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To life—and to cultural appropriation
I’m in New York for Christmas, and the other evening I went to see a production of “Fiddler on the Roof”—in Yiddish.
No, I don’t speak Yiddish, except for the usual 100 words of insult that have somehow crept into the English vernacular. And I’ve seen “Fiddler” many times, including the original with Zero Mostel long ago.
But, as this review (and all the others the production has received) indicates, you don’t have to know Yiddish or be Jewish to appreciate this remarkable production:
If you know Yiddish, it is, without question, a must-see. And if you have any hesitation about attending a three-hour show in a language you don’t speak, let me assuage your concerns immediately. You don’t have to be of any particular linguistic base, ethnicity, or religious affiliation to comprehend the beauty and significance of this work or to be touched by the characters and their story; you just have to be human. So, whatever your background, do yourself a favor and go (I’m of Scottish and Dutch Protestant descent, and I was thoroughly enthralled, impressed, and delighted with this rendition of one of my all-time favorites)!…
From the ensemble’s exuberant folk dances and solemn ceremonies that punctuate the story to the revealing conversations and unforgettable songs that strike a balance between humor and pathos (“the happiness and tears” of “Sunrise, Sunset”) – all delivered in the genuine style and actual language (including some bits of Russian dancing and dialogue) that the characters would have used – everything is this production bespeaks accuracy and authenticity. The intimate space of the theater and the earthy artistic design also serve to reinforce the immediacy and sincerity of the narrative…
The production provides written translation on each side of the stage, much like with an opera, and although that makes for certain problems with attention because the viewer must read the titles and watch the action almost simultaneously, the rewards are great.
I noticed that the jokes fell a bit flatter than they do in English, probably because of the time lag. But that was more than made up in the greater depth of feeling and seriousness conveyed by the unfunny parts of the play, which were emphasized and deepened in this particular production. Was it the acting that made the difference? Or did the fact that the performance was in another tongue—a slightly familiar one, but still different—make it seem more like an opera than a musical comedy? Was it all of the above?
Whatever the reasons, after a few moments there was an uncanny impression that we were watching the original inhabitants of the original shtetl, rather than actors on a New York stage. Eerie.
The 1964 musical “Fiddler on the Roof” was originally based on Sholem Aleichem’s (Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, raised in a shtetl) stories of shtetl life, published in Yiddish. The English-language Broadway musical changed those stories somewhat for the American audience (and later, the world, because “Fiddler” has gone all around the world), and the English was translated into many many other languages. But the only time it had been performed in Yiddish previously—the language of Sholem Aleichem’s stories and the language the protagonists would have actually spoken in real life—was in an Israeli production in 1965.
Until now. The New York version I saw uses that same 1965 translation, which incorporates more of Aleichem’s original phrases into the lyrics:
Neither the show’s director, Joel Grey, nor all but three of its 26-member cast knew much Yiddish when they started. The scripts are in English, the dialogue and song lyrics spelled out phonetically…
“We worked first in English,” Grey tells The Post. “And if that went well, we’d add the Yiddish.” He says that both he and the cast received daily training from the dialect experts at the museum.
They do an extraordinary job.
And as far as “around the world to great acclaim” goes, I think the video I’m about to post here explains itself. It’s not in English or Yiddish; it’s the song from Fiddler called “To Life,” performed by a Japanese company in Japanese. The musical was hugely popular in Japan when it went there:
As Jeremy Dauber notes in his book The Worlds of Sholem Aleichem, Fiddler eventually became “a free-floating symbol, an Everylens for talking about universal challenges to tradition.” With that univeralism in mind, Fiddler has played everywhere, from Moscow to Warsaw to Budapest. But the story would seem more logically connected to those places, which have a historical Jewish connection—even for non-Jewish residents—that Japan lacks. And yet, as Barbara Isenberg writes in her book Tradition!: The Highly Improbable, Ultimately Triumphant Broadway-to-Hollywood Story of Fiddler on the Roof, the World’s Most Beloved Musical: “As Fiddler on the Roof traveled the world, few countries were so welcoming as Japan.”…
The show is about tradition, father-daughter(s) relationships,” Koji Aoshika, vice president of MTI Asia, which licenses the show, told me by email. “Japan was the same. You had to follow what the father said—arranged marriage, for instance. So, the story of a Jewish father losing power in the family life and girls starting to make their own decisions resonates…
So maybe Fiddler resonates in Tokyo not only because it’s a family drama about fathers and daughters, or a universal tale about modernity, but because Japanese history does, in fact, include a chapter about dislocation from a sepia-toned “old world” and an uncertain journey to a “new world” where the traditional rules no longer applied. Tevye and his daughters had to leave Anatevka and even move across an ocean to find their new world. The Japanese stayed put, but the new world came to them just as surely, with the same uncertain mix of hope and fear.
On watching this video, it also strikes me that the actors are having themselves a ball, and that includes the dancers who seem to have the flavor of the movements just right:
[NOTE: The Yiddish version is playing here until December 30, and is then moving to this theater.]
Sweden’s two worlds
We’ve heard a lot about Germany and its immigration woes, but of all the countries of Europe that are having trouble with their unassimilated newcomers, Sweden just might lead the way:
While much attention was focused on Germany during the 2015 refugee crisis, in which more than a million migrants from the Middle East and Africa entered the continent at the behest of Angela Merkel, the country that admitted the most migrants per capita was Sweden. In one year alone, the northern European nation of 10 million added nearly 2 percent to its population. Most of those arrivals were young men. Tens of thousands more have continued to arrive since then…
…Rosengård, Seved, and Nydala, [are] immigrant neighborhoods in the southern city of Malmö and among the 23 “especially vulnerable” areas across Sweden. At times, ambulances and fire trucks will enter only with police protection. Desperate police have appealed to imams and clan leaders for help when they cannot contain the violence…
The on-the-ground reality I witnessed in some parts of Sweden stood in stark contrast to the egalitarian utopia I had been sold by American progressives. How did Sweden, on the whole a prosperous and peaceful nation, also develop parallel, segregated societies afflicted by criminality and violence? The starkest reminder of this reality are the numerous grenade explosions and gun murders that have become a regular occurrence across some sections of society. In fact, Sweden’s homicide rate is now above the Western European average…
University West sociologist Göran Adamson blames, in addition to poor urban planning, Sweden’s state-sponsored multiculturalism for financing separatism through various ethno-religious institutions…
Sweden’s institutionalization of multiculturalism began in 1975, when a parliament led by Social Democrat Olof Palme rejected assimilation in favor of policies that encouraged minorities to keep their separate identities. “Of course, if you say these things [critically] in Sweden, you’ll be ferociously attacked by social workers and the dominating left-wing academia for being inhumane,” Adamson says.
Sounds familiar, although somewhat more extreme than what’s been happening elsewhere in Europe—and to a certain extent in the US, although America has never embraced multiculturalism to the same degree and has at least retained a small residue of devotion to assimilation.
Multiculturalism was thought to be a way to respect other cultures, and I suppose it is, but its dangers are obvious if those cultures are not compatible with (or are in fact openly hostile to) that of the host country. This is a fact that is often ignored by those who are dedicated to multiculturalism.
{NOTE: The article also mentions that the problem with immigrants in Sweden is not necessarily just with those who practice Islam:
Although Sweden’s jihadist problem intersects with immigration, evidence doesn’t support the myopic focus on Muslims in immigration discourses, according to Stockholm School of Economics researcher Tino Sanandaji. “Among migrants from the Middle East” to Sweden, most “are not Muslim but instead are Christian, atheist, agnostic, and members of other religious minorities,” he tells me. Sanandaji, a Kurdish immigrant from Iran who has written a best-selling book on Swedish immigration, says that people often confuse Middle Eastern culture with Islam. His research, he says, indicates that second-generation immigrant gangs are influenced more by gangster-rap subculture than by any religion.
There are probably many contributors to the situation, but the combination of Muslim immigrants, Middle Eastern culture as a whole, and modern trends such as gangster-rap has a lot of toxic potential.]
Caroline Glick on Trump’s Syria pullout
Pros and cons. There are quite a few of each, so I suggest you read the whole thing.
It ends this way:
Time will tell whether Trump’s decision to remove U.S. forces from Syria was a prelude to disaster for U.S. allies and a boon for America’s enemies, or whether the opposite is the case. But what is clear enough is that move is not entirely negative.
Is John Roberts the new Anthony Kennedy—and if so, why?
There’s a lot of talk that John Roberts is taking up where Anthony Kennedy left off, as the new “swing” justice. This is based not just on the memory of his role in the Obamacare tax vs. penalty brouhaha, but on a decision reached yesterday. As William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection writes:
Roberts…saw fit to make a public pronouncement after Trump criticized a San Francisco federal judge for a decision enjoining Trump’s new policy on processing asylum claims, which held that people who illegally crossed the border could not apply for asylum…
The injunction against the new asylum rules was upheld by the 9th Circuit, and the government sought an emergency stay. In a 5-4 Order released [Friday], the Court rejected the stay, with Roberts joining the four liberal justices…
In other words, while awaiting a ruling on the merits, a San Francisco judge had earlier enjoined the federal government from changing previous policy on asylum. When Trump criticized the San Francisco judge as being an “Obama judge,” Roberts—in a public statement unusual for a sitting SCOTUS justice—criticized Trump and stated that there’s no such thing as “Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” and that judges are “an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
Translation: don’t you dare imply that judges are political; we are above all that!
Then yesterday, by refusing to stop the San Francisco judge’s injunction, Roberts became the swing vote when the same issue came to the Supreme Court. He voted with the liberals in allowing the previous injunction to remain in effect.
This was not any sort of decision on the merits; it was merely a decision not to reverse the San Francisco judge’s decision, pending a later ruling on the merits of the asylum question. It was also a defense of that judge as being a member of that “group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right.” Perhaps, to Roberts’ way of thinking, had Roberts voted to reverse the decision of that San Francisco judge, it would have lent support to the idea that the San Francisco judge had been motivated by “Obama judge” partisanship to make an incorrect ruling.
It may be that, when the asylum question is heard on the merits, Roberts will end up voting with the conservatives and uphold Trump’s position. Perhaps. But I believe that in the meantime Roberts was deeply offended by Trump’s criticism of the judiciary, even though I think Trump was absolutely correct in that criticism.
I believe that there are at least three more things operating with Roberts in handing down this decision. The first is that most people, especially ambitious people—and that includes SCOTUS justices—are attracted to power. Power is enticing, and increasing one’s own power is always tempting. So what could be more powerful for Roberts than becoming a swing justice? It would mean that a great many huge and important cases would turn on what Roberts thinks.
Secondly, Roberts was nominated by George Bush. What better way for Roberts to prove that he’s no “Bush judge” than to vote with the liberals? So that’s another motivation to do what he did yesterday.
Thirdly, I’ve noticed a tendency in Roberts—long before Trump became president—to vote in the way that is least likely to upset the status quo apple cart. For example, in the case of Obamacare, Roberts found a “creative” way to avoid a bold overturning of a bill that had been passed by Congress. In yesterday’s injunction case, the path of least resistance was to let the injunction stand rather than to overrule it. But when the case about asylum actually reaches SCOTUS, Roberts could go either way—he might rule with Trump in order to uphold an executive order already issued, or he might rule against Trump in order to support the implementation of the pre-existing (pre-Trump) policy on how asylum is handled.
The winter solstice is here
The winter solstice comes tonight and I, for one, am cheering. It may not be a holiday exactly, but winter holidays cluster around it for a very good reason: the beginning of the end of the dark days.
Who wouldn’t drink to that? We who live up north are especially sensitive to the fact that the days that get dark almost as soon as they get light have finally peaked, and the lengthening of the days has begun. It’s no accident, no accident at all, that both of the winter holidays— Christmas and Chanuka—are festivals that feature (literally) light in the darkness.
This year the winter solstice has some unusual characteristics:
The longest night of 2018 will be illuminated by a full moon and a meteor shower…
This year is the first time a full moon will coincide with the solstice since 2010. The next time will be in 2094.
The full moon of December has had many names over the years. NASA refers to it as the Cold Moon. It has also gone by names such as Long Night Moon by some Native American tribes, who kept track of time by observing the seasons and lunar months, according to the old Farmer’s Almanac.
Friday’s night sky will also be shared with the annual Ursid meteor shower named after the constellation Ursa Major.
Happy solstice!
Remember Carter Page?
And you should, too:
If Carter Page isn’t the world’s most diabolical spy ever, then it could imply that the investigation itself has been diabolical.
Well, Carter Page isn’t the most diabolical spy ever. Actually, he’s not a spy at all. That leaves alternative number two…
The Mattis resignation
I think this is bad news:
Trump tweeting that we are leaving Syria has rocked the world…there has been pushback to Trump regarding this decision. Syria, as we all know, has been a cluster from the get go. But now it seems that Trump’s decision was the last straw for Secretary of Defense James Mattis. This afternoon he submitted his resignation.
I have never been on board with Trump’s expressed tendency and desire to withdraw (prematurely, IMHO) from places where we’ve already expended a great deal of effort and blood. Syria is an exceptionally complex problem, and I think the withdrawal will leave a dangerous vacuum—and nature abhors a vacuum. Mattis seems to be saying as much, and he knows a great deal more about it than I do:
I believe we must be resolute and unambiguous in our approach to those countries whose strategic interests are increasingly in tension with ours. It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model – gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions – to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.
Mattis had said this last May:
What we don’t want to do, now that we are on the cusp of winning on the battlefield in terms of taking down the physical caliphate, the geographic caliphate, we do not want to simply pull out before the diplomats have won the peace…So you win the fight, and then you win the peace.
Sounds pretty basic to me. It’s a lesson the Obama administration failed to learn (or wished to ignore), most notably in Iraq, and it’s one that Trump made clear in his campaign speeches that he hadn’t learned either.
More here:
The Turkish Defense Minister was already threatening to level a brutal assault on US-backed Kurdish allies and put them “in ditches” once the US pulled out. The remark set Mattis off. He had spent months trying to convince Trump that withdrawal was a bad idea and was now seeing early signs of what it could mean to US allies in the region.
A little past 3pm, Mattis was in the Oval Office, trying one last time to get Trump to change his mind about Syria. The meeting didn’t last very long. The President refused to budge, and so Mattis made the only remaining choice he felt he had left— he pulled out a two-page letter he’d brought with him and resigned on the spot. Though he wouldn’t be leaving immediately—Mattis will stay on until February— the decision was final.
Trump’s move doesn’t have a lot of support, although Stephen Hayward points out that it may help Trump in the 2020 election, and that:
…those on the left and right who cheer a shrinking American military footprint around the world give up their right to complain when the world becomes a more chaotic and violent place.
Indeed, they’ve given up their right to do it. But they haven’t given up doing it.
I repeat that this is an aspect of Trump of which I’ve always been very wary. I hope the predicted disaster doesn’t happen, but I fear it will.
What’s up now with the wall?
The House has voted to approve 5 billion dollars for the border wall, but there’s basically no chance it will pass in the Senate.
When that happens, and another funding bill is passed that doesn’t include the wall money, will Trump “shut down” the government?:
But in fact it’s Senate Democrats shutting down the government in media spin. Shutting the government is not actually shutting the government, but there can be bad optics for the party that gets blamed, which inevitably is Republicans.
$5 billion in the world of federal spending is small. It’s not about $5 billion. It’s about Democrats wanting to break Trump.
But isn’t everything about breaking Trump?
However, former Congressman Jason Chaffetz has a thought on how to resolve the impasse—redirection:
Each year the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on things that are not specifically authorized by Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans have been complicit in this practice.
The Democrats may feign exasperation with the president potentially spending “unauthorized” money on the wall, but they have enthusiastically participated in the budgetary games that will make it possible.
…[T]he budget categories under which programs are authorized and funds are appropriated are very broad, and since Congress doesn’t pass specific language about every last dollar’s use, discretionary funds are inevitably used for things that Congress never specifically funds.
This is how the executive branch often gets the money it needs to do things that Congress won’t formally authorize. It finds money that has been either broadly appropriated or appropriated to a program that is expired and redirects it to a related program or purpose of its choosing.
I see no reason why that cannot happen. If it doesn’t happen, it would mean that the powers that be didn’t want it to happen.
Lately it may seem…
…that I’m becoming obsessed with James Comey
Not really. At least, I hope not. But I’ve been focusing on him lately because he is an excellent example of the kind of person especially common in government these days. Call it the Swamp, call it the Deep State, call it macaroni—whatever you call it, it’s not a good thing.
Comey channels Alfred E. Neuman
James Comey seems to be in “what, me worry?” mode.
Lat Monday’s statement of note from this wise public servant was as follows:
Mr. Meadows: All right. So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?
Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew. [see NOTE below]
Mr. Meadows: I didn’t say you knew. Who did you think it was? Obviously — are you saying you’re so intellectually not curious that you would not say, “Who’s the private client?”
Mr. Comey: Show me where the word “client” is. I’m struggling a little. I see. So the sentence reads, “The source collected this information on behalf of private clients and was not compensated for it by the FBI.”
I don’t remember asking — other than knowing it was political people opposed to Trump, I don’t remember asking which firm, which law firm, those kinds of things. And I don’t remember being told.
Mr. Meadows: So you’re trying to share with this committee –and I want to take you — and that’s why I was asking you to verify this. You expect us to believe that you got notation that a private client is there and that you didn’t — you weren’t inquisitive enough to figure out who the private client was?
Mr. Comey: Who cares? It was Republicans —
Mr. Meadows: Well —
Mr. Comey: — opposed to Trump —
Mr. Meadows: — it makes a big difference. I mean, if you —
Mr. Comey: Let me finish my answer. It was Republicans opposed to Trump, and then it was Democrats opposed to Trump. There was potential bias in this information. That’s really important. Whether it was Sally Smith or Joe Jones, Republican, or Sally Smith, Democrat –
Mr. Meadows: Director Comey —
Mr. Comey: — to me, it didn’t matter.
Rep. Meadows objected, saying it is of great importance, given that the information was used to gain court permission to spy on an American citizen:
“It does make a difference. If someone is paying for this and you’re actually using that information to surveil American citizens with a FISA application, it does matter to me and most Americans.”
Here Comey is repeating MSM and Democratic talking points about Fusion which have been shown to be untrue. Republicans had zero to do with the funding of the dossier, as Comey either knows or should know if he’s at all competent. What he probably does know, however, is that Republican involvement is the fiction the MSM was pushing and that many many Americans probably believe that to be the case, so Comey’s answer will appear to make some sense to those people even though it is based on a falsity.
Comey’s lack of specific interest in who funded the dossier (if he really didn’t know and didn’t ask, which may or may not be the case) would have come from his need to get that investigation going and to use the dossier to jumpstart it no matter what. Why question its provenance if you’re already dedicated to using it despite the fact that Trump’s enemies paid for it, which should have made it highly suspect as a source?
Of course, it turns out that Trump’s oppponent’s campaign funded it, which if anything would make it even more suspect than if other Trump enemies had funded it. But to Comey, all of that was irrelevant (or at least he’d like us to think it was irrelevant). In his previous career, had he really lacked curiosity to that degree? I doubt it very much. But he’s a clever enough lawyer to use it as an excuse now. He’d prefer that we think him a fool rather than a knave, if he has the choice of shaping our opinion.
I say “knave.” The man is no fool, not by a longshot.
[NOTE: Let’s look at this exchange a bit more closely:
Question: So, when you saw [that the Steele dossier was funded by a private client], who did you think the private client was?
Mr. Comey: I don’t know that I knew.
Isn’t that quintessential Comey? “I don’t know that I knew.” The question was not, however, whether Comey knew who the client was. The question was who Comey thought funded it. His answer was that he doesn’t know whether he knew or not, and yet later in the exchange he seems to be saying he didn’t know and what’s more was not the least bit curious about it.
That seems to contradict his earlier response about not knowing (or not remembering?) whether he knew or didn’t know, although it’s all so slippery it’s hard to even say. Statements that are so equivocal are deliberately difficult to contradict, because they essentially say nothing. But Comey is quite practiced at that sort of thing.]
Whither the wall?
As presidents go, Trump is harder to predict than most.
Will he veto the continuing resolution budget bill? The Freedom Caucus will support him if he does:
…[W]e’re going to back you up if you veto this — back you up,” Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said. “If you veto this bill, we’ll be there. More importantly, the American people will be there. They’ll be there to support you. Let’s build the wall and make sure we do our job in Congress.”
Here’s a report timestamped 42 minutes ago (as I write this, anyway) saying Trump is “abruptly” threatening to veto it. I don’t see what’s so abupt about it, since he’s been threatening that sort of thing off and on for quite some time. Trump likes to keep his options open, you might say.
It would not surprise me if he doesn’t veto it and it would not surprise me if he does. How’s that for a definitive statement? Trump is indeed unpredictable and I believe that’s one of his strengths in fighting the Democrats and those Republicans who oppose him. As I wrote yesterday, however, Trump’s supporters will not like it if the wall doesn’t get built, and if he has any desire to be re-elected (and I think he does have that desire) he needs to find a solution.
Here’s a description of another possible approach from Trump to tackling the problem:
“It’s not a retreat, it’s actually a bigger attack,” said a Trump adviser,
The shutdown date OK’d in the Senate-passed legislation was pushed back to Feb. 8, after Trump is scheduled to give his State of the Union to a joint sitting of Congress. It is always the biggest speech of the year.
“The date after the State of the Union gives the president the biggest visible platform,” said another source familiar with the plan today. “This positions us to have the fight when we have the most visibility,” added the source.
Visibility is one thing, but results are what people want, and with the Democrats and Pelosi in control of the House there is little chance (IMHO) of getting any wall funding passed. I think this particular anonymous source is blowing smoke—but hey, as I said, Trump is unpredictable.
Then again, if the American people wanted the wall, why did they elect a Democratic House? My sense of it is that people don’t think that way when they vote. Most people are thinking locally—as in, “this person is nicer than that person, this person will get my district more perks than that person.” The entire picture—“if I vote for the Democrat then the Democrats might control the House and we can kiss the wall goodbye”—just isn’t that common a perspective.