Bless me anyway
2006-05-07 22:32In which I shine up my little bit of political.
This morning, I read an article in the Boston Globe which mentioned in passing that Brandeis University's decision to honor Tony Kushner with an honorary degree is being protested—I presume on the grounds that he is pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, the same complaints that I heard when Munich came out. As an alumna of Brandeis and a fan of Tony Kushner's work, I confess myself puzzled. And as a cultural Jew, I suppose. Not for nothing, I always thought, is there told the joke about two Jews on a desert island and three synagogues.* Whatever happened to diversity of opinion?
From Tony Kushner's liner notes to the Klezmatics' Possessed (1997)**, cut so as not to eat people's screens.
( Read more... )
For this, he shouldn't receive an honorary degree? I am even more puzzled when I read that the commencement speech will be delivered by a prince of the royal house of Jordan, whom no one seems to be protesting—and the point is not that they should start, but that if people are to criticize the university for its endorsement of an insufficiently Jewish playwright, it seems a little inconsistent tacitly to approve of its endorsement of an Arabic royal. Because, after all, doesn't it all come down to Us and Them . . .
I'm sarcastic because I genuinely do not understand, and I've arrived late to this controversy in any case. But I seem to remember also that Brandeis is a secular school (whose academic calendar revolves around the Jewish ritual year), and that writers are awarded honorary degrees for their art, not their politics (which are perhaps simultaneous for Tony Kushner), and that the American Jewish community is not monolithic (and nevertheless causes me to feel like an alien in its mainstream), and I have not expressed myself on this matter anywhere near as eloquently as I think the situation deserves. Or perhaps it doesn't deserve much more than my desire that Tony Kushner receive his honorary degree without further ruckus, and that this whole silliness cease and desist as promptly as possible. Israel isn't Judaism. Tony Kushner isn't the Anti-Moshiach.*** And I think we all have better issues to argue over.
(For example, if my bathroom walls suffer from tzara'at, do I still need to call in a priest or just sue my landlords? Discuss. I'm not losing my shower curtain again.)
At the very least, I do.
*I don't remember its provenance; I assume I encountered it first in Leo Rosten's fabulous Dictionary of Yiddish. The general gist is argumentativeness: one synagogue for one, another for the other, and then the third that both of them can agree never to set foot in. My grandfather points out that the joke isn't about two Jews, two synagogues, and a church, but still.
**Which I notice has recently gained, on amazon.com, a viciously anti-Kushner "review" that says nothing about the music and everything about the reviewer's narrow-minded paranoia. At least the other one-star review has the grace to dislike only the album.
***Look, you find a better equivalent for the expression "isn't the Antichrist." I'm not as familiar with Jewish apocalyptica as I should be.
This morning, I read an article in the Boston Globe which mentioned in passing that Brandeis University's decision to honor Tony Kushner with an honorary degree is being protested—I presume on the grounds that he is pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel, the same complaints that I heard when Munich came out. As an alumna of Brandeis and a fan of Tony Kushner's work, I confess myself puzzled. And as a cultural Jew, I suppose. Not for nothing, I always thought, is there told the joke about two Jews on a desert island and three synagogues.* Whatever happened to diversity of opinion?
From Tony Kushner's liner notes to the Klezmatics' Possessed (1997)**, cut so as not to eat people's screens.
( Read more... )
For this, he shouldn't receive an honorary degree? I am even more puzzled when I read that the commencement speech will be delivered by a prince of the royal house of Jordan, whom no one seems to be protesting—and the point is not that they should start, but that if people are to criticize the university for its endorsement of an insufficiently Jewish playwright, it seems a little inconsistent tacitly to approve of its endorsement of an Arabic royal. Because, after all, doesn't it all come down to Us and Them . . .
I'm sarcastic because I genuinely do not understand, and I've arrived late to this controversy in any case. But I seem to remember also that Brandeis is a secular school (whose academic calendar revolves around the Jewish ritual year), and that writers are awarded honorary degrees for their art, not their politics (which are perhaps simultaneous for Tony Kushner), and that the American Jewish community is not monolithic (and nevertheless causes me to feel like an alien in its mainstream), and I have not expressed myself on this matter anywhere near as eloquently as I think the situation deserves. Or perhaps it doesn't deserve much more than my desire that Tony Kushner receive his honorary degree without further ruckus, and that this whole silliness cease and desist as promptly as possible. Israel isn't Judaism. Tony Kushner isn't the Anti-Moshiach.*** And I think we all have better issues to argue over.
(For example, if my bathroom walls suffer from tzara'at, do I still need to call in a priest or just sue my landlords? Discuss. I'm not losing my shower curtain again.)
At the very least, I do.
*I don't remember its provenance; I assume I encountered it first in Leo Rosten's fabulous Dictionary of Yiddish. The general gist is argumentativeness: one synagogue for one, another for the other, and then the third that both of them can agree never to set foot in. My grandfather points out that the joke isn't about two Jews, two synagogues, and a church, but still.
**Which I notice has recently gained, on amazon.com, a viciously anti-Kushner "review" that says nothing about the music and everything about the reviewer's narrow-minded paranoia. At least the other one-star review has the grace to dislike only the album.
***Look, you find a better equivalent for the expression "isn't the Antichrist." I'm not as familiar with Jewish apocalyptica as I should be.
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