Veteranscribe's Blog

My quest to understand the full history of anti-Semitism has led me to “The Origin of Satan,” a very fine book by Scripture scholar Elaine Pagels.  I would like to quote Dr. Pagels’ concluding remarks from that book below, at the end of this post. I think that they are worth remembering even today, as we Americans live through a time of distressing and deepening divisions in the political arena. We can and should do better. Yesterday’s lessons are applicable today.

But first, a brief recap. “Satan” was not always the prince of darkness, an outsider ruling an evil empire and tempting people to sell their souls.  If you recall the biblical story of Job, written about 550 B.C.E., he almost seemed like a buddy of God’s who challenged the Almighty to a wager – and lost. Other Old Testament writers talked about various evil spirits that arose among the chosen people and tempted them to do wrong. For them, “Satan” was an insider who led people astray.

Pagels explains how, later on, the Gospel writers introduced a we-they split within the Jewish community. The followers of Jesus, in the opinions of Mark (the first), then Matthew, Luke, and John, got it right. Those Jews – led by the traditionalist Pharisees – who did not follow him, got it wrong.  Eventually there came “demonizing.” Everybody who was against us was not only mistaken; they were doing the work of the devil.  “Satan” grew bigger, even more wicked, and became the ruler of an army of thousands of devils.

The Gospels re-wrote the story of the crucifixion, whitewashing Pontius Pilate to make him seem like a nice guy. Pilate was in fact a brutal bastard who sentenced Jesus to death for insurrection. But, intent on beating out the foe within their own community, early Christians made their Jewish political/doctrinal opponents the evil ones and the prime movers behind Jesus’ earthly demise.

Does that attitude, which leads to attacking and vilifying those who do not agree with your side on something, sound at least vaguely familiar in 2018? If not, it should.

The long story of discrimination against Jews took many tragic turns in the next two thousand years and culminated in Hitler’s Holocaust. It’s too long to chronicle here, but I submit that it all began with that we-they split, introduced 2000 years ago.

Mixing metaphors and dipping into pagan mythology here, I’ll suggest that early Christians opened a Pandora’s Box with their combative tactics; they unleashed a torrent of human miseries they even they could not have foreseen.

And their approach also ignored other messages of the man they followed.  That brings us to those concluding thoughts of Professor Pagels. She cites Matthew: “If you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

Another often-ignored message: “You have heard that it was said ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your father in heaven.’”

Not all of those who were Christians persisted in that demonizing of others. And that gives me, brought up Catholic and still with it, hope.

I would like to suggest that now, in 2018, we take our cues from them and follow their example, whether it’s in the voting booth, in our everyday dealing with others, and – perhaps most especially – when we use the technologies of our social media. Again, Professor Pagels:

“Many Christians, then, from the first century through Francis of Assisi in the thirteenth century to Martin Luther King Jr. in the twentieth, have believed that they stood on God’s side without demonizing their opponents. Their religious vision inspired them to oppose policies and powers they regarded as evil, often risking their well-being and their lives, while praying for the reconciliation – not the damnation – of those who opposed them.

“For the most part, however, Christians have taught – and acted upon – the belief that their enemies are evil and beyond redemption. Concluding this book, I hope that this research may illuminate for others, as it has for me, the struggle within Christian tradition between the profoundly human view that ‘otherness’ is evil and the words of Jesus that reconciliation is divine.”

Amen to that.

It was a cold and rainy evening in New York, back in 1859, and Daniel Decatur Emmet was feeling lousy.  The Ohio-born Emmet, an abolitionist and a songwriter for minstrel shows, was warming himself by the wood stove and wishing he were somewhere else – preferably someplace that was warm, like the states of the American South.

Legend has that his wife sympathetically suggested, “Well, why don’t you write a song about it?”

A good idea, especially because Emmett had recently been hired by a company named Bryant’s Minstrels, and he had to come up with a new song, a “walkaround” for the minstrel show, within a couple of days.

Emmet sat down and wrote, “I wish I was in the land of cotton…”

Bryant’s Minstrels premiered “Dixie” on April 4, 1959. It was the second-to-last song in the show, billed as a “plantation song and dance” and placed there because they didn’t think it was going to be good enough to serve as the show’s finale. They were wrong. It was an immediate smash hit, as soon became the standard closing number for the Bryan minstrel shows.

You know what happened. “Dixie” became the anthem and rallying song of the Confederacy. It was played at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis and by General Pickett before his disastrous charge at Gettysburg.

But the song also was a favorite of President Abraham Lincoln. It was played at many of his campaign rallies for the 1860 election.

Not all Southerners liked it because they knew of its Yankee origin. They inserted lyrics of their own to make it more martial, such as “In Dixie Land I’ll take my stand / To live and die in Dixie.”

In 1861, a Swiss-American Confederate propagandist named Henry Hotze wrote,

“It is marvellous with what wild-fire rapidity this tune “Dixie” has spread over the whole South. Considered as an intolerable nuisance when first the streets re-echoed it from the repertoire of wandering minstrels, it now bids fair to become the musical symbol of a new nationality, and we shall be fortunate if it does not impose its very name on our country.”

Emmet, the abolitionist, expressed regret for not having worked a little harder on the song’s original composition after he saw what a success it was. He also regretted that it became the Confederate Anthem. And he never made much money from it. Had he not sold it outright for $300 to Firth, Pond and Company in 1861, he could have lived a life of luxury on the royalties.

On April 10, 1865, one day after the surrender of General Robert E. Lee, Lincoln addressed a White House crowd:

“I propose now closing up by requesting you play a certain piece of music or a tune. I thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I ever heard … I had heard that our adversaries over the way had attempted to appropriate it. I insisted yesterday that we had fairly captured it … I presented the question to the Attorney-General, and he gave his opinion that it is our lawful prize … I ask the Band to give us a good turn upon it.”

This was one way in which Lincoln showed his willingness to be conciliatory to the South – to “bind up the nation’s wounds” – and allow formerly rebellious Americans to rejoin the Union.

So next time you visit a Waffle House, remember:

“There’s buckwheat cakes and Injun batter,

Makes you fat or a little fatter.

Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.”

And there you have it. A song that, nowadays, is seen as hateful, racist and discriminatory was written by a man who was committed to the abolition of slavery. It was also a favorite of the man who freed the slaves.

And now you know the rest of the story.

I usually order vinaigrette salad dressing when I go to a restaurant. I think I’ll go back to Greek, now that I know where the term “vinaigrette” came from.

Back in Victorian times – think the 75 years or so before the era of “Downton Abbey” – fashionable ladies carried their vinaigrette everywhere. Depicted here, the vinaigrette was a little perforated box filled with aromatic herbs and a vinegar-soaked sponge. It was handy for sniffing in times of “olfactory distress.” The ladies’ attendants also found the vinaigrette handy in reviving their mistress after she had swooned and fainted for one reason or another.

 
Apparently, there were plenty of occasions of olfactory distress back in those days. A great deal of the ladies’ fainting must have been caused by the relentless assaults of offensive aromas.

According to “The Royal Armpits” in the latest issue of Mental Floss magazine, our forerunners stank. To high heaven, they stank. The article’s subhead wryly points out,  “We should be thankful they don’t make history books scratch n’ sniff.”

 
So how bad was it? Hard to imagine, but it started ‘way back before the Victoria era. People in those days thought that baths caused disease by opening the pores and allowing diseases to invade the body – the exact opposite of what happens.

 

Queen Elizabeth I once stated that she “took a bath once a month, whether I need to or not.” Henry VIII had a foul-smelling, festering wound on his lower leg; you could get a whiff of it from three rooms away. The royal doctors made it worse by tying the wound open, thinking that the sore needed to run in order to heal. They even sprinkled gold pellets onto it, keeping it infected and putrefying.

 
Over in La Belle France, Louis XIV, “The Sun King,” had such bad breath that his mistress doused herself in perfume to ward off the stench. His predecessor, Louis XII, once declared, “I take after my father. I smell of armpits.”

 
Outside those royal rooms it was just as bad, if not worse. In cities, people would simply toss the products of their bathroom visits out into the street. In 1900, in New York, there were about 200,000 horses within the city. That means a daily output of five million pounds of poop, most of which was just swept to the curb.

 

Wealthy Londoners employed an army of “night soil men” to cart the stuff away. They disposed of it in dumps on the outskirts of the city. One such place – typical British humour – was named “Mount Pleasant.”

 
The invention of the flush toilet made it even worse. In the summer of 1858, so much human excrement clogged the Thames River that it became known as the year of the “Great Stink.”

 
There was also the smell of death. In London, butchers killed and disemboweled animals right in the streets. One greedy British pastor sold “burials” to his flock, but didn’t bury the bodies. He stashed 12,000 of them in the church cellar, and the fumes made churchgoers pass out.

 
Even in churches where the dead had been properly buried, the smell of the people was too much to take. Thomas Aquinas approved the use of incense because the faithful’s odors “can provoke disgust.” In Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, the people who bought the tickets in the cheap seats were known as “penny stinkers.”

 
Yes, I am very glad that our history books are not scratch ‘n sniff. And I have a suggestion for historians.

 
Let’s revise, once again, those notations that describe calendar eras. “BC” is now “BCE,” and “AD” is now “CE.” I say that we do away with them.

 
The most accurate way to depict former times is to start back at the beginning. Make the year that Adam and Eve left the Garden of Eden “Year One, B.O.”

Did you ever wonder why the Jewish kids always did the best in high school? Did you also ever wonder how the Jewish people have not only survived but prospered and contributed untold good to humanity, despite centuries of prejudice, ostracism, and persecution?

I always wondered, and I think I know now, after reading “Jews and Words” by Amos Oz and Fania Oz-Salberger. It’s a tight little 204-page essay by two people who describe themselves as “secular Jewish Israelis.” At the outset, the authors declare who they are and whence they come:

“First, we don’t believe in God. Second, Hebrew is our mother tongue. Third, our Jewish identity is not faith-powered…There is not a religious bone in our bodies.”

That’s pretty strong stuff to declare in a book that is, after all, about a people who are identified by their religion. I can’t imagine a Catholic author saying anything similar in a book about his confessional faith. But their ability to utter such words is, as it turns out, a logical conclusion to one of the big differences between Judaism and Catholicism – the infallible guy in Rome.

Near the end of the book, they write, “The Jews never had a pope…Because suppose we did have one, everyone would be slapping him (or her?) on the shoulder, saying that their grandfather knew his grandmother in Plonsk or Casablanca. Two degrees of separation at most. Familiarity, intimacy, contrariness – this is the stuff our communities are made of…Someone will always dissent. Our smoke will never be white. So much for a Jewish Pontiff.”

They earlier stated, “There is a Jewish theology of chutzpah. It resides in the subtle juncture of faith, argumentativeness, and self-targeting humor. It amounts to a uniquely irreverent reverence. Nothing is too holy to deserve the occasional send-off. You can laugh at the rabbi, at Moses, and the angels, and at the Almighty too.”

No, that’s not the way it was for someone who grew up Catholic. But maybe this Jewish approach to things is one of the reasons that I enjoyed being the only goy in attendance at monthly business networking meetings at a temple a few communities distant.

There’s another thing about the Jewish people that this book confirmed for me. I think I had it essentially right, but the book explains why. Before reading it, I had come to believe that one of the greatest sources of Jews’ strength and resiliency was that they remember who they are. I believed that their rituals, their traditions, their religious learning all undergird their collective identity.

The authors seem to agree. They write “Almost all societies have cherished the imperative of intergenerational storytelling. Almost all cultures have glorified the passing of the torch from old to young…But there is a Jewish twist to this universal imperative. …No ancient civilization…can offer a parallel comparable with Judaism’s insistence upon teaching the young and inculcating in them the traditions and customs of their people….Where other cultures left boys in their mothers’ care until they were old enough to pull a plough or wave a sword, Jews started acculturating their youngsters to the ancient narrative as soon as the tots could understand words, at two years old, and read them, often at the ripe age of three. Schooling, in short, began soon after weaning.”

The vessels for all that learning were the written texts. When the Jews went into the Babylonian captivity – and even before that – families understood that they must “act as relays of national memory embedded in written texts.”

So there it is – early literacy and facility with storytelling that gave the Jewish kids a big leg up on their contemporaries once the secular schooling began. No wonder they had so many honor students. And there too is the collective memory of who we are and how we got here. No wonder that the Jewish community has staying power.

That collective memory, those cultural touchstones and common points of reference, it seems to me, are fading away in modern America. It seems like there’s a lot of insubstantial fluff being taught today, mere stuff and nonsense. The Common Core, anyone?

We need a real common core, a cultural canon that every American must experience. A return to close familiarity with the Bible and all it offers would be a giant step back towards the right path.

And spare me, please, the knee-jerk, selective quoting of Tom Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists on the “wall of separation between church and state.” If you insist that the old plantation owner and slave driver’s private writings be the supreme law of the land, then bring in what he had to say about black people in “Notes on the State of Virginia.” You might have second thoughts.

But back to Amos and Fania’s thoughts on the matter. They point out that there are “more Bible-wise atheists in Israel than anywhere else.” And that, too, is an advantage.

They go on to say “Most Western nonbelievers today have not crossed paths with the Bible as a literary text. Unlike Homer, it is not widely taught in schools. Like Twitter, it is handed down in byte-sized chunks…The paradox is clear to an Israeli eye. Today, in many secular societies, religion itself obscures this exquisite work of art from view. The Constitution of the United States helps bar it from public schools, because it is mistaken for a (wholly, solely) religious text. This is a sad cultural loss.”

Can’t agree more with that one.

I’m glad I got this book. It also has a lot of things I never knew about the women of the Bible, about the resurrection of the Hebrew language, and about the delicious brand of humor that is distinctively Jewish.

If you like to read, if you love history, if you want to know why things are as they are, and if you enjoy learning “the rest of the story,” I think you’ll like it too.

(Cultural) History I Never Knew:
Scaramouche, Scaramouche. Who is That Guy?

Scaramuccia, also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a roguish clown character of the commedia dell’arte, which began in 16th-century Italy.

Scaramuccia (literally “skirmish”) wears a black mask and, sometimes, glasses. He entertains the audience by his “grimaces and affected language.” Another such minor character is Coviello, described by painter Salvator Rosa as, (like Scaramouche) “sly, adroit, supple, and conceited”. In Molière’s “The Bourgeois Gentleman,” Coviello disguises his master as a Turk and pretends to speak Turkish. Both Scaramouche and Coviello can be clever or stupid—as the actor sees fit to portray him.

Scaramouche is also one of the iconic characters in the Punch and Judy puppet shows, which have their roots in commedia dell’arte. In some scenarios, Scaramouche is the owner of The Dog, another stock character. During performances, Punch frequently strikes Scaramouche, causing his head to come off his shoulders. Because of this, the term “scaramouche” has become associated with a class of puppets with extendable necks.

The accompanying picture is that of a Royal Doulton mug of Scaramouche.

Many of us who are unfamiliar with Italian comedy or with Punch and Judy first heard of Scaramouche in Bohemian Rhapsody:

“I see a little silhouetto of a man,
Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango?
Thunderbolt and lightning,
Very, very frightening me.
(Galileo) Galileo.
(Galileo) Galileo,
Galileo Figaro
Magnifico.

“I’m just a poor boy, nobody loves me.
He’s just a poor boy from a poor family,
Spare him his life from this monstrosity.

“Easy come, easy go, will you let me go?
Bismillah! No, we will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go. (Let him go!)
Bismillah! We will not let you go. (Let me go!)”

The fandango is a lively couples’ dance usually accompanied by guitars, hand claps and castanets.

“Bismillah” is an Arabic word that means “in the name of God.” It is used at the head of almost every chapter in the Koran.

Hey – who said you couldn’t absorb some serious culture by watching “Wayne’s World?”

Justinian the Great was a mighty important guy in the history of the world.

The last Roman Emperor whose native tongue was Latin, he ruled the Byzantine Empire from 527 to 565. His armies reconquered much of the old Roman Empire that had been lost to invading hordes. He rewrote the body of law, the Corpus Juris Civilis, which is still the basis of civil law in many countries.

Justinian’s building program included the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which was the center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity for almost a thousand years. After the Ottomans took over, it became a mosque. Since 1935, it has been a museum.

Like most powerful politicians who tend to their image, Justinian had a historian who crafted fawning, flattering accounts of his exploits. Procopius of Caesarea wrote “The Wars of Justinian” and “The Buildings of Justinian.” Both were published during the emperor’s lifetime. The accomplishments chronicled therein were noteworthy.

However, the military and architectural feasts weren’t the emperor’s whole story. Procopius also wrote “The Secret History.” It contained the really interesting stuff, including unvarnished tales about the often scandalous private lives of Justinian and his seductive wife Theodora. The manuscript remained unpublished until 1623, when it was discovered in the Vatican Library.

The existence of The Secret History had been known earlier. It was mentioned in a 10th Century Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda. In that encyclopedia, the Secret History was referred to by the Greek word “Anekdota,” or in Latin as “Anecdota.” Both of these mean “unpublished writings.”

The earliest meaning of “anecdote” in English was thus “Secret, private, or hitherto unpublished narratives or details of history.” Only later did the word come to have its present meaning: “The narrative of a detached incident, or of a single event, told as being in itself interesting or striking.”

Justinian and Theodora, perhaps the Western World’s first Power Couple, didn’t have to worry about paparazzi, bloggers, or Facebook. Their naughty antics remained secret for nearly a thousand years. But the first anecdote, starring them, eventually found the light of day.

So, my friend, be careful what you write and what you post, lest you too have your own anecdotes become known to all the world.

We are now in the final month of 2012. As the old year winds down, it’s the “Holiday Season,” which began with our day of Thanksgiving on November 22 and ends on New Year’s Day, January 1. It is a happy and festive time for all of us.

For the rest of this old year, however, I am going to try very hard not to say “Happy Holidays.” Why, may you ask? Patriotism, I reply.

On December 2, the first Sunday of Advent, Christians lighted the first candle of their advent wreath: the candle signifying hope.  Four more candles will follow, in succeeding weeks leading up to Christmas. Saturday evening December 8, our Jewish friends will mark the first of Chanukah’s eight days when they light the shamash , the menorah’s “server” candle, which they will then use to light the other eight candles. Christians are preparing for the birth of their Savior; Jews are commemorating the re-dedication of the temple after fighting to secure their religious freedom.

The reverence for tradition and the celebratory spirit that we find among Christians and Jews at this time of year should not be, in my opinion, a reverence and spirit that is limited to homes and houses of worship, or shared only with those of one’s same faith.  Rather, it ought to shine forth from every household, burst forth from the hearts and lips of every man and woman in America, whether they practice a religion or not.  These holidays are quintessentially American holidays.

Yes, July 4 is rightfully regarded as America’s biggest day. It celebrates the birth of our nation. But I suggest that the Christmas and Chanukah holidays are just as important. They remind us why the birth of America even took place.

Here is how the Bill of Rights commences: “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;…” Only after the people’s religious rights and liberties were addressed did the Founding Fathers go on to add freedom of speech, of the press, of the right to peaceably assemble, of the right to petition for redress of grievances.

The longing for religious freedom brought people to America. The securing of the right to that freedom was the very first building block of the Bill of Rights.

This is the time of year that we are – or should be – remembering and celebrating that freedom.  And to me, “Happy Holidays” just does not do an adequate job; it is a bland and artificial substitute that purposely avoids any religious impulse or feeling.   “Merry Christmas,” or “Peace of Christmas,” or “Happy Chanukah” or “Chanukah Sameach” are so much better, and so much more American.

And so, here’s my Old Year’s resolution. For the rest of December I’ll do my best to eschew “Happy Holidays.” But I will be wishing happiness for those I greet, while keeping in mind the blessings we all enjoy in our lives in this great and noble land.  My words of greeting: “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Chanukah.”