Passover . . . "it's like the Jewish Christmas?"

so it seems my long hiatus cost me at least a few devoted readers/commenters. oh well.

expect to spend the night reading hundres of pages of War & Peace. Also need to do a 'critical reading' of Zionist Culture and West European Jewry Before the First World War (by Michael Berkowitz) and write a short response paper. So keeping busy. . .

But I had to share this, overheard in (Columbia University's) Butler Library cafeteria/lounge:

(ok my memory is not perfect so I'm taking some editorial license here, but this is basically what I overheard.)

"So we're going to Florida for Passover."
"Yeah Passover, gosh for years we'd celebrate my birthday with a matzoh-meal cake. It was awful."
"Passover, it's like Christmas, I guess?"
"Christmas?"
"Well, I mean, like even secular Christians celebrate Christmas, it's like that one time of the year. . ."
"Yeah I guess. It's a pretty important holiday."
"Well not like Yom Kippur."
"Yeah, not like Yom Kippur. But it's still pretty important like one of the major 4 holidays. . Like Hannukah, it's pretty much a joke. As a kid you're all into it you think it's about this great miracle until you realize it's basically all about slaughtering some Greeks. It's like Purim, it's not like a real holiday."
"What's Sukkot?"
"Um. . umm."

Well it doesn't look quite as funny here but it was amusing. . I thought of cutting in but I didn't want to disrupt the flow of a conversation that seemed, to me, to sum up the narrative of the 21st century American Jew. Then again, this is probably more than the average American Jewish college kid knows about being Jewish, so maybe this doesn't quite sum it up. . .

on Tolstoy, Zionism, and Lawrence Summers

Some thoughts:

Tolstoy needs an editor. War & Peace is just too long. I find myself associating Tolstoy with Austen. Blasphemy? So many names and so much meaningless chatter. . .

I'm discovering some pretty strong arguments in favor of Zionism, as we read through some of the writings of the early Zionists and their supporters. Read the most heart-wrenching poems about the Kishinev pogroms by Tschernikhovsky and Bialik. To think that there was so much worse to come. . . Was disappointed with Herzl's Alteneuland, struck me as something of a childish work of fiction, though I realize it's more of a political statement than anything else, but it's hardly compelling even so. Apparently Ahad Ha'am agreed. He also took exception to the general belief at the time that Zionism would cure the world of antisemitism. He was no fool.

Learning a lot about monkeys, and by extension about myself and my species.

Oh, and I must get this in: Larry Summers. Well, I admit I'm no feminist and yes what Summers said about women was poor judgment on his part. I think free speech is important and that it's fair to explore the possibility of inherent differences between men and women but I think making such comments is unwise and can be hurtful to women who feel personally threatened by a world which, let's face it, is in many ways hostile to them. Personally, I take no such offense but I understand why some would. But he apologized, and he promised to reach out and draw more women into the maths and sciences at Harvard.
That said, I think Summers should be applauded for resisting the pressure to conform to the standards of a very radical element at Harvard--something I think was made most evident when he confronted the issue of antisemtisim on campuses in general and at Harvard in particular. It takes a certain strength of character to do that kind of thing--particularly for a Jewish president at a WASPy Ivy League. And so I think it is a shame he is stepping down.
It is a shame that there is so little diversity of opinion and politics. Apparently diversity on campuses today has more to do with skin color and ethnicity than what really makes us distinct, unique individuals: the way we think.
Oh well.

on Notes from the Underground, Herzl, Nordau and some

No time for a lengthy post but it seems my readers are growing frustrated so here's what I've been up to:
Notes from the Underground -- now added to my list of favorites. Dostoevsky's writing is clever, witty and always entertaining. His biting humor adds poignancy to a tale of estrangement and its only companion: madness.
On the Zionism front: Just read Theodor Herzl and Max Nordau's addresses at the first Zionist Congress in 1897. Also read an essay by Leo Pinsker, and Herzl's "The Jewish State." Although there's much to take issue with in all these writings, their flaws lie only in their inadequacy as prophecies. It seems nobody, not Herzl, Pinsker or Nordau, despite recognizing the difficulties facing European Jewry and the desperate need for a solution, could foresee what lay in store for Jews in the Germany they all adored. It sends chills up my spine to read things like (and I praphrase, no time to get the text but this was in Herzl's piece) "nothing can be done to the Jews' money as it is locked away in banks" and "once having granted the jew emancipation, the modern state will not be able to retract the move."
More later.