That Day

I listen to WNYC, our local NPR station, all the time. It is one of the consistent joys in my daily life to hear the lineup of shows unfold over the course of the weekday. Morning Edition first, then after an hour of the BBC which I can give or take, the local shows -- Brian Lehrer, Leonard Lopate and Soundcheck, back to the national lineup of Fresh Air and All Things Considered in the late afternoon.

This week I've changed the station more than I ever have in the past. The reason for this is the growing din of memorializing 9/11.

I had wondered how the 10th anniversary would unfold for me, at first it was a lazy, kind of minor academic thought that floated through my mind, later it caught my attention more, and now that I know, I've realized I'm completely unprepared for it.

On the radio, it started off with a gradual turning up of the volume and frequency of stories about 9/11, a report here, an individual testimony there; but over the past week it has dominated nearly everything I've heard on all the shows I normally listen to. It has become inescapable.

Today was the worst. While driving Toby and Beruria to school, there was a lengthy segment that detailed the death of the "first" casualty of the attacks that I listened to quietly (so that hopefully the kids didn't hear too much) -- that is to say, the first whose death certificate was formally filed of all the thousands that would follow.

And for the first time in nine years, I broke down and started crying. I had to change the radio station.

I haven't had this feeling for a long time. And it made me realize that I need to somehow try to exorcise these feelings that have laid dormant for quite a while.

There was a time when I cried every morning for a good four or five months after the towers came down. Every morning I would open the New York Times, and after reading through the first pages, inevitably came the pages of pictures and memorials for the victims that had been identified that day. I read them every day, and like a ritual every day I broke down over my coffee. I didn't intend to, I didn't do it because I liked it. I felt like it was an obligation, that I owed it to someone to read those stories.

Kara and I moved to New York City one week before the attacks. Kara was starting her first year of grad school at Rockefeller University on the Upper East Side, and we had just moved across country to our tiny, 175 square foot apartment on West 58th and 9th avenue. I had taken to going to minyan every morning up the street at the Lincoln Square Synagogue, I think services started at about 7 or 7:15 am. I cherished watching the city wake up every morning, the shopkeepers hosing down the crap on the sidewalks, the number of yellow cabs and buses ramping up in the eight blocks between our place and the shul in 66th. A brand new New Yorker, I lived this little fantasy life. Through a twist of fate Kara and I had ended up in the center of the world, the place I'd been reading about and seeing in movies since I was a kid. A few blocks away from where Holden Caufield caught a cab and drunkenly asked the cabbie about where the ducks in the Central Park pond went when the water froze. Eight blocks south of the record shop where Woody Allen met Diane Wiest in Hannah and her Sisters. Every day I walked past the Iridium where Les Paul had a standing gig every week. Living close enough to Julliard to actually be annoyed by the obnoxious hothouse flowers who went to school there...I could go on and on.

Long story short, I liked walking home from shul in the morning.

That morning I walked home, even though I wasn't planning to. Kara and I needed an external disk drive, and I had intended to jump on the #1 subway at 66th Street and take it all the way down to Park Row, to the mecca of all electronic stores, J&R Music World. I had only been there once, and was amazed that when I turned the corner the first time to Park Row, I looked up and saw the Twin Towers for the first (and, it would turn out, the last) time in my life. They were just across the street. Right there, so big, just popping up out of nowhere.

But I didn't think it through, and as I was leaving shul I realized that the last thing I wanted to do was to ride the subway for God-knows-how-long all the way downtown with my tallis and tefillin bag. That seemed like a royal pain, so instead I just walked back to our building, went in the front door, said hello to the security guy, and rode up to our apartment.

If I'd have taken the train, I probably would have gotten downtown at just the wrong time. I would think about that a lot after that day.

Kara was in the shower. I yelled hello to her, went to the cupboard, grabbed the Raisin Bran, poured a bowel, sat down at the tiny table (the apartment was only one room). The futon we slept on was folded up. I don't remember if the tv was on or whether I turned it on, but I started watching Katie Couric and reading the paper. At some point I looked up and saw the North Tower (I think that was the first) burning. I turned up the volume, and heard Couric describing it, saying a plane had flown into the building.

"Kara! Holy shit! A plane just flew into the World Trade Center!" I yelled...Kara was then drying her hair. I remembered immediately a story I'd read about a similar thing happening during World War II, when a B-25 flew in to the Empire State Building. "Oh my God, Kara, it's just like the thing that happened with the Empire State Building!" I remember seeing pictures from that, and thinking about the people who were killed in the accident (it was an accident -- I think low clouds or something), and especially about the secretaries -- for some reason the thought of these people just doing their normal jobs suddenly finding the building in which they were working disappearing around them, finding themselves falling hundreds of feet to earth. That image had always really disturbed me. "I wonder what happened?"

Right after I said that, watching the unchanging image of the burning tower on the tv, and then there was a shadow, and then the tv picture went out.

We didn't have cable in that apartment, just an antenna, and just got the local stations. The shadow, I realized only after I turned to the only station we still got -- it was Channel 2 (I think that's ABC) -- was a plane hitting the second tower. The tv went out because all the stations except for ABC transmitted from atop the Towers. Only ABC had theirs on top of the Empire State Building.

It was at that second that I knew this was intentional, that someone had meant to fly two planes into the World Trade Center.

I remember the fear. I remember hearing that another plane crashed into the Pentagon. I remember not know what was next, whether planes would start careening out of the sky everywhere, the terror that something could happen to us.

In the meantime, Kara and I didn't know what to do. Kara was supposed to start classes that morning. She wasn't sure whether they were cancelled. I'm sure we argued about it -- I'm sure I said that there was no way they were having classes; I know that Kara was worried, because she decided to go across town to the campus. I know I didn't want her to go; I was actually scared and didn't know what was happening. Kara, always the more level and grounded of the two of us, wasn't worried; but she was worried about missing her first class. She went. I stayed in the apartment, staring at Channel 2.

In those days, we didn't both have cell phones. We had one, and I can't remember if I had it or if Kara took it with her. I don't even know how she got across town; I think she maybe tried to take a bus but ended up walking.

I was supposed to be reading books, prepping for my oral exam next Spring. I didn't do that.

After sitting for a while staring at the tv, I had to get out of the apartment.

I decided to take a walk. The security guard was listening to the radio. I remember exchanging a look with him like "what the hell?"

I walked out on to 58th street, and started walking east, towards Columbus Circle. The whole block was dead. No one was out on what was usually an extremely busy street, 9th Avenue. On the side streets as I walked, delivery trucks had just stopped, parked on the curb, and had their doors open and the radio on loudly, so that the people who were gathered around could hear. I remember a number of trucks parked like that, around each one a little community of listeners silent, standing in half-circles around the open doors. Sometimes the drivers were sitting there in the cab, sometimes they were part of the circles. Nobody talked.

I kept walking. I got to 8th Avenue, and I looked downtown.

I saw the smoke. Huge plume of smoke, one giant plume.

I walked to Columbus Circle, and in to a bodega, I think one next to the Starbucks there on 59th. I bought a pack of cigarettes, even though I'd quit smoking a while ago. I walked to the USS Maine memorial on the corner of Central Park, the one facing Columbus Circle, and sat down, opened the cigarettes, took one out, lit it, started smoking.

A guy came up to me. Little overweight, about my age, long hair. He looked at me like he wanted to ask me something.

I remember it was the first time I ever made eye contact in a public place in New York City with a stranger walking up to me...it was something I never did, because I never knew what I'd be getting myself in to. I was a nervous new New Yorker.

But it was just that kind of day -- you made eye contact with strangers on Columbus Circle.

He asked me if I could spare a cigarette. Not like a homeless guy, but like a guy like me -- someone who didn't smoke anymore, but did today. Of course I gave him one.

He lit up, and at that moment a pair of F-16s -- probably New York National Guard -- flew very low above us. I'd see those planes many times that day (or their twins), circling the island over and over again, circling us all with their loud engines -- they were almost the only loud sound you heard where I was sitting.

The guy sat down next to me, and we smoked. I think at one point we started up a very brief conversation, something along the lines of "what the fuck?" followed by shrugging shoulders and shaking heads. "What the fuck is going on here?"

I walked back after the smoke to my apartment. I noticed the people around the trucks getting a little more agitated. I think crying more. I think exclaiming a little more than they had been...and I didn't know why at that moment, but it was because the towers had begun to fall.

I walked into the lobby of our building. The security guy was there, leaning over the counter, listening to the radio. It was a weird kind of lobby, very large and new (it was part of housing that Bard University opened for its New York arts campus, and was quite new and polished). To get to the security desk, you had to go in the door, walk down a few steps, then up again to the elevator. You passed the security guy. He was usually not so loquacious, usually just nodded if you said hello. Not unfriendly, just not so talkative.

Now we talked. "The tower just fell down," he said to me.

I think I said "Jesus Christ" or something. I don't remember, but it was some exclamation.

We just stood there for a minute. I couldn't think of anything to say, he probably couldn't either.

I went and took the elevator back up to my apartment.

A short time later the second tower came down, and I remember just yelling. Just screaming. I was angry. So angry. I screamed and I cried, really cried, just wept.

I don't really remember how the rest of the day went. It was a lot of the same. I think at some point Kara called or I called her (the phones weren't working most of the morning). She told me she was coming home. At some point during the day, I got through to my parents. My dad didn't say hello when I got through, he just said "Come home now. Just come home."

I remember the hospital. We lived directly across the street from Roosevelt Hospital. On one of my trips outside I decided to go to the Red Cross which was on 10th about a block north of us. I was going to give blood, and there was a long line outside the door. I got on the line, and after a while a person came out and said that they couldn't take any more blood, that they had too much now, that it wasn't getting used yet, and that they couldn't safely store any more.

When I walked home again, I passed the entry to the ER at Roosevelt. There were a lot of people standing around in scrubs, waiting. They were just waiting, serious-looking, waiting for the flood.

I think the saddest thought that hit me -- or rather, the thought that made me the saddest -- was when I realized that the flood never did come. There weren't enough people who lived to flood the ERs as far uptown as 59th and 10th. They just waited there, the people at the hospital, all day in their scrubs, probably bone tired, and the ambulances never came.

They said they didn't know how many people were killed, but the whole thing was unfolding. The rest of the day it was the same, the smoke you heard about, the people flooding over the Brooklyn bridge. The next day we saw the pictures, the people carrying others out, the finance guys in their suits covered, just covered with dust. The firemen. So many dead firemen, policemen.

I remember thinking, "They planned the timing so that the second tower would get hit when the firemen were there trying to help people in the first." I don't know if it is true, but that's what happened.

I watched the smoke every day. A few days later the winds shifted to the north, and I smelled it for the first time. The smell was entirely new to me, but there was no mistaking what it was.

A few weeks later, I had to go back to Palo Alto. I still had to complete my teaching and courses, and Kara had started at Rockefeller, and we had to do a bi-coastal marriage for about four months or so until I finished at Stanford. I didn't want to leave, I didn't want to leave her there or leave myself, because I had found very quickly that New York was, after those towers came down, a very long way away from everywhere else. I followed the emails that went out on different grad student list serves at Stanford that I subscribed to, and I found it astounding that there was a total disconnect in what they saw from what I saw. They saw it from a long way away; that is the only way I can account for the way they wrote on these lists. It made me angry, and I didn't want to go to Palo Alto and talk to these people I went to school with.

But I went, and I spent a lot of time ignoring them all. I spent a lot of time alone. I'm only realizing this now, but I spent almost all of the time I wasn't teaching or meeting with professors sitting alone in my room in Escondido Village. I smoked a lot. I drank a lot, I'm not proud to say. It is just occurring to me now that I wasn't really behaving in a healthy way. I thought it was just because I missed Kara (which was true), but now I wonder whether it was something more than that.

I got up in the morning every day, and I rode my bike or walked to the center of campus. I bought a coffee at the cafe next to the library, and sat and read my paper. Every day I lit a cigarette, probably more than one, drank my coffee and read and cried. Day after day. Then got on with my day.

I am not proud of my behavior. Today I did the math, and I realized that even if I was in New York City when the towers went down, I was one of 8,000,000 other people who were in New York City that day. Even if I was in Manhattan, I was one of, I don't know, at least 1,000,000 other people there. Even if I was south of Central Park, I was one of hundreds of thousands of others there. I am not special in any way. I was on 58th street.

Hell, I have friends who were there -- literally there. My friend Ari was there; a young guy, starting out in finance, he had to run away from the dust and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge to get out.

Ari is the happiest person I've ever met. I ask him every week in shul how it's going, and he answers, invariably, "It's going great. Fantastic. Just a great week." And he means it. I don't know if it has anything to do with that day, but I think maybe it does.

I'm not special in any way. I feel bad that I spend all this time writing about this, that I've thought about it so much, when it didn't happen to me. But I guess it still just hurts a lot.

So, I haven't listened to too much NPR this week. I don't know what I'm going to do on Sunday, we don't know what we're going to do. I do know that it is still raw, that it still is just this pain that hasn't ever really gone away, all the things that have happened over the last ten years. I don't know if it's wrong -- it seems like everyone wants to remember, talk about it, think about it, but I just find it really hard.

Professor Bernhardi

Walking on one of our interminable hikes around Vienna (well, enjoyable for me, probably interminable for Toby), we passed the Burgtheater. This magnificent building, built after plans by the most important historicist architect in 19th century Europe, Gottfried Semper, the model for every late 19th century theater in the Austrian Empire (and a few beyond its boarders), was of course on the list of structures I felt obliged to visit.

Little did I expect that the play that was showing on its stage was going to be Professor Bernhardi by Arthur Schnitzler. It was kind of like walking past the Estate's Opera in Prague and seeing that a Mozart opera was playing. Or, l'havdil, seeing the Ring at Bayreuth. It was bashert. We had to go.

Explanation clearly in order. First off, who was Arthur Schnitzler and why does the production of one of his plays in Vienna obligate a cultural historian of late 19th century Austro-Hungarian Jewry to see it?

Schintzler, a product of Leopoldstadt, was a doctor by profession, but in mid-life turned his attention to his true passion: writing, especially for the theater. Through his body of work, usually deeply complex and starkly honest in its presentation of such issues as sex, psychological turmoil, and the hypocrisy of class, race and morality in fin-de-siecle Vienna, he is considered along with Freud, Otto Weininger , Gustav Mahler and Theodor Herzl to be among the definitive symbols of the turn-of-the-century in Vienna. His most famous play is most likely Reigen (or Le Ronde), which has seen several interpretations and reincarnations, most recently as The Blue Room on stage in London and New York, and the novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), most famous to movie fans in its incarnation as Eyes Wide Shut, a sex-o-rama starring Tom Cruise and Nichole Kidman.

So while clearly there was a little bit of the dirty old man about him, Schnitzler is nevertheless rightfully considered a master of shading the subtleties of Viennese social structure -- the cuts, the hierarchies, the wounds -- and especially the simultaneously tragic, pathetic, and often noble attempts of middle and upper middle class Jews of his time to navigate the treacherous waters. Because he did it, he certainly knew of what he spoke.

I know him best through his novel, Der Weg ins Freie (The Road into the Open), which is to my mind about the best tableau of the interior life of Jews in fin-de-siecle Vienna every produced. Remarkably, the hero of the novel is a Gentile nobleman/would-be-composer, who spends most of the novel living a life of leisure and hanging out in the cafes with his Jewish friends. It is a fantastic book, and I can't do it justice here.

The play Toby and I saw, Professor Bernhardi, was a work from the middle of his career. Perhaps its greatest claim to fame was that, ironically, it was not allowed to premier at the Burgtheater when it was written. Considered obscene by the Imperial censors, it was banned when it was written in 1912, opening instead (surprisingly) in Berlin. The reason usually understood for its being banned was its mention of abortion, which in the Catholic Austrian Empire was a subject strictly verboten and taboo in public life. But I suspect that there was something else at work: the frank depiction of institutionalized and sensational anti-Semitism in the Vienna of Karl Lueger.

The play opens in Bernhardi's clinic, where the Professor is the chief physician and head of the practice (among other things, the play is rather enlightening as to the structure of Viennese medical institutions in the early 20th century). The scene is the office, with two doors, one on the right leading to the patient's ward, on the left leading out of the office. At the opening, a woman (off stage) is dying of sepsis brought on by a botched abortion. The doctor's various interns and a nurse are discussing the case (and also flirting -- gotta get the sex in somehow). The professor comes in, and is informed that the patient is dying, but is in a state of sepsis-induced euphoria, believing not only that she is well, but is the happiest she has ever been (the only sounds you hear from the woman is her singing childhood songs off stage). Shortly after, a priest enters. He'd been told that there was a woman who needed last rights, and he was here to administer them.

This is where the play becomes interesting. Not wanting the patient to be awakened from her euphoria (presumably a priest giving her last rights would make her realize the reality of her situation), Bernhardi (did I mention he is a Jew?) forbids the priest from entering.

A fascinating moral dilemma emerges: is it preferable for a dying person to live out their last moments as painlessly as possible, or for them to be made aware of their immanent demise for the sake of a religious ritual? Bernhardi and the priest represent two poles: the priest an anti-humanist, religious certainty (of COURSE she should be administered the last rights, regardless of the outcome, as it is her eternal soul that is in peril), and Bernhardi, a Jew, a man of science and pragmatism, whose humanity places his care for the patient's state in the here-and-now first.

But in the course of their argument, the nurse (who has been tipped off by the priest when Bernhardi wasn't looking, and told she should inform the patient that the priest was here) has gone into the ward. You hear a shriek where there was pleasant singing, and then the nurse rushes in to tell the doctors and Bernhardi that the woman is dying. What Bernhardi fears would happen has taken place: knowledge of her dire condition has exacerbated it, destroyed her sense of euphoria, and with it her body collapses. The woman dies. Bernhardi, frustrated, angry, emerges, the priest, realizing what has happened, takes off his collar. Bernhardi walks over to the priest, and actually seems to try and offer cold comfort: it wasn't the priest's fault, as her death was unavoidable.

Rather than taking solace, the priest, far from feeling any responsibility, accosts Bernhardi angrily, and with anti-Jewish innuendo: it was not he, a priest who was doing his holy duty, who should feel in any way responsible; it was Bernhardi, a Jew with now knowledge of the True Faith, who bore the responsibility for endangering the woman's soul. The priest vows that this will not be the end, and storms out of the ward.

Fast forward, and the priest has gone to the newspapers (the depiction of Viennese public opinion and the role of newspapers, etc., is really first rate), and worked its way up to the important donors to the hospital, even to the Reichsrat itself. Bernhardi is attacked, accused in terms that resemble ritual murder accusations, his practice endangered.

Well, it was here that Toby and I had to leave. You see, we bought the 5 Euro tickets...which got us in the door, but also in the nosebleed seats far above the stage. The play, as captivating as it was to me (who actually understood what was going on), was unintelligible to Toby (his German, I'm afraid, isn't quite as good as his Hebrew). And the heat from the stage lights seemed to rise up right to our section. Although Toby was an INCREDIBLY good sport -- he was all for going -- and although he took everything in stride, including the bad view of the stage, the heat and the German, was clearly fading, and there was, for some ungodly reason, no intermission. We ended up sneaking out a door nearby -- luckily I had the foresight to buy tickets on an aisle.

So, hats off to Schnitzler, who wrote a great play -- I've downloaded the text to my ipad so that I can actually find out how it ends. Hats off to the actors, who were great. But most of all, hats off to my intrepid travel companion and research assistant, Toby, who was such a trooper. It was an experience I know I'll never forget, and I've probably finally succeeded in my real goal: making sure the LAST thing Toby wants to do for a living is become an academic :-).

A Hard Day

Last Monday was Yom Hazikaron, or Israeli Memorial Day. While like most American Jews I've always been vaguely aware of Yom Hazikaron, always exactly before Yom Ha-atzmaut (Israeli Independence Day), I admit I've never paid much attention to it. It is one of the trio of "modern" Jewish holidays (although considering the fact that two of these days commemorate tragedies for the Jewish people - Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha-Shoah, "holidays" doesn't seem like the correct word) that we in America are accustomed to noting with some kind of programming if we're affiliated with a Jewish institution, but aside from that generally pass with only minor notice by more attentive and affiliated American Jews, and without much notice at all by many.

My experience here was, perhaps needless to day, entirely different. It was so different that it kind of sneaked up on me and I found myself unprepared not only for the patterns of observance here, but by the deep emotions the day brought up in me.

Let me start by saying that for the first time in my life, a day of remembrance for fallen victims of national conflict actually conveyed, on a collective level, the depth of pain that it is supposed to. Never have I been so pointedly aware of how far from showing actual respect and dignity for those we are supposed to be remembering in our corresponding American days of remembrance -- Memorial Day and Veteran's Day -- we have gone in American society. I'm not placing blame, I'm simply observing. For me, like I'd wager most Americans who have not lost any family members in conflict (which, today, is MOST Americans, period -- and the serious implications of that deserve far more space than I can devote here), aside from very basic and frequently unobserved pieties, Memorial Day is simply a day off to take advantage of sales.

Not so here. Yom Hazikaron started, startlingly for me, with a minute-long siren at 8 pm sharp. For those who have not heard these sirens, the sound is hard to describe. It is sharp, scary, loud, and dissonant due to the fact that there are several sirens sounding at once at slightly different pitches. It is an uncomfortable experience -- and even if it isn't by design, the effect is appropriate for the sentiment of the day. Normal life is disrupted in small but obvious ways. Take television: at the siren, all normal Israeli programming went off the air, including on the cable stations (we have Hot, and all of the Hot stations -- that is, the cable company's stations that are not part of the Israeli networks). On many of the stations, a message screen that read "יום הזיכרון לחללי מערכות ישראל" literally "Day of remembrance for Israel's Fallen Soldiers," usually with an image of a Yizkor candle and an Israeli flag in some form. The only "active" broadcasting was a combination of coverage of the various official tekesim (assemblies) in honor of the day. The last, and to me most poignant broadcasts were of "sartei zikaron," memorial films. These were videos made in honor of a specific soldier, including long interviews with the families and loved ones.

One of them I watched at length, and it was about 20 minutes long. It described a bicycle ride throughout the entire country that was done by the brother of a fallen soldier, an avid cyclist. The whole film was moving, but there was one moment that hit me powerfully. The cyclist spoke for a moment about his feelings about his brother's death, and the raw emotion of the comments, coupled with the simple poetry that Hebrew, unlike any other language I know, can convey even in the most basic statements. One sentence struck me. "כעסתי -- כעסתי על הארץ הזות, שאוכלת יושביה". "I was angry -- angry at this land that consumes its inhabitants." The source of this sentence -- or the last clause rather -- is Bemidbar (Numbers) 13:32, and are among the words used by the spies sent by Moses to scout out the land of Israel to denigrate the land. These words and the rest of the report doom all of the generation to wander for forty more years in the desert.

Here, they are the anguished words of a grieving brother. Although I've read them countless times in their original context, never have they hit me so powerfully.

My regularly-scheduled Hebrew session with my friend and Hebrew instructor Shira was supposed to start at 10, which would have meant that it ended at 11, the time of the second jarring siren that sounds for a minute of silence. This is what most Americans who have any sense of what happens in Israel on Yom Hazikaron know about -- it is during this siren that all activities in the country stop, all stand -- even those who happen to be driving a car at the sounding pull of the road and step out of their cars, which are among the more familiar images one sees in the newspapers.

As it turned out, we didn't get started at 10:30, and the siren went off just as we were beginning to go over the talk about Birnbaum I've been translating into Hebrew. Two sentences in, and the sirens sounded. We stopped, obviously, stood up. The siren went on for what seemed like a very long time...it's amazing how long a minute can seem.

It is strange and moving for me to be in a place where a day like this affects everyone, on every side of the political spectrum, so deeply. In Toby's case, the school had (as all, I believe, do) a tekes, an elaborate assembly which included, apparently, in addition to the more somber remembrances, re-enactments of battles. This I found deeply disturbing. Although I am generally quite happy with Toby's experiences at Yehudah ha-Levi, there are moments that I realize the distance between myself and the da'ati community here and at home. One of those moments came when I asked Toby what he thought about the tekes; his response? "The battles were really cool...the kids looked really realistic when they died" [then brief demonstration of the facial expression of one of the dying "soldiers"] "and the Arabs looked really realistic." Yikes. Disturbing doesn't quite begin to describe my feeling at this response; still, he is seven, and it provided a good moment to discuss why this whole setup was a bit problematic.

Let us look forward to the day when Yom Hazikaron is a day that we are able to remember the dead -- all the dead [המבין יבין] -- with sadness at the losses, but with a reasonable expectation that more will not be added to their numbers. Utopian, I know, but if we can't hope, what is this day for in the end?

The Beethoven Frieze

One of the highlights of our trip to Vienna for me was the opportunity to visit a place deeply important to me personally and professionally as a cultural historian, the Secession museum. Situated between the Opera and the Naschmarkt (Vienna's answer to the shuk), the Secession has loomed large in my imagination of the city, yet I had never seen it in person before now.

First, a little personal background and historical context. The Secession building was the culmination of a bold project undertaken by the Vienna avant-garde at the end of the 19th century. Like the French artists of preceding decades who broke away from the "academic" schools of art that dominated in the middle of the 19th century, the Secessionists made their reputation in their break from the artistic establishment in Vienna -- Gesellschaft bildender Künstler Österreichs, Künstlerhaus [The Society of Austrian Visual Artists, Kunstlerhaus] -- in 1897. The dominant style of the Kunstlerhaus, as with most establishment visual arts in the 19th century, was Historicism, which also happened to define other forms of design (especially architecture). In 1897, revolting against this dominant mode, artists including Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Joseph Olbrich and others demanded a turn to the modern style of the time, which we usually associate with the various labels including Art Nouveau ("New Art"), Beaux Arts, Jugenstil, and, of course, Secession. Each of these titles more or less describes elaboration on similar themes in different places, especially France, the United States, Germany, and Austria-Hungary, all of which developed their own expression of the style.

The figure most celebrated as central to the Secession movement and its style is, of course, Gustav Klimt. We are all familiar, I imagine, with his classic style, and especially his use of detailed human faces surrounded by elaborate patterns of color and gold leaf -- probably most famous in the (often reproduced) image "The Kiss." Of course the style represented by Klimt's work extended far beyond painting; in fact, the greatest impact of the Secession was probably on design, including shapes and patterns of all sorts of objects from household items, to building details, to buildings themselves, examples of which one my find all over Vienna, Prague and Budapest (each of which had their own form of Secession). One of the most prominent architects and builders in Vienna, Otto Wagner, turned himself from late historicism in his buildings to become a member of the Secession, and his mark on the urban landscape of Vienna is profound and unmistakable.

The building most associated with the Secession, however, is not Wagner's work, but is the work of founding member Joseph Maria Olbrich, a hall designed as the gallery for the work of Secession artists, the Secession Museum. The building was, to say the least, unique for its time: a massive, temple-like structure topped by an effervescent dome of golden leafs, it is surrounded by decorations with classical motifs re-imagined in Secession style. Above the main doors are a trio of gorgons (snake-haired women from Greek myth) whose snake-hair intertwines the words "Mahlerei -- Architektur -- Plastik" (painting, architecture, sculpture). Above them, in huge letters, the motto "Die Zeit Ihre Kunst -- Der Kunst Ihre Freiheit" (To each age its art, to art its freedom) -- which I regard one of the most succinct and magnificent statements about art of all time. Walking around the building one encounters other wonderful little design elements -- a trio of owls on the sides, and of course the delightful little turtles (see post "Wien noch einmal" for a pic) that support massive planters in front. All in all, the building is just wonderful.

But for all its beauty, the building was only part of what I wanted to see. Aside from the building, there is only one other permanent display at the Secession, a series of friezes (really murals, I would say, as they are painted and not in relief) that surround the walls of a lower gallery, the Beethoven Friezes by Klimt. These images were part of the fourteenth Secession exhibition in 1902, devoted to Beethoven and the most famous of all Secession exhibitions, and used to be in the main, upstairs gallery space. They were part of a larger display that originally included a massive, seated sculpture of Beethoven by Max Klinger (not to be confused with Maxwell Klinger, Jamie Farr's crossdressing clerk in MASH). The statue itself is now in Leipzig (I believe), but the Klimt murals were preserved and eventually moved to a lower gallery.

Now before this trip, my main exposure to the Beethoven Frieze was in Karl Schorske's famous book on turn-of-the-century Viennese culture, Fin-de-Siecle Vienna, to this day the most important text on the cultural and intellectual history of that period. And while the book has been a consistent inspiration to me since I was an undergraduate -- in fact, it is probably the book, more than any other one, that made me want to do what I do for a living -- the images of the Beethoven Frieze that it contains are anything BUT compelling. They are included as part of a larger chapter on Klimt, and for reasons that I assume have to do with publishing constraints, the only images of the Beethoven Friezes are these pretty shabby black-and-white images (there may have also been a color plate, but I don't remember just now). They never blew me away, that's for sure, and although I appreciated their importance as part of Klimt's ouevre, I was always much more interested in his other work, especially his portraits and landscapes.

So when Toby and I couldn't get in to the Secession on Sunday as planned, I really didn't give much thought to going back. I figured that I had seen what I came for, as the current exhibitions were not of much interest to me. But on Tuesday, we found ourselves once again in the neighborhood of the Secession, the doors were open this time, and I once again wondered whether perhaps it might be worthwhile to go see the Beethoven friezes. After walking past the building to the Naschmarkt, then back, I decided that it would be a mistake not to go.

And I was right. For the most part, the current Secession is used for exhibitions of contemporary artists, and the friezes have been removed (in rather bad taste, if you ask me) to a dedicated space downstairs. (Interestingly, the museum directors seem to know what the actual draw is -- there are two admissions charges, one for the upstairs exhibits and one for the Beethoven friezes -- and the second one is more expensive!)

Paying our entry fee (8.50 Euro! Yikes!), Toby and I went in, and wandered downstairs. The building is quite spare in the interior design department. Walking down the stairs, we found a large-scale cutaway model of the museum, which was quite interesting. But it was upon walking through the doorway to the room that held the friezes that I realized it was worth every Euro cent.

I've heard many times that one can't really appreciate major artworks without seeing them in an unmediated setting. Books and posters and other reproductions just don't cut it. And while I'd generally agree that this is true in a technical sense -- you can't have a very good sense of Monet's "Waterlilies" without seeing how big it is, for instance. Yet I'd never really had the sense of an emotional difference -- that is, that I was somehow moved more deeply by encountering an actual piece of art. Well, maybe once, when I saw a Van Gogh "Sunflowers" for the first time in the British Museum when I was 17.

This was different. The friezes -- really four distinct tableaus which progress in a narrative around the room -- were magnificent in person. Although I can't really convey the power of the entire work here, I'll post here the images in order. The basic idea of the friezes is to graphically represent the music of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 (here is a sample -- Lenny Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic -- skip to about minute 3.37 for the music -- for those who aren't familiar), known most widely for its setting to music Schiller's chillingly beautiful poem, "An der Freude," "Ode to Joy" (here is the text in German and English of the Schiller poem -- it's worth reading and savoring). Klimt imagines the progress of the symphony as an existential description of both the be conflict tween despair and joy in the individual psyche and of on the scale of the human experience writ large. The first image is of a knight being urged forward by frail human forms, weak and pleading for a champion in the struggle against despair. The second image, actually the largest and most elaborate of the four, is a panel depicting all of the sources of pain and despair in the human experience, represented by a large hairy beast, Typhoeus, a winged gorilla surrounded by gorgons on the one hand representing sickness, madness and death, and on the other by female forms representing lasciviousness, wantonness, intemperance. Moving on to the third image, after this monstrous tableau, one finds a solitary female figure, carrying a lyre, representing the glimmer of hope for the triumph of joy through art. Finally, in the last and, in my opinion, most magnificent tableau (see image at top of post), a choir of Klimt-ian angels sing in ecstasy as a couple embrace, having realized the transcendent joy of love.

Even as I write these words, I'm getting choked up. It was this last image that really hit me most profoundly -- the perfect balance of the angels and the embracing couple, the complete resolution of pain and suffering through universal love. Not love tied to any ideology, not some hackneyed religious or political ideal or what have you, but simple beauty, the beauty of a private moment of unmediated love between a couple, so profound as if to shape the cosmos and the angels themselves.

I can easily say it was the first time I have really felt so alive in seeing a work of art in person. It was a welcome change of feeling, a ray of hope even in a city of so much heavy history and sadness. I've never been a tremendous Klimt fan (I've always found the commercialization of his work to be a bit much), but I have to admit that at that moment, I felt he had gotten it right in a way few are ever able to do.

Wien: WIR gedenken (wenn Sie gedenken nicht)

I can't say there has been a day that I have walked around in Central Europe that hasn't felt like Yom Ha-shoah, so while it was a coincidence that I happen to actually BE in Central Europe on Yom ha-Shoah, I thought I'd take a moment to reflect on it.

First, to explain. I am not, nor have I ever been, a big fan of the approach, well-established among some Jewish groups who approach Europe by presenting it as a great big graveyard whose value is solely as a prelude to a trip to Israel. Obviously, I chose to make it my life's work to engage with Europe and its Jewish life as a living, breathing thing rather than a prelude to its own destruction.

That said, for the same reason it is impossible for me to walk around places like Prague and Vienna and not, at just about every moment, be reminded of the devastation that has taken place, of the fact that an integral, rich, and organic part of this world was viciously cut out, for the most part with gratuitous cruelty only a few decades ago -- just thirty years before my birth. Part of the reason is I know in intricate detail the richness of this world; it is what drew me to the life and career I have chosen. You can't sit for hours of the day in archives sifting through the living documents of people who lived in and walked on the very streets Toby and I have wandered every day without feeling an unresolvable sense of loss.

I find it hard to understand how people really "enjoy" traveling around here. I benefit deeply from coming here, but, try as I might, I just can't wrap my head around this being a place for a pleasure holiday. I think that may be why, after about three days in any of these cities, I become more and more irritable, wading through groups of people for whom strolling these beautiful streets is a laugh, a great place to party, or whatever. I've watched things like Rick Steve's shows on Central Europe, how he talks in such blithe tones about the good shopping, the neat sites and wonderful cuisine not to be missed, and I honestly can't relate to this approach.

This is not to say that I fault or blame people who DO enjoy visiting Central Europe this way, just that I can't really share that feeling.

Alright. Toby and I took one of our tiulim this evening, and although it was a day late, I cannot think of a more fitting observance of Yom Ha-Shoah. Part of the reason we came here was to document the sense of urban space as lived in Jewish history, to gain access to the places about which I write as a "walker in the city," as a person seeing the world as it was seen by my subjects.

And, in a place like Vienna, a major part of this, the sacred life of Jewish Vienna -- the life of the synagogue -- is all but impossible. That is because on one evening (ONE evening), November 9-10, 1938, every synagogue in Vienna (with the exception of the Seittenstettengasse synagogue) was destroyed.

To say this as a fact is not new. But what it means, what it REALLY means in terms of space, plaster, bricks, wood, sacred objects, Torah scrolls -- to say nothing of the lives of those who came to the places week after week, who celebrated the major events of their lives in them, or even the most mundane acts of piety (or lack thereof) -- is hard to conceptualize.

So here is my feeble attempt: by photographing the space where some of these buildings -- among them the most impressive and ornate synagogues not just of Vienna but of Central Europe and beyond -- once stood.

What is in their place? Where once stood buildings renowned for their architectural daring, innovation, beauty -- what is there now?

Below are three synagogues then, and now.

1. The Pazmanitentempel. Designed by Ignaz Reiser, built 1910, it was intended to be the modern masterpiece, the jewel among Vienna's many synagogues. The plans are here, and now what stands in its place: a functional, 1950s era block of apartments (the one in the middle is the actual spot where the shul stood). A small plaque marks the site's former occupant, at 6 Pazmanitenstrasse.






2. The Polnische Shul. Built 1892, designed by Wilhelm Stiassny, a renowned Central European architect who also designed Prague's Jerusalemska Synagogue. A period picture, and what now stands in its place: a functional, 1950s era block of apartments. A small plaque marks the sites former occupant at 29 Leopoldgasse.









3. The Leopoldstadt Temple. The crown jewel of the Vienna Cultusgemeine synagogues, this building, designed by noted architect Ludwig Foerster and built in 1858, while not the "first" synagogue of Vienna in terms of importance, was certainly the first in terms of design, modernity and fashion. It was situated near Praterstrasse on Templegasse, a stone's throw from the canal, and literally dominated the blocks surrounding it. Although one may see traces of this building in Foerster's other synagogues, such as the Central Synagogue in New York and the Dohany Synagogue in Budapest, the Leopoldstadt Temple was unique and, to me, its absence speaks volumes. Now there are modern buildings situated there, including a schoolyard for a heder -- thus I had to take my pictures somewhat on the sly, so as not to alarm the teachers and guards. The empty space and part of the glass building next to it, 3-5 Templegasse, are on the site where this magnificent building once stood.

These are just the few we photographed. The list is much more extensive. Dozens of established synagogues, even more private Bethaeuser, all now gone, their memory, almost gone.

When one tries to grasp the fact that these monumental buildings were destroyed entirely on one night, the sheer awfulness of the history of the last seventy years starts to sink in. The amount of human effort that had to go in to burning these buildings, tearing them down brick by brick, is simply staggering.

Now there is a real hollowness about this place.

Wien, noch einmal

A day of mixed success. Toby and I had debated what to do today; whether we should jump on to the "Baden Bahn," a train that runs directly from the Vienna opera to Baden bei Wien, the closest spa resort about 26 km south of Vienna, or to stay around the town. The deal breaker was the fact that the Secession museum, one of our must-see sights, is normally open on Sunday and closed on Monday. Better, we thought, to stick around town today and go south Monday.

Well, the best laid plans...

I had noticed yesterday afternoon while we were strolling around town that there were a number of posters put up by, among other groups, the KPO (Kommunistische Partei Oesterreichs), announcing a large march and rally in honor of May Day. When I first saw them, I laughed out loud. Toby asked my why. "Well, I'd just forgotten that Communism is still taken seriously by a lot of people here" I replied, and then tried to answer Toby's next obvious question ("what's Communism?") with my dialectic-materialism-for-seven-year-olds lecture (patent pending). The results were mixed. Nevertheless I didn't give it another thought, save to take note of the fact that there were an unusual number of portable toilets surrounding the Rathaus which seemed to be the destination of the marchers the next day.

Fast forward to this morning. As we alighted from the U-Bahn at the Opera, we noticed a proliferation of red banner-bearing folks gathering at the Operaplatz. I didn't really pay it much mind until we crossed the street, and then I saw even more, as well as a several-meter-long banner, compliments of the KPO, which featured portraits of Communist heroes. And it was wild. Are you ready for this? In left-to-right order, the portraits were: Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Yes. STALIN and MAO. I actually could not believe it. There they all were, tons of folks, young and old (mostly, I'd say, college-aged), from all different groups (including, quite prominently, the Turkish communist party -- I guess of Austria), marching behind banners of two of the biggest mass murderers of the twentieth century.

Now, those who know me well know that I'm a lefty. But it's days like today that I realize just how moderate I am, because I was just disgusted by this display. I mean, exactly what kind of person do you have to be to believe that Stalin represents your interests?

I was actually surprised by how angry this made me.

And that was just the beginning. Walking away from this little display, Toby and I made our way south to the Secession, only to find out that it was...closed. AARGH! We walked around the building, hoping that perhaps the main entrance in front wasn't the, well, main entrance, but it was futile. I found a couple that looked like locals who were also trying to get in and asked them, "Wissen Sie, warum das Museum geschlossen ist?" They were as bewildered as me. "Vielleicht der erste Mai," said the woman with a resigned shrug. "Walla," I replied, in what has by habit become my catch-all Arabic response to just about any news.

Leave it to the commies to spoil the day.

Well, in the spirit of making lemonade out of lemons, I used the opportunity and our location to spot and photograph several of the buildings south of the city center for my collection of fin-de-siecle Viennese architecture pics. And there were some beauties -- remarkably almost ALL by Otto Wagner.

I had never realized just how much Otto Wagner has come to define exactly what Vienna is in terms of its sense of self through buildings. So many of the major building projects of the 1880-1910 period are either his own designs (several of them also contracted and overseen in their construction by him) or by his students. It is amazing. Some of the examples we saw today were the Wienzeile apartments, with their incredible art nouveau details (see image), the U-bahn station at Karlsplatz, and of course the Postparkasse building. We stumbled, surprisingly, upon one of the most (in its time) shocking buildings of Adolph Loos (see pic), the apartment house on Michaelerplatz, and I actually appreciated why it was such a dramatic and controversial structure, even today, surrounded by Baroque grandiosity.

Well, anyhow, enough for tonight. I think I'm becoming a little obsessed by architecture...I'll have to stop by the Sigmund Freud museum and see if they dispense free psychoanalysis...maybe through one of those little penny-souvernier dispenser thingies.

In Wien

After a wonderful (and far too short) break from Israel over Pesach with Kara and Beruria in White Plains, Toby and I are on the road once again.

We left New York late in the afternoon the day after aharon shel Pesach...and to my astonishment found ourselves on a particularly Israeli exodus from galut (exile). A good half of the seats on the Austrian Air flight to Vienna must have been occupied by Israelis returning from the Pesach holidays back to the grind (including one astonishingly obtuse family of haredi American olim hadashim -- new immigrants, for my non-Hebrew readers -- en route directly to Ramat Beyt Shemesh with what seemed to be half the material property of Monsey in their checked luggage...I finally know how Joseph Roth must have felt at times).

At any rate, Toby and I were among the few Members of the Tribe (tm) on the flight to actually proceed through passport control rather than on to the connection to Tel Aviv. And we were wiped out. I still don't know how Toby held it together. Neither of us slept a wink on the uncomfortable 777, although we did enjoy watching movies together in our shared insomnia. Determined to do this trip on the cheap, upon arriving we headed to the CAT -- the Vienna public train service that runs from the airport to the center of the city and connects to the U-bahn (subway) system rather than take a cab, and Toby was right there with me, not just awake but shlepping his own weight in wheeled luggage. We arrived in Wien Mitte, to find that we had to actually go OUT of the CAT station to enter the U-bahn station a block away. Why the f*%k can't urban planning commissions connect pubic transportation properly?

Compounding the difficulties of our trip was the fact that I, in all my preparations, failed to actually print out a map of the way from the U-bahn station to our apartment's offices. Easy enough, I thought, I'll just get us to Leopoldstadt (the central neighborhood of Vienna's 2nd District) and ask someone where the street, Nickelgasse, was located. Great plan, except for the fact that Nickelgasse seems to be the Viennese equivalent of Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter. No one I asked (and I asked about five people) had heard of it. Right, I decided, we'd just wander around Leopoldstadt until we found it...which, miraculously, we did. It is a tiny alley connecting two of the larger streets of the neighborhood -- thus the ignorance of the majority of the population of Vienna on its whereabouts.

We had arrived in Leopoldstadt. Now for the uninitiated, Leopoldstadt is an extremely important place for my work. It is the historical center of the Jewish community of Vienna. After the mid-19th century, when the tiny Viennese Jewish community (which had been located around the more famous Judenplatz in the First District, home then and now of the "old" Seitenstettengasse synagogue, a building designed as part of a general neighborhood construction by Josef Kornhaeusel in 1826) exploded due to liberalized immigration laws, the center of the Jewish world of Vienna -- and it was considerable -- moved across the Donaukanal to Leopoldstadt. Before that, the district had been most famous as the home of the Augarten, a Baroque "Lustgarten" (Pleasure Garden -- that is, contrary to its erotic-sounding name, simply a large Baroque garden for the enjoyment of Vienna's upper crust) built in the 17th century, it now became Central Europe's answer to the Lower East Side.

I can't describe the feeling being here. It is bizarre for a historian of Austro-Hungarian Jewish history with a shockingly little amount of time spent in Vienna to suddenly find himself in the center of the world about which he had been writing for the last decade. We have a little two room apartment (very nice, actually) just down the street from a corner dedicated to Theodor Herzl. A block away is Grosse Schiffgasse, the street where Nathan Birnbaum and his cohort launched Kadimah and from which he published Selbst-Emancipation. He lived here for much of his life in penury, probably in a building with a courtyard not unlike the one I step out into every day and probably of a comparable size -- albeit with a wife and three sons.

Toby and I attended services on erev Shabbat at the Seittenstettengasse synagogue. I had been concerned about getting in, as the shul is known for its tight (and Israeli-sponsored) security. So Toby and I went to the offices on Friday morning, and spoke only Hebrew to the guard. This seemed to work well. I felt like I hadn't left Jerusalem. He took our passports, checked them, and told us "Ein bayah. Mitpalelim b'erev shabat b'sheva, u'v'boker b'tesha" ("No problem. Services on erev shabbat are at 7, and in the morning at 9"). He told us he'd be there, and he'd remember us. He was as good as his word.

The shul was fascinating. Like stepping back in time to about 1935, including a hazan in the same style canonical garments as those worn by Solomon Sulzer, and a full male choir. The only difference was, I imagine, a much smaller crowd (it compared with the group at the Altneushul in Prague when Toby and I where there in December). The interior of the shul was wonderful, just like the pictures I've seen, although a bit smaller. The Rav gave a nice little d'var Torah, replete with reference to the Royal Wedding that had occurred that morning.

After that, Kabbalat Shabbat with the same tunes that Sulzer had written 150 years ago (I know this, as I have seen the score and photographed it -- from the Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People in Jerusalem). They did throw in a Carlebach tune now and then (much to my annoyance), but in general the whole shebang was the real deal. And it did sound sublime. Of course, it would be very hard for me to listen to this every week...I've grown quite accustomed, it seems, to the Israeli down-and-dirty approach to tefillah.

We had intended to return for the morning davening, but I had made the decision when we went to bed that it was time to get a good night's sleep, come what may, and I wasn't going to wake us up for anything, just rise when the feeling hit us. It didn't hit us until 11 am, as it would turn out, long after time to make it to shul. Oops. Ah well, I had really gotten what I'd come for as far as shul was concerned.

One more note about Leopoldstadt. Remarkably, it is still the home to what remains of a Viennese Jewish community, which breaks down to two groups: haredim and hiloni (secular) Israeli ex-pats. The haredim are hard to miss: they are dyed-in-the-wool Hasidim, judging from the name of their beyt midrash and accompanying bakery, Ohel Moshe, they are Satmar to boot. The Israelis are much more interesting in my opinion. There is an open marketplace nearby, the Karmelitenmarkt, and the biggest outdoor cafe is called "Teva," ("nature" in Hebrew), and is clearly the job-site of choice for Vienna's artsy-boho Israeli expats. Unbuttoned shirts and long hair for the men, tight jeans and flow-y blouses for the women are de-rigour. Once again, I felt like I was sitting in Tel Aviv.

OK, Toby's finally asleep, and it's time for me to sign off. Tomorrow: Baden-bei-Wien where I get to indulge once again in my spa fascination, and hopefully the Secession museum among others.

Shavua tov to my reader(s?).

Uncertainty

It's been a loooong time since I've posted...three months by my count. So much has happened in this time. Kara and Beruria came and went, Carl and Sue as well. It's been some time since I've been to the archives, but I've collected enough material for a good couple of years of productivity.

Now is a time of a bit more loneliness, a bit more contemplation. Toby's doing fantastically at school. As his friend Natan's mother, Vered, pointed out to me one day while watching Toby play basketball with the other kids, "you know, he's fluent in Hebrew. If you made aliyah now, he'd be one of the success stories." I'd like to say I never doubted it, but I was terrified when we first got here that Toby'd have a terrible time, would get picked on, be sad, depressed...maybe even have to go home. I now almost feel like I'm doing him a disservice by taking him back to the states...but not quite. I think he's as anxious as I am to go home.

It's a strange thought going home. I am frustrated by my Hebrew as always, but I do think if we were here for a more indeterminate stretch, it would click and be fine. I'm working on translating a couple of my talks into Hebrew, and I think it's a great help. I can't help but wonder at -- admire -- the friends we have made here who go on, day after day, accepting that living here has its ups and downs. If there is anything that actually makes me contemplate seriously aliyah -- although my aliyah would be different than what we're doing now; for one thing, I'd live either in Tel Aviv or in the Galil -- it is knowing that my friends here just keep living and going on, undeterred by the problems inside and out.

Looking around, I'm worried. Not really about mine or Toby's safety...the chances of something happening (בלי עין הרע) to us are quite slim. But the bombing on Wednesday, the first one in three years, one which I heard the concussion (and I'll never forget that sound...nor my thought, just as I heard it, that I hoped it wasn't a bomb), has shaken me a bit. Shaken, perhaps not the right word...more, disturbed me. I'm sorry for the narcissism of that comment...it's not meant that way. More than that..in combination with the rockets landing in Sderot, Ashkelon, Ber Sheva, Ashdod...Ashdod! If you look on the Atlas Zahav, you'll see that Ashdod is a full two pages north of the Gaza Strip, and I feel just...helpless. Disgusted, tired, helpless.

I feel like I'm watching a slow motion catastrophe. Not that I feel like being here longer or shorter would make it less of one; no, this is a catastrophe that will be unfolding for some time. As more than one person has said to me, on the right and the left, the status quo can exist for a long, long time.

But it's not just the violence, as bad as it is. I feel like I'm watching a disintegration of a country that, even though I've only spent a small part of my life here, I love deeply. Most people weren't paying attention, but two days ago the Knesset passed a law, in my opinion relying on the fact that people were distracted by other issues, that allows for the creation of exclusionary covenants in communities in the Galil and Negev. Communities of over 400 citizens will be able to screen and exclude those who might wish to live in them (read: exclude Israeli Arabs).

We are better than this. There really aren't any legitimate reasons for excluding citizens of this country from settling where they want. For the most part, Israeli Arabs want what Israeli Jews want, and that is the chance to have a happy and comfortable life, living in peace with their fellow citizens. I have heard the explanations and justifications for this law, and I find them utterly unconvincing. This is but one of many, many tests of the true mettle of our miraculous little state, but it is an important one. It matters to me, because I am a Jew and a Zionist but also a believer in democracy and civil rights. I believe that Israel, if it is to every aspire to the goal that it be truly the "ראשית צמיחת גאולתינו," the first flowering of our promised redemption, has to, for God's sake, come down on the right side. In my opinion, we need to rise above what our deep, and in the case of Israeli Arabs, largely irrational (if not racist) fears would have us do. Israel, like ALL democracies, is only as good as it treats its most disadvantaged citizens, be they Ethiopians, Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Russian olim, on and on.

We must be better than this, or else what are we living (and, sadly, dying) for?

Well, on that, goodnight. And if I have any readers left, I promise to post more regularly!