Another Great Rebbe

I have been blessed with many great rebbeim, and other teachers, over the years.

This morning, probably inspired by the rain, someone in shul asked if they've started saying ותן טל ומטר in חו"ל yet. Turns out the rain didn't wait for them this year, as they begin the night of December 4. Then I remembered that tomorrow night is a Friday, so they actually begin Saturday night. Then I remembered that next year is a leap year, so they would have begun December 5 anyway. It's all very confusing, not to mention quite inaccurate. I prefer the Israeli schedule.

That reminded me of my eleventh grade rebbe in MTA, R' Isaac Suna, זצ"ל. We were having a hard time understanding all this- I suppose this would have been twenty-four years ago exactly, also the eve of a leap year- so the two of us went into the library, pulled down the Encyclopaedia Judaica and other books, sat down, and hashed out the whole astronomical calculation. He was quite the teacher, in many different ways.

At the end of the school year, he gave me an inscribed copy of his book, on the perush of a Rishon on Nedarim, published by Mossad HaRav Kook. One day I shall tackle it...

Wow! First time I missed a month! So I'm cheating and back-dating this one. Here are some Facebook posts from the past month or so you may find interesting:

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So Kerry is "cautiously optimistic" (of course; diplomats always are) as he brings Netanyahu's "proposals" to Abbas and Abdullah.

Now, I can't speak for Netanyahu, who I generally like but who can do some very silly things sometimes*, but the rationalist in me wonders what on earth such "proposals" can be. I'm reminded of something I was once told about R' Eliezer Berkovitz. Asked about theological dialogue after the Holocaust, he said, "How's this for dialogue? 'Stop killing our children, thank you very much.'"

*Although if the news means what it implies, it seems as if Netanyahu's "proposals" are basically Berkovitz': "Stop killing us, thank you very much." If that's the case, maybe Kerry shouldn't be so "optimistic."

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Hannibal Lecter asked Clarice Starling if the lambs have stopped screaming.

One wonders if the odious John Kerry believes that by suppressing Jewish rights and blaming Jews for their own deaths, he will keep all those murdered Kohn relations- and, even more importantly, the little Kohn inside him- from screaming.

Ah, who'm I kidding- the man has probably never had an introspective moment in his life. Whether that's better or worse than being a self-hating quasi-Jew I don't know.

Is that a bit harsh? Well, too bad, because the newspaper really ticked me off this morning. OK, I'll try to be nicer to the Prime Minister:

Oh, Bibi. Oh, Bibi, Bibi, Bibi. Remember how the other day I said you sometimes do silly things? Well, caving in to anti-Semitic demands and, at the same time, rewarding terror are two such examples of silly things. I can't quite decide whether making John Kerry happy is sillier than those, but it ranks up there.

(Since, of course, Netanyahu has explicitly called for exactly the opposite in the past, we must wonder at what stage he is a liar and/or a craven politician- before he takes office, or during his term.)

(By the way, the definition of "chutzpah" is Kerry's own State Department criticizing Israel for not allowing Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. You know what? Keep your honey, and keep your gall.)
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More imaginary "What if ordinary people got to talk frankly to important people without all the diplomatic niceties" conversations:

"King Abdullah, you like to present yourself to the world as a pleasant, nice kind of Arab monarch. We could almost be fooled into thinking you are civilized. You even appeared on Star Trek once. So let me ask you: For some bizarre reason, Israel has decided to let you, an illegitimate usurper of Palestinian national rights, and on what is legally Israeli territory, in fact, control Judaism's holiest site. With that in mind, why are Jews constantly harassed and forbidden to pray at that site by people literally employed by you?"

"Oh, and before you open your mouth, let me assure you that the only acceptable answers other than, 'I'm terribly sorry, I'll put an end to that,' are 'I have a gun pointed to my head by the majority of my population, who are rabid anti-Semites,' or 'I am a rabid anti-Semite myself.' Thank you."

Here's another one:

"Rabbi Tau, the chardali leaders who hold in your thrall made a lot of hay in the 1990's playing on people's fears of Oslo, claiming- lying, in fact- that they were the only true right-wingers who would oppose such things. So why would you lead this effort- I assume you led it, because whenever you're not front and center on something we can safely assume you're pulling the strings- to cave in to Arab demands about the Har HaBayit?"

"Again, the only acceptable answers are 'I am really a charedi and actually can't stand any of my supposed supporters,' or 'My entire life and movement have been almost solely motivated by animus against R' Stav and everything related to him.' Thank you."

(I think one reason Tzohar, Beit Hillel, et. al. really get their goat is that they stay away from politics and have lots of right-wing members. That keeps them from the fate of, say, Meimad, which we're assured, not very honestly, stood for more than Oslo.)

That's all for now! In nicer news, if you listen closely, you can hear the trees and other plants saying shira.
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I always find it a bit jarring that the very last line of the Yom Kippur Avoda- the culmination of all the highest-level tefillot you can imagine- is something as seemingly prosaic as "ועל אנשי השרון היה אומר: יהי רצון מלפניך ה' אלוהינו ואלוהי אבותינו, שלא יעשו בתיהן קבריהן" 

I think I only came to appreciate it today, when (unbeknownst to us in Jerusalem) those risks became- as they seem to have become for thousands of years- all too real. There's the obvious point that at the very moment we're praying for rain and expecting it to start within weeks, we, and the kohen gadol, need to emphasize that they should be גשמי ברכה, without flooding or building collapses.

But more than that, there's a certain poetry in the idea that we can go from the sublime to the (again, seemingly) mundane like that. That our prayers are not only about the "big" things like war and peace, but also have concern for the everyday person, living "far" from the Temple, whose life and livelihood are at risk from the rains. May we all be protected.

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Some notes on Israel:

-Yesterday, the mother of a murdered terror victim was making her statement before the Supreme Court regarding house demolitions and said some angry but not really offensive words. She was cut off by the Chief Justice herself (or Herself, I suppose I should say) and told that "Even bereaved mothers should have limits."

Wow. Being thin-skinned certainly seems in vogue among our elites, worldwide, doesn't it? I don't think actual monarchs would actually do something like that.

Notice to Miriam Naor and all her ilk: If you're the type of person who can't take the occasional insult or hear things that make you uncomfortable, well, perhaps you shouldn't have elevated yourself into a position of power over us proles. Welcome to the real world.

-The newspaper reported that the Knesset cafeteria has been moving silverware from public access for fear of stabbings. Considering the level of Knesset security (you can't enter the building unless you have a good reason), that sounds either bizarre or really troubling. But it does remind me that "סכו"ם" is my favorite Hebrew word ever.

-I saw the new Field Intelligence berets for the first time yesterday. As I expected, although they're officially tan, they look a lot more like yellow to me, which makes sense considering that berets and unit flags often match, and their flag is yellow and white. It got me thinking that the IDF has pretty much covered the entire spectrum now, and then some- there are fifteen colors total, including a few shades each of blue and green, black, grey, and even sort of white.
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A number of years ago, I attended a shiur of Professor Shnayer Leiman. He read a story that had recently appeared in a number of charedi sources- a newspaper, a book by Ruchama Shain, etc.- always with a few variations. He then read the original, which was a short story by Agnon. (At the end, R' Leiman added a very interesting take on the whole thing. Details can follow if wanted.) At some point, some charedi writer had passed it along and it got mistaken for fact.

As often happens when R' Leiman does something like this, there were protests from the audience. "Well, um, maybe Agnon was reporting something that had actually happened." "No," came the reply. "He wrote fiction."

This came to mind again when I picked up this week's "Ish Le-re'ehu," a charedi-ish parsha sheet produced and distributed locally. Right there on the front page was a story about a tzadik who gave away his etrog to preserve shalom bayit. It was familiar to me, because a translation of the story into English was published on the internet only a few weeks ago. It was, of course, a short story by none other than Agnon. My, he's the gift that keeps on giving. (Just this morning I noted sadly to myself that you don't see the old fifty shekel bill with his face any more.)

(By the way, some of the details of the Hebrew version are a bit "frummer" in a disturbing way. Knowing the text of the original it was lifted from makes that more disturbing.)
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Yesterday was R' Meir Kahane's twenty-fifth yahrtzeit. I am sad to report than unlike last year, the signs legally posted around south Jerusalem were torn down.

The only time I heard him speak was at the Young Israel of Hillcrest back in November of 1989. It was the days of the First Intifada, and he delivered some, shall we say, clarifying thoughts. The audience, properly, ate it up. Toward the end, he spoke, as he often did (and wrote) about the importance of aliyah.

Some neighbors gave us and others a ride home. In the car, they were all pumped. "Oh, he tells it like it is!" and the like. One of kids then asked, "What was that at the end about moving to Israel?" and his parent waved it off with, "Oh, that's his usual mishegas."

I was young, but they say the young have better phoniness detectors than others, and I detected it right there.

As I later read his writings, I discovered that this was an acknowledged lack of tact on R' Kahane's part. As he put it, he valued truth more than success, and so pushed issues (notably for his early days, support of the Vietnam War) that he could have left unmentioned or unstressed, even if it turned off potential followers. And my, did he promote aliyah. Wrote a whole book about it, in fact. I imagine he realized what effect it had.

Or did it? Right after his murder, Yoram Hazony, no Kahanist he, wrote a eulogy in the Jerusalem Post in which he pointed out (based on personal experience) that while he might have no attracted huge numbers of actual followers, the influence R' Kahane had was vast, in bringing people- who may not have agreed with his more famous and controversial opinions- to Jewish practice, to caring and working for the Jewish people, and to making aliyah. Maybe that was an influence on me. (Although, being, unlike Hazony, a good fanatic, I long ago learned not to disagree with anything R' Kahane said.)

Knowing R' Kahane, he was probably happier with that fact. It brings to mind the positive attitude of Shlomo Carlebach (yahrtzeit also last week, also an admirer-not-follower of R' Kahane) toward those who he had brought so closer to Judaism that they had stopped speaking to him.
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A bit late, but I have a random thought: As much as they may disapprove of the "settlements," and may, in some cases, actually harbor real animosity toward "settlers" and/or religious types and think they are the root of all the violence, I can not recall a left-wing Israeli ever once saying something like "Why are there attacks in Tel Aviv? We're not settlers!" That should tell you a lot about who feels they're part of society and who doesn't.

(The same seems to hold true of the small number of right-wingers who think secularism is the spiritual cause of the violence, or the larger number who think leftism is a direct cause of it. They may think it's the cause, but you never hear "So why are we being attacked?" from them.)

(Michael Moore did say something like this after 9/11, but he's stupid and has no class, and is not an Israeli.)

On a completely different topic, am I the only one who is a bit uncomfortable with the idea of an eight year old whose parents were murdered almost in front of him being made into the star attraction at a mass convention? Can't it wait until he's eighteen, or sixteen, or at least bar mitzvah?
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So Moshe Halbertal was heckled and disrupted while giving a speech at the University of Minnesota. Halbertal is about as far from a far right-winger as you can imagine, but, you know, "Zionism" and all, and we can't expect careful thinking from anti-Semites in general, and these A-rabs and their leftist fellow travelers in specific.

Meir Kahane was once heckled (with "Allahu Akbar," imagine the Upper Midwest being a hotbed of Islamism as early as 1990) at a speech at the very same university. He stepped out from behind the podium, waded into the scrum of screamers, and physically pushed them off the stage. Now there was a man. Israeli academics should take a lesson. Rough these coddled millennials up a bit and maybe they'll get shaken out of some delusions.

(Two weeks later, someone brought a gun, and that was that. Chaval.)

You can find the whole speech on Youtube, but here's the relevant part. Alas, the video cuts out for a second at the crucial moment.
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I love finding two seemingly unrelated news stories and tying them together.

The EU is moving ahead with their plan to label products from Yesha. It goes without saying that the EU will not do this for Catalonia, the Basque Country, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Gibraltar, Western Sahara, Ceuta, Tibet, Goa, eastern Ukraine, Crimea, western Poland, Kurdistan, etc. etc., but, you know, Jews.

Ayelet Shaked is pushing forward with her plan for transparency in international funding of NGOs, which is actually a very sensible and internationally accepted idea. The usual suspects (obviously including the Israel-haters at J Street) are howling, and most affected will likely be the EU, which underwrites a whole lot of the anti-Israel crowd, because, you know, Jews.

Depends whose ox is being gored, I guess.
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Sometimes I think Bibi appoints people to official positions just to...well, maybe not shut them up, but to keep them quieter.

Bibi: If I promise to stop being such a fanatic on Facebook, will you give me a ministry? Even a small one?
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Imagine conversations if statesmen could really speak their minds (or, better, if I had a chance to talk to them), part whatever:

"Secretary Kerry: You're over seventy years old, for God's sake. The President is a bit younger, but still theoretically a middle-aged man. Now, we all know- we have for years- that both of you are prone to acting like little children, especially when you don't get your way. But at least you can try to act like adults. I thought we were taught that bit about 'sticks and stones' in kindergarten. And if you're going to act like a Southerner when it comes to 'honor,' at least go the whole hog, slap someone in the face with a glove, and challenge them to a duel or something. I thought it was the Asians and Arabs who had all those hangups about 'saving face,' and we know we're that's gotten them. Again, grow up.

"Oh, and Israel is a- say it with me- sovereign state. We've never told you who should be Undersecretary of State for General Moneywasting or whatever.

"Bibi: See the last paragraph above and grow a spine. They're never going to like you, and you give them this and you'll find them b****ing about Hotovely or Danon or Bennett next."
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Woke up this morning to discover that every mailbox in the building (and, I assume, the neighborhood) had been stuffed with Hebrew-language literature from the local branch of the Seventh Day Adventists. ("Shomrei Shabbat," they call themselves here.) There was quite the variety- some got a shrink-wrapped set of about fifteen booklets, some got different paperback books, and the va'ad bayit box actually got a hardcover. I perused it a bit and will take it to the recycling bin tomorrow, not that the effort isn't appreciated. When I hit the part about how the universe was too created in exactly seven days and only heretics would say otherwise, it got a bit too fundamentalist for me. :-)

Two very different things occurred to me only later:

1. This is probably illegal under Israeli law.

2. Distributing this- or even having it distributed- on Saturday itself is probably not a very good way of advertising how seriously you take the Sabbath.
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 I love this line:

'כדי לא למכור את הארץ פעם בשבע שנים לגוי, מכרו אותה לעשר שנים לעם הארץ'
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Veteran's Day deserves a World War I story:

"At this point lieutenant Paul Jurgen Vollmer yelled out over the noise asking if [Alvin] York was English. See, in WWI, no one really took the Americans very seriously, and everyone thought of them as the rookies. Vollmer figured this crazy/awesome/ballsy soldier must be some kind of English superman who was showing these sissy Americans how it was done. When York said he was American, Vollmer replied 'Good Lord! If you won't shoot any more I will make them give up.'

"Ten minutes later, 133 men came walking towards the remains of York's battalion. Lieutenant Woods, York's superior, at first thought it was a German counter-attack until he saw York, who saluted and said 'Corporal York reports with prisoners, sir.' When the stunned officer asked how many, York replied 'Honest, Lieutenant, I don't know.'

"...And York's the one who was a pacifist."
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Back in the 1980's, Israel issued some coins with a tiny hanukiyyah and the word "Hanukka" on them- I have no idea if this was only done on the holiday, and can't imagine why they did it. I used to see them every now and then, but haven't for a while- I think they discontinued the practice about twenty-five years ago.

Just today, I got change- actually for exchanging bottles, appropriately enough- that included a 10 agora coin from 1990 with the Hanukkah imprint. Isn't that a nice gift for Rosh Chodesh Kislev? Chodesh tov, all.
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I imagine you have to do something- go to a certain school, have a certain background, I don't know- in order to pull something like this off. I wish I knew what it was.
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I suppose saying "I told you so" is generally in bad taste. But I remember annoying my teammates when, in a series of debates about immigration over twenty years ago, I insisted on beginning by pointing out how legal immigration in the form of refugee requests has put the West at risk for terrorism. (I was basing myself on the first WTC bombing which had just taken place. Their annoyance disappeared when I won the debates.) Ah, plus ca change...

One of those debates, by the way, was against the woman I'd eventually marry. :-)

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On Elementary as on all TV mystery shows the guilty party is never the first (or second, or even sometimes the third) suspect. But when said first suspect is Red China, you just know there's no way they'll be guilty. Hollywood will never tick off a market of a billion people. In fact, it's why you see more and more Chinese people in big action movies; it is in fact why you see so many more action movies (no need to translate).

And, of course, one of the official representatives of the PRC will get to throw an unanswered sarcastic remark about the US in there somewhere.
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There were two stories in Friday's paper that caught my eye. One made me scream and one made me roll my eyes:

- Nir Barkat is very angry at Moshe Kahlon, who apparently is refusing to meet with him about Jerusalem's budget. (Interestingly, Kahlon's brother until recently sat on the City Council as part of Barkat's party.) So Kahlon responded- get a load of this- that he's met with Zeev Elkin, who's "Minister for Jerusalem Affairs," a pointless position that was supposed to have gone to Barkat anyway. Great.

- Aryeh Deri is very openly trying to bribe Eli Yishai back into Shas, thus far unsuccessfully. Deri's brazenness is amazing: "I'm offering him good money!" he declares. "Why won't he come back to the true path?" I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.
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A couple of points about Paris:

- Rolling Stone Magazine exists, it seems, to stroke the egos of aging 60's rock and roll fans. They were all delighted to report that someone set up a piano outside the venue in Paris and played "Imagine."

I was pleasantly surprised to see how many of the comments made the obvious point that that is a stupid and dangerous song. Perhaps there's hope.

- The exporters of products from the "occupied territories" should seize the opportunity. I imagine the hard-core anti-Israel types who would boycott them (and who probably boycott Israel, period) are not as numerous as the ordinary Europeans who are fed up with all this coddling nonsense. Write "WEST BANK" in big letters and see if it helps, why not.
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Around when I first started my blog, a friend (actually the same friend who actually started my blog, long story) told me I was like "Buddha with a sword." I eventually renamed the blog that, but it was only much later that I entered those words into Google and discovered that Buddha-with-a-sword is actually a real thing. Oh, sure, the sword is supposed to symbolize wisdom or something, but it still looks totally bad***. It's called Manjushri, and here's some of many examples you'll find out there. (One is sitting on a lion.)  If anyone ever finds one in a flea market, pick it up for me.

(By the way, "fat Buddha" is actually found only in some cultures. Buddha is generally skinny, as you'd expect of someone who spent a lot of time meditating- "contemplatin' his ever-diminishin' navel," as some British comedian once put it. In some versions, he's practically skeletal.)
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 My Mom spent a semester in Israel just under sixty years ago and took a bunch of home movies that we still have. One of them was taken in the courtyard of the then President's Residence, nowadays Yad Ben Tzvi but back then occupied by Yitzhak Ben Tzvi himself. (That's the guy on the hundred-shekel bill, for now.) I especially remember that she focused on the State coat of arms as part of the film.

Yesterday we were taking the lad home and passed that very spot. I turned my head to see that same coat of arms, still mounted on the same wall. I've seen it before, but for some reason it hit me yesterday. It was a moment.
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Just noticed that Jimmy McMillan is running for president, in the Republican primaries. All is well.
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The aspect of this whole (latest) Hazan contretemps that is most interesting to me is this: The original insult/"accusation" that he lobbed at Elharar was exactly the same thing that got his father thrown out of the Knesset. (In that case, it was really egregious, and of course Elharar was completely innocent.)

I put "accusation" in quotes on the off chance that Hazan is somehow obsessed with clearing his father's name and throws the charge around as a way to show that everyone does it or something. (Again, completely falsely.) But I don't give this boor that much credit. Probably it's just a family stain that he can't get off his mind and it pops out of his mouth every now and then, to the extent that he'll even mock someone's physical disability to say it. Like I said, a boor.

I suppose one more irony is that he probably wouldn't be in the Knesset now if his father hadn't preceded him. You'd think there'd be at least 120 decent, deserving people in a country of eight million...
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To all New Yorkers, present or former: Happy Evacuation Day! Yup, that's the great New York City holiday that got nudged aside by Thanksgiving.

(Evacuation Day is also a holiday in Boston, but in March.)

And if you think that a holiday limited to one city is a bit extreme, when I was growing up, we actually had a holiday limited to only two boroughs of that city, Brooklyn-Queens Day. And then the kids in the other boroughs whined that it wasn't fair that they had one more day of school than we did, and so they gave everyone off. (I remember the Anti-Defamation League wasn't too happy about Brooklyn-Queens Day either, but they can't be happy about anything.) Another tradition bit the dust. Well, at least we can read about and celebrate them both as we wish.
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So apparently, while I wasn't paying attention, National Geographic went and essentially* sold itself to Fox.

(*Magazines, TV, books, internet, etc.- all their media stuff. But that's a lot.)

It seems there are a bunch of lefties in the expect lather about this. I wonder if they actually read the magazine. I subscribed for twenty-five years and think it might be a great thing.
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 Today's paper raises the claim that Israel is offering all sorts of goodies to the PA (the "government," such as it is, and the people) to stop the terror. (Obviously, attacks will "have to" continue for a few more months, because that's the way of the world.) Leaving aside that blackmail is not ever the way to conduct business, not by individuals and not by allegedly strong countries, there are some other troubling implications here:

1. The PA is admitting that it controls all this, in which case they should get diddly squat and be violently shut down.

2. They are lying, in which case ditto ditto.

Returning to the blackmail point, this also indicates that (again, if the PA is not lying) that there is a real cause behind all this, in which a creative mind should be able to figure out some way to address it without caving. There are creative minds in positions of importance, no? Or are they all too busy planning how to get into politics more quickly when their current position ends? (You know who I'm thinking of here.)

(However, in contrast to all of the above, see this. Which negates all the above, but is disturbing in another way, in that there seem to be important people who think this is all reasonable and can be used as a pressure point.
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We visited the new exhibitions at the Israel Museum today. I especially like the one on designers of Hebrew fonts in the early days of the State. The Albrecht Durer exhibit was also quite impressive- I hadn't known that the Museum owned the works it does. There was also a very good exhibit of Man Ray's works, which of course put me in mind of this clip, one of the best parts of a great movie. (It took a Youtube comment for me to get the angle that this is Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody- think what they have in common- discussing a rhinoceros.) They had one of Man Ray's chess sets on display, as I was hoping they would.
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Israel's attitude toward race-I won't call it "racism," because it really isn't- can be a bit off-putting to an American, and maybe even refreshing in the face of too much tiptoeing on the other side of the ocean. (And maybe not.)

Eliezer Marom is the immediate past commanding officer of the Israeli Navy. He was born in Israel; three of his grandparents were ethnically Jewish but his mother's father was Chinese, and it shows on his face. He's in the news today for unfortunate reasons. Now, I know there's a real thing in Israel about using Army and other nicknames throughout a person's life, which is how we get Bibi and Buzhi and Bogie and Gandhi and Fuad and so on. But I really don't think that an American newspaper would keep using Marom's nickname, which basically translates as "Chinaman," the way the papers do to this day. I mean, the headline on the first page literally begins, "Son of Admiral (reserves) Chinaman..." and you don't get to his real name until deep into the article itself.

(English Wikipedia politely tells us that his nickname is "Eli." Click to the Hebrew version.)
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I don't approve of the YMCA posting invitations to kids for a Christmas tree-decorating party around the city. Call me old-fashioned.

I approve even less, though, of people tearing down those paid for, legally-posted ads. That is all.

In other holiday news: Having suffered through another frankly offensive email about "whether or not it's muttar to celebrate Thanksgiving" (the Rav is "J.B.," wouldn't you know), it occurs to me that the same exact agonizing is visible, I assume among the same exact people, every 5th of Iyar. Funny how that works out.

(True story from my father: One Wednesday in November, the Rav announced, "Shiur is early tomorrow, boys. I have to catch a flight back to Boston so we can eat turkey at my sister's house."

As a Purim issue of one of YU's papers put it, "The Rav preferred his stuffing and cranberry sauce on the side. Being a Brisker, the Rav did not approve of sweet potatoes."

As both Efrat and R' Rakeffet point out, being a Brahmin, the Rav took Thanksgiving very seriously.)

In non-holiday news: Every year I face the question: Is saying something new in Shemona Esrei a matter of thirty days or thirty days worth? That is, v'tel tal umatar is not said on Shabbat, at Musaf, etc., so its period might be longer than that of, say, mashiv haruach. I asked my rebbe once and was told it's a machloket.

Well, one way or another, that period is over today. (That is, we've said v'tel tal umatar as many times as mashiv haruach is said in thirty days.) And they haven't even started saying it in chutz laaretz, thanks to Pope Gregory of all people!
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The Rambam states in a letter that he has made a personal holiday of the anniversary of the day he first went up to the Har HaBayit.

I accordingly marked the anniversary myself, which was the fifteenth of Kislev, 2004. That was last Friday; I hereby mark the anniversary here.

Just in time, a popular Jewish blogger has, once again, as he has numerous times in the last few months, decided to declare that I, and any other Jew who has fulfilled the mitzvah of aliyah l'Har HaBayit, has blood on his hands.

Well, to quote his fellow Upper Midwesterners, the Norwegian farmers of Lake Wobegone, tellwiddem. I hope God assists in giving me the opportunity to go up again soon.
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Wow, that's a lot. Happy December!

The Passing of a True Rebbe

From my brother comes the sad news that Rabbi Shmuel Klein has passed away. A product of Torah Vodaas and Dropsie College, he taught Gemara at Ramaz' Upper School and was the ba'al koreh at my father's shul in Queens. My parents, believers in out of the classroom education, had my brother and I learn (not at the same period of time) Navi with him every Shabbat afternoon- I learned with him week in, week out for at least seven or eight years, finishing all of Neviim Rishonim and Yishayahu and beginning Yirmiya before high school got too busy. (I finished most the rest of Tanach at YU and on my own, but basing myself on what I'd learned with him.) He was also the Bar Mitzvah teacher for both of us, and encouraged us to keep layning afterward, which we both did. We inherited a somewhat unique style from him- to this day, people will come up to me in Jerusalem after hearing me layn and ask if I have a brother in New Jersey. :-) In both settings, he was a remarkable rebbe from whom we learned so much.

I was actually just thinking of R' Klein a few days ago as we read about the generations from Noach to Avraham- how he once gently pointed out that maybe they didn't actually live to such advanced ages, and that something other than plain p'shat is intended. I remember him saying, "Now, I realize that some people may be uncomfortable with this view, but it's a legitimate one." 

Another time, when we got to Chapter 40 of Yishayahu, he said, "I should just point out that a lot of people say that from this point on, the sefer was written by someone else. As we learn it, you'll see why they say that." He never said it was right or wrong, or even mentioned it again- but that one mention was worth quite a lot. In addition to all I learned from him on the topics we were devoted to, those little notes that were tossed in meant a lot- expand your mind, don't worry if things don't make sense at first, and maybe not every solution out there is as treyf as people say they are- look into them and work them out for yourself.

And to this day, I find myself using his expressions: "Give me a second," I'd say, and he'd smile and answer, "I'll give you two seconds!" Pops out of my mouth all the time.

And to top it all off, he was also a fan of Gilbert & Sullivan- I used to run into him and his wife at performances. (Performances of the same New York company that is no longer putting on The Mikado, because the world has gone mad. Well, we are carrying on with a new production here in Jerusalem, at least.) That says something to a young Orthodox man as well.

Yihi Zichro Barukh.

Apparently he *did* say these:

My favorite Yogi Berra line: Asked if he thought whether Joe DiMaggio's marriage to Marilyn Monroe was good for baseball, he answered, "Well, I don't know if it's good for baseball, but it's gotta beat the hell out of rooming with Phil Rizzuto."

My Bronx-raised father's favorite Yogi Berra line: Berra was rooming with third baseman Bobby Brown, who was going through medical school at the time. (Fascinating man. Look him up.) One night, Brown was reading a medical textbook in bed and Berra was reading a comic book. Berra leaned over to Brown and said, "I hope yours is as good as mine!" (Different versions exist.)

Interestingly, neither is a Yogi-ism. So, alas, here is one: "It ain't over 'till it's over." And it is.

The Man Who Brought People To Life

Some of Oliver Sacks' stories were almost unbearably sad and poignant. After all, he treated, among others, the sort of people who just couldn't have the cliched "happy ending," something which takes strength in and of itself.

Other stories were amazingly uplifting. And almost impossibly, most if not all of the sad ones were uplifting as well.

Above all, his stories were, to use a word I once saw applied to him, humanizing. He brought the individual out in a way that a dry case study could not.

And then, as he faced the end of his life, he somehow found the strength and skill to do all of that with his own story. We are all enriched. RIP.

Edited to add: The following was the last sentence he ever published. It is beautiful, and beautifully appropriate:

"I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest."
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The number of protesters outside Bibi's home is multiplying. Now, there are some people in tents protesting Hotza'ah LaPoal and/or Bituach Leumi. (It's hard to tell, and lately their signs haven't gotten mixed together with those of the hunger-striking "Women for Peace." It's a fun block.) They yell at us (alternating in Hebrew and English) for taking the lad out in the sun. (Lest you think we are bad parents, he wears lots of sunscreen, which of course they can't see.) The leader has been laying out in the sun herself for a while. Today, she had a volume of the Zohar with her. Ah, Jerusalem.

Two on the Fourth

My parents had occasion to mention the New Carrollton, Maryland train station. Here's what I wrote back:

New Carrollton brings to mind some July 4th trivia. One of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was Charles Carroll of Maryland. The Carrolls were a major Maryland family- there are actually a few "Carrolltons" in Maryland, which is why this one (which is named for Charles Carroll) changed their name to "New Carrollton." In fact, there were so many Charles Carrolls in the family ("Carroll," of course, is Latin for "Charles"), including his own father and son, that this one signed his name "Charles Carroll of Carrollton," after the place where he had a home (although a *different* place from New Carrollton), which is how it appears on the Declaration itself.

Maryland was founded by Catholics, but by this point had actually become very *anti* Catholic. The Carrolls were all Catholic and Charles couldn't enter a lot of professions in Maryland, but still managed to become very wealthy and prominent. He was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration. Just to show how short history can be, he was one of the founders of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, which ran right through Montgomery County, which is where we got started. :-) The "B&O" is one of the railroads in Monopoly and existed until relatively recently.

Carroll died in 1832, the last surviving signer of the Declaration (the last to die before him were two of the authors themselves, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who both died on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after the Declaration). The movie National Treasure, which is based on a supposed secret the Founders held, opens with his dying before he can fully reveal the secret, and the rest of the movie is about adventurers trying to solve it. In real life, his descendants remain a major Maryland family.

And now you've seen the word "Carroll" so often it's lost all meaning. :-) Don't forget to get a fifth on the third to have a happy Fourth!
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(From yesterday:)

John Adams, in a letter to Abigail right after American Independence had been declared:

"I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more."

Well, he was right about all but one thing: He wrote the letter on the third of July, and was talking about the *second* of July, which is, in fact, the actual date of the United States' declaring independence. Look it up. Happy Independence Day!

A Few More

OK, a few more posts from Facebook (links can be found there), because I have such loyal readers:

Whitey Bulger is the gangster they based Jack Nicholson's character in "The Departed" on. He was on the lam for over fifteen years, was caught a few years back, and is now serving two life terms. He's 85.

A bunch of kids wrote to him for a history project. Here's part of his response:

"My life was wasted and spent foolishly, brought shame and suffering on my parents and siblings and will end soon...Advice is a cheap commodity some seek it from me about crime — I know only one thing for sure — If you want to make crime pay — 'Go to Law School.'"
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In honor of Art Garfunkel (a Kew Gardens Hills boy, like Paul Simon and myself- I only realize now that their childhood homes were a few blocks from mine) visiting Israel, it's time for Ali G:

Ali: What is Art Nouveau?

Professor Arthur Danto, Columbia University: [Explains.]

Ali: What is Art Deco?

Danto: [Explains.]

Ali: So what is Art Garfunkel?

Danto: ...a singer...

Ali: So ain't that confusing for young people?

Danto: It may be, but it would astonish me if it was.
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 So they're filming the scene in "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers" where Wormtongue kills Saruman (it's in the Extended Edition), and Peter Jackson is telling Christopher Lee (Saruman) what to do. Lee interrupts him to point out that that's not what people sound like when they're stabbed in the back.

During World War II, Lee had been in the Special Operations Executive, aka "the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare," aka "Churchill's Secret Army," aka "the Baker Street Irregulars" (they were headquartered down the block from Sherlock Holmes' place). Also on the team was Ian Fleming, who based most of the James Bond characters (M, Q, Moneypenny, etc.) on people he'd worked with there.

So while Lee didn't talk about what he'd done as an agent, he knew of what he spoke when correcting Jackson. And then he went on to have another amazing life. RIP.

(I love this quote from him:

"When people say to me, you know, were you in this? Were you in that? Did you work in this? Did you work in that? I always used to say 'Can you keep a secret?' And they would say 'Yes, yes' and I would say 'So can I.'")
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 Wow. I'm quoting Joe Biden:

After only four months in the United States Senate, as a 30-year-old kid, I was walking through the Senate floor to go to a meeting with Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. And I witnessed another newly elected senator, the extremely conservative Jesse Helms, excoriating Ted Kennedy and Bob Dole for promoting the precursor of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But I had to see the Leader, so I kept walking.

When I walked into Mansfield’s office, I must have looked as angry as I was. He was in his late ‘70s, lived to be 100. And he looked at me, he said, what’s bothering you, Joe?

I said, that guy, Helms, he has no social redeeming value. He doesn’t care — I really mean it — I was angry. He doesn’t care about people in need. He has a disregard for the disabled.

Majority Leader Mansfield then proceeded to tell me that three years earlier, Jesse and Dot Helms, sitting in their living room in early December before Christmas, reading an ad in the Raleigh Observer, the picture of a young man, 14-years-old with braces on his legs up to both hips, saying, all I want is someone to love me and adopt me. He looked at me and he said, and they adopted him, Joe.

I felt like a fool. He then went on to say, Joe, it’s always appropriate to question another man’s judgment, but never appropriate to question his motives because you simply don’t know his motives.

ותבקע העיר

A couple of days late, but:

According to a plain reading of the account in Yirmiyahu (52:10, the only one in Tanach with a date), the walls of Jerusalem were breached on the 9 of Tammuz. (This is the event we mark on the 17th, a week from now; the Bavli and Yerushalmi reconcile the two dates in different ways, and I've heard others as well.)

That was in 586 BCE, exactly 2600 years ago. (2015+586=2601, but there was no year zero.) Not especially significant, except that things ending in "00" tend to make one think.

I'd have added more when I posted this on Facebook, but the world has grown frightening, unlawful, irrational, immoral, and somewhat sad (whew!), so I retreat to my blog- "the inner recesses of my home," as Justice Alito might say.

It's been over twenty-five years, but I still remember the flag burning case. What particularly sticks in my mind is the complete lack of a well-crafted response from the Right. No argument that the Court had got their moral case (e.g., that this wasn't "speech") or legal case (e.g., that state action wasn't protected) wrong; certainly no argument that this didn't come under the court's purview, and certainly no attempt to take practical steps to address any of that. No, all that came were populist calls for an amendment, something that would never happen and which implicitly conceded all of the Court's arguments. It merely was a good talking point, was good for stirring up crowds, and (taking a page from the Left) served only to tar those with a more nuanced view of the process (while having an identical view of the desired result), thanks to general ignorance of civics.

Yes, I think that concession has borne fruit, in too many ways.

As long as I've mention Facebook, here are some recent posts, for those who check in only here:
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Tonight I participated in a wonderful reading of "The Tempest." I was Prospero, among others. A small number of attendees meant I had some heated discussions with myself.

I also had a piece of a Vegemite chocolate bar. It's actually quite good. (And to all those disbelieving souls, yes, despite not a drop of Commonwealth blood in me* and not having tasted it until I was well into adulthood, I actually very much enjoy Marmite.)
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I should be used to it by now- whenever there's some big local sports victory, motorcades of fans come tearing down Aza beeping their horns. Even at 12:25 in the AM. When it started tonight, I didn't have to be told that Jerusalem won.

Maybe they want to make sure Bibi knows. One of them was screaming his name just now. Barkat knows, of course- he was down on the floor with the team.

Well, go Jerusalem!

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For some reason, the Bar Association is sponsoring an evening of speeches on "Diabetes and Obesity: Plague of the Century."

Between presentations, there will be coffee and cake (and, I assume, bourekas), because, you know, Jews. And Israel.
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I've just started a book I bought (thanks, Shavua Sefer!) about the archaeological excavation of the altar on Mount Ebal, in the Shomron, in the 1980's and 1990's.

At the end of a long list of acknowledgments- dig personnel, students, volunteers, institutions, local Jewish Shomron residents- the author writes (translation mine), "And we must mention our Palestinian friends, who for obvious reasons cannot be named." That's kind of sad.
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Sometimes I feel like grabbing Israeli law firms (and others) looking to hire olim by their figurative lapels and pointing out that the types of people who *would* match their listed qualifications are not, ahem, the type of people who make aliyah.
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Things that happen to me more often than you'd think, part whatever:

I'm in a city I'm not from, that I barely visit, that I know very little of apart from where I'm headed, and not even that, having gotten lost a bit earlier. I get stopped by a random citizen who asks me where X is. We are nowhere near X, but by sheer coincidence, I just came from the same block. I give directions and feel like a big-shot native.
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I can be a real cynic, but last night, I attended a screening of Yehuda Avner's "The Prime Ministers" and the waterworks turned on. A good Zionist refresher. A well done event, Yeshiva University Israel Alumni!

Interestingly, it was the same day as I inquired as to his details so I could get a memorial plaque for him (one of my duties as gabbai). I never met him myself, but apparently he was a longtime mitpallel at Kehillat Renanim. And whaddya you, in the movie itself, he's describing learning of the Yom Kippur War while in shul, and there's a picture of our beit knesset's building. (Granted, Heichal Shlomo is one of the more prominent buildings in the State of Israel.)

I was thus able to tell his daughter, from whom I got the actual details, how much I enjoyed the film.
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Today is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. I'm reminded of the story of how Paris newspaper headliness tracked Napoleon's progress through the 100 Days (from when he left Elba until his final downfall):

The Tiger has broken out of his den!

The Ogre was three days at sea

The Wretch has landed at Frejus

The Brigand has arrived at Antibes

The Invader has reached Grenoble

The General has entered Lyons

Napoleon slept last night at Fontainebleau

The Emperor proceeds to the Tuileries today

His Imperial Majesty will address his loyal subjects tomorrow!
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Many years ago my mom got me a Sherlock Holmes doll. The lad has grown quite interested in it lately, and only today did I notice that his coat buttons feature the symbol of the People's Liberation Army (Red China). Now how did I miss that?

(It's not a great mystery: The doll, like everything else these days, was made in China, and the factory probably had some military contract and so had spare buttons lying around. My grandfather worked in a place that made insignia during World War II and would sometimes bring my Dad spare US Army buttons. I don't think he still has any...)

I remember when we passed the toy store and I (already an adult, but a huge Sherlock Holmes fan) pointed it out in the window, not asking for it or anything, and then one day my Mom, bless her, brings it home. I think the place shut down not long after that. :-)

Ben Meah Shanim

Back in 1996, shortly after being elected Prime Minister for the first time, Bibi went to the US. He spoke to Congress and in a number of other places. I remember we were in Israel and followed him from afar.

At one talk before Jewish leaders, he recommended that every newly married Jewish couple be given a library of ten basic Jewish books. The first, he said, should be a Tanach, of course, and the rest he'd leave to the experts.

As it happened, cousins of ours, newly married, were visiting Israel at that very moment as part of their honeymoon. They weren't very observant or Jewishly learned, and my parents mentioned Bibi's idea to R' Rakeffet when we were eating with him one day and asked what he thought we should give them.

It doesn't get the recognition it deserves, he said, but the single best book on Judaism out there is Herman Wouk's This Is My God. So we got it and gave it to our cousins, and by their account they enjoyed it a lot and learned a lot from it.

I actually own a few copies, including some first editions and a Hebrew translation, and it is indeed a wonderful book, excellently written and with great content. Today Wouk is being celebrated for his novels, but some mention of this work should be made as well. Someone once quoted a YU rosh yeshiva as saying you even need to say Birkat HaTorah on it. Maybe so...

זה היום עשה ה

I've been using Koren's books for decades- I think my first ever was their Tikkun, with which I prepared for my bar mitzvah- and I've become a huge fan of theirs in recent years. So when they asked me to review their new Yom Haatzmaut Machzor, I was very happy and honored to accept.

Celebrating Yom Haatzmaut back in the old country- more on that below- I remember a somewhat limited selection of printed materials to follow along the tefillah chagigit. YU would have a tekes every year that combined Yom HaZikaron and Yom Haatzmaut, and the tefillot were generally handed out as a photocopied sheet that literally copied and pasted various segments of the tefillah together. At best, there would be an actual printed and stapled pamphlet that would do pretty much the same (using selections from Siddur Rinat Yisrael and printed by the WZO), but usually with directions that essentially read, "Turn to regular Maariv in your siddur now, and turn back here when you're done." The next morning we were pretty much on our own. (YU's official minyanim all say Hallel without a bracha, but I once went to a renegade minyan that said the bracha, layned the haftarah, the whole nine yards.) It was enough, I guess, but obviously lacking. Of course, both Rinat Yisrael's and Koren's regular siddurim had all the material, but in much the same way as they had, say, the amida for Chol HaMoed.

There were some full, or almost full, siddurim for the day. The WZO produced one, again based on the Rinat Yisrael, that was also available with an English translation. They were still not much, but much better than the alternatives- the whole tefillah for night and day, together with some notes and an essay or two. The Kibbutz HaDati had its own version of the tefillot, as opposed to the "standard" one set by the Rabbinate. Still later, much more complete works began to appear of late- there's a work called "Goel Yisrael," a siddur with lots of extra material, and a siddur that came out recently called "Beit Melucha." There have, of course, been many more (and better quality) pamphlets similar to those described above released in the last few years, as well as Yom Haatzmaut tefillot as appendices to works on Zionism, and the like.

Last year, however, Koren released its Yom Haatzmaut Machzor, and this year has released the English/Hebrew counterpart. I will review these here.

As I wrote above, I'm a big fan of Koren. First, it's clear from their products that they put a lot of thought into each book, not just in terms of content but also into layout, presentation, appearance, and so on. This is not a minor issue- it's very nice to be able to use something attractive, and of course a huge help to both tefillah and general reading and learning if the print is easy on the eyes, the text is easy to follow, and so on. And here, I think it would be very hard to argue that Koren excels over most if not all other publishers. It's probably a major key to their success, and it shows in these machzorim, which of course adapt the texts from their siddurim and Tanachs.

I suppose if that was all, it would be enough to establish Koren's machzorim as a gamechanger in this field. No more sheets, pamphlets, or small books, but a respectable sefer that makes no apologies and makes it easy to say the tefillot. But, of course, these are much more than that.

The sheer amount of content puts me in mind of something I thought of only last week, during Pesach, as I considered the many haggadot we have (and, of course, the huge number we don't): There isn't enough time in the seven-day chag to digest it all, let alone in one (or, I suppose, even two) seder nights. That doesn't mean you can't start reviewing this material from, say, the end of Pesach and keep going through Yom Yerushalayim (these machzorim cover both days, as well as Yom HaZikaron). We live the miracle of Israel every day, so why not? And, of course, there's always next year...

The Hebrew version (available in the three major nuschaot) is edited by R' Benny Lau and Dr. Yoel Rafel. It contains an introduction and extensive, Yom Haatzmaut-specific notes on the tefillot by the former, and appended essays by the latter as well as others. The essays deal with various matters related to the days celebrated, focusing on the tefillot themselves but covering much more as well. Each is a small gem, and again I only wish there was more time to digest them all fully.

The English/Hebrew edition, which I've just received (available in Ashkenaz for now; sponsored by World Mizrachi and other local organizations), is even more massive. Of course, the English translation (Rabbi Sacks', as in their siddurim) alone doubles the size, and there is again a chagim-specific commentary to the tefillot, this time by R' Moshe Taragin with contributions from the Hebrew edition authors. The tefillot, by the way, are remarkably complete- as Koren has done elsewhere, for example in its Chumash, you have pretty much everything you need, even Birkat HaMazon and Sheva Brachot. There are even multiple versions of Al HaNissim to add, if one's practice is to do so. (The propriety and history of doing so is also discussed, as we will see.) The Hebrew version even has zemirot for the day.

The translated version seems, logically enough, a bit chutz la'aretz-centric. I used the Sacks Siddur a bit before I made aliyah, but I will confess I find the format of a translated sefer a bit hard to follow now. That's just me, of course- many have told me that you get used to it quickly. The tefillot of the translated version are formatted for use in chu"l as well, with the minor differences between the American and Israeli Ashkenaz noted.

Of course, the tefillot are only one reason to use the Machzor, and even those in Israel who already have the all-Hebrew version handy will still want to use this sefer. There's the commentary, as said, but even more so, there are essays. There's an introduction by R' Riskin which I found very moving in a number of places (although he could have held off on including some less-universally held opinions, not that I necessarily disagree with him), and over 250 pages of essays on the other side of the book. (This brings the total size to close to a thousand pages. You get your money's worth.) These are arranged into two broad categories- "Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael" and "Yom Haatzma'ut and Yom Yerushalayim," and cover a very broad range of topics, and are written by a great range of luminaries, both past and present. Many have appeared elsewhere- including, of course, the all-Hebrew edition- but they are here gathered in one convenient location- and some seem to be original as well. I can't say that I have thoroughly read each one yet, but I have gone through them and see much to be delved into.

One topic, covered in an introduction, the commentary, and some essays, is the tefillah itself. The origins of the tefillot (and the religious nature attributed to the days) is gone into, but there is also a lot about what it is proper to say, what various opinions are, and so on. I will admit this (which I have seen almost predominate other Zionist discussions of Yom Haatzmaut outside of Israel, such as some of those published by YU) is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, especially after seeing the admirable lack of thought put into the question by many Israelis- Yom Haatzmaut is a chag, on a chag we say certain things, and that's it. (Although the Machzor makes clear there were and are such discussions in Israel as well, but they don't seem to affect the hamon am.) What put my mind to rest, however, was some of the content of the Machzor itself. The commentary, for example, at one point quotes R' Yosef Messas implying that this is an Ashkenazi (or galuti, or right-leaning) problem: Be a Sephardi, he says, and simply accept the miracles and pray as your heart tells you.

It's summed up even more nicely as part of the essay contributed by Dr. Erica Brown. She points out that the best way to experience Yom Haatzmaut is to do so in Israel. I imagine it's to be expected that the most commendable, but still somewhat constrained, celebrations in chu"l may lend themselves to such concerns. Here, as she writes, the natural and so much different celebration will put the foreign observer in a whole different state of mind.

Of course, that's a minor point. Considering that the alternative- as the publisher points out in his preface- is not people quibbling over a half-perek of Hallel here or there but people who prefer to ignore the State entirely or worse (I once heard someone bizarrely mocking the fact that observance, and Hallel, that year had been moved because of Shabbat, seemingly not noticing the obvious point of how much a miracle a State that does so as part of official policy is- although that reminds me that the Machzor could have used a clear statement of when the dates are moved, unless I missed it), the very existence of this Machzor is a huge leap forward. Even these discussions on the tefillah may be seen as part of the greater miracle- we are at a point where, yes, we have to discuss and decide such things, and we accept and embrace history rather than run from it. The addition of this Machzor to the bookshelf is a fine indicator of that, and hopefully will only add to the stature of these days all over the Jewish world.

As a side note, Koren, whether intentionally or not, seems to have become the model for such things. I remember when the Sacks Siddur first came out, people were actually happy simply to be using a Modern Orthodox siddur. (I imagine I don't have to spell out the history that led to those feelings.) The same seems to be true of their new Talmud and other projects. Of course, making an ideological statement wouldn't be enough of a reason for success, so it helps that the books in question are of such high quality as well. And the new Yom Haatzmaut machzorim are a worthy addition to that list in both senses of the word- very well done, useful, and informative works that will also contribute to a wider positive movement in Israel and the Jewish world.

Ah, here are the links. You can toggle between currencies and languages at the top. Also available at your local bookstore, as they say:

Hebrew/English

Hebrew (links below for other nuschaot)

And here's a video about the new Machzor:

How to End a War

The American Civil War ended (effectively) 150 years ago this week. I had a Pesach-related anecdote last week, herewith is a series of anecdotes relating to the surrender at Appomattox Court House specifically (as, I see, I promised years ago). The first tale is a bit bizarre:

Wilmer McLean was a businessman who lived on a farm in Manassas, Virginia, south of Washington, D.C. The First Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war, took place on his land on July 21, 1861. (Southerners call it First Manassas, as they name battles after towns, as opposed to Northerners, who named them after physical features, in this case Bull Run Stream- perhaps because the Confederates actually lived there. This is reflected to this day on United States military battle streamer flags- units that fought for the South, and there are still some in the U.S. Army, use the Southern names and put grey over blue.) His home was requisitioned for use as headquarters for Confederate General Beauregard's staff, which naturally made it a target for Union artillery. A cannonball dropped down his kitchen fireplace chimney and exploded in a pot of soup. No one was hurt (in the house, that is- among all these light touches, let's not forget that over 800 were killed and 2,700 wounded in the one day battle alone), but McLean decided that the neighborhood was too dangerous and that (for that reason and more prosaic ones) he had to get his family out of there.

He took enough time doing it that he was still in the area when the Second Battle of Bull Run/ Second Manassas took place just over a year later. (Over 18,000 killed and wounded in a three-day battle. My God, that war was horrible, not that any war isn't.) McLean then packed up and moved much further south, deep in Virginia, to a sleepy little out of the way town called Appomattox Court House.

You can guess where this is going. The Battle of Appomattox Court House took place on April 9, 1865, as Robert E. Lee's fleeing Army of Northern Virginia was finally pinned down there by Ulysses S. Grant's Army of the Potomac. (It wasn't such a major battle as battles go, but well over 600 were still killed or wounded.) Lee decided to surrender, and a suitable location had to be found. McLean had a nice large house with a nice large parlor, and the knock came at his door. He wasn't happy about it, but the surrender took place there, and Union officers took anything that wasn't nailed down for souvenirs, tossing cash at the protesting McLean to attempt to make up for it. Some minor skirmishes and lots of other surrenders followed, but Lee's essentially marked the end of the war. McLean later said, "The war started in my front yard and ended in my front parlor."

McLean couldn't maintain mortgage payments on the house (which is now a museum, the furniture recovered or replicated) and moved back to Manassas after the war. He later moved to Alexandria, worked for what is now the IRS, and died and was buried there in 1882.

Of course, what happened in (and, as we'll see, what didn't happen in, and what was said in) the parlor is far more important.

Lee arrived at the McLean house with his aide. He was dressed in his best uniform, neat and clean and honorable. Grant's only thought (as he told an admirer years later) was that, his luggage having been misplaced, he was wearing a muddy private's uniform on which he had stuck his two shoulder straps with his three-star rank insignia (the highest at the time), and was worried Lee would think he was insulting him. He therefore apologized, and the two chatted for a bit. They had served in the Mexican War together, although Grant was considerably younger and assumed, correctly, that Lee wouldn't remember him. It took them a bit of time to get down to business. Grant was not happy: "I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse," he later wrote.

Lee wasn't just wearing his best uniform- he was wearing a sword. Traditionally, surrendering generals hand over their swords. And he wasn't wearing any old sword that he could afford to lose- he was wearing a beautiful one, with a lion-headed pommel, gold-plated hilt, and ivory grip, that a Maryland admirer had commissioned for him in Paris. And Lee could have offered the sword, and Grant could have taken it, and no one would have said anything, and Grant could have given it to a museum or his children, and would have been remembered as having behaved in a completely proper fashion.

Or Grant could have returned the sword to Lee, as was sometimes done by magnanimous victors. And again, there wouldn't really have been anything wrong with that, although it certainly drives the symbolism of defeat home a little more, and would have been somewhat humiliating to Lee, the gentleman.

But Grant did none of those things. As soon as he saw the sword, he had one thought in mind: How to keep Lee from even offering it in the first place.

Grant had his adjutant, Colonel Ely S. Parker (much more on him later) write up the surrender terms. They were very generous, especially considering that they were coming from "Unconditional Surrender Grant": The Confederate soldiers were all free to go home provided they pledged never again to rebel against the United States. When Lee mentioned that many of his men were farmers and that planting season was upon them, Grant said that any Confederate soldier who claimed a horse or mule could take it to plow his farm. He also ordered that the Union Army provide food for the starving Southerners. Lee reviewed the terms, and said they would go a long way to reconciling the two halves of the country- which was, of course, the point. And then Grant took a pencil and added one line: The surrender, he wrote, "will not embrace the side-arms of the officers". No one said a word, but everyone knew what that meant. Lee never offered his sword, and rode off with it still strapped to his side.

After the surrender was signed, Grant introduced his officers to Lee. The most important words said that day were said at that point.

I got a lot of this information from a series of articles Grant's grandson wrote for National Geographic fifty years ago. The magazine featured a painting that had been made just for the article, which now hangs in their Society's headquarters in Washington. Here it is; the artist has done a masterful job conveying the emotions of the moment. The Union (brevet) general on the far right is the famous George Armstrong Custer; Parker is next to him.

As you might be able to tell from the picture, his real name wasn't "Ely S. Parker." Here's his story:

Among the people Grant introduced to Lee was Colonel Parker, essentially his top assistant. Parker had dark skin, and Lee at first thought he was black- that Grant was trying to make a symbolic point about the fight against slavery by having him there. But then he realized that Parker was, in fact, an American Indian.

Parker (who, in fact, was promoted to Brevet Brigadier General that very day, one of only two Indian generals in the war- the other was Stand Watie, a Confederate) was a Seneca from Upstate New York. He was named Hasanoanda at birth; Ely Samuel Parker was his Christian name. He became a lawyer and then a civil engineer, and represented the tribe in their dealings with the government. He eventually became the Chief of the Seneca (and the Six Iroquois Nations as a whole), with the name Donehogawa, "Keeper of the Western Door of the Long House of the Iroquois." He moved out West to supervise engineering projects, where he met and befriended Grant, who commissioned him a captain. He served as an engineer in the siege of Vicksburg before Grant made him his adjutant. At the McLean house, he wrote the surrender documents. (I got some of the ideas below from A History of US, a history series for kids.) Later he recounted his encounter with Lee:

"General Lee stared at me for a moment. He extended his hand and said, 'I am glad to see one real American here.' I shook his hand and said, 'We are all Americans.'"

Let that sink in for a second. Lee said what today would be considered the perfect politically correct statement- only American Indians are "Native Americans," the only "real Americans." Maybe Lee thought that he didn't have a racist bone in his body, all that fighting for slavery notwithstanding. (And maybe, indeed, he didn't. We just don't fully "get it" sometimes.) It took the real colorblindness of Parker to set him straight- all Americans are "real Americans," no one- not even a minority- is more privileged than another. You start holding one group up, and soon you start holding others down. 150 years later, I fear that the "enlightened" and damaging view of Lee (great as he was) is prevailing over what held the country together.

Did it help Lee, at least? Maybe. Read on. Lee put on his hat and gloves, bowed, and he and his aide went outside and mounted their horses. Grant and his officers came out onto the porch and saluted them; when he heard the Union soldiers start to cheer, Grant ordered it stopped immediately. "The Confederates were now our countrymen, and we did not want to exult over their downfall," he later said. At the actual surrender of the troops, the Union side provided full military honors. Lee gave a farewell address to his men, who didn't want to give up. They loved Lee, and told him that he should encourage the Army to head to the hills and carry on guerrilla warfare. Lee refused: He told them the war was over, that the two parts of the country should reconcile, and that he was happy slavery had been abolished- it would even be better for the South. What should his men do? "Go home," he told them, "and be Americans." It seems Parker's words had sunk in.

Parker remained in the Army for a few more years, assisting Grant and negotiating with Indian tribes. After Parker left the service, Grant (by then president) appointed him Commissioner of Indian Affairs- the first Indian to hold the position. He worked to end the military actions against Indians in the West. He then left government service, moved to New York City, made and lost money in the stock market, and ended his career as an official with the NYPD. He became close with the reformer Jacob Riss, who wrote a cute short story (trigger warning: very un-PC language), featuring Parker at this stage of his life. He died and was buried in Connecticut; as this was considered Algonquin territory, his widow, at the request of his tribe, had him reinterred in Buffalo. Look him up on Wikipedia and follow the cemetery links for a fascinating tour through history. Speaking of history, Parker had one daughter who died in 1956. Sometimes history isn't so far removed from us after all.

Grant went to meet the Confederate Army and then sat with Lee on the McLean porch receiving visitors. Lee then went home, and Grant got on a train to Washington to submit his final report. The coda for the whole war took place on that train.

I previously mentioned that Grant's grandson, Ulysses S. Grant III (himself an Army general) wrote a series of articles for National Geographic for the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. I drew on the final article for this post, and conclude them with the same anecdote he did. He had been told the story by his father, Major General Frederick Dent Grant (you notice how generalships traveled in the family), who in turn had been told it by his father, Ulysses S. Grant himself. Grant was on the train back to Washington from Appomattox:

"In the railroad car, two or three seats ahead of General Grant and across the aisle, sat one of Lee's soldiers, evidently on the way home. A man- apparently a planter who had not been in the war, dressed in corduroy breeches, boots, and wearing a broad hat- sat down by the Confederate soldier and started a conversation.

"'Well,' he said. 'So you have all surrendered. Couldn't you have taken to the hills and carried on for a year or more?'

"To which the soldier indignantly replied: 'Look here, my man. I have been in this war for nearly four long years. I have been in eight pitched battles, innumerable skirmishes, and have been wounded three times- and I am plumb satisfied.'"

Brother Against Brother

Next week marks the 150th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War. I hope to have a series of posts about it then, but here's one that links that event with Pesach:

150 years ago tomorrow (on the Jewish calendar), Philadelphian Myer Levy, a Union Army corporal, was walking through a captured Virginia town, thinking he had no place- and nothing, really- to eat for Passover when he saw a boy sitting on the steps to a house eating something that looked familiar.

He went up to him: "Hello, young man! May I have a piece of that matzah?"

The boy ran into the house shouting, "Mother! There's a damn Yankee Jew outside!" The mother came out and politely invited Levy to join them for the seder.

"Even a marginally Secret Service."

That scene (from Sherlock) continues:

"You don't trust your own Secret Service?"

"Naturally not. They all spy on people for money."

For a while, I've wondered at the near-universal (heck, universal, and, in publicizing them, certainly unprofessional and unethical) leftist tendencies of ex(?) heads of the Shin Bet and Mossad. It's just so bizarre- that movie "The Gatekeepers" got every single living former head of the Shin Bet to participate. They say Dichter wasn't so happy with it, but they still used him. There's got to be some explanation, I figured. I think I've finally put it together.

It connects to how Tom Wolfe describes the Bronx District Attorney's office in The Bonfire of the Vanities:You're a young graduate of a New York law school, probably ethnic and/or idealistic (hence the public service), thus probably liberal. You're going to change the world. You're going to help people. And you spend years putting minority defendants behind bars, because all the criminals in your county are black or Hispanic, because everyone charged is guilty, and because that's your job. And so you start developing fantasies. The most important one of that novel is, of course, the Great White Defendant. Something to prove that you're not evil.

Well, here you are, a well-educated, smart, Ashkenazi secular Israeli from the right background. (How else do you rise this far?) Dollars to donuts you tend to the left. And you spend a few years killing Palestinians or Gulf Arabs or Iranians or whatever, because that's who constitutes the threat to your country, and that's your job, and God bless you for it. But you become a little disillusioned. That type of dirty work can take a toll on any man, especially one without a certain ideological foundation. And your ego pipes up too- here you're working in the background, no one knows what you're doing, and until recently they didn't even know your name. You'd like to be recognized. You'd like to make a difference in a big, public way. You'd like to end it all, and in a way that matches your politics. And so you start fantasizing that, say, the real threat to the state is a handful of Kahanist kids with spray paint. You get a touch of the old Stockholm Syndrome, perhaps, but above all, to assuage your conscience, you begin to think that talking to Abbas or even Hamas and giving them the store would be a fine idea and start telling everyone your about your deep insight into matters about which you have, let's be honest, no experience or expertise. You get to like the adulation of the Left and the "West." (Which is, after all, Herzog and Livni's whole "platform.") And, therefore, you become a big voice for the Left and won't shut up about it.

Just a thought.

The Most...Human

I wanted to write about something else for the end-of-the-month post. But not today:

Leonard Nimoy: Well. My work is done here.

Barney: Whaddya you mean your work is done? You didn't do anything.

Nimoy (chuckling): Didn't I? (Beams away.)

Yes you did, Mr. Nimoy, yes you did. RIP.

(Scene from perhaps the best episode ever of the Simpsons. Not to be confused with Nimoy's other star turn in that series: "Hey, Spock! Whaddya want on your hotdog?" "Sur...prise me.")

BDE

From Yeshiva University's Israel Alumni comes the sad news of the passing of R' Jacob Rabinowitz, who was one of my rebbeim in YU's Isaac Breuer College. He was the perfect (and required) combination of a great rebbe and a very fine person. I remember attending a commencement some years after I graduated only because he was receiving a well-deserved honorary doctorate and I wanted to congratulate him in person- I glad I was able to.

One story he told us has always stayed with me: In the 1970's, he had been not just a rebbe but a dean, of Undergraduate Jewish Studies. Once, a big donor to YU came to visit and meet Dr. Belkin, the then-president, who was in a meeting and asked R' Rabinowitz to take the donor around for a few minutes until he was free.

As R' Rabinowitz told it, a nice-stop stream of profanities emerged from the man's mouth. R' Rabinowitz was a gentle man and could barely take it, and was happy when was finally able to hand the guy off to R' Belkin. After the donor left, he went to R' Belkin and asked, "How can you deal with a person like that?" R' Belkin replied, "Do you think it's easy to give away a million dollars?"

R' Rabinowitz finished by telling us that he learned a great lesson that day: Always look a little deeper before judging a person. A person who seems to be the most horrible human being may actually be the most noble. Of course, in his own case, no digging was needed. Yihi Zikhro Barukh.