The Vineyard and the Jews

 

Hear ye another parable. There was a man, a householder, who planted a vineyard, and made a hedge round about it, and dug in it a press, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen; and went into a strange country.
34 And when the time of the fruits drew nigh, he sent his servants to the husbandmen that they might receive the fruits thereof.
35 And the husbandmen laying hands on his servants, beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.
36 Again he sent other servants more than the former; and they did to them in like manner.
37 And last of all he sent to them his son, saying: They will reverence my son.
38 But the husbandmen seeing the son, said among themselves: This is the heir: come, let us kill him, and we shall have his inheritance.
39 And taking him, they cast him forth out of the vineyard, and killed him.
40 When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do to those husbandmen?
41 They say to him: He will bring those evil men to an evil end; and will let out his vineyard to other husbandmen, that shall render him the fruit in due season.
42 Jesus saith to them: Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? By the Lord this has been done; and it is wonderful in our eyes.
43 Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof.

This passage, the gospel reading at last Sunday’s mass, is commonly taken to mean the the covenant with the Jews has been replaced by the Christian covenant; that Jesus is rejecting Judaism. Last Sunday’s sermons might have suggested as much.

I don’t think this is a plausible reading. To begin with, Jesus quotes several lines from Psalm 118:

“The stone the builders rejected
    has become the cornerstone;
the LORD has done this,
    and it is marvelous in our sight.”

It therefore seems significant that this Psalm begins with

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;
    his love endures forever.
2 Let Israel say:
    ‘His love endures forever.’
3 Let the house of Aaron say:
    ‘His love endures forever.’
4 Let those who fear the Lord say:
    ‘His love endures forever.‘”

A repeated promise that God will never abandon the Jews—or the priests, the house of Aaron.

Moreover, it follows that, if the stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone, the temple and the builders of the temple—the Jews—must still be in the picture. It must be them raising the stone to its position.

Moreover, Jesus is, after all, quoting from the Hebrew scriptures as authoritative.

Accordingly, it is only those, gentile or Jew, who reject and do not repent of their rejection of this stone who shall lose the kingdom of heaven:

“Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”

Anyone.

What is the stone? Not Jesus. For in the parable, the rejection is not only of the son of the vineyard owner, but also of the servants and messengers—the prophets. All prophets.

The stone might better represent the stone tablets of Moses on which the law was inscribed. It is the law and lawfulness, divine justice, that is rejected.

Those who will lose the kingdom of heaven are any, Jew, Christian, Muslim, or none of the above, who reject God’s rightful dues, however he sends for it: through Moses, through the Hebrew prophets, through the prophet Muhammed, through Krishna, or through the gospel and the Christ.

Israel: Just a Bigger Ghetto

Sofia's Grand Synagogue

I was walking along a street in downtown Sofia one Friday evening several years ago. Gradually, through the dusk, I realized I was surrounded by a small gang of elderly people. All the men were wearing yarmulkes. I had stumbled upon the last remnants of Sofia's Jewish community heading for synagogue for the beginning of the Sabbath. Perhaps a score of aged men and women.

In 1944, Jews made up one quarter of the city's population.

What happened to them all? No, they were not sent to Hitler's death camps. Bulgaria never permitted that. Instead, they all emigrated to Israel after the war.

Sofia synagogue interior

I am not at all sure this was a good idea. I am not at all sure that Israel is a good idea. And I do not mean that it is bad for the Arabs, although no doubt it is. I mean it is bad for the Jews.

In fact, it has done Hitler's work for him: it has achieved his vision. Early plans and directives suggest that Hitler had no special interest in killing Jews. His original idea was to exile them—he thought to Madagascar, or somewhere else in Africa. This was also, not coincidentally, the original plan of Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Palestine would have done nicely had the British allowed it. Hitler just wanted them out of Europe, so that they could not contaminate Europe's Aryan purity. Just as Herzl wanted an independent state to prevent Jewish assimilation.

Theodor Herzl

Hitler, in other words, was a Zionist. Israel has done exactly what he sought to do, but was unable to do. Is this a good thing?

And is it a wise strategy in terms of Jewry's ultimate survival to huddle into one small nation state? Isn't this a case of putting all one's eggs in one basket? Wasn't Jewry's previous strategy, of dispersion throughout the nations, in fact an unusually successful one? Where, by contrast, are the Assyrians, the Carthaginians, or the Visigoths today? It allowed them an escape hatch in all circumstances: suppress them in Spain, and they had connections and relations in Turkey; in the Netherlands, and they had contacts in Poland. Hitler, though he controlled all of Europe, was unable to eliminate them. In ten years, he managed to kill six million. By contrast, now two well-placed Iranian bombs could wipe out seven million Jews in an instant.

A passionate Zionist

Just as keeping all the Jews of a city in one ghetto made it easier to find them when a pogrom started, so concentrating all the Jews of the world into one twelve-mile-wide country seems on the face of it like herding them all into one big cattle train.

And it is, of course, apartheid, segregation. This has not always turned out well elsewhere. Nor did we ultimately find shipping all the blacks of America back to Liberia an entirely satisfactory solution for that minority group.

Moreover, if the Jews are really determined to set up shop permanently in one location, Israel is actually a remarkably bad choice. There is a reason why the Israelites have, historically, kept being thrown off this land. As have the Canaanites, the Philistines, and the crusading Franks. It is a natural thoroughfare, the only land route between Africa and Asia, the carrying point between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, wedged in between the two larger entities of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Trying to establish and hold an independent nation in this little corridor is rather like building your house in the middle of a highway, and hoping nobody will trespass. Not to mention, of course, that the place is a desert, a natural wasteland. The Zionists could have done far better by settling Argentina, Oklahoma, or the interior of BC. All of which were still more or less available.

A sheep among wolves.

At the same time, the loss of so much of its Jewish population, I suspect, has greatly impoverished Europe. I had this sense in Sofia, and it seems, on reflection, self-evidently so. Jews are responsible for a staggering proportion of European, as well as American, culture. It is the mission of the Jews, after all, according to the covenant, to be a light unto the nations. By retreating to Israel, they are abandoning this mission, and this religious duty. Is it any wonder that European culture now seems moribund and listless? The light has departed from it. If American culture seems still more vital, it is perhaps because fewer of its Jews have been tempted to leave for Israel. And abandoning their historic mission is likely to have the same enervating effect on Judaism.

Now, of course, as a result of Israel's existence, the Jewish witness has been stripped from the Muslim world as well. Distinct communities and subcultures all over the world, with their millennia of traditions, are being wiped out, as in Sofia, in a generation. Bahrain's synagogue stands idle. The Jewish community of Cochin, of over two thousand years' duration, older than France or England, is no more.

The abandoned Manama synagogue.

One suspects that, when the histories are written a hundred years from now, the State of Israel will be seen as a greater calamity for the Jewish people than the Holocaust itself.

Interior of Cochin synagogue.

Leonard Cohen the Jew

Adam Cohen, Leonard's son, has confirmed in stark terms in a recent piece in the Winnipeg Free Press the thesis I proposed on this blog some time ago: that Leonard Cohen is in fact a devout practicing Jew. He writes of his memories of his father, "He was there to protect values. It would be lighting the Sabbath candles and learning Hebrew prayers, singing songs, reading the Bible."

Most artists seem to end up religious. And this fact is generally kept pretty secret. Not least by the artist himself: he knows it will hurt sales.

Sabbath in Sofia

I was walking alone through the darkening streets of downtown Sofia, homeward from a sidewalk supper with my colleagues. As I passed Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, I reflected once again on how beautiful Bulgarian culture was, but then began to brood on the fact that it once also included a large Bulgarian Jewish culture, which is now gone. Before the war, one fifth of Sofia's residents were Jews. They were not killed in the Holocaust, to Bulgaria's eternal credit. But almost all chose to emigrate, to the new state of Israel, after the war.

Just as I was feeling sad about this, about how great a cultural loss this was, I became aware of being surrounded on the sidewalk, otherwise almost deserted at this hour, by a small parade of rather elderly men and women. I looked up from my brooding, and noticed next in the gathering darkness that the men were all wearing yarmulkes.

Of course. It was Friday evening. The Sabbath had begun. As orthodox Jews, they could not drive or ride—they had to walk to the Central Synagogue, once the largest Sephardic synagogue in Europe, still standing a few blocks away, for the sundown service. Shabat Shalom.

Judaism, it seems, is still here in Sofia. And, while this trickle of old mn and women may be the last generation there, perhaps not.

The overall population of Bulgaria is declining, though its economic future seems rosy. Israel's future looks less and less secure. I think, if I were a young Israeli, I would think very carefully about the possibility of emigrating here, where there is no tradition of antisemitism.

Indeed, all across Europe, populations will soon be declining. They could use the Jews back. In what may after all be their God-given role, as a leaven among the nations, not just one more nation among all the others.

Leonard Cohen's Hat

In his current and recent tours, Leonard Cohen always appears on stage wearing a generous-brimmed fedora.

http://aroundtheedges.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/blog-image-june10-2008.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3352/3448742085_e27fa97430.jpg?v=0

Maclean's magazine asked him why. His answer sounds like a dodge: he simply said “I’ve been wearing a fedora for a long, long time. This particular hat is from a little hat store just opposite my daughter’s antique store in Los Angeles. They have a very good hat store there.”

Changing the subject, in other words.

The immediate, cynical suspicion, might be that he is going bald. But he is not. That can be easily proven—he doffs his hat at times, and shows it hides a silver mane:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisboland/2625110452/

Nor is it a question of style—for it is not, despite the hint in his answer to Maclean's, a question of one particular hat, or style of hat. In Dallas, he appeared in a cowboy hat. For a long CBC interview recently, he wore a slouch cap:

http://images.celeb9.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/leonardo_cohen.jpg

And he wore it, in this case, even though he was at home, indoors.

The real reason he wears the hat is obvious. Leonard Cohen has become (or has long been) an Orthodox Jew.

Orthodox Jews, in line with the Halacha, traditionally keep their head covered at most if not all times. Even indoors, directly counter to the traditional Canadian practice.

Cohen's “fedora” is in fact a black trilby, the most traditional style of hat among North American Orthodox Jews. The rest of his standard dress also conforms precisely to the traditional halachic norms: covered arms, covered legs, shirt buttoned at the throat, no view of skin below the neck, and black in colour.

He dresses like a Rabbi.

It is remarkable that no one has noticed this; it is a measure of just how out of touch mainstream culture has become with the single most important subject of all, religion.

Cohen, accordingly, is probably wise to dissemble on the point. He knows what happened to Bob Dylan when he went evangelical.

Cohen has always been deeply religious in his sentiments; but everyone wants to believe that he is a Buddhist. Adherents.com lists him as the fifth most famous Buddhist alive:

http://www.adherents.com/people/pc/Leonard_Cohen.html

This is particularly odd, since Cohen so far as I can tell has never claimed to be a Buddhist, and, when asked, has always said he is Jewish. In this, his experience is very much like—and probably informed by—Jack Kerouac, whom everyone also thinks is Buddhist, although he always claimed to be, as he was raised, Catholic.

It is, I think, the general experience of great artists. Most of them end up, if they do not begin, deeply religious. But their public, and even more their critics, academic and journalistic, are rarely able to follow them there. Either they lose their audience, and become uncool, or they conceal their true message behind parables and smokescreens of superficial beauty, hoping the truly discerning will yet have eyes to see and ears to hear.

Buddhism is a good screen, in the modern West. People think it is cool; people think it is an amoral religion, and so they feel safe around it.

Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, is uncool, because it comes with all those tiresome moral precepts.

But Leonard Cohen, I suspect, really believes in all those tiresome moral precepts.

“You don't know me from the wind
You never did, you never will;
I'm the little Jew who wrote the Bible...”