Heine and my father's "Alt und ..."

How do you know you're Jewish?

The recent rabbinical ruling that the (born Christian and Danish) convert who divorced from her Israeli husband was never Jewish makes one wonder.

I can remember asking my wife how she knew I was Jewish, and getting no answer. But she said that her brother had a "bris" card which certified that her brother had had a kosher "bris". Me, I had nothing, nada, gar nichts!

So, am I Jewish?

So, I asked my 92 year old mother who can barely remember the pain I caused her many years ago (and since, but that's different). She answered that I was born in the Jüdische Krankenhaus in Hamburg, which had a special room for "bris"ing. Did I have a mohel I asked? She didn't know. She wasn't permitted to see the "bris". My grandfather Albert held me. He was an MD himself, so perhaps he actually did the dirty deed, but my mother claims (on no evidence) that he just held me down. So, who did it? I don't know, and never will.

When I ask her how I'm to prove I'm Jewish, she sheepishly says something equivalent to "drop you drawers" and then blushes. So old fashioned.

But when I was young, and the world was simpler, when the second World War had just ended, and "never again" had not yet been said, I was a lefty-liberal arguing about how the good German Christians could have looked away while their Jewish neighbors were annihilated. Now I know, but then  I didn't, and even then, I obsessed about what would happen when they looked away here, in the good old US of A? In 1948, Israel offered an answer, i.e., a safe haven to flee to should the worst come true here. All you had to be was ..., Jewish!

Ah, said someone, there's the rub!

With the fashion of circumcision penetrating the larger (goyish, presumably American) world, "pulling down you pants" was no answer.

Now I'm no expert in this area, having seen very few penises other than my own, but I suspect that the difference between a therapeutic circumcision and a mohel's swift clean schneid is not that great. To an undiscerning observer like me most likely the differences are nil. So does Israel accept anyone with a circumcised penis? Of course not.

Oi, how to think this through?

Ah, I thought, I've got a "bris" kiddush cup that was brought from Germany in 1938. It has my name on it. Of course the engraver misspelled my name, but what the devil.

Oh, I forgot, it didn't include my Hebrew name, and it didn't include my "bris" date, which should have been 8 days after my emergence into the (good?) German air.

My mother claims that I had a bris, but she wasn't in the room, and doesn't know if a mohel did the job or a doctor colleague of my grandfather.

According to my father, I was born in a hospital which had inscribed on it (somewhere, according to my father) "Alt und arm und krank und Jüde, ein vier fach Katastrophe". Perhaps this was a family joke, although I note that my sister used almost the same quote in a book of hers (she claimed it was a bastardization of a poem Heine (1841) wrote:

"Ein Hospital für arme, kranke Juden,

Für Menschenkinder, welche dreifach elend,

Behaftet mit den bösen drei Gebresten:

Mit Armut, Körperschmerz und Judentum!¹





A hospital for sick and needy Jews,
For those poor mortals who are trebly wretched,
With three great evil maladies afflicted:
With poverty and pain and Jewishness.



...        

Translated by Hal Draper.)

So, I've got no documentary evidence of my "bris". My bar mitzvah took place in a reform synagogue, so I guess its null and void. My wedding took place in the same reform Temple, so I guess my wife is living in sin (as am I, I suppose). Oi. And my children. Well, I can at least stand up and say that I saw his "bris" and I met his mohel. Was it kosher? We have no bris card! We thought so, but now, given the higher standards, perhaps not. After all, the Danish lady's children, brought up Jewish, are now, post hoc ergo propter hoc,  goyish. How strange. How deranged.

As for my daughter, my wife, my mother, etc., I've just got their word that they were born of Jewish mothers (which used to make you automatically Jewish). No circumcision for them, that's for damn sure.

Maybe Heine was right about the plague of being Jewish. Certainly choosing it is meshugah.

Maybe the Germans were right; you're Jewish if a "real" German says you are.

² =================================================================
Naphtali Perutz ben Mosheh

---

1. Ein Hospital für arme, kranke Juden,
   Für Menschenkinder, welche dreifach elend,
   Behaftet mit den bösen drei Gebresten:
   Mit Armut, Körperschmerz und Judentum!
   Das schlimmste von den dreien ist das letzte,
   Das tausendjährige Familienübel,
   Die aus dem Niltal mitgeschleppte Plage,
   Der altägyptisch ungesunde Glauben.
   Unheilbar tiefes Leid! Dagegen helfen
   Nicht Dampfbad, Dusche, nicht die Apparate
   Der Chirugie, noch all die Arzneien,
   Die dieses Haus den siechen Gästen bietet.
   Wird einst die Zeit, die ew'ge Göttin, tilgen
   Das dunkle Weh, das sich vererbt vom Vater
   Herunter auf den Sohn, - wird einst der Enkel
   Genesen und vernünftig sein und glücklich?
   Ich weiß es nicht! Doch mittlerweile wollen
   Wir preisen jenes Herz, das klug und liebreich
   Zu lindern suchte, was der Lind'rung fähig,
   Zeitlichen Balsam träufelnd in die Wunden.
   Der treue Mann! Er baute hier ein Obdach
   Für Leiden, welche heilbar durch die Künste
   Des Arztes (oder auch des Todes!), sorgte
   Für Polster, Labetrank, Wartung und Pflege -
   Ein Mann der Tat, tat er, was eben tunlich;
   Für gute Werke gab er hin den Taglohn
   Am Abend seines Lebens, menschenfreundlich,
   Durch Wohltun sich erholend von der Arbeit.
   Er gab mit reicher Hand - doch reich're Spiende
   Entrollte manchmal seinem Aug' - die Träne,
   Die kostbar schöne Träne, die er weinte
   Ob der unheilbar großen Brüderkrankhiet.
2. The worst of these three evils is the last one,
   The thousand-year-old family affliction,
   The plague they carried from the grim Nile valley,
   The old Egyptian faith so long unhealthful.
   
   
   Incurable deep-seated hurt! No treatment
   By vapour bath or douche can help to heal it,
   No surgery, nor all the medications,
   This hospital can offer to its patients.
   
   
   Will Time, eternal goddess, some day end it,
   Root out this black misfortune that the fathers
   Hand down to sons? And some day will the grandsons
   Be healed and whole, and rational and happy?
   
   
   I do not know! But meanwhile let us honour
   The heart that sought so lovingly and wisely
   To soften the afflictions one can soften,
   By pouring timely balm upon the lesions.
   
   
   The worthy man! He builded here a refuge
   For sufferings the doctors' arts could physic -
   Or death's could cure, as well! - providing
   For beds, refreshments, care, and tender nursing.
   
   
   A man of deeds, he did what could be done;
   A day's wage for good works this man devoted
   In his life's evening, out of love of mankind,
   To find relief from toil in benefaction.
   
   
   He gave with open hand - but gifts still richer
   Rolled from his eyes at times, the precious teardrops,
   The lovely teardrops that he wept lamenting
   The great incurable malady of his brothers.

Catastrophe Awaits

The following letter to the editor appeared in the trade journal C & E News:

"Catastrophe Awaits:

RUDY BAUM makes some important observations relative to the use of the atmosphere as a sewer for CO₂ (C&EN, Feb. 9, page 3). Another problem may be even more significant, however: the exponential growth of the world's population, which because of religious and cultural constraints, may be uncontrollable, except by nature.

The world's population doubles every 30 to 50 years, which means that more people are now alive than have ever lived. It means that by 2050, the population will double to about 12 billion. Even now, people are living in less and less hospitable locations and are more subject to disastrous floods, tsunamis, mudslides, droughts, and earthquakes. Three-quarters of the people in developing countries do not have a suitable water supply.

More people mean more pollution in the form of carbon dioxide from burning carbon-containing fuels, sewage, toxic metals, and materials from manufacturing and from discarded products. These factors, in turn, upset the natural environment, and we are beginning to see results such as global warming and loss of species.

Meanwhile, the percentage of land devoted to agriculture is decreasing continuously. Sooner or later, food production will be overtaken by population growth. Profligate use of natural resources such as oil, iron, nickel, and other metals will render such resources extremely scarce. This, combined with the rapid increase in population, will bring shortages and much higher prices for those goods that are available.

People in China and India, in particular, are tasting the fruits of modern technology and demanding automobiles, air-conditioning, TVs, cellular phones, and other gadgets. Demand for energy (oil) in these countries is growing rapidly and will continue to grow. Unfortunately, environmental sensitivity in the developing world is often minimal, and even now, dumping and burning electronic waste from discarded computers and cell phones, etc., is a major problem in China and Africa. Factor in the current worldwide recession, and the problems become even more challenging.

Solutions to these problems are neither easy nor obvious. If population growth were to stand still, we could probably work through today's problems by using windmill power, alcohol fuels, and so on. But it won't stand still, and it's unlikely that anything significant will be done. We may rest assured that the laws of nature will prevail whether or not we do anything. The outlook is grim, but shouldn't these challenges be confronted?"

A. Lee Smith

Howell, Mich

taken from Chemical & Engineering News, May 11, 2009, page 2.

::::::::::::::::comments:
In teaching freshmen, especially non-majors, I've found that their interest in the ultimate demise of their lives and way of life does not effect them at all. They are utterly indifferent.

As usual, short term interests trump everything!

"Some one else will take care of the problem." "The problem is a fake; there;s really nothing wrong."

For people of a certain age, who see the real future with crystal clarity, i.e., their own demise, this innocent stupidity is just that; the words of the ignorant and those incapable of thinking.

Woe unto my children and grandchldren.

Ideology trumps Intellect

The following letter showed up in the Chronicle of Higher Education

To the Editor:

Christopher Phelps's essay cannot go without comment. Phelps asserts, apropos of the current economic turmoil, "The recent riot of capitalist irresponsibility has shattered the fantasy that the free market, left to its own devices, will automatically produce rationality and prosperity." He also contends that what he calls the conservative position regarding the New Deal "ought, by all rights, to be on the ropes."

More indefensible claims have never been made. Phelps, a historian, simply doesn't know what he's talking about.

Ever since the economic implosion began, the standard line from statist politicians and intellectuals has been that it was due to "laissez-faire ideology" and deregulation. That notion has been refuted over and over. The great economic bubble could never have arisen but for an array of government interventions that caused artificially low interest rates and then steered most of that money into the housing sector. The Federal Reserve is a nonmarket actor. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that gave investors the impression that the securities they issued were backed by the federal government. The Community Reinvestment Act and the political mania for maximizing the number of people owning rather than renting was equally a creation of politics, not the market.

How those and other federal interventions created the conditions for the housing bubble has been frequently demonstrated; for example, in Steven Horwitz's "An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left" (http.7/myslu.stlawu.edu/~shorwitz/ open_letter.htm).

What many economists have to understand is that whenever the government promotes artificially cheap money and credit, the result is to distort the pattern of investment and resource allocation in the economy. We get overexpansion in those sectors of the economy most sensitive to interest rates, such as housing. Cheap credit leads to, as the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Fricdrich Hayek explained, malinvestrnents that cannot be sustained in the long run. Far from putting that argument "on the ropes," the events of the Great Depression and of our current recession strongly confirm it.

Blaming laissez-faire capitalism for the consequences of government interference with our system of money and credit, with the standards of lending institutions, and with many other aspects of the free market's allocation of resources, is an egregious case of blaming the victim.

GEORGE C. LEEF
Director of Research
John William Pope Center
for Higher Education Policy
Raleigh, N.C.

It is interesting to read the above from the point of view of an academic scientist whose life has been spent in research and teaching. Clearly, the Nobel prize in economics should be abolished, when the two sides of an economic debate can not come to closure.

Oddly enough, both sides appear wrong to me. The left, arguing for more regulation since less regulation led to the problem, and the right arguing that offering cheap loans caused the problem. Apparently, the middle ground, that banks offered loans recklessly since they'd discovered securitization which allowed them to sell the loans, wash their hands of the risk, and continue making poorer and poorer loans risk free, is ignored by the ideologues.

Certainly, the government wanted more loans made to poorer people, encouraging home ownership to stabilize neighborhoods, making people have a stake in their own local environment. Certainly, the lack of regulation (especially concerning risky loans) existed. But loaning someone else's money rather than your own, which is what, de facto, the banks did, is what seems to be the problem.

What was broken can not be fixed by more or less regulation, more or less "cheap" money. What is needed is that the banks make prudent loans because they can not offload the risk elsewhere. It is the offloading which severed the umbilical cord between loaning money and getting the loan repaid.

Ideology is perverse in preventing thinking!

---

Christopher Phelps's essay cannot go without comment. Phelps asserts, apropos of the current economic turmoil, "The recent riot of capitalist irresponsibility has shattered the fantasy that the free market, left to its own devices, will automatically produce rationality and prosperity." He also contends that what he calls the conservative position regarding the New Deal "ought, by all rights, to be on the ropes."
More indefensible claims have never been made. Phelps, a historian, simply doesn't know what he's talking about.	Clearly (to me), the Nobel prize in economics should be abolished, when the two sides of an economic debate can not come to closure.
Ever since the economic implosion began, the standard line from statist politicians and intellectuals has been that it was due to "laissez-faire ideology" and deregulation. That notion has been refuted over and over. The great economic bubble could never have arisen but for an array of government interventions that caused artificially low interest rates and then steered most of that money into the housing sector. The Federal Reserve is a nonmarket actor. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises that gave investors the impression that the securities they issued were backed by the federal government. The Community Reinvestment Act and the political mania for maximizing the number of people owning rather than renting was equally a creation of politics, not the market.	Generally, impressions are not enough to cause anything. Blaming the governmnet policy seems counter-intuitive. Their argument, if memory serves me right, is that putting roots into a community, i.e., owning property, would stabilize neighborhoods and prevent continuing decay. One has to argue against that idea, not the ultimate economic error, if one is to have sanity in this debate.
How those and other federal interventions created the conditions for the housing bubble has been frequently demonstrated; for example, in Steven Horwitz's "An Open Letter to my Friends on the Left" (http.7/myslu.stlawu.edu/~shorwitz/ open_letter.htm).	Horowitz also doesn't address the idea that no one forced banks to lend inappropriately (and offload the risk to others).
What many economists have to understand is that whenever the government promotes artificially cheap money and credit, the result is to distort the pattern of investment and resource allocation in the economy. We get overexpansion in those sectors of the economy most sensitive to interest rates, such as housing. Cheap credit leads to, as the Austrian economists Ludwig von Mises and Fricdrich Hayek explained, malinvestrnents that cannot be sustained in the long run. Far from putting that argument "on the ropes," the events of the Great Depression and of our current recession strongly confirm it.	Certainly, the government wanted more loans made to poorer people, encouraging home ownership to stabilize neighborhoods, making people have a stake in their own local environment. Certainly, the lack of regulation (especially concerning risky loans) existed. But loaning someone else's money rather than your own, which is what, de facto, the banks did, is what seems to be the problem.
Blaming laissez-faire capitalism for the consequences of government interference with our system of money and credit, with the standards of lending institutions, and with many other aspects of the free market's allocation of resources, is an egregious case of blaming the victim.	Egregious? When left to its own devices, laissez-faire capitalism moves money up the ladder, from the poor to the wealthy. The disparity in wealth seems proof that this is true, at least over the last few decades.  Belief in the "free market" means that departments of weights and measures are irrelevant (which is absurd). The truly free market cheats whenever and where ever it can, when there are puny punishments available for cheating and knowledge of cheating is localized.