Origin of Satan

Nothing like taking some sick time to finally get around to some reading. Or should I say, nothing like being forced to take some sick time, because I have spent most of the last week or so in bed or coughing myself silly in an armchair because when I was coughing myself silly in bed I kept waking up the baby. 

While I was visiting the US I got caught up with the recent seasons of Supernatural, the drama/horror series currently dabbling in apocalyptic themes. Made me decide to read the New Testament again, well, that and ODing on so much Johnny Cash while Stateside, so many Christian themes in his music, made me want to go back and research the source, which in turn reminded me that I never finished Elaine Pagels fascinating book "The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and Heretics".  

No, this is not a study of the occult nor a book that particularly deals with anything particularly Satanic, rather it's a fascinating look at early Christian history and how early Christianity portrayed its opponents in terms of the demonic or satanic. 

Rereading the New Testament after many years was quite an eye opener. I don't think I'd ever really noticed just how much emphasis there is on exorcisms and Satan, how many references that pop up in everyday English and American discourse have their origins in the Christian text itself. Certainly that disconnect between how Judaism traditionally tends to view Satan and the much greater emphasis Christianity seems to place on Satan has always piqued my curiosity, especially the way it impacts popular culture and frames of reference. 

I would be the first to admit that I don't know much about Christianity, I am an observant Jew after all, but religion has always been a favourite interest of mine. I first picked up Pagels' book when taking a course about the European witchcraze at college. I think that's probably also the last time I read the New Testament, trying to understand where it all came from, get into the heads of the European clerics at the time, trying to understand how they came to the conclusions they did. I don't remember noticing how many stories of possessions and exorcisms there were that time around, but I should have, seeing as that was very much an issue during the tail end of the witchcraze. Strange to say, but to the best of my knowledge actually reading the New Testament, or at least the passages relating to possession and exorcism, and how these might have, must have, directly influenced those events, wasn't on the course reading list. How could they have even taught such a course without that kind of a primary source? For that matter, I don't remember whether Pagels' book had come out yet, but it should be required reading for such a course too.

I guess to an extent I'm sucked in to Pagels' book as much by the history as by the theology and exegesis, such a critical period in determining both the fate of Judaism and Christianity, indeed the identity of what was to become the Western world, getting into the voice of Josephus and trying to imagine the turbulence and chaos of the period, the uncertainty, the doubts that must have plagued to many faithful, the destruction of so much of the Jewish people, the insanity of taking on the might of Rome. It really is quite terrifying. And the signs of so much of it are still visible in the landscape of this region to this day.

Oh, how I've missed you...

I guess this is lame, but I really, really missed vegetables while I was in the US.

I mean, I understand why say in Iceland or Norway or elsewhere in northern Europe they didn't seem to be big on salads and veg, I think Iceland had the most expensive fresh veggies I've ever come across in my life. I get that, those aren't countries really suited to growing a lot of the stuff locally so it kind of breaks the bank. Make up for it with great fish though.

The US though, they have a huge country with plenty of areas where the climate is perfect for growing veggies. There was even some pretty good produce in the stores (not usually on par with the UK, certainly not with Israel, but then I guess I am a little spoiled), but hardly anyone seems to use it.

Am I missing something?

Here no meal is complete without salad, and by salad I mean finely chopped cukes and tomatoes, probably red pepper, maybe parsley or coriander or onions. And any nice meal ideally comes with a whole bunch of salads, some raw, some cooked. In short, vegetables are a big staple.

Just about everywhere we went in the US folks thought a few lettuce leaves maybe with a berry and a shredded carrot for decoration was a salad. Most meals seemed to be some kind of protein and a grain, plus the aforementioned scrappy lettuce leaves. If we were lucky there might be a cooked vegetable, maybe a sweet potato or if we were really lucky, some kind of squash, twice we got really really lucky and there was asparagus.

That was main meals. I thought breakfast was even stranger (and Americans mostly thought my tastes were bizarre), I mean, is it that peculiar to have veggies and salad at breakfast? Apparently. And yes, I have travelled before, quite a bit over the years, but I'ed forgotten this lack of veggies in America, it has been a few years.

It drove me nuts. Weeks and weeks of veggie deprivation, and I started to get real hungry.

What gives?

And what do people do with the bounty of produce in the stores? OK, so when I broke and went out and bought some myself and managed to find sometime between visits and baby to cook it, I discovered that much of it tasted kind of weird. Blandest galangal I have ever had (didn't even smell much of anything, for a second I wondered if I had accidentally bought Jerusalem artichoke, but no, it really was flavourless galangal). The basil was all kind of sweet, like licorice, not richly flavoured the way it is at home. Coriander also felt odd. Cucumber had no flavour. Onions were much milder.

So yeah, it is good to be home among the veggies again. Made a huge pot of tomato-coriander soup, just hit the spot. And dined on lots of chopped up Israeli salad almost every day I've been home. Veggies, oh how I've missed you.

A foreign city without soldiers

So the strangest thing about the US, well, kind of felt like this a bit in the UK too, but it feels more pronounced here, the strangest thing is the way people just live here, a nation a supposedly at war, and it feels like nothing, because the wars are so far away that unless you are yourself in the armed forces or a relative or close friend of someone who is, you just forget about it, except maybe for worrying about your tax dollars or something and it is all just so weird.

There is no Thursday evening crush of soldiers home on weekend passes, no uniforms at every turn, no draft, as in the Israeli song, this is a foreign city without soldiers, and it is just so true, even in DC or Norfolk or Groton, the vibe is just different. All those quirky little things in Israel, like the way folks with gun permits casually go armed, friends who come to tea with a sidearm in their belts, because, that is life, and folks living in dangerous areas go openly armed, they way the guard at the mall asks if you are carrying a weapon or the tannoy at the airport reminds people that weapons are not allowed there, in the same voice she uses to remind you that smoking is only permitted in designated areas.

It isn't that back home I notice these things so much, they just are, but here in the US I notice their absence, like something is missing, and I know I've written about this before, but each time I visit the US it hits me all over again, especially visiting the US at a time when that country is at war.

Because (as far as I know) you can't get a 24 hour (let alone a 12 hour) pass to come home to the US from Iraq or Afghanistan - it can take that long just to make the journey back. So for most people the wars their country is fighting become academic, arguments about morals and resources and politics, not, well, either we fight or the guys who have homes an hour away from our homes will get even bigger missiles and target our homes too. I mean, no, I don't have that though in the back of my mind all the time or even most of the time, but it's there. I know its a real threat.

It isn't in the US though and I can't decide whether that makes me jealous of this sense of peace, or worried that these folks don't really understand what's out there, especially the guy sitting the White House screwing over my country because (I think) he believes that sacrificing us will bring world peace. And yeah, that is kind of upsetting, but nothing new there, enough people have believed that for enough years, even a few presidents, though nothing quite as extreme as this I think.

But leaving personal fears for my country aside, I feel like the people here just dont get what's out there, hating them, wanting to hurt them, because its so far away, and maybe that's good, because it means that the perpetrators of 9-11 didn't win, didn't get to break America, but it's bad because it means that the people here don't understand that there are hate filled people around the world just waiting for another chance to make the US hurt, and they'll take any chance they can get.

I can't quite get my mind around the idea of a front so far away that, well, it's quite genuinely out of sight out of mind. Not that in Israel life didn't go on more or less as usual with a front an hour or so away from home, and perhaps that is even crazier than the way things are in the US with it half a world away, but still, I think that we all know back home that normalcy, however much we live it on a daily basis, is a fragile, precious thing, because every security check and every kid in uniform reminds us of the price we pay. And maybe I have a bee in my bonnet, but even post 9-11, Americans just seem to take that freedom and security for granted, save perhaps for friends and family in NY who saw and felt that fateful day's events up close and personal, whose lives were forever changed by it the way Lebanon and Oslo and Gaza changed ours, but maybe not even them. 9-11 was a one time thing, not continuous, wave after wave of there but for the grace of God like we live with every few years.

More than anything though is this feeling of either blithe false security or plain ignorance or maybe real safety, I don't know, the way there are no security checks when you go into the mall or a sporting event, hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and it's all just wide open, because hey, they security check like wackos at the airport, so nothing can get in, right? (And of course without profiling, they can't screen effectively.) It all just feels so vulnerable, so open, so unprotected.

It was weird hearing a lecture about Mid East events given by an American to Americans, just being an Israeli fly on the wall and listening to people's views and ideas. Really weird. And a bit creepy, seeing as this is the country trying to save the world, well, I think it is, maybe it's just trying to protect its own interests, but it's nice to think that the US still has the idealism to protect freedom and democracy worldwide. Maybe.

So after this talk, some people are chatting in the lobby, and someone is self-righteously going on about how Israel should just smash Gaza and kick out its residents (well, its not as if her sons or husband are going to have to to the fighting or expelling, so who cares if someone else is going to do the dirty work), and how crazy it is that Israelis have lived with missiles for so long (and yes, it is, and they still are) and my kid, not yet 5, pipes up and says, well, you don't really need to worry about the missiles, it's OK, when you hear the siren you just get under a heavy table or run for your shelter, and the woman just gapes, and my daughter adds, it's the same as the earthquake drill, rooms without windows are good too.

And yeah, I did teach my kid what to do, and yes, I pray with all my heart she never needs to, and no, it isn't what I planned on having to teach my toddler, but I would rather she know and be prepared than for God forbid that siren come and she doesn't know what to do. Well, this American woman looks at me in shock, and I explain that I believe my kid needs to know, and that in Israel, Memorial Day is something real and palpable and we explain it to the little kids, as generally and obliquely as possible, but they get the idea, they know why there is a memorial siren on Memorial Day and Holocaust Memorial Day, because that is life, and we don't dwell on it (subject matter of this post aside, I really try not to go into it with my kids), but they need to know, so they know. Does it harm their childish innocence, maybe, means they know a little more about the real world that I hope to God I didn't need to explain to them, sadly, yes, I think so, but it's not like I explain the details.

So I guess that is what is bugging me, a mix of feeling plain insecure because of the lack of a security presence here, but also just a disconnect with how people feel in their world, a lack of realism, a feeling of fantasy, and that's not the cliched critique of American materialism and consumption, I think that goes on in much of the world, though the scale of it here is staggering, no, it's more the mindset, the way people are so removed from a lot of what their country is doing, or just the way life is elsewhere in the world. Like my standard critique of all the sci-fi shows where the American explorers tell the aliens what life is like on Earth, and they basically mean what life is like in America, because if John Crichton had been from Israel he would have landed on his feet much sooner in the Uncharted Territories.

At long last

It does me good it does to see such a wet, stormy winter. Not wet and stormy enough, but I will be thankful for what is. Won't help our severely depleted water supply, decimated by years of drought, but rain means hope, and winter isn't over yet.

I happened to be in the UK this winter, for the first time, in, well, I don't quite remember, but a long time. It never ceases to amaze me how different rain feels there. Yes, rain is a big deal here and it rains all year round there, granted, but that's not it.

It's the light, the way the grey, dark buildings there just seem so oppressive in the grey, wet weather. Here, even with the storm clouds clamping down darkening even the usually bright Mid Eastern noon, there seems to be a glimmer, a luminosity, something in the light Jerusalem stone and whitewashed stucco that brightens the gloom.

Then there is the smell. The rain just smells different here, don't know why, but it does. Wonderfully fresh, vibrant, envigorating. There it just seems to smell of wet overcoats and petrol laced puddles.

More than anything though is the excitement. The way kids long to make use of their umbrellas and wellies, only useful for a few short months a year. I guess it's the way kids in England hope for snow. The anticipation of the first rains of the season is one thing, but each and every rainful during the short wet season is welcomed for the miracle of life that it brings.

Yes, this is the land of uncertainty, the slope of the volcano where anything can happen, where the fragile balance of the natural world feels more palpable than in many other places, but that is also why I think we feel more accutely God's presence on this earth, where the difference between life and death is dependent on a few paltry months of rain

Saint-Exupery

Absolutely thrilled to come across the new Hebrew translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Pilote de guerre and Lettre a un otage.

When I was a kid my mother figured out that the way to bridge the gap between my love of all things aviation related and her love of French literature was to introduce me to St-Exupery's writing, and boy did she hit the nail on the head.

Once upon a time I would have read this in the original French, but sadly it's become so rusty over the last decade that I can't even really enjoy Le Petit Prince in the original anymore, which is a crying shame, but I just haven't had much reason to use my French in such a long time.

I think it's a generational thing, parents and family who went through WWII, all their stories so vivid in my mind, I think that's why I seem to read so much about WWII. I just heard so much about the Battle of Britain and the Blitz growing up. Maybe that's why I read so many aviation related WWII books. Maybe I was just born old too, would explain a lot as well.

Saint-Exupery just does it so well, so painfully, tragically, heart-breakingly well.

Finding this book is like holding treasure in my hands.

A blurring of lines?

Only in Israel story 683:

You randomly find yourself watching Channel 24, Israel's version of MTV.

The country's leading music critic, a secular and openly gay man, is interviewing a "born again" Breslov Hassid, clad in full hassidic garb, about his new album, the style of which is clearly influenced by the Hebrew version of Bob Dylan.

These two men represent in many ways opposite poles of Israeli society, Jerusalem versus Tel Aviv, but their conversation is polite, warm, about the interviewee's 7 kids, grandchildren, pilgrimage to Uman, musical inspiration, current movie project...

I think it's happening more, this meeting across the chasm, people who've crossed the line in either direction from religious to secular, from secular to religious. Look at journalist Dov Elboim who left the Haredi lifestyle but has focused his work on bringing a Jewish religion and culture to mass media. Likewise the many popular musicians who've become closer to their Jewish roots and in so doing have brought about the current trend for recording albums based in some way on traditional Jewish sources, be it Bari Sakharov's rock songs whose lyrics are taken from religious poetry or Ehud Banai's full on lovingly recreated recordings of authentic Jewish liturgy.

I don't entirely know what this all means, how deep it all is, how much is simply a Jewish veneer to pop culture or a trendy veneer layered over traditional practices. I'm not sure it really matters. I believe though that it's good, a correction of sorts for the anti-religious, in many ways anti-Jewish, atmosphere of the '50s and '60s, or even the fashion for corny pseudo-parody of Hassidic music and stories in the '70s.

Where will it lead? I never claimed to be a prophet, but anything that is making even a limited percentage of young Israelis look again at their rich heritage is good in my book.

Childhood Heroes

 

I was sitting and nursing Junior Junior this afternoon when his big sister snuggled up to me.

She has restless hands and restless eyes, everything must be read, touched, learnt. She picked up the newspaper lying on the sofa and eyed the colourful ad for the Herzog College, advertising BA courses in various subjects, Bible, Hebrew Literature, Jewish Philosophy and the like.

5,4,3,2,1 wait for it...

Right on cue:

"What is this about Ima?"

So I explained, maybe, one day, when she is a big girl, well, a teenager, well probably after National Service or The Army, she could go to college and perhaps choose one of the listed subjects for study.

"But Ima, I want to study all of them! Children have more interests than grown-ups, we want to learn everything."

OK, well, that's my girl, boundless thirst for knowledge in one high energy package.

"But what if you could only choose one?" I say, curious if she'll pin down one subject, most of which I'm pretty sure she doesn't understand.

The Little Person runs her finger down the list, pauses at Tanakh, slips down to Jewish Philosophy and settles on Hebrew Literature.

I ask her why she chose that. I'll like it, says she confidentally, and patently hasn't a clue what subject she's chosen. "What is it?"

So I explained, which led to her grabbing a poetry book from the shelf, which turned out actually to be a Hebrew song book, which had a line "and if in Moscow the gates are locked" and that led to me explaining what Moscow was and why the gates might be locked.

And before I knew it, I had spent the evening trying to explain the story of the Soviet Jewish Refuseniks to my almost 4.5 year-old.

"So you told the Soviets שלח את עמי(let me people go) just like Moshe said to Paro'?" Well not me personally...

"So Uncle is a hero?" Well, I guess so.

Amazing that today almost no one seems to remember or talk about it, one of the greatest stories in modern Jewish history, well, I think, in history in general. It's been boiled down to an Israeli foreign minister with a Russian accent.

When I was my daughter's age though the Campaign for Soviet Jewry was without doubt one of the greatest influences on my life.

No, I'm not Russian, but the plight of my Jewish brothers and sisters in the Soviet Union was as much part of growing up in the 70s and 80s as Star Wars and Maggie Thatcher.

I thought that all families spent weekends and afternoons demonstrating outside Soviet missions, making non-stop phone calls to Aeroflot offices and shouting out during performances of the Bolshoi Ballet all with the message "Let My People Go שלח את עמי".

I thought joining a pro-Soviet Jewry rally outside the UN while visiting New York was a standard tourist thing to do.

I thought all children were concerned with the fate of their Soviet Jewish peers, writing them letters and drawing them pictures, when they were older trying to penpal with them, while teachers and parents carefully coached us what to avoid so as not to attract the attention of the Soviet censor.

I thought that it was normal for friends and relatives to go off to the Soviet Union with Hebrew books smuggled between the covers of popular best sellers, tallitot hidden in coat linings and audio Hebrew lessons disguised as classical music recordings.

I thought everyone had family and friends who met with Soviet dissidents, writing down incriminating information in invisible ink for fear of "outing" more potential contacts to the KGB.

It seemed like the most natural thing in the world: my uncle went, friends' parents went, shul rabbis went, teachers and neighbours went.

Looking back I remember so many sermons relating to the topic at shul on Shabbat. Our rabbi, or a guest rabbi, giving a talk about his experiences secretly minstering to Soviet Jews while on a visit behind the Iron Curtain.

My heroes had names like Sharansky, Volvovsky and Gurevich. And Andrei Sakharov too, even though he wasn't Jewish, but he wanted freedom for the Soviet people too.

And my uncle.

He was my hero too, going of to Brezhnev's USSR with his innocent boyish smile and stash of Hebrew books and tzitzit, returning like a dutiful tourist with armloads of cheaply produced Soviet propaganda books about Lenin and Communism, matrioshka dolls, a big fur hat (he did visit Moscow in January!) and for me, a big doll in Russian national costume made from a flimsy, brittle plastic.

Didn't everyone have an uncle who ran a hardware store in his ordinary life, but secretly played at being a Cold War spy to procure freedom for Soviet Jews?

The day in February 1986 when Natan, or as he was then Anatoly, Shcharansky, went free is engraved on my mind as if it were now. The entire school gathered in the gym and one of the teachers turned on the television while we watched breathless as the great man himself crossed over from the Iron Curtain to freedom. Some of the grown-ups had tears in their eyes and even the littlest children who didn't quite understand what was happening got caught up in the excitement and emotion of the event.

How many kids today have even heard of him, let alone know who he is, his incredible story?

My daughter will though, if I have anything to do with it.

This evening I pulled down the self-published book a friend of my uncle's about the exploits of London Jewry to help Soviet Jews, full of photos of the ordinary people who went on missions to the USSR, so many familiar faces, so many stories I remember hearing around the family dinner table.

Flipping through it with my daughter helped to make the story of the Refuseniks seem real. She was amazed to see her great uncle looking so young (so much hair, such funny frames on his glasses, she commented), but most of all she was fascinated by the photos of Soviet Jewish children, especially in the secret Jewish kindergartens.

"Is that what children looked like then?" She asked, "You all wore such different clothes, did you look like that then too?"

"Why didn't you go with Uncle to visit the children?"

Well...

Israel didn't have diplomatic relations with the USSR then (I should say it was really the Soviets who didn't have diplomatic relations with Israel), so much of the practical campaign went on in the diaspora, where Jews could use their foreign passports to travel to Russia, and where there actually were Soviet missions to demonstrate in front of.

I wonder if in part that's why the Campaign for Soviet Jewry seems to forgotten in Israel, or whether it's just been eclipsed by some of the more troubling problems elements of the mass Soviet aliyah seem to have brought with them.

The recent horrific murder of a Russian immigrant family in Rishon Letzion by a Russian former employee settling scores has only added to the already severely tarnished image of the emigre community here. As a friend remarked recently, "is this what we fought for?"

So nothing in life is ever simple, but just because nothing comes without problems, doesn't mean that the struggle to help the Refuseniks was pointless.

I was thinking how a few years back we spent Simhat Torah with cousins in Gush Etzion, and there dancing with the Sefer Torah in their shul was an older Russian man. I heard someone call out his name and realised that he was one of the Refuseniks my uncle visited in Moscow, now living a vibrant Jewish life in Israel with his family.

A couple of years later I literally ran into him while again visiting my cousin. This time by chance my uncle was with me and the beaming former Refusenik grabbed him in a bear hug.

Then there is the guard at my kid's school, sweet older guy from Uzbekistan. One day I happened to have a visiting friend with me at pick-up time and we got chatting with the guard while waiting at the gate. When he mentioned he had grown up in Bukhara my friend's eyes went wide and she started reminiscing about her journey behind the Iron Curtain back in the 70s in aid of Soviet Jewry, including a stop in Bukhara.

The guard's eyes lit up. "We never gave up hope, at every meal my grandfather concluded grace by telling us that one day we would merit living in the Holy Land." He grinned at us "And here we all are."

I'm pretty sure that's what we did it for.