This post is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.
Returned home today. Long flight. Many thoughts.
On Romney’s blood money, Romero’s life. Our blood money, the Congo’s life. Israel’s blood money, Palestinian life. The Wheel of Blood Money. Everyone has to have their place on the Wheel, otherwise they are down and out. Finished. Not a rosy picture.
The last nights in my hotel in Innsbruck – the crucified Jesus and the crucified animal heads as his partners. They’ve been hanging there together for a long time.
Turns out the hotel is older than old, going back to the 1500s or so. The famous have stayed here and I was upgraded – are you ready – to the Goethe room where – if this could really be so – Goethe stayed on occasion. Sans indoor toilet I assume.
Perhaps my stairway friends, as I came to know them, were already here or in the process of being collected. One of the preserved animal heads appears to be from a bison. But there are others, including a ram’s head, all arranged alongside the huge wood-carved crucified Jesus. An unusual combination. I’ve never seen hunted animals and the hunted man arranged as a family portrait. Doubt you have either.
The hotel breakfasts were terrific. Real bread and an assortment of cheeses plus many other items you’d never eat at breakfast except at a tourist hotel. So good stuff and meals on the town as well, mostly pizza and beer, served European style. Did I forget my ride up the mountain with cable car as transport? The ride wasn’t bad at all. Beautiful landscape. Steep climb. Tall trees. Cool breeze. Thoughts of winter. The winter must be bitterly cold.
Europe is Europe, though changing. Tourism is tourism, hasn’t changed. Air travel is air travel, changed for the worse as everyone who flies knows.
Word on the street is that Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his VP choice. Romney is trying on the conservative economic hat after his Middle East foray. Debacle?
Disappointed with Obama? Try Romney for the next four/eight years.
From the European and global angle here in the program any enthusiasm about Obama is over. Enthusiasm about America ended eons ago. Romney would just set us back further. Details unnecessary. The Republican package is a disaster.
Though my Israeli and Palestinian students are now in my rear view mirror, I can’t help but think of their future. The Israeli will trot the globe, trying to cope with the Israel she can’t return to. The Palestinian will return to Ramallah, trying to cope with Israelis who stay and those who leave. She won’t show her solution hand because there isn’t going to be one she can or her people can live with. Though it is also true that my Israeli student can’t live with the non-solution Israel proposes. Their difference in not being able to live with this or that non-solution betrays a similarity. One is captive in the land, the other is free as a bird. They are joined at the Israel/Palestine hip.
Our last beer session with students before my hotel stay, again joining the non-resolution of the German/Austrian- Jewish divide. There aren’t enough European Jews left to move toward revolutionary forgiveness. Yes, we were discussing this until the alcoholic end. There is a possibility in Israel/Palestine since, though the situation has gone too far, it hasn’t gone far enough to make forging a new history impossible.
Really, though, I think the nomenclature of revolutionary forgiveness has gone far enough. Need to scrap it. So, too, with Jerusalem as the broken middle of Israel/Palestine where Jews and Palestinians can gather as two traumatized people and begin again. The path of justice seems impossible now. Probably should just bury the prospect of a future different than the present.
Yet a future will come into being. Over time, it can’t look too much like the past. How long that “over time” will take is an open question. Even our small Israel/Palestine/Jewish dialogue in the program is part of a larger change that one day will turn the corner.
Turning the corners of history. Jews aren’t present on the Austrian/German horizon. Still, there was a corner turning on the Jewish question, a corner turning made easier without the presence of Jews. So, the fact that no revolutionary forgiveness is possible doesn’t preclude a new sensibility. While revolutionary forgiveness and turning the corner can be combined, they can also be separated. As in so many arenas, though context isn’t everything it’s a lot. I suppose the lesson is to take what you can. Take what is left. Do something with the leftovers.
Tired. Traveling the world is a violence to the body and the psyche. Necessary travel, yes, though ninety percent of the airlines are full of Disneyland tourism wherever their particular destination happens to be. People trying to escape their hum-drum life. No matter that the planet might go under as you enjoy the tourist side show. Why let the thoughts of global warming ruin your whole day?
Of global warming, the heat struck me as I landed in Orlando. I grew up with the heat so no problem for me. As I have remarked to others, in a decade or two my Cape accommodations might be waterfront property. An increase in net worth. However, the following decade might find it in the middle of the ocean. Downward mobility is part of our planetary lives.
Did I mention that I met my Fiji student in the city for coffee? She’s on the decolonizing of her religion track for good. Told her that she needed to hang out in liberation circles in Latin America for a while. Yes, they continue to exist. Across our global warming globe.
A Jewish theology of liberation.Few takers then. Few takers now. Even the twenty-fifth anniversary of its arrival hasn’t spurred an (un)revival interest.
When my Fiji student thanked me for my teaching, I shared the Buddhist saying – “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” The teacher has already been on the scene, sometimes for thousands of years, but before the student takes the teaching to heart, she has to ready herself for the teachings’s arrival.
Jews aren’t ready for the teaching we need. When the (Jewish) student is ready, though, the teacher will appear in an intensity that shocks us. Too late, no doubt. But then when it happens, it is right on time.
You wrote: Many thoughts. On Romney’s blood money, Romero’s life.
Yes, it seems like such a huge obstacle to cleanse. The elite seems to be awash in it, from blood diamonds to killing trade unionists in South America. It’s brutal and uncaring. Oliver North, who funded the contras illegally in Nicaragua, is a commentator on Fox News. There is a boycott campaign called “Killer Coke” because of union activists at coke plants in Colombia getting killed, for example, by paramilitaries. As you said: “The Wheel of Blood Money.”
You wrote: “The last nights in my hotel in Innsbruck – the crucified Jesus and the crucified animal heads as his partners. They’ve been hanging there together for a long time.”
Yes, some people do not have taste. I visited a German restaurant once and it had old-fashioned knick-knacks all over the walls- to me anyway it didn’t look like good taste. Likewise, in the hotel, the person wasn’t thinking in religious terms seriously: in traditional Christianity, the person would face the crucifix and say a short prayer. Obviously having animal heads next to it would be a big distraction. So most likely the hotel owner put it there for decoration instead of serving a religious function. Admittedly, he could have meant something by it, but you would have to ask, and probably no one knows anymore.
One gas station in Virginia had about 8 US political portraits arranged around the wall. Lee’s was about shoulder height and Lincoln’s was about knee height. Maybe the owner meant something, or maybe it was random.
On this Jewish-German divide. Why?
The Holocaust is now almost 70 years ago. Time enough for the passing of not one or even two but three generations. Even Germans who were just kids at the time are now in their eighties, and it is a near-certainty that no one who bore any significant responsibility is still alive. There is no one left to forgive or not forgive. As for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they have done nothing for which they need forgiveness.
Postwar Germany is a radically different society (or possibly two societies–East and West) that must be understood and dealt with on its own terms. And a substantial number of Jews ARE again living in Germany. How come you don’t see them? But then even the larger category of European Jews (in Britain, France, Russia etc.) is invisible to you.
” And a substantial number of Jews ARE again living in Germany.”
Several years ago (2005?) a friend of mine pointed out that, for the first time, there were more Russian Jews immigrating to Germany than to Israel. That says something about what the passage of time has come to mean in those two countries, no?
when the student is ready the teacher appears?
yet the teacher has always been here?
the teacher?
life’s lessons
why unseen for so long?
denial, superstition & the exclusively me
“So, too, with Jerusalem as the broken middle of Israel/Palestine where Jews and Palestinians can gather as two traumatized people and begin again.”
So, seventy years later, you still get nervous around Germany, Austria, but the Palestinians have to put up with the very people who traumatised them, and are traumatising them now today? Interesting isn’t it, the way it all comes back to the equivalency hasbara even if it’s inverted in some way. And the Jews got themselves a nuclear-armed country, but they’re still “traumatised” and the Palestinians got nothin’, but it’s their job to help the Jews out with their renewal.
Sure, okay.