A disaster. The Netanyahu government and the Peace-process - RAL
The first Yohrzeit of murdered prime minister Yitzhak Rabin z"l and the first half year of the government Netanyahu: time to evaluate. In less than half a year the Netanyahu administration succeeded to break down what had been built up with so much effort in the three yeas of Rabin's government: the carefull beginning of peace with the Palestinians and the vague contours of a new and different kind of Middle East.
In this article, RAL argues that the extremists on both sides, the Hamas and the Yigal Amirs, have won the elections. They wanted to stop the peaceprocess and they have succeeded, by installing fear in the Israeli population.
This article can be found in Levend Joods Geloof # 2 1996
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Pluralism after half a year of Netanyahu
The coalition government of Benjamin Netanyahu has a strong ultra-orthodox wing. Already now the consequenses are being felt. The government is planning on undoing Supreme Court decisions that are favourable to the non-orthodox jewish denominations in Israel. The attack on non-orthodox conversions has already begun. The Israel Religious Action Centre is lobbying in the Knesseth, in particular the new parties (Immigrants'Party and Third Way Party) to convince them of the need to support the Reform Movement as well as to prevent the undermining of the Supreme Court.
This article can be found in Levend Joods Geloof # 2 1996
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The Story of the Seven Gates - Ineke van Mourik
Visible bodies, invisible bodies and lost souls
This is the text of a lecture at the Amsterdam Summer University 'The Body in Judaism' (29 juli-2 augustus
1996), organised by the Jewish Historical Museum of Amsterdam.
We all have a body so we are supposed to know what it is and what it means to have one, but when we talk
or read about it, it seems as if we came from different planets. Even within monotheistic religions that have as
a ruler the One and Only God, we find contradictory ideas stemming from different interpretations of His
words. The body can be seen as a vessel of good and evil, or as a Temple; it can be seen as a prison, or as a
guesthouse of the soul; as a source of esthetic and sensual delight, or as a despicable bag of flesh; as
something that needs to be punished and starved, to neglect and hide, or as something to admire, to adorn
and to take care of. It can be seen as a wild animal that needs to be tamed, or it can be perceived as a
passive erotic object. Our bodies can be thought of as the essence of our individuality or, on the contrary, not
at all our most essential part. They can be viewed as material things that we may manipulate, dissect and
control, or as spiritual gateways.
To confound our discussions further, these ideas are never adhered to by all people sharing one
framework of religious or ideological thought. Moreover, in their elaboration and practical consequences these
views on the body are usually handled differently when applied to the bodies of women or those of men, the
bodies of people from different ethnic groups, religions, cultures or nationalities, or people with sexual
preferences varying from the heterosexual one.
I should like to take you on a short trip through the inner city of Amsterdam. For what could be a better way of
talking about the body then inviting you for an imaginary walk? When one is walking, one has to use one's
legs, one's eyes, one's touch and smell, one's mind and heart, in order to move through the streets and to
absorb everything that one experiences.
There is one more reason for my choosing the city, in our case Amsterdam, as a metaphor. It is not a
new thought to consider the city and its inhabitants as a kind of body. Therefore, a stroll through the city might
teach us something about the subject of this conference: the body in Judaism in particular, and the body in
Western culture in general.
Let me, first of all, introduce your guide to you. She is a woman in her forties, born a roman-catholic, but
already from an early age a disbeliever. Her feminism and her homosexual lifestyle made her critical of anti-
body, anti-woman and homophobic tendencies in western Christian culture and made her look for better ideas
elsewhere. After marrying a female husband and housewife of Jewish descent, she became strongly
'angejiddelt'.
I, as your guide this morning, will give you my subjective views on the city of Amsterdam, while
carrying my backpack containing a hodgepodge of influences of which the Jewish tradition and culture, at
least here in The Netherlands, has alas become the least visible one for most non-Jewish people.
One of the signs of a renewed visibility has been the recent appearance of a book by young, Dutch
Jews titled: Macho's and Princesses, Eros and the Jews.
Talking about the body is also talking about sexuality, and as W.C. Fields has said: 'Some things are
better than sex, some are worse, but there is nothing exactly like it.' So I will briefly talk about this book,
before we make our promised tour.
I am, indeed, extremely happy that the book Macho's and Princesses solves a couple of what are, for
outsiders, Jewish mysteries, so that I shall not be obliged to go into intimate details of my mixed marriage. My
husband and wife has, you see - maybe very Jewishly - threatened to divorce me if I would make too personal
a statement. But, as I said, everything you always wanted to know about Jews and sexuality but didn_t dare
to ask, has been answered in the book I just mentioned.
Read the story of stand-up comedian Raoul Heertje, who reveals in a letter to non-Jews the most
hidden secrets of Jewish sexuality, the Jewish nipple, Jewish breasts, the Jewish penis and Jewish semen. In
other stories you find the ultimate truths about Jewish men: they are either clumsy and frustrated or sexually
uncommonly potent. And about Jewish women: they are totally a-sexual Jewish princesses, or they are
damned good in bed.
In fact, all my prejudices got confirmed and also those I have towards the goyim, the non-Jews,
especially goyish women, the 'shikses': they are either frustrated bitches, or wild sexual animals.
After this brief detour, let us, according to good Jewish oral tradition, start our city trip with a
preliminary stop at one of the rare kosher restaurants on the outskirts of Amsterdam, next to the far end of the
Vondelpark. On the wall of this restaurant there is a mural. It shows all kinds of historical events and locations
in Israel. Among them, we see a fragment of the Kotel, the Western Temple Wall or, in Christian language,
the 'Wailing Wall'. On this painting, quite contrary to reality, we don_t see any people praying at the Wall.
Also, the division of the Wall, two third for men, one third for women, remains invisible.
I still remember a conflict at the Wall that happened a couple of years ago and that hasn't been solved
yet. One day, the women at the Kotel began to pray loudly. The men, at the other side of the fence,
immediately started yelling hysterically and threw chairs at the women. Kol isha, a woman's voice, is
considered by male ultra-orthodox Jews to lead to yetzer ha-ra, the evil inclination. Women's voices are said
to seduce men and to distract them from their sacred obligations such as prayer. They therefore may not be
heard during prayer, they must be forbidden.
But let us dwell no longer in this cosy restaurant where Hebrew religious music is heard in the
background, but hit the road and dedicate ourselves to our walk. Or, like my husband would say: and now
tacheles.
The First Gate: The Gate of the Garden of Eden
The first gate through which we enter the city is the gate that gives entrance to the Vondelpark. It is a beautiful
day, one of the first days of spring after a cold and severe winter. Older people, huddled in their coats,
sunbathe themselves on the benches. Audacious youngsters undress their bodies as much as possible and
stretch themselves out on the damp grass. Others make music, do Tai-Chi, perform acrobatics, play soccer,
or are taken out by their dogs. On the paved roads skaters enjoy the movement of their bodies. One can hear
the laughter of children in the playground. Lovers of all sexes, colours and preferences, touch and kiss each
other.
I try to picture the park as it was seventy years, or even only thirty years ago. Then there was also joy
and laughter and all the pleasures of being outside, but there was much less physical expression except by
the children. In those times, grown-ups behaved and dressed in a way that was more a manifestation of
decency and shame, of hiding their bodies, than of joyfully showing and using them. Thus the body has, at
least as seen from the outside, been liberated from its former strait-jacket. However, from time to time one
can still see reminders of the past walking by in the Vondelpark: a group of Chassidim in their dark
seventeenth-century clothes; Islamic women in their djelleba's and with head-covering.
Now, what has happened in our western culture that has brought about these changes? Have we
really returned to the Garden of Eden? Have we indeed found back our child-like innocence and thus the
unhemmed enjoyment of our bodies? Have we finally cast off our western, Christian tradition of denial and
contempt of the body?But what about those Chassidim? Don't Jews have a more positive attitude towards
the body? Isn't that what Judaic tradition tells us? And if that is true, why then have books been written like
Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint or Erica Jong's Fear of Flying? What is or was so revolutionary about the
masturbation with a kosher liver by Roth's hero, or about a zipless fuck, as described by the other American
Jewish author, Erica Jong?
But let us first continue our walk.
The Second Gate: The Gate of Consumer's Delight
At the other end of the Vondelpark we enter, through the second gate, a part of the city that consists of
sidewalk-cafe's, bars, disco's, coffeeshops that sell soft drugs, numerous restaurants and an abundance of
shops and department stores.
The people in this part of the city amuse themselves with drinking, smoking, eating, dancing and most
of all shopping. Day after day they carry, with unflagging zeal, their bulging plastic shopping bags home, in
order to stuff their contents into their already cramped houses and refrigerators, or hang them around their
bodies. This must be for them a perpetual feast of oral joy and body-adornment.
In this part of the city we also find the paradise of anal joy. Here is the territory of male homosexuals:
streets lined with bars of all kinds, with sauna-baths, leatherbars and darkrooms. A paradise of weird outfits,
mutual masturbation and bodily contacts that seem to defy Aids.
No, we are not entering one of those leatherbars or the Roxy, a decadent disco where you get a
straight look into hell, although I know that you are very curious. This will be a decent day-trip and we will now
climb the stairs of the distinguished and expensive department-store Metz where, in the tearoom at the top,
we can have, for free, a view of the city behind the third gate.
The Third Gate: The Gate of the Rational Mind
One has to be outside the body of the city or a little bit above it, in order to discern its protruding limbs: its
banks and office-buildings, its universities, hospitals and sport-stadium, its prisons and, on taking a closer
look, its churches.
The steeples of the churches that once dominated the city skyline have by now been surpassed by
more secular buildings. All these worldly buildings have one thing in common that stands in sharp contrast to
the churches: they have sacrificed the soul in favour of the body. They put the main emphasis on the physical
parts of the body, like hospitals, or on physical achievements, like sport-palaces, or they favour the rational
mind and the material brain, like universities, industries and businesses. The churches, on the other hand,
always had a tendency to sacrify the body - symbolized by the crucified body of Jesus (the most succesful
icon of the last two thousand years) - in favour of the soul.
On entering the secular buildings, one notices at once that they are very much alive, crowded with
people who work there, who are clients or patients, public or visitors. But whenever one should want to enter
a church now, it is usually closed, or it has been transformed into a cultural center, a gallery or a disco. If the
latter has not happened yet, one sees in the churches at the best a handful of mostly elderly people who are
saying their prayers.
I wonder whether the sacrifice of the soul was a necessary step in the liberation of the body and
whether there are any gates in the city that can show us a more sophisticated approach to it. But let us first
descend from our tearoom and enter the fourth gate.
The Fourth Gate: The Gate of the Red Lights
It is only a tiny step from the world of huge stores and broad streets to the oldest part of the city, with its
narrow streets, its dark, smelling alleys, its old, crooked houses with their cosy red lights, and their inviting
women of all ages under forty, of all skin colours and from different countries. Here men of all skin colours mix
intimately with the bodies of women of all skin colours. If there is one part of the city where the ideal of a multi-
racial and multi-cultural society has been realized, then it is here. For almost all tourists and for many
inhabitants this is the most romantic spot in town. It is the number one site to visit.
I know it is hard to admit, but the gate through which we entered this section of the town could as well
be called 'The Gate of Slavery', or 'The Gate to the Garbage Dump'. That is, because everything you see here
is false. The mixing of races has nothing in common with real respect for people from other countries and
cultures. The women kept here are mostly the drugged slaves of men who have lured them into the trap of a
'nice job' in a rich western country.
The sexual intercourse practiced behind the red lights is not a lustful meeting of two bodies, but
mostly paid 'garbage can sex', a mechanical dumping of semen into a vessel called woman. The seemingly
cosy rooms are a facade to hide the innumerable sad stories of exploitation, violence and misogyny. If there is
one part of the city where the bodies of women are at the same time visible and invisible, then it is here.
Is this the ultimate outcome of a Christian culture that not only denied and loathed the body, but
above all despised women's bodies? Of a culture that, for centuries, has been dividing women in virgins,
whores and housewives? On the other hand, all cultures - even Jewish culture with its life- and body-affirming
values - have known and still have prostitution.
As a guide, I feel I am on the wrong track now. It is not essential whether there are or are not
prostitutes in any given culture. The relevant question, the one that Freud already asked, is: 'Was will das
Weib?' What does a woman want?
Freud asked his famous question more as a rhetoric phrase, a confirmation of women's
mysteriousness, than as a question directed to women themselves. It wasn't Freud's intention to really get
an answer.
Well, maybe some women want to be prostitutes, and others want to be virgins or housewives, but
there ought to be more opportunities for women than either spending your life in a monastery or in a brothel or
in a patriarchal household.
It is a fact that most existing cultures today are still patriarchal. The identity of women in these
cultures is defined in relation to men. Women in general do not own their own bodies. This disembodied state
is connected with their voicelessness. As long as they do not talk, do not give words to their own experiences,
they not only remain mysterious but they are also a mystery to themselves.
Since the late sixties women all over the world have begun to give voice to their own ideals, feelings
and experiences. They especially try to describe their attitude towards their own female bodies. The
redefinition is in progress of a body that has always been colonized by patriarchal cultures and which,
moreover, was only concerned with its heterosexual use.
Now as soon as women raise their voices they become dangerous, because they thereby attacking
the old male order. That is what happened at the Kotel in Jerusalem. The fear of the men is not the fear of
yetzer ha-ra, of sexual temptation, but a fear that goes much deeper. It is the age-old fear of autonomous
women who start to express, in their own voices, their own ideas about themselves. It is the fear of the final
collapse of the patriarchal social order in which men are dependent on the position they ascribe to women. In
this respect, female liberation is one of the most revolutionary movements of this century.
These thoughts and remarks run through my mind as I stand in a part of the city that once housed
many monasteries and churches. You all know, of course, that Amsterdam has for centuries been a city of
merchants and ministers. Religion and trade have always been perfect partners as long as they lived apart
together.
Well, at least in former times the soul was not completely lost. But all that remains here now, is trade
and trade only: trade in women, trade in sex, trade in drugs. It surely is a romantic part of the city that we have
just visited. But it surely is also time for a little something to chase away the sadness and the anger that it
evokes.
Maybe I took you on the wrong tour. Maybe I should have gone with you to the movies, to the theater,
to a café with stand-up comedians, to the zoo, to some famous shuls or to an interesting church or museum: to
all those nice places in the city that are like jewels on a body. But my task was to show you the body itself. So
let us continue to the heart of the city, the fifth gate.
The Fifth Gate: The Destroyed Gate
There is no gate. We just enter this part of the city. Here, in the very center there are many new buildings,
new streets, a modern operahouse and the new city-hall. Something has happened here, this part of town
looks uprooted, as if a bombardment had blown away all the older buildings and everything else there ever
was.
As you may know, it was not a bombardment, it was city-policy by the city magistrates, shortly after
the Second World War. After the destruction of almost all Jews of Amsterdam, after the cold-blooded murder
of six million European Jews, the annihilation of their bodies and their culture, local authorities, like a surgeon,
cut away that part of the city that once was the heart of Jewish life.
The Hebrew word for heart is 'lev' or 'levav'. It refers not only to the physical heart but also to the inner
life, both emotional and intellectual. Whenever the word lev (or levav) is used in Tenach, the Hebrew Bible, no
sharp distinction is made between mind (or soul) and body. In Judaism there is always a body-awareness that
is closely connected to a positive attitude towards conscious life on earth. People are God's co-workers on
this earth, meant to complete the creation, to contribute to tikkun olam. That task makes their physical
existence essential and something to honour.
In Christianity, asceticism and body-denial will surely bring you in heaven. But in Judaism one cannot
enter heaven if one didn't enjoy the good things of life. It is difficult to understand that the One and Only God
made two heavens, or perhaps more, but it must be a part of the divine plan.
There is a scar in this city, there where the Jewish heart has been destroyed. The mere handful of Jews who
returned to Amsterdam after the times of the Shoah, and their offspring, are constantly aware of it, whereas
fifty years after our liberation from the Germans most inhabitants don't even feel the itching of the scar.
There are still some reminders of a living past here, like the old synagogues that are now used as the
Jewish Historical Museum. One unusually large, Sephardic synagogue is still in use a few times a year, but by
an extremely small community. Most present-day Jews don't live here anymore. They have moved to the
very outskirts of Amsterdam and to the nearby town of Amstelveen.
I do not want to imply that this destroyed neighbourhood was a romantic place before the war. It
certainly was not a kind of sthetl with fiddlers on the roof, with Tevye the Dairyman telling funny stories and
everywhere the smell of chickensoup. The Jewish quarter was a place of poverty, of bad health and very poor
housing. But the physical destruction of its inhabitants, the annihilation of its culture and the final tearing down
of its neighbourhood has made this part of the city into a place of shame and neglect, a monument of not
taking care. Its empty lots are a reminder of all the collaborators who handed over the bodies, hearts and
souls of their Jewish fellow-citizens to the anti-semitic occupiers. By doing so they have sold their own hearts
and souls to a perverse ideology.
It is right on this spot that Mokum, as Amsterdam is called in Yiddish parlance, has died and with it
her neshomme, her heart.
Let us sit down for a moment in the café of the Jewish Historical Museum and order some kosher cheesecake
and coffee. After our brief tour, I will make a few more remarks and give you here my personal final
conclusions.
In the beginning there was the park, the joy and laughter behind the 'Gate of the Garden of Eden' and
at the end the silence of the empty space and its 'Destroyed Gate'. In between we have seen the 'Gate of
Consumer's Delight', the 'Gate of the Rational Mind' and the 'Gate of the Red Lights'.
Well, surely this is not a city, like Jerusalem, that got its blueprint from a heavenly counterpart.
However, even Amsterdam has its own intangible city. Above the city there is emerging:
The Sixth Gate: The Gate of the Digital City of Amsterdam
Here people are communicating in a disembodied way, by electronic means. In this case - exactly the
opposite from Jerusalem - the 'heavenly city' has as its origin the physical one below.
A city of the future, one that constantly oscillates between two extremes, is coming into being. Its
roots are in the hedonistic, materialistic and exploitative use of the body and its crown is the disembodied
world of bits and bytes.
One has to look very carefully to find an undercurrent in this city of a critical appreciation of the body and of a
more spiritually informed bodily awareness. One can find bits and pieces of it in the so-called 'alternative'
cultures of feminists, gay people, artists and newcomers in this land. One can also find it among progressive,
liberal Jewish thinkers who try to integrate modern ideas with the Judaic tradition. The Jewish tradition,
besides being one of the roots of Christianity, is important as an antidote to western values that are tainted by
the Christian mentality of body-denial and misogyny.
In certain periods of history Judaism used to be more women-friendly than other religions; body and
soul used to be both positively perceived, as intertwined aspects of the whole human being. On the other
hand, several of its ideas -notably on the subjects of sexuality and gender -are by now outdated, they also
have become obsolete.
It is here that Philip Roth and Erica Jong come into the picture. Their books were a violent attack on
existing values. They were an effort to liberate sexuality out of the confinement of marriage, a system of
discriminatory regulations and of patriarchal definitions.
But there is more to the job than smashing a brick wall. The Western body is in bad shape. It has
crucified itself to a very limited definition of the body. Something essential is missing. There is a hole in it
through which the heart and soul have disappeared, as symbolized in this city by the physical destruction of
Amsterdam Jewry and its quarter.
By digging out the 'Destroyed Gate' and what lay behind it, we can finally enter:
The Seventh Gate, the Golden Gate
The body is itself the 'Golden Gate', because it is the memory-house of all the good and bad experiences we
ever had and at the same time the treasurehouse of knowledge, understanding and wisdom. Through it we
can shape our lives in this and in the future world. It is up to us to make use of all its possibilities, both the
physical and the spiritual, in undivided cooperation and concord.
Ineke van Mourik (Copyright)
Ineke van Mourik (1949) publishes essays, short stories and poetry in several literary journals (Lover, Opzij,
Lust & Gratie). She was editor of Lust & Gratie for thirteen years. In 1988 her novel Tropenritme ('Rythm of
the Tropics) was published by In de Knipscheer, Amsterdam. She is currently working on a new novel, which
will be published in 1997.
This article can be found in Levend Joods Geloof # 2 1996
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God and His children - Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp
This article is an impression of Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp's (who himself has been a hidden child) visit to the Conference of Hidden Children, Child Survivors and Survivors' Children which took place in Teaneck, New Jersey from 11 to 13 October.
'When it snows, I panic; snow meant staying inside, because footprints could give you away.'
I will wait till my son will ask me questions, until then I will keep my mouth shut. Once he came back from school with questions. They had talked about the Holocaust. I talked to him for ten minutes, more I couldn't handle. When the time was up, I broke down and cried. I hated it, all these years I had been so strong.'
Why did you mind so much?'
'I didn't want him to consider me a weak mother, an instable person.'
'Maybe crying was your strength at that moment.'
She got up to get herself some water, she was shaking all over.
'Do we feel guilty because we survived and the others didn't?' the counselor asked. Most of us nodded 'yes'.
This article can be found in Levend Joods Geloof # 2 1996
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Cyberspace: Utopists versus Doom-prophets - Manja Ressler
Most people agree that the Internet is a usefull tool. However, about the long-term consequences of this new medium the opinions differ widely.
One one side there are the Internet Utopists, who believe this medium will change the world into one big global village, and a democratic one at that. They reason that because in principle everyone has access to all information on the 'Net, it will make the world more democratic. On the other side of the spectre one finds the Internet doom-prophets, who predict the end of literature and all written forms of culture.
Both groups are mistaken. They confuse medium and contents. Both groups overestimate the power of the new media. Internet is nothing more and nothing less than the combined possibilities of computer and telephone.
As it is easier and more comfortable to read longer texts in printed form, it is very unlikely that the Internet will replace books and newspapers. The internet is an addition to our abilities to acquire information, not a replacement of other media.
There are three functions in which Internet has unique possibilities:
The first is that it is a universal, 24 hours a day accessible catalogue which enables us to find information on virtually any subject through search-machines.
The second is that it is a 24 hours a day accessible software-bank. Almost every producer of software provides free shareware versions of their products.
The third and very important function is that of a quick but not intrusive means of communication. Through e-mail, mailing-lists and newsgroups one can share within seconds information with likeminded people all over the world. For people who live in small Jewish communities (like in The Netherlands) this is an incredible possibility to break their relative isolation.
This article can be found in Levend Joods Geloof # 2 1996
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