More articles by Brian JosepherJosephus’s Jumble, the 21st Century Edition: October 2008Josephus’s Jumble, the 21st Century Edition: October 2008
As my loyal readers probably know, I am a direct descendant of the historian Flavius Josephus. Aside from writing such seminal works as War of the Jews (c. 75), Josephus wrote a column for The Titus Times. He called his column, “Josephus’s Jumble.” In the first column of every month, Josephus reviewed the past month. It is my honor and privilege – and some might argue, my birthright – to resurrect Josephus’s Jumble, the 21st century edition. In this particular edition, I’m reviewing some stories missed during the onslaughts known as the economic crisis and election 2008.
Are You Ready to Jumble?
ADVERTISING GENOCIDE AT $27 A POP
In early September a Parisian store in the Belleville district began to sell a unique line of T-shirts. What made the T-shirts unique wasn’t their color (gray) or their cut (sleeveless) but the words written in both German and Polish. “Juden,” the T-shirts read in German, “eintritt in die parkanlaren verboten.” “Zydzi,” the T-shirt read in Polish, “niedozwolony z wej cie ten park.”
The T-shirts sold for 18 euros ($27) each. “We can’t keep them in stock,” the sales assistant at the store reported, according to the BBC. “They’re our best selling product.”
One of the purchasers was questioned outside the store. “Do you know what the words mean?” she was asked. She admitted that she couldn’t read either German or Polish. The words mean: Jews forbidden from entering the park.
The T-shirts were reproduced from Nazi signs in Lodz, 1940. On February 8 1940, the Nazis announced the order to establish the Lodz ghetto. All of Lodz’s 230,000 Jews were moved into an area a little under three square miles. The resettlement was supposed to take one day. It took weeks. In the early summer of 1944 the Nazis ordered the liquidation of the ghetto. Of the 230,000 Lodz Jews, and some 25,000 Jews transported in from nearby areas, under 1,000 survived.
The T-shirts didn’t have any wording on the back. But considering what was written on the front, the words “Je crois dans le genocide” might have been appropriate. I believe in genocide.
IS THE CHURCH MORE PROGRESSIVE THAN THE STATE?
The Belleville district in eastern Paris is a mixed area of Jews and Muslims, and of course the ubiquitous Catholics. Aside from the T-shirts, there’s another phenomenon occurring there (and elsewhere in France). “There’s a migration of Muslims to private Catholic schools,” Jean Chamoux, the headmaster of a school in Belleville, claimed. “In the entirety of France – known for liberté, égalité, fraternité – there are four Muslim schools. Four. There are almost 9,000 Roman Catholic schools. It’s ironic but today the Catholic Church is more tolerant of – and knowledgeable about – Islam than the French state.”
There are no national statistics but according to the office of France’s minister of national education, Xavier Darcos, Muslim students now make up more than 10 percent of the 2 million students in Catholic schools.
Headmaster Jean Chamoux explained the Muslim exodus to Catholic schools. He began with the argument of curriculum, “We practice religious freedom. The public schools do not. We teach the national program. Religious activities are entirely optional.” He then offered a secular argument, “Public schools don’t prepare students in the same way. A Catholic education is the best way to lay the foundation for a brighter future. Fifteen of the top 20 high schools in France are Catholic schools.” He offered a theistic reason, “We share the same God.” Then he turned to perhaps the core reason. “In one word,” Chamoux responded, “respect. Take the veil as an example. In the public school system, Muslims would not be allowed to wear a veil [due to a 2004 ban on headscarves]. If I banned the headscarf, half the girls wouldn’t go to school at all. I prefer to have them here, talk to them and tell them that they have a choice.”
A spokesman for Minister Xavier Darcos disagreed vehemently. “The headscarf is a sexist sign, and discrimination between the sexes has no place in our schools, public, private or otherwise. This is the fundamental reason why we are against it.”
Jean Chamoux did not disagree but he chose a different tactic. Again he used the word respect. “My goal is that by the time the girls graduate they have made a conscious choice, one way or the other. But the choice is theirs, not the state’s. That’s something that we must respect.”
WHAT IS THE FUTURE OF THE BANKING SYSTEM?
On the morning of September 25, a millionaire financier in London breakfasted with his wife and their young son. He then drove his car to the rail station. Rather than wait for his train into the city and his office, he leapt in front of a 100 mph express train.
The suicide of Kirk Stephenson offered perhaps a glimpse of the future, and a reminder of the past. Although Stephenson’s finances are not known at the time of this writing, he is believed to have “succumbed” to the stresses of his position, according to Lindsey Cole, head of public relations at Stephenson’s place of employment, Olivant Advisers. Stephenson was chief operating officer at Olivant. In June, Olivant secured a 2.5 percent stake in Swiss banking giant UBS. Over the previous year UBS had written off billions in bad debt, a product of the United States mortgage market.
Since June, UBS’s value has fallen 20 percent, costing Olivant 200 million pounds. The decision to buy into UBS, according to Lindsey Cole, was led by Mr. Stephenson.
Lindsey Cole expressed great shock and sorrow on behalf of Olivant. “He was very hard working. He did a 24-hour-a-day job. The pressure apparently was too much.”
That explanation, as incomplete as it is, harkens back to another time when financiers killed themselves in droves. During the Great Depression, suicide was not an anomaly. “I remember my father’s best friend losing his entire fortune,” begins the essay “The Kind of Man Roosevelt Hired.” “Before the Depression, he’d had a thriving business, a beautiful apartment. He’d invested heavily on margin in the market. Suddenly he had nothing. He jumped from his 16th story apartment. His apartment looked out at Central Park, or Hooverville as it was known then. The flowerbeds and manicured lawns had been turned into a sea of flimsy shanties made of anything available, aluminum mainly but also newspaper and cardboard and trash and tree branches. Inhabitants of the shanties tore down low-hanging limbs in hopes of strengthening their structures. Trees in Central Park lost their reachable branches. That was an effect of the Great Depression.”
OTHER NOTABLE DEATHS
One actor’s death dominated the obituaries but the world of scholarship and literature lost two eminent men. William Woodruff, born in Blackburn, England, died on September 23. Woodruff was as much a chronicler as a historian. In addition to his brilliant “Concise History of the World” (a book that would not be written in our century of specialization), he wrote two memoirs. They might be the kind of books Frank McCourt would have written, had McCourt not engaged in hyperbole and, some argue, fiction.
In addition to his non-fiction, Woodruff wrote “The Vessel of Sadness,” an autobiographical novel of his experiences fighting for the British in Italy during the Second World War, and “Paradise Galore,” an Orwellian barnyard allegory. Woodruff’s narrator is a wild boar in search of Happy Land, where pigs go after leaving the farm. The moral of the story is that true happiness lies in coming to terms with the stages of life.
William Woodruff was 92-years-old.
Three days earlier, this country’s top Russian scholar, Marc Raeff (pronounced rie-uff), passed away. Professor Raeff was a very prolific writer, specializing in imperial Russia. It can be argued that our knowledge of Peter the Great comes directly from the scholarship of Professor Raeff.
Marc Raeff was born in Moscow in 1923. His father, an engineer who worked for the Soviet government, was sent to Berlin. When the Nazis ascended to power, the Raeff family moved west, to Paris. They left imprisoned Europe at the last moment, 1941.
Marc Raeff studied at the City College of New York, as many immigrants did. He spent most of his professional life at Columbia University. His book, “Russia Abroad: A Cultural History of the Russian Emigration, 1919-1939,” follows the migration of Russians during the early Soviet period. It is a book of both sorrow and hope and it speaks to a century of refuge and expatriation.
Marc Raeff was 85-years-old. He died of Lou Gehrig’s disease.
EHUD OLMERT MAKES A STATEMENT
While his friend George Bush hides in the White House bunker, hoping for the day he can take Air Force One back to Texas and retirement, Ehud Olmert has decided to go out loudly. “What I am saying to you has not been said by any Israeli leader before me,” the lame duck prime minister told the newspaper Yediot Aharonot. He then listed the conditions necessary for a peace between Israel and Palestine.
“The time has come to say these things,” Olmert continued. On the West Bank: “We have to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the meaning of which is that in practice he will withdraw from almost all the territories, if not all the territories.”
On East Jerusalem: “A decision has to be made. This decision is difficult, terrible, a decision that contradicts our natural instincts, our innermost desires, our collective memories, the prayers of the Jewish people for 2,000 years.” Olmert then argued that Israel must cede East Jerusalem to the Palestinians.
On the Golan Heights: Olmert proposed using the land as a carrot of sorts. In exchange for the Golan, Damascus would alter its Greater Syria policies, altering its ties to Hezbollah and Iran.
On Iran: Olmert proposed acting within the international system. “Part of our megalomania and our loss of proportions is the things that are said here about Iran. We are a country that has lost a sense of proportion about itself.”
Perhaps this last statement is the epitaph of our age. We live in dimensions imagined by imperial motivations. We attach a “Greater” notion to our nationalism: Greater Israel, Greater Iran, Greater United States. We become flag-waving fumigators. We attempt to rid the world of self-identified vermin. But we don’t have the introspection to recognize our own motivations: greed, conceit, “megalomania,” to quote Olmert.
Our age cries out for introspection. Our leaders respond with threats and taunts and trumped up confidences. Ehud Olmert, you should have given this speech after your election victory in 2006. Tzipi Livni, you should learn from your predecessor’s example. Is anyone paying attention in Washington?
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