Sorry, but it must be done:

A Distant Mirror: EVERYBODY Gone Wild!

Jake.....? You OK?

Robert, I also loved Tuchman's book when I read it years ago. Perhaps when I get through the mountain of good books I haven't yet read - right now I'm racing to finish Camus' "The Fall" (in French) in time for my book club on Thursday - I'll reread it.

Sara:

Now, I'm gonna say it:

Existentialists Gone Wild.

My head just falls into my hand: backward technology and agriculture, near total illiteracy, infant mortality, personal hygiene (not!), the world was flat. I wonder how, exactly, Jewish life fared and endured. More literate, I hope (for starters).

Jeremiah:

Very literate. In the Christian world only the clergy, for the most part, were literate, in the Jewish world it was not uncommon for women to be able to read, at least in prayers. How did Jews survive? One word: Torah.

I believe that all "babke" references have been replaced by "gone wild" references. Sigh...poor babke

Just here from Cathy Seipp's site, and to my surprise the first thing I read was a well-written summary of one of my favourite books ever. I shall read it again now!

I always remember thinking that it was Tuchman's premise that the Scots invited The Plague upon themselves by opportunistically invading the English when news of the Black Death made its way to Edinburgh.

Mike:

Any friend of Cathy's... You know, I have not read that particular section for a while. I'll have to read it again. The book is so rich with ideas and original notions that it's hard to keep it all straight. But it is a great reminder that the world we live in is a pale shadow of what was, and yet in a sense still remains.

I know there are some exalted things about medieval Europe - cathedrals, mostly - but thinking about those centuries mostly makes me sad. Not quite weepy, just misty. And this is before the Protestant Reformation....

Robert:

An addendum to your one word... the Rabbis of the Talmudic era made the Torah something that could transcend borders and the Medieval Ashkenazic took that ball and ran with it. Their teachings help Jews navigate what was really the "wild West" of Western Europe, (yes, yes, it is "Europe Gone Wild!" but I'm getting this out of my silly system), and find ways to survive. Just reading the responsa of Rabbeinu Gershom gives you not only an inkling of the crazy world that faced the Jews, but also the genius of a man who saw a way to create a community in the chaos without a sovereign Jewish government, without any guarantees of protection, and without any idea of what would come next. Think today's illegal immigrant Mexicans and throw in a Crusader or two and you have an idea what life was like for Jews in 1325.

Jake:

Not only the responsa of Rabbeinu Gershom. Rashi, and the Tosfos, and all who came after.

I hope you're not comparing illegal Mexican immigrants to medieval Jews for if there is one thing the Jews were always scrupulous about it was observing the laws of whatever country they were abiding in. No matter how hostile.

My grandfather worked for ten years to bring his family over from Poland. He was proud that he did everything legally, became a real American.

When I look out my window and see hundreds of illegals waving the Mexican flag and screaming 'Mexico!" my response is very simple: the border is right over there, cross it please if you adore Mexico so much.

I hate ingratitude.

Jews have always been the most grateful of citizens.

Robert:

No, in fact Lou Dobbs and I are of one voice about the illegal immigrants issue... (we talk about it every day, and today I showed him something interesting about immigration laws from Sean Willentz's new book... of course). In 1840, ad in 2006, greedy U.S. corporations and smaller employers are luring illegals over the border and forcing the middle class to pay their way. This is class warfare and most of us are losing.

I was only comparing Jews to illegal Mexican immigrants in that they both risked a lot to have a better life. Of course, the Jews had no native country to go to, so most of the comparisons end there!

"Jews have always been the most grateful of citizens."

Well, not the Communist and assorted Leftwing ones I've known: Leon Bronstein, Grigory Zinoviev, Rosa Luxemburg, Emma Goldman, Lillian Hellman. How about Weather Underground femme fatales Bernardine Dohrn and Kathy Boudin?

Jeremiah:

I was referring to the majority of Torah Jews. Not blood-thirsty Jews who all renounced their Judaism in the name of some fictional internationalism--which in the end killed more Jews. Stalin was an even bigger butcher than Hitler, let us never forget.

If only the Jews of Czarist Russia had Lou Dobbs on their side!

My bad: This Baal Teshuva forgot to wipe his feet at the door.

Robert did you forget about “The King’s Persons” by Joanne Greenberg (Takes place in the 12th century).
Here is your own review:
http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/searchview.php?id=13215

Jeremiah:

It's okay, you actually made a good point, which is: when Jews give up Torah and replace it some secular political utopian religion, it will inevitably come back to butcher them. Facism and Communism did it in the 20th century.

Michael:

Oh you, I was going to write about "The King's Person's" tomorrow.

I hope I didn't ruin your post for tommorow...

Michael:

No, of course not.

You know, I just noticed that history, like the news, tends to be really *bad*. In some ways things improve, but in other respects, they either get worse or find new ways of going bad. Kind of depressing if you think about it.

Fascism and Communism will do it again in the 21st Century.

Irina:

Read the book, then look out your window at America, and Americans, and you will feel just fine.

Jeremiah:

The great threat of communism died with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The fascism we must now fight is Islamo-fascism, of that there is no doubt.

But it's a two-front war. An extremely serious two-front war.

May I recommend "Five Days in London" by John Lukacs. It's about Churchill's momentous decision not to seek terms with Hitler in May 1940. The book is utterly gripping and Lukacs points out quite clearly that it was the intellectuals in England, the University upper crust, who had a grudging respect for Hitler and were the class most prone to defeatism. Churchill had to fight these Cambridge snobs tooth and nail. They considered him a war monger and fool. "There is no defeating Herr Hitler," they said in their plush club chairs.

Sound familiar?

Sorry, but no historian of medieval Europe reads Tuchman's book seriously. She does a good job of creating a very different time and place but not the 14th century. The book is filled with misconceptions about the middle ages.
On the other hand, back to your last post, Soldier of the Great War is one of my favorite books ever.

This is so familiar it can be an episode for my TV series, "Berkeley Hills 94720" :-).

Last year I was a guest at a dinner party held in the home of a Berkeley prof. Previously he'd organized a "Poets Against War" reading on campus. That night he'd gathered a group to listen to Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem", a work composed in the ruins of WWII, intended to lament all war - a highbrow "antiwar" favorite.

At least 2 things were fishy about this. The work itself was inspired by "antiwar" poet Wilred Owen who'd died in WWI. Now that was one lamentable war, but one with far different geopolitical causes and issues than WWII. So that's a strange stretch on the part of Britten. The other thing is that the prof was of a bent that the work applied to his own complaint about the U.S. having created a front in Iraq. So he was using a piece written circa WWII, inspired by work from WWI -- to denounce America's commitment to WWIV!

You say communism's dead, but it sure felt like what I think fellow-travelling intellectuals in the US and UK did routinely during the 1930s and 40s.

Deeni:

I've read quite a few academic histories of medieval Europe and nothing in Tuchman's work has ever struck me as being terribly at odds with what I'v read.

Unless you count her clarity of prose, precision of language and her blessed lack of dense academic jargon.

I've heard this objection to Tuchman's work before and it seems to me that Tuchman's greatest sin is her popularity and accesibility to average grunts like me.

Sorry Deeni, but I am no fan of academics, and I am not cowed by higher degrees. In fact just the opposite.

But it is nice that we can agree on Mark Helprin's work. Have you read his novella "Ellis Island?" It is... perfect. I have wanted to make it into a film ever since it was published.

Jeremiah:

Organized state communism is dead. Even China is moving away, quite quickly, from centralized communism. The French might be the only peoplee defending large scale Socialiist programs in the streets. But even the state is not behind the program anymore.

Look, there will always be communist/Marxist/Lenninist/Trotskyite fools in our upper classes who will dabble in this muck. Over-educated fools who disguise their tyrranical anti-Semitic impulses within Marxist rhetoric.

We have seen enough of these fools to know what happens in Act III. Isaac Babel watched impassively as his Jewish brothers were slaughtered by Cossacks and then wrote acceptable socialist art about it; and he was shocked, just shocked, when Stalin's agents came for him in the middle of the night.

No, these are individual fools who exist in our universities and feed off of each other. They live in an echo chamber. But they do not replicate, by which I mean they do do not have children in great nuymbers, and so they will disappear.

It's the Islamic world we have to fear. They are disciplined, they despise democracy and freedom, love tyrrany, and they hate Jews, women and homosexuals.

Sound familiar?

Yes, familiar. And with a new twist: "The Islamic Threat is Greater Than German and Soviet Threats Were", by Dennis Prager
http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/dennisprager/2006/03/28/191502.html

Robert, I would agree Islamo-fascism is a bigger threat than organized communism, but unfortunately, there remains a threat of socialism out there, including here, spread by crazed liberal judges, scary types such as Chomsky and other hateful lunatics, especially seen in colleges...and politicians quite willing to pander to socialist tendencies, though never calling them that. While I love this country and believe it is still free, we also have to watch those freedoms are not usurped by these closet socialists (and that is a problem for both sides of the political aisles...the governent grows like Topsy under both Dems and Republicans, and I do believe that is a bad thing).

This might sound like lunatic raving too, but I remember hearing Paul Harvey on the radio, after the Kelso decision at the Supreme Court..and he used the word "communism" to describe it..and I think he was right. But there are many more egregious examples.

Why does this happen? The elitist fools buy into it...but the average person listens to demagogues railing against free markets, and that person doesn't understand basic economics...just that they are getting "screwed" by Big Oil and Big Pharma and Wal-Mart etc. Right now we seem ok, but if there is a bad economic downturn, I will worry about what "solutions" will be proferred...most will be socialist in nature, I believe.

On Pesach we talk about Laban as the enemy from within. I think we have those "Labanites"...but we ultimately have to watch out for the Islamofascists..but there are already alliances forming with these groups. That's another long discussion.

As for immigration...there are many problems with the current situation, but you have pointed out the differences from when our parents and grandparents came over. They wanted to be AMERICANS with all that meant: Freedom and the chance to freely pursue betterment. Freedom was a gift, and liberty gave one a chance for a life without midnight knocks from the secret police, and the suppression of liberty.

Yet, no one came with the expectation that they would be handed anything. The streets were paved with gold, they were told, but they didn't argue when they got off the boat, when they found it that it only meant there was OPPORTUNITY, not a handout (notwithstanding the formation of aid societies that helped the poor immigrants...but that is very different than govt. welfare)

My grandparents had nothing..worked like dogs, played hard too, but built up a life and businesses, learned English and loved this country, even as they retained their identity as Jews. They were AMERICANS. My dad, as a refugee after the Holocaust, came out of the DP camps and was brought over on a Bnai Brith scholarship, plunked down in the then cow-town of Lincoln, Nebraska and went to school. He learned English, worked hard and eventually became a Ph.D. microbiologist. He retained his Jewish identity, but he was an AMERICAN.

They took the opportunity when they came here to better themselves. The only handout was the scholarship and the boat trip here, for my dad, who truly had no resources..but once here, and after finding out where the few relatives he had were, he relied on their largesse, but later paid them back.

My relatives were not unusual. This was not unique to the Jewish refugees, as those from all over the world came just wanting to have a chance for betterment, without the repression of the old countries.

My dad cried when Nixon resigned...why? Because it was a bloodless coup, it did not lead to death and violence...the system, flawed as it can be, worked..and life went on. And he cried because he had direct experience of how things were done in other countries, with executions and riots and death.

So excuse my prolix entry here, I get passionate about this...we should allow and encourage immigration, but for those who want to be Americans...they can still be Hispanic, they can retain their heritage, as my relatives did...but learn to speak English ALSO, adopt the ideals of this country, don't stay on welfare and yes, obey the laws of the country.

Dinai d'malchusay dinai. The Talmudic dictum Robert is talking about translates to simply "the laws of the land (lit: Kingdom) are the laws. Jews DID obey them, and learned to navigate where necessary between the exigencies of those laws and of Jewish law. It was never easy, but Jews realized that it was necessary, for without obeying laws, (and another discussion of course is about bad laws and injustice), there is chaos.

Thank you for reminding me of this book. I gave it to my father for his birthday in 1979 (just checked the inscription) after reading a review because he loved history. It became his all-time favorite gift and for 15 years, until his death, my sister and I tried unsuccessfully to match the gift of this book.

Maurice:

Thank you for your thoughtful and as always articulate comment. It's always wonderful to hear from you.

I'll only respond to your notion that we do have to worry about communists at our gates.

I agree that there are academic Marxists/ Lenninists/whatevers in our "elites." But they are not carrying Kalachnikovs. They are firmly middle and upper middle class and believe me, they are not about to rise up and agitate among serfs in Brooklyn. They value their vacations in the Hamptons too much to rock the boat. They are children. Annoying children to be sure, stupid children, but children who can easily be dealt with. Threaten them with bodily harm and all you will ever see of them ever again is... dust.

No, as Mao correctly noted, power comes out of the barrel of a gun. From the Islamo-fascists who really are willing to kill and die for their beliefs. From rogue states and territories, who are anxious to train and give safe haven to transnational terrorists: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, North Korea, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Gaza, etc.
It is here where the true life and death battles will be fought. The rest is a side-show that you and are fighting every day with our words.

Maurice:

On Dinah D'Malchutah Dinah: (Literally, "The law of the land is the Law," Intended Meaning: "The Civil Law of the non-Jewish country is the civil law you must obey as a Jew).

This was the ultimate genius of the early Ashkenazic Rabbis; a single statement that ensured most Jews could move about where opportunity allowed them too. Even if a Rabbi or an accompanying Jewish court could not be found.

The illegal aliens swarming into our country could use a little Dinah D'Malchutah Dinah right now. They should obey the law, become citizens and put away any thoughts of the hellish world of Mexico that caused them to risk their lives to get here in the first place.

And our elected leaders, including President Bush and Ted Kennedy, should start respecting the laws of their own native country and throw off the corporate masters and the ultra liberal groups who for once have something in common: a disrespect for hard-working Americans and the existing law. Actually, I've suspected that ultra liberals and corportate apologists have had this in common for a long time.

Congratulations to you Maurice and your parents for your adherence to the law while achieving the American dream.

Robert, I agree with you about Islamofascism being much scarier, and everything you wrote in response to my earlier email. I think I just get profoundly upset that in this day and age, that ANYONE with half a brain could advocate any form of socialism or gloss over what happened to the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Cuba..and it does worry me.

I do believe it makes us less able to deal with the threat of Islamofascism. Rome fell because it was rotten in the core, as much as it was attacked externally, (though I don't draw every single parallel that some do).

Jake, your response was fantastic, both about dine d'malchusey, and about the corporate capitalism and ultra-liberal groups. I haven't read a more succint and to-the-point summary of what ails us.
I think many folks don't understand about corporate capitalism, and equate what goes on with truly free markets...which we do have in many areas, but not in others. And where I worry about what could happen here is based on that misunderstanding: If we have a downturn, it will be placed on "free markets"..and not on the many distortions to those. Complex issues, I know, and I have no claim to having many answers..but thanks for your answer, I enjoyed it.

This is a wonderful site, Robert, on so many levels, but one of those is the level of intelligence of your readers, and I just want to say thanks for your writing and for all the responses you give to everyone. It is time consuming..but appreciated.

Maurice:

I think your passion against communism/socialism is wonderful and I agree that we must always be on guard. No argument. I also get upset with idiots who advocate for Cuba or the current whack job in Venezuela. But usually these regimes self implode sooner or later.

Islamo Fascism on the other hand shows now signs of waning or imploding. In fact, with the tacit support of a billion silent "moderate" Arabs, it seems to grow more powerful each day.

So, Maurice, follow the trail of the beheadings. It leads to the Arab world, not to Harvard or Yale. They just like writing multi-cultural defences of the beheadings. We can deal with those idiots later.

Thanks so much for your kind words. I've said it many times: Seraphic Secret is nothing without its amazing readers and commenters.

Agreed, Robert. Islamofascism is far and away the biggest danger to the world Demographics alone make it something to be feared. I read somewhere that one cause of war is where there are two many young men, in particular, with not enough to do, and the pressure from the demographics builds up and is let loose by war. I know it's a simplistic explanation...but it would be an additional problem; the Muslim birth rate is high across the world, the number of those in their late teens and twenties seem enormous..and the ideology is hideous. All in all, a terrifying prospect.

I agree that academic prose is often deadly-- and academic writers can certainly be inspired by good writers. But it still doesn't make Tuchman's book good history.
I have Ellis Island on my coffee table as I type. Simply beautiful. As is A Winter's Tale (although I can't say I got all of it, it is once of the first books I read after 9/11 and it really affected me). But none of these are as great as Soldier of the Great War-- that would make a fantastic film. I can just picture the scenes in the Dolomites...

Deeni:

I remember arguing with a film professor that John Ford was a far better director than Federico Fellini and he said that Fellini was an artist whereas Ford was merely a Holllywood craftsman. Now, finally, the pendulum has swung to Ford's side in academia, and Fellini is rightly seen as a pretentious and overblown European blowhard.

My point being that Academia goes through fashion and phases just as the clothing industry does. Tuchman is out now, but in a few years, mark my words, she'll be back in.

"Soldier of the Great War" has been optioned and some terrible scripts have been churned out. My feeling has always been that it would make a much better mini series, say 14 hours. But try and get a network to commit to something that vast for a project of such quality.

BTW, Helprin's father was in the film business. Helprin hates the movie business and everyone associated with it. He especially hates the Hollywood limosine liberals who spout the stupidest rhetoric ever heard on planet earth.

Thanks for writing Deeni. Look forward to hearing from you again. This is fun.

P.S. Did I ever mention that I used to be a rock climber? Never made it to the Dolomites, but did climb in the Shawangunks.

"And with a new twist: "The Islamic Threat is Greater Than German and Soviet Threats Were", by Dennis Prager."

Thanks for the tip - I just did a post about this.

Yehudit:

Thanks so much for bringing your post to our attention.

Robert - Good book selection. When I read it in 1981, it opened my eyes as to how history can actually speak to the present day. I understood the Nazis as not a "one off" event but rather a technological update of old behavior.

I have a related question: should "crusade" be a dirty word. When Bush used it immediately after 911, he was, well, crucified. Last year, I happened to be watching C-SPAN speeches from 1952 of Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson. Stevenson talked about a "crusade" in a positive manner. Then, a few days later, Ike in his acceptance speech said "I know a thing or two about crusades" , bragging in fact: his wartime autobiography I believe was "Crusade in Europe".

So - are "crusades" good or bad?

Judd:

I do not believe that Crusade should be a forbidden word, though during the First Crusade, hundreds of Jewish towns were utterly destroyed by Crusaders and thousands of Jews along the Rhine were slaughtered in the name of the Christian G-d.

The current queasy fear of offending Muslim sensibilities by using the word "Crusade" is absurd. It's just a case of us allowing ourselves to be intimidated by Muslim thugs. The Orwellian use of language is the first step any tyranny uses to oppress its poulation. The Jihadists well know this. Americans, unfortunately, do not.

In short, some Crusade are good, some bad. But here we are talking about the control of language.

Thanks so much for asking.