Sam Schulman, noted neo-con, wrote this inflammatory article about same-sex marriage.
He is also prone to crying anti-semitism. More on this later.
5/28/09
Valkyrie was kinda cool
Except my DVD from netflix was scratched and I didn't get to finish it.
But I very much enjoyed the irony of Die Walküre playing while bombs were falling on Germany. Reminded me of Thomas Mann - and more antisemitism. LOVED IT. srsly.
also, Eddie Izzard is a Nazi.
But I very much enjoyed the irony of Die Walküre playing while bombs were falling on Germany. Reminded me of Thomas Mann - and more antisemitism. LOVED IT. srsly.
also, Eddie Izzard is a Nazi.
5/19/09
A Rant About Philip Roth
My ex-gf posted a facebook survey about books and she said that Philip Roth "focuses too much on being Jewish" and that being Jewish "isn't much of a big deal." She also insulted Roth, as many do, of being a misogynist.
So I, in my passive aggressive bitchy-ness, wrote her this response (which I obviously won't send directly to her because I'm a vagine) since she insulted one of my favorite writers.
"WHAT THE FUCK. Allow me to delineate the myriad ways in which you convey severe mental retardation. Firstly, what book have you read other than The Plot Against America, which a) sucks and b) features no prominent female characters. And not all of his books even focus on Jews. Secondly, saying that Philip Roth shouldn't write so much about Jewish identity is like saying Thomas can't write about Germans or that Toni Morrison can't write about black people. Furthermore, you dismiss nearly every other Jewish writer, since so many of them focus on (guess what?) THEIR IDENTITY AS JEWS. Thirdly, you cannot use Roth's misogynistic tendencies to discount his oeuvre (Faulkner, anyone? Shit, he hates women AND black people). Roth's misogyny in no decreases the importance of his work. Moreover, if you were to discount every writer or work with misogynistic tendencies, your reading list would be quite narrow. (Hell, your beloved Jane Austen relies on misogynistic stock types for her female characters, with Elizabeth Bennet the only possible exception. Maybe). Fourthly, I don't believe that you are in any position to pass judgment on the importance of Jewish identity. I'm offended, in fact, that you believe yourself in a position to do so, since you hardly identify as a Jew (I don't think you've ever been to shul, you didn't have a Bat Mitzvah or have a Hebrew name, you don't say "brisket," and your views on Israel are under-developed nor is "I just want all Jews to be safe" a real opinion.)"
So I, in my passive aggressive bitchy-ness, wrote her this response (which I obviously won't send directly to her because I'm a vagine) since she insulted one of my favorite writers.
"WHAT THE FUCK. Allow me to delineate the myriad ways in which you convey severe mental retardation. Firstly, what book have you read other than The Plot Against America, which a) sucks and b) features no prominent female characters. And not all of his books even focus on Jews. Secondly, saying that Philip Roth shouldn't write so much about Jewish identity is like saying Thomas can't write about Germans or that Toni Morrison can't write about black people. Furthermore, you dismiss nearly every other Jewish writer, since so many of them focus on (guess what?) THEIR IDENTITY AS JEWS. Thirdly, you cannot use Roth's misogynistic tendencies to discount his oeuvre (Faulkner, anyone? Shit, he hates women AND black people). Roth's misogyny in no decreases the importance of his work. Moreover, if you were to discount every writer or work with misogynistic tendencies, your reading list would be quite narrow. (Hell, your beloved Jane Austen relies on misogynistic stock types for her female characters, with Elizabeth Bennet the only possible exception. Maybe). Fourthly, I don't believe that you are in any position to pass judgment on the importance of Jewish identity. I'm offended, in fact, that you believe yourself in a position to do so, since you hardly identify as a Jew (I don't think you've ever been to shul, you didn't have a Bat Mitzvah or have a Hebrew name, you don't say "brisket," and your views on Israel are under-developed nor is "I just want all Jews to be safe" a real opinion.)"
5/18/09
Internalizing & Perpetuating Anti-Semitism
Self-deprecating humor has long been a trope of Jewish comedy. Woody Allen and Larry David, well aware of their own neuroses, allow people to laugh with them at their own travails because they look at themselves in a critical light. This event that I want to talk about, however, is a case where people laugh at Jews, rather than with them.
This Jewish girl, who is away at college, prank calls her parents on a live radio show. She knows exactly what their reaction is going to be when she jokes that she is dating an Italian guy. Their reaction is one of outrage and, frankly, racism, which the "innocent" girl predicted. The parents aren't necessarily racist against Italians, but one can assume they'd react similarly if her daughter were dating a Brazilian dude. Whereas Woody Allen and Larry David "take advantage" of themselves, this girl takes advantage of her parents, whom she knows to be incredibly ignorant and insular, and publicly humiliates them.
I'm finding parallels with the internalized anti-semitism that the Russian writer Isaac Babel suffers from. Internalized Anti-Semitism can be roughly defined as adopting the (anti-semitic) opinions of gentiles as one's own. In Babel's works it's manifested with Jews themselves accepting anti-semitic stereotypes such as, "like all Jews, I was puny short of stature, and suffered headaches from too much study." The girl knows her parents would react with vitriol because they are Jews who place too much emphasis on marrying a member of their own race and religion. But, rather than opening up an intellectual debate as Babel does, this girl plays a sick joke in a public sphere.
More parallels: Bernie Fucking Madoff. I guess the only parallel, though, is that Bernie Madoff fostered Jew hate.
So, internalized anti-semitism is bad in two ways. For one, it's Jews hating Jews due to external sources. Secondly, this perpetuates anti-semitism because people see the way Jews condemn their own kin and they latch on to that.
http://www.break.com/index/jewish-girl-prank-calls-her-parents.html
There's the video. It has 7 Milion hits.
This Jewish girl, who is away at college, prank calls her parents on a live radio show. She knows exactly what their reaction is going to be when she jokes that she is dating an Italian guy. Their reaction is one of outrage and, frankly, racism, which the "innocent" girl predicted. The parents aren't necessarily racist against Italians, but one can assume they'd react similarly if her daughter were dating a Brazilian dude. Whereas Woody Allen and Larry David "take advantage" of themselves, this girl takes advantage of her parents, whom she knows to be incredibly ignorant and insular, and publicly humiliates them.
I'm finding parallels with the internalized anti-semitism that the Russian writer Isaac Babel suffers from. Internalized Anti-Semitism can be roughly defined as adopting the (anti-semitic) opinions of gentiles as one's own. In Babel's works it's manifested with Jews themselves accepting anti-semitic stereotypes such as, "like all Jews, I was puny short of stature, and suffered headaches from too much study." The girl knows her parents would react with vitriol because they are Jews who place too much emphasis on marrying a member of their own race and religion. But, rather than opening up an intellectual debate as Babel does, this girl plays a sick joke in a public sphere.
More parallels: Bernie Fucking Madoff. I guess the only parallel, though, is that Bernie Madoff fostered Jew hate.
So, internalized anti-semitism is bad in two ways. For one, it's Jews hating Jews due to external sources. Secondly, this perpetuates anti-semitism because people see the way Jews condemn their own kin and they latch on to that.
http://www.break.com/index/jewish-girl-prank-calls-her-parents.html
There's the video. It has 7 Milion hits.
5/16/09
On William Blake & Evolution
The only times I can pay attention to long science/history documentaries is when I’m stoned. So I here I am, rather high, watching a show on the evolution of the eyes of animals. (How I started watching this show calls for another long story). The first eyes, I learn, merely saw different shades of light, those were jellyfish, then we have crustaceans, living 500 million years ago, whose eyes are made from rock. ROCK! Mother-fucking calcite eyes! Then the show gets to vertebrates, reptiles, mammals, and finally it starts talking about mammals who are adept at night hunting; i.e. cats and tarsiers.
Now the tarsier is an exceptionally badass primate whose eyes are bigger than their brains. But I want to talk about cats, and about “eyeshine,” in Latin, “tapetum lucidum.” We all know what that is, when we see felines at night their eyes literally shine, allowing us to deduce that they have incredible night vision and are adroit nocturnal hunters. William Blake knows what I’m talking about. In his famous poem, “The Tyger,” Blake talks about the fiery eyes of the titular beast and wonders how could this animal have been created, or “what immortal hand...could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The purpose of the poem is a deeply spiritual or religious probing of the universe. The poem is not merely about a large cat, but it is about Blake’s search for a certain idea of god; an idea that I have rejected for some time now because of association with shows like this from the history channel (and Schopenhauer, and the Holocaust, but more on that later).
William Blake’s world was not populated by any kind of evolutionary scientists. Indeed, “The Tyger” was written before Darwin was even born. But Blake asks fundamental questions that we still ruminate over today, ideas discussed in both scientific spheres and religious spheres. The lines, “What the hammer? what the chain?/In what furnace was thy brain?” evoke enquiries that even now, 214 years after Blake wrote the poem, prompt biological research. People want to know what’s up with eyeballs, or, less specifically, why things are the way they are. Blake, though, was searching for a spiritual guide, or some type of god, something who could have also “made the lamb, make thee [the tiger]?” Today I am blessed (haha!) to be able to listen to men and women who, through dutiful research and the wonders of television, can give me answers to Blake’s questions. These answers, however, do not lead me to believe in an omniscient being.
Blake could also have wondered what immortal hand might have framed the symmetry of snakes, sharks and crocodiles and marsupials, whose eyes also have light reflective properties. William Blake could find (I’m assuming from the poem) no other answer as to why animals have these attributes besides the existence of a sentient creator. I want to sense the tingling of doubt in Blake due to the previously mentioned line about a lamb and the juxtaposition of a benign animal to a dangerous one. Unfortunately, the physiological variations between prey and predator do not shake Blake’s spiritual leanings. Blake (I’m getting pretty damn critical of him now) could not know that rabbits can see all 360 degrees of their environment, in contrast to hawks who have incredible binocular vision.
I don’t want to further delve into current scientific knowledge that might have swayed Blake into becoming a non-believer, but I would like to interject one of my all time favorite quotes that just popped up in my brain. Thomas Paine writes, in the beginning of Common Sense, “time makes more converts than reason.” Paine was of course talking about independence from England and not disbelief in god, but the quote fits and I flaunt it all the time!
(originally written August 4, 2008)
Now the tarsier is an exceptionally badass primate whose eyes are bigger than their brains. But I want to talk about cats, and about “eyeshine,” in Latin, “tapetum lucidum.” We all know what that is, when we see felines at night their eyes literally shine, allowing us to deduce that they have incredible night vision and are adroit nocturnal hunters. William Blake knows what I’m talking about. In his famous poem, “The Tyger,” Blake talks about the fiery eyes of the titular beast and wonders how could this animal have been created, or “what immortal hand...could frame thy fearful symmetry?” The purpose of the poem is a deeply spiritual or religious probing of the universe. The poem is not merely about a large cat, but it is about Blake’s search for a certain idea of god; an idea that I have rejected for some time now because of association with shows like this from the history channel (and Schopenhauer, and the Holocaust, but more on that later).
William Blake’s world was not populated by any kind of evolutionary scientists. Indeed, “The Tyger” was written before Darwin was even born. But Blake asks fundamental questions that we still ruminate over today, ideas discussed in both scientific spheres and religious spheres. The lines, “What the hammer? what the chain?/In what furnace was thy brain?” evoke enquiries that even now, 214 years after Blake wrote the poem, prompt biological research. People want to know what’s up with eyeballs, or, less specifically, why things are the way they are. Blake, though, was searching for a spiritual guide, or some type of god, something who could have also “made the lamb, make thee [the tiger]?” Today I am blessed (haha!) to be able to listen to men and women who, through dutiful research and the wonders of television, can give me answers to Blake’s questions. These answers, however, do not lead me to believe in an omniscient being.
Blake could also have wondered what immortal hand might have framed the symmetry of snakes, sharks and crocodiles and marsupials, whose eyes also have light reflective properties. William Blake could find (I’m assuming from the poem) no other answer as to why animals have these attributes besides the existence of a sentient creator. I want to sense the tingling of doubt in Blake due to the previously mentioned line about a lamb and the juxtaposition of a benign animal to a dangerous one. Unfortunately, the physiological variations between prey and predator do not shake Blake’s spiritual leanings. Blake (I’m getting pretty damn critical of him now) could not know that rabbits can see all 360 degrees of their environment, in contrast to hawks who have incredible binocular vision.
I don’t want to further delve into current scientific knowledge that might have swayed Blake into becoming a non-believer, but I would like to interject one of my all time favorite quotes that just popped up in my brain. Thomas Paine writes, in the beginning of Common Sense, “time makes more converts than reason.” Paine was of course talking about independence from England and not disbelief in god, but the quote fits and I flaunt it all the time!
(originally written August 4, 2008)
Tattoo Idea
I've been thinking about this tattoo for a while now and have been asking many peoples' opinions on the matter. So...you know how Hitler made Jews wear Magen Davids that said "Jude" (or "Jew" in the appropriate language depending on which country was ocuupied)? I want one of those tattooed on my chest.
Jillian and I were talking about how nothing within the Holocaust is being embraced by the Jewish community, and this is what I want to do with my tattoo. Hitler also created the pink triangle, by the way, which has become a symbol of gay pride/liberation. Also, the crucifix has become an important (the most important?) symbol of Christianity even though Christ was, well, crucified. [It could be an important symbol of Judaism as well, seeing as how many Jews were killed by the Romans. After all, there is Masada, which is seen by Jews as representing solidarity].
So I don't think this tattoo is religiously offensive, (other than the fact that I'm a Jew getting a tattoo) because the defacing has already been done by the Nazis. Indeed, one of my Orthodox friends said she wasn't offended by the subject of the tattoo, but that she is just against tattoos in general. It's also not like I'm dumping a menorah into a jar of urine in some kind of trite commentary on religion. (Fuck you, Andres Serrano, you unsubtle, petty moron. If you want to criticize religion, go ahead. But don't stick a holy symbol into human waste and try to pass it off as art).
One rebuttal to my idea was, "why don't you just get numbers tattooed on your arm?" And I was like, "well, shit, I would." It's more or less the same symbol as the Yellow Badge, even though only Auschwitz prisoners were branded, including non-Jews. I want my tattoo to be more about Jewish identity. So my tattoo is possibly more universal. (I also once saw a girl with a bar-code tattoo, and thought that was kitschy). Also, I wouldn't get this tattoo because I'm paranoid about very visible tattoos disallowing me from getting hired at some point.
Also, at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum in Israel) I saw art utilizing the Yellow Badge motif. So fuck you, haters!
Also, I'm thinking I should get it in German (my ancestors are Austrian) but at Yad Vashem I did see that the name Silberstein was connected to a Dutch Jew who died in either Sobibor or Auschwitz....I don't think he's related to me, and I don't think I had any ancestors who died in the Shoah or were interred, so if i get the tattoo in Dutch ("Jood") it could be an homage to this random guy.
This brings up another criticism of my tattoo idea. Someone was offended because she remembers sitting on her grandmother's lap and seeing numbers branded and her arm. She was told stories about the Holocaust every day of her life, and claimed that I couldn't connect to the Holocaust like she could. But I don't think she can make that assertion. I was inundated with the history of the Holocaust. I read "Night," I read Anne Frank's diary, I live right next to a Holocaust Museum which I saw the KKK picket! So it doesn't really matter if any of my immediate relatives were made to suffer; we all suffered.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)