RUTHFULLY YOURS

To the extent people know the amazing story of the rebirth of Hebrew as a modern language, they are apt to identify it with the single-handed efforts of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, famous for having refused to allow his infant son to hear a word of any other language in his first years.

While not disputing Ben Yehuda’s role, Berdichevsky gives us a wealth of fascinating information about what he calls “the epic transformation of the classic language of the Bible into modern ‘Ivrit’, the national language of the dynamic state of Israel, its everyday vernacular spoken by seven million people.” He describes Hebrew’s influence on English, the inspirational example of modern Hebrew for the revival of a host of “minor languages” including, among many others, Irish, Welsh, Basque, Catalan and Maltese, and the influence on Hebrew of the many languages that bear witness to the three thousand years of Jewish experience, among them Akkadian, Greek, Persian, Arabic, German and Yiddish. None of this is academic or difficult to follow: Berdichevsky never loses sight of his goal of keeping the interest of the lay reader.
In an interesting sidelight, we learn of the parallels between Ben Yehuda and Lazar Ludwig Zamenhof, who created Esperanto. Born within a year of one another in similar homes only 250 miles apart, both sought a career in medicine (although Ben Yehuda’s health forced him to drop out) and both saw their work as a means to enhance the standing of the Jews, in Zamenhof’s case through fostering international solidarity via a common language. (His last major project was translating the Old Testament into Esperanto). Berdichevsky, himself something of an expert on Esperanto, demonstrates how Zamenhof used the logical structure of Hebrew in creating it. Although Ben Yehuda would have to be counted far more successful in achieving the mission he set for himself, Berdichevsky offers the interesting factoid that, after Einstein, Zamenhof is the Jew whose portrait has appeared on the postage stamps of more countries than anyone else. As far as postage stamps go, Ben Yehuda is the loser.

There’s a chapter on Hebrew’s at times bitter rivalry with Yiddish to serve as the national language. And Hebrew’s victory was at times marred by harsh tactics. Berdichevsky writes that as late as 1951, for example, the government agency charged with approving the public showing of films and plays issued a directive banning presentation of a play in Yiddish in Tel Aviv and threatened fines for the actors. Similarly the Yiddish newspaper was allotted very limited access to the government’s control of the supply of paper and had to resort to the black market where the only paper obtainable was yellow, green and red, leading to comical multi-colored editions.

In the Soviet Union, where the heavy hand of government was no laughing matter, Hebrew was condemned as a “reactionary tool” and only Yiddish considered the legitimate tongue of the “toiling masses.” The result was an almost total prohibition of any expression of thought or cultural activity in Hebrew. Berdichevsky writes: “Nowhere else and against no other language (except Esperanto in Nazi-occupied Europe) was such a policy invoked by any regime to strangle a language into total silence.”

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Dr. Norman Berdichevsky, an author, freelance writer, editor, researcher, translator and lecturer of history and culture for several major cruise lines. Formerly a lecturer of Hebrew at the University of Central Florida, the Theological Faculty of Aarhus University in Denmark, and the Jews’ Free School in London, as well as an experienced translator (From Hebrew and Danish to English), he is the author of six books and lives in Orlando, Florida. He is the author of the new book, Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.

FP: Dr. Norman Berdichevsky welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let’s begin with what inspired you to write this new book.

Berdichevsky: Thanks Jamie.

My knowledge of Hebrew, my experience teaching the language in the Diaspora and the eleven years I spent in Israel working as a professional translator, opened up new horizons and enabled me to participate in the resilience of spirit that Israelis feel in the face of adversity. My goal in writing this book is to reach as wide an audience as possible of both Jews and Gentiles, including those with no prior knowledge of the language, to make them more aware of the importance Hebrew has played in the forging of contemporary Israeli society and culture and its function worldwide as the new Jewish international language.

A dynamic nation has been created with a determined belief in a common origin, destiny and struggle with a unifying common language adapted and modernized by the only people who identified with it and its ancient homeland. Anyone wishing to understand modern Israel, its history and development towards a more inclusive society for all its people including non-Jews should be familiar with Modern Hebrew and how this language grew and changed over the past mere one hundred and thirty years through challenges and dilemmas resulting in startling achievements and new prospects.

FP: Expand for us on the transformation of Hebrew and why this book is so important in touching on this issue.

Berdichevsky: Few subjects have commanded the attention and provoked, fascinated, excited, and enchanted so many readers as the saga of the Zionist rebirth of Israel. Yet in this monumental literature, relatively little space has been devoted to the epic transformation of the classical language of the Bible into Modern “Ivrit”, the national language of the State of Israel, its everyday vernacular spoken by more than seven million people. It was grafted successfully onto an older literature and longer historical continuity than Latin or Greek and is the official language of business, research, the law, and government of the dynamic State of Israel.

The book explores the historical background, past and current controversies, challenges, dilemmas and prospects facing the Israeli people that stem from the choice made four generations ago to create a renewed nation in the Land of Israel with Hebrew as their national language. It is a study in the politics, linguistics and sociology of language, exploring the relationship of the Israelis with the Jewish Diaspora as well as their fellow non-Jewish citizens, the largely bilingual Arabic and Hebrew-speaking Arab population.

The war against jihadism has been chronically misunderstood because of our failure to acknowledge the religious motives of Muslim jihadists. This failure began in 1979 with the Iranian revolution. Trapped in our Western secularist paradigms, we interpreted the uprising against the Shah as an anti-colonial revolt against a “brutal” autocrat propped up by the West for its own exploitative economic and geostrategic purposes. The aim of the revolution, the argument went, was to create a government more sympathetic to national sovereignty and Western pluralistic government. However, it soon became clear with the political triumph of the Ayatollah Khomeini that the revolution was in the main a religious one, inspired in part by anger at the Shah’s secularization, modernization, and liberalization policies. As Khomeini said in 1962, the Shah’s regime was “fundamentally opposed to Islam itself and the existence of a religious class.”

Despite that lesson, the rise of al Qaeda in the 90s was also explained as anything and everything other than what it was and still is–– a movement with deep religious roots. Under administrations of both parties, the mantra of our leaders has been “nothing to do with Islam.” We created various euphemisms like “Islamism,” “Radical Islam,” “Islamic extremists,” or “Islamofascism,” to explain an ideology that is firmly rooted in traditional Islamic theology and historical practice. We were anxiously assured that Islam was a “religion of peace,” its adherents tolerant and ecumenical. Popular figures like Osama bin Laden were “heretics” who had “highjacked” this wonderful faith, distorting its doctrines to serve their evil lust for power. We looked upon them as “beards from the fringe,” malignant cranks like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, or David Koresh.

This fundamental error continues today, as Muslim violence and anti-Semitism are explained by every factor instead of the essential one––the theology, jurisprudence, and history of Islam.

When one asks for evidence for this detachment of Muslim violence from the tenets of Islam, the best most apologists can do is produce a Westernized nominal Muslim, a propagandist like Tariq Ramadan, or a left-wing academic who reflexively considers any enemy of the colonialist, imperialist, capitalist West to be a friend of the left. Jihad is not, they assure us, the theological imperative to “fight all men until they say there is no god but Allah,” as Mohammed himself commanded. Jihad is merely a form of self-improvement and community service. “Allahu Akbar” is not the traditional Muslim battle cry, but merely a way of saying “Thank God.” Revered Muslim scholars like the Ayatollah Khomeini––educated in Qom, the “Oxford and Harvard of Iranian Shi’ism,” as Barry Rubin put it, and honored as a “grand sign of Allah” for his theological knowledge––was simply wrong when he said, “Islam says: Kill all the unbelievers just as they would kill you,” and “Islam is a religion of blood for the infidels.”

Sci-Fi Author Jerry Pournelle recently re-published a sixth grade reader from 1914. In his latest FIREWALL, Bill Whittle explains how full comprehension of a single paragraph from that hundred-year-old elementary school textbook eludes virtually all of today’s college graduates; shows why it is such a sin, and reveals the Progressive Struggle for Stupidity in all of its undeniable venality.

AMERICAN EDUCATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR STUPIDITY

Hi everybody. I’m Bill Whittle and this is the Firewall.

Science fiction writer Jerry Pournelle has republished, with his additional commentary, a completely forgotten – but far from forgettable – book called Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong.

Literature Reader, Sixth Year, by Leroy E. Armstrong is not a novel or a scientific treatise or a book or Mr. Armstrong’s poetry. It’s a textbook – a California textbook: a collection of written tales and their analyses, the basics of literature, story structure and all the rest: that’s it and that’s all.

On a whim, I looked it up on Amazon, and on another whim, I clicked on a random link, and scanned the first paragraph I laid eyes on, which read:

Then Jason lighted the pile, and burnt the carcass of the bull; and they went to their ship and sailed eastward, like men who have a work to do. Three thousand years and more they sailed away, into the unknown Eastern seas; and great nations have come and gone since then, and many a storm has swept the earth; and many a mighty armament, to which Argo would be but one small boat; English and French, Turkish and Russian, have sailed those waters since; yet the fame of that small Argo lives forever, and her name is a proverb among men.

This is what sixth graders were reading one hundred years ago, in 1914, but if a college kid today graduated with a full and complete understanding of that one single paragraph they would be better educated than they are after a quarter-million dollars or so of student debt.

http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/frontpagemag-com/confronting-the-muslim-brotherhood-in-the-american-heartland-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang was joined by Dr. Mark Christian, the President and Executive Director of the Global Faith Institute. He is the son and nephew of high ranking leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in his home country of Egypt. After his conversion from Islam to Christianity, Dr. Christian dedicated his life and work to the proposition that “the first victims of Islam are the Muslim themselves.”

Dr. Christian joined the show to discuss Confronting the Muslim Brotherhood in the American Heartland, explaining Global Faith’s battle to stop Muslim Brotherhood front groups’ malicious plans within the “Tri-Faith Initiative” in Omaha, Nebraska. He also shared his conversion from Islam to Christianity, the dangers he has faced for doing so, his views on ISIS’s Islamic inspirations, and much more:

As the media-sanctioned rioting, bloodshed and looting continue in Ferguson, Missouri, evidence is emerging that police shooting victim Michael Brown wasn’t the upstanding citizen that many on the Left have claimed him to be.

All of this is happening as mobs have been attacking cops with Molotov cocktails and destroying community infrastructure. Some blacks in the region are reportedly randomly assaulting non-blacks as collective payback for what happened to Brown. Looting and property destruction are rampant. Scores of people have been arrested. Aircraft were ordered to fly at least 3,000 feet over Ferguson airspace after police said their helicopters were fired on from the ground.

A curfew was imposed, and the state’s feckless Democratic governor, Jay Nixon, stripped local police of some of their responsibilities, replacing them with state highway patrolmen. This, predictably, led to more looting of stores and all the things that usually happen when an angry violent mob is rewarded for its bad behavior.

Through it all, the Left is out in force in Ferguson, trying to make a bad situation worse. The criminal elements of the city have been emboldened by martyrized accounts of Brown, as they carry out a campaign of destruction against the civil order under the banner of “no justice, no peace.”

As happened in the Trayvon Martin case two years ago, the hulking, nearly 300-lbs. Brown has been portrayed as an innocent doe-eyed angel unfairly cut down by evil police as a promising future awaited him. In Brown’s case, he was said to be just days away from heading off to college.

But as one blogger observed, in this age of ubiquitous social media, the 18-year-old African-American man left behind,

“a cache of rap songs … that contain pretty much what you’d expect out of modern rap – lots of boasting about murdering, taking drugs, drinking, and sex with hos.”

In one of them labeled “Free$tyle Big’Mike,” one performer raps, “My favorite part’s when they bodies hit the ground. I soak ‘em up like I’m wringin’ out a sponge.”

Ferguson happens a few times every month. More often in the summer when tempers are hot and crowds of bored men and women fill the streets looking for something to do. Teenagers ransack stores. Small cities stretch their budgets in a bad economy to put as many cops as they can on the street.

And then somewhere between the open fire hydrants, the stores that do most of their business in EBT cards and lottery tickets, the check cashing places and furniture rental outlets, something happens.

And it happens a lot more often than you think.

A crowd gathers. Fists rise in the air. The police deploy. The EBT stores, check cashing places and furniture rental outlets roll down their shutters. A tense hour passes before the scene fades away leaving behind a crude graffiti scrawl of a wannabe gangsta and his favorite pit bull, a few faded color photos and some purple candles guttering in the night underneath his portrait.

Not the full scale rioting, looting and curfews. That’s the sort of thing that doesn’t happen on its own.

It has to be community organized into being.

Fergusons usually happen locally, but when it’s convenient then the looting and car stomping go national. The Trayvon Martin case happened in an election year. So did the Michael Brown case.

Maybe we can look forward to another Ferguson in 2016 and every two years after that.

There’s no need to belabor how Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson profit from the racism industry. Even the crowds booing them in Ferguson know that by now. Both men became irrelevant dinosaurs in 2008.

Obama’s election marginalized Jesse and Al. Jesse Jackson was shoved aside, muttering something about cutting off a part of Obama’s anatomy on FOX News. Sharpton became Obama’s messenger boy to the black community while scoring a teleprompter reading gig on a liberal cable news network.

“Whom the gods destroy, they first make mad.”
– Euripides, 5th Century B.C. Greek tragedian
No, we are not all descending into madness. Just our political leaders, our news media, our schools, and assorted loose human cannons who are plumbing the depths of insanity and institutional irrationality to see when their and our craniums crack. And they seem to want the rest of us to go berserk and take up residence with them in their loony bin where we can all tiptoe through the tulips and have huggy-bear sessions with our killers. They are mad, and they wish to make us mad. Insanity is the new norm.
The America Heritage Medical Dictionary defines insanity (or madness) as:
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed.
In a sane world, men would not, for example, protest the right of Israel or any other sovereign nation to defend itself against attacks by its neighbors or by terrorist groups like Hamas. Instead, they would urge the Israeli government to wipe out its enemies and uproot them, or at least spray Hamas with a root-killing chemical (shall we call it “DDT” – Deter Deranged Terrorism?) and leave their former subjects and human shields to fend for themselves.
Another mark of madness is the spectacle of Jews opposing Israel’s existence and blaming Jews for anti-Semitism, and even accusing them of racism. Daniel Greenfield, in his August 8th FrontPage article, “J Street Accuses Jews of Racism, Blames Jews for Anti-Semitism,” noted another form of madness:
After Hamas violated yet another ceasefire, anti-Israel group J Street stepped up to do what it does best. Attack Jews and Israel.
Jeremy Ben Ami [a spokesman for J Street] then launched into a pitch for letting Hamas smuggle as many weapons as it wants “Occupation, Blockade, Frustration, etc…), accused Israel of racism, warned Israel to “heed to the advice of its friends in the White House and the State Department and at a minimum should show them the respect that the country’s closest ally deserves.”
Then Jeremy Ben Ami claimed that the conflict was promoting anti-Semitism and ranted about “growth and extent of hatred of the other, intolerance and outright racism in our own Jewish community.”

Despite the conviction in Israel that its military actions against Hamas in Gaza are justified, the notion that this third Gaza war in the past six years has been a consequence of the failure to conclude a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority is widely accepted across the globe.

For Palestinians, the argument continues, there is no choice but resistance and confrontation since diplomacy and non-violence have not ended the occupation. For that reason, many Palestinians claim that Hamas is fighting not simply to lift the blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip but also to give them their freedom.

The claim resonates broadly with the international community. Even as they recognize Israel’s right to defend its citizens, many political heads of state also emphasize that the Jewish state must adopt policies that offer Palestinians hope for the future.

Let us stipulate that the Oslo peace process has failed to fulfill the expectations of the Palestinians for a state with Jerusalem as its capital and recognition of what has been adopted as the nation’s sacred right of return. But has the peace process been totally without positive consequences for Palestinians who live on the West Bank?

Palestinian institutions operate in cities; schools, colleges, and universities provide education for the population, security forces guarantee some measure of stability widening the ambit for economic growth.

All of this is less than ideal, but is it not better than the alternative circumstances in Gaza where the population has been held hostage to the political Islamist agenda of Hamas and its promise of liberation through perpetual war against Israel?

For the question is not whether resistance hurts Israel – it does – or whether constant confrontation reminds the world of what is widely regarded as an illegal occupation of Palestinian lands, but rather whether negotiations, in the context of a commitment to peaceful co-existence can produce more benefits for more Palestinians than war, always presented as the only alternative.

“Just this past year, J Street leadership cried foul when they were not voted into the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. After reading the most recent statements made by J Street during Operation Protective Edge, it has been made very clear to me that once you blame the Jews for anti-Semitism, you have really simply gone beyond the pale.So I ask: Really J Street? Why do you really supposedly support the existence of a State of Israel? What’s the point?”

Ok, its official, my mind has been blown.

If you’ve read my other essays, it will not be a shock to you that I’ve never agreed with J Street’s supposed “Pro-Israel and Pro-Peace” mission. However, one point made by J Street Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami in his most recent “Word on the Street: Difficult Questions and Hard Truths” has taken me over the edge.

In making his main points, Ben-Ami states “Failure to solve this conflict is eating away at support for Israel around the world, damaging the country’s legitimacy and, in some cases, fanning growing flames of anti-Semitism.”

Wait, what?

Did he just insinuate that the horrible, quickly increasing anti-Semitism all over the world, INCLUDING now the United States, is due to Israel’s inability to “solve the conflict?” Only a week ago, Rabbi Joseph Raksin (Z’L) was brutally murdered on his way to Shabbat morning services. While at the moment this is not being investigated as a hate crime, with violent anti-Semitism swiftly increasing around the world and specifically anti-Semitic incidents occurring in this neighborhood in Miami, it’s difficult not to see the connection. News reports from this past Shabbat in Miami show a community in a state of terror, with police escorts supervising observant Jews walking to the synagogue and Jewish parents scared to let their children play outside. It’s hard to believe that this is really happening in the United States in the year 2014.

In the subsequently published J Street position paper “Aim for Conflict Resolution, Not Just a Ceasefire” there is NO mention made of concern for the increase of global anti-Semitism. There is, however, significant concern and attention given to the “rise in intolerance and racism among the Jewish community” as it states “From the revenge killing of Muhammed Abu Khdeir to the very public anti-Arab pronouncements by members of the Knesset and by ordinary citizens, voices of hatred and racism have emerged and actions have occurred that run counter to the most basic of Jewish values…The growing lack of tolerance for political dissent and for opposing viewpoints should be of grave concern to Jewish leaders in the United States and in Israel. Racism and intolerance should have no place in our community.”