompatible with that of his wives, causing them to miscarry male babies, and also giving rise to his paranoia and physical degeneration in later life. This might explain some of Henry’s behavior, but I’m convinced that no imaginary TV series could ever come up with a better explanation.

 

Coffee, Cantatas and Bach

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abu ghosh, Andres Mustonen, Barrocade

 

 

A Saturday morning all-Bach concert in the neighbouring village of Abu Ghosh was an occasion not to be missed, especially as it coincided with a special birthday. And what an occasion it was! It marked the conclusion of the Barrocade ensemble’s concert season, featured Finnish violinist and conductor Andres Mustonen, and the programme included Bach’s Cantata no. 140, Brandenburg concerto no. 5 and his concerto for oboe d’amore. A rich programme indeed, and one that ended on a particularly attractive note – a performance of Bach’s Coffee Cantata

 

The history of the spread of coffee in Europe in the seventeenth century is the subject of legend. According to some reports an Ethiopian farmer noted the lively behavior of his goats after they had chewed the berries of a certain bush. From there the coffee drink spread throughout the Arab world, was traded by the Ottomans with Venice, and entered Europe via that route.

 

According to another account, when the invading Ottoman army was routed by the troops of the Holy Roman Empire at the siege of Vienna in 1683, the Turks left large quantities of tents, pack animals, grain and gold as well as sacks filled with green coffee beans. When the booty was distributed it transpired that no one wanted the beans, which were unknown in Vienna at the time. A Polish resident of Vienna by the name of Kolschitsky who had lived in Istanbul and served as an interpreter, offered to take the sacks. He knew how to prepare coffee, and later established the first coffee house in Vienna, from where the institution spread to the rest of Europe.

 

Coffee houses became meeting places and the scene of social gatherings, the forerunner of the men’s club; women were banned from them in England and France, while in Germany they were permitted to enter. In Bach’s time in Leipzig (1723 until his death in 1750) the Zimmerman Café was well known as a meeting place for musicians, it housed the Collegium Musicum, an ensemble that was established there in 1702 by Telemann, and it was there that Bach’s Coffee Cantata was first performed.

 

We all know Bach as a serious, prolific and God-fearing composer, and the cantatas he composed for performance in the framework of the weekly church service are a mainstay of the musical repertoire, not to mention his many other orchestral, chamber and choral compositions.

 

We also know that Bach had a large family, and it would seem that – perhaps inevitably – he also had a sense of humour. At any rate, the Coffee Cantata begins with the narrator telling the audience (in German) to ‘Shut up, and stop chattering,’ which probably reflects what was happening in the coffee house at the time.

 

The two main characters in what is essentially a mini-opera, the father, Schlendrian (literally, ‘Stick in the Mud’) and Lieschen, his daughter, are in disagreement because the father objects to his daughter’s habit of drinking coffee. The two engage in an entertaining musical duel – the father trying every ruse he can think of to stop his daughter drinking coffee and the daughter happily accepting every restriction he seeks to impose in order to be able to continue indulging in the habit. In the performance we attended the singers donned period costume and acted their roles, using props such as coffee cups of various shapes and sizes. However, when the father threatens to prevent his daughter from marrying she finally agrees to stop drinking coffee and urges him to find her a husband, though secretly resolving that whoever he may be he will have to allow her to drink coffee.

 

At this point, much to the audience’s amusement, the father started to point to one or another member of the audience, indicating that they might be a suitable match. But Lieschen has a plan of her own and it turns out that her choice has fallen on the personable young tenor-narrator. The cantata ends with all three singing joyfully about the delights of coffee, a beverage that is enjoyed even by mothers and grandmothers. The message seems to be ‘if you can’t beat them, join them,’ and that is possibly a lesson that Bach himself had to learn in his long and productive life.

 

(In honour of Yigal’s 75^th birthday)