January 31, 2005Ward of the State U - IVAh, it gets better. It turns out that DU has access to an extended academic database, where I can limit my searches to refereed publications. There, I did find one other pre-tenure piece, bringing the total to two, I believe. Possibly three. (Note that the stated publication date on the UCTP site is 1991, making it possibly one of the sounds, reasoned arguments that earned Mr. Churchill his tenure.) What really caught my eye, though, was "Deconstructing the Columbus myth: was the "great discoverer" Italian or Spanish, Nazi or Jew?", which made it into Social Justice, Summer 1992 v19 n2 p39(17). The question of Columbus' possible Jewishness nonetheless remained intriguing, not because I held it to be especially important in its own right, but because I was (and am still) mystified about why any ethnic group, especially one that has suffered genocide, might be avid to lay claim either to the man or to his legacy.... This is, not to put too fine a point on it, garbage. It practically qualifies as an intellectual landfill all on its own. There was a point in time, back when I was growing up, that certain Jews felt it necessary to try to prove Jewish connections to as many Western figures as possible. As the song says "But what kind of nut would you have to be/ To borrow a ship and put out to sea/When you don't know what's on the other side". Say what you will, it takes a special kind of courage to point your ship towards the open sea at a time when everyone else is creeping down the African coast, afraid that their ships will spontaneously combust when you get too far south. Freberg was making fun, but my guess is that we learn more from his history than from Churchill's. As for his understanding of Jewish theology, the concept of "chosenness," and practically every event in Jewish history since 1933, he's got enough problems in his own field before venturing out into that world. I'm sure he doesn't get out much, but he might have taken in a high school version of "Fiddler on the Rez." You know, the one where Tevye looks up at God and asks, "Couldn't you choose someone else once in a while?" Chosenness isn't a virtue, it's an obligation. The hostility of the Nations is a biblical concept, and goes back just a wee bit further than even Columbus. As for Zionism, it's an idea with many currents. But in its dominant form in the 1930s and 40s, its purpose wassn't to exempt Jews from history - we'd had quite enough of that for a few millenia, thank you very much - it was to mainstream Jews back into history. Most Jews I know are perfectly comfortable calling Darfur a "genocide," far more comfortable than the UN is, for instance. It's the term "holocaust" that we want to preserve as evidence of a unique event. The costs of not doing so were on display in last week's London Auschwitz commemorations, as Muslim organizations variously declined to participate, objected to the whole thing, or did go based on the notion that other people died too, so it was ok to look past the Jews. Someone who's immoderately protective of ethnic identity should certainly be sensitive to others' history being stolen.
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