RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.newcriterion.com/posts.cfm/Piss-Christ—Art–and-Violence-6908

“Sneering at religion is juvenile, symptomatic of a stunted imagination,” writes Camille Paglia, an atheist, in her new book Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars. She is referring directly to Piss Christ. I interviewed Paglia last Thursday about her new book at the museum of art in Philadelphia, and she made the point that religion lies at the heart of all great art. One of the reasons why the art world is spiritually and intellectually hollow today, she said, is because it continues to “sneer” at religion and think, mistakenly, that doing so is still avant-garde. It’s not. It’s old news.

Serrano’s work is not so much anti-Christian as it is anti-intelligent. So why not let the Piss Christ, and the juvenile imagination that gave birth to it, die in the light of sunlight?”

“Piss Christ” has been resurrected.

Or, at least, the controversy surrounding it has been raised from the dead, now that it is back in New York at the Edward Tyler Nahem gallery (through October 26) in an exhibit called “Body and Spirit” which celebrates the life and work of its creator, the artist Andres Serrano, whom we’ve written about before.

Over twenty years ago, in 1989, the hazy image of a crucified Christ, submerged in a jar of Serrano’s urine, created a public firestorm when conservative Sen. Alfonse D’Amato (NY) deplored it on the Senate floor as a “despicable display of vulgarity”—one that had, no less, been funded by taxpayers. Serrano was radical, but he wasn’t that radical: The so-called avant-garde artist received government support to the tune of $15,000 for the work.

Today, what’s astonishing about Piss Christ is not its vulgarity or shock-value; it is a completely mundane work of “art” which has aged as well as a cheap wine spritzer. The only merit it has is as a historical artifact of the culture wars. It is, to use the phrase of TNC art critic James Panero, a boring blasphemy.

No, what’s astonishing is that despite its third-rate stature, it continues, after all these years, to provoke its intended target to disturbing outbursts of anger and violence.

On Palm Sunday in 2011, for instance, a group of radical young Christians stormed a gallery in Avignon, France, which was displaying Piss Christ as part of an exhibit. They made their way past security, threatened a guard with a hammer, broke through the Plexiglas protecting the image, and slashed it with a sharp object. In 1997 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, the work was also vandalized, and gallery officials received death threats for showing it. In 2007, a group of neo-Nazis attacked a Serrano show in Sweden (though Piss Christ was not on display there).

http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem–math—anti-Semitism-in-the-Soviet-Union-7446

A look at anti-Semitic university admissions in the USSR from the perspective of a leading mathematician.

Burke

was right!

When I was growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, I thought math was a stale, boring subject.1 I could solve all of the problems and ace all of the exams at school, but what we discussed in class seemed pointless, irrelevant. What really excited me was Quantum Physics. I devoured all the popular books on this subject I could get my hands on. But these books didn’t go far enough in answering deeper questions about the structure of the universe, so I wasn’t fully satisfied.

As luck would have it, I got help from a family friend. I grew up in a small industrial town called Kolomna, population 150 thousand, which was about seventy miles away from Moscow, or just over two hours by train. My parents worked as engineers at a large company, making heavy machinery. One of their friends was a mathematician by the name of Evgeny Evgenievich Petrov, who was a professor at a local college preparing school teachers. A meeting was arranged.

Then in his late forties, Evgeny Evgenievich was friendly and unassuming. Bespectacled and with beard stubble, he was just like what I imagined a mathematician would look like, and yet there was something captivating in the probing gaze of his big eyes. They exuded curiosity about everything. Knowing that I was fascinated with the quantum world, he convinced me that spectacular advances in this field were all based on hardcore mathematics.

“If you really want to understand it, you have to first learn math,” he said.

At school we studied things like quadratic equations, basic Euclidean geometry, and trigonometry. I had always assumed that all mathematics somehow revolved around these subjects: perhaps problems became more complicated, but they still remained within the same general framework with which I was familiar. But what Evgeny Evgenievich showed me were the glimpses of an entirely different world, an invisible parallel universe, whose existence I hadn’t even imagined. It was love at first sight.

I started meeting with Evgeny Evgenievich on a regular basis. He would give me books to read, and, at our meetings, I would tell him what I learned and ask follow-up questions. Evgeny Evgenievich played soccer, ice hockey, and volleyball with enthusiasm, but like many men in the Soviet Union in those days, he was also a chain smoker. For a long time afterwards, the smell of cigarettes was, in my mind, associated with doing mathematics.

I was learning quickly, and the deeper I delved into math, the more my fascination grew. Sometimes our meetings would last well into the night. Once, the auditorium we were in was locked by the custodian who couldn’t fathom that there would be someone inside at such a late hour. And we must have been so deep into conversation that we didn’t hear the turning of the key. Fortunately, the auditorium was on the ground floor, and we managed to escape through the window!

It was 1984, my senior year at high school. I had to decide which university to apply to. Moscow had many schools, but there was only one place to study pure math: Moscow State University, known by its Russian abbreviation MGU, Moskovskiy Gosudarstvenny Universitet. Its famous Mekh-Mat, the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, was the flagship mathematics program of the USSR. Since I wanted to study pure math, I had no choice but to apply there.

Unlike the U.S., there are entrance exams to colleges in Russia. At Mekh-Mat there were four: written math, oral math, an essay on literature, and oral physics. I had, by then, progressed far beyond high school math, so it looked like I would sail through these exams.

http://www.jewishideasdaily.com/5103/features/krav-maga/?print

The year was 1987 when the Intifada started. Just after few months after I had joined a Jerusalem judo club, our instructor, Dr. Yosi Lev, told us he was going to make a change in our practice sessions: we would now divide our classes between judo and krav maga (“contact combat”). “As a person who has gone through some wars in this country,” he explained, “I can tell you that these riots we are experiencing right now are not going to disappear quickly. The streets in Israel are going to be much less safe, and I want you to be equipped with a martial art more practical than judo.”

We all respected our instructor. Dr. Lev was a man who was struck with polio as a young child, a disease that left him paralyzed in both his legs. With a will of iron, he overcame his paralysis, studied judo, and became one of the founders of the sport in Israel. He holds a fifth dan in judo, a very high grade of black belt, and is one of the world’s leading experts in the field of martial arts for the disabled. Dr. Lev studied judo, Jujutsu, and street self-defense under Denis Hanover, one of the most important figures in the development of what is now known as krav maga.

I didn’t like krav maga. I didn’t like its brutality and violence. This was not my plan, I thought, when I chose judo as my sport. Indeed, I did not survive the practice of judo, either; when Yosi eventually decided that teaching judo was too demanding for him, and I left it for the study of aikido, which aims at self-defense without unnecessary harm to the attacker.

I did appreciate, though, having been taught krav maga as a modern martial art. Every martial art is limited by its martial culture. Every war culture, be it a war between armies or between street fighters, has its own ethical values, its own rules. Traditional martial arts are bound by what is permitted in the cultures that developed them and the arms that were used when the arts were developed. Thus, every traditional martial art contains anachronism: in the modern street, you will not be attacked in the same way you would have been in traditional Japan. Krav maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and efficient, brutal counter-attacks. It answers challenges that traditional martial arts do not.

Krav maga was derived from street-fighting skills developed by Hungarian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler to defend the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in the then-Czechoslovakian city of Bratislava in the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s Lichtenfeld immigrated to Israel and began to provide combat training lessons to what would become the Israeli Defense Forces, which went on to develop the system now known as krav maga. It has since been refined for civilian, police, and military applications.

Krav maga is about tachles—translated, very imperfectly, as brass tacks. A key principle of krav maga is finishing a fight as quickly as possible; therefore, all attacks are aimed toward the most vulnerable parts of the body. In krav maga you will not find any of those elements of Zen that are so crucial in oriental martial arts. A krav maga practitioner is focused only on efficiency.

Since krav maga is taught in the IDF, most Israelis encounter it on one way or another; but only a few Israelis practice high-level krav maga, which is taught only in army special units. And most do not practice it after they leave the IDF, despite their military exposure to krav maga and despite the fact that martial arts are a fairly common sport in Israel. Few Israelis choose judo, either. In contrast, many practice karate, kung fu, tae kwan do, and—as I do—aikido.

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/dgreenfield/%e2%80%9chigh-noon-for-america-the-coming-showdown%e2%80%9d-book-review/

Conservative books are not a rare commodity in an election season, but most such books tackle a single subject or area. Some can be very good but have a narrow focus that they follow through along its path. That is not the case with High Noon for America: The Coming Showdown from Jamie Glazov which brings together some of the symposia that he has overseen through the years into a collection that deals with many of the larger issues that confront our civilization.

Here deep thinkers like Richard Pipes, Robert Spencer, Michael Ledeen, Vladimir Bukowsky, Tawfik Hamid, Nonie Darwish and Nancy Kobrin discuss some of the really big ideas, many of which are too big for even a single book, and yet manage to fit neatly and compactly into this small volume.

The trick is the mechanism of the symposium which brings together different views from very different thinkers into a format which allows for the clash of ideas and the synthesis of conclusions. Rather than advocating a single thesis, High Noon for America just as often offers a variety of perspectives; angles of light out of a window overlooking the edge of time.

The contributors include historians and dissidents, activists and architects of foreign policy, bridging the gap between the grass roots and the ivory tower for lively and stimulating discussions on everything from Communism and Islamism to radical politics and the future of the United States. These are weighty issues and they come with weighty perspectives. In assembling this volume, Glazov did not simply zero in on the cutting edge issues, as it would have been very easy to do, but has assembled symposia with an eye to the widest perspective, rather than the most immediate trending topic.

In High Noon for America the sun is clearly setting and yet the slowness of its descent allows the reader to join the assembled personalities in an upholstered chair to ponder its bloody rays and the darkness that may follow in its wake. Casting a look back at the past, some of the men who helped define the 20th Century, including Natan Sharansky and Richard Pipes, sift through the history that brought us here, while the visionaries of the future, including Robert Spencer and Michael Ledeen, confront the perilous future with equal boldness and courage. And we, who dangle on the strings of the present moment between the past and the future, can only watch and learn.

We can only admire the foresight of Robert Spencer when, in a symposium taking place during the Libyan War, he says, “Obama has affirmed his support for ‘the universal rights of the Libyan people,’ including ‘the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny,’ but he has never specified who in Libya is working to uphold and defend those rights.” This would indeed prove to be the sticking point of this humanitarian intervention, as it has of so many other humanitarian interventions in the past.

Or how, when Kenneth Levin in a symposium on Geert Wilders discusses the Oslo Syndrome and mentions the process by which populations embrace “the indictments of their enemies, however bigoted or absurd or murderous those indictments” and “delude themselves that by doing so, and promoting concomitant self-reform and concessions, their enemies will be appeased and grant them peace”, so that a connection is formed between two wars on two battlefields of the soul against the same enemy.

There are moments that penetrate to the core of our social malaise, as when Dr. Hollander states, “The 60s left behind a huge subculture of mutually supportive people. Rather than interested in political soul searching, they have been determined to salvage or eulogize their youthful idealism.”

And there are moments that penetrate the mind of the enemy, as when Dr. Nancy Kobrin observes that, “Having grown up under a death threat, Albahri merely turns the tables to decree a death threat. She has identified with her aggressors by becoming one. She is a willing executioner in this tsunami of genocidal hatred,” and through her powerful words we can see the shape of the mind of the enemy in the war for tomorrow.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/12260

Op-Ed: A Brit’s View: Goodby Europe, Hello Israel?

Richard Mather, is a freelance journalist based in Manchester.

I am of the firm belief that Israelophobia is a symptom of the resurgent anti-Semitism, not the cause. Anti-Israel sentiment is so irrational, so hyperbolic and so spiteful, that political explanations do not suffice.

The firebombing of a synagogue in the Swedish city of Malmo is another distressing indication that the future of European Jewry is at risk. It seems that only six decades after the Holocaust, Europe is reverting to type.
In response to the explosion, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, expressed his belief that Europe’s Jews are “under attack” and that not enough is being done to protect Jewish communities.

Indeed, a recent report by the Anti-Defamation League shows that anti-Semitic attitudes in Europe are at “disturbingly high levels,” with Hungary, Spain and Poland the worst offenders. Around half of the population in each of these countries harbor anti-Jewish views. Attitudes in France and the UK are also a cause for concern.

Physical attacks, cemetery desecrations, firebombings, graffiti and the bullying of Jewish children by their Muslim peers are frequent events in countries across Europe. Unfortunately, Europe’s politicians and opinion-formers have spent so long wallowing in post-colonial guilt and cultural relativism, that they lack the political will to tackle Muslim anti-Semitism, preferring instead to castigate Israel.

Attributing anti-Semitism to the Israel-Palestinian crisis is a common mistake. I am of the firm belief that Israelophobia is a symptom of the resurgent anti-Semitism, not the cause. Anti-Israel sentiment is so irrational, so hyperbolic and so spiteful, that political explanations do not suffice.

Europe is a hothouse of Quran-inspired hatred and Christian anti-Semitic tropes in which all the old prejudices about “the Jew” as dangerous, nefarious and disloyal are reinterpreted for a modern audience. Israel-bashing is merely a way of expressing and legitimizing these irrational feelings.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/02/As-Benghazi-Attacks-Raged-State-Dept-Dismissed-Strong-U-S-Response-As-Unrealistic According to the Wall Street Journal, as the attack on the U.S. consulate was raging, Obama took a “wait and see” approach. Ninety minutes after news of the attack reached Washington, Obama, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, JCS Chair General Martin Dempsey, and a national security adviser convened for an oval office meeting in […]

Click here: Omigod! Left finally recognizes Hamas as horrible – Maggie’s Farm http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20703-Omigod!-Left-finally-recognizes-Hamas-as-horrible.html Omigod! Left finally recognizes Hamas as horrible It is a signal event when even some from the political left who has long sided with pro-Palestinian assertions wakes up and recognizes the horror that is Hamas. In 2005, Israel unilaterally removed its military […]

Is there anyone who doesn’t know, by now, that Muslim fanatics, worldwide, are waging Jihad (holy war) against all non-Muslims of all faiths? Jihad has been making major impacts throughout Europe. For example Muslims are succeeding in forcing incorporation of Islamic laws into countries’ existing laws. And, in the USA, Muslims have been penetrating the […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/329207/911-families-object-obama-purchase-illinois-prison-andrew-c-mccarthy On Obama’s directive that DOJ purchase the white elephant state prison in Thomson, Illinois (see my earlier post, here), Debra Burlingame has issued a statement on behalf of the 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America: 9/11 families strongly object to the Obama administration’s plan to purchase Thomson Correctional Facility in Thomson, Illinois […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/329117/obama-flouts-congress-orders-doj-buy-white-elephant-illinois-prison-andrew-c-mccarthy Obama Flouts Congress, Orders DOJ to Buy White-Elephant Illinois Prison By Andrew C. McCarthy October 3, 2012 11:06 A.M. So I’m in the middle of writing an “I told you so” post about Libya and, wouldn’t you know it, I have to stop so I can write an “I told you so” post about […]