Have you heard the one about the two Jews who . . .

Keiron Pim

Writing a review of three recent books on Jewish humor for the Spectator (November 25, 2017), Keiron Pim asks, 'Is Jewish humour the greatest defence mechanism ever created?'

I don't know if he ever explicitly answers that question, but he does offer a typical Jewish joke that puts things into perspective:

There's a long joke that Dauber and Baum tell in different ways, which in essence goes like this.

In the Pale of Settlement Moshe and Abram are walking down the street, kvetching about being too poor to eat, when they pass a church with a sign that reads: 'Convert and we'll give you ten roubles!'

Moshe looks at Abram and says: 'You know what, I'm going to do it,' and goes inside.

Twenty minutes later he emerges looking solemn, his head bowed. 'Well,' says Abram, 'did you do it? Did you get the ten roubles?'

And Moshe looks up at him and says: 'Why is it you people only ever think about money?'

Now, that's funny! Sublime wit!

Blame the Jews! (Again)

Antisemitic Caricature of Jewish Banker
Vos iz Neias

Over at the Marmot's Hole is a report that Samsung is engaged in a struggle over control as shareholders prepare to vote on the potential merger of Samsung with Cheil Industries, a merger especially opposed by the shareholder and hedge fund corporation Elliott Associates LP, and some Koreans have made arguably antisemitic comments, as reported in "South Korea - Jewish Organizations Call On Samsung To Denounce Accusations Of Jewish Cabal Blocking Deal" (Vos iz Neias? July 14th, 2015):

According to South Korean financial publication MoneyToday, "Elliott is led by a Jew, Paul E. Singer, and ISS [an advisory firm that analyzed the merger] is an affiliate of Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI), whose key shareholders are Jewish. According to a source in the finance industry, Jews have a robust network demonstrating influence in a number of domains."

Meanwhile, Mediapen, another local publication, asserted that "Jews are known to wield enormous power on Wall Street and in global financial circles" and that it is a "well-known fact that the US government is swayed by Jewish capital."

Jewish money, it reported, "has long been known to be ruthless and merciless."

In an accompanying photo, Singer was referred to as the "greedy, ruthless head of a notorious hedge fund."

Every long-time reader of my blog knows where I stand on this issue, but just in case some commentators over at the Marmot's Hole don't know, I posted an unambiguous comment for everyone's edification:

Samsung's problems? I blame the Jews! And the cyclists!

I believe that surely clarifies my view on this significant issue . . .

A pairing that didn't work . . .

Rivka Galchen
Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson

In the NYT's Sunday Book Review is posed the question "Which Books Do You Read Over and Over Again?" (March 3, 2015), to which Rivka Galchen responds, beginning with an anecdote:

Recently at the checkout of a grocery store, the young man bagging my goods mentioned that he had brought the very same prosciutto to the Rosh Hashana meal he shared with his Jewish roommate's family. He had brought that prosciutto . . . and he also brought a lavender goat cheese that he would recommend, it was delicious. He had ended up eating . . . both the prosciutto and the goat cheese himself. The family, he said, had laughed at him about what he had brought . . . . [T]hey were nice about it, but also they were kind of rude, but he didn't care, he'd enjoyed the food, even though, he emphasized, they really had been very weird about it. The young woman working the cash register interjected that the reason Jews don't eat pork is because, in their holy book, God punished some people by turning them into pigs, and so eating pork was cannibalism. Then the young man said, Oh, that makes sense, but still I don't think they had to be so weird about it.

At least, the Jewish family didn't cut the young man's head off for profaning a holy day, unlike what a devout group from one of the other 'Abrahamic' religions might have done in a place where its laws are enforced.

Speaking of which, the young lady at the cash register seems to have learned the pig tale from that other Abrahamic religion, since we often hear its religious leaders referring to Jews as the offspring of pigs. Actually, though, I've read somewhere that the pig tale comes originally from a Jewish source warning that God was displeased with the Jews of some city or other and transformed them into pigs as punishment. But as far as I recall, the change was temporary. Perhaps some reader can fill us in on that.

Anyway, the amusing part of the young man's story - to get back to my real point - was that he was not only bringing the wrong meat, i.e., pork, an 'unclean' meat, he was pairing the meat with a dairy product, which is not a kosher pairing since observant Jews can't pair meat with 'milk'! The young fellow couldn't have gone much further wrong.

Unless the cheese itself were unkosher, but I don't think it is.

The 'Annoyment' of Philosophy

Amazon

I'm now reading Howard Jacobson's novel The Finkler Question, and it's a humorous read so far - though I've not gotten far into the book, and in fact only so far as the passage below, which reaches with effort to succeed in stretching onto page 27 - anyway, a humorous read, so humorous in the aforesaid "passage below" that I laughed out loud on the subway train to Ewha early in the morning and so alarmed the few passengers sharing the same car with me that they must have concluded I "was in fact quite mad":

Every few years [Julian] Treslove decided it was time he tried philosophy again. Rather than start at the beginning with Socrates or jump straight into epistemology, he would go out and buy what promised to be a clear introduction to the subject - by someone like Roger Scruton or Bryan Magee, though not, for obvious reasons, by [his friend] Sam Finkler. These attempts at self-education always worked well at first. The subject wasn't after all difficult. He could follow it easily. But then, at more or less the same moment, he would encounter a concept or a line of reasoning he couldn't follow no matter how many hours he spent trying to decipher it. A phrase such as 'the idea derived from evolution that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis' for example, not impossibly intricate in itself but somehow resistant to effort, as though it triggered something obdurate and even delinquent in his mind. Or the promise to look at an argument from three points of view, each of which had five salient features, the first of which had four distinguishable aspects. It was like discovering that a supposedly sane person with whom one had been enjoying a perfectly normal conversation was in fact quite mad. Or, if not mad, sadistic. (Jacobson, The Finkler Question, pages 26-27)

I laughed out especially loud at the last three sentences, and laugh again now that I re-view the passage. And I hope you also will laugh at the humor in the passage since I took pains to type it out and painstakingly checked to see that I got it, without typo, completely right!

But maybe the humor for me is that I've experienced exactly this maddening reaction in reading complex philosophical arguments!

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson

Amazon Site

I recently finished reading a novel titled "J." That symbol is intended to be a crossed-out capital letter "J." Why? Because the main character's father always "put two fingers across his mouth, like a tramp sucking on a cigarette butt he'd found in a rubbish bin[, which] . . . he . . . did to stifle the letter j before it left his lips" (page 6).

Why stifle the letter "J"?

To avoid accidentally pronouncing the word "Jew," a word no one in the novel ever utters even though every character has a Jewish surname, a name apparently taken on as an act of atonement for something terrible that happened - if it did happen - to the Jews, but also to pretend that nothing happened, surely not, since everyone is now 'Jewish.'

Okay, that's enough of a hint at a plot spoiler, so I'll stop now except to say that I liked the novel enough to purchase a second one by Jacobson: The Finkler Question.

It won the 2010 Man Booker Prize for literature, so it comes with an imprimatur.

Holocaust Recividus? J Speaks

Howard Jacobson
Photo: Hindustan Times via Getty
The Spectator

In James Walton's first response to Howard Jacobson's new novel, he writes, "Howard Jacobson's J convinced me that I'd just read a masterpiece" (The Spectator, 13 September 2014), but he soon had some doubts. First, the conviction:

I finished the book, in fact, convinced that I'd just read a masterpiece.

But 'reality' sets in:

The trouble comes with reflecting on it afterwards. Once you're not being swept along by Jacobson's prose, the awkward realisation dawns that he's not joking, in more ways than one. Nor is he merely trying to write a work of dark fantasy. For the novel to carry the kind of punch he clearly intends, it needs to be at least imaginable that, within the next few years, the British people could rise up against the country's Jews, who still occupy 'a particular, even privileged place in the nation's taxonomy of fear and loathing'. And that once they had, the crime could be buried. And that British Christians still define themselves against the Jews.

I haven't read the book - I can't read everything! - but perhaps Jacobson is listening to the political left that has aligned itself with radical Islamists and openly re-uses antisemitic tropes. Could that be what the novel is really focusing on?

Of course, I'm mildly speculating, but the fact is that the rise of antisemitism in Europe these days is not so much rightwing as it is Muslim and leftwing.

Hebrew 9:15 -- Specifically about Israelites and their Descendants?

Moses with Tablets of Ten Commandments

Rembrandt (1659)

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm looking again at Harold W. Attridge's Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, checking up on one of the verses that I cited a couple of days ago, specifically verse 9 of chapter 15:

And therefore he [i.e., Christ] is the mediator of a new covenant, so that once a death took place for the redemption of transgressions under the first covenant, those who have been called might receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. (Attridge's Commentary, page 253a)

καὶ διὰ τοῦτο διαθήκης καινῆς μεσίτης ἐστίν ὅπως θανάτου γενομένου εἰς ἀπολύτρωσιν τῶν ἐπὶ τῇ πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ παραβάσεων τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν λάβωσιν οἱ κεκλημένοι τῆς αἰωνίου κληρονομίας (GNT Morph, Blue Letter Bible)

In Sunday's study group, I happened to notice that the verse seems to be focused solely on transgressions committed under the first covenent, and I called attention to this point, asking if the verse applied specifically to the Israelites and their descendants, i.e., only those who were bound by the Mosaic Law.

My question didn't really get an answer, which is why I've returned to it today. My hunch is that the author of Hebrews is focused almost entirely upon the meaning of Christ's sacrifice for those under the Law, just as his larger focus is upon the status of Christ in terms of old covenant paradigm. In all cases of comparison, the author of Hebrews finds that Christ surpasses the old revelation.

What interests me is that the writer seems to have no interest in the significance of Christ for Gentiles in his text -- though feel free to correct me if I'm wrong and have overlooked something (and I'm not arguing that the author considered Gentiles to be excluded). In verse 15, at any rate, the author seems to ignore Gentiles. If so, then "those who have been called" (οἱ κεκλημένοι, perfect passive participle of καλέω [kaleō]) might refer to those called into the old covenant, namely, the Israelites and their descendants.

In this hermeneutic, the calling would not fit a Calvinist understanding of the elect individually predestined for grace, but a different calling, that of an entire people -- the Israelites and their descendants -- to the old covenant, within which they are judged by their faithfulness to the Law. Now, however, they might receive through Christ the eternal inheritance if they accept the author's christology of Jesus as the Messiah, the Supreme Sacrifice, the Heavenly High Priest, and the Son of God. His warnings in the opening passages (cf. 2:1ff) imply that his audience has a choice to accept or reject the high christology that he sets out, and his exhortation in the closing passages (12:1-29) that believers hold fast, especially in 12:15f, which implies that one can fall, presupposes that one has a choice. But this is tangential to my main point.

I'm not explicitly supported in my reading of Hebrews generally by Attridge on the point about Israelites (or their descendants) and Gentiles, but neither am I clearly contradicted (Commentary, pages 254b-255b). Concerning the sins committed under the old covnant, Attridge does note that:

The sins involved took place "under the first covenant" (ἐπὶ τῇ πρώτῃ διαθήκῃ). There is no indication that the transgressions were in any sense caused by that first covenant. The old covenant is simply the regime under which were committed sins that could not be expiated. That Christ's sacrifice had such a retrospective effect is also implied by the atonement language that Paul inherited. The later reference to the "perfection" of the heroes of the old covenant that occurs with that of Christians (11:40) indicates one implication of this retrospective effect of Christ's sacrifice. (Attridge, Commentary, page 255a).

Attridge would appear to concur with me that the verse focuses only upon those bound by the old covenant. The citation of 11:40 -- "God provided something better for us, so that they might not be perfected without us" (Attridge, Commentary, page 346a) -- shows this retrospective concern for Israelites (and descendants), though without excluding Christians generally, of course, as indicated by the "us" of 11:40. However, I suspect that the author of Hebrews is using "us" to refer specifically to his audience of Jewish-Christians. Recall the "us" of 1:2 in the context of "the fathers" of 1:1, which could imply "our fathers" -- but Attridge rejects this reading of 1:1-2 (Commentary, page 38b), and I won't press it for now.

Gerard Delanty on Rémi Brague

Gerard Delanty

(Image from University of Sussex)

Yesterday, I linked to Gerard Delanty's article on European identity, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends" (European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003), which reviews nine books presenting views of Europe. The article dates from 2003, which is not so long ago, but given the enormous changes since then, especially Europe's ongoing economic crisis and its surging immigration, the debate over European identity has probably moved on. Delanty's article remains valuable, however, especially for it succinct presentation of various views, including the summary of Rémi Brague's understanding of European identity, so I'll post it here for readers' convenience:

Europe as a Philosophical Idea

Works on Europe as a strictly philosophical idea are rare. A few notable exceptions in recent times are Derrida (1992), Gadamer (1992), Kristeva (2000) and Patočka (2001). The English translation of Rémi Brague's La voie romaine is a major contribution to the constitution of Europe as an object of philosophical reflection. Originally published in 1992 in response to the Maastricht Treaty, this subtle book can be easily misunderstood. This is an essay about the philosophical essence of Europe and it is Brague's argument that this is to be found not in the content of European traditions but in their form: the uniquely European is to be found in the nature of the transmission of culture rather than in any specific cultural content. Europe is based on a particular cultural form that transforms that which it takes over but does not have a culture of its own. The essence of Europe is its capacity to transform culture. For Brague, Europe cannot be defined by geography, by politics or by a disembodied Platonic idea. It is not a place or a particular political order. Europe is a variable notion and defined as a particular kind of cultural belonging, which Brague associates with Rome. 'Europe is not only Greek, nor only Hebrew, nor even Greco-Hebraic. It is decidedly Roman' (p. 26). This may sound extraordinary, but Rome for Brague denotes something more European than Greek, Judaic or Islamic modes of belonging because Rome is not European at all in its fundamental nature -- 'this culture is not Latin, or European, but foreign' (p. 92).

For Brague, Europe has always defined itself through otherness, a condition that he associates with Rome. 'The Romans have done little more than transmit', he argues (p. 32). Roman culture was based on innovation, commencement, a search for the new. To say that we are Romans is the contrary of identifying ourselves with a great ancestor; it is to recognize that fundamentally we have invented nothing, but simply that we learned how to transmit the cultures of others. Thus what distinguishes Europe is its mode of relating to itself, which is one of distance: 'The distance that separates us from the ancient Greeks is not in principle, less than that which separates us from other modern cultures' (p. 142). Europe constantly has to confront a consciousness of having borrowed everything from sources that can never be regained. Brague associates with Rome a form of cultural translation in which something new is always created in the act of interpretation. In contrast, in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign. The ancient world can only be known in its traces. This leads Brague to his thesis that at the heart of the European consciousness is the phenomenon of 'secondarity': Europeanness is based on the act of cultural creation in which all cultural content is never a copy of an origin. This capacity for self-transformation leads to the interesting insight that Europe does not belong to the Europeans, who do not exist as such. 'Europe is a culture' and cannot be inherited but only created (p.149) is the conclusion Brague reaches.

This is a decidedly deconstructive reading of European culture as already decentred, 'eccentric' and containing alterity within it. Moreover, it reflects a processual and transformative conception of Europe -- echoing Renan, 'Europe is a continual plebiscite' (p. 5) -- since the political implication, not fully developed by the author, is that Europe is never tied to its origin but can and must constantly recreate itself. To be sure, Brague seeks to tie the idea of secondarity to some notions in Catholic theology, obscuring some of his fascinating ideas and it is indeed arguable that the condition of cultural secondarity needs to be related exclusively to Rome. In more conventional approaches this is often associated with the idea of modernity, as in the work of Blumenberg, who has clearly influenced Brague. But the central thesis that European culture needs to be defined in terms of its form rather than identified with a particular cultural content solves some of the problems of essentialism. It also gives a different twist to the idea of the uniqueness of Europe, since what is claimed is that this consists of the capacity for secondarity. But there is a philosophical slight [sic. sleight] of hand in the seductive argument that '"Eurocentrism" is a misnomer' on the grounds that 'no culture was never so little centred [sic. centered] on itself and so interested in the others as Europe' (pp. 133–4). Notwithstanding this problem which is not adequately addressed, this book offers one of the most important philosophical theorizations of the meaning of Europe. (Gerard Delanty, "Conceptions of Europe: A Review of Recent Trends," European Journal of Social Theory, 6(4) 2003, pages 485-486)

This is a rather good summary of Brague's views, but I think that Delanty exaggerates the degree to which European identity is to be found in its form rather than its content. To be European is not just to be characterized in its form of "secondarity" as a transmitter of foreign cultural contents that transform and are transformed. Europe has a more particular cultural debt to Greek and Jewish culture. I think that Delanty also misstates Brague's point about Islam concerning the manner in which foreign cultures are taken over: "in Islam, the original content is retained to a greater extent whereas in Europe the origin is always foreign." Brague's point about translation in the Islamic world is not that Muslims were more accurate in their translations of foreign materials into Arabic, but that they stuck with those original translations, holding that the Arabic language had perfected the meaning and that there was no reason to return to the foreign sources since the translations were superior. Europeans, by contrast, always sought more accurate translations because they knew that the superior text was to be found in the original. Once they had the originals, of course, they were free to transform these through reinterpretation -- the transformative part of transmission -- but the originals were never considered to be superceded.

I recommend that interested readers go directly to Brague.

Major Fallacy: Nazis Deceived by Nonexistent Man With Qualities

Major William Martin

(Image from New York Times)

Jennet Conant, in "The Man Who Never Was," written for the New York Times (May 6, 2010), reviews Ben Macintyre's true story of the fictional Major William Martin, a British military man who didn't exist but who fooled the German high command by a clever ruse. The invented "Major Martin" was a corpse disguised as a fake courier carrying on his body papers outlining the real plan of invasion by way of Sicily disguised as a false plan and a false plan of invasion by way of Greece diguised as the real plan. This corpse, "who would wash up on the Spanish coast, was a complete fraud, but the lies he would carry from Room 13 of the British Admiralty all the way to Hitler's desk would help win the war."

The story is stranger than fiction because it began as fiction but grew to reality, initiated by an idea listed in a now-famous "Trout Fisher" memo, a document attributed at the time to Director of Naval Intelligence John Henry Godfrey but now known to have been written by another fellow working for British intelligence. This memo appeared early on, in September 1939, merely three weeks into the war:

"The Trout Fisher," said the memo, in that peculiarly sporting style that only the English can pull off, "casts patiently all day. He frequently changes his venue and his lures." Although issued under Godfrey's name, it was most likely the work of Ian Fleming, whose gift for intelligence planning and elaborate plots, most of which were too far-fetched to ever implement, later served him so well in his James Bond series. The memo was "a masterpiece of corkscrew thinking," Mac­intyre writes, laying out 51 schemes for deceiving the Germans at sea, including one to drop soccer balls coated with phosphorus to attract submarines, and another to set adrift tins of booby-trapped treats. Far down on the list of suggestions, No. 28 -- "not a very nice one," the author(s) conceded -- proposed using a corpse, dressed as an airman, carrying spurious secret documents.

That this suggestion was in turn based on an idea used in a detective novel by Basil Thomson, an ex-policeman and former tutor to the King of Siam who made his name as a spy catcher in World War I, only adds to the fantastic quality of Macintyre's entertaining tale. First Fleming, an ardent bibliophile, dusted off this quaint literary ploy; then the trout-fishing admiral, who always appreciated a good yarn, had the cunning to know that "the best stories are also true," and dispatched his team to turn fiction into reality. In many ways it was a very old story at that, as indicated by the operation's first code name, "Trojan Horse." A bit of gallows humor led to the plan's name being changed to the rather tasteless Operation Mincemeat.

The double-bluff worked. The Germans fell for it. But the story is even more fascinating, incorporating one Ewen Montagu, and his younger brother, Ivor, brilliant scions of a Jewish banking dynasty who attended Cambridge and there not only invented the rules for table tennis but also founded the Cheese Eaters League . . . though Ivor also became a Communist and Soviet spy who kept a watchful eye on his older brother as the M15 kept their watchful eyes on him. Unaware of Ivor's scrutiny as Soviet spy, which perhaps posed little danger anyway, Ewen took the bones of the corpse idea laid out in Fleming's "Trout Fisher" and put 'mincemeat' upon those bones, for he gave the ruse its name, "Operation Mincemeat," and helped work out the realistic details of Major Martin's fictional life. Ewen later wrote a book in 1953 on the successful operation, The Man Who Never Was, which was dramatized as a movie in 1956.

Truly a story thus even stranger than stranger than fiction . . .

Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif: "Atheists, Christians, and Fornicators Are Responsible for Human Rights Treaties"

Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif

(Image from Memri)

Finally, an issue upon which atheists, Christians, and fornicators can agree: human rights. According, anyway, to Saudi Arabian Muslim cleric Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, who informs us:

"We are committed to international treaties as long as they do not violate Islamic law. If they violate Islamic law, we should throw them out, because they are not worth the ink they were written with. With all due respect, the international treaties are worthless."

Worthless? Why would that be? The unvarnished truth from Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif:

"Who is responsible for the human rights and international treaties? The atheists, the Christians, and the fornicators, with all due respect."

Muslims, atheists, and Christians are, I suppose, mutually exclusive groups, but none of these exclude actual fornicators, who can always be found everywhere. Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, however, is referring to 'fornicators' who exist only in his mind, where they multiply their numbers and conspire with 'atheists' and 'Christians' also present there to foment for thoughts of human rights and against thoughts of sharia.

But the conspiracy is even bigger than Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif imagines, for some 'thoughts' remain hidden even to himself, specifically, the 'Jews' of his mind who stand behind the scenes manipulating the 'fornicators', 'atheists', and 'Christians' . . . all in the interest of human rights.

With all due respect, Mr. Muhammad Musa Al-Sharif, you haven't yet figured out the entire conspiracy, so try to introspect just a little bit more.

Clarice Lispector: "I only loved something I didn't know."

Clarice Lispector

"Untamed Creature"

(Image from New York Times)

In a reminder of why I read the International Herald Tribune -- which now identifies itself as "The Global Edition of The New York Times" -- I happened upon the review "Out of the shadows for a Brazilian writer," by Fernanda Eberstadt, about Benjamin Moser's biography of the Brazilian Jewish writer Clarice Lispector: Why This World.

That title has no question mark, so it sounds as if it would provide an answer, a theodicy of some kind to explain the world's excessive evil. That turned out not to be so far off the mark:

Nineteen forty-three -- the year after Stefan Zweig, another Jewish writer who hoped Brazil could offer redemption from Europe's genocidal impulses, committed suicide in a mountain resort not far from Rio -- saw the publication of the 23-year-old Lispector’s first novel. It was called "Near to the Wild Heart" [i.e., Perto do coração selvagem], and it was an overnight sensation. The story is simple -- a man torn between a homebody mistress and a wild-animal wife -- and chillingly amoral, but Lispector uses it to address with brutal lucidity what will prove the central question of her work: What is the nature of God's presence in the world?

Moser, however, portrays Lispector as "a writer almost cabalistically bent on piercing the veil between 'word' and 'being,' and not much convinced of the validity of such human categories as good and evil." Or is this Eberstadt's view? Either way, I wonder if it's not a bit too ambivalent, given Eberstadt's reading of the biography:

[Clarice's mother,] Mania, long mute and paralyzed, died when Clarice was 9; [her father,] Pinkhas, now Pedro, struggled in vain to make a living as a peddler and died at age 55, leaving his children with the "unbearable" memory of a gifted mathematician and immensely moral man who was at every step thwarted by human evil and indifference.

If Moser's biography depicts an "immensely moral man . . . thwarted by human evil" because he was Jewish, the "categories of good and evil" would seem to be less ambiguous than implied. And then there's the evil perpetrated upon Lispector's mother:

During the civil war that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, [the region of] Podolia [in western Ukraine] was beset by a truly genocidal succession of pogroms. In 1918, Lispector's grandfather was murdered, her family home destroyed, and shortly after, her mother, Mania, already the mother of two small children, was gang-raped by Russian soldiers -- an assault that infected the young woman with syphilis.

The infection took eleven years to do away with Mania, bringing her to a "mute and paralyzed" state before it finally killed her. There certainly seems, in the dreadful things that happened to Lispector's parents, to be such an abundance of evil -- in both the moral and the natural senses -- for me to wonder if the line between good and evil can be so ambiguous for Lispector the writer even if Near to the Wild Heart, for example, is "chillingly amoral." I realize that one must distinguish between the writer Lispector and Lispector the writer, but even the latter cannot be simply identified with the narrator, and still less so with the protagonist, of a novel. But I suppose that I ought to read the book -- or better, Lispector's books -- before I judge either Lispector or Moser's biography by Eberstadt's cover.

For otherwise, despite Gadamer, I'm merely pre-judging such alienated creatures as Lispector and those who comment upon her life and her work . . .

Adam Garfinkle on the 'Jewcentric' Personality

Jewcentricity?

(Image from Wiley)

I receive regular articles emailed from the FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute) and yesterday received one in the "Footnotes" series (The Newsletter of FPRI's Wachman Center) with the odd title "Zionism and 'Jewcentricity' in American History" (Vol. 14, No. 12, August 2009). Written by Adam Garfinkle (editor of The American Interest) and based on a fascinating presentation, "The U.S., Zionism, and Israel," at a conference "U.S. Foreign Policy and the Modern Middle East" held in Philadelphia on June 25-27, 2009, the article and presentation are both advance reports from his upcoming book Jewcentricity: Why the Jews Are Praised, Blamed, and Used to Explain Just About Everything (Wiley, September 2009).

As I noted, the article has the odd title "Zionism and 'Jewcentricity' in American History" -- a rather disconcerting title, actually -- but here's Garfinkle's definition of the disconcerting term:

Jewcentricity is the tendency to exaggerate the role of Jews and Judaism in consequential human affairs.

As he notes, this can be expressed in antisemitic or philosemitic ways. Indeed, I've long considered these to be two sides of the same coin, and I've noticed that very little is sometimes needed for an individual to flip almost at random from one side to the other.

Mark Twain was a good example of this sort of 'Jewcentric' individual, for he wrote an essay published in Harper's Magazine, "Concerning the Jews" (September 1899), that expressed both attitudes. After writing the arguably antisemitic words that the "Jew is a money getter, and in getting his money he is a very serious obstruction to less capable neighbors who are on the same quest," Twain went on to write these rather more positive, arguably philosemitic words:

The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rule, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away . . . . [T]he Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit together in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now who he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal except the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains.

This could, of course, easily flip back over into an antisemitic attitude, for the two attitudes share the view that the Jews play an overwhelming role in world affairs. Interestingly, even Jews can show both tendencies. Recall Garfinkle's definition:

Jewcentricity is the tendency to exaggerate the role of Jews and Judaism in consequential human affairs.

In the article, he then immediately observes:

Non-Jews do it, and Jews do it, too. Sometimes the exaggerations are philo-Semitic . . . sometimes anti-Semitic.

With that in mind consider our modern-day "Spengler" -- who has recently revealed himself to be David P. Goldman, associate editor of First Things -- for "Spenger" wrote an article published on September 17, 2007 in Asia Times, "It's easy for the Jews to talk about life," in which he expresses positive views that recall Twain's positive remarks about the Jewish talent for survival and success against the odds:

It's easy for the Jews to talk about delighting in life. They are quite sure that they are eternal, while other peoples tremble at the prospect impending extinction. It is not their individual lives that the Jews find so pleasant, but rather the notion of a covenantal life that proceeds uninterrupted through the generations . . . . What makes the Jews different is their unique belief that the Covenant gives them eternal life, a belief grounded, to be sure, by thousands of years of history, and survival against all odds against the depredations of the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Alexandrine and Roman empires, not to mention more recent unpleasantness. It is not changing the baby's diapers or changing grandma's bedpan to which the Jews refer when they speak of delight in life, but rather the idealized, perpetual life of a kinship community.

Goldman is of course Jewish, but his 'Jewcentric' views have at times been expressed in less positive ways, for in 1978, he was associated with Lyndon LaRouche and co-wrote an article with Uwe Henke von Parpart for LaRouche's paper New Solidarity (November 18, 1978) titled "Israel Got H-Bomb From Wall Street Zionists -- USLP Readies Dossier" (pdf). The acronym "USLP" stands for "United States Labor Party," which was at that time the name of LaRouche's organization, and Goldman's views in this article are less than positive:

Operating under the cover of partnerships in Wall Street Brokerage Firms, executive positions in industrial companies, and hole-in-the-wall "scientific" firms scattered throughout the New York Metropolitan area, members of the Nuclear Club of Wall Street are the core of the atom spy network of Israel's foreign secret intelligence, the Mossad. These men are the most dangerous traitors in circulation now in the United States. Through their efforts, Israel has the means to provoke a third World War and destroy the United States.

The LaRouche organization is known for this sort of conspiracy-mongering. Goldman has long since left that organization, and his views on the role of Jews and Israel have grown far more positive -- as his "Spengler" articles attest -- but he remains a fascinating example of what Garfinkle might refer to as "the Jewcentric personality."

Not that Garfinkle ever mentions Goldman, for the name doesn't appear in Garfinkle's book Jewcentricity: Why the Jews Are Praised, Blamed, and Used to Explain Just About Everything, but the man fits the type.

"Stoning . . . is the introduction, by contemporary Islamic leaders, of a Jewish custom"?

(Korea Herald)

The British scholar Chris Williams, who seems to be writing a regular column for the Korea Herald these days, had an article in yesterday's Herald that promised to apply lessons learned from the recent events in Iran to an analysis of North Korea: "Could 'Iran' happen in North Korea?"

Despite the headline, Williams actually had relatively little to say specifically about North Korea -- though he did make the following remark:

Hope for Iran, and North Korea, lies in two things. Despotic regimes inevitably score own goals, appear foolish and inept, and alienate their own supporters. But paradoxically, it is unfortunate that those who rule North Korea seem less inept than those who rule Iran.

I gather that North Korean 'eptness' means that the answer to the question posed in this article's headline as to the possibility of massive popular resistance in North Korea is: "Maybe not." I suspect, however, that if the North Korean leadership seems less inept than Iran's leadership, this is because the North Korean leaders do not flirt with democracy and therefore have no ballots to obviously and crudely miscount. Williams did have some otherwise interesting things to say about Iran, despotism, and democracy, but his article contains the following, confounding passage:

Stoning is not, as many believe, Iranian tradition. It did not happen during the Shah's era, and the practice is not Persian or proposed in the Koran. It is the introduction, by contemporary Islamic leaders, of a Jewish custom. The practice is closer to Zionism than Zoroastrianism.

That last line is perhaps indicative of an Anglo-Saxon love for alliteration, and thereby 'poetic', but the entire paragraph is a cognitive snarl that would appear to hold Jews in some way responsible for the un-Islamic application of stoning as punishment in Iran. Let us therefore look a bit closer at this issue.

Is stoning a Jewish custom? I don't currently see many Jews involved in stonings. To be frank, I don't see any. Jewish laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy do indeed mandate stoning for some crimes, and these might be what Williams was thinking of, but the laws on stoning haven't been applied for perhaps 2000 years. There may have been some exceptions, for isolated cases can probably always be found, but one can hardly call stoning these days a Jewish custom.

Moreover, stoning surely has nothing to do with Zionism, which is a secular political philosophy. I can't imagine that Williams thinks that the state of Israel has laws to mandate stoning for capital offenses. As for the reference to Zoroastrianism . . . well, why is that thrown in? Except for alliteration, of course . . . and, I suppose, because the Iranians used to be Zoroastrians, who apparently didn't use stoning as a punishment. But Iranians haven't been Zoroastrians since the Islamic conquest nearly 1400 years ago.

And that is the crux, for stoning is both law and custom in Islam. Williams is correct that the Qur'an does not mandate stoning, but Islamic law, shariah, certainly does, for shariah is based on three sources: Qur'an (Allah's revelation), Sira (Muhammad's life), and Hadith (Muhammad's sayings). Muhammad practiced stoning, and he condoned it. Stoning is not a recent introduction to Islam by contemporary Muslim leaders. It is decidedly no innovation.

As for the history of stoning's application in Islamic Iran, I know little about that. Possibly, Williams is correct that it was not practiced in the past and was only introduced into Iran's Islamic Penal Code in 1983. Be that as it may, stoning has certainly always been part of Islamic law, and when one considers that Iran's Islamist revolution took place in 1979, then the fact that stoning was made law merely four years later looks less like innovation and more like an opportunity grasped.

In no way should one blame the Jews for stoning in Iran . . . or for stoning in Islam.

Financial Conspiracy of Uncle Sam, Zionists, and . . . Allah?

Uncle Sam

Third-Rate Deceiver?

(Image not from Wikipedia)

All of you financial analysts studying the role of derivatives in the current financial crisis have been looking at the wrong thing. The crisis is not the unforeseen consequence of trying to eliminate financial risk by spreading the risk across various investments, a practice that many analysts now claim actually increased risk because everybody was spreading risk around and thereby involving the entire financial system in an increasingly precarious 'risky business'.

Well, that's all wrongheaded, for that indispensable resource MEMRI, in a dispatch titled "Arab Columnists: The Economic Crisis -- A Conspiracy by U.S. Government, American Jews" (Special Dispatch Series, No. 2091, October 22, 2008), informs us that "several Arab columnists" have recently written "that the global economic crisis is the result of a conspiracy by the U.S. government, by American Jews, and/or by the Zionists . . . aiming to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, to seize Arab wealth, and to take over the global economy" -- with the general aim of "increasing their influence in the world."

The head of the Egyptian Parliamentary Foreign Liaison Committee, Dr. Mustafa Al-Fiqqi published an article in the London daily Al-Hayat arguing that the economic crisis was "Part of Global Political Conspiracy":

During the summer holidays, I was preoccupied with the global issue of the conspiracy theory. I examined everything that was happening around me in light of this theory, applying historical analysis to gain insight into events and opinions . . . . In my opinion, the current economic crisis, which is expected to get worse, is a new kind of conspiracy. It started in September, only seven years after the first [conspiracy, i.e. the September 11 attacks]. This time, the aim is to take over the property and capital of the Arabs, and to create a new climate of economic plundering in the wake of the political plundering. Such is the Western mentality -- it excels at reaping what others have sown and at seizing anything that they have no right [to take].

Al Fiqqi argues that 9/11 was for political control and that that current financial crisis is for economic control. Both are conspiracies because both began in the same month -- the former in September 2001, the latter in September 2008 -- and Al Fiqqi should know, for he's been studying the September 2008 crisis since last summer.

Lebanese columnist Fuad Matar wrote that "The Crisis is a Move Devised by the Jewish Mind and the Zionist Lobby," apparently publishing the same article for the Lebanese daily Al-Liwa and Saudi daily Al-Yawm, and argued that Jews had "instigated the financial crisis in order to prevent Bush from fulfilling his promise to establish a Palestinian state before the end of his presidency."

Matar acknowledges a minor inconsistency in his theory:

Some might [disagree with me,] saying that Jewish money and the Jewish mind constitute the main nerve of the financial world and of the real estate investment [sector] in the U.S., and that it is therefore hardly likely that Zionism would destroy financial, real estate and investment institutions in which [Zionists] play an active role, whether as shareholders or executives.

Matar, however, remains convinced because he is certain that the aim is to reduce American power:

Zionists made a significant change in their plans, [and decided that] the time has come to transfer the Zionist strategic base from the U.S. to Europe, when the possibility arose that a black man, Barak Obama, would head the U.S.

But I thought that Obama was strong in his support for Israel . . . . Well, never mind that. It's all smokescreen, anyway.

Meanwhile, in that center of intellectual ferment, Saudi Arabia, Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma, a lecturer at King Faysal University, maintains that this global economic crisis is being manipulated by the Rothschilds in line with their aim of taking over the world's financial markets. In "Who Is behind the American Crisis?", written for Al-Watan, she argues that "the real value of learning history does not lie in merely knowing the facts, but in absorbing them and taking a lesson from them" -- a reasonable enough point -- and goes on to tell us the lesson:

Some say that the facts of the current American crisis are clear, and that there is nothing hiding behind the scenes, but I disagree. [I believe that] those hiding behind the scenes are numerous. [These are forces] that are accustomed to staying hidden and working in the dark, especially [when the moment is right] and hegemonies are ripe for toppling.

Although I lack Al-Jalahma's financial expertise and grasp of historical facts, I wonder what her positive evidence is for blaming the Rothschilds, for she seems to provide merely analogical 'evidence' from past financial crises when the Rothschilds allegedly manipulated things behind the scenes.

Even Allah is implicated in this conspiracy, it would seem, for in another MEMRI translation of Arabic news (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, No. 2092, October 23, 2008), we learn from Dr. Zaghloul Ragheb Al-Naggar the startling truth about the truly hidden forces at work:

In an October 8, 2008 interview on Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV, prominent Egyptian geologist and cleric Dr. Zaghloul Ragheb Al-Naggar discussed the global economic crisis, warning that the "usury system" displeased Allah, that the capitalist system was collapsing, and that this was "a wakeup call" to "base economic institutions on healthy Islamic principles" and to realize the truth about Islam . . . . [adding that] "What we are seeing is a war waged by Allah and His Prophet."

So . . . am I to infer that Allah is working with the Bush administration and the Rothschilds to destroy the global financial system and bring about the victory of Islam?

Truly, "Allah is the best of deceivers" (Allahu khayru al-makireena, Quran 3:54).

Sarah Palin and the Jewish Question

David Brickner

Head of Jews for Jesus

(Image from Jews for Jesus Blog)

Yesterday's blog entry discussed the controversy over Governor Palin's remarks on the Iraq War, and for those remarks, I don't think that she can be seriously faulted, not any more so than Lincoln for making similar remarks during wartime, for neither she nor Lincoln claimed to know God's will.

The other controversy recently swirling about Palin is not directly about her but about David Brickner, leader of the organization Jews for Jesus, because of some remarks that he made while visiting her home church in Wasilla, Alaska. Brickner has helpfully posted the message that he gave that day: "The Jerusalem Dilemma," Wasilla Bible Church, August 17, 2008 by David Brickner

By dilemma, Brickner explains that although Jerusalem means "City of Peace," the irony is that it has no peace:

[This is] the Jerusalem Dilemma. Here is this city that represents a people, that represents a move of God; the name itself -- Ir Shalom -- means 'City of Peace.' And yet, what irony that there has been no peace, and there is no peace in the city of peace.

I think that Brickner is misusing the word "dilemma" to mean "irony," but perhaps I've misunderstood him. More importantly for our understanding of Brickner's talk in Palin's Wasilla church is this point:

Israel is an example of what all humanity has been saying to God since the beginning of time, shaking its fists at the heavens and saying, "You'll not rule over us."

And so all of the controversy that we see swirling in Jerusalem is really a mirror that the world looks in to see the controversy within. The Jerusalem Dilemma is the Wasilla Dilemma; it's the dilemma of the human heart.

I take it that Brickner is using Jerusalem, and therefore also Israel, as a symbol for all of 'rebellious' mankind, so we ought to keep this in mind as we come to his controversial words about "judgment":

But what we see in Israel, the conflict that is spilled out throughout the Middle East, really which is all about Jerusalem, is an ongoing reflection of the fact that there is judgment. There is judgment that is going on in the land, and that's the other part of this Jerusalem Dilemma. When Jesus was standing in that temple, He spoke that that judgment was coming, that there's a reality to the judgment of unbelief. He said "I long to gather you, but . . ." what? "You were unwilling." God never forces His way on human beings. And so because Jerusalem was unwilling to receive His grace, judgment was coming. He says, "Look, your house has left you desolate!" What did He mean by that? Remember where He is. He's standing in the temple there in Jerusalem, the place where God had promised, through Moses,

"There I will meet with you, there I will hear your prayers, and there I will forgive your sin."

And now Jesus in that temple, just before going to the cross, says, 'From now on this place is desolate.' And Jesus' words have echoed down through the centuries. Not a generation after He uttered this promise, Titus and his Roman legions marched into that city and destroyed both the city and the temple. And from that day until this very present there has been no temple, and there is therefore no sacrifice in Judaism. Only we could sacrifice in . . . the only place was in the temple. And therefore there has been, and there is today, no confidence of atonement, no confidence of forgiveness. If you were to stand outside of a synagogue on the day of atonement and ask those leaving the service, "Did God hear your prayers? Were your sins forgiven on this most holy of all days?" the answer would be, "I hope. I hope, but who can know?" Who indeed but those of us who have come under the wings of the Almighty, who've entered into that place of grace where forgiveness is assured for the dilemma of human life. Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real.

When Isaac [i.e., David Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it. And Jesus talks about it, but He didn't leave us there. There's a promise of a return from this judgment. Jesus concludes His message there in the temple by saying this -- 'I tell you, you will not see Me again, you will not experience what I have come to bring, this place of grace which I have and will soon establish . . . you will not see Me again until you say, until you’re able with conviction to articulate, these words: "Baruch hab-ba bashem Adonai -- 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord."' Once again quoting again from a Psalm, this time Psalm 118:

The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief . . . the chief corner stone. And this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

Well, what are we to make of this? Is it antisemitic? Brickner himself is ethnically Jewish, but some Jewish converts to Christianity throughout history have turned against their own people in a hatred that is perhaps self-hatred. From my reading of Brickner's words here and elsewhere, I don't clearly sense hatred. We should also keep in mind that Brickner is using Jerusalem and Israel as symbols for all of humanity's relation to God. God offers either forgiveness or judgment, and each individual chooses one or the other. That's pretty standard evangelical language. But the example is problematic, and raises some troubling questions:

When Isaac was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it.

In the context, since Brickner had first discussed the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. as judgment on the Jews for their rejection of Jesus's offer of God's message, this also would seem to be offered as an example of God's judgment upon the nation of Israel. That would be problematic, for it would imply that the Jewish-Muslim conflict as a whole is God's judgment on the Jewish people. Would this mean that the American-Islamist conflict is God's judgment on America? That 9/11 was God's judgment on America?

Or was Brickner offering the bulldozer example as an instance of God's judgment upon specific individuals? That would also be problematic.

Brickner would have done better to place the bulldozer story in the context of the Christian belief in the fallenness of the world rather than using it as an example of God's judgment on unbelief.

Brickner has gotten a lot of criticism for his remarks, and I must say that I think the criticism appropriate. Apparently, Brickner himself sees the some validity in the criticism, for he has posted a response:

The notion that the terrorist, bulldozer attack in Jerusalem this summer was God’s judgment on Israel for not believing in Jesus, is absolutely not what I believe. In retrospect, I can see how my rhetoric might be misunderstood and I truly regret that.

Of course I never expected the kind of magnifying glass scrutiny on a message where I was speaking extemporaneously. Let me be clear. I don't believe that any one event whether a terrorist attack or a natural disaster is a specific fulfillment of or manifestation of a Biblical prediction of judgment. I don't believe that the newspaper should be used to interpret the Bible. The Bible interprets the Bible.

I love my Jewish people and the land of Israel. I stand with and support her against all efforts to harm her or her people in any way. Please feel free to read my further explanations, in my Realtime article and in the interviews I did with Christianity Today and NBC.

I'll leave the reading and analysis of those links to others, but we should keep in mind that the controversy is David Brickner's controversy based upon David Brickner's words.

On the other hand, Governor Palin is reported to have been present during Brickner's presentation, so a question about her opinion concerning his words is a fair one. I haven't actually seen a direct, explicit statement by Palin on this issue, but I did find an article by Ben Harris, "McCain team: Palin rejects views of church's Jews for Jesus speaker," The Jewish Journal (September 3, 2008), which states this:

Vice presidential pick Sarah Palin says she doesn't share the views of a Jews for Jesus leader who in a speech at her church suggested that violence against Israelis resulted from God's judgment against Jews who have failed to embrace Jesus.

In particular, Michael Goldfarb, a spokesman for the McCain campaign, announced:

"Governor Palin does not share the views he expressed, and she and her family would not have been sitting in the pews of this church for the last seven years if his remarks were even remotely typical."

Although I'd prefer to hear Palin's own words, I don't see this controversy about Brickner's words having much traction in generating controversy about Palin.

Dong-A Ilbo: "America: 2% Jewish, but Manipulated by Jews"

"JEW: 유대인 파워"

("JEW: Jewish Power")

(Image from Dong-A Ilbo)

After church yesterday, my family and I went out to lunch at a local Korean restaurant near Bonghwasan Subway Station, and as we sat down to our table, I happened to glimpse on a neighboring table the flag image that you see above taking up fully one-quarter of page A19 in the International (국제) section of the Dong-A Ilbo (동아일보) for Saturday, December 15, 2007. Concluding that the paper, already a day old, had been left behind by a customer, I took it and brought it home for closer inspection.

I've provided my best translation effort for the Dong-A Ilbo headline in my blog heading above, but someone better in Korean than I will probably need to retranslate it:

"2% 유대인, 미국을 쥐락펴락"

I've asked the Big Hominid, of Hairy Chasms fame, who suggests "2% Jew(ish), Puppeteering America," which he considers a bit awkward, but he adds that the headline alone strikes him as antisemitic. I had considered something like "puppeteering" for "쥐락펴락," but my wife and my daughter both said "manipulating" or "molding." I await a more exact translation.

Much the same goes for the article from which this headline and the unpleasant photo above have been borrowed, i.e., someone more proficient than I will need to take a crack at the whole article.

However, the Korean expression "유대인 파워" superimposed on the flag itself just beneath the equally superimposed majuscule "JEW" is simple to translate. It means "Jewish Power" and apparently implies that Jews are the controlling power in America.

The author of this article, Kong Jong Sik (공종식), who serves as the Dong-A Ilbo's foreign correspondent based in New York might not be the one who chose the headline and the photo, since that's usually an editorial decision, but even if the article itself is merely a report on Jewish influence, the title and photo will nudge the reader toward reading the article as saying that Jews manipulate American policy on Israel.

If the article minus the photos simply notes that Jews have influence greater than would be expected from their tiny percentage of the American population (2% or whatever) because of their remarkably high percentages in various professional fields, then the article might be unobjectionable, but combined with the prominent headline and photo, it seems to go beyond this to suggest manipulation, possibly even control, of America by Jews, and this is where we're led into the realm of conspiracy theory.

Never underestimate the power of visual cues.

But I'll leave the more exact analysis to fellow bloggers here in Korea who have the requisite Korean skills (though experimentalists can copy here and paste here for a rough translation).

I was, however, truly hoping that we'd gotten beyond Lee Won-bok's Far Countries and Close Countries (이원복, 먼나라 이웃나라)...

On the side of the angels...

This image above, borrowed via the Czech site 'Navajo' from Wikipedia, has this as its caption "A modern depiction of Satan before his fall." No artist's name appears to grace this work of kitsch, but I wonder if the artist intended this as the first of a before-and-after series. If so, I also wonder how Satan would be depicted in his fallen state.

Most of all, though, I wonder why this unfallen Satan looks like a young Billy Graham:

You can see the original of this image, along with several others, at Sermon Index (2005). Here's the same photo, but with shoulders and partial torso:

And from Time Magazine (June 14, 1999), here's another image useful for comparison:

And from Religion & Ethic Newsweekly (June 24, 2005), we find another useful photo to compare:

The resemblance is uncanny, but perhaps intended (in which case, canny).

I've already openly wondered how the kitsch artist who depicted Satan would have depicted a fallen Satan. Similarly, I wonder what a fallen Billy Graham would look like. Crestfallen?

About three years ago in a Sunday school class, I heard someone refer to allegations that Graham had made antisemitic comments. That had surprised me because I had only ever heard him praise the Jews as God's chosen people.

I finally took the time to look into this issue and learned that Graham's comments had come in a conversation with President Richard Nixon that the latter had secretly taped. Here's what the BBC News (March 2, 2002) has:

In the taped conversation, Mr Graham said the Jewish "stranglehold" on the media "has got to be broken or this country's going down the drain".

"You believe that?" Nixon replies.

"Yes, sir."

"Oh boy. So do I. I can't ever say that but I believe it," Nixon says.

"If you get elected a second time, then we might be able to do something," Mr Graham replies.

Later in the conversation, when Nixon raises the subject of Jewish influence in Hollywood, Mr Graham says: "A lot of Jews are great friends of mine. They swarm around me and are friendly to me, because they know that I am friendly to Israel and so forth, but they don't know how I really feel about what they're doing to this country, and I have no power and no way to handle them."

That's pretty damning. How does Graham 'explain' it?

"Although I have no memory of the occasion, I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office conversation with President Nixon some 30 years ago," Mr Graham said in a statement released by his Texas public relations firm.

"They do not reflect my views and I sincerely apologise for any offence caused by the remarks," he said, adding that he had spent his life building bridges between Jews and Christians.

I find this insufficient. While I can imagine that Graham might not recall a specific conversation from 1972, the specific details of his remarks to Nixon imply that he held strong though usually unexpressed views about a putative Jewish 'stranglehold' on the media that was sending the country "down the drain." Even if Graham doesn't remember the conversation with Nixon, surely he can recall views that his taped remarks imply were strongly held.

John Milton, who has himself been portrayed as the devil, presented us in Paradise Lost with a Satan that looks a lot like us -- or how we would like to appear if we were bigger than life. One 'wit' on the internet has brief photo essay (November 7, 1999) to 'prove' that Billy Graham is Satan.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the anonymous author presents Gawain as a model of Christian piety and knightly courtesy, a man to emulate. Yet, he falls for a winsom woman and chivalrously accepts a gift that turns out to be a test of his integrity, for in accepting the gift, he breaks his devotion to the Virgin Mary and his word to the Lord of the Manor where he has received hospitality. When he realizes what he has done, he privately puts much of the blame on women:

But 'tis no marvel if one be made a fool and brought to sorrow by women's wiles, for so was Adam beguiled by one, and Solomon by many, and Samson all too soon, for Delilah dealt him his doom; and David thereafter was wedded with Bathsheba, which brought him much sorrow--if one might love a woman and believe her not, 'twere great gain! And since all they were beguiled by women, methinks 'tis the less blame to me that I was misled! (SKGK, translated by Jessie L. Weston, Lines 2414-2428)

Graham received a lot of very postitive publicity in the media over the years -- a gift, one might say, but also a test of character. Gawain failed his test, and blamed women, yet the anonymous author doesn't portray Gawain as an evil man but merely as a flawed if otherwise exemplary man.

Maybe that's Graham: a flawed if otherwise exemplary man.