More Jewish Stuff

[nancylebov]

There's more discussion of Why There Is No Jewish Narnia at osewalrus and ashnistrike.

A eulogy for Philip Klass (William Tenn), an excellent science fiction writer who did the sort of classic satire which seems to have fallen out of the field. It includes a link to him reading his "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi", which is very sad, funny, and intelligent-- and hopeful from a certain angle. There's an interview for the first 40 minutes of the interview-- you could skip it, but where else are you going to find out that John Cage was a very good poker player? [1] Also, I'd say that Tenn was one of the best talkers in sf. One of my favorite programs items was just Tenn by himself talking for an hour.[2]

Sooner or later, every Jewish community hangs by nothing [3]. Jews are moving out of a Swedish town because of a combination of violence from Muslim immigrants and a left-wing Mayor who says that the violence is simply a natural reaction to Israeli policies. News story from interactiveleaf.

[1]Well, here, but I'm not going to transcribe the whole interview for you. The experimental composers of the era tended to like science fiction. There's probably a dissertation in there for someone.

[2] I've seen a discussion on rec.arts.sf.fandom of what program items people remember most fondly, and I think there was a consensus that they consisted of one or two well-chosen people who could just talk about whatever they wanted.

[3]A quote from the Tenn story. I hope a day comes when this doesn't make emotional sense any more.

Addendum:More discussion of "There Is No Jewish Narnia" at here, mostly listing more writers, but also with a discussion of whether Jewish symbols are as good fantasy fodder as Christian symbols.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Also:
http://fjm.livejournal.com/907353.html

[madfilkentist]

Jews are moving out of a Swedish town because of a combination of violence from Muslim immigrants and a left-wing Mayor who says that the violence is simply a natural reaction to Israeli policies.

Sickening. The connection between Nazism and the hatred of Jews which is found in too many Muslims is well-established, though not often mentioned. This hatred is based on twisted modern teachings, not the Quran.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if religions gave better resistance to bad ideas, but that might be too much to ask. I'm quite willing to say that modern Islam has a cultural problem that isn't based in its scriptures.

I'm working on a theory that even though religions give a lot of ethical advice, much of it good, getting ethical behavior isn't what religion is for. They might mostly exist for the emotional consolation which is gotten by group services-- I'm reading Pagel's Beyond Belief, which is about what Christianity was doing for the first 300 years. It didn't have creeds, and yet it was attractive enough to get a lot of converts.

You might be interested in this.

[avram]

The connection between Nazism and the hatred of Jews which is found in too many Muslims is well-established

Er, what?

Are you saying that Jew-hating Muslims are like Nazis because both groups hate/hated Jews? If so, to what end are you drawing this comparison?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Don't both use The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?

madfilkentist may be talking about Occidentalism, a complex of ideas which portray an ideal past and potential future that's agricultural, military, obedient, and purified of the complex decadence of the city. It presents Jews, trade, cities, modern art, rights for women, homosexuals, religious and cultural tolerance, and probably a few more things as the enemy.

I'm not sure how old the anti-modern/anti-freedom and weirdness meme is-- but I've seen a claim that the virulent form is fairly modern and Western.

[avram]

I'm having trouble sorting out the actual ideas here.

Assuming that both the Nazis and al Qaeda (or whoever it is that we're assuming is described by Gary's "too many Muslims") both used/are using The Protocols -- so what?

Look, here's my concern: We're got two wars going right now, and a significant chunk of our political class is pushing for openly expanding things into Iran. (Covertly, we're already involved.) And some of the propaganda used to justify these wars is based on portraying this as another World War 2, with our enemies as new Nazis. Much of the pro-war propaganda leading up to our invasion of Iraq was very explicit on this point -- "Axis of Evil", Saddam Hussein as a new Hitler, the war's opponents as Chamberlain, etc.

The Protocols were originally published in Russia in 1903. So if use of The Protocols proves some kind of similarity, than logically both the Nazis and al Qaeda must be similar to Tsarist Russia. Right? But you don't generally hear anyone making this claim, not because it's any less logical than the argument that uses The Protocols to tie al Qaeda to the Nazis, but rather because it doesn't carry the same propagandistic payload. Modern Americans have all been trained to reflexively hate the Nazis (which isn't to say that the Nazis weren't extraordinarily hatable), but don't have any particularly strong emotions about Tsarist Russia. (Or even know anything about it, as shown by the anti-Obama protestors who seem to believe that the Soviet Union was characterized by a large number of czars.)

(Actually, there's a funny bit to that comparison, too. The most obvious thing held in common by al Qaeda, the Nazis, and the Russians who initially made The Protocols popular is that they all fought against the Russian Communists.)

Getting back to my point, it doesn't suffice (if your aim is rational argument, and not emotional propagandizing) to just say "Bob wants to ban smoking -- just like Hitler!" It's necessary to point out how Bob's desired smoking ban will (or at least could) lead to death camps, or the annexation of the Sudetenland, or the Autobahn, or whatever.

As far as "occidentalism" goes, I think it's a terrible name for a real phenomenon that isn't limited to eastern perceptions of westerners. As Jim Henley once wrote:

One of my regular correspondents today was complaining about the war being supported by "Red Staters." The irony is that most of the world consists of "Red States." They just don't happen to have Americans in them.

So "occidentalism" strikes me as a terrible name that implies that a worldwide phenomenon is characteristically Asian.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I was thrashing a little, trying to make sense out of what madfilkentist wrote.

My point about the Protocols was just that some fraction of Muslim anti-Semitism has a western source rather than being innately Muslim.

As for Occidentalism, I wouldn't mind a different name for the idea that virtue consists of obedience and simplicity for the vast majority of people, and only strong leaders and unthinking enforcement of tradition can keep the corrupting influences away.

IIRC, there was some of the "the only good people are soldiers and farmers and their leaders" attitude in the Classical era, so it isn't just Asian.

Let me know if you come up with a better name for it.

[avram]

Well, yeah, I suspect that there wasn't much sense there to be had, which is why I asked what he meant.

As better terms for that particular memeplex goes, how about calling it right-wing authoritarianism?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

you could call it that, but there are a lot of people in the US who consider themselves to be on the right who are aren't deeply involved in that memeplex, and some Communist governments went in for it.

You could just call it authoritarianism, but that doesn't seem to have the depth of connotation we're looking for.

I'm tempted by "top-down neophobia", but that probably won't do it.

[avram]

but there are a lot of people in the US who consider themselves to be on the right who are aren't deeply involved in that memeplex

Yeah, but lots of Americans think "right-wing" means "opposed to big government". (Which it doesn't.)

some Communist governments went in for it

Which ones?

If you check out that "right-wing authoritarianism" Wikipedia link above, you'll see mention of the work of Canadian psychologist Robert Altemeyer. He developed a scale for measuring susceptibility to authoritarianism, and it turned out that there really is a correlation between that and right-wing political beliefs.

Altemeyer also put together a test to measure left-wing authoritarianism -- people like the Weathermen and revolutionary Maoists of the '60s and '70s. But when he looked for them with his test, he couldn't find any.

A few years ago, John Dean wrote a book called Conservatives Without Conscience which drew upon Altemeyer's research. Austin Bramwell wrote a critical review of it for American Conservative magazine, and the magazine gave Altemeyer space for rebuttal, in which he talks about the details of his work. He also wrote a general-audiences book, available free in PDF format, but the magazine rebuttal is much shorter.

[avram]

Actually, I've allowed myself to become distracted from the point. I think Altemeyer's research applies only to North America in the 1990s and early 2000s. Obviously, left-wing authoritarianism has existed in other times and/or places, and may come to exist again here.

The point I should have made: sexism, racism, homophobia, excessive nationalism, and hatred of innovations in art are all right-wing phenomena, by definition. Anti-Semitism and anti-urbanism are right-wing phenomena by association -- over time, those associations will fade, or perhaps already have. An authoritarian movement that encourages right-wing phenomena is a right-wing authoritarian movement.

A left-wing authoritarian movement would encourage (some) different behaviors, although I have a tough time imagining a non-nationalistic authoritarianism. Maybe some kind of United Nations black-helicopter thing, like the militia types fantasize about -- dissolving national borders by force, relocating everyone randomly to break up ties of nation, race, and religion.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'd been meaning to bring up the changes in who's likely to be authoritarian, and not getting around to writing it.

If we take Communism to be left-wing (I'm capitalizing it to distinguish the kind that actually managed to be in charge of governments from the voluntary commune sort), then at least the Khmer Rouge and the Cultural Revolution were anti-urban.

I don't know if you'd count it as excessive nationalism, but both the USSR had and China still has policies intended to weaken minority cultures.

That kind of thing wasn't, afaik, part of the theory of Communism, but the strength of nationalism and ethnic identification were wildly underestimated by the original batch of idealists-- who also probably didn't realize how tyrannical those governments would turn out to be.

[sethg]

Does “Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson” count?

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Depends on who's doing the counting. I consider being able to write humor when very ill to be heroic in its own way (iirc, Effinger was sick when he wrote at least some of those), but I think Jewish American Princess stuff to be a very dull stereotype.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I had another thought about this. I'll confess to ignorance about what exactly would constitute "Jewish themes" and whether they can be detected in works of fiction, but the whole category of themes attributed to a religious sensibility troubles me a bit: eucatastrophe and meaningful or necessary self-sacrifice occur in, for instance, the Mahabharata, Muslim works and the broad genre of Arabic and Indian folk tales that (partly) underlie the Arabian Nights' Entertainment and Kalila wa Dimna. But when a putatively Christian (or in English simply "unmarked") author uses these things we're generally inclined to call them Christian themes. Then there's the issue of layering of creeds: if an unmarked author gives us an Exodus or return-to-paradise story, are they serving up Jewish themes apt to satisfy Weingrad's criteria, or does the author's uncertain identity make those themes Christian by default? Wall-E only really makes sense as a retelling of Exodus (without that frame the return to Earth appears simply ill-advised): is ti a Jewish-themed film?

I really have no idea, but I'm disinclined to rush to conclusions.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Those are good, careful questions.

I was at a panel about Jewish themes in science fiction, and it focused a lot on persecution and assimilation. The books I remember being discussed are Slan and Kuttner's Mutant. Oh, and the Foundation books, for needing to keep referring back to a text to know what's going on.

I was a little surprised at the enthusiastic agreement about Mutant, which I didn't resonate with that much personally-- but then, I've had a *very* easy life so far as anti-Semitism is concerned. I've got a level of background fear from knowing history that I try to manage, but I've only had a couple of minor encounters myself with the mild stuff.

However, it might explain why the happy ending of the book didn't work that well for me. If you haven't read it and don't mind spoilers, I'll tell you about it.

However, none of this is about Jewish religious or distinctive cultural themes, now that I think about it. It's also interesting to look at the combination of what might need to be there and what might need to be missing for something to seem Jewish.

What might qualify....and bear in mind that I've never been religious, but I've been to 8 years of Hebrew school---word and letter magic (there are Hebrew folk tales about personified letters).

Respect for education-- Lindskold's The Thirteenth Orphan is one of the best I've seen for this, but I assume it's coming out of Confucianism. The American myth tends to be about the young person with extraordinary talent and/or intuition. There's some of that in the Lindskold, but the older characters really know more and it matters.

Something that might be un-Chinese-- everyone has a right to argue. I gather this is more vividly present in Israeli culture.

Secular Judaism-- one would be the belief that a better world can and should be built, and the important thing is doing the work much more than getting martyred.

ashnistrike's article (link in my top post) is interesting for one sort of Jewish theme.

God Is a Verb is an introduction to Kabbalah and Kabbalistic thinking. It's a lot more alien to me than mainstream American culture, but would be incredible fantasy fodder, and challenging but interesting science fiction fodder. Everything (especially in the Torah) is significant, and the logic is associational rather than denotative. Even when the logic is denotative, it's described as not being A and not A, it's A and B. (If A is becoming B, when do we say it's changed over?) And alternates between description and rather mythic stories which are clearly intended as an important part of normal teaching.

For a while, I was getting upset at the lack of Jewish-themed sf, and aside from that I should probably take another look at the some of the authors listed in this discussion, I concluded that I was driving myself crazy over something when I wasn't even sure about what it would be.

[avram]

Wall-E only really makes sense as a retelling of Exodus

Really? I saw it as an inversion of the Garden of Eden story from the book of Genesis, myself.

I'd say Wall-E is a biblically-themed film, with nothing to break it out specifically as Jewish, Christian, or Islamic.

I suppose a Garden of Eden-themed story could be specifically Jewish if it included a Lilith figure, or Christian of it presented the serpent as a rebellious angel, or Islamic if it gave the Garden eight gates. Or any number of other details the various traditions have added to the story.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about the exile + promise of return thing: the technocrat turns out to be a false prophet - his exile does not lead to return, but then Wall-E appears and leads the reluctant back to Earth, where they can rediscover their garden nature and all that.

I guess Mircea Eliade had a pretty good go at this trope in a great variety of cultures: it could be said to be part of an awful lot of traditions. It seems like we're more or less in agreement regarding not wanting to jump to conclusions regarding exactly which traditions, unless there are some shibboleths included to make it unambiguous.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

I've thought a bit more about this, and it strikes me that the Exodus/return and the Garden of Eden/return rhyme strongly but differ in ways important to the argument. If we accept that "this-worldliness" is a Jewish attribute (and I don't know about that, but if) then Exodus is the more this-worldly and therefore Jewish - return is affected within historical time, while return to the Garden of Eden only happens in a metaphysical realm or at the end of the world, which, using the same ideas about religions, might make it "more Christian" (or "more Islamic").

There's also some sense at the end of Wall-E of "getting back to work," standing up (literally) and taking responsibility (no matter how ridiculous this sense is in the film). Again, using Weingrad's lights, that seems "more Jewish."

I picked on Wall-E because I think it doesn't work except as myth: it certainly isn't any kind of "practical" or speculative sf. A load of ink has been wasted on the illusory happy endings of movies - about the destruction that would result from killing the Emperor and exploding the Death Star in Star Wars, which is obscured by the ending credits - but Wall-E has such a sadistically false happy ending that I think it beats any other movie I'm aware of.

So if I'm right about Weingrad's argument, maybe Wall-E is a fantasy with Jewish inflections, despite its rockets and robots.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

At this point, I'm not sure what's subtly Jewish and what isn't.

The end of Wall E annoyed me because if people were that adapted to microgravity, they couldn't start walking by an effort of will-- their bones might break, and at best it would take long reconditioning.

I don't remember it otherwise that well-- was the idea that they could just start over successfully on a devastated planet?

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

From one little seedling, the sun sets on a small field of seedlings, growing in the unreconstructed landfill that Wall-E had been tending. The People stand and blink in the wondrous light of their rediscovered home.

I believe the implication is that humanity should be able to regrow the garden of Eden or Promised Land with a total biodiversity of one unknown plant species plus whatever microbes they're no longer used to.
The whole setup on the spaceship, its critique of modern society, stands at such odds with this Arcadian vision that I cannot process it except as a kind of satire on the conventions of film-making - something like toddalcott's interpretation of Inglourious Basterds - and, more generally, of storytelling, maybe an attempt to reveal the deep delusions that bedevil the green movement.

When I saw the first 20 minutes of Wall-E without sound on an airplane I thought it was the greatest movie ever made - relevant to all the stuff I was reading at the time, presenting these difficult ideas effortlessly, making them read naturally. When I got to see the whole movie with sound I couldn't quite understand how that first brilliant impression was destroyed by adding a soundtrack, nor how we'd gone from social and ecological critique to delusional robot love story to throwaway references to 2001 to The Poseidon Adventure to whatever the hell the ending was supposed to give us. Even the social critique started to feel mean-spirited because, as you note, loss of bone density would be a consequence of lifelong space travel (plus, erm, cancer?) and quite a separate issue from the moralising gaze we are offered toward these bone-idle, narcissistic do-nothings.

So. Yes, annoying. I still can't reconcile it all.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

I wonder how many "happy endings" just use easy symbols of hope without actually making sense. I recently saw a discussion of Shakespeare in Love having a very unhappy ending if you gave it a moment's thought.

And what, exactly, was the point of the happy ending of The Music Man?

Even when I was watching Wall E, I didn't think a solitary plant was plausible.

And speaking of not plausible, the total passivity of the humans on the space ship isn't plausible-- I believe that humans who were totally entertained and taken care of would still develop a creative culture of their own.

As for why the movie worked at all, maybe it's like opera-- if the emotional high points are good enough, making sense isn't that important.