Arts & Culture – Page 152

Glick’s one-state solution

The two-state solution was one of the most talked about issues in the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Not everyone is talking about a two-state solution these days, however. As a regular reader of Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick, I was interested to read her most recent book, The Israeli Solution (Crown Forum, 2014), in which she introduces her vision of a one-state plan, and challenges the assumptions two-staters make about the demographic threats that are supposed to be inherent in a one-state future. Glick also considers what might be the international response to such a plan, as well as the risks and benefits to all the players.

In her preface, Glick makes it clear that “the time has come for American policy makers to reconsider their devotion to the two-state formula and consider an alternative policy that makes sense both for the United States and for the Middle East.”

She presents a history of Israel, then provides a look at both Yasser Arafat and current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as reviews the history of Hamas. She states her incredulity that Western leaders acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization but fail to see that Hamas is the same as Arafat, Abbas and others who support terrorism and advance the cause of Israel’s destruction.

Glick also discusses the origins of the often-confused term Palestina, which the Romans incorporated to wipe out the Jewish identity of the land of Israel because it connected the identity of the land to the ancient Philistines.

She analyzes Israel’s national rights to Judea and Samaria and the term “West Bank,” coined by the Jordanians, “who instigated their occupation of the areas in order to ground their claim to sovereignty on an intuited but nonexistent political link between the west bank of the Jordan River and the east bank of the river which was Jordan.”

Many people toss around the term “demographic threat” based on misinformation about the Arab population, contends Glick. She writes that “the real demographic threat that Israel faces is not that the Palestinians will become the majority west of the Jordan River. The real demographic threat is that if a Palestinian state is created, vast numbers of Palestinians will flee to Israel … and a sufficient number will emigrate to Judea and Samaria from surrounding Arab countries to overwhelm Israel.”

In conclusion, she makes her points very clear that “the Palestinian conflict with Israel is a function of the larger Arab and Islamic world’s refusal to accept that Israel has a right to exist.” The Arab states exploit their politics and foreign policies as a means to coerce the Americans into taking actions to appease them, she argues.

“The United States has a paramount national security interest in ensuring the military strength and social cohesion of the Jewish state,” writes Glick. Israel is America’s only remaining ally in the Middle East, and in her comparison of the Obama and Bush administrations’ policy speeches, Glick finds them “substantially indistinguishable.”

An extensive bibliography and notes closes the book.

Sybil Kaplan is a foreign correspondent, lecturer, book reviewer and food writer in Jerusalem. She has compiled nine kosher cookbooks. She leads weekly walks in English in the Jewish produce market, Machaneh Yehudah, and writes the restaurant features for Janglo, the oldest, largest website in Israel for English-speakers.

Christianity stands accused

The Catholic Church did not initiate diplomatic relations with the state of Israel until 1993 and, according to the Italian writer Giulio Meotti, things haven’t been all rainbows since then either.

The creation of a thriving Jewish state creates a theological conundrum for the Catholic Church, Meotti writes in The Vatican Against Israel: J’Accuse (Mantua Books, 2013), because it is a refutation of the theological view that Judaism should wither and die in the shadow of a successor religion, Christianity. The theological imperative of Jewish disappearance is now accompanied, he writes, by a geopolitical imperative that Israel should vanish.

“Replacement theology stated that Christians had inherited the covenant and replaced the Jews as the Chosen People. The concept of replacement geography similarly replaces the historical connection of one people to the land with a connection between another people and the land,” Meotti writes. “The existence of a restored Israel in the land of the Bible, proof that the Jewish people is not annihilated, assimilated and withering away, is the living refutation of the Christian myth about the Jewish end in the historical process.”

The necessity of rejecting Zionism and, in its time, Israel, bested even the liberalizing influence of the Second Vatican Council, the near-revolutionary reconsideration that took place within Catholicism in the early 1960s. This period, which saw the Church recognize Judaism and Christianity as familial theologies and renounce the millennia-old deicide charge against the Jews, nevertheless has a stream that abhors Zionism. Meotti writes that two conflicting Vatican tendencies developed at that time and still dominate: “theological dialogue with Judaism, and political support for the Arabs.” (The gushing lamentation offered by the Vatican on the death of Yasser Arafat is particularly striking.)

Meotti contends that this process has involved the Catholic Church differentiating between “good” and “docile” Jews of the Diaspora and the “bad” and “arrogant” Jews of Israel.

The book is a litany of indictments. The Church had relations with the PLO before it had relations with Israel. Top Church leaders have repeatedly accused Israel of behaving like Nazis. They routinely use crucifixion motifs in the Israeli-Palestinian context, with Jews playing the Romans and Palestinians, of course, playing the beatific victim. Israel, said one archbishop, was imposing “the sufferings of the passion of Jesus on the Arab Christians.” Another, at the time of the Palestinians’ seizure of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, declared: “Our Palestinian people in Bethlehem died like a crucified martyr.” Arafat himself jumped on the bandwagon, declaring: “Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayeen who carried his sword along the road on which today the Palestinians carry their cross.”

The first translation into Arabic of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was courtesy of the Catholic Church. One archbishop was convicted of using his immunity to smuggle explosives to Palestinian terrorists and served just four years of his 12-year term after intervention by the Pope and a promise to make no more trouble. (He turned up again in 2010 on the fatal “Freedom Flotilla” that sought to bring aid to Hamas terrorists and has goaded Palestinian Christians to violence, insisting it is the only thing that will move Israelis.) Today, Catholic-affiliated nongovernmental organizations are among the leaders in the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

The Vatican’s relationship to the Holocaust is particularly dissolute. Pope John Paul II, in 1979, spoke at Auschwitz, noting that “six million Poles lost their lives during the Second World War, one-fifth of the nation,” failing to note that these were almost all Jews. Instead, he called Auschwitz “the Golgotha of the contemporary world,” Golgotha being the place in Jerusalem where Jesus is said to have been crucified.

More perversely, after visiting Mauthausen, the Pope said that the Jews “enriched the world by their suffering,” He seemed to be echoing the thoughts of John Cardinal O’Connor, then archbishop of New York, who a year earlier had visited Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust museum, and asserted that “the Holocaust is an enormous gift that Judaism has given to the world.”

John Paul also infuriated Jews, among others, by conferring a papal knighthood on Kurt Waldheim, the former Austrian president, United Nations secretary-general and Nazi war criminal.

When Jews objected to a proposal to build a Carmelite convent at Auschwitz, the mother superior of the order asked: “Why do the Jews want special treatment in Auschwitz only for themselves? Do they still consider themselves the Chosen People?”

The “J’Accuse” part, which channels the moral outrage of Emile Zola, is fair enough, but this book is only partly about the Vatican. Meotti dredges up equally egregious affronts perpetrated by countless other Christian denominations.

The book is a searing indictment of the Catholic Church, but it is also deeply flawed. At the least, the title is deceptive. The “J’Accuse” part, which channels the moral outrage of Emile Zola, is fair enough, but this book is only partly about the Vatican. Meotti dredges up equally egregious affronts perpetrated by countless other Christian denominations. By no means is Meotti’s condemnation limited to the Vatican, and it is difficult to discern why the title should suggest it is.

Meotti frequently puts uncited statements in quotations. For example, during the 1967 war, when Israel faced annihilation from the Arab states, Meotti claims the Vatican gave the order: “Cheer for the other side.” The quote marks suggest someone literally said this, but whom? On another occasion, he attributes, in quotes, the statement “Jerusalem must be Judenrein.” But who is alleged to have said it? One can also frequently sense comments being stretched out of context to fit the thesis.

Too many times to count, Meotti declares one Christian assertion or another “a blood libel.” The term’s over-usage diminishes whatever power the accusation carries. And nowhere is his over-usage more disturbing than in his casual, often flippant invocation of Nazism.

He writes, “Like Hitlerism, Palestinianism is not a national identity, but a criminal ideological construct…. Worse, the Netanya Passover bombing that killed 30 is a “mini Holocaust.” And, “The dark irony is that the Europeans who are supporting the Palestinians’ ‘right of return’ are living in homes stolen from Jews they helped to gas.”

Meotti’s book has the potential to make an important case against Christian antisemitism and anti-Zionism. While it doesn’t fail completely – the evidence being compendious – the charge to the jury is so overwrought that one feels resentful at being manipulated. The facts would speak for themselves if the author would step back a bit.

Pat Johnson is a Vancouver writer and principal in PRsuasiveMedia.com.

Ancient hatred writ large

Near the end of World Without Jews (Yale University Press, 2014), we find this passage from a letter written in June of 1943 by a Wehrmacht officer named Wilm Hosenfeld, a Catholic, a schoolteacher in civilian life who had come to know a lot about the fate of the Jews deported from the Warsaw Ghetto: “With this terrible mass murder of the Jews we have lost the war. We have brought upon ourselves an indelible disgrace, a curse that can never be lifted. We deserve no mercy, we are all guilty.” Hosenfeld was later captured by the Soviets and died in a Siberian gulag.

The remarkable thing about this letter is not just that it was written, but that its author was a member of the notorious Sturmabteilung who later became a full member of the Nazi party. One may ask: doesn’t the fact that one Nazi could feel this way repudiate the “we had no choice – we were following orders” excuse so often heard from other Holocaust perpetrators?

These are the kinds of questions posed in the meticulously researched new book by Israeli-born historian Alon Confino of Ben-Gurion University and the University of Virginia, which draws upon many non-traditional sources to present an answer to a new Holocaust question: not whether or not the Holocaust was intentional, or how it was carried out, but rather how did Germans come to conceive of a world without Jews? (And, as Confino makes clear: it was indeed a world without Jews, not a Germany without Jews, that the Nazis envisioned.)

Drawing upon untraditional sources, many of which have only recently been found or made available – wartime letters, diaries, journals, newspapers and photographs – Confino provides a shocking answer to this question: “Germany went after the Jews … not in spite of being a nation of high culture but because it was such a nation…. The Nazis perpetrated the Holocaust in the name of culture.”

Confino notes that the burning of the Bible was a Nazi obsession: thousands and thousands of Bibles were heaped on the flames, culminating in the great fires of Kristallnacht, during which not only Bibles, but 1,400 synagogues were set on fire.

Confino’s goal in World Without Jews is precisely to explore the very backgrounds and influences that created a uniquely genocidal culture. He begins his quest at a new starting point by asking, if Nazi policies were fueled by master-class racism, why were the Nazis so anxious to prioritize the burning of the Bible? Confino notes that the burning of the Bible was a Nazi obsession: thousands and thousands of Bibles were heaped on the flames, culminating in the great fires of Kristallnacht, during which not only Bibles, but 1,400 synagogues were set on fire.

Confino’s subject, then, is not Auschwitz, as it is of many Holocaust historians. Rather, it is this: how could Germans imagine a world without Jews? Where could such an absurd, fantastic notion come from? How could it become legitimized? How could it possibly be carried out?

Confino is certain of one thing: the Judeocide was fully anticipated before it began in 1941. This conviction contradicts that of most Holocaust historians, who feel that the Holocaust was an ex tempore “solution” to the “Jewish Problem” raised by the German forces’ occupation of Eastern Europe. Not so, says Confino, because the Holocaust was a result of “an accumulation of ancient [largely Christian] hatreds” fueled by 19th-century nation-building and given precedent by the mass murders perpetrated around the world in the 19th century by British, French, Dutch and Belgian colonizers. But why Jews? Why was their extermination seen as so central to German survival?

Confino’s answer to this question is that Jewish culture had always been a culture of chaim, of life; the Nazis wanted to found a culture of death. To do so, they had to “eliminate the shackles of a past tradition” to “liberate their imagination to open up new emotional, historical and moral horizons that enable them to imagine and to create their empire of death.” Thus, life-centred Jews had to go, and their books with them.

What we have here, in other words, is “the first experiment in the total creation of a new humanity achieved by extermination, a humanity liberated from the moral shackles of its past.”

On the question of who knew what was happening, Confino is uncompromising: no one in Germany could not have known – not necessarily about the mass murders, but that “something terrible” was happening.

On the question of who knew what was happening, Confino is uncompromising: no one in Germany could not have known – not necessarily about the mass murders, but that “something terrible” was happening. To prove his point, Confino cites hundreds of articles, pamphlets, radio speeches and photographs “showing what Germans saw when they walked in the street, drove on the road, or made their way to work” – all of which refer to the need to eliminate the “Jewish influence.”

In Confino’s view, the extermination of the Jews was fully intentional; all it required was a passive populace, and the active participation of the Christian Church. The Nazis got both, in spades.

Confino doesn’t hesitate to directly implicate the Christian Church in the Nazis’ program to eradicate Christianity’s Jewish origins: time and again he reasserts the “fundamental affinity” between Nazism and Christianity regarding the need to eliminate Christianity’s “Jewish roots.” The difference between them was that for the Nazis, they produced Christ; for the Church, it was because they killed him.

Nazism, then, was to be a new Bereishit, a new beginning point. Canadian scholar Northrop Frye said often that Western culture was permanently “anchored” in the Bible: the Nazi project was to cut this anchor and drop a new one, rooted in the crazed dogmas of Mein Kampf. Getting rid of Jews was, in other words, “akin to making a clean historical slate.”

One of the most unforgettable and heretofore never published photos contained in World Without Jews, shows a small statue of a crucified Christ in front of a church in Westphalia. Under the statue, in large letters, there is the sign “No Jews Allowed.” Just over the head of the Christ are the letters “INRI”: that is, in Latin, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” May this irony not be lost and, to that end, may we be thankful for books such as Confino’s World Without Jews.

Graham Forst, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education departments at Simon Fraser University, University of British Columbia and Banff School of Fine Arts. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.

Chua and Rubenfeld attempt to explain success

Jews are the quintessential successful minority group by any economic measure. They are disproportionately represented in the top rankings in business, finance, the arts, scientific research, architecture, medicine and law.

Likewise, Mormons and new immigrants to the United States from China, Cuba, India, Lebanon, Nigeria and Iran make the A-list in several sectors of the economy. Meanwhile, black Americans and other groups are stuck in poverty with high unemployment and poor education.

Those are bold statements that many will dismiss as thoughtless stereotypes. But are the generalizations baseless?

The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America (Penguin Press, 2014) is an exploration into the murky world of these sweeping statements. Amy Chua, the “tiger mom” who gained notoriety for her harsh approach to child-rearing, teams up with her accomplished husband Jed Rubenfeld to investigate some of the reasons why some groups rise to the top of their fields, become wealthy and win awards while others seem to be stuck in a rut.

They look for similarities in the lives of numerous celebrities, corporate leaders and ordinary folks, both those who have done well and those who have failed. They dissect statistics from census tracks that identify highest income and medium household net worth for different ages within several racial, cultural and religious groups. They count CEOs and CFOs, the percentage of students at Harvard and other Ivy League schools, and the winners of Nobel Prizes, as well as cultural awards such as Pulitzers and Academy Awards. They slice and dice the numbers in numerous ways and come out with specific cultural traits – a set of values and beliefs, habits and practices – that they conclude are similar among all the overachieving groups.

• Disproportionately successful groups have a deeply internalized belief in the specialness or superiority of their group, rooted in theology, history or a social hierarchy from their homeland.

• Members of the group have a feeling of insecurity and anxiety about losing whatever they have. They feel what they do is never good enough.

• Those that succeed emphasize discipline and controlling impulses. They stand up to temptation and persevere despite difficulties.

The authors conclude that people grappling with a superiority complex and deep insecurities are often consumed with resentments that push them to overachieve. The chip-on-the-shoulder attitude feeds their ambition and creates an “I’ll show them” mentality. Impulse control mixed with strong ambition yields a toughness and resilience. Members of the group who succeed found virtue in enduring hardships, deferring gratification and standing up to adversity.

There is some truth in what they write. The biographies of prominent Jewish figures often include anecdotes reflecting those traits. Although Jews are “Chosen People,” they are haunted, at least in the world of Philip Roth and Woody Allen, by insecurities stemming from unrelenting parental pressure and social scorn, real and imagined. Impulse control has been foundational to Judaism religion, with its 613 injunctions, and its countless prescriptions for a traditional Jewish way of life. It is those forces that Chua and Rubenfeld say converge to produce success.

Jewish overachievers are not the only ones. Chua and Rubenfeld find parallels with the traits of the disproportionate number of Mormons who are top executives of Fortune 500 companies, with Asian American students with the highest grades (but reportedly the lowest self-esteem of any racial group), and Cubans in Miami who have become millionaires and hold a disproportionate number of managerial and professional positions in the city, and dominate local politics. Other immigrant groups under similar pressures also do well.

But such sweeping statements set off alarms. Caustic reviews since the book was released earlier this year dismissed their conclusions as racist, faulty social science and, some may say even worse, dull prose. Reviewers attacked Chua and Rubenfeld, two Yale University law professors, for sloppy thinking and loose use of language.

Chua and Rubenfeld are accustomed to public attention, although usually of a different sort. Chua was on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world after the release of her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother in 2011. Rubenfeld has written two international bestselling novels and two books on constitutional law.

They challenge those who assume equality is always beneficial. They suggest that promoting self-esteem, instant gratification and excessive freedom in parenting may be counter-productive.

Clearly frustrated by the response to their new book, Chua and Rubenfeld have said their work has been misunderstood and misrepresented. They believe they have been aggressively attacked because their conclusions run counter to contemporary political correctness. They challenge those who assume equality is always beneficial. They suggest that promoting self-esteem, instant gratification and excessive freedom in parenting may be counter-productive.

They attribute the uproar over the book also to an aversion to talk about opinions about various cultural, ethnic and religious groups doing significantly better than others, views that are often expressed privately but not in a public forum.

They got that right. It’s a minefield filled with explosive emotions and ugly name-calling. However, they are right in insisting that the overheated rhetoric contributes nothing to an understanding of the subject. We should not avoid discussion of hot issues, especially those that have given rise to some of the worst atrocities in the world. Chua and Rubenfeld raise matters that should engage society in dispassionate debate.

So let’s turn the spotlight on their generalizations about cultural traits to see whether they stand up.

Chua and Rubenfeld try to inoculate their conclusions from criticism with 78 pages of notes and listing the names of 50 research assistants who worked with them. They claim statements about economic performance and cultural attitudes are backed up by empirical, historical or sociological evidence. “But when there are differences between groups, we will come out and say so,” they write.

They look at characteristics of those struggling in poverty and at a variety of explanations for their situation, such as IQ levels. They conclude that the disparities between rich and poor cannot be explained by these alternatives.

They also note the transitory nature of the accomplishments achieved through the sense of superiority, insecurities and hard work. Success wipes out insecurity and eases assimilation; equality undermines personal ambition. They conclude that traits that helped disproportionately successful groups rarely survive beyond the first two generations.

They downplay the impact of politics, social institutions and education. Personal responsibility plays virtually no role in their theories. Factors that have nothing to do with religion, culture or race, such as the lack of opportunity, discrimination and the devastating impact of economic forces, are minimized. Chua and Rubenfeld gloss over examples that do not fit their theories.

Despite their extensive references to research, the book reads as if Chua and Rubenfeld started with conclusions and then went out to find evidence to back up what they wanted to say. Focusing on cultural traits has blinded them to other influences. They downplay the impact of politics, social institutions and education. Personal responsibility plays virtually no role in their theories. Factors that have nothing to do with religion, culture or race, such as the lack of opportunity, discrimination and the devastating impact of economic forces, are minimized. Chua and Rubenfeld gloss over examples that do not fit their theories. Are they cherry-picking results and leaving out conflicting evidence? An answer to that question will be left to the experts in the field.

Anticipating probably the most controversial attack, the charge of racism, the authors write they are identifying psychological attitudes, not characteristics from birth. They acknowledge that significant differences exist within every racial, cultural and religious group. Even the subgroups they identify were not monolithic. But, they say, that did not make the culture traits less real or powerful.

They also anticipate critics who say the traits they celebrate often do not lead to happiness. They acknowledge that the attributes of success come with their own distinctive pathology that misshaped lives. Deeply insecure people were often neurotic and a sense of superiority led to arrogance and easily morphed into racism. They concede that the “triple package” might not be a recipe for happiness. Indeed, the rewards of the triple package were mostly financial. However, they posit that material success can lay the foundation for a happier life.

So, what are we left with after so many qualifications? As pop sociology, the book provides numerous provocative sparks for conversation around the Shabbat table. They identify some traits of some people who have achieved much. But many would insist their glib generalizations are just plain wrong. At times, they seem to give the strongest arguments against their own conclusions. And, even if you accept what they say, it is doubtful that many parents would want their children to follow the direction that Chua and Rubenfeld have set out.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve this book, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

PhD research sparks fiction

Shirley Graetz’s She Wrote on Clay (Hadley Rille Books, 2013) is so intriguing, so mesmerizing, so unique, so well-written, I could not put it down!

Graetz was born in Dusseldorf, Germany. She came to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and never left Israel. Her master’s degree and her doctorate are in ancient Near Eastern studies, and she is a licensed tour guide and a teacher, married and mother of three young children.

She explains that, while conducting her PhD research at Ben-Gurion University in 2011, she was working on letters written by women who were naditu, monastic women who lived around 1800 BCE, about the time of Abraham, in Mesopotamia (ancient Iraq).

She had never written fiction before but, she says, “The women started to talk to me in my head. I had just given birth to my third child (the other two were 2 and 4), it was the second year of my PhD, but I sat down and wrote for three days. It was as if the story wrote itself.”

The texts were originally in cuneiform on clay tablets, in Akkadian, an ancient language. Some of these women were scribes. They lived in the equivalent of a walled compound called a gagu, but each woman had her own house or room. They all came from wealthy families, and there were different gagus in different cities. By becoming a naditu, each woman foreswore marriage and children, but her family provided her with food and clothing. However, the women had to be successful in business in order to remain financially independent.

The most prominent gagu was in Sippar, Meospotamia, a city on the banks of the Euphrates River, from which we have the most texts.

The novel revolves around 16-year-old Iltani, whose goal in life is to become a scribe. The best way to achieve this is to become a naditu and go to a gagu, which she will do in three months; her aunt and a childhood friend also live there. Her father has paid a naditu there to teach her to be a scribe. Once she enters, she will not visit her family for two years.

When she enters, there is a ceremony as she leaves her family and is welcomed by the priests, the making of temple offerings and her initiation. Her life then begins, and this forms the bulk of the book – focusing on her day-to-day life, the process of learning to be a scribe, her relationships with her aunt and friend, as well as conflicts within the gagu and her other relationships, until she is 25, already nine years in the gagu.

The surprising turns add much to the enjoyment of this read, and the meticulous details described about the home life, the clothes, the food, the customs in Sippar, are also part of the fascination of this story about what I would call “feminist women of 4,000 years ago.”

Learning from tragedy

It was Aug. 9, 2001. I was in Jerusalem after 19 years absence, to attend a convention and do research on a memoir, Witness to History: Ten Years as a Woman Foreign Correspondent in Israel (still unpublished). I was staying at the Sheraton (now the Leonardo). I left the hotel to meet my good friend and personal guide, Pat (z”l). She and I were going to the Bible Lands Museum for a reunion with a mutual acquaintance. All the traffic from the hotel down King George into town was blocked. We heard there had been a terrorist attack, but decided to go on with our plans.

Later, when we returned to the hotel, national board members were waiting for us and told us to go and call our families and tell them we were OK. One by one, Hadassah women came in with stories of having been on Ben Yehudah … of hearing an explosion and ambulances. It was the Sbarro restaurant terrorist attack.

***

Dr. Zieva Dauber Konvisser is a fellow of the Institute for Social Innovation at Fielding Graduate University in California. In 2003, she was at the Israel Centre for the Treatment of Psychotrauma in Jerusalem, beginning research on the “possibility of post-traumatic growth coexisting with post-traumatic stress.” Earlier this year, her book Living Beyond Terrorism (Gefen Publishing, 2014) was published.

Founding director of the centre, Prof. Danny Brom, writes in the book’s foreword that Konvisser contributes to “the study of politically motivated violence by documenting many of the challenges that confront people who experience such violence and by elucidating the many ways people find to overcome the horrors of their encounter with deadly violence. Equally, this book contributes to the development of the concept of post-traumatic growth.”

Konvisser herself explains in the preface that the focus of this book is on “resilience or recovery and post-traumatic growth.”

Konvisser is a second-generation Holocaust survivor, having lost more than 30 relatives in Vilna. During a trip to Israel in 2002, she reflected how survivors of terrorist bombings moved beyond their traumas. Subsequently, she visited Israel eight times between 2004 and 2010 to speak with such survivors.

She spoke with 24 survivors in 2004, who made up the research study sample for her doctoral dissertation, then revisited them in 2007, interviewed seven more plus 15 Arab Israelis. In 2013, she again asked them to reflect upon and describe changes in “their family, work, health and/or outlook in life since the previous interviews. The result is 36 stories as told by 48 survivors and family members with 33 incidents described.

The book is a tribute “to those who survived attacks with or without disability or loss, as well as family members of those who perished…. By telling and retelling their stories, we celebrate their lives as people – as human beings.”

Among the most amazing aspects of the book is one of the three appendices, which lists 58 organizations supporting terror survivors and families. There is also a glossary and a selected bibliography.

This is a very difficult book to read. Every story is upsetting and painful, whether one has personally experienced a terrorist attack, is related to someone or is acquainted with a victim. However, Konvisser notes 12 qualities common to these survivors, which could be “cultivate[d] to master any crisis.” These include:

• They struggle, confront and ultimately integrate painful thoughts and emotions.

• They adjust their future expectations to fit their new reality.

• They call on their inner strength, core beliefs and values.

• They are helped to move forward by strength gained from their past experiences and prior adversity.

• They are helped by spirituality or grappling with fundamental existential questions.

• They stay healthy and focus on their fitness level.

• They are creative, find the silver lining and give back, moving forward with action.

• They stay connected and seek outside resources to help them through rough times.

• They tell their stories and try to make sense of their lives.

• They are hopeful, optimistic and celebrate life.

May we all learn from their experiences.

VIFF screens humanity’s best/worst

Ilya Kabakov is the subject of Amei Wallach’s lya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here. (photo from VIFF)

This year’s Vancouver International Film Festival (Sept. 25-Oct. 10) will take viewers on a rollercoaster ride, if the films reviewed by the Independent this week are any indication. We went from soaring heights of imagination and freedom with Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here to the music-filled yet poverty-ridden streets of Jakarta in Jalanan to the horrifyingly shallow depths where evil is normal in The Decent One.

“What interests me is where is the border between reality and the dream,” says artist Ilya Kabakov in Enter Here. With this film that the Jewish Independent has sponsored at VIFF, Amei Wallach follows Ilya and his wife and partner Emilia Kabakov in the months leading to a massive retrospective in Moscow in 2008. She captures the couple’s personalities: Ilya, with his mind anywhere but on earth, still traumatized by his life – and that of his mother, who led a very difficult existence – in the Soviet Union, which he escaped in 1987, and Emilia, the organizer, fearless. The exhibit marked his first return to Russia, and there is trepidation about how it will be received, and how he will handle his memories.

Kabakov’s paintings and installations are unbelievable. They inspire contemplation and awe at their scope and creativity. Most of the ones highlighted in the documentary critique what Russia would have been – and seemingly has become again – to live in: the surveillance, distrust, harshness, bureaucracy. His works are influenced by various events and people, including his mother who, at his behest, wrote a diary when she was in her 80s.

In his New York studio, Kabakov reflects on three types of losers: mankind in principle, his feelings about himself despite his self-acknowledged success, and his reaction to Russia. He describes Russia as “permanent rainy,” and speaks of life there as “two-faced,” the public front and the personal. As a non-state-sponsored artist, he created much work, but only exhibited twice in his home country. For Kabakov, for whom the museum is akin to the church, “The last haven of our history and our spirit,” this alone would have been reason to flee. For the many around the world who have glimpsed his great mind through his work, we’re very lucky he did.

***

photo - Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. — Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. *(photo from VIFF)*

Director Daniel Ziv obviously fell in love with the street musicians he profiles in Jalanan. Their aspirations, energy, passion, kindness, and resilience – he communicates all of it, such that you almost don’t notice it’s a documentary about poverty, development, corruption, and the treatment of women, the place of art in society, and other such weighty subject matter.

Of the 12 million people living in Indonesia’s capital city, some 7,000 earn their living as buskers, according to the film, and Jalanan follows the lives of three of them – Boni, Ho and Tuti – over a five-year period. In the face of hardship, the troubadours remain optimistic and driven to create and share their music. Nothing gets them down: Boni and his family are evicted from their 10-year “home” under a bridge, Ho gets jailed for just being on the streets and Tuti is unable to live with any of her three children.

As writes Ziv in a director’s statement, “This isn’t the type of documentary that feeds off tragedy … this is not about thousands of lives being threatened … this isn’t even about the poorest of the poor. Rather, Jalanan traces the lives of a forgotten, marginalized community that slips through society’s cracks. The dilemmas and conflicts here represent a huge segment of urban population in the developing world…. This film is meant to give them a voice, to raise awareness for their conditions and struggle.”

Ziv takes the awareness beyond the film, with a campaign to raise money to buy homes for Boni, Ho and Tuti: fundrazr.com/campaigns/dgEM6.

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photo - Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945 — Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945. (photo from VIFF)

And then, there is a person like Heinrich Himmler, who could write home to his family with love and affection while on a trip visiting concentration camps. Vanessa Lapa’s The Decent One is based on personal letters, documents and photographs that were found in the Himmlers’ home by U.S. soldiers in 1945, but which weren’t handed over to the military authorities. They became the property of Lapa’s father somehow, and she has used them to make this documentary.

The Decent One is very stylized. Voice actors read the letters, diary entries and documents from Himmler, his wife, daughter, mistress and others, archival footage has sound effects and/or music added, and benign-sounding excerpts from the writings are juxtaposed against brutal images. Viewers follow Himmler from a young age to his rise in the Nazi party and through much of the war. The cumulative effect is powerful. The most upsetting and scary conclusion is that understanding evil is nigh impossible.

Artist via camera lens

Michael Seelig is donating the proceeds of his photography exhibit to the Zack Gallery. (photo by Olga Livshin)

Every one of Michael Seelig’s photographs reflects a place, its character, its soul. He doesn’t enhance the images in any way. Photoshop’s magic is not for him. He even scoffs at cropping. “I might crop a tiny bit for the printing, just the edges,” he said in an interview with the Independent. “That’s my real challenge – to get every frame right.”

His approach to photography is that of an artist. And, he also paints, although unlike his photos, Seelig doesn’t sell his paintings. “They are for family and friends. I never exhibited them,” he said. “My paintings are mostly watercolors. The compositions are similar to my photographs – urban, for the most part – but they are different, too, depending on my mood, often architectural but less precise than photos, less angular. You have to allow the paints to run, to find their own way.”

Seelig’s solo exhibit Traces opened on Sept. 4 at the Zack Gallery. It is a fundraiser for the gallery. “I’m lucky to be able to donate this show to the gallery and the JCC [Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver],” he said. “My wife and I have been supporters of this important institution in Vancouver for many years. We donated time and money, worked as volunteers at various points. I think maybe some people will buy prints of my photographs because the proceeds would benefit the JCC.”

Seelig took most of the photographs during his travels, and he has traveled extensively, especially after he retired. “We live part of every year in Israel,” he explained. “Everything is close there – Europe and Asia.”

Many people travel and take photos, but not everybody can produce a body of photography worthy of an exhibition. Arriving on location is just a matter of buying a plane ticket, but finding uncommon angles and perspectives takes inspiration and a creative eye.

“I took the photo of the historical buildings in Budapest from the opposite roof,” he said about one of the images. “The view from there was outstanding, but I had to find the perfect spot for this shot. I’m interested in details and, for this shot, I wanted to align the lamp post with the border between the two buildings.”

Another of his images, a majestic panorama of Turkish mountains with an air balloon as a focal point, he took from an ascending balloon. “The view was spectacular, the juxtaposition of a thousands-year-old landscape and the bright modern balloon.” He couldn’t have gotten such an impressive shot any other way.

“That’s what I like about photography,” he said. “I’m always looking for things to photograph but, as a rule, panoramas don’t interest me.” Instead, he admitted his fascination with urban details.

As a professional architect, he taught urban planning and design at the University of British Columbia for 30 years and he frequently used his city photos for his lectures. “When I travel, I always have a camera with me, but not in Vancouver, not now. Before I retired, though, I photographed Vancouver for my PowerPoint presentations. I had a lecture on benches in the city, another one on traffic lights. Signs in Vancouver – the images were fantastic. None of those signs exists anymore, which is a pity. I have those photos somewhere.”

None of his Vancouver photos are on display in the gallery. Some pictures, however, represent highly unusual urban elements, like a stairway on a blank wall in India or wall paintings in Italy, which look like abstract canvasses. Others, Seelig took in nature, but the lines and correlations of light and shadow evoke man-made formations. Boulders, for example, pile haphazardly against a blindingly blue sky in Israel, like a modernist sculpture, although no human arranged them. The eerie composition was created by sun, sand and wind.

In one image, trees strain up in parallel lines in the forests of America or Turkey, lovely pastel patterns in yellow and green.

“I love trees,” said Seelig. “In this show, there are four different kinds of trees.” One tree in particular, an ancient terebinth growing in an Israeli desert among the rocks, seems surreal, almost sentient. The colors of the photo are muted silver and gold, bleached by the relentless sun, as the old gnarled tree contemplates the mysteries of the universe. It doesn’t feel like people should exist anywhere near it.

“I have been taking photos for many years,” said Seelig. “Before, they were either for my paintings, although I never copied them, not directly, just to remember something I saw, or I took photos for my teaching. In the last 15 years, I do a lot more photography.”

Seelig’s photos are available in limited editions of five only. Each one will last a long time, as he produces his prints not on photo paper but on archival metallic paper and mounted to aluminum.

Traces runs until Sept. 28.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Rounding out Bard season

From left to right, Anousha Alamian, Shawn Macdonald and Anton Lipovetsky in Equivocation. (photo by David Blue)

From Midsummer Night’s Dream and Cymbeline, reviewed last month, the Independent moves to Bard on the Beach’s other two offerings this season: The Tempest and Equivocation.

There is only one word to describe this production of The Tempest: fantastic. It is a remounting of the 2008 show, which debuted on the studio stage under the direction of Meg Roe. That was a sublime production and I did not think it could get any better. But, I was wrong. Roe’s second time around, with the move to the big stage, has elevated this “storm” to new heights and makes it the must-see show of the Bard quartet.

Allan Morgan and Jennifer Lines reprise their 2008 roles, as Prospero and Ariel, respectively. Six years on, both have gained a maturity that infuses their acting and takes them to the top of their games. It is their relationship that is very much front and centre in this tale. Morgan is a stern but loving father and, ultimately, a benevolent Prospero, and Lines, with her lovely singing voice, is a charming Ariel, Prospero’s fairy servant.

photo - Allan Morgan as Prospero in The Tempest — Allan Morgan as Prospero in The Tempest. *(photo by David Blue)*

Todd Thomson’s portrayal of the leashed, animal-like slave Caliban is visceral, as he evolves from crawling subjugation to upright manhood. Miranda’s (Lily Beaudoin) and Ferdinand’s (Daniel Doheny) innocent young love is so touchingly portrayed that even the heart of the biggest cynic in the audience will melt. However, it is Luisa Jojic and Naomi Wright, as the tippling sisters Trincula and Stephana, who blast this production into the stratosphere. Their metamorphosis from sophisticated, well-heeled ladies to bedraggled strumpets, as they troll the island with Thomson (with whom Wright gives new meaning to the concept of a foot fetish) and their funky pas de deux are worth the price of admission. This comedy is juxtaposed against the darker side of the production, Prospero’s struggle – enslavement or freedom, revenge or forgiveness, love or hate.

As in Midsummer, the visuals give this production its moxie: the seashell stage frame, Christine Reimer’s fabulous costumes (Ariel’s gigantic wings, First Nations-inspired raven masks, creatures on stilts with flowing robes, white-frocked cross-dressers) and Gerald King’s lighting, especially for the sparkly wedding scene. Add to the mix original music (composed by Roe’s husband, Alessandro Juliani) played by a string quartet prominently seated on stage and you have a recipe for success. There are Jessies on the horizon for this production. As Prospero says in his iconic line, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” And this dream has wings.

For the Shakespeare, history and political buffs out there, Equivocation will provide a cerebral workout and, with its plain language, a respite from the Bard’s iambic pentameter.

While Shakespeare was a prolific writer, little is known about the man himself. Bill Cain, a Jesuit priest and founder of the Boston Shakespeare Company, takes up the gauntlet to provide us with some insights into Shakespeare’s character in this thought-provoking play set in 1606 and centred around the Gunpowder Plot to blow up Parliament and assassinate King James I and his family.

The plan foiled and the conspirators sentenced to death, Prime Minister Robert Cecil approaches “Shagspeare” to write the government’s version of what happened. Shag is conflicted (as he says, “I don’t do current events”) about whether to write his patron’s propaganda or tell the truth, at great risk to himself and his merry group of thespians, the King’s Men. To equivocate – use unclear language to deceive or mislead – or not to equivocate, that becomes the question.

Shag’s decision process and his troupe’s rehearsals weave their way through other storylines: the strained relationship between Shag and his daughter, Judith, the surviving twin (his son, Hamnet, died at the age of 11) and the rivalry between the two acting Richards, veteran Burbage and young Sharpe.

Cain teases us with multiple references to Shakespeare’s works (so brush up on your Shakespeare before seeing this!), along with plays within a play (a much-loved Bard device) and some spicy, contemporary language. Oh, and there are a couple of beheadings, too.

Six actors comprise the cast and all but Shag (Bob Frazer) and his daughter Judith (Rachel Cairns) play multiple roles.

Gerry Mackay is Burbage as well as Garnet, the Jesuit priest and the alleged mastermind behind the plot, who defines equivocation as, “a way to tell the truth in difficult times.” Jewish community member Anton Lipovetsky shines in his two major roles of a co-conspirator and the wacky King James (played with a darn good Scottish accent). Anousha Alamian creeps us out as the Machiavellian Cecil and Shawn Macdonald does Armin and Sir Edward Coke, along with a lovely Lady Macbeth. The whole cast is strong, seamlessly moving in and out of their various roles and this is very much an ensemble success story (ably directed by Michael Shamata) but particular mention must be made of the performances of Frazer, Mackay and Lipovetsky.

The set is stark and the costumes simple. The only time color really appears on stage, apart from the language, is during Macbeth, in which the actors are resplendent in colorful plaid shawls. This color versus black and white juxtaposition is a metaphor for Shag’s conundrum, to tell the truth or to color it. And, by the way, what is truth?

Tova Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelance writer and lawyer.

Garay’s 20 years, with 20 dancers, 20 places

Left to right, Michelle Lui, Bevin Poole and Vanessa Goodman. (photo by David Cooper)

Dancers Dancing and SFU Woodward’s present the world première of 20.20.20, in which audiences will not just see, but feel the city come to life onstage. At the Goldcorp Centre for the Arts Sept. 24-27, the show captures the atmosphere of urban Vancouver in all of its complexities from a unique lens.

Celebrating 20 years of working in Vancouver, choreographer Judith Garay looks at 20 intersections in the city to set 20 dancers in motion – inspired by interactions of architecture, pigeons, overpasses, green spaces, mountain views, skateboards and especially the people, old and young. Contrast and contradiction drive the work to be physically exhilarating and thoughtful, prosaic and emotionally charged.

The artists – including Jewish community member Vanessa Goodman – have dug their heels into the world of Vancouver, and brought their experiences and observations back to the studio, where it has been a process of using pedestrian research and full-body articulation to create beauty in otherwise overlooked aspects of city life. The synergy of their work is expressed organically in the process, as the dancers have felt charged by the city itself. They expect a similar visceral reaction for audiences.

As the team continues to organically replicate the city life to stage, they have been surprised in how the process is revealing Vancouver. Contrasts keep resurfacing, like urban and green, rich and poor, young and old and the infamous weather that changes a sky of grey clouds to one of blinding sun. These balances reflect the ever-evolving city from day to day, and naturally beg for a creative portrayal that is full of movement and life.

With music by Stefan Smulovitz, lighting by John Carter and costumes by Margaret Jenkins, 20.20.20 steers away from a traditional tour of Vancouver, instead providing multiple ways to emotionally experience the city. Performances at the Goldcorp Centre, 149 West Hastings St., are at 8 p.m. Tickets are available online at sfuwoodwards.ca or dancersdancing.com.