Opinion – Page 92

Compassion in the face of death

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously struck down the law that makes it illegal for doctors in Canada to provide medical assistance to severely ill patients who wish to die.

The court decision permits physicians to assist in the suicide of “a competent adult person who clearly consents to the termination of life and has a grievous and irremediable medical condition, including an illness, disease or disability, that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.”

The decision reflects a fundamental shift in societal opinions toward end-of-life issues. It is worth noting, at this point, that attitudes toward death, life and intervention have never been static. As medical technologies advanced in recent decades, some (primarily religious) voices argued that these technologies interfere with the will of God by “artificially” extending life. Now, the reverse is apparently true. It tends to be religious voices today arguing that, in some cases, the withdrawal of life-extending technologies and treatments is akin to exercising the prerogatives of the Divine in ending life.

Whatever moral concerns surround this serious issue, an understandable dissonance has affected Canadians’ attitudes: it has been noted that there are times when we force human beings to endure suffering at the end of life beyond what we would permit our pet animals to experience.

Many Canadians who have watched loved ones suffer excruciating and slow illness and deaths recognize that human suffering could be more compassionately ameliorated. Among the first steps should be the provision of the best palliative care available. When absolutely no better option exists, assisted death may be the best choice for some individuals. Most of us can see this. We may wish it weren’t so and, of course, we hope we and our loved ones are never faced with these decisions. The fact is, many of us will.

Yet, every instance in which an individual, their family and doctor make decisions about end-of-life preparations must be entirely individualized. There is absolutely no way that one can apply the same criteria to two cases. Circumstances are not transferable between diseases, patients, families or belief systems. Two people with identical conditions and prognoses may justifiably choose diametrical endings.

Indeed, we must ensure that assisted death does not become a go-to “solution” when alternatives exist, or that any patient feels the slightest pressure to choose it. There is a real danger that some people will weigh decisions not on what is best for themselves but what they perceive as best for others or based on what others in similar situations have done. Not wanting to be a “burden” should not be a legitimate justification for assisted death.

There is genuine and justifiable fear around the potential for a “slippery slope.” It is important to note that this Supreme Court decision deals

with the rights of an individual of sound mind to make a decision on their own in consultation with those they trust to end a life of suffering dominated by unbearable pain and the absence of hope for recovery.

Euthanasia is an entirely different matter. It does not involve an individual’s free and informed choice. The fear is that the acceptance of assisted death will make our society more amenable to – or at least less vigilant against – euthanasia. This is not a consideration to be dismissed. The sanctity of human life is too great to ignore the fact that human beings have the capability of justification for all sorts of things. So, as Canada engages in discussions about this ruling, we should also be vigilant in reasserting our fundamental beliefs that the value of life is not diminished by the legalization of assisted suicide, but rather our humanity and the right of all Canadians to a decent life and a respectful death is part of a worldview that is life-affirming.

Certainly there is nothing happy about this subject, but if this decision makes the end of life more bearable for some Canadians then it should be welcomed. Safeguards are absolutely crucial and, as a society, as families and as individuals, we must discuss and understand the limits and potential misuses of this new freedom.

It is so important that we as a society get this right. The federal government will address this issue in the coming months. The Supreme Court has spoken, as often happens in this country, leading legislators in social progress. It’s our turn now. Canadians should have a long, thoughtful and nuanced discussion on this topic.

The godliness of survival

As the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz approached last month, discussion turned to the shrinking number of survivors. My father-in-law, Bill Gluck of Vancouver, was one of them, having been deported to Auschwitz from Hungary in 1944, a beautiful boy of 13 with piercing green eyes, a compact frame and a knockout grin. We mentally celebrated his life on that anniversary. But not 24 hours later, his ailing body gave out.

As we began to grieve my father-in-law’s death, I became aware of the delicate dance between remembering Holocaust survivors for the individuals they were, and invoking their identity as survivors.

Esteemed psychoanalyst and child survivor of the Holocaust Anna Ornstein specializes in trauma. Yet even she bristles at being called a “survivor,” telling the Washington Post on Jan. 23, “That’s almost like another crime.” She added, “We were reduced to a race…. This is my name, I had parents who raised me a certain way, and that was not washed away.”

Mourners don’t have the luxury of asking the departed how they wish to be remembered. In any case, we each carry our own points of salience with us when we remember.

At my father-in-law’s funeral and shiva, Bill’s nephew recalled dancing on his uncle’s feet. My husband described the invisible love that had been all around him, like clean air. Bill’s daughter reflected on the heartiness of autumn’s last remaining leaves as she had helped make her father comfortable during his final weeks. And there were his fellow Holocaust survivors, coming to pay respects to a departed member of their own.

Before I met him some 20 years ago, my father-in-law had visited Vancouver schools, telling students his personal story of survival and freedom. For some of the audience, this was their first experience of learning about the Holocaust. One of these students later befriended a young man from Toronto when they studied together at Queen’s University. That young Torontonian would, a few years later, become Bill’s son-in-law.

My stepmom encountered Bill years before I met him, hearing him relay his personal account one evening at Vancouver’s Jewish community centre. I, too, recall reading about Bill’s journey in the pages of the Jewish Western Bulletin (now the Jewish Independent) before meeting his son, who I would go on to marry.

Survivors manage to touch so many, directly and indirectly. Yet, as each one is, my father-in-law was so much more than the sum of those harrowing experiences. Along with his wife, my beloved mother-in-law, Bill built a life of love out of the depths of inhumanity. He lavished a great deal of affection and nurturing on his family, and found his own moments of serenity and solitude as he took up distance sailing around the islands of British Columbia in his later years.

As the rabbi spoke about my father-in-law at the graveside service, he spoke of the godliness that surely ran through him. In young Bill’s harrowing months at Auschwitz, he had found ways to help his fellow inmates. Perhaps most profoundly, Bill had also committed to memory details of instances of kindness amid the horror. Sometimes a certain German guard in the camps would help him – pulling him out of a work line to give him a less strenuous task, placing him on a bicycle during a long march, even giving him his gun to hold. These stories of goodness didn’t die with Bill, for my father-in-law had taken pains to impress these anecdotes upon his children.

Perhaps the godliness of survival is also the godliness of looking for kindness wherever it happens to be, and instilling goodness in the everyday. Bill wanted life to be simple and good; he wanted to find kindness around him, and he hoped others did too.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was previously published in the Canadian Jewish News.

Let’s talk about security, privacy

Last week, the federal government introduced proposed legislation intended to strengthen anti-terror powers of police, the intelligence service and the military.

The legislation would make it illegal to advocate or promote terrorism, would allow courts to remove terrorist propaganda from the internet, and make it easier for authorities to apprehend suspected terrorists before they act.

Civil libertarians waded in immediately. The British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which is already engaged in litigation against the federal government over allegations of electronic surveillance without warrants, warned that the legislation would give new powers to security agencies that have “shamefully inadequate oversight and are hostile to accountability.”

The proposed legislation comes on the heels of two terror attacks in Canada last year by apparent lone wolves in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que. In its press release announcing the measures, the government pronounced the world “a dangerous place” and reminded us that “Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism.” Fair enough.

But Canada is also not immune from the threat of government overreach. There is a very critical line and a democracy needs to struggle to find precisely the right balance around these issues. While a terror attack can come out of the blue and kill, threats to individual liberties tend to emerge more slowly and the harm they do is not as immediately clear.

Israel is probably the most illustrative example of a democratic society trying to balance individual rights with protection of civilians from determined terrorists.

The balance that Israel has struggled to find between the rule of law, protection of civilians and the preservation of core civil liberties has been one of the defining and divisive characteristics of Israeli life for decades.

Balancing the physical safety of civilians with the preservation of the freedoms that define that country invigorates a vibrant public discourse, an ongoing, hand-wringing, conscience-challenging debate that carries on with extraordinary passion in a vibrant political ferment.

Among the problems with applying the Israeli model to Canada’s is that, put simply, Canada is not Israel. Canada has had nothing even remotely comparable to the onslaught of terror attacks Israel has endured. Nothing should diminish the grief and determination we felt collectively after the two incidents last year in this country, but neither should we pretend that our society is under imminent threat of sustained, existential violence from ideological forces. That is simply not the case. Proponents of the legislation might say that we need to make sure that things do not get out of hand by getting ahead of it early. Perhaps. But then a wiser solution still would be to work with and support communities where radicalization is taking place, or threatens to take place, and empower the moderates and reformers to identify and help those at risk of succumbing to ideological extremism. There are other approaches as well.

We should not be lulled into any sense of complacency about the sort of world in which we live. But neither should we succumb to hysteria and assume that the sky is falling. Neither should we pretend that this is all white hat/black hat drama. In Canada and, especially, in the United States, in recent months, we have seen those in authority – police – shoot several innocent civilians. And we have plenty of examples of overreach by intelligence and security agencies that seem to view their constitutional limitations as mere suggestions. This may be a time to strengthen laws that protect our civilian populations from terrorists, but citizens should likewise ask when we will see legislation that ensures our civil liberties are as secure as our physical well-being.

Underpinning all of this discussion, though, is a problem far more immediate to Canadians: political polarization. Would it be too much to ask that, on an issue the federal government rhetorically insists is so extraordinarily urgent as protecting Canadians from terrorism, that they might reach across the aisle and work with opposition members, rising above partisanship to develop responses to genuine national security threats?

Imagine if, instead of a government-initiated security bill pushed through by a majority government, we engaged opposition parties and Canadian citizens to discuss and propose a consensus around these issues that balances the demand between our freedoms and our personal and collective security. That would be an exercise in democracy that would truly define the difference between the enemies who seek to destroy us and the values we cherish.

Perhaps it’s too much to expect in an election year.

Stand against extremism

(image from abouddandachi.com)

On Jan. 27, commemorations were held worldwide in remembrance of the Holocaust. Seventy years after the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, these remembrances are as necessary as ever, as evidenced by the past year’s rising tide of antisemitic attacks the world over. And while it may be impossible to stop every terrorist attack everywhere in the world, the manner in which societies and individuals react to such atrocities is just as important as “killing the bad guys.”

A case in point would be the terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January. In the aftermath, a massive two million-strong march was held in the heart of Paris in support of freedom of expression. The phrase #JeSuisCharlie became the most widely used hashtag in Twitter’s history. To meet the increased demand from multitudes of first-time readers seemingly eager on making a statement against extremism, the publication run for the magazine’s Jan. 12 issue was increased from 60,000 copies to three million, and increased again to five million, and, again, to seven million copies.

Marches, Twitter campaigns and a massive surge in readership. Yet, largely relegated to the background was the fact that Jews were specifically targeted during those three terrible days in Paris. Indeed, for months before the Paris terrorist atrocities, Jews in much of Europe had been subjected to a relentless wave of vicious antisemitic attacks. An atmosphere of raw, unchallenged hatred for all things Jewish preceded the events in Paris, and the warning signs were there for anyone who cared to pay attention. When Jews in Denmark trying to hold an event calling for religious coexistence are chased off the streets by “Allahu akbar”-screaming, black-banner-waving thugs, then very soon someone will get it into their head to try to kill Jews in Paris.

Marches, Twitter campaigns and millions of new readers. Momentary, short-term reactions to a very long-term problem, one that has been building up for years. In the wake of such atrocities, it is natural for individuals to feel a strong need to act. And nothing reputes terrorism as effectively as making a stand with its intended targets and victims: by making a stand with the Jewish communities of Europe and the world over.

One effective, long-term method of displaying solidarity with Jewish communities worldwide is to show the same enthusiasm for their publications as the world has displayed for scooping up issues of Charlie Hebdo. To repudiate global extremism, one only needs to act on a very local level.

Salom, the Turkish Jewish weekly tabloid, isn’t exactly an easy publication to find in Istanbul unless you know where to look. But with a circulation of just a few thousand, it has for almost seven decades managed to put out a highly professional and relevant newspaper (far more substantial and better produced than the hopeless Syrian regime mouthpieces Al-Baath or Al-Thawra, even with the resources of the state), and over the years some of Turkey’s most prominent writers and journalists have written for it. Over the years: over the span of no less than 68 years.

A community, any community’s, newspaper is a chronology and journal of the times and events of that community’s history and its place in the world, the events that they were affected by or had an effect on, the opinions, hopes, dreams and fears of that community’s individuals. As a source for a history of the times, websites don’t come close.

And few things strike at the heart of a community’s sense of safety or belonging as attacking or intimidating its publications. For a community to lose its publication would be a devastating blow to its sense of identity, history and continuity within the larger society it inhabits.

And so, when a community is under sustained attack from fringe extremist elements, one of the best long-term demonstrations of solidarity is to adopt that community’s publications. And it was in this spirit that millions of people around the world suddenly felt a compulsion to own a copy of Charlie Hebdo, regardless of their opinions on the merits (or lack thereof) of the paper’s contents over the years. In the aftermath of a terrorist event, ordinary people are driven to respond with an act that loudly and clearly expresses their rejection of and revulsion at the attack.

Marches are all very well and good, but it is highly unlikely that the scale of the January Paris march will ever be repeated for years to come. Twitter hashtags? Very fleeting and very much of the moment. A long-term response is necessary to support a community under long-term threat.

And, while Jews in one’s local community may not face the same level of violence and intimidation as Jews in other parts of the world, the nature of global antisemitism is such that Jews anywhere can, at anytime, become targets from any source, no matter how distant or remote the threat may seem, as evidenced, to take a recent example, by the Hezbollah terrorist organization’s threats to strike Jews anywhere in the world in retaliation for its recent high-level losses in Syria.

Not everyone can be a Lassana Bathily, the Mali-born employee of the Hyper Cacher, the targeted Paris kosher supermarket, who saved countless lives by hiding customers during the attack. Individuals can still achieve a great deal by standing with those whom extremists would target, however. Heaven forbid that anyone should ever suffer a terrorist attack ever again, but let’s not wait until after an atrocity to express “Je suis (insert latest victims here).” Society’s embrace and acceptance of its minorities are the surest shield and protection against opportunistic acts of hate against those minorities. Terrorism thrives in an atmosphere and environment of unchallenged and unchecked hatred.

Holocaust commemorations are held just once a year, and by the time a society feels compelled to respond to atrocities in its midst with million-person marches, it is probably too late, extremism has already dug its roots deep into that society. Extremism is more effectively fought on the individual level, with small, daily acts of kindness towards those that may be vulnerable, and the ostracizing of those groups and individuals who are hateful in their speech and behavior (I’m looking at you George Galloway, you shameful carpetbagger). Global extremism is most effectively fought by very local acts of consideration.

In this day and age, fighting extremism can be as simple as buying a newspaper. Salom.

Aboud Dandachi is a Syrian blogger based in Turkey. He has been cited on issues relating to the Syrian conflict on the BBC, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, Al-Arabiya and Turkiye Gazetesi. This article originally appeared on his blog From Homs to Istanbul, which can be found at abouddandachi.com. It is reprinted with permission.

Bibi, Obama: Grow up

Iran’s propaganda machine Press TV on Monday reported that U.S. President Barack Obama had “unfriended” Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Facebook.

Predictably, it turned out the report was a hoax. Iran’s humorless propagandists reported as fact a joke from an Israeli satire site. And yet, despite the big journalistic oops (as if they care), the Iranian voice box made a legitimate point. The two men, ostensibly leading figures in world diplomacy, have in recent weeks been behaving like sulky teenagers.

Netanyahu unwisely accepted an invitation from the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, John Boehner, to address Congress, specifically to pressure the Americans to increase sanctions on Iran. The fact that this visit would take place at the height of the Israeli election campaign has been criticized by some, with others noting that former president Bill Clinton hosted Shimon Peres during an election cycle. The fact that the invitation came from the speaker of the house, rather than from the president, whose responsibilities include being the country’s foremost voice on foreign affairs – and its head of state and commander in chief – is a significant protocol breech, but a deliberate one.

We are becoming almost inured to successive hyperbolic assertions that bilateral relations between the United States and Israel are at their lowest ebb. But this time, it seems true, although a result of such foolishness that it seems almost comical, as well as tragic. These two men, whose seeming dislike for each other they are not even mature enough to hide or deny, are submerging the best interests of the relationship, shootings spitballs at each another across the divide.

Critics of Obama’s motivations allege that he does not pass the “kishkes” question; that his commitment to Israel’s security, such as it may be, is based a political imperatives or strategic demands, rather than a personal commitment to the idea of the Jewish state. To many others, these criticisms don’t hold water.

But what of Netanyahu? What on earth is he thinking, deliberately provoking his country’s most important international ally by inserting himself squarely into a constitutional tight spot, pitting the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government against each other? Especially when Israel’s own intelligence service, the Mossad, has made clear that it is in Israel’s interest to allow negotiations with Iran to proceed, rather than to undermine them with additional immediate sanctions.

We are driven to ask, does Netanyahu know something we don’t? Does he know something the Mossad does not? Or is he driven merely by the hawkish demands of his domestic political constituency?

And why does he think that picking a fight – a very public, nasty and juvenile fight – with the president who was reelected with the support of 70 percent of American Jewish voters, would be a wise strategic or ideological move?

Greater minds can dissect the realpolitik motivations of these two strong figures. Wise figures in the think tanks of Washington and Tel Aviv are dissecting the nuance and nonsense the two leaders have displayed recently.

From where we sit, however, their behavior simply looks like they are putting their immature dislike for each other as individuals ahead of the interests of their countries. And, there is Speaker Boehner, ready to take political advantage.

Barrels of ink are being spilled this week on this topic, with the best minds of our generation advising both these men how to proceed. Our advice is simple, but it should be said: Just grow up.

Why is media Israel obsessed?

More senseless violence has hit Jerusalem in recent months, with the brutal murder of four worshippers at a synagogue in the Har Nof neighborhood late last year and multiple stabbings and car attacks. Some folks, while on the one hand wanting to ensure the world learns of these heinous acts, will, on the other hand, continue to ask why the media is so obsessed with Israel.

I was reminded of this question not too long ago via a short CNN video clip with journalist Matti Friedman in which he discusses an article he wrote for Tablet last summer that’s taken on a new life online. To make his case that the media is unfairly biased against Israel, Friedman cites the 2013 death toll in Jerusalem compared to Portland (more deaths in Portland), and the century-long Arab-Israeli conflict toll compared to the ongoing carnage in Syria (more lives lost in Syria). He adds that, in the overall reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian saga, Israel is unfairly portrayed as the aggressor while the Palestinians are cast as victims rather than as agents of their own fate.

The question of presumed agency is a key one in the conflict: how the conflict actors themselves see it, and how others can serve to reinforce these roles. It’s a fair point.

However, to truly understand why individuals, media markets, foreign policy actors and international organizations devote so much time and energy to the Israeli-Palestinian nexus, we’d need some in-depth research to really understand their motivations. For now, here are several plausible reasons that seek to raise the discussion beyond the reductionist assumption that there is a “media bias against Israel” and the related, if unspoken, accusation that the world simply hates the Jewish state.

Perhaps most importantly, American taxpayers provide a significant annual sum of money to Israel, via the $3 billion in annual U.S. aid granted to Israel. It’s natural that the government and the voters in that country at least would disproportionately concern themselves with the region.

Second, the Israel-Palestine core is the heartland of the three main monotheistic religions. The role of religious symbolism in Western art, literature, film and culture in general is significant. The region, in short, has long captured the imagination of many.

Third, Israel – unlike Syria – is a democracy. Citizens of democracies tend to hold other democracies to democratic standards. That means that violence committed in the name of democratic values – for better or worse – sometimes gets more airtime.

Fourth, as others have written before, Israel is seen by many as a colonial transplant. There are very good arguments against a simplistic understanding of Israel as a colonial project. (There is no core state to which settlers send extracted resources, for example.) But there is no getting around the fact that Israel’s birth was precipitated in part by Europe’s carving up of the region into mandate territories after the First World War. The shred of the colonial shadow succeeds in galvanizing a certain political consciousness that other conflicts, especially civil ones within non-democracies, simply don’t, unfortunately perhaps.

Fifth, once Israel came into existence, it was seen by many as a plucky state surviving against all odds. It’s a narrative that Israel and the engines of Diaspora Jewry have themselves succeeded in promoting. That the world continues its fascination with Arab-Israeli geopolitics, played out now partly through the Palestinians, is, therefore, not surprising.

Sixth, Jews tend to punch above their collective weight in many aspects of popular culture: entertainment, the arts, literature and so on. That the Jewish state and its goings-on figure so prominently in the media can be seen as a benign extension of this. Add to this the fact that some of the players in the contemporary Israeli-Palestinian saga also hold American citizenship (three of the victims of the Har Nof synagogue attack held dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship, while the fourth was British Israeli) and the effect is magnified.

Finally, as for Friedman’s comparison between the disproportionate attention given to death and destruction in Israel compared to, say, in Portland, one could say that political violence naturally garners more international concern – again, sadly for those who are ignored – than death caused by typical urban ills such as poverty, petty crime, drugs or traffic accidents.

In sum, I’ve suggested seven plausible reasons why the world might be “obsessed” with Israel, none of them having to do with base hatred of the country or of Jews. Of course, there’s nothing saying that any of these possible reasons obviate the need to look antisemitism in the eye wherever it genuinely appears, or to spend more time analyzing the Palestinian part of the equation. But let’s at least consider the array of possibilities out there before we assume that the world is against us.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. A version of this article was originally published on haartez.com.

Ignorant conspiracies

After the murders in Paris this month, it did not take long for the forces of conspiracy to switch into high gear.

Among those in the anti-Israel movement were people who suggested that the murders had been perpetrated by Israeli agents and that it was a frame up to besmirch Muslims. Greta Berlin, a leader in the Free Gaza movement and one of the most prominent anti-Israel campaigners, posted a statement on her Facebook page shortly after the murders at the French satirical magazine: “Mossad just hit the Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo in a clumsy false flag designed to damage the accord between Palestine and France…. Here’s hoping the French police will be able to tell a well-executed hit by a well-trained Israeli intelligence service and not assume the Muslims would be likely to attack France when France is their friend. Israel did tell France there would be grave consequences if they voted with Palestine. A four-year-old could see who is responsible for this terrible attack.”

Such comments should exclude people like this from legitimate dialogue on the issues, yet the world continues to grant them impunity to spread their theories. And, as perverse and disturbing as the conspiracies from such anti-Israel activists are, there are more absurd and apparently common views expressed on the street in the Paris suburbs where large populations of immigrants from Muslim countries live in economic stagnation. It took an American reporter no time at all to find more fantastical theories; for example, that the attacks were carried out by magical, shape-shifting Jews who morphed themselves into figures resembling Arab terrorists and perpetrated the evil acts.

As extraordinarily outlandish as the latter allegation is, it is no more removed from reality than the former. And both represent a somewhat alarming reality in contemporary discourse. There are conspiracy theories with some traction that say “the Jews” invented ISIS, perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and are in cahoots with the Freemasons to control the media and levers of power. Moowahahaha.

We should be cognizant that these ideas exist and pay attention to the impact they may play in the global dialogue about Israel (and anything else involving Jews). And, we should be vigilant and thankful for the organizations that monitor and condemn these notions. At the same time, we need to maintain perspective. While these ideas may seem widespread, they are generally (though not always) held by the ignorant, the ill-informed and the undereducated. Notably, these ideas seem most prominent in places where democracy has not been permitted to flourish, and autocrats will – and do – exploit these sorts of things for their purposes. Most of the people who carry these poisonous thoughts, however, cannot even exert their influence at the ballot box.

We return to comments by Jonathan Kay when he visited here more than a year ago now. Kay, then the editorial page editor of the National Post and now editor of The Walrus magazine, insisted that these voices have been marginalized. In the halls of power – or even of country clubs and polite society – where antisemitism once held sway – these ideas are dismissed along with the people who espouse them. To subscribe to them is to relegate oneself to the D-list of civil dialogue.

It is important to acknowledge, on the one hand, guttersnipe who purvey ludicrous, hateful ideas and, on the other, the progress that has been made against bigotry among the people who determine policy in our country and among our democratic allies. Outside these circles are all sorts of ideas that are beyond the realm, but in the places where bizarre anti-Jewish conspiracies still hold sway, antisemitism is merely one among a disturbing host of societal ailments.

There is a quote that seems appropriate here, and it is doubly attributed – to the American presidential confidant Bernard Baruch and children’s writer Dr. Seuss. Whichever man originated it, the sentiment applies: “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.”

Unpacking Lintel’s background

Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre kicked off the new year with Underneath the Lintel, on stage until Jan. 31. Though it seems the well-known Emmy-winning playwright Glen Berger did not intend the bigotry implied by his play, his thematic choices create a serious problem nonetheless. This Lintel comes to Vancouver from Alberta’s Rosebud Theatre. (Spoiler alert: the ending of the play is revealed and discussed below.)

While British, Canadian and American critics have given the play mixed reviews, some have argued that it’s not antisemitic, unlike the story that inspired it. And it’s been a hit with producers, who have given it numerous productions across North America and even a run in London’s West End starring Richard Schiff of West Wing fame.

Berger’s 2001 comedy is a contemporary adaptation of the allegorical medieval Christian myth of the Wandering Jew, a figure that has served for centuries as a symbol of the Jewish people’s rejection of Christianity.

Many readers will be familiar with the story, which tells the tale of a Jewish cobbler in Jerusalem who ignores Jesus’ plea for help on his way to crucifixion. The 13th-century fable tells us that, in response, Jesus cursed the Jew. To paraphrase, Jesus says: “For your failure to demonstrate kindness, you are doomed to wander the earth, without rest, until we meet again.” The cobbler is forced to leave his family and wander the earth, alone and unloved, until the Second Coming. He still wanders today, exhausted (in some versions, wicked) and waiting for Jesus to return.

According to historian Salo Wittmayer Baron, the legend became popular with the audiences for medieval passion plays in which the fable was enacted. “Although, from the outset, everyone realized that [the cobbler] had been a Jerusalemite Jew, he now began to be identified with the unconverted eastern Jew still alive in modern times,” he writes in Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages (vol. 10). The first written record of the fable is from the 13th century; indeed, it becomes the very first mass publication when its German-language version is published in 1602.

Underneath the Lintel follows a Dutch librarian (called Librarian in the program) around the world as he searches for the person who returned a library book that was 113 years overdue. During his international pursuit of the culprit, Librarian tells us, he realizes he may, in fact, be following in the footsteps of the Wandering Jew. He then shares the basics of the medieval fable with the audience (without context or dwelling on the work’s antisemitic history) and reasons that if he has discovered that the Wandering Jew really exists, this also proves that God exists. Librarian is awed and thrilled by that possibility, and the play turns into his search for God. Soon, however, the audience realizes what Librarian does not: he may be the Wandering Jew himself.

The play’s only character is Librarian (a very good Nathan Schmidt). Librarian never judges (a punishing) God’s treatment of the Wandering Jew. In a 2013 essay for American Conservatory Theatre, Berger writes that the Wandering Jew is guilty of a “mistake, a simple mistake.”

This Pacific Theatre production is a very good play, and the story of Librarian is compelling; two features irrelevant to the content of the script. Undoubtedly, the script’s problem is the result of sloppy writing and a somewhat ignorant reading of what the Wandering Jew folktale implies. The playwright seems very naïve.

In a 2013 interview with JWeekly, Berger said, “Up to the 19th century, the Wandering Jew was considered a condemnation of Jews and Judaism, because he wasn’t very nice to Jesus and consequently got punished for it. I think people just know The Wandering Jew as an antisemitic tale in any context.” Including this one? He doesn’t say, but it appears that Berger believes he’s cleansed the fable of its offensiveness. It’s just another cautionary tale now, his script implies, like The Little Mermaid or Pinocchio.

Berger signals a slight shift in the American Conservatory Theatre essay. He writes, “Now, I was quite aware that the myth of The Wandering Jew was originally an antisemitic tale, but the myth had taken on more complex meanings in its 700-odd-year history and I felt, besides, that an artist can always appropriate myths for his own ends.”

This is true. Artists can do whatever they want with whatever they want. What Berger has done here, however, is confirm the conclusion of the original antisemitic folktale. A more “complex meaning” than simple bigotry is tough to imagine.

In this play, the Wandering Jew commits his “crime” while standing “underneath the lintel” of his front door. He watches but ignores the procession of the condemned. When Jesus falls before his door and begs for help, the Jew remains still. In some version of the tale, the Jew strikes Jesus or tells him to hurry. Berger writes in the program’s playwright’s note: “[The Wandering Jew’s] predicament is the predicament of all humanity – he made a mistake, a single mistake ‘underneath the lintel,’ when he put fear and self-interest ahead of compassion. Everyone does this all the time.”

Berger, therefore, reduces the fable to “people make mistakes.” What mistake? Was it a mistake to reject Jesus and Christianity? In whose eyes? Berger allows: “Did the punishment fit the crime? No.” But guilty nonetheless, he implies: there has been a crime. Perhaps Berger thinks the sentence a little long. He never articulates his thoughts on the punishment beyond its failure to fit the transgression.

“I’ve received letters calling Underneath the Lintel antisemitic,” Berger writes. “That said, I’ve also received letters calling the play too ‘pro-Zionist,’ and also ‘anti-Christian,’ for the portrayal of a cruel Christ, I suppose. So go figure.”

In the end, of course, we discover that Librarian might actually be the Wandering Jew and just not know it. On the surface, we learn that the Dutch librarian is also guilty of “a mistake” that has ruined his life. Underneath his own lintel, Librarian rejected the only woman he ever loved. The cost of that mistake is loneliness and an obsessive pursuit of the Wandering Jew that forces him to travel the world. Berger, here, equates Librarian’s mistake with the Jew’s mistake. Librarian rejected a woman; the Jew rejected Jesus. Only one was punished for eternity. Librarian, however, has free will.

It’s difficult to understand why the vast majority of critics do not notice the play’s antisemitism, and why, those who do insist on announcing that it is not antisemitic.

Some audiences will surely argue that the play is not antisemitic but, rather, about antisemitism. Not evident, I believe. Others will compare the retelling of this legend to the problematic Merchant of Venice. But this is a contemporary play, not the revival of a period piece. Some will argue that the play questions God’s fundamental justice: it does not.

Underneath the Lintel was written by an American Jew to entertain and provoke audiences; one might say that The Wandering Jew was written by medieval Christians to entertain and provoke audiences – but, more to the point, to promote hatred and violence. The playwright succeeds in diminishing the true meaning of The Wandering Jew when he equates it, thematically, with a simple story of lost love.

As a final “surprise,” as the play ends, Librarian transforms into a cartoon Jew. He already has a beard and an accent that sounds Yiddish. Now, he dons an old black suit that we’re told is dirty and smelly. The jacket bears the Star of David we’re told Jews were forced to wear in the 15th century. He wears the funnel-shaped cap Jews were forced to wear in the 14th century. He holds a prayer book in one hand and (what appears to be) a candlestick in the other.

Costumed thus, he dances Tevye-style to klezmer music and the play ends. This final image smacks of historic – and overtly – racist portrayals of the Wandering Jew in art. If Berger intended to comment on this image, on this object of scorn, he forgot to do so. The play ends instead with the comic dance of the Jew.

Michael Groberman is a Vancouver freelancer writer.

The word “Palestine”

Does Palestine exist? A blogger on the often-provocative website JewsNews doesn’t think so. A package of dates marked “Palestine” must be “magic,” he says, since there’s no such country. And this echoes Moshe Arens’ trotting out of the old canard that Palestine doesn’t exist, but Jordan – the real Palestinian state – already does.

There are at least two issues at stake for Israelis: legitimacy and security. Yet a closer look reveals that neither concern is quite what it seems.

Part of the reason that many Jews have been allergic to the word Palestine is that it has long been used to negate the legitimacy of Israel. In this view, the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River (or west of that, to the Green Line, depending on one’s view) is like a blue and white transparent film revealing a red, white and green film, containing a different narrative beneath. Since time is linear and space is finite, there seems to be room for only one people and one narrative on that tiny slice of Middle East territory. One cannot reverse the flow of the sands of time. Israel exists, so Palestine, the logic goes, cannot.

But, surprise! Those who would wish to roll back history and replace Israel with Palestine, as the Palestinian national movement claimed to want to do for decades, have now indicated – at least via their official leaders – that they will be satisfied with a mere 22 percent of the land they originally claimed as theirs. A state of Palestine, in other words, need no longer negate the symbolic right of Israel to exist.

Complicating all of this, though, is the one little word one often hears from Israeli officials, and which every state and all people deserve: security. For example, Bibi Netanyahu, in a video posted Dec. 27 to the Prime Minister of Israel’s Facebook page, contained an address to an enthusiastically nodding U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham.

In the span of a few seconds, Bibi managed to call out Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat’s rhetorical hyperbole (Erekat’s comparison of ISIS’s Islamic state desires with Bibi’s Jewish state utterances), while associating the Palestinian negotiator’s “incitement” with the throwing of a firebomb on an Israeli girl in the West Bank. The kicker: the folly of the Palestinians seeking to bring to the United Nations Security Council a proposal – a “diktat” Bibi calls it – containing provisions that “seek to undermine our security.”

The trouble with the security discourse is that, just as stating “there is no Palestine” (or “there is, but it’s in Jordan”), it tends to serve as a rhetorical trump card. We all deserve security but we also know that full and total security is ultimately elusive. Where security threats were traditionally measured solely in terms of territory, now security experts also think in terms of environmental safety, immigration and contagious diseases. There are always new threats on the horizon. All the while, we must recall that conventional security threats never really disappear – for anyone.

On top of all this we must ask whether the little girl who was tragically burned by the act of terrorism in the West Bank was in fact more secure by Israel holding onto that territory and moving its population there. Counterfactual reasoning is never foolproof, but one could certainly make the argument that occupying a hostile population for decades on end is itself a security liability, rather than a security guarantee.

Many have indeed made this argument. More than 100 retired Israeli generals, other high-ranking officers, Mossad officers and police chiefs have even told their prime minister as much, writing a letter last November urging him to “adopt the political-regional approach and begin negotiations with moderate Arab states and with the Palestinians (in the West Bank and in Gaza, too), based on the Saudi-Arab Peace Initiative.”

Obviously Israel wants security. So do the Palestinians. When it comes to the nasty world of international politics, there are no absolute security guarantees – but there are calculable risks. For starters, peace treaties tend to hold better than wishing that an occupied people will sit on their hands for decades. With 59 internal checkpoints in the West Bank, not counting the 40 near the entry to Israel at B’Tselem’s last count, I would even suggest that hoping that your own civilian population can move freely and safely within the occupied territory where an enemy population resides is where the magical thinking really lies.

So, as for that blogger and those dates, I would advise him to take a bite out of the dried fruit. I doubt that those dates are magical, but there is indeed a sweet spot that reveals the best chance for peace between two peoples vying for security and independence. And it doesn’t involve keeping the status quo going, unhappily ever after.

Finding beauty on travels

After a three-month travel adventure with the purpose of seeking beauty wherever I went, many thoughts raced through my mind. I had quit my job, gone on the road, run out of money, and had no clue what came next. I couldn’t have predicted that a philosophical discussion on the meaning of life with a perfect stranger would change my life. But it did.

A tall man stood behind me in line at passport control in the Sydney airport. He started to chat with me, wondering where I was going. Grinning, I explained I was returning home after wandering around Australia and New Zealand solo. He was heading to Wales.

Grant was part of an elite Australian special-forces team. Somehow we got into a serious conversation, keeping busy until our flights by walking together around the airport. It was August 2004.

“Everything happens for a reason,” Grant said with confidence.

“How can you be so sure?” I replied.

“I know it. I have seen it every day of my life. It’s just how the world works.”

“Do you really believe that?” I wondered. “How do you know that things happen for a reason? Maybe things happen and we give them reason, and not the other way around.”

I recalled every detail of how I spent Sept. 11, 2001. I was working for CNN as a field producer on Lou Dobb’s show, Moneyline. My job had started a few weeks prior and I was thrilled: the low drama of financial news was perfect for me. I distinctly remember a conversation with my father about this feature of my new job at the end of August 2001.

“I can do this,” I said. “The markets go up and down; there’s no blood and guts in these news stories.”

A short time later, I was a witness to Sept. 11, and I can’t think, let alone write, about it without having tears in my eyes.

In a state of shock, I watched smoke pour out of the enormous gash in one of the World Trade buildings. Soon after, the tower started to collapse as I watched, and my brain screamed, “There are people in that building and you are watching them die and there is nothing you can do!” I have never felt such anguish and helplessness. With these thoughts now racing through my mind as we wandered the airport, I asked Grant, “Where were you on Sept. 11?”

He spoke solemnly, “I’ll never forget Sept 11. My mother died in my arms at the hospital, and then my brother and I heard the news.”

I was surprised. As I was watching my city fall apart, his world was also breaking into pieces thousands of miles away. Soon after that difficult day, Grant was one of the Australian servicemen who went to fight the war in Afghanistan.

I ended up covering terrorism and the Sept. 11 story for two years. It got to me. My usual happy-go-lucky cheerful disposition disappeared. Covering funerals and sad stories daily left a deep imprint on me. I needed a change. I wanted to see the beauty in the world, the happy moments, the positive. I read books by every optimistic self-help guru I could lay my hands on, including books by the Dalai Lama. However, the book that made the most impact on me was an Australia and New Zealand guidebook. So, I put my math skills to good use, reached into my savings account and soon after found myself – and my backpack – at a Victorian-style hostel in Auckland, New Zealand.

Down Under was the perfect place to embrace a new worldview; to fill my head with beautiful images to counter the horrible ones. I hitched rides from perfectly lovely strangers, drank pure water from ancient glaciers that I hiked, and dared myself to do anything and everything interesting, including scaring myself to death skydiving with my new travel friend, Dave Ellis.

I admit, the night before I was scheduled to jump, I tossed and turned, praying for it to rain. I wished I could back out of my commitment without appearing to be terrified. I was afraid of heights and scared out of my mind. But, my sense of adventure got the best of me, as it usually does, and I went ahead with the leap.

Dave and I became the best of friends after jumping out of a perfectly good airplane 12,000 feet above Queenstown, New Zealand. Later in the trip, he invited me to come explore Perth, Australia, after I had toured that country’s east coast. Traveling without a plan but with cash in hand left me open to seeing where the world would take me.

It was a great suggestion. That said, a less-than-desirable five-hour-plus cross-country flight from Brisbane squished in between two larger-than-life rugby pIayers brought me to my destination.

One night while in Perth, I was invited to Dave’s parents’ house for dinner. His British grandmother, Bette Ellis, told me about her life and how she had met her husband in Jerusalem in 1946. Leonard was in the British military. They traveled the world together. She was an adventurous lady filled with energy and, as a youngster, an avid dancer.

Her world was forever changed on Feb. 28, 1967, when she was nearly killed in a terrorist bombing in Aden, Yemen, where she was living at the time. The bomb exploded at a cocktail party she was attending. The two women right next to Bette and with whom she had just been speaking, were killed. She survived but was left a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down.

The Ellis family was torn apart. Her youngest son, David, was sent to England to be looked after by Bette’s sister. Her husband Leonard suffered from extreme guilt because he had left Bette at the party as he was called away to work. They eventually divorced, and she became a single parent to three children. Leonard went on to have years of health difficulties and passed away at age 62 from cancer.

In the most unlikely place on the planet I would have imagined, I had come face to face with terrorism again, and the effects it had, even 40 years later, on a family. Once again, my heart was ripped to shreds over how one act, one moment in time, can shatter and splinter a person and a family forever.

The story stuck with me, and I emailed Dave’s father, Alex, to interview him. He wrote, “Thanks for the interest in Mum’s story. Yes, the impacts may go on for years and in many cases are difficult to cope with whereas the public interest tends to be more about the event and the immediate impacts. In many ways, there are almost forgotten victims of such attacks. Mum was a very strong person and led a very active life considering the extent of her injuries. Her story is certainly one of strength and hope but there is no doubt that many other victims have not fared as well.”

He continued, “Coincidentally, Mum passed away, and the date is very easy for us to remember as it was 11 Sept.”

Shocked and teary-eyed, I couldn’t help but wonder about the timing. While more than 13 years have passed since Sept. 11, 2001, for many, it is as if it happened yesterday; for some, the scars of this terrorist act will remain and be felt for generations. Even though Bette had passed away years after the 2001 attacks, this sad date still had resonance, personally, nationally, globally. She was a woman with a staunch will to live, and her family, a role model of love, made the best of a tragic situation.

I don’t know if I believe that things happen for a reason, but I do know that giving them purpose is all most people can accomplish. So, the next time you travel, be open to the world and its wisdom. Even in learning of others’ heartaches and tragedies, there is some hope to be found. On your journeys, if you are truly lucky, you might make lifelong friends like I have in the Ellis family, friends who will restore your vision of the world, and show that good can triumph over evil.

Masada Siegel is an award-winning journalist and photographer. Follow her at @masadasiegel and visit her website, masadasiegel.com.