The Wandering Jews

Six weeks, eleven flights, six states, one one-week cruise and four countries (not including the USA). That is feeble compared with the Beatles’ tour of the USA in 1965 (twenty-five cities in thirty days), but they were much younger than we were (and probably flew first class). One (distant) relative looked at our itinerary and shuddered in horror. I’ll admit that the prospect of all the flights, airport security procedures and hanging around that was involved filled me with something akin to dismay, but in the event, everything worked perfectly.

Our main objective was to spend time with Ariel, our son-in-exile, and his new wife, Lisa, followed by visits to friends and relatives scattered throughout the USA. One of the results of WWII was to disperse our parents’ families to the four corners of the earth, with the USA playing a major role in providing a haven. Staying in touch with the various relatives hasn’t always been as easy as it is today, in the digital age of instant communication, but contact of some kind has almost always been maintained.

Thus it was that we were able to visit relatives and friends we hadn’t seen for several years, and it seemed to us that they all went to extraordinary lengths to make us comfortable in their comfortable homes, to get us together with other members of our far-flung family and to amuse and entertain us royally. Words cannot convey our gratitude to them all or express our joy at having been able to meet so many of them and simply just hang out together, and sit and chat and feel at our ease. In this way we were able to enjoy San Diego, California; Richmond, Virginia; Baltimore, Maryland and New Orleans, Lousiana, in addition to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Despite the nasty stuff that appears in the news, America is still an enormously prosperous and varied country, with amazing cities of every kind. Las Vegas greeted us with its bright lights and pezzaz, but it also has its suburban life, similar in many ways to other US cities. In New Orleans all around our hotel in the French Quarter were jazz bands and street performers banging on drums, juggling or tap dancing at all hours of the night and day. Other places were more sedate, even bucolic in a suburban kind of way, though what awaited us in New York was far from rolling countryside. Everywhere we went we saw construction, both commercial and residential, under way, and most of the people we encountered seemed well-dressed and well-fed.

We also enjoyed a Caribbean cruise. The choice was between a week in New York in chilly November or a spell in warmer climes and the chance to visit tropical isles, so we decided to go for the cruise. We had already spent a few days in Mexico City, in search of the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and our visit happened to coincide with the legendary Day of the Dead. That was all interesting enough, but we also managed to squeeze in a very enjoyable (albeit exhausting) trip to the remains of the Aztec pyramids, thus satisfying our thirst for history, archaeology and art in one fell swoop.

Before leaving the USA we returned to Las Vegas to spend Thanksgiving with our new family, and that was quite an experience. Being able to participate, however modestly, in the massive preparations for the traditional feast was a privilege and a joy, and to sit down with eighteen other people at the beautiful table and partake of so many delicious dishes was an event the memory of which we will continue to savour and relish for many a day.

As for the cruise, well, that deserves a blog post of its own.

77 Miles of Jewish Stories; History, Anecdotes and Tales of Travel Along I-8 by Donald H. Harrison

The 70 chapters of this book appeared originally as individual articles in various editions of the San Diego Jewish World, the website edited by Donald Harrison that provides a wide variety of items culled from Jewish and other publications around the world. Harrison’s knowledge of Jewish-associated subjects, whether historical, geographical, political, social or general is encyclopaedic, and his writing is always lively and interesting.

Veteran journalist that he is, Harrison invariably finds an interesting ‘peg’ or angle to which to attach the item he is writing about, and in this particular instance the general scheme is based on his peregrinations along the Interstate route that abuts the border between the USA and Mexico, generally clinging to the southern part of the region in and around the city of San Diego (southern California).

Harrison has remained true to his motto, and that of his website, ‘There’s a Jewish story everywhere,’ and his efforts to confirm this have proven to be very fruitful. In addition, he is an expert in the history of San Diego and has authored a book giving the biography of Louis Rose, the first Jew to settle in San Diego in the early years of its foundation, in the 1850s. Who would have believed that one of the first residential developments in the city was named Roseville, after the man who conceived and executed the project, and that a memorial to the man is still in place there?

When I interviewed him, Harrison told me that he had decided to drive along I-8 and take every exit in turn, though it’s not clear whether he did this in the chronological order in which the chapters appear in the book. Be that as it may, the compilation contains a fascinating array of anecdotes, human interest stories, historical developments and events concerning Jews and Jewish communities along the route he describes, ranging from the Mormon church’s San Diego Family History Center reached from Exit 8 to the Beth Jacob orthodox synagogue at Exit 10, with Chabad of East County (Exit 13) and Qualcomm Way and Stadium, the telecommunications giant co-founded by Jewish electrical engineers, Irwin Jacobs, Andrew Viterbi and others at Exit 6.

All in all the book provides a fascinating and varied picture of life as it is lived in the USA and possibly elsewhere, too, simultaneously reflecting the similarities and differences between Jewish communities and individuals wherever in the world they may be.

Winds of Change

The latest event on the world stage, the not-very-stellar re-election of Angela Merkel and rise of the AfD party in Germany, seems to fit into the pattern that has characterized elections all over the world in recent years, with the rise of right-wing parties.

Some people think it started with Brexit, followed by Trump, but in actual fact it started much before that, right here in Israel, with the ongoing re-election of Binyamin Netanyahu and the Likud party, recently bostered by other, even more right-wing parties such as Jewish Home.

Support for Israel’s Labour party, which represented the generation of pioneers and socialist idealists who toiled and fought to establish the state of Israel, has declined steadily in recent decades. This has been due in part to lack-lustre leaders as well as to disillusion with the ideology – or lack of it – advocated by the party. The party seems to have never really recovered from the mortal blow delivered to it by the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, though the shift to the right began with the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and its aftermath.

As is the case elsewhere in the world, the right wing in Israel tends to be supported by those segments of the population that are largely poorly-educated and ready to swallow populist slogans trumpeted by cynical politicians and the public-relations firms they employ. In Israel there is the additional element of apprehension regarding the Palestinian population and the intentions of the neighbouring Arab countries. One cannot deny that there is a basis for some of these fears, as concerted military actions from the outside and occasional terrorist attacks from the inside have shown in the course of Israel’s history. The arrival of over a million immigrants from the former USSR has also bolstered the right-wing electorate. The ideological right wing in Israel claims the monopoly over advocating the right of Jews to have a country of their own, even though this was the guiding principle behind the actions of the socialist pioneering generations.

The right-wing tendencies that have emerged in Israel, as well as in countries that once advocated egalitarian ideas, tolerance of ‘the other’ and the provision of welfare for those unable to support themselves, have served to bring to the fore the baser aspects of human nature. The Biblical tenet of loving one’s neighbor as oneself has been supplanted by the concept of cut-throat competition and survival of the fittest. Xenophobic and beggar-my-neighbour behaviour is tolerated if not condoned, and the general atmosphere is clouded by public assertions that would have been unacceptable less than a decade ago.

Tensions within Israeli society are being exacerbated by irresponsible politicians, and utilized by some of them to further their own interests and careers. It is pitiable to see how far Israel has moved away from the high ideals that once characterized it and to observe the antics of the individuals who  now represent the electorate in the Knesset. But they are able to say in their defence that they are simply emulating the example of our cousins in other supposedly enlightened countries. Although there is some truth in this, it cannot be denied that we were there first.