April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943.

Instead, the Jews of Warsaw gave Hitler a present that he certainly didn’t want: months of armed rebellion that DEFEATED the German army repeatedly and wasn’t completely crushed until October 1943, though major combat operations, to borrow a phrase, were completed around May. Including the periods of more sporadic fighting, this resistance lasted far longer than the German take over of Poland as a whole, which took scarcely one month. It is pointed out in Melvin Konner’s book Unsettled that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, largely fought by Jews but with some Polish uprisings occurring at the same time and inspired by the Jewish uprising, also lasted longer than the time it took Germany to defeat France, though again you have to include the period of more sporadic fighting as well as the main combat.

The uprising was partly inspired by the Socialist Zionist organization Hashomer Hatzair (coincidentally, my mother briefly belonged to this organization in her youth). Insurgency started in January, 1943. By the end of January the Ghetto was actually controlled by two armed Jewish organizations, one led by Mordechai Anielewicz, of Hashomer Hatzair, and Zivia Lubetkin (who survived the uprising) and the other led by Dawid Mordechaj Apfelbaum, a former officer in the Polish army. As Passover began on April 19th, Himmler’s birthday present to Hitler also began, with thousands of German, Polish and Ukrainian forces attacking the Ghetto. They moved in at 4 a.m. They moved throughout the Ghetto and believed they had occupied it within 4 hours. Then, at the intersection of Mila and Zamenhofa Streets, the insurgents struck with a single captured machine gun, ample small arms fire, and many Molotov cocktails. The Germans were completely routed by the Jewish insurgents by 2 P.M., providing Hitler with a major embarrassment for his birthday.

March is an insane month for the amount of political events you can go to. The proof is in the amount of political heavy hitters DL21C was able to wrangle during that month : Jon Kerry, Wesley Clark, John Tester, John Edwards, Bill Richardson. It is also an insane month for the amount of technology and media conferences you can get invited to, the most important (at least for me) being SXSW --but there's eTech and IDPI as well.

I missed almost all the events involving presidential candidates because of the amount of conferences I was involved in during the month of March. Once I was done with my last one, ARC's national conference on "Facing Race", I was free to enjoy a candidate or two by the end of the month. I wasn't able to make it to the John Edwards event (I was having some fun at a party with Nancy Pelosi).

So 3/26 was Bill Richardson's lucky number.

I had not intended to post so much Jewish-oriented material recently and don't want to start being a one-issue diarist. But this item is pretty important. Seems the Lithuanian government is slating the ancient Jewish cemetary in Vilnius for destruction.

Choral synagogue in Vilnius

There once was a thriving and highly respected Jewish population in Lithuania. Vilnius was called the "Jerusalem of Europe" by Napoleon, so great was the fame of its Jewish scholars. One of the greatest Orthodox Jewish sages, Elijah ben Solomon (called the Vilna Gaon) came from Vilnus and had a profound effect on yeshiva teaching. During the period of Lithuanian independence (1918-1940) Jews served loyally and bravely in the Lithuanian army.

An old photo of the Jewish quarter.

Now there are only about 4000 Jews left in Lithuania. And the cemetary where generations of Jews of Vilnius are buried is now threatened.

The cemetary.

From Guysen Israël News:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

At a time when I was simultaneously becoming more agnostic/atheist and more Jewish (perhaps in the tradition of Isaac Deutcher who recognized a place within Judaism for non-believing Jews), I quite naturally posed the age old question of just what it means to be a Jew. Parts of my quest to answer this question for myself have become diaries on various blogs. Genetic, cultural, tribal, religious, nationalistic and historical definitions of Judaism all combine into a mish mash that must be confusing to non-Jews but that I have come to see as a very key aspect to Jewish identity. I have come to see this identity crisis as a core part of Judaism that goes back as far as we can trace.

That’s how I think. Immerse in the complexity and maybe even add to that complexity with some paradoxes: atheists can be perfectly good Jews, identity crisis can be a defining feature of identity, etc.

My wife thinks differently than I. And her response to the question of Jewish identity was characteristically terse and to the point:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

I have shared with this community my ongoing and very personal search for my Jewish heritage and identity more than once, most recently, lovingly and visually in a diary based on a talk I gave at a Jewish Genealogical conference.

What I have not shared as much is the academic backdrop to this personal search. I am inspired to share this academic backdrop with you as I reread one of the books that is key to this backdrop: Melvin Konner’s 2003 book Unsettled. This book is billed as an “anthropology of the Jews” and covers the entire panorama of Jewish existence at least to some degree. It is primarily this book I want to share with you.

But first I want to also mention a few other books that complement Unsettled as what I would consider “must read” books for an understanding of Jews as a people. Most particularly I consider Israel Finkelstein’s iconoclastic book The Bible Unearthed a must read. It is considered one of the more radical interpretations of the archaeological evidence, but it by and large rings true to me particularly in light of the far less radical work The Canaanites, by Jonathan N. Tubb, which I read at about the same time as The Bible Unearthed. I found the evidence presented in each work to dovetail very nicely and reading The Canaanites gave me a better appreciation for The Bible Unearthed. Two supposedly counter-views to Finkelstein’s work were written by William G. Dever, Who Were and What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? Oddly, to me Dever comes off far more in agreement with Finkelstein than at odds with him and it seems to me that Dever obsesses over differences with Finkelstein in details…so much so that he felt the need to write TWO books more or less directly addressing Finkelstein’s work. But reading Dever’s view as a partial counterpoint to Finkelstein’s book is well worthwhile. Together, these four books, perhaps with the additional Finkelstein book David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition, are to me key books for understanding the origins of Israel and the Jews and I cannot stress enough how important this is to an understanding of being Jewish. Jews are nothing if not obsessed with the thousands of years of tradition that they are a part of and reading these archaeological works gives you a very good sense of what that tradition really is. Judaism was NOT at its start a monotheistic religion, for example. But it WAS a religion that shunned the eating of pork.

Did you know that the vast majority of anti-Semitic libels, including accusations of disloyalty and the infamous blood libel, go all the way back to the Roman Empire. Of course Jews were slaughtered and attacked way before Romans became experts at it, but ancient nations like Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt were simply treating Jews the same way they treated everyone: conquest, slavery, high taxes...

Remember that the very, very first historical reference to "Israel" was an Egyptian boast by Merneptah that the people of Israel had been completely destroyed, leaving no offspring. But this boast was included in a long list of destroyed people.

Romans, as far as history tells us, were the first to villify Jews as they killed them. It was no longer a matter of bullying everyone. Jews were singled out in particular.

Apion (1st century BC) gave us the earliest version of the blood libel. The Roman historian Tacitus gave us the suspicion that Jews could never be loyal to their host nation and hence were always under suspicion. Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch all added to the earliest history of intellectual anti-Semitism.

Natrually the Spanish Inquisition, operating throughout Spanish and Portuguese territories, took anti-Semitism to new lows. Until the 1930's, with all due respect to modern Catholics, Catholics were the most rabid Jew-haters in history. Of course Hitler and the Nazis finally took that title.

Sexism and racism are getting talked about quite a bit on our companion site Culture Kitchen. And they are getting A LOT of readers. Though my favorite discussion of race on the site right now isn't getting much attention. But I do recommend Margaret's diary down memory lane.

To me, any discussion of race or gender has to start from the realization that America was FOUNDED with racism and sexism included in its foundation. Too often excuses are made that ignore this: things like "slavery wasn't so bad," or "the Civil War wasn't about slavery," or "that is all in the past, things are equal now."

As long as people ask questions like "are we ready for a woman president" or "are we ready for a [fill in your favorite ethnic, religious or racial minority] president" we still have a long way to go. I like to point out that if we are still asking if we are ready for a woman president this long after Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, etc. have ALREADY had women presidents/prime ministers, we should be embarrassed.

About 10 years ago I was living in a great place in the Hollywood Hills. We had a dinner guest one night who identified himself as a "libertarian." Now I have known some pretty smart and well meaning libertarians. But this guy was basically a fool who used libertarianism as a way of blaming society for his own shortcomings.

I tend to tune in Current TV in the morning. In between my wife's intense study of the Weather Channel and leaving for work, I switch on Current TV. Good mix of news and culture in a short attention span theater format. Often something particularly good will be on.

This morning I saw an interesting segment on the difficulty of an Asian/African-American interracial relationship. A Korean daughter runs into trouble with her parents when her mother discovers that she is dating a black man. Her mother freaks out, leading to an ongoing harangue trying to convince her daughter that she is betraying her race and doing something unnatural, while her daughter tries to convince her mother than 2006 in America is different than living in homogenous Korea.

Neither mother nor daughter dare tell the father what's going on. Presumably he doesn't watch Current TV, unless this is her way of telling him.

The segment ends with the statement that the daughter still hopes for understanding from her parents because she loves them.

Racism is universal. I can't say anywhere I have been seemed to be completely free of racism. How race is defined varies. The percentage of tolerant people in the culture varies. But there is always a core group of people who finds ways of defining "us" vs. "them" and who will be horrified every time one of "us" falls in love with one of "them."

My wife and I, thanks to a cancelled political meeting and an already arranged babysitter, recently had a chance to be by ourselves without kids for a couple of hours. This is so rare these days!

We were discussing my article on European headscarf bans and started discussing xenophobe Republican Virgil Goode's fear of incoming Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison's wanting to swear his oath of office on a Q'ran. Honestly, I think Ellison's use of a Q'ran once owned by Thomas Jefferson is about the most American of acts one can imagine, embracing both our tradition and our diversity. But Virgil Goode seems terrified of Muslims.

My wife then shifted the discussion to just what would WE swear our oath of office on. She suggested Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. For me it would have to be something more appropriate. I guess if it was school board, I'd swear on my copy of Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle. If it was another position I'd probably choose the appropriate doncument like the city charter for City Council or state or Federal constitution for those governing bodies.

As far as I know there is no European yarmulke-specific ban. But there are numerous headscarf, burqa and veil bans in place or under consideration.

Yesterday I saw a pod on Current TV about Britain's consideration of a headscarf ban, pushed by politicians like Jack Straw. It wasn't the most detailed of their segments, but it showed some of the deep xenophobia behind this movement. As a side note, for those who haven't watched Current TV, they have some very powerful stuff. They filmed in North Korea, revealing how seriously weird and screwed up that place is and showing a wry humor in the process. Their earlier coverage of Haiti was excellent. Their coverage of the Iraq and Afghan wars from the point of view of both our soldiers and the citizens of those nations has sometimes been extraordinary. They have some crap, but some of their stuff is well worth watching.

Back to the headscarf ban.

In France a ban on Muslim headscarves and other "conspicuous" religious symbols at state schools has been in place since 2004. I don't like their law, but it has one advantage of including all "conspicuous" religious symbols. My question is has it been equally enforced? Have Jews been prevented from wearing their Yarmulkes openly? What about crucifixes?