RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/washingtons-239-year-old-christmas-gift-that-keeps-on-giving-11671830842?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

There’s been so much talk lately about threats to our sturdy republic that it’s worth reflecting on a time when American democracy really was fragile and the actions of one man were essential in allowing it to thrive. It was on this day in 1783 that George Washington performed perhaps the greatest of all his services to our country.

Richard Snow wrote in the Journal in 2014:

One day toward the end of the Revolution, the expatriate American painter Benjamin West fell into a conversation about the war with George III (although one would think His Majesty would hardly have welcomed the topic). West said he believed that when the fighting was done, George Washington would retire. The king was incredulous: “If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.”
When Washington did just that in 1783, another American artist, John Trumbull, wrote from London to say that the resignation “excites the astonishment and admiration of this part of the world. ’Tis a Conduct so novel, so inconceivable to People, who, far from giving up powers they possess, are willing to convulse the Empire to acquire more.”

Thomas Fleming wrote in the Journal in 2007:

The story begins with Gen. Washington’s arrival in Annapolis, Md… The country was finally at peace — just a few weeks earlier the last British army on American soil had sailed out of New York harbor. But the previous eight months had been a time of terrible turmoil and anguish for Gen. Washington, outwardly always so composed. His army had been discharged and sent home, unpaid, by a bankrupt Congress — without a victory parade or even a statement of thanks for their years of sacrifices and sufferings.
Instead, not a few congressmen and their allies in the press had waged a vitriolic smear campaign against the soldiers — especially the officers, because they supposedly demanded too much money for back pay and pensions…
Congressman Alexander Hamilton, once Washington’s most gifted aide, had told him in a morose letter that there was a “principle of hostility to an army” loose in the country and too many congressmen shared it. Bitterly, Hamilton added that he had “an indifferent opinion of the honesty” of the United States of America.
Soon Hamilton was spreading an even lower opinion of Congress. Its members had fled Philadelphia when a few hundred unpaid soldiers in the city’s garrison surrounded the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall), demanding back pay. Congressman Hamilton called the affair “weak and disgusting to the last degree” and soon resigned his seat.

https://americanmind.org/salvo/american-christmas-1776-victory-or-death/

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

“One had to be a fool or a fanatic in early January 1776 to advocate American independence.” That is the considered judgment of one of the leading historians of the American Revolution. Meeting in Philadelphia, delegates from the thirteen colonies to the second Continental Congress had been discussing independence for months leading up to January 1776. Some were strong advocates. All delegates were pledged not to reveal the secrets of their conversations outside the doors of Congress. One reason for this was that discussion of independence was dangerous. Independence meant rebellion. Rebellion meant treason. Treason was a capital offense.

Nonetheless, one of those delegates, a 29-year-old physician and spirited patriot from Philadelphia named Benjamin Rush, sought out an acquaintance who was not a member of Congress to discuss advocating independence to the public. This acquaintance, a few years older, had been an unknown shopkeeper in England until a couple of years before; now he worked as an editor and writer for Pennsylvania Magazine; soon he would become the famous Thomas Paine. Paine liked Rush’s idea, maybe even more than Rush did. He set to work writing, and the two began to meet at night in Rush’s home reading passages aloud and editing them. When the pamphlet was finished, Rush suggested a title and arranged for a printer. On January 10, 1776, Common Sense was published, arguing fiercely and uncompromisingly for American independence. It became more widely read than any merely human writing yet published in America and contributed greatly to making the idea of independence seem not foolish or fanatical, but inevitable. On July 4, 1776 America went from discussing and advocating independence to declaring it. But declaring independence was a long, long way from achieving it.

By summer 1776, the most powerful navy in the world was conveying the greatest British expeditionary force in history across the ocean to suppress the American rebellion—over 30,000 professional soldiers, including 17,000 Hessians, experienced, fully equipped, and backed by the wealth of empire. George Washington’s rag-tag Continental Army seemed no match for this great force. The most informed leaders in England thought and said that they would make short work of the rebels. European powers largely agreed. Tories and even many revolutionaries in America thought the same thing. Through the summer and fall of 1776, Washington and his army suffered one defeat after another, retreating from New York, across New Jersey, and finally crossing the Delaware River into Pennsylvania, as British and Hessian forces pursued. His men were in tatters, many had no shoes and wrapped their feet in rags. Many were sick. Many more were dispirited. Winter was coming on. Enlistments would expire at the end of the year. On December 20, Washington wrote Congress: “10 days more will put an end to the existence of this army.”

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/religion/2022/12/three-chanukah-cheers-for-the-maccabees/

EXCERPT

The history behind this festival is extraordinary. What’s more, far from being important only to the Jewish people only, this festival is relevant to the entire Western civilization. I would even go as far as to say that this festival commemorates a decisive moment for the Western world because the events of more than 2000 years ago celebrated at Chanukah influenced — indeed, determined — the future of we know today as the Western world. If you think this assertion a bit over the top, please read on.

The Hanukkah story

Let me take you back to the time of the Greek-Syrian despot Antiochus III (222 -186 BC) , succeeded by his son Seleucus IV,  and then by his brother of the same name during one of the most dramatic times Israel has endured in all its long and difficult history.  Needing the money to pay off the Romans, who won a war against him, Seleucus decided to foot the bill by confiscating the treasure from the Temple in Jerusalem. At the time, every Jewish adult paid a special tax – ‘half a shekel” – in order to provide for orphans, to provide for the sacred rituals and, of course, to maintain the Temple itself. The decision to confiscate the national treasure was met with outrage but the people were helpless to resist.

Seleucus IV was succeeded in 174BC by his brother, Antiochus IV, more commonly known as Epimanes, the madman.  To root out an intractable Jewish individualism he forbade all Jewish laws to be followed. The Jews rebelled, were crushed and thousands died. Jewish worship was forbidden, the Torah scrolls were siezed and burned, their study declared punishable by execution.  Sabbath rest, circumcision and the observing of dietary laws were prohibited under pain of death, with many more thousands killed for refusing to comply. The spark which ignited the firestorm was lit in the village of Modiin, where an elderly priest, Mattityahu, refused to offer sacrifices as demanded by the gods of the Greeks. The villagers fell upon the Syrian soldiers and killed them. After this, the Jews had no choice but to seek refuge in the surrounding hills of Judea, and that is where the rebellion became a guerrilla war. The Jewish volunteer legions were formed, led by Juda Maccabee. This name, by way of background, was an acronym of the four Hebrew words Mi Kamocha Ba’Eilim Hashem – “Who is like You, oh G-d”.

Despite their overwhelming strength, the Syrian-Greek armies were defeated by the Maccabees, who returned to Jerusalem in triumph and rededicated the Temple, casting out the idols placed there in 139 BCE.

https://bit.ly/3huvOyQ 

1. NBC news, December 13, 2022: “An ancient treasure trove of silver coins dating back 2,200 years, found in a desert cave in Israel, could add crucial new evidence to support a story of Jewish rebellion…. The 15 silver coins were hidden [during] the Maccabean revolt from 167-160 B.C., when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Seleucid [Syrian] Empire….” 

2. The US relevance. In 1777, Chanukah was celebrated during the most critical battle at Valley Forge, which solidified the victory of George Washington’s Continental Army over the British monarchy.

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a player in the ratification of the US Constitution, paved the road to the Boston Tea Party, 1773: “What shining examples of patriotism do we behold in Joshua, Samuel, the Maccabees and the illustrious princes and prophets among the Jews…” 

Chanukah according to US Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, December 1915: “Chanukah, the Feast of the Maccabees…celebrates a victory of the spirit over things material… a victory also over [external, but also] more dangerous internal enemies, the Sadducees [the upper social and economic echelon]; a victory over the ease-loving, safety-playing, privileged, powerful few, who in their pliancy would have betrayed the best interests of the people; a victory of democracy over aristocracy…. The struggle of the Maccabees is of eternal worldwide interest…. It is a struggle in which all Americans, non-Jews as well as Jews… are vitally affected…”

3. Jewish national liberation holiday.  Chanukah (evening of December 18 – December 26, 2022) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays – Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles, and Shavou’ot/Pentecost – which commemorate the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to liberation in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.  

https://jewishlink.news/features/55212-holocaust-justice

“Holocaust and Justice: Representation and Historiography of the Holocaust in Post-War Trials,” by David Bankier and Dan Michman, Eds. Yad Vashem Publications. 2010. ISBN:
978-965-308-353-0.

A popular misconception about the 13 trials conducted by the International Military Tribunal in Germany between 1945 and 1949 is that the Holocaust was a primary subject of the prosecution. The Nuremberg Trials were the “first time in history, political and military leaders of a country were tried and indicted for crimes they had committed during wartime,” Israeli historians David Bankier and Dan Michman note. As Lawrence Douglas, an American law professor, points out in this volume, the idea that those who commit mass atrocities must be held accountable in criminal courts—whether domestic, international or in some combination of the two—is now universally accepted.

For the unprecedented events, an international tribunal was convened. The creation of these unique legal proceedings raises a number of questions: What was the background that enabled this development, and what impact did these trials have on the postwar world—on international law, on the prosecution of war crimes, on historiography and collective memory, on coping with the past, on media coverage of the trials, on the cinematic image of World War II and the Holocaust? Significantly, the German attempt to annihilate European Jews was not the central focus of the trials, although the “very facts of the persecution of the Jews and their wholesale murder were explicitly mentioned in several instances and implicitly in many,” Bankier and Michman conclude.

To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the first Nuremberg Trials, the Yad Vashem Institute for Holocaust Research held an international conference focusing on the issues the trials raised and selected a number of papers presented at the conference by scholars from Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Israel, the U.S. and Canada for this extremely important volume.

The book is divided into three sections. The first deals with Nuremberg Trials—their background, the environment in which they transpired, their judicial character and their long-range influence in the immediate years after the war. The second section focuses on the trials of German war criminals conducted by German courts, and how they were covered by the media and the way in which the Holocaust was portrayed by them.The last section examines the trials in countries Germany occupied during the war: Belgium, France, the Soviet Union, Poland and Italy, in an effort to understand the historical and legal background and the long-term influence on memory of the and how the Holocaust is being represented.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/considering-martha-gellhorn

In 1959, Martha Gellhorn wrote that her first marriage, to Ernest Hemingway, which lasted from 1940 until 1945, was “a distant dream, not very true, and curiously embarrassing.” More than 60 years later, you would think that she deserves more than to be cast as Hemingway’s third wife. But that is exactly what the Ken Burns/Lynn Novick documentary Hemingway does.

Born in St. Louis in 1908, Martha bore witness to most of the wars of the 20th century, with her insights captured in 21 books. She believed that writing was in the service of fighting injustice, and her work demonstrated bracing honesty, unfathomable courage, and a strict code of right and wrong. Yet her old-fashioned virtues make her difficult to approach. Add this to her fierce, late-in-life defense of Israel and the fact that she killed herself in 1998 rather than lose her eyesight, and she becomes, as my students would say, less relatable. Never mind that she continued to travel and file stories into her 80s, defying the common wisdom that war correspondent is a job reserved for young people. Or that her lean, arresting style can make you weep. Too often written off as adjunct to Hemingway, she once said that she wanted her journalism to “eliminate the sound of me screaming.”

Meanwhile, Burns and Novick’s Hemingway is the queer victim of toxic masculinity (he liked to dress as a woman in bed with his fourth wife). B & N are too smart to paint Gellhorn as the “bitch” that some of Papa’s friends viewed her as, but they do introduce her as a writer who “had a crush” on him; Meryl Streep reads her letters in mid-Atlantic tones. Their Gellhorn, while sympathetic, shows too little of the brave, charming, bullying, vain, daring, mythmaking female writer and too much of a #MeToo heroine chafing at her husband’s tyranny.

Unlike Hemingway, Gellhorn loved her mother, Edna, a beautiful suffragist who married George Gellhorn, a gynecologist. Both were half Jewish. Martha, their third child, grew up assimilated. In her largely excellent biography, Carolyn Moorhead only reports one incident of antisemitism in Gellhorn’s childhood, when her friend, Johnny Stix, was not invited to a dance because she was Jewish and Gellhorn also refused to go in solidarity.

If the Gellhorns—especially the impressive George—worshipped anything in the Jewish tradition, it was education. After Gellhorn came home from school with female genitalia missing from the drawings in her biology textbook, her parents started their own progressive school. Gellhorn attended, and there she began to cultivate friendships with men and women she admired. It was this need that may have resulted in her marriage to Hemingway, which the documentary series does not explore. She needed heroes to model herself after, and she understood early on that there would be a cost. As she later wrote, she needed “my desperate faith in the human spirit … revived and rewarded.” She did not find that at Bryn Mawr, where she went in 1926 and where she read Knut Hamsun and edited the college newspaper.