News, Views, and Shmooze....

Without Borders

This morning, in an AOL round-up of retail companies that will be closing some of its stores (the list includes Ann Taylor and Starbucks, which have already shuttered many of their stores), I read the Borders will be down to 60 or so stores from their original 300 plus.

I would have been shocked, but I knew the forecast wasn't good when I e-mailed Rosh Hashana greetings to my friends and fans two weeks ago. With one exception, all the posts to Borders staff I had the pleasure of meeting over the past years--salespeople, even planners, managers, reps--bounced back.

So sad.

Great Quote Attributed to General Schwartzkopf...

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkopf was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward Hizbollah


The General said, "I believe that forgiving Hizbollah is God's function. The Israeli's job is to arrange the meeting."

Pell Mel

Well, not really. But I'm tempted. Again.

A couple of years ago I wrote a scene in my first Molly Blume novel. Molly and a date are going to see a Mel Gibson movie. Molly tells the reader, "I love Mel Gibson. I love everything about him."

I loved Mel Gibson. Loved him in "Lethal Weapon." Loved him in "Hamlet."

So I was terribly disappointed when Mel made the headlines about his forthcoming "The Passion of the Christ," along with his father, the Holocaust denier. I watched interviews with Mel. He said he loves his dad. I didn't fault him for that. My problem is that, based on several comments, even though Mel tried to distance himself from his father's position, Mel doesn't disagree with him. He proclaimed that his father never lied to him, that everything he [Mel] is, is a product of his father.

So...if Gibson senior claims the Holocaust is an exaggeration, and Mel claims his father never lied...that means Mel believes that the Holocaust is an exaggeration, right?

When I received my copy-edited manuscript, I deleted Mel from the scene and inserted Tom Hanks. (Please, Tom, don't pull a Mel.) When the "Passion" came out, I read reviews. The film - and Mel - had supporters, but there were many non-Jewish reviewers who believed that the film had antisemitic overtones, not only in the dialogue and scenes, but also in the physical depiction of Jewish characters.

But I didn't see the film, so I didn't feel qualified to comment on it, or on Mel's motives or beliefs.

Now he has made undeniably antisemitic comments. While drunk, some maintain, so they don't count. On the contrary: His inebriated state loosened his inhibitions and his tongue. And his statements lend credence to those who saw antisemitism in the "Passion" and its creator.

Mel has apologized and wants to meet with Jewish community leaders to make amends. That's nice, but what does that mean? And how does one begin to eradicate from his heart and conscience the vitriolic message of hate toward Jews that he probably absorbed growing up in his childhood home?

If Mel is sincere, he faces a serious challenge, and he should receive the help he's seeking.

If Mel is talking amends and apology because he's trying to squirm out of this mess....

I'm waiting, and watching.

Wendy Wasserstein

I was shocked to learn that playwright Wendy Wasserstein died. From Nextbook:

Raised in Brooklyn, Wasserstein first gained attention with Uncommon Women and Others, which she wrote as a grad student. She won a Tony and a Pulitzer for The Heidi Chronicles in 1989, and gained wider fame with The Sisters Rosensweig. Wasserstein also authored a children's book and two collections of personal essays.

I'm sorry to say I never saw one of Ms. Wasserstein's plays. I did read an article she wrote several years ago for the New Yorker, describing her unexpected but welcome pregnancy and its serious complications; the arrival of her daughter, who was in a neonatal ICU for two months; the beginning of their life together.

The article was moving, humorous, insightful.

The New York Times, among others, has an in-depth obituary.

Torah, Torah

A few days ago I blogged about an L.A. Times story about rabbis rescuing Torah scrolls from a shul in New Orleans.

My friend Sue Horowitz, who appears as a character in Now You See Me..., my new Molly Blume mystery (Sue's friend had the winning bid at a Malice Domestic charity auction to appear as a character in my next mystery; she gifted Sue with the "character" ), sent me these photos.

 

Rescuing the Sacred

Rushing out early yesterday morning for jury duty, I had time for only a brief glance at the L.A. Times. On the front page was a color photo of a man wading through hip-high water in New Orleans, hands gloved, arms holding a Torah.

It wasn't until last night that I read Solomon Moore's story behind the photo:

Satisfied that most of his congregants were safe, the rabbi began to worry about the Torahs.

Rabbi Yisroel Shiff of Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans hoped that his Orthodox synagogue's holy scrolls would come through Hurricane Katrina undamaged. But if not, he wanted them buried in the appropriate manner.

"We bury them with honor, as we would someone we care about — the Torah is the life's blood of our community," Shiff said.

The rabbi, who evacuated to Tennessee before Katrina hit, knew that the temple near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain had been flooded. But, he said, "we believe in miracles. Maybe the water didn't reach the scrolls."

He called Rabbi Isaac Leider, who had spent five years in Israel with the search-and-rescue squad Zak'a, performing sacramental cleanup duties at bus bombings and other sites. Leider — who also volunteered his services at the World Trade Center, the TWA Flight 800 crash site and other tragedies — now works with a Jewish ambulance service in New York City and New Jersey.

He had come to New Orleans to make sure that the bodies of any Jews who died as a result of Hurricane Katrina were treated according to religious law. But he also focused on the task of retrieving the congregation's holy scrolls.

Shiff said at least one of the Torahs had been there when he attended the synagogue as a child — he doesn't know exactly how old the scrolls are.

"We had them appraised and were told our scrolls are much older than 100 years," he said. "They must have come from Europe. The congregation is 101 years old, and they have been with them at least that long."

Often, Torahs are the most valuable artifacts of a Jewish congregation. A new Torah scroll can cost $50,000. Older scrolls — and many are hundreds of years old — often are worth much more.

But their value is not based on the material.

"The Torah is the basis of the Jewish religion," Leider said. "Last week, we were saving lives, but once that was done, this became just as important."

Said Shiff: "The Torah scrolls are particularly precious to people who live by their words."

The Torah tells the story of Moses as he led the Jews out of Egypt. The text, which Christians know as the Old Testament, also holds the most important laws of the Jewish faith.

"The Torah is not stored in a computer file; we don't copy them on copy machines," said Rabbi Shlomo Gertzulin, vice president of Agudath Israel of America, an association of several hundred Orthodox congregations that sponsored Leider's recovery efforts. "They are only written by the most devout and knowledgeable scribes."

A Torah is handwritten by a rabbinical scribe trained for years in the art of Hebrew calligraphy. There are centuries-old requirements on the exact size and spacing of characters, and special rites associated with words representing the Ten Commandments and Moses.

It can take as long as a year for a scribe — using a quill and sacred ink made from an age-old recipe — to complete a Torah. The scrolls must be made from cowhide, thinned to a leathery parchment, then woven together with leather thread to complete the text.

The scroll is then wrapped around wooden rods that often are capped with pure silver. Each Torah, the five books of the Jewish Scriptures, is then cloaked in purple velvet and stored in an ark, or cabinet; it is removed only for congregational prayers and on the high holy days of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

And when they are damaged beyond repair — by fire or flood, for example — they must be buried according to Jewish tradition...

Read Moore's entire story.

Bravo, Blair!

Literally two minutes after I posted about Blair's advisors urging him to ditch Holocaust Day, I saw this:

Blairs office: NO PLANS TO CHANGE BRITISH HOLOCAUST DAY
	By Haaretz Service and AP British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office said Monday it had no plans to rename Britain's Holocaust Day, despite calls from Muslim groups to make the annual memorial more inclusive. The proposal by a committee of Muslim leaders advising the government as it seeks to combat Islamic extremism want to replace Holocaust Memorial Day with a Genocide Day that would include recognition of Muslim deaths in the West Bank and Gaza, Chechnya and Bosnia, according to the British paper the Sunday Times. A Home Office spokesman said that it would consider the proposals but said it regarded the Holocaust as a "defining tragedy in European history," according to the Times.
	Read On ...

Advise...and Consent?

According to the London Times, advisors are urging Blair to ditch Holocaust Day:

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

The draft proposals have been prepared by committees appointed by Blair to tackle extremism. He has promised to respond to the plans, but the threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the Jewish community.

Holocaust Day was established by Blair in 2001 after a sustained campaign by Jewish leaders to create a lasting memorial to the 6m victims of Hitler. It is marked each year on January 27.

The Queen is patron of the charity that organises the event and the Home Office pays £500,000 a year to fund it. The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims.

A member of one of the committees, made up of Muslims, said it gave the impression that “western lives have more value than non-western lives”. That perception needed to be changed. “One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national Genocide Memorial Day.

“The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others. It’s a grievance that extremists are able to exploit.”

The recommendation, drawn up by four committees including those dealing with imams and mosques, and Islamaphobia and policing, has the backing of Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

He said: “The message of the Holocaust was ‘never again’, and for that message to have practical effect on the world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double standards in terms of human life. Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time.”

Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity Interpal, said: “There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have been wiped out over the years. That’s pretty genocidal to me.”

The committees are also set to clash with Blair on his proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group. Government sources say they will argue that a ban is unjustified because the group, which is proscribed in much of the Middle East, neither advocates nor perpetrates violence in the UK.

A Home Office spokesman said it would consider the proposals for a separate Genocide Day for all faiths but emphasised that it regarded the Holocaust as a “defining tragedy in European history”.

Mike Whine, a director of the British Board of Deputies, said: “Of course we will oppose this move. The whole point is to remember the darkest day of modern history.”

Louise Ellman, Labour MP for Liverpool Riverside and a Holocaust Memorial trustee, said: “These Muslim groups should stop trying to evade the enormity of the Holocaust.”

By the time you read this, advisors will have advised.

The seven committees finalise their recommendations today at St George’s House, Windsor, and will submit them to Blair and Charles Clarke, the home secretary, on September 22.

What's your guess?

Letter to the World, from Chris Rice

I've met New Orleans  author Chris Rice (son of Ann Rice) at several mystery conventions. This is what he told the Times-Picayune:

A Letter to

America

Dear

America

,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're

South Louisiana

.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for
that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations.
We're not much on formalities like that.

And we might be staying around your town for a while, enrolling in
your schools and looking for jobs, so we wanted to tell you a few

things about us. We know you didn't ask for this and neither did we,
so we're just going to have to make the best of it.

First of all, we thank you. For your money, your water, your food,
your prayers, your boats and buses and the men and women of your
National Guards, fire departments, hospitals and everyone else who
has come to our rescue.

We're a fiercely proud and independent people, and we don't cotton
much to outside interference, but we're not ashamed to accept help
when we need it. And right now, we need it.

Just don't get carried away. For instance, once we get around to
fishing again, don't try to tell us what kind of lures work best in
your waters.

We're not going to listen. We're stubborn that way.

You probably already know that we talk funny and listen to strange
music and eat things you'd probably hire an exterminator to get out
of your yard.

We dance even if there's no radio. We drink at funerals. We talk too
much and laugh too loud and live too large and, frankly, we're
suspicious of others who don't.

But we'll try not to judge you while we're in your town.

Everybody loves their home, we know that. But we love

South Louisiana

with a ferocity that borders on the pathological. Sometimes we bury
our dead in LSU sweatshirts.

Often we don't make sense. You may wonder why, for instance - if we
could only carry one small bag of belongings with us on our journey
to your state - why in God's name did we bring a pair of shrimp
boots?

We can't really explain that. It is what it is.

You've probably heard that many of us stayed behind. As bad as it is,
many of us cannot fathom a life outside of our border, out in that
place we call Elsewhere.

The only way you could understand that is if you have been there, and
so many of you have. So you realize that when you strip away all the
craziness and bars and parades and music and architecture and all
that hooey, really, the best thing about where we come from is us.

We are what made this place a national treasure. We're good people.
And don't be afraid to ask us how to pronounce our names. It happens
all the time.

When you meet us now and you look into our eyes, you will see the
saddest story ever told. Our hearts are broken into a thousand
pieces.

But don't pity us. We're gonna make it. We're resilient. After all,
we've been rooting for the Saints for 35 years. That's got to count
for something.

OK, maybe something else you should know is that we make jokes at
inappropriate times.

But what the hell.

And one more thing: In our part of the country, we're used to having
visitors. It's our way of life.

So when all this is over and we move back home, we will repay to you
the hospitality and generosity of spirit you offer to us in this
season of our despair.

That is our promise. That is our faith.

A Drop to Drink

A few years ago in late August or early September, in one of the weekly Monday morning Torah study sessions given by Shira Smiles that I miss so much, we talked about the upcoming high holidays. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur. A time for self-evaluation, for spiritual renewal, for growth, for atonement.

For new year resolutions.

Baby steps, Shira advised. Pick a blessing on food, she said.  Avoid reciting the blessing by rote. Focus on the gift you're receiving as you express your gratitude. Say the blessing with "kavanha." With concentrated intention, with meaning.

I have been thinking about Shira's words this past week, as I read with despair and horror about victims of Katrina, every time I fill a glass with water from my sink. It is not hard to find meaning as I recite the blessing.