All Extremely Precarious is an International newsblog with invited contributors
edited by Joselyn Morton
19 March 2010
I was framed.
Photo Roger Morton
This was no timorous beastie but an invading terrorist. It took up residence while we were in the Loire and it happily shat and peed its way round the kitchen. Luckily, thanks to my housewifery skills and the fact that I like big glass jars, the only thing it munched its way into was a cardboard box of coco lait.
It now lives in the woods far, far away. Lucky for it, that it finally stepped into the non-killer trap – it had so pissed me off . It had continued its manky ways for 2 days after we got back. I had meticulously cleaned and scrubbed everything on Day 1. How boring is that!
Day 2, there was pee and poo in the drawers again. The kindly trap was still empty, so I was down in the workshop searching for the death-trap … couldn’t find it. Returned to find the mouse in the cage trap. Wise decision, mon ami.
Association Variations have pleasure in announcing their forthcoming performance of the MOZART REQUIEM featuring Variations Ensemble Vocal and Orchestra conducted by John Jenkins. Soloists are Clementine Lovell, Alison Chew, Russell Painter & Daniel Roddick. Concert also includes other solo, choral and orchestral works by Fauré and Mozart.
Performances: Friday 9th April 2010 at L'Eglise St Astier 2000hrs and Saturday 10th April 2010 at La Collegiale, Riberac 2000hrs.
Tickets on sale NOW Reservations 0553 906203 price 15 euros children under 12 free.
In this examination of the creation of a Jewish state I will try to understand the ‘Condition’ of the Jews from the Reformation to the Shoah. Jewish history is a delight to discover, abundantly well recorded and to my mind unusually honest. J. Katz writing in his book Out of the Ghetto: The social Background of Jewish Emancipation 1770-1870, says “The history of the Jews at the dawn of the’ modern age’ may be said to be an interplay between changes in condition, alteration in types and shifts in institutions on the one hand and a reshaping of ideas, images and stereotypes on the other. During the 19th century, Jewish communities in Europe underwent a transformation that changed their legal status, their occupational distribution, their cultural habits, as well as their religious outlook and behaviour.”
The end of the nineteenth century would see some Jews more determined to hang on to their separatist traditions, others were at the forefront of avant-garde thinking, and still others had fully assimilated into many societies throughout the world. In the pre-modern age most Jews, except possibly for those living on the Indian sub-continent, and in China, had been subjected to repression (often violent) and discrimination. At times they were evicted as a group from some cities and states – such as England. They were subject to special taxes and permits for the right to enter a country or to live in a particular place. They specialised in ‘portable’ professions where knowledge and high skill were the predominant features. They were tailors, tutors, estate managers and diamond cutters. Jews dealt in money but they also ran inns, bars and hotels. In pre-Reformation times Jews were barred in most societies from attending Universities and from the professions.
In Venice where Jews were an important part of Venice’s life blood (international trade) they were forced to live in a part of the city known as the Bulghetto. It was from this that we get the word Ghetto. In Venice they also provided finance for business (and had to pay for the guards that kept them under lock and key in the ‘ghetto!’).
The connections between Jews meant that over time, long-distance business relationships developed. Cairo, Aden, Baghdad, Cochin and Melaka had Jewish communities. S. D. Goitein’s massive work A Mediterranean Society covers the period from the 8th to 14th century and shows Jewish connections in business reaching all around the Mediterranean and into West and East Europe. In Spain they had worked with Islamic rulers to build a successful society.
Norman Davies, writing in his Europe - a History, says ‘the state of Poland-Lithuania was the only large state in Europe to offer a safe haven in the preceding centuries’ that is since the 1500s. 72% of European Jews lived there’.
Everywhere they lived, Jews formed themselves into communities around synagogues and maintained their traditional life. Hebrew was the language of the religion. This was mixed with the local languages for secular purposes. Yiddish and Judaeo-German, which they wrote in Hebrew characters, were spoken universally amongst European Jewry.
Life under 7th century Arabic colonisation in the Levant, Arabian Peninsula and North Africa, for the Jews, and other non-Muslims, varied with the times and the rulers. The ‘condition’ of Jews under Islam began to ease after the dawn of the modern age and in Europe from the 1900’s as Jews began to gain political influence (for example the Rothschilds).
When European countries began to displace Arab hegemony in the Mediterranean and Africa with their own colonial structures, Jewish lobbyists in Europe could influence these structures and thus begin to rein in anti-Semitism.
In the 1880s, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire (1453-1921). Arab nationalism had not yet developed and in Palestine it was non-existent. Opposition to Jews was secondary to opposition to foreigners who were mainly Christians.
Jews experienced severe repression in Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen. In 1948 after the establishment of Israel 45,000 Jews (virtually 100% of the Yemeni Jewish population migrated to Israel. However many Jews and Christians prospered in the Arab world.
Two major events in Europe contributed to the ‘condition’ of Jews in the modern age - that is from the end of the eighteenth century until about the 1890s. First the Partition of Poland and second the spread of emancipation following the French Revolution in 1788.
The main effects of these two events on European Jewry were ([i])that Jews began a new era of migration and more importantly Jews received full civil rights and therefore freedom of movement in many European countries. These changes meant that some Jews began to disregard the traditional restrictions imposed on them by their own community. They began to become more secular, marry out and therefore reduce the number attending Synagogues.
After the partition of Poland, Jews became subject to the laws of the countries that ‘benefited’ from the partition. The partition on the East side now became part of the Russian Empire and the Jews were restricted to what was called the Pale of settlement.([ii]) (ie that part which had been part of the Polish-LithuanianState). Further restrictions stopped Jews from coming even close to the border of Russia proper. The reason for this was to keep a Jewish middleclass from settling in the large cities such as Kiev, Moscow and St Petersburg where they might compete for positions previously held by Orthodox Christians.
When the Russian authorities wanted Jews to move for the Administration’s purposes, they launched pogroms. A pogrom was an old Russian saying for ‘rounding up and lynching’. Pogroms were a definite incentive for Jews to leave Russia. The resulting increase in the number of Jews on the move created an atmosphere of suspicion and discrimination in Europe (where the refugees from the Pale fled to) primarily Austria.
At this time Jews also began to migrate in large numbers to the USA. Jewish numbers in Europe increased from about two million in 1800 to about nine million in 1900.([iii]) In the USA the number of Jews went from 2,000 in 1800 to 1,000,000 in 1900 and by 1910 this number had grown to 2,200,000.([iv]) The number of Jews in Palestine grew from 10,000 in 1800 to 55,000 in 1900.
Norman Davies argues that Jewish emancipation was a ‘double edged sword’([v]).
He says that when host societies began to change their attitudes to Jews and lift constraints that had applied to Jews it highlighted the ‘ internal ghetto’ in Jewish minds.
“Observant Jews could not hold to the 613 mysvots (rules of dress, diet, hygiene and worship etc) if they tried to live outside their own closed community; and intermarriage was strictly forbidden. Since Judaic law taught that Jewishness was biologically inherited in the maternal line, Jewish women were jealously protected. A girl who dared marry out could expect to be disowned by her family, and ritually pronounced dead. Extreme determination was needed to withstand such acute social pressures.”
The haskalah was a concept to modify Judaic practises for life in western society. First associated with Moses Mendelsohn, it grew out of the ‘enlightenment’. The men who followed this line of thinking were known as maskilim and they went into the communities to explain haskalah. Mendelsohn also translated the bible into German so that Jews would learn German and therefore be able to take part in German society.
A Rabbi of Lemberg pronounced a ban on the maskilim in 1816. Davies says this reveals the anxiety of both Orthodox and Hasidic leaders as reflected in this poem by Judah Leib Gordon (1871)([vi]).
For Whom Do I toil?
My Enlightened brothers have acquired worldly wisdom,
And are loosely bound to the language of their people,
They scorn the aged mother holding her spindle.
“Abandon that language whose hour has passed;
Abandon its literature, so tasteless, so bland;
And our sons? The generation to follow us?
My heart bleeds for them-
They make progress, year by year they forge ahead;
Who knows where they will reach, how far will they go?
Perhaps to that place when they shall never return….
Still the Muse visits by night,
Still the heart listens, the hand writes –
Fashioning songs in a tongue forsaken.
What will I, what hope? To what end travail?
For whom do I toil? To what avail?
The good years wasted,….
Oh who can foresee the future, who can foretell?
Perhaps I am the last of Zion’s poets;
And you, the last readers?
Cecil Roth, who appears to be an example of an assimilationist, writes, ‘they (the Orthodox Jew) clung unnecessarily to conservative dress of a century before and their intellectual interests were confined to the Talmud and allied literature: or, in the case of Hasidim, to the phenomenal attributes of one Zadik or another.‘ ([vii])
The haskalah advocated full-scale assimilation in which Jews were encouraged to participate in all walks of life. Jewish practises would be confined to the family home and the Synagogue. Reformed Judaism was a response to the need to reconcile Jewish religion with the demands of life in a modern society.
This move to Reform Judaism did not affect the great mass of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. There Hasidim appealed to the poor, less-educated Jew. The wealthier, better educated Orthodox Jews also supported the Hasidics. Reform Judaism was aimed at the middle-classes to prevent assimilation.
Samuel Raphael Hirsch, a neo-orthodox rabbi from Frankfurt acknowledged there was a need for Jews to integrate more fully with their surrounding societies and to escape the stultifying environment of the ghetto. He advocated the adoption of western clothes, language and culture yet insisted that religious traditions remained unchanged. Orthodoxy, under the successful leadership of Hirsch retained the support of most Central and Western Jews.([viii]) Eventually Reform Judaism gained acceptance by most Orthodox Jews. An example of Judaism surviving historical changes.
The main example of course is the Holocaust. The full extent of the horrible murder of the six million Jews by the Nazis was discovered when the allies captured the death camps and the news of the Holocaust was reported worldwide. Survivors then made their way to the huge refugee camps in Europe that sprang up to deal with the problem of displaced persons.
The United Nations was founded on June 26 1945. It was the tour of the displaced persons’ camps by members of the UN that swung the vote backing the creation of a Jewish State.
In Israel the memory of the Holocaust victims is venerated (as it should be).
Stephen O’Rourke
(In 1897 Theodore Herzl convened the First Zionist Conference in Basel, Switzerland. Present were 197 delegates from 16 countries. They formed the initial Zionist policy. This gathering proved a major event in the establishment of the modern State of Israel. Afterward Herzl wrote in his diary: "At Basel I founded the Jewish State. Perhaps in five years but certainly in 50 everyone will know it." On May 14, 1948 - 50 years and 9 months later, the State of Israel was founded. Unfortunately, Herzl did not see it happen. He died at age 44 of a heart attack following the stormy controversy involving the proposal that the Jewish people make their home in Uganda. ed)
Endnotes
[i]Europe – a History, Davies, Norman, Pimlico, London, 1997, p843
[ii]The Jew in the Modern World, Paul Mendees-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz (compliers & Editors), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p379 map
[iii]Europe – a History, Davies, Norman, Pimlico, London, 1997, p842
[iv]The Jew in the Modern World, Paul Mendees-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz (compliers & Editors), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p707 (table)
[v]Europe – a History, Davies, Norman, Pimlico, London, 1997, p843
[vi]The Jew in the Modern World Poem by Judah Leib Gordon, Vienna, 1871,translated by D.Goldman in the book by Paul Mendees-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz (compliers & Editors), Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995, p707
[vii]A Short History of the Jewish people, Roth, Cecil, Macmillan & Co., London 1936, p356
[viii]The Dictionary of Global Culture, Kwame Anthony Appiah & Henry Louis Gates jnr, Penguin Books, New York, 1996, p347
Bibliography:
Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews & Christians under Islam, Associated University Presses, London, 1985
Davies, N., Europe – a History, Pimlico, London, 1997
Goitein, S.D., A Mediterranean Society (6 Vols.), University of California press, Berkeley, 1999
Katz, J., Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation 1770-1870, Schoken Books, New York, 1973
Kwame Anthony Appiah & Henry Louis Gates jnr, The Dictionary of Global Culture, Penguin Books, New York, 1996
Paul Mendees-Flohr & Jehuda Reinharz (compliers & Editors), The Jew in the Modern World, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1995
Roth, C., A Short History of the Jewish people, Macmillan & Co., London 1936
Well I have been enjoying Kandahar since I arrived. Back in New Zealand we used to call Northland the winterless north and in the same fashion I would consider Kandahar to be the winterless south of Afghanistan as the temp has been over 20 degrees Celsius since I arrived and may reach 30 this weekend.
On the other hand I have heard that summer is unbearably hot.
Well southern Afghanistan has been in the news in the last few weeks with the assault on Marjah in neighbouring Helmand province. And KandaharCity will be next on the list as stated by reports from the ISAF forces.
Kandahar city (KC) is approx 30 km from where I am based which is near the Kandahar Air Force Base (KAF). KAF houses approx 10,000 personal and there are many employment opportunities for local Afghans. We employ some locals who I have been talking with over the past few weeks.
They live such a hazardous life but don’t seem to overly worry about the potential risks, mostly because there are not many options available to them.
The picture of KandaharCity that I have built up over the last few weeks is one where the Taliban are everywhere and maintain a level of control over the city.
People will not go out at night as they say the Taliban rule the dark, when going to work in the morning they wait until daylight and try to mix with all the other people who come out at that time. They don’t tell anyone where they work even their friends as no one is trusted. The route and time they travel to work is different every day. They say that most of the Taliban left Marjah and have come to KC as this has been their home town. Bin Laden’s former training camps aren’t too far away from here. So these locals turn up to work every day and risk their lives in the process.
If the Taliban find out that you work for a foreign company by either seeing you or having an informer tell on you, your name will be put on a piece of paper with the allegations and some phone numbers. This paper will be placed at the local Mosque or at your house if they know where you live. Then you have one week to phone one of the numbers and talk to the Taliban to explain that you will resign or that they have been given the wrong information. This process is abused by people who have grudges and give false information. Just this week it made the news that 4 Pakistanis and 1 Afghani were killed while travelling to work on a roading project. What was not mentioned was that there was a total of 15 shootings that night involving Afghani’s working with/for foreigners. This is the environment that the locals live in and navigate while trying to earn money to feed their families. But it is not the same for the rich and powerful locals, most of whom have earned their money by having companies that have earned a great amount by the services they provide to ISAF and foreign companies alike. They are not touched by the Taliban so there must be some sort of deals/pacts that are done where both parties benefit.
As this is the backdrop to the upcoming siege of KC I don’t know how it will succeed given the Taliban are so mobile and KC is a huge city. The Taliban which do the fighting seem to be the foot soldiers while the differences between people controlling these foot soldiers at the top are blurred with the local government and businessmen.
Kandahar is a very poor city, there will be no military solution just an economic and policing one.
As I'm sure you well know, I was run over by a lorry whilst cycling and almost lost my leg – miraculously I have made a great recovery and so to give thanks have set myself the challenge of cycling (ie with zero emissions) to Southern Spain for charity – following the Greenwich Meridian (the zero degree line) until it leaves Europe - thus 'Double Zero'.
I plan to leave from Greenwich at the start of April (in three weeks time...) and cycle to the south coast where I will sail across to France to Le Havre (the nearest harbour in France) then continue my cycle to just south of Denia in Spain, where the Meridian leaves Europe south to Africa... if you go to doublezero.org you can find out more about it, and see the crazy route I have to follow...
So please please sponsor me - even if its just a little amount - the direct link for sponsorship is www.justgiving.org/00 . All proceeds are going to save Rainforest, so it's a good thing to do anyways... And if you think you might be able to help out or even join me for a day or two, then just email, I'd love the company.
Stop Press: I am having trouble locating a sailing yacht for the passage from Newhaven to Dieppe. If anyone knows how to help I would be most grateful. I’m happy to pay for charter fees – skippered or bareboat. (I’ve a lovely skipper standing by) anything to avoid having to take the Newhaven/Dieppe ferry. Please email at
In 1893 Katherine Lee Bates wrote of “America ! America ! ... from sea to shining sea.”
In the year 2010 we have made the trip from Pacific to Atlantic - well Gulf of Mexico, for at this stage, we are in New Orleans.
‘Go West, Young man ...’ is wrongly attributed to Horace Greeley but it was actually first written by John B.H.Soule in an 1851 editorial for the Terre Haute Express. Not many people know that. And be that as it may, we chose to travel in the opposite direction. And so it was that we slammed the door behind us on the Great State of Texas and crossed the Mississippi in Louisiana running down the Interstate 10 into New Orleans.
We had been warned about Texas . Dry, semi-scrub desert in the West, endless straight highways stretching to the horizon and beyond, a state bigger than France and to cap it all - George W Bush country and the home of all that is bad in America. We found almost none of this to be so. Certainly we entered by the back door at El Paso and our greeting was of a six-lane highway in both directions. This in itself no bad thing but when you are at the wheel of a high-sided Winnebago thing with all the agility of an overweight hippo this can be somewhat traumatic. This is a road with a maximum speed limit of 75 miles per hour and a minimum of 45 mph. Do the sums and convert into kilometres and the problem becomes evident. Especially as the American persuasion these days is to keep to the max.
But the downside of Texas ended there. We headed off Route 10 and took the lonely and rather lovely 90 and found delightful little towns. These, although past their heyday of playing host to cattle barons and lonesome cowboys were now playing a new role in 21st century America. There was Marfa and its marvelous Presidio Hotel, a classic example of South Western Texas architecture with its pseudo-Spanish influences. It was here that actors and crew alike lodged when filming the 1950's movie Giant appropriately about the rise and fall of a Texas oil man. James Dean. Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Dennis Hopper under the same roof for several steamy summer months. What stories could waiters, bus boys and chamber maids tell of the goings-on in those pre-tabloid exposé days. Out on the prairie the crumbling remains of a built-by-Hollywood rancher’s mansion lies bleached in the sun.
Then there was tiny Alpine where a huge neo-classical campus of the University of West Texas dominates the skyline and provides student ammunition for dozens of reasonably priced restaurants and a smashing diner, all glitz and chrome and the best waffles of the trip so far. Fifty miles or so on, with nothing to speak of in between, we came upon Marathon. Here the French Grocer provided to-go coffee and an obvious photo-op. It seems the French family have run this business since the cowboys really did roam the range. Maybe some of those ancestors of mine really did go West after all.
At a time when British newspapers’ front pages headline London as a city in which almost half its children are below the poverty line and at a time when the President of the USA is finding it difficult to get his Health Reforms through, the following information about the World’s Rich List might seem particularly incongruous, insensitive and downright impossible … (ed)
Mexican telecom giant Carlos Slim has topped Forbes magazine's billionaire's list - the first time since 1994 that an American has not led the rankings. Mr Slim's fortune rose by $18.5bn (£12.4bn) last year to $53.5bn. That beat Microsoft founder Bill Gates ($53bn) into second place, with US investor Warren Buffett ($43bn) third.
In 2009 332 names left the list after a tough year, but the total number of billionaires on this year's list rose from 793 to 1,011, Forbes said.
A spokesman for Carlos Slim refused to confirm the Forbes estimate of the Mexican tycoon's wealth, saying they did not "waste their time" on such calculations, but he welcomed the result.
"We're pleased that he has been considered the best businessman of the world," spokesman Arturo Elias told the BBC. "It means there is trust among the investors."
The year's biggest gainer, Brazilian mining tycoon Eike Batista, broke into the top 10 for the first time. He came in at number seven, having boosting his wealth by $19.5bn to $27bn. There were two Indians at number 4 and 5. These were Mukesh Ambani with $29bn and Lakshmi Mittal with $28.7bn.
France's Bernard Arnault ($27.5bn), the man behind the world's biggest luxury goods firm LVMH, also moved back into the top 10 at number eight, increasing his fortune by $11bn to $27.5bn. Their mounting wealth helped to push Ikea's Ingvar Kamprad and Theo Albrecht - one of the men behind Aldi - out of the top 10. In a sign that the global economy could be seeing signs of improvement, the average net worth of the world's billionaires is now $3.5bn, up $500m from last year.
Furthermore, 97 names made their debut while a record 164 returned to the list in 2010 - including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg ($4bn), who, aged 25, also regained the title of youngest billionaireThe news was a far cry from 2009 when the financial crisis took its toll on the world's richest people, wiping 332 names off the list and an average of 23% off the wealth of the remaining billionaires.
In the UK, the sixth Duke of Westminster Gerald Grosvenor (45) remained the wealthiest Briton with a net worth of $12bn as he improved his finances by $1bn despite the UK property slump. Pakistan (Mian Muhammad Mansha, number 937) and Finland (Antti Herlin, number 773) added their first billionaires. A total of 234 Asian billionaires were featured in the 2010 list compared with 248 from Europe.
In 2010, New York has 60 ultra-rich residents, Moscow is second with 50 billionaires and London third with 32.
