What Is In a Name?

From an early age, I was aware that not all was as it seemed.  According to my family, I was Jewish but in accordance with most authorities on the subject, I was not.  The problem was my mother – a southern shiksa who married a Jewish Yankee from Baltimore.  Because my mother is not Jewish, rabbinic authorities declare that I’m not either.  For me personally, it is not an issue and I can dismiss the controversy with a Talmudic shrug.  For Israel, it is a larger issue with much wide-ranging implications.    

There are two sides of the much debated topic.  On the Orthodox side of the equation, there are the rabbis of Israel.  When Israel was created, the government bestowed upon the religious authorities the responsibility of all religious matters which included marriage and questions of Jewishness.  The only time the government infringed on this duty was in the parameters for the Right of Return and Israeli citizenship, requiring only one Jewish grandparent of an immigrant (or their spouse).  However, according to the religious authorities, only one of a Jewish mother or one who has passed through traditional conversion can claim to be a “Jew.”  

On the other side of the argument are the liberals who see the question mired in the difficulty of answering, “What is a Jew?”  Outside of Israel, so many Jews (particularly young Jews) are marrying outside the Tribe, lines are blurring at a dizzying rate.  There is even a growing number of Jews who feel a belief in God is not necessary to be a Jew.  Additionally, there are the problems that arise from such a narrow view of “Jewishness” as seen in the Jewish Ethiopian immigrant controversy in Israel in the 1980s and their Hebraic bona fides.  Compounded with the omnipresent uncertainty of Eastern European/Russian Jews who grew up with no religious knowledge under an atheistic regime and the question grows more convoluted. 

Both sides raise troubling consequences to the other’s position.  The Jewish race, not to mention the faith, has survived largely through a measure of self-preservation and agreed-upon identity.  In the face of historic animosity, they have persevered through a measure of isolationism.  The more vague the traditional concepts of identity become, the greater the threat of the word “Jew” not meaning anything.  Particularly offensive to Israeli rabbis is the concept of a secular Jew without religious conviction.  However, a growing number are in that category or have switched religious affiliation altogether.   For a people who have endured immeasurable oppression, the loss of this identity is traumatic.   

From a modernist point of view, the narrower the term “Jew” is defined, the more likely the faith will die out as prospective converts consider other options.  Ethiopian and Russian Jews do not consider themselves any less so but, in Israel, endure constant suspicions to the contrary.  It is tough enough to convert to a faith in a world that increasingly disrespects such standards.  One can accept such criticism but to have it come from within?  Israeli rabbis have frequently blamed American and other western rabbis for watering down the standards but the reality for these leaders is quite different.  The level of pluralism in western societies make adherence to Israeli standards suicidal.

There is a story of an atheist who tells a rabbi he does not believe in God.  The rabbi responds, “What makes you think God cares?”  I don’t think the question of “Jewishness” can be settled on the basis of religion.  It is an ethnicity and, like God, the belief in the Almighty should not be of primary concern.  However, the rabbis have a great deal vested in maintaining the power to determine this and though liberals in the Knesset are trying to push their agenda, it will take some time.  The Diaspora has broadened the concept of who is and who is not a Jew and there is little point in re-arguing the issue.  One thing is for sure – a protracted argument does no one any good and certainly, is not advantageous for Israel.  I would think it has enough on its plate. 

The Instinctual (Ineffectual?) President

Russian president Vladimir Putin has been juggling a great deal of late – Syria, the Ukraine, domestic dissenters, terrorist attacks, the Olympics, treason and gay rights.  He has inserted himself into these issues like a man without enough to do.  Advantageously or not, he has entered into frays in an attempt to bring Russia once more to the fore.  As Benito Mussolini sought to re-create the Roman Empire, Mr. Putin wants to bring back the glory and the relevance of the Soviet Union.  What has emerged is a portrait of a man who does not have a master plan so much as an instinctual drive to matter once more.

In the Ukraine, it has been a battle between a government who is beholden to and admiring of the heavy-handed example of Russian rule while its people are desperate to be a part of the European Union.  The people have been staging one massive demonstration after another to demand entrance into the more economically prosperous West.  Mr. Putin doled out $15 billion that he will likely never see again, saving the Ukraine for the moment, but to what end? 

Concurrently, gay activists are primed to make their point with the upcoming Olympics but the president’s anti-gay stance is not controversial in a largely conservative country.  Additionally, while the Russians may be attacked by the more liberal West on the subject, few other countries are making waves on the subject, so why stir the pot?  The moral litmus test that Mr. Putin seems to be suggesting was made after the fact and is further proof that no grand master plan exists for the president.  

The Edward Snowden affair has made more than a few observers and leaders scratch their heads as the incident does nothing for Mr. Putin.  There may be a deep-seated Russian DNA that requires agitating and embarrassing the Americans but Mr. Snowden is no Kim Philby or Alger Hiss.  In the world of international relations and espionage, it would appear that only the naïve Mr. Snowden thought he had something noteworthy on his hands.  The fact that the conscious-stricken traitor has taken or tried to take refuge with three oppressive regimes (Russia, China and Venezuela) further diminishes his importance and message.  

However, the two things the Russian leadership knows about are dealing with internal dissention and throwing a parade.  Yet, the world has changed and even this has proven difficult.  First, Russia made headlines with the imprisonment of the crude, albeit impactful message of the punk band Pussy Riot.  While the Russians have traveled through the cauldron of glasnost, the government has limits.  Back in the day, the three young women would have disappeared and no one would have been wiser but the women have gone viral and they have become impossible to ignore.  Their recent release from jail by the “benevolent” Mr. Putin was seen as the cynical gesture it was and further proof that the president had little idea how to cope.   

Then, there are the Olympics.  Twentieth-century Russian/Soviet history has shown the importance of putting on a show.  Yet, the terrorist attacks in Volgograd threaten to bring down in horrific fashion Russia’s plans to present an athletically dominant and culturally significant image to the world.  No doubt, Mr. Putin, a la Captain Renault, is rounding up the usual suspects but the fact that fears linger and uncertainties are rising is proof that the Russians are not quite as efficient at crushing dissent and “troublemakers” as before.  While one may assume that the lack of more recent attacks is a sign of Russia’s determination, the Chechens are not known for sustained violence – only attacks that are sporadic and spectacular.  An attack at the Olympics would certainly fit the modus operandi. 

Vladimir Putin is an anachronism who is trying to portray his measures under the guise of a modern veneer.  Much like to tax and to please, this tactic is quite untenable.  If the president can have a safe and, for the Russians, a successful Olympics, the country will no doubt benefit but it will not be based on any grand master plan on the part of Mr. Putin.  As Julia Ioffe of the New Republic put it, this is a man thinking and acting instinctively, not deliberately.  While he is hoping that is enough, hope alone has seldom accomplished great things.   

A Road to Perdition

This weekend, an independent arbitrator ruled that New York Yankees’ third baseman Alex Rodriguez was suspended for an entire year, including post season for involvement in performance enhancement drugs (PEDs).  This has been a protracted process beginning with Mr. Rodriguez’s initial rejection of a 200+ game suspension mid-way through last season.  The Yankee third baseman demanded, as is his right under the collective bargain agreement (CBA), for an independent inspection of the evidence and the sentence.  The arbitrator did reduce the sentence but to Mr. Rodriguez’s outrage, a year will be taken away and likely, his career.  Alex Rodriguez has promised not to go quietly but he does need to go away.

In 2009, Alex Rodriguez revealed, after a litany of proclamations to the opposite, that he had taken substances to enhance his performance while he was a member of the Texas Rangers.  However, he was quick to say that he no longer took such drugs and asked that people judge him from that moment forward.  However, when Major League Baseball (MLB) convinced PED clinic owner Tony Bosch to turn over evidence of those players he had sold and administered drugs to, a string of players were revealed.  These players ranged from those to make the big leagues to superstars.  Mr. Rodriguez was at the top of this list.  Based on the evidence provided by Mr. Bosch as well as from other sources, MLB lowered the boom on every person on that list.   

It was at this point that Mr. Rodriguez’s indignation came to the fore.  Too vested in the statistics and glory he had accumulated to back off, he doubled down by lashing out at those who charged him with doping.  He criticized MLB, Commissioner Bud Selig and the entire process, declaring the charges and the suspension as contrived and the product of a smear campaign directed only at him.  All other players suspended accepted their punishment.  There were no cries of persecution, a rigged system or faulty evidence.  To their credit, these players realized their errors and instead of putting their teammates through a continued soap opera by battling the suspension, they took their medicine.  Not Mr. Rodriguez.  He demanded instead an independent arbitrator, all the while declaring that MLB was acting outside the guidelines of the CBA and making much of the fact that Mr. Selig would not attend the hearings (something the commissioner had never done during his tenure).    

When the arbitrator released his findings, he kept the bulk of the original suspension.  The ruling suggests that MLB had a great deal more evidence than has been revealed and that it was air tight.  Once more, Mr. Rodriguez declared the system corrupt though the arbitrator was impartial and by all accounts, carried out his duties thoroughly.  In a lengthy and rambling statement, Alex Rodriguez declared his innocence and his intention to take the matter to a federal court.  Meanwhile, he attempted to rally the players’ union and his former colleagues to come to his support and aid.  The immediate response has been a deafening silence.  It would appear that, for the most part, players are tired of Mr. Rodriguez’s antics and its effect on baseball.   

It is clear to see Alex Rodriguez’s actions as the epitome of selfishness.  To make matters worse, he has declared his intention to attend spring training as allowed for by the CBA, further creating a blunderbuss that will no doubt negatively impact the Yankees’ preparations for the 2014 season (as an Oriole fan, not necessarily a bad thing).  In some ways, it is a sad day for baseball but on the whole, historians and fans will look back on this suspension as the moment baseball began getting its house in order.  As a fan, I would tell the embattled Yankee – Don’t go away mad.  Just go away.

Don't Know Much About History...

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.  Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it.

            Benjamin Franklin

In the mid-2000s, I was in Japan with a group of high school students as part of a cultural exchange.  As a part of the exchange, I as the teacher met the education director for the Niigata Prefecture.  At the time, a controversy had erupted over the presentation of Japanese history in school textbooks.  Typically, the Japanese are reluctant to address controversial issues publicly but the education director asked me, as a history teacher, of my thoughts on the textbook debate. 

Risking a possible international incident, I suggested that history is not history unless it is embraced fully, warts and all.  Otherwise, it’s propaganda.  The director smiled and I smiled for I realized he was a reformer and I did not create an international row.  Today, however, the issue has re-emerged in Japan over the atrocities committed by the empire during World War II.  Nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in the aftermath of his recent visit to the controversial war dead shrine (Yasukuni), is attempting to shore up his conservative base and the issue of school textbooks is as impactful as it gets.   

Japanese schools are a model of, if nothing else, efficiency in providing a national narrative.  The Japanese have gone to great lengths to push and emphasize the importance of school lessons and the message that such lessons disseminate.  What is presented in Japanese schools is digested and learned to the letter and forms students their concepts of the various subjects – everything from math to history.  The idea of the proposed changes in the history textbooks could go a long way to change and shape how young Japanese students view their country and its past actions.   

Typically, Japanese history textbooks have an almost bullet-point style presentation – heavy on the core facts and figures and shallow on depth and context.  Some of the proposed changes (some examples recently published by the New York Times) are more a question of comprehensiveness than ideology.  A comprehensive discussion on the peace treaty that ended the war might include the typical Japanese view of the treaty, American objectives and the Japanese government’s response to those goals.  On a more nefarious and ideological level, the changes seek to whitewash the role the Japanese military played in the abuse and murder of civilians in Korea, China and a host of other subjugated countries at the mercy of the Japanese during World War II.     

In the United States, we have various groups who are seeking to re-write history.  In some cases, these groups simply seek to further explain or more greatly enumerate the details in which things happened.  However, other groups seek to re-cast history and its events to suit their own world view, regardless of facts.  Like these groups, the Japanese are playing a dangerous game.  What they sow here in 2014 in the form of whitewashed history textbooks could reap a risky flirtation with past mistakes.  George Santayana’s oft-quoted quip of history repeating itself might be trite but no less applicable.  Until the Japanese come to grips, as a culture, with their actions, the country as a political entity could become a wild card in the regional political power structure.   

In some ways, the effort of the Japanese is admirable as many places around the world are filled with those who bemoan the loss of who they are.  However, that same culture prevents the Japanese from fully embracing and accepting what it did as a country.  The salvation of any culture is a better understanding of its history – with all the blemishes and imperfections (and horrible abuses) that understanding brings.  The textbook crisis will be a turning point for the country and will drive it towards something new and better or toward something old and destructive.  History is not the romper room seen in elementary and middle schools (and high schools for that matter).  It is the most important subject one can pursue in order to have a better comprehension not only of ourselves but our culture.