ARE THE CHILDREN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SINS OF THEIR FATHERS?

The son of Barnard Madoff committed suicide, apparently unable to cope with unrelenting innuendo and, finally, lawsuits and allegations that he and his brother knew and participated in the $64 billion fraudulent scheme devised and executed by his father.  Two years ago, Bernard Madoff confessed to him and his brother, and they in turn reported the fraud to the authorities.  The two year statute-of-limitations on fraud claims has come, and the trustee must file now to recover assets for the victims of the massive fraud.  Those victims include a number of Jewish charities as well as wealthy individuals.

The courts will eventually decide the factual and legal fine points as to whether the Madoff family were knowing (or unknowing) beneficiaries of the fraud, and whether such knowledge (or lack of knowledge) makes any difference.  On a vastly larger scale and with even greater evil intent, the Nazi machine took the lives and the property of over 11,000,000 people, 6,000,000 of them Jews.  Much of continental Europe and the Soviet Union were more or less complicit, with much of the rest of world in a state of willful ignorance.  

Those of the Nazi hierarchy who could be caught (or who were not protected as designated intelligence or national defense assets), were tried and punished.  Complicit Swiss and other banks and institutions were eventually forced to disgorge some of the stolen property.  The German state (but why not the Austrian state?) paid out substantial though insufficient reparations.

So there are now those who say "enough, already."  The evil generation is dead.  Let's move forward.  Forget about it!   Essentially, they say, the statute of limitations runs at the end of a generation.  Maybe such should be so in terms of material repayment.  But can it, or should it, be so with collective memory?   Yad Vashem, the Israeli memorial to the holocaust, will not let it be soon forgot, painful though the memory can be.  How could anyone distantly related to me, either participate in or turn a blind eye, to such pervasive evil?  Under the same pressures, would I have behaved any differently?

On both sides, going back to the 17^th century, my family comes from religious German-speaking peasants from the Strasburg, Alsace and Stuttgart, Wuertemburg regions of Europe.  On the maternal side, the family arrived in Maryland in the mid 1700’s and joined with devout Lutheran immigrants seeking refuge from the wars and turmoil of Europe.  They were co-founders of several of the earliest Lutheran congregations in Maryland, near Frederick and Hagerstown.  My maternal grandmother, one of 14 children, came from a Roman Catholic family of Luxembourgers who emigrated to the United States in 1875.  She was ex-communicated when she married my grandfather and agreed to raise my mother and her siblings in a non-Lutheran protestant faith.

       On the paternal side, my family was part of a strict pietist Lutheran sect that emigrated from Wuertemburg to the Odessa, South Russia region near the Black Sea in the late 1700’s and first decade of the 1800’s.  There they established self-sufficient ethnic colonies and prospered until the rise of Slavic nationalism in the 1880’s.  They separated (were excommunicated) from the Lutheran Church, which they viewed as insufficiently pious.  They held their own services in their homes, believed that the world would end in the early 1800’s and, among other reasons, emigrated to Russia to be near Israel at the end of days.  In the 1880's, they started leaving for the Dakotas, a region similar to the Russian steppes.  They continued their strict religious observances through the third decade of the 20^th Century, but did re-join the Missouri Synod, one of the mainstream American Lutheran sects.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the South Russia emigration is the connection to Georg Leibbrandt.  As summarized in the Jewish Virtual Library:

 Georg Leibbrandt was a scholar and politician in the Nazi Party.

Born to ethnic German parents in Torosovo (also called Hoffnungsfeld), near Odessa, in the Zebrikovo district of the Ukraine. It is probable, during his lifetime, he was the world's foremost scholar on the subject of Volga Germans.

In 1918, Leibbrandt studied theology in Germany; also taking classes in philology and history. In 1927, he was awarded a Ph.D. He traveled extensively through the Soviet Union in 1926, 1928, and 1929. During his visits, he was variously represented as a doctor of philosophy, a post-graduate student, a professor of history from Leipzig University, and an employee of the Institute for the Study of Germans Abroad (Deutsches Ausland Institute) in Stuttgart. The official purposes of his visits were the study of the history of the development of German colonies in the Black Sea coastal region and the gathering of historical information. As a result of his work, a book regarding emigrant movement of the Germans was published in Germany.

Leibbrandt had a talent for languages; which, coupled with a Rockefeller scholarship, enabled him to resume his studies in Paris and the United States from 1931 - 1933. While in the U.S. he kept contact with Volga Germans who had also emigrated to America.

Leibbrandt accepted a request from Alfred Rosenberg in 1933 to return to Germany, and joined the Nazi Party that year. He was then named director of the Eastern Division of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP. He was also placed in charge of anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda. When the Soviet Union was invaded in 1941, and the Ministry for the Eastern Occupied Territories was established, Dr. Leibbrandt was chosen by Rosenberg to direct the Political Department. Thus, Leibbrandt became the liaison for the Ukrainian, Caucasian, Russian, and other groups of emigres. Leibbrandt and Alfred Meyer attended the Wannsee Conference in 1942; representing the Ostministerium. In the summer of 1943, for unknown reasons, he ceased his duties in the Ministry and joined the Kriegsmarine (German Navy).

Leibbrandt was kept in Allied internment from 1945 - May 1949. He was formally charged with involvement in the murder of Jews, January 1950, by the Nuernberg Landgericht. The case against him was dismissed on August 10, 1950 and he was released from custody. In the post-war period, he returned to America and resumed his earlier studies on the subject of the Volga Germans; making expert contributions to the Association of Germans from Russia until his death in Bonn on June 16, 1982.

Leibbrandt’s birthplace, Hoffnungsfeld, was a daughter colony of Hoffnungstahl (Valley of Hope) that was established in the early 1800’s by Leibbrandt’s and my ancestors.  Leibbrandt’s principal scholarly work prior to joining the Nazi party, “Hoffnungstal und seine Schwaben”, is still the seminal genealogical compilation for that region of South Russia.  Over the last ten years, there have been several indirect negotiations over the use and copyright restrictions on that material on behalf of the Germans from Russia Heritage Society.

A large scale emigration from South Russia to the high plains in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas started in the 1880’s (prompted by the rise of Slavic nationalism) until the Stalinist terror cut off most of the escape during and after World War I.   Those who did not make it out before then were mostly executed or disappeared in concentration camps or Siberia.  A few survived and stayed in the area, only to be caught between the Russian and the German armies in World War II.

In one of life’s odd coincidences, the Jewish great-grandparents of my wife’s godsons emigrated from Odessa, the city nearest Hoffnungstal, to the Dakotas at the same time as my great-grandparents.  They all homesteaded within a few miles of each other, and probably knew each other.   

So, in October of this year, I turned the corner and came face to face with the portrait of Georg Leibbrandt at the Yad Vashem Wannsee Conference exhibit.  Did Leibbrandt successfully recruit spies or collaborators in South Russia?  In South Dakota?  The sparse records and recollections remaining from South Russia contain accounts of horrific Russian atrocities against all non-slavic groups, more or less indiscriminately.  They also include accounts of Black Sea Germans collaborating with the German army against Russia as well as accounts of Black Sea Germans hiding or protecting Jews.  There are also a few accounts of Black Sea Germans participating in harassment of Jews.    

In South Dakota, and the United States generally, Black Sea Germans volunteered and served in the U.S. armed forces in numbers greatly disproportionate to their percentage of the total population.  They did this even though they were regarded with suspicion during both World Wars, as many still spoke German.   Some were arrested and jailed for a time for no reason other than their ethnic background.
The Black Sea Germans along with much of the remaining Jewish population in the same region fled to central and western Europe in the hope that they would be under the protection of the British and American forces at the end of World War II.  Under terms Stalin extracted from Roosevelt at Yalta, both groups were "re-patriated" to areas under Russian control by order of General Eisenhower.   Much suffering ensued.   Survivors of the long trek out of South Russia and the spirit crushing "repatriation" have left bitter memories -- separately recorded, but eerily alike -- in the Jewish and Black Sea German populations.
So when, if ever, does the accounting for the inhumanity of one people to another come to a close?  When, if ever, and if ever, how, is justice done?   And what does doing justice do to those who would bring justice?  These are hard questions with many facile and few, if any, satisfying answers.  It may be one problem we have to the end of time.

WHERE WILL THE LITTLE GHOSTS, GOBLINS AND GREMLINS GO THIS HALLOWEEN?

            For the last four decades or so a host of ghosts, goblins and gremlins gathered at the home of Mr. and Mrs. David Jones not to far from the Governor’s Mansion in Helena, Montana.  No, it was not a haunting as the spooks were spoken to ahead of time and invited to the party.   There will not be a Helena Halloween House this year because Ruth Jones has moved to be with her own grand-gremlins near Portland, Oregon following the death of her husband of 62 years on June 30^th.

            The idea of a Halloween House came to Ruth Jones when chatting with mothers and their toddlers while waiting in a supermarket check-out line a bit after her three older children got too old for a traditional Halloween party.   She just invited them to come over and they came. “It sort of evolved over the years,” she said.  Indeed it did!  She continued to extend invitations while waiting in line at other shopping venues.  Over the years the number of invitees began to grow, and the Jones residence came to be known as “the Halloween House.” 

Two years ago 90 children showed up.  How did she know?  “I gave away that many battery sparkle toys.”   Hmm.  Wonder if the adults got any? 

The house was decorated with lots of lights and featured a lit up ghost in the window.  The dining room table had a large ceramic pumpkin with a witch sitting on top.  “It was made for me by one of my best friends.”

Ruth has a way for generating enthusiasm for the party.  “Last year, from a good friend, I even got a hollowed out pumpkin with flowers and a stuffed black crow.”

Other long time Halloween helpers included her husband.  “Dave always got the donuts and apple cider and took a picture of everyone who attended, including the parents.  That was so we could tell who the ghosts and goblins belonged to.  He had a system whereby he numbered them on a sheet of paper with their signature and address so we could send them a copy of the picture.”

The party went on after the toddlers left, especially in most recent years.  “I was even lucky enough to have friends come later in the evening (some dressed in costumes) after bedtime for the Ghosts and Goblins.  It was all enjoyable from the babies dressed like pumpkins, to my retired friends, to the high school children that came because they remembered coming when they were little.” 

It could be that they also came back, like the six foot teenager last year, for the “treats” but also for the “tricks.”.  After a bit of friendly teasing from Mrs. Jones about not having a costume “he showed me on his knee he had cut a hole in his pants and drawn a face.  When he was leaving I heard him tell his friend, ‘See, I told you she always gives the big bars.’”  He got that right.  Mrs. Jones started stocking the 6 to a package candy bars in the freezer at least a month before Halloween.

  

      Mrs. Jones fully disclosed, before selling the house, that it was haunted at least once a year.  “I did not want them to be surprised come Halloween,” she said.  Will she miss the party?  “Of course, and also the excitement getting the house ready for it.”

            So why not take the tradition to Oregon?  “It has been difficult for me not to invite people I see here with small children.  In Helena, I invited them all year.  We never knew how many were going to show up or at what time. I am not too sure how people might react to random invitations from a stranger.  Maybe after I am here awhile,” she said.  

            What will she miss most?  “I will miss seeing how much they have grown in a year.  Who would come that came last year.  All the confusion.   I just plain like people, especially the children.”

            What will Helena miss most this Halloween?  If you have a memory of the Jones Halloween House and would like to share it post a comment to this story at www.weatherbeller.blogspot.com.

COMMENT

My journey to Halloween House started in 1981 with an auspicious start that melded into a cherished tradition for more than a decade for my family following a threat and black mail from the one and only Ruth Jones.
In the winter of 1981, Ruth’s son Richie, myself and several unnamed others slipped out of high school, got some refreshments and went to the Jones house knowing Mrs. Jones had not come home sick from work in 24 years. About 3:45 that afternoon the string ended with Ruth walking in unannounced to our gathering. To say the least Rich was in considerable trouble with the rest of us close behind.
Fast forward to the summer of 1998. In the mean time I was married with 2 kids and my mother-in-law and Ruth have known each other for years. I ran into Ruth over the years from time to time. This time she told me all would be forgiven from our high school indiscretion if I would simply bring the kids to her house for Halloween. That year started my kids looking forward to the last stop of the evening the Halloween House. The kids got doughnuts, big candy and a light-up toy of some sort. I got my picture taken and Dave would get me some of the “grown-up cider”. A few weeks later an envelope would appear with our copy of the photo.
This year when we were talking about Halloween and I told the kids that Ruth had moved we spent about half an hour remembering the years of fun. My oldest daughter who is a senior in High School talked at length about the different memories of gifts from Ruth. My youngest boy who is 7 brought out the ghost flashlight he got last year and we used it for tick-or –treating this year.
Don Bartsch Helena MT

November 4, 2010 8:01 AM

WRESTLING WITH ANGELS, THE BOOK OF JOB AND RELIGION AS A CRUTCH

 

The short essay, Is Religion a Crutch, first appeared in August 2007.  The essay and the sermon that inspired it, in retrospect, were significant milestones on a journey that eventually led in January 2010 to an intensive study and practice of Judaism.   That study and practice in turn is now focused on a disputation (patterned on a lawsuit/indictment of sorts) depicted in the Book of Job.  I have found a delightful and highly intelligent companion and guide in William Safire's, The First Dissident: The Book of Job in Today's Politics.

An engaging aspect of Judaism (at least in some variations) involves constant re-thinking of the relationship of man and divinity, variously imagined as wrestling with an angel (Jacob); the woman who laughed at Hashem for promising her a child and heir in her eighties (Sarah); Abraham negotiating for the salvation of a few good souls before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; or Tevye chastising Hashem for the burdens of his life in Fiddler on the Roof.

The Book of Job clearly ranks among the most perplexing and disturbing stories of the Bible along with Abraham's near sacrifice of his only son.  How can these intentional acts be reconciled with the concepts of justice, kindness, mercy and omnipotence?   What are we to make of the frequent genocidal acts of the Israelite conquest of Canaan?  For that matter, was it really necessary to wipe out humanity in the Great Flood?  Weren't the Ten Plagues and the inundation of Pharoah's pursuing army a trifle over the top?  Why put the tempting fruit in the garden in the first place?

The Book of Job serves as a sort of summation of these arguments against the existence of a just order in the universe through the intentionally inflicted suffering, at the hands of the Satan but with divine go-ahead, of the most righteous among men.  Essentially, the Satan (the original Devil's Advocate) asks for a test of the purity of Job's faith and worship by posing the question:  how do we know whether Job is righteous for the obvious material rewards that he has been blessed with, the usual herds of camels, goats, oxen and sheep, a loving and beautiful wife, and a host of children all above average?  In the story, God accepts the wager and lets the Satan go to work, inflicting emotional distress on the innocent Job (but horrific pain, suffering and death) on all of his children in addition to wiping out all his livestock and material possessions.  Job, of course, remains ignorant of the wager, but nevertheless remains steadfast in his faith and worship.  Further afflictions are then visited on Job himself, leading to his wife's suggestion that he curse God and die rather than put up with this raw deal.  Again, he declines, but does curse the day he was born and serves up an indictment against the divine injustice of things, an implicit rebuke of the Almighty.

Job then gets cold comfort from three friends.  The first, Eliphaz, the Temanite, pleads the case that Job's suffering is part of a cosmic general retribution for something that may be akin to inherent human imperfection.  In the King James version:

4:7-8  Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished, being innocent? or where were the righteous cut off?  Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

Eliphaz also takes Job to task for hubris he sees in Job's curse of his birth:

4:17  Shall mortal man be more just than God?  shall a man be more pure than his maker?

As Safire points out, this and other passages must be read as suffused with irony since it has been stipulated (as facts may be at trial) in the wager with the Satan that Job was pure as the driven snow.  Job repeatedly protests his innocence, an innocence to which God, the Satan and the reader are privy, but not Job's interlocutors.

Then comes Bilbad, the Shuhite, restating, sharpening and focusing the argument of Eliphaz makes it personal, but lays the blame on Job's children:

8:3-7  Doth God pervert judgment?  or doth the Almighty pervert justice? If thy children have sinned against him, and he have cast them away for their transgression; If thou wouldest seek unto God betimes, and make thy  supplication to the Almighty; If thou wert pure and upright; surey now he would awake for thee, and make the habitation of they righteousness prosperous.  Thogh thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.

Again, as parties to the wager, we cannot reconcile Bilbad's account with the stipulated facts.  We know Job's refutation to be well founded.

The comes Zophar, the Naamathite, further honing the accusation and laying blame to make it personal to Job:

11:2-6  Should not the multitude of words be answered? and should a man full of talk be justified?  Should thy lies make men hold their peace? and when thou mockest, shall no man make thee ashamed?  For hast thous said, My doctrine is pure, and I am clean in thine eyes.  But oh that God would speak, and open his lips against thee;  And that he would shew thee the secrets of wisdom, that they are double to that which is!  Know therefore that God exacteth of thee less than thine iniquity deserveth.

Bluntly put, Job is told to shut up and stop whining.  He is too small and finite to understand God's purpose and surely deserves what he is getting.  Again, we know it ain't so, at least as to deserving what he is getting.

Enter from nowhere a fourth voice, not a friend, the young whippersnapper Elihu, with an indictment against lawyers that I do not take personally.  This translation comes from the New English Bible, much closer to the original Hebrew meaning:

36:15-19:  Those who suffer he rescues through suffering and teaches them by the discipline of affliction.  Beware, if you are tempted to exchange hardship for comfort, for unlimited plenty spread before you, and a generous table; if you eat your fill of a rich man's fare when you are occupied with the business of the law, do not be led astray by lavish gifts of wine and do not let bribery warp your judgment.  Will that wealth of yours, however great, avail you, or all the resources of your high position?

No pain, no gain.  A pretty hard sell knowing what has been stipulated.

Then comes a scene which probably inspired a parallel encounter in the film version of The Wizard of Oz. This from the King James version:

38:1-4  Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,  Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?  Gird up now thy loins like a man: for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.

This and more intimidating intimations of mortality go on for another chapter or so, but no clear and direct answer to Job's complaint of injustice comes forth from the whirlwind.  When called to respond, Job (like Dorothy) says meekly as it appears in the Jewish Publication Society Hebrew-English Tanakh:

40: 4-5 See, I am of small worth; what can I answer You?  I clap my my hand to my mouth.  I have spoken once, and will not reply; Twice, and will do so no more.

More metaphorical thunder and lightning ensue, as if the abject apology for complaining about manifest injustice were not enough, and Job says:

42: 2-6  I know that You can do everything, That nothing you propose is impossible for You.  ho is this who obscures counsel without knowledge?  Indeed, I spoke without understanding Of things beyon me, which I did not know.  Hear now, and I will speak;  I will ask, and You will inform me.  I had heard You with my ears, But now I see You with my eyes; Therefor, I recant and relent, Being but dust and ashes.

Job does, indeed, shut up and stop whining, as advised in a gradation of ways by his three friends and the young interloper Elihu.  An epilogue follows, neatly tying up the loose ends in an entirely unsatisfactory way by restoring Job's camels, sheep, goats and oxen (lions and tigers and bears, oh my) though nothing further is said about the preceding slaughter.

In the Wizard of Oz, we have the dog Toto to thank for pulling back the curtain to reveal the machinery that resides in the whirlwind.  Dorothy then confronts the almighty Oz in a fashion that sets him back on his heels.  The protagonists are rewarded for their suffering in an imaginative award ceremony that puts them in touch with their inner resources.

I will not attempt here and now a theory of the Book of Job that will can compete with that devised in the Wizard of Oz or by that word wizard Safire.  After all, Job was from the land of Uz, a jurisdiction where other laws may apply.   But I would like to agree with Safire that the Book of Job, through the sly use of irony, does fulfill a Toto-like purpose.  We are left to ponder the big questions of good and evil and how to reconcile a belief and worship of a power that appears to be, in Woody Allen's memorable phrase, a chronic underachiever when it comes to fulfilling his promises to righteous people.  In that sense, the Book of Job is a powerful and poetic precursor to the Socratic dialogues, in particular Plato's Republic.   The ultimate challenge of Job is the call to wrestle with Providence, and to figure out what that means.


************************************************

IS RELIGION A CRUTCH?


Part bravado, part taunt, uttered in contempt, "religion is a crutch" in the mouth and mind of the speaker, reduces faith to a desperate illusion. In the brave new world sans religious faith, the clear-eyed skeptic (in his own eyes) ascends to heroic (dare we say demigod like) status by fearlessly embracing a godless accidental universe that, like individual lives, ends abruptly and without purpose. Two prominent spokesmen for this well-traveled point of view are Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene, The God Delusion and A Devil's Chaplin, among other tracts, and Daniel Dennett in Darwin's Dangerous Idea.

One can almost hear between the lines, that rousing poem learned many decades ago in middle school:

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul
In the fell clutch of circumstances
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of change
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the year
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Were this a story along the lines of The Devil and Daniel Webster, a faint order of sulfur would be in the air. But, I think, the better parallel comes from Greek myth or tragedy and, instead, we should be able to smell the wax burning from the wings of Icarus.

I do not contend with Professors Dawkins and Dennett. In fact, I concede that religion is a crutch. In turn, I ask the esteemed Professors to concede that science is a crutch. I also ask them to concede that science and certain aspects of religion, equally, are faculties of mind that are necessarily and undeniably the result of natural selection either on genes or memes.

Now let's define some terms -- "religion", "science" and "crutch". With some humility, let's start with "crutch". In partial deference to the Oxford Don, the The New Oxford American Dictionary will serve as my authority on this point, though the concepts of "religion" and "science" may require more elaboration. I had considered the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary, but it has a little too much information for present purposes. Two definitions appear: "1. long stick with a crosspiece at the top, used as a support under the armpit by a lame person [in sing.] figurative a thing used for support or reassurance; They use the Internet as a crutch or support for their loneliness. 2. archaic another term for CROTCH (of the body or garment.) I think we can safely rule out the second definition and the literal meaning of the first definition as pertinent to the discussion. I believe that Professors Dawkins and Dennett would agree.

Note the use of the term "used" in the definition. Although the dictionary physically describes a crutch, the figurative usage depends entirely on a metaphorical analogy to the use of a crutch. In other words, a crutch is a type of tool designed for a specific use. Humans themselves sometimes describe themselves as homo habilis, the animal that makes and uses tools, crutches included. Tools essentially make up for the many biological deficiencies that humans, described by Aristotle as featherless upright bipeds, have when compared to, for example, cheetahs when running, Australian shepherds for herding sheep (or humans for that matter) and falcons for flying, which brings us back, for the nonce, to Icarus.

Now to the tougher terms. Religion, according to our dictionary of preference, is either/and/or "1. the belief in a god or gods who made the world and who can control what happens in it: I never discuss politics or religion with them.; 2. one of the systems of worship that is based on this belief: the Christian/Hindu/Muslim religion." This definition probably works fairly well for Dawkins and Dennett in view of their primary agenda: the defeat of attacks on the concept of evolution by means natural selection from certain organized religious groups who in turn feel quite threatened by, in their view, the Dawkins and Dennett assertion that science trumps their theology, or worse, constitutes an act of theocide.

Much of the ink has been spilt, in recent times, on the teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to natural selection as the mechanism for evolution in American secondary classrooms. A readable and excellent summary of that conflict can be found in Kenneth R. Miller's Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution. More about Miller's attempted synthesis in a later essay.

With its focus on "god or gods" and the creative agency attributed thereto, this definition of religion excludes, among others, practitioners of Taoism as well as Buddhism and, a fairly hefty segment of the world's population. Dawkins and Dennett, though they focus primarily on the creation aspect of some religions, do in fact appear to have a more ambitious agenda of removing from the realm of reality any basis for a moral way of life grounded in any kind of rational foundation. Such systems, they seem to imply, cannot co-exist with a rational science. "The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference." River Out of Eden at 14.

This brings us, then, to a definition of science. Oxford tells us that science is 1. the study of and knowledge about the physical world and natural laws; or 2. one of the subjects into which science can be divided, e.g. biology, physics and chemistry. To this we should add, I think without objection from either Dawkins or Dennett, that true science generally results from a method that requires the formulation of a hypothesis based on the observation of facts that can then be verified or falsified by testing the hypothesis in a clinical or natural experiment capable of replication. I take this to be a simplified statement of the scientific method as stated in Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations.

Earlier in this essay, I called upon Dawkins and Dennett to concede that science is a crutch just as I conceded that religion is a crutch. Now I must explain why both concessions are necessary. A crutch, you will recall, in the literal sense is a useful tool fabricated by a human for the purpose of compensation for one of humankind's many biological deficiencies, namely a susceptibility to lameness that four or more legged animals seem able to cope with admirably by employing one of their redundant appendages. In the figurative sense, a crutch is a thing used for support or reassurance.

Perhaps you think I have given up the game by first conceding that religion is a crutch in both the literal and figurative senses. The truth of the matter, every religion that I can think of begins with the premise, undeniably true, that all men are limited and finite with an imperfect understanding of a vast and apparently unlimited universe in space and time (or space-time). Given the human condition, a crutch of some sort would seem to be necessary and desirable to cope with, well, the infinite and the place of man in that infinity. Why else go on?

But you might say, crutches are the devices of men. Are you then saying that religions are also invented by men? Did man invent God? And if you say that, don't you concede that all religions are, in fact, illusions, having no basis in reality?

Frankly, I am unaware of any religion that is not associated in a one-to-one mapping with humans. No evidence indicates the existence of religion prior to the emergence of humans; no other species engages in practices that we would accept as evidence of religion. The jury is still out, of course, as to whether such conditions may be found, eventually, either in the geological record or on other planets in other solar systems.

The same can be said of science, and more to the point, the scientific method. Clearly, and undeniably, science and the scientific method are crutches (useful tools) associated in a one-to-one mapping with humans. No evidence indicates the existence of science prior to the emergence of humans; no other species engages in practices that we would accept as evidence of science.  The jury is still out, of course, as to whether such conditions may be found, eventually, either in the geological record or on other planets in other solar systems.

We might also add that science, or at least the scientific method, is a relative latecomer to the human toolbox, say within the last 400 years or so. Given the evidence of religion in human societies almost as soon as there were human societies and the nearly universal presence of religions in all relatively long-lived societies would seem to suggest that religion, or at least certain aspects of religion, have either adaptive value in the survival and perpetuation of the species (be fruitful and multiply), or at the very least, place no negative burden on the carrier of the God gene or God meme as the case may be. It may be too early to tell whether the same can be said of science, especially in view of the fact that science has produced various means to achieve the annihilation not only of the species, but also the planet.

Some interesting work has been done to identify the so-called God gene, defined as a propensity in the bearer toward spirituality. See, e.g. Dean Hamer's The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into Our Genes. Suffice it to say that this research poses a very difficult problem for those who would argue, on the basis of natural selection as the mechanism driving evolution, that religion is an illusion while science is not. The ability to do and understand formal science is something reserved to a relatively small percentage of the species. The ability to practice and appreciate religion, in one form or another, appears to be nearly universal. I take this truth to be self-evident as a necessary implication of evolutionary theory: the creation endowed all people with certain inalienable cognitive functions, a primary one being spirituality.

More on this in the next essay.

POSTSCRIPT

The title of this essay was inspired by a sermon delivered last Passover by Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg of Beth T'filoh Synagogue in Baltimore, Maryland, where my father-in-law has been a member for most of nearly nine decades. The ideas expressed, however, grew out of a discussion among my son, my wife's godson, my father-in-law and me at my father-in-law's home when an Orioles game was rained out a few years ago. The discussion went well into the evening and continued among father, son and godson on the trip back to Washington from Baltimore. I leave it to the reader to decide whether Book I of The Republic of Plato was also a source of inspiration.

REALLY ANCIENT ANCESTORS: THE " X" CHROMOSOME

So why do separate analyses for the "Y" and the "X" chromosome?  The analysis is a bit different because it looks at mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) instead of markers along the an entire chromosome.  mtDNA does not combine at conception so it shows up in pretty much the identical form throughout the maternal line, exactly the same signature for siblings and all those tracing back mother-to-mother through many many generations.  Once again, the mtDNA analysis is useful for tracing ancient migration patterns.  In the near term, it is most useful for eliminating possible genetic relationships because, in the absence of a perfect match, no relationship exists.

The description of the maternal haplogroup is very general.  In this case, the K group also called by the catchy moniker of The Ice Immigrants, derives from a population that migrated from the Middlel East about 50,000 years ago to Europe. Naturally enough, the K haplogroup shows up in "notable rates" among the Druze, "a small and distinct religious community mainly in Lebanon and Israel."  But 10% of Kurds, Palestinians and Yeminites also belong to the K group.  Current Basques do not belong to K, but Basque remains froma few thousand years ago have large numbers.  Notable rates of K show up among Ashkenazi Jews with 20% of current day Ashkenazis in the subgroup K1a1b1a.  No, you did not read kabala.  Those are number one's, not lower case L's.  Hmmm.  Maybe some numerologist made up the subgroup label.

Finally, a 5,300-year-old man (not Sid Ceasar) whose remains were found frozen and well preserved in the Alps near the Austrian-Italian border.  You guessed it -- K.

The generality of the information makes this more like astrology than the connect-the-dot specificity of old fashioned genealogy.  One tends to identify with the part of the group that fits with a current perception of self, a club that would be worth joining. 

REALLY ANCIENT ANCESTORS: THE " Y" CHROMOSOME

Quite a bit of fuss has been made lately with TV programs showing celebrities discovering their recent (last 400 years or so) ancestors.  These programs, usually sponsored or supported by Ancestry.com, have attempted to dramatize the "holy cow!" ("eureka!!!" for those who prefer Greek and extra punctuation)  feeling that amateur and professional genealogists get when they come across some crumb of evidence that an ancestor actually did something worth recording, usually after hours or days of sweat-equity in some poorly ventilated library, eyes  bloodshot staring at microfilm, microfiche or pixels on a computer screen.  Who better to channel these moments of triumph than some attractive actress, handsome actor or other famous person, none of whom have ever come close to doing the exacting and often tedious work that precedes the climactic moment.

Less attention has been paid to the use of DNA analysis to determine, very generally, the haplogroup of an indiviudal's really ancient ancestors -- 50,000 to 100,000 years ago.  Markers of the "Y" chromosome (father's line) can be used to demonstrate the probable migration route out of Africa.  The DNA device can also be used to locate MRCA's, meaning "most recent common ancestors" of those who submit DNA samples for analysis.  This may turn up unknown genetic "cousins" within 5 generations or so by comparing the haplotype with others submitted through a matching device on the Ancestry,com website.

So here are the results and the explanation offered for the analysis.  The "X" chromosome analysis will be onthe next posting.

GETTING FROM GUELFF TO EDEN VALLEY

We have, at this writing, no direct account of the reasons for Michael Guelff's decision to leave the little Belgian village bearing his ancestral name and seek his future and fortune in Eden Valley, Minnesota.  Nor do we have a direct account of the same journey taken at the same time by the Grein family for a destination a few miles away in St. Anthony, Minnesota.

About Michael Guelff, we know that two brothers and a cousin preceded him to the same general geographical area a few years before his voyage.  One brother settled in Marquette, Michigan, another in Appleton, Wisconsin and the cousin in Austin Mower, Minnesota a few miles away from Eden Valley.  Michael Guelff stayed with at least one of the brothers for  a short time after his arrival.

About the family Grein, we know that they were preceded by close relatives who settled in Minnesota, Ohio and Iowa.  Anna's older sister, Susanne, had married John Roler (also spelled Roller) and they had made the journey to America in 1873.  A great many "Luxembourgers", the term generally used for immigrants from the southern part of Belgium and Luxembourg, settled in the Ohio and northern Mississippi Valleys in the latter part of the 19th Century.  A combination of drought, poor harvests and overpopulation motivated the general exodus to the more promising and less populated United States.

Though most of the specific details on the Grein/Guelff travel arrangements remain unknown, most of the Luxembourgers found their way to the United States using package deals -- ocean passage and railroad tickets to final destination -- offered by several of the emigrant ship lines in collaboration with the expanding U.S. railroads.  Not coincidentally, Eden Valley was a significant rail station on the Soo Line at the time of the Grein/Guelff arrival.

So how did this work?  The Port of History Museum in Philadelphia has a very helpful exhibit, especially
considering that Philadelphia was the Grein/Guelff port of arrival. Basically, after the Civil War and with the advent of seaworthy steamships, a large number of "ocean liners" were built to ply the emigrant trade mainly from European ports in Germany and the Netherlands to Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore along the eastern seaboard.

One of the most famous lines, the Red Star Line, was only a trade name, not a corporation. It is not entirely clear who owned the name, most likely the International Navigation Company, since that is the name printed on the "Report or Manifest of all the passengers taken on board." 

At Philadelphia, in 1871, some businessmen created the International Navigation Company. The company ordered in England the construction of three vessels, one of which was the steam ship Nederland, although it apparently also had two masts as depicted on the manifest.  At Antwerp, in 1872, another company known as the Société Anonyme de Navigation Belgo-Américaine was founded. The International Navigation Company put into this new venture the three vessels under construction. Consequently, the newly formed company became the owner of the S.S. Vaderland, the S.S. Nederland, and the S.S. Switzerland.  The Nederland was completed in 1873, and both companies started operating a line under the name of Red Star Line.  The photo of the S.S. Nederland below comes from a website of old steamship photos:

The principal ports of departure and routes of those ships that routinely made a port of call at Philadelphia are illustrated by the map below, also borrowed fromthe Port of History Museum.

The ship that brought the Greins and Michael Guelff to the Port of Philadelphia was a typical twin screw double-masted affair.  It was in the smaller range of ships, about 2200 tons. Some of the larger ships built later carried 1000 or more passengers. These vessels arrived on a weekly schedule in New York and Philadelphia, as noted in this schedule from the Antwerp end of the voyage. 

Like most immigrants, Michael Guelff and the Grein family booked passage in steerage, fairly cramped quarters below decks.  Moreover, steerage passengers were not allowed access to the more desirable parts of the ship and certainly were not allowed to mingle with the first class passengers.  At the time of their crossing in 1878, the ships typically did not have separate cabin space for families.  Curtains drawn around bunks were about all the privacy anyone had.  The bunks were none too commodious either, and did not have spring suspension until around 1900.  A six-foot person would either need to curl-up or dangle feet over the foot of the bunk, which was very clear from the interactive exhibit at the Port of History Museum, which invites you to "Climb Rigt In."  Anna Grein at 5' 4" or less, on the other hand, probably had little difficulty sharing one level of the bunk with a parent or a sibling.  Her baby brother Pierre Grein was 13 months old and her younger sister Catherine was 5 at the time of the April 14, 1878 departure of the Nederland  from Antwerp.  Anna may have had one or both in her charge. The manifest has her age listed as 14, even though she was 16 years and four months at the time the ship set sail from Europe.  The lower age probably meant a lower fare and doubling up on one of the bunks.

The steerage fare also did not allow much room for luggage, certainly nothing more than could be stowed under the lower bunk in one of the typical "steamer trunks" manufactured for exactly that purpose, a precursor of the airliner roll-on.

Given the cramped quarters and the monotony of a 17 day crossing, the Grein/Guelff party was undoubtedly very happy to arrive in Philadelphia on May 1, 1878, a bustling seaport teaming with families and adventurers ready to head west.  Some contemporary lithographs, undoubtedly idealized and spruced-up, convey some sense of what the arrival and re-embarkation via railroad must have been like.

"At Dock Street Wharf" is a hand colored engraving by Schell & Hogan from Picturesque America, which was published in 1876, just two years before the Nederland brought the Grein/Guelff party to America.

Another lithograph, from a magazine tear entitled "Scene At the Landing of Immigrants from Europe At the Washington Avenue Wharf, Philadelphia", though from about 1900, gives a stylized depiction of the arrival process, not too different from what took place in 1878. 


Next stop, Eden Valley.

PASTOR POISONS GIRL GETS LIFE

Rush N.D. Minister To Prison Cell After Midnight Sentencing -- Mercer County Man Confesses He Killed Maid, Fired Parsonage After She Threatened To Tell Wife of Illicit Relations

After this piece was published, I was contacted by a writer researching this particular murder for a magazine article and, potentially, a book dealing with strange happenings and murder mysteries of the Dakotas.  A correspondence ensued and substantially more genealogical research, including a letter from prison written by the Rev. Heid Janssen and correspondence with a descendant of the Reverend who was also a psychiatrist.  The writer has priority to the use of the research, so it will not appear in this blog in whole or in part until the story and book are published, at which time I will offer my readers a review of the story.  

--Mandan, N.D. Aug 19 [1938]--Sentenced at a midnight court session, Rev. Heid Janssen, Evangelical Lutheran pastor at Krem, began a life term in the state penitentiary today a few hours after pleading guilty to poisoning his 16-year old housemaid and firing the parsonage containing her body.
Feeling in the community ran so high trial was ordered immediately after the minister, 51, admitted he killed Alma Kruckenberg because she was pregnant.
Sentence was passed by District Judge H.L. Berry. Janssen was taken immediately to the penitentiary.
The arraignment followed swiftly after Janssen signed a confession before States Attorney Floyd Sperry of Mercer County admitting he perp[etrated the crime Monday.
"The devil overcame me," the pastor said impassively. "I did wrong. I have a very good Christian wife and two boys any father would be proud of and I feel only sorry that I bring such grief to them."
The girl's father after hearing the pastor admit his guilt told him:

"I FORGIVE YOU."

"We were the best friends he had," John Kruckenberg said. He described the minister as "the best preacher I ever heard.
"He was especially good for children and was very well respected, not only in this community but ministers over the state as well," the father said.
Kruckenberg described his daughter as "not very healthy" and said he had placed her in the churchman's care because he thought she was safe there and that the work would not be too hard.
Miss Krickenberg was one of 10 children in the family of Mr. and Mrs. Kruckenberg, farmers near Krem, 60 miles north of Mandan. She had been employed at the parsonage since last January.
Sperry and Special Assistant Attorney General James Austin began questioning Janssen early Tuesday. During two days of incessant interrogation, Sperry said, the minister denied any connection with the fire and burned body.

PARENTS ASK TRUTH

Thursday evening the parents of the murdered girl confronted Janssen and pleaded he "tell the truth." The confession followed.
Janssen told the court he gave the girl poisoned wine Aug. 13, and then burned teh house. He admitted illicit relations with the girl. He said the girl threatened to tell Mrs. Janssen, and he decided "to do away with her."
Janssen's wife was in Bismarck for medical treatment when he confessed to the crime and Sheriff F.W. Vreeland of Mercer County did not believe she knew either of the confession or the sentence.
The minister was calm throughout the trial and did not break down. He seemed pleased he would be taken immediately to the penitentiary.

FORMERLY AT HARVEY

Serving a parsonage of almost 50 members in the Krem area, Janssen has been there five years, previously serving in Montana for 18 years and before that at Harvey S.D. for eight years.

From The Fargo Forum Friday Evening August 19, 1938

I requested a copy of this news article from the Germans for Russia Historical Society after a research librarian there generously offered to run a check for the appearance of an Evangelical Lutheran Pastor by the name of Heid Janssen in connection with the murder of a servant girl sometime between 1930 and 1940. This genealogical investigation into an otherwise long forgotten crime was triggered by a story my father once told me when I asked him why he only went to church when his mother was buried and his children got married. He said he did not like the hypocrisy of church goers who sinned all week and held themselves out to be holy and righteous for an hour or so on Sunday mornings. Then, after a short pause, he told me about a pastor he knew when he was young who raped and killed a girl working at the parsonage. He never mentioned it again, and I never asked. But I never forgot the story.
A week ago, I returned to eastern Montana to celebrate the 100th birthday of my Uncle Bill, who was married to my father's sister, the oldest of the five children in my father's family. While there, I also reconnected with my 92 year old Aunt Martha, the widow of my father's older brother. It turns out that my Aunt Martha and my father were confirmed by the same Lutheran Pastor in a little church in Marsh, Montana, not too far from Glendive, both on or near the Yellowstone River. So I asked her about my father's story. Without hesitation she recited the particulars pretty much as I remembered my father's account and added to it, the names of the pastor's wife and two boys as well as the last name of a servant girl, whose body was found in the well of the Marsh, Montana church after Rev. Janssen was arrested and convicted for a similar crime in North Dakota.  A coroner's report, subsequently located, said only that the girl's body was found downstream in the Yellowstone River.  No autopsy was done.
As I write this piece, I am looking at "Zur Erinnerung an den Tag der Konfirmation" with the written inscription at the bottom "Evan. Luth. Jehovah -- Kirche, Marsh Montana" and in the same hand signed "H. Janssen ev. luth." Pastor, dated 23 June 1929.

THE TALMUD AND THE INTERNET

Taking my lead from the title, I downloaded this book from the Internet and read it on my Kindle. Spark-like thoughts shot out from the "e-ink screen which reads like real paper and boast 16 shades of gray for clear text and sharp images." So says Amazon.com.

The author deftly weaves the very old and the very new with reflections on his relation to religion and his Jewish identity. He views the Talmud (2000 years of rabbinic commentary on the Torah) as a sort of Internet chat room of indefinite duration and scope. As Rosen points out, rabbinic scholars speak of "the sea of the Talmud" to convey the organic size and neural connectivity of the work, which can be entered at almost any point in time and on any topic along the vast shoreline of its ocean.

Most unusual to the uninitiated (and perhaps most intriguing), the Talmud like the Internet reflects and refracts an overwhelming array of views, often directly contradictory, even on matters that are settled confessions of faith in most other variations of occidental monotheism. Possibly (plausibly) this seeming chaos of uncertainty emerged from the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem in the first century of the Common Era and ensuing Diaspora. Judaism, to survive and even sometimes thrive, evolved into a "grass roots" organization in which each Jewish household, wherever it existed geographically, became a functional equivalent of that temple, at least in some important respects. Thus, Judaism in exile became a portable religion of the book and never-ending commentary on the book, a sort of evolving collective covenant of memory that bound a people. The Talmud bundled culture, customs and practices into a portable abstract world of the word that was realized in the here and now wherever it was studied, revered and shared.

Rosen raises the provocative possibility that the Internet may (has) become the collective enduring consciousness of this century and, like the Talmud and the Torah before it, both memorializes and retroactively reshapes the past. Being of a literary bent, Rosen feels no discomfort by the evident and heavy pen applied with equally heavy moral judgments and consequences (real or imagined) by those priestly and later rabbinic scribes and commentators to those familiar and oft re-interpreted stories from the Tanahk (roughly what is also known as the Old Testament). Unlike the ancient Egyptians, the Romans, Russians, Nazis and other lesser known enemies and oppressors, Jews have survived and controlled the telling and re-telling of the past.

Rosen does not reflect on the Orwellian aspects of the enterprise. In the slogan words of Big Brother: "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." Rather, Rosen explores more deeply the importance of remembering in order to establish identity and in order to defeat attempts to erase memory (in fact, to erase any remembrance that Jews or Judaism existed). He does this by reflecting on the two lines of his ancestors, one escaping from the Shoah to spend the duration of WWII in a camp for Jewish children on the estate of Lord Balfour and the other having arrived and becoming established in the United States before the great calamities of the 20th Century claimed the lives of a third of the world's Jewish population.

One cannot read The Talmud and the Internet without being inspired to follow the path of Rosne's reflections. In 2000, when the book was first published, Wikipedia had not yet taken off. Wikipedia's own history of Wikipedia states that the Wikipedia was not formally launched until January 15, 2001, quickly became a large global project that today includes over 14 million freely usable articles in hundreds of languages worldwide, and content from millions of contributors. Some of them even rabbis.

In a partial recounting of what Jews faced from several centuries in Europe, Rosen mentioned a particularly loathsome tract penned by Martin Luther later in his life, "The Jews and Their Lies." Luther had, at the beginning of the Protestant break from the Catholic Church, been sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. The sympathy evaporated when it became apparent that Jews could not be converted to Luther's vision of Christianity. This should not have surprised Luther since his theological concept of redemption by faith alone is the perfect antithesis of the Judaic emphasis on the hard work of achieving by practice and conduct what is promised in the covenant. Judaic deed versus Lutheran creed or otherwise put in the disputation between Erasmus and Luther, works versus faith.

A significantly large number of Lutherans in the late 18th Century, the Pietists, also essentially rejected the central Lutheran doctrine, some of my forefathers among them. Because the establishment Lutheran church began to assume the outward trappings of Catholicism, the Pietists started to meet in household conclaves, dress simply and work hard on conforming personal practice to ethical ideals. The established church viewed them as trouble makers, even though generally they were widely regarded as conforming their behavior to a higher standard of moral conduct.

In the 18th Century, first Peter the Great and then Catherine the Great sent an invitation to prosperous farmers to resettle in the Ukraine near Odessa in land seized from the Ottoman Turks. My ancestors accepted and went in family groups known as "harmonies". They settled in self-governing colonies, guaranteed by the Czarist edicts (ukases) to be exempt from military service, taxation for a period of years, military service and complete freedom of religion. An added incentive to those, like my chiliastic forefathers, who fervently believed the world would end in the 1830's, was the proximity of Odessa to Israel. They were ex-communicated from the Lutheran church when they left as reflected in the large "X" through the church records of their family births, baptisms, marriages and deaths.

Many Jews from the same regions of German speaking Europe also accepted the invitation. For a time, the deal worked for both groups. The Jews generally worked in trades within the larger
population centers and the German farmers remained within the small walled villages. In the end, with the rise of Slavic nationalism, the promises of the ukase were rescinded. It turned out to be a deal with the devil.

Rosen's mention of the Luther tract startled me. The Lutheran environment in which I grew up was nearly devoid of Jews and completely devoid of anti-Semitism. My Lutheran heritage had been shaped more by the tripartite, internecine and fratricidal wars of Lutherans, Calvinists and Catholics causing both maternal and paternal ancestors to flee Alsace and Weurtemberg. The maternal side came to colonial western Maryland where they found ways to cooperate even to the extent of sharing church structures and pastors with other Protestant denominations, an arrangementthat never would have happened in Europe.

I was also struck by Rosen's reference to his father's involvement, like my own father's, in Masonic orders, which are open to all monotheistic faiths. My father repudiated the Lutheran church, which his step-father built and served as a deacon. See Pastor Poisons Girl Gets Life. The Masonic orders became an outlet for a deeply held, but rarely expressed spirituality.

It did not seem at all unusual to me that my father had as a close friend one of the handful of Jews who lived in Helena, Montana. Jerry Karasik owned and operated a cafe on Rodney Street called the Dutch Maid from 1955 until sometime in the 70's or 80's. Jerry's parents were "Bohemian Jews," according to census records recently located. Jerry was born in Canada. He came to the United States and eventually to Fort Harrison just outside Helena to train as a paratrooper in a Canadian-American commando unit that came to be known as the Devil's Brigade, 1st Special Service Force, organized in 1942. Helena's Memorial Park is dedicated to the unit, along with I-15 and its extension into Alberta, Canada all the way to Lethbridge. A couple of Hollywood action movies, notably "The Devil's Brigade", have been made about it, but certainly bear almost no relation to the reality of the training or what these men actually faced in combat.

Jerry liked Helena, and came back after the war. It must have seemed like a return to paradise. Jerry and my father got to know each other in the late fifties when my father was frequently in Helena to bid on state and federal highway contracts. My father consumed large amounts of beer and coffee, so I suspect the location the Dutch Maid near two of his favorite bars, Jesters and the Red Meadow, had a lot to do with the initial acquaintance. Also Dad's low/middle German shared vocabulary and idiomatic expressions with Yiddish, so they probably had that in common as well. For some reason, Jerry either never learned to drive a car or at least never owned one, so Dad got in the habit of driving him back and forth to grocery stores and other places. Later on, when Dad's company failed, Jerry reciprocated by providing a relatively unlimited supply of "Jewish road oil" (Dad's term for Jerry's coffee and his notion of friendly harassment) and odd jobs around the malt shop.

The friendship may also have had something to do with the Masons. At least one group of German Mason's openly repudiated the rampant anti-Semitism in Germany prior to and during the rise of Hitler, though others were not so righteous. See www.bessel.org/masjud.htm David Kaufmann, the author of the piece and a free mason, summarizes the intersection of the fraternal order and Judaism. Both subscribe and aspire to respect and support individual freedom, moral responsibility, the symbolic finding of "light" through moral practice, ridding oneself of all prejudices and a deep respect for learning. Of course, Masonry also borrows freely symbols that are central to Jewish liturgy, literature and practice, most especially the Temple of Solomon and light as the symbol of divinity. The place where I scattered my parents ashes on the crest of the continental divide hosts an open air Masonic structure commemorating the first Masonic meeting in Montana. The structure faces and points to Jerusalem, more specifically and symbolically the location of the Temple.

No doubt, because of the this notable influence, Free Masonry has often figured prominently in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Once again, from a Wikipedia article entitled "The Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy:"

The International-Communist-Judaeo-Masonic Conspiracy, sometimes called
the international-marxist-masonic conspiracy, or simply the judaeo-masonic
conspiracy, is a conspiracy theory involving a secret coalition of Jews, Freemasons,
and communists. The coalition's dark aim, especially in the view of franquist pain,
would be world domination. The absence of evidence for such a world-spanning
is taken as further demonstration of the influence of the conspirators, who are
understood to be working to suppress evidence of their activity.

What else is there to say in the face of such logic?

THE JEWISH QUESTION

This essay is not about the integration of Jews into the societies of 19th Century Europe; it is also not about Karl Marx and his essay On the Jewish Question; and it is emphatically not about Jean Paul Sartre’s Semite and Anti-Semite. It is, however, to a certain extent about the Seinfeld episode with the dentist who converted to Judaism so he could tell Jewish jokes to his patients.

This is the Jewish question: Have you met any nice Jewish girls? I have been asked this question many times, but only on the coasts, far away from where I grew up in the high plateau and Rocky Mountain regions of Montana, Wyoming and Utah. The question contains the implicit assumption that I am Jewish, and I have only been asked the Jewish question by people who are Jewish, usually someone who knows some nice Jewish girl and has also seen Fiddler on the Roof. Very few Jews live in the regions where I grew up, so I suppose it would not be surprising if all of the nice Jewish girls had already met and married someone by the time I became a logical suspect suitable for interrogation. How few you ask? One family of four and one bachelor diner owner in my hometown of Helena, as far as I know.

Although I have never been asked the Jewish question by a non-Jew, I have observed some behavior by non-Jews that clearly indicated, in retrospect, that they also assumed that I was Jewish, which brings me back to Fiddler on the Roof. Norm Jewison, a nice Canadian goy, directed of the movie version of Fiddler. A syndicate of Jewish backers bought the movie rights and asked Jewison, assuming that he was Jewish, to direct it. In his Turner Classic Movies interview, Jewison gives a side-splitting account of the jaw-dropping reaction to his response, “You know that I am not Jewish, right?”

In Jewison’s case, at least in the instance of being offered the job to direct Fiddler, the assumption embedded in the Jewish question worked in his favor. For the most part, in my life, the assumption has also worked in my favor, and sometimes produced similarly comical results. Shortly after arriving at Williams College, my small freshman political science class, in keeping with the college ethic, went to dinner at the professor’s house. During the usual get to know you chit-chat the professor asked in his thick ex-patriate Austrian accent, where I had gone to prep school, guessing a predominantly Jewish suburb of Chicago. “Prep school? I went to Helena Senior High School in Helena, Montana.” “Really?” he said in obvious amazement and some disbelief, “You seem to have a well-trained mind.” That comment can tell you a whole lot about the then prevailing stereotype of Montana on the east coast.

A few years later, while considering the possibility of graduate school, the chairman of the philosophy department called me into his office to talk about schools, and also about academics as a profession generally. At one point the conversation took a strange turn. Out of the blue, he put the question: “What do you make of the fact that all of the professors in the department that you have worked with come from Christian backgrounds and two are Catholic?” I was tempted to say, well my grandmother was Catholic and I learned a lot from her, so what would you expect me to make of it? My Spidey sense counseled silence, so I waited for him to answer his own question, which he had a history of doing. It was not all that usual for this professor, who had a degree in theology as well as philosophy, to come at something sideways, but this question was a little more sideways than most, so I said, not committing to anything, “I hadn’t really thought about it”, just to see where he was going. He then went into a kind of confessional mode and said that, because of the way he was raised, he only recently was able to stop categorizing people by their last names. After that brief statement, this professor from a starchy New England family who had, perhaps, the biggest influence on my thinking at college and afterwards, went on to write a glowing letter of reference that assured my acceptance to all the law schools and graduate schools to which I had applied. Not until many years later did I realize that he also had assumed that I was Jewish. Did his interest in my career somehow assuage guilt over a self-discovered latent anti-semitism?

In law school, students and professors alike continued to assume that I was Jewish. In general, this worked in my favor because they all assumed, in keeping with stereotypes, that I was smarter and more capable because of it. Professor Kaplan, who recruited me to be a research and teaching assistant for his undergraduate course, was quite surprised by my German Lutheran upbringing, but then became fascinated by the cultural differences and similarities. He grew up in Brooklyn a few blocks from Woody Allen, with some of the same neuroses and sense of humor and exactly the same accent. Kaplan eventually paved the way for work at the Hoover Institute on the Stanford Campus, and then a position at the Department of Justice that I declined in favor of a better offer, economically, at private law firm, the most prominent partners of which --- were Jews.

My first and best mentor in the firm was a semi-observant Jew. At the first firm function his wife turned to me and asked, “Have you met any nice Jewish girls yet?” I felt it necessary, at this point, to make full disclosure. She was obviously disappointed, but then brightened and said, “But have you met any nice Jewish girls yet?”

Oddly enough, she did turn out to have a connection to the woman I married a few years later. Her mother taught English Literature at the University of Illinois. One of her best students, a descendant of Mayflower era Puritans and recently arrived Irish Catholics, later became my wife.

Several years later, on a business trip to Chile, one of the larger vineyard owners of Palestinian extraction hosted a relaxing afternoon at one of the best restaurants on a hillside near his plantations. After a pleasant afternoon enjoying the view and some very good Chilean wines, my gracious host put his hand on my shoulder, leaned toward me and said in his broken English, “We are brothers.” I said, in my less than adequate Spanish “We are brothers?” He said, “Yes we are brothers. Your people and my people come from the same place and the same tradition.” I said, “The same place? You came from Montana?” He said, “No, not from the mountains. My people come from Palestine. Your people come from Israel. We are brothers.” After I explained and we had a good laugh at the misunderstanding, my host said, “Well, it’s too bad. We know the Jewish lawyers are the best ones, so maybe we need somebody else.”

Perhaps fate predestined a second marriage to a nice Jewish girl, which came about in 2000. With some trepidation, I prepared to meet her conservative-orthodox parents, not sure at all what the reaction would be. They turned out to be wonderfully warm people with pretty much the same basic values as the parents that raised me. At the end of that first meeting, my future mother-in-law took my future wife aside, smiled mischievously and said, “He looks Jewish." I believe that she was thinking, "He could be Jewish.”

My mother and siblings connected immediately with Roslyn, seeing what I saw, and universally concluded that I was “marrying up.” Mom, in particular, liked the match. A year or two after the wedding, inspired by the Friday at sundown prayers that Roslyn and her father did every week by telephone, I started having long distance Sunday at noon “services” with Mom. She was pleased, but kept asking why I was suddenly doing this. Eventually, I told her about the Friday prayers. With no sense of irony, she said, “That Roslyn! I really like her! She will make a good Christian out of you yet!” And she just might. And maybe there is a place in the afterlife where both mothers will get their wish.

THREE TIMES NU

We set out for Potomac at 7:45 am, allowing extra time for weather and traffic. The record-breaking snowfall had not yet been completely cleared from many major road ways, and even the plowed routes had dangerous patches of black ice as well as an over abundance of twittering/cell-phoning drivers with little or no experience with these kind of weather conditions. 

My wife, Sarah, had prepared a briefing folder the night before consisting of three of the Rabbi’s High Holiday sermons (downloaded from the synagogue website) and the directions from Map Quest. We made unusually good time, so stopped at the Potomac Village crossroads for coffee and a grain shovel (much better for heavy snow than a standard snow shovel). Even with the stopover, we arrived at the synagogue about fifteen minutes early.

We could see the rabbi in a large meeting room leading his Wednesday morning minion, so we wandered around the synagogue to get a feeling for the place. A fairly new structure nestled in a wooded neighbor hood, the buildings seemed to blend into the surroundings. We learned later that the architect was a member who lived not too far away.

Rabbi MW of my wife’s family’s “modern orthodox” synagogue in Baltimore recommended this place, even though Rabbi SW was conservative and had come to the conservative stance from a reform starting point. The rabbis knew each other well and for many years. Judaism offers, to the newcomer, a bewildering number of variations that, for most purposes, are lumped into three large “denominations”: orthodox, conservative, and reform. I suspect the Baltimore rabbi directed us toward a conservative synagogue primarily because of his close friendship with Rabbi SW but also because men and women do not sit together at orthodox services. That logistical fact would make it impossible to have Sarah’s guidance in many aspects of the service.

After looking into the sanctuary, the library, and reading the names on the tree of life, we found the rabbi’s office and checked in with his assistant. She had been extraordinarily friendly and helpful a few days before in providing information and background on the synagogue. We knew that the rabbi had built this congregation from scratch in 1988 into a politically and socially active group, and that he is highly regarded in the metropolitan area and beyond. We chatted amiably for a few minutes until the rabbi came in from the minion.

We were warmly greeted and welcomed into his study. Other than the referral from the rabbi in Baltimore, he knew nothing about us, so we spent ten minutes on general background – what we did, where we lived, how we met, children, family, our different religious backgrounds – before coming to the point. Why become a Jew? Why now?

Sarah was a little afraid (with probable cause) that I would respond to this question in a semi-humorous way, my usual entre to a more serious discussion, after the modus operandi of Socrates. When she first put the question to me a few days earlier, my deflections consisted of “It’s about the real estate,” referring to the unoccupied burial plots that her father held for the family in the Baltimore synagogue cemetery. This particular family joke owed its origin to a dear, and recently departed, Czech friend when I first met him at a dinner we hosted at our home soon after we married. “So,” he deadpanned while looking around the house, “You married her for the real estate.” It took me two beats to adjust to his very dry Czech sense of humor (two orders of magnitude beyond conditions in the Mojave Desert) before I said, “Sure. That’s it.”

We had, when our mothers passed away a year apart, discussed the fact that only Jews could be buried in a Jewish cemetery, so if we were to be together through eternity we needed to find a Christian cemetery immediately adjacent to a Jewish cemetery, and arrange for plots along the boundary, one on each side. Such places actually exist! Amazing how the marketplace solves problems of this sort.

The joke, of course, reflects a deeper purpose. We were married in Baltimore nine years ago in a ceremony performed by a reform rabbi and having all of the outward appearances of a Jewish ceremony, except for the critical words, “under the laws of Moses.” Another joke could be made at this point: “I wanted to make her an honest woman.” And it would also reflect a deeper purpose.

When my wife’s mother Sophie passed away, my wife assumed the ritual Sophie had long conducted of lighting the candles and saying the prayers with Willie, to begin the Sabbath at sundown on Friday. The observance took place in Baltimore and Washington, with the prayers said over the phone and sometimes, when we were traveling, at points around the world – Prague, Paris, Rome, Rapid City to name a few. I also gained a deep respect for Willie, who seemed to me to effortlessly “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.” This had become my spiritual family.

Inspired by this simple act of honoring her father and the memory of her mother, I began something similar with my mother (at half time on a Super Bowl Sunday), which I called “telephone church.” Starting with Genesis, I would pick a passage, read it along with her, then ask her some questions. This worked, even though she was having short-term memory problems at the time. Talking about things she had learned when young could lead to a current, real-time conversation.

She was curious to know why I was suddenly reading the Bible with her now. To keep her curious, I evaded answering the question for almost two months, when at last I explained to her the Sabbath ritual of Sarah and Willie. Her reaction, without any sense of irony: “I have always loved that Sarah. She will make a good Christian of you yet!” In my mother’s world, being a good Christian had very little to do with theology and everything to do with a nurturing kindness to everyone she knew and an unerring sense of doing the right thing in all circumstances.

 

I told this story to Rabbi SW, and also described a little of the family history, noting in particular that both of our families spent a century in Czarist Russia, a few hundred kilometers apart in Ukraine. Both families knew the horrors of the rise of Slavic nationalism and as a result, emigrated to the United States -- my father’s family from the Black Sea region near Odessa in the 1870 to 1880 time frame and my father-in-law from a village near Kiev in 1920. The family of Sarah’s godchildren emigrated at the same time as my father’s family from a nearby village outside Odessa to a village less than 10 miles away from where my great grandparents homesteaded in the Dakotas. 

Apart from the historic and geographic connection, I was struck from the beginning at the shared values of hard work and high ethical standards that each of us received as our family heritage. In my case it was the natural by-product of at least seven generations of Pietist Lutheran observance and rigorous religious instruction. In Sarah’s case, innumerable generations of Orthodox Jewish observance. I was also struck by the fact, but did not mention, that most of the Yiddish expressions I had heard were variations of the German dialect and the idioms of the language that my grandparents and my father spoke.

 

The rabbi summed it up by saying, “Pretty much the same history, except for the anti-semitism.”  I did not respond, though I could have recounted to him the horrors visited on the 1,000,000 or so Black Sea and Volga Germans whose lands were confiscated, whose woman were raped, whose families were exiled to slave labor camps in Siberia and literally worked to death, whose villages were pillaged and whose leaders were executed prior to and during World War I and World War II. See, The Great Terror by Robert Conquest. I could also have told the stories of those Black Sea Germans who took into their families and sheltered Jewish families from the even greater atrocities visited on them by the invading Germans, or the horrors that followed World War II when Black Sea Germans and Jews alike were forced to return to the miserable and hostile conditions in Russian controlled territories from which they had just fled. But, of course, nothing compares to, or should be compared to the incomprehensible evil of the mass genocide that was the Holocaust.

The rabbi then moved to the attention grabber of the meeting. “It is my duty as a rabbi to shun you, discourage you from converting, and to refuse you three times,” he said, “And then embrace you, if go ahead anyway.” I could not resist. “I have had experience with this, having proposed to Sarah three times, before she stopped objecting to the form of the question.” “Then you know what I mean,” he said, enjoying the joke.

First, he raised the issue that most deeply divides and defines the difference between Christianity and Judaism: the divinity of Jesus. The divinity of Jesus, as special and distinct from the divinity of all mankind as the children of God, had always perplexed me, so much so that it came close to derailing my confirmation when I raised the question with the wife of our Methodist minister in confirmation classes. I had noticed very different formulations among the four gospels, with Mark being the closest to what I perceive as a continuation of one strand of Jewish theology in the teaching of Jesus: namely, the recognition that, since all men are children of God, the love of your neighbor as yourself is essentially equivalent to the love of God. I told the story to the rabbi.

Second, he turned to the observances of Judaism, notable among them the attending services (Shabbat) and the ceremonial circumcision for men who are already circumcised (hatafte dam bit), and the purifying immersion in water (mikvah)-- the antecedant of Christian baptism.

Third, we discussed the logistics and the time required for completion of conversion classes and learning some rudimentary Hebrew, the involvement of the rabbi as my sponsor, working with my father-in-law on some of the material, and other practical aspects. We decided that Sarah would attend classes with me and that we would attend Shabbat services in Potomac, except when attending in Baltimore, with conversion classes taking place in conjunction with another synagogue in DC.

The rabbi gave us a list of books to get started with, and we were on our way in the next journey of our lives together.