Anti-Zionism Anti-Semitism (Stanford)

The dreary and now almost predictable slipping of anti-Zionism into anti-Semitism continues, this one at Stanford. It’s the idea expressed by a member of the ASSU student Senate that Jewish control of the media and of government is an open question. In addition are attempts by the ASSU to cut the budget of the Jewish Student Association, because they have enough back up money in reserve for such an emergency. For anyone interested, I’m posting a link to a strong opinion piece in the Stanford Daily by senior staff writer Winston Shi condemning the phenomenon. You can read it here.

 

Material Culture, Animal Culture (Books Made from Vellum)

They used to make high end books out of vellum, described as “the semi-transparent inner membrane of calf skin,” or the even finer uterine vellum, that membrane taken from the skin of embryonic or still-born calves. Marc Epstein tells is that these materials were better suited than paper for absorbing the pigments and gold leaf used to illuminate deluxe medieval manuscripts. The skin-membranes are both tough and soft (Marc Epstein Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts, p.30).

 

 

Take the L Train (Tomer Hanuka)

(North Carolina) Why No University Boycott? (LGBT)

My brother asked me to post this question. Leaders in corporations and in state governments (including Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York) are beginning to turn the screws on North Carolina in the wake of that state legislation’s controversial bill striking down protections for LGBT citizens. Actions include restricting all unnecessary business in and business travel to the state until this mess gets cleared up. It comes down to boycotting the State of North Carolina, or at least pretty close to it. Now compare this leadership from corporate America and from political bigwigs to the silence from university administrators and faculty. Beyond words, there has been no call to boycott universities and colleges in North Carolina, no call to cancel events such as conferences and symposia, or other visits to the state. In the face of discrimination, academics allow each other, their friends and  colleagues, this free pass.

And what about the academic left? Beyond the expression of outrage and solidarity, what do faculty plan to do in terms of concrete action? The very same faculty members and members of academic associations prepared to boycott Israeli universities and colleagues are among the very ones who went to the mat against the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in support of Steven Salaita’s case against the administration. Salaita was ultimately denied a position there for reasons having largely to do with abusive speech on Twitter. Faculty across the humanities rallied bravely to his defense, and to the defense of academic freedom. In Urbana-Champaign, all dealings with the university, including university departments and committees were  suspended, causing massive disruptions to the life of the university and its activities. Will these same colleagues ready to boycott Israel not stand up for LGBT rights in their own country, in North Carolina, or is going to be business as usual for the academic left?

Turn down an invitation to Duke? Cut off colleagues from Chapel Hill? My own thoughts about academic boycotts are more ambivalent than those of my brother. He holds academe in nothing but contempt, whereas I am not sure I’m ready to venture an opinion. But he’s right to draw this comparison between corporate leadership in the business world versus university administrators and faculty. It turns out that sometimes the university is a more conservative place than a large corporation.

Universal Norms & Murdering Arabs in Israel (1951)

The news from Israel is full of the tension between norms and practice –the universal norms of a democratic polity versus the dehumanizing practice of military occupation. Recent video footage shows an Israeli soldier in the occupied city of Hebron shooting to death a Palestinian man lying prone on the ground; the Palestinian had been wounded by other soldiers in the course of a knife attack on them, but he no longer posed a threat to anyone. The soldier who killed him is going to be charged with murder. In a politically craven act meant to appeal to his political base, The Prime Minister has since sought to walk back his initial condemnation of the act.

Apropos to that ongoing story, Haaretz has this article about an Israeli cabinet debate in 1951 about striking the death penalty from the country’s legal code. It’s here in English and here in Hebrew. The historical context would seem to be the attempt by Arab refugees from the War of Independence to return to their lands, and their murder in cold blood at the hands of young Israeli men. While opposed in principle to the death penalty, the Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other members of his government, including Minister of Labor Golda Meyerson, worried that nothing less than that, nothing less than hanging a Jew for murdering an Arab would deter and stem the rash of killings in the early days of the State.

From the article, the government ministers express a realist appraisal that there was in the general public Arabs were considered not just unequal to Jews, but something less than human. To a person, the ministers were horrified by these acts of violence, which hung over their deliberations. Ben-Gurion makes mention of those who think it’s a “mitzvah” to murder Arabs so that there would fewer of them in the country. The story suggests just how violent a place the country has always been, the extreme antipathies between Jews and Arabs, and the depth of anti-Arab racism in Israeli society. The difference seems to be that, unlike today, government ministers back then saw clearly as their moral and political responsibility the upholding of human rights.

Jesus, President Obama & Bernie: The Messianic, American Politics, and a Sense of Humor

Another excellent post by Menachem Feuer, this one on Sanders, the messianic, and, of course, the schlemiel.

The Home of Schlemiel Theory

Writing on the apostate Jewish Messiah, Sabbatai Zevi, Gershom Scholem argued that there are two kinds of messianic ideas: one is restorative and the other is apocalyptic. The latter idea is, for Scholem, the most dangerous because, in imagining the new world that will emerge when the messiah comes, it appeals to a sensibility that is desirous of miracles and things that are unimaginable.   It promises to, as Scholem puts it, destroy or radically alter the course of history.   In this sense,  it appeals to a sensibility that yearns for a violent conclusion to history, a revolutionary sensibility. Since it is so radical it will most likely, according to Scholem, lead to kind of nihilism. Scholem rightly points out that the Rabbis of the Talmud – and Moses Maimonides in particular – suppressed this idea because of its wild appeal to the imagination and its antinomian tendencies. Sabbatai Zevi and…

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Rat and Bear (Peter Fischli & David Weiss)

On view at their retrospective at the Guggenheim, Peter Fischl and  David Weiss’ film Least Resistance is a murder mystery that follows the antics of Rat and Bear, two louche art snobs out and about in Los Angeles.