Posted on 08/06/2006 6:23:12 PM PDT by goldstategop
One of my favorite all-but-unknown books is The Heart Of Princess Osra, written by Anthony Hope in 1896. Hope hit the big time with The Prisoner Of Zenda and its boffo sequel Rupert Of Hentzau, two rip-roaring yarns in which an English dilettante twice contrives to save from usurpers the throne of Ruritania.
The Heart Of Princess Osra is also set in Hope's fictional Mitteleuropean kingdom, but this time a century and a half earlier - the 1730s - and it's not a rollicking adventure but a series of ill-starred romantic vignettes featuring King Rudolf III's younger sister and various unsuitable suitors. Yet it does make you appreciate how fully the author conceived his fictional landscape: Ruritania wasn't merely the setting of a thriller, so why just use it as such? Hope knew its history, its rulers and its laws long before the events of The Prisoner took place. As evidence of that, look no further than chapter one, page one of Princess Osra:
"Stephen! Stephen! Stephen!"
The impatient cry was heard through all the narrow gloomy street, where the old richly-carved house-fronts bowed to meet one another and left for the eye's comfort only a bare glimpse of blue. It was, men said, the oldest street in Strelsau, even as the sign of the "Silver Ship" was the oldest sign known to exist in the city. For when Aaron Lazarus the Jew came there, seventy years before, he had been the tenth man in unbroken line that took up the business; and now Stephen Nados, his apprentice and successor, was the eleventh.
Old Lazarus had made a great business of it, and had spent his savings in buying up the better part of the street; but since Jews then might hold no property in Strelsau, he had taken all the deeds in the name of Stephen Nados; and when he came to die, being unable to carry his houses or his money with him, having no kindred, and caring not a straw for any man or woman alive save Stephen, he bade Stephen let the deeds be, and, with a last curse against the Christians (of whom Stephen was one, and a devout one), he kissed the young man, and turned his face to the wall and died.
Therefore Stephen was a rich man, and had no need to carry on the business, though it never entered his mind to do anything else...
THAT'S PRETTY darn good. There's not another single reference to Ruritanian Jewry in any of Hope's writing, but he's thorough enough in the conception of his fairytale kingdom even to know what the anti-Semitic property restrictions are. The author located Ruritania somewhere between Saxony and Bohemia, though, thanks to the movie versions of Zenda, we tend to think of it as being in the Balkans. But it doesn't matter where you put it, the likes of Lazarus the Jew are long gone from Strelsau's bustling streets. In Romanian Journey, Sacheverell Sitwell recounted his visit in 1937 to the Bukovina, formerly the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire, then part of Romania, now in the Ukraine. Its capital, Czernowitz, was a melange of Romanians, Ruthenians, Poles, Germans, Armenians and Swabians, but, as Sitwell couldn't help noticing, you'd never know that from a stroll down Main Street: "There is not a shop that has not a Jewish name painted above its windows. The entire commerce of the place is in the hands of the Jews. Yiddish is spoken here more than German."
Not anymore. The Jews of Czernowitz are dead or fled, as they are from a thousand other cities across Europe. For centuries, the rap against the Hebrews was that they were sinister rootless cosmopolitan types unbound by allegiance to whichever polity they happened to be residing in. So, after the Second World War, the ones who were left became a more or less conventional nation state, and now they're hated for that.
But all the hoo-ha about Holocaust denial (and granted, from President Ahmadinejad to Mel Gibson's dad, there's a lot of it about) has obscured the fact that the world has re-embraced, with little objection, an older form of anti-Semitism. Israel is, in effect, subject to a geopolitical version of the same conditions endured by Lazarus the Jew in Anthony Hope's Strelsau.
The Zionist Entity is for the moment permitted to remain in business but, like Aaron Lazarus, it's not entitled to the enforceable property rights of every other nation state. No other country - not Canada, not Slovenia, not Thailand - would be expected to forego the traditional rights of nations subjected to kidnappings of its citizens, random rocket attacks into residential areas, and other infringements of its sovereignty. This isn't about who's right and who's wrong: there are regional flare-ups all over the map and, regardless of the rights and wrongs, for the most part the world just sits back and lets them get on with it. There are big population displacements - as there were, contemporaneous to the founding of Israel, in Europe and the Indian sub-continent - but one side wins and the other makes do with what it can get and the dust settles.
The energy expended by the world in denying this particular regional crisis the traditional settlement is unique and perverse, except insofar as by ensuring that the "Palestinian question" is never resolved one is also ensuring that Israel's sovereignty is also never really settled: it, too, is conditional - and, to judge from recent columns in The Washington Post and The Times of London, it's increasingly seen that way in influential circles - the Jew is tolerated as a current leaseholder but, as in Anthony Hope's Ruritania, he can never truly own the land. Once again the Jews are rootless transients, though, in one of history's blacker jests, they're now bemoaned in the salons of London and Paris as an outrageous imposition of an alien European population on the Middle East.
Which would have given Aaron Lazarus a laugh. The Jews spent millennia on the Continent without ever being accepted as European. But no sooner are the Continent's Jewry all but extinct than suddenly every Jew left on the planet is a European.
In her Impressions From The Road, With Historical Essays (1903), Elizaveta de Vitte witnessed the same phenomenon in the Bukovina Sacheverell Sitwell later noted, but blamed the success of the Jews for the poverty of the Russians: "Out of the 600 students in the Chernowitz University, only 50 are Russian! It is true that admission to the University is open to everyone, but the actual enrollment happens in the following way: on a set day, Jews block the doors of the University..."
The Zionists' "disproportionate" response in Lebanon is merely the latest version of the famous Jewish pushiness.
With hindsight, even the artful invention of the hitherto unknown ethnicity of "Palestinian" can be seen as the need to demonstrate that where there is a Jew there is the Jew's victim.
It's a very strange feeling to read 19th century novels and travelogues and recognize the old psychoses currently reemerging in even more preposterous forms. These are dark times for the world: we are on the brink of the nuclearization of ancient pathologies.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
I see that the inestimable Mr. Steyn got my letter.
L
I am sure I have asked this before. So please be patient, since I still don't have the answer.
Why are American Jews predominantly democrat/liberal when the American right in general and President Bush in particular are the best friends Israel has ever had ?
In Moab on a mountain once,
I took my stave in hand,
And gazed out wistfully upon
The hoped-for promised land.
Then bade me Death my eyes to close,
And drew me far away,
Behind a rampant stallion,
In heaven’s formless dray.
When here I stopped, in bonds of flesh,
I bound myself to earth,
Again (who have with Pharaoh walked)
To know the dread of birth.
And have I come thus, far in time,
My bootless rod in hand,
To sigh upon a mountain-top,
For you, my Promised Land?
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
Interesting. Thanks for posting this.
This piece was like the movie which leaves the audience stunned and speechless at the end, resulting in a palpable pause before the audience starts to file out...silently.
Thanks for the post.
The situation has flipped. It's now the stateless Muslims who are insinuating their way into European countries. The real threat of Islamism has replaced the imagined threat of Zionism.
Who wrote that?
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)
There is no rational basis for it that I can think of other than that a democratic administration was in charge of fighting WWII. That was the dawn of 20th century democratic party power, and it probably had a lot to do with Jewish support of democrats, and then liberals, and then socialists.
Some American Jews see the religious right as Jew-hating fanatics.
You can pretty much throw a dart blindfolded at a map of subsaharan Africa and find a spot in crisis or warfare or upheaval but that's no crisis, as far as Europe or the rest of the world is concerned. No UN-sponsored cease-fire agreements, no wall-to-wall coverage on CNN. It's apparantly just the Israel question that needs to be decided by outsiders.
Upwards of 70% of the religious right are fully supportive of Israel in the current conflict. With enemies like that, who needs friends?
Warning! This is a high-volume ping list.
I don't think that the viewpoint is particularly rational, and I don't know how widely held it is. The other side of the coin is that Jews know that they don't have to vote Republican to receive Republican support for Israel.
That said, I wonder how many American Jews really give a damn about Israel. I've known quite a few Jews who didn't seem to care about Israel, or even about Judaism.
Great poem.
Did you write the poem, Mr. Ramsbotham? I cannot find references to it elsewhere.
If you are raised by a Jewish mother, you grow up guilty.
a sign of the changing times http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1678135/posts
Excellent article!
Mark Steyn lays it on the line, as always.
Dennis Prager has written on this. See Jewish World Review. But there is more to it. Jews attend the "Best Universities"; That's the story right there. I was fortunate enough to have William Kristol as a professor for 2 seminars as a senior at Penn. Still, all History, Poli Sci. and Econ. majors, even Wharton, were trained to graduate as communists, and only a few of us have filtered it out since.
If I may be so bold to answer your question from my perspective, Jews see politics as separate from friendship. Their politics are based not on who is their friend, but on what they believe in. The are liberal primarily because they believe in freedom over state control as the state is the one who leads the way in pogroms of Jewish mass extinction.
Thats my guess, from living with them for years...
What few Jews realize is that the Religious Right are as misrepresented by the media as the Jews. The real Christian has always been the friend of the Jews. It took the internet to break the bonds of the main stream medias lies about both the Jews and Christianity.
Thanks; I wrote that many years ago, after reading Josephus's "The Jewish War" for the first time. It's part of a longer piece I called "The Prophet's Lament." Somehow it just seems appropriate in the present circumstances.
If it is the letter I am thinking of it is posted on his website.
Hi,
Your poem reminded me of an old neighbor of mine.
She was an Imigrant from Russia. Tashkent.
She was once lamenting that in Russia she was not Russian, but a 'Jew'. And then, after coming to Brooklyn, NY she again felt outside of the affluent jewish community: She said here I'm not a 'Jew', but a 'Russian'.
High Volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel.
also Keywords 2006israelwar or WOT [War on Terror]
----------------------------
It's a very strange feeling to read 19th century novels and travelogues and recognize the old psychoses currently reemerging in even more preposterous forms.
***
Zechariah 12:2 Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem.
Zec 12:3 And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people: all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though ALL the people of the EARTH be gathered together AGAINST IT.
So, isn't that contraintuitive, since Evangelical Christians are the most enthusiatic supporters of Israel?
It's more likely that they depise the religious right because it so strongly embraces what is, essentially, the ultimate Jewish heresy: Christianity. It is the religious bigotry of such Jews, not their fear, that fuels their hatred. The religious right is the Christian group that is most sympathetic in its views regarding Jews in a religous sense to be found in America today.
To the extent that fundamentalist Christians and Jews are at odds, it is because they clash on important social political views: on matters such as abortion, gay rights, capital punishment, second amendment rights, and church and state separation. But again, most of these matters are really political at their core and trace more to the differences between the urban and provincial social backgrounds of the contending groups than they do to religious factors.
Historically, American Jews felt alienated from the Republican Party not because that is where the Christian fundamentalists were found (it was not). Rather, it was because country club establishment Republicans, the party of the Rockefellers and Fords, were infected with a strong strain of anti-semitism and worked hard to exclude Jews, especially successful Jews, socially and professionally.
This question was given to Mark Levin on his radio program. My apologies to the Great One if I do not state his answer as well as he, but basically Mark said that they are Liberals first, and Jews second. In other words, they worship at the altar of Liberalism, not Judaism.
To that I might add an observation given to me by one of my college Sociology professors (a good professor, as I recall): Judaism is not merely a religion. It is both a religion and an ethnicity. There are Jews (ethnic) who are, per se, not Jewish (religious). They may not have stepped into a Synagogue in 40 years. Can they be portrayed by the media as "Jews"? Of course. But they are not religious. These Jews probably feel much more at home with Liberalism than with their "co-religionists."
************
Very well said.
Upwards of 75% of American Jews voted against George Bush and for John Kerry. Even the nominally "pro-Israel" (at least in their press releases) liberal Jews like Dershowitz work tirelessly for anti-Israel candidates like Hillary Clinton.
And by anti-Israel, I mean those pols who might cluck and shake their heads over Man's Inhumanity to Jews...and then will shrug and cavil when Israel really needs our help.
"Are you dropping dead? You poor dear....... I'll attend the Blue Ribbon panel sometime next year."
Delay was the strongest, most passionate pro-Israel rep in the House. Did he get any help from even the conservative Jews? Delay was that unforgiveable thing...one of those embarassing evangelicals. Not our kind, deah.
Look at what is happening to Lieberman--that he is a Jew and pro-Israel is the elephant in the room that no Lamont supporter will discuss. Look at his blogs and notice all the "code language" that is supposed to enrage Jews and fill them with "never again" passions. Not a peep about it. Not a darned peep.
Benign neglect is just another kind of antisemitism, and almost all US Jews are foursquare behind these pols. It's beyond bewildering to me--more of a self-destructive pathology, based on the Joy of Spite. The joy of spiting the Christian...behold that outpouring of spite here on FR when Mel disgraced himself. Resentment Unmasked.
Which brings us to policy, and the future of US support for Israel. Given that the religious right is probably the only reliable and strongest support for Israel (to the fidgets, blushes and cringes of the few urban Jews who do try to support Israel), how long will the ship of state sail to Israel's aid? The religous right cannot fight all of Israel's political battles, particularly when conservative Jews are too shy to be seen sitting at the same table as the evangelicals.
When a pro-Israel pol like Delay finds himself in need of a few warriors to keep himself viable, there is no reciprocity. How long will pols like Delay rise to serve Israel's interests?
I don't think there'll be many more. If Lieberman is brought down, pols are going to notice that there isn't much in the way of political goodies for those who support Israel.
Ping!
Pokey78, thanks for the ping.
Ping
BTTT
Is there anything this man can't deeply analyze?
Old saying, "They live like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans." I know young Jewish families who thought it was anathema to vote for Bush's re-election.
Thanks for the ping. Steyn nails it again, in remarkably few words.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.