Israelite U.P.K. School Demonstration in Times Square
Last Saturday my wife and I were in Times Square, heading to Olive Garden to have a nice dinner for our anniversary. We got off the train at 42nd street and walked through Times Square to do a little site seeing first. I was surprised to see what looked like a hate group preaching in the middle of Times Square.
When we were there, I didn’t really pay too much attention to them, other than to stop and take the above photo and note that they were yelling loudly about black people being oppressed. When I got home, I looked them up on Wikipedia and found the following information:
Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge (ISUPK) is a non-profit organization based in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, United States. The group is part of the Hebrew Israelism movement, which regards American blacks as descendants of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled ISUPK an “extremist” and “black supremacist” group.
I zoomed in on the info boards they had set up and saw some things I didn’t expect:
Christianity Board Crop-Closeup
They apparently consider Jesus to be the anti-Christ. I’m no expert on Jewish theology, but I think that’s a harder line than the average Jew would take, fears of antisemitism aside.
Islam Board Crop-Closeup
Islam wasn’t spared either; not that anyone thinks to spare Islam these days when there’s an opportunity for criticism. The ISUPK has apparently equated the Ka’aba (the square structure in the photo) with an idol. They’ve gone so far as to tag the ‘black stone’ as a “clitoris”. If you’re not aware, Muslims believe that Abraham visited Hagar and his son by her, Ishmael, and helped them construct a home near a spring which came up out of the ground when struck by Ishmael’s feet as a baby. That’s the black square structure. Or, at least, the rebuilt and maintained representation of it. Muslims pray facing this structure, regardless of where they are in the world and perform a pilgrimage, but not because they worship the structure. It’s just a symbol; it’s the focal point that unites all Muslims. Islam as a religion is big on the concept of unity, though you couldn’t guess it considering some of modern day politics.
The black stone which the ISUPK referred to as a “clitoris” is a black stone said to have fallen from Heaven to show Adam and Eve where to build an altar for sacrifice to God. It was, according to tradition, placed in the Ka’ba by the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims attempt to touch it or kiss it on one of their seven circuits around the Ka’aba during the Hajj, or pilgrimage.
Neither the Ka’aba nor the black stone are idols in the sense that they’re worshipped. They’re merely focal points for the religion. I’d put good money on Jesus Christ not being the anti-Christ as well.
Last Wednesday night I went back to the Spiritual Life Center at NYU. My class at City College was given the choice to vote between whether they’d rather have class at CCNY or go back to the Ramadan Workshop and they chose the workshop. That was good, because even if they hadn’t, I’d have skipped class to go back. It’s one thing to read about Islam and Muslims in a book or see it in a documentary; it’s quite another to get that first-hand experience in actual religious workshops that discuss the details of the faith and how people are actually practicing it. It’s also nice to socialize with and meet people who practice Islam. It really helps to put things in perspective, in the sense that Islam is not a monolithic evil.
While I was there I was pleasantly surprised to see a former classmate from an English class I took last Fall semester. She was sitting on the other side of the room (the room basically stays divided by gender in Islam, forcing people to focus on the material and God rather than each other), so we chatted by Facebook messenger for a few moments before paying attention to the lecture. She told me that the speaker’s name from the previous week is Khalid, so I went back and edited that post. I’m pretty bad with names.
She also told me the guy has videos up on YouTube so I did a search and found out the NYU Islamic Center has its own YouTube channel. There are two videos from the workshop up already: the first and second. The one from this week hasn’t been uploaded yet. I’m not sure if it will, since it wasn’t Khalid giving the lecture. If you were curious, you can watch the video below to see some of what I sat through during the first week. The video could be a bit better. The information borders cover too much of the viewing area and never fade away, but the important part is what Khalid is saying.
This last week’s lecture was by a guest speaker. Again, I don’t remember his name. He studied Islamic disciplines in South Africa, if I remember right. He spent six years being educated in Islamic schools and he’s now here in New York to begin his undergraduate education in a Western traditional college. His lecture focused on the legal aspects of fasting during Ramadan. The guy has a bit of a sense of humor and I was surprised and happy to see that he was very candid with the topic in the interests of clarity of information.
Issues like menstruation and avoiding any activity that might “get the juices flowing” were addressed. It wasn’t something I expected to hear discussed, but then again, what was I expecting? I suppose topics like that probably wouldn’t come up during a conservative Christian sermon. I wonder if that means Islam has a healthier conception of sex and the body? I’ll have to think about that more. The topics weren’t all racy. Things like medication and health issues were also covered, including when fasting begins and ends and when you’re allowed to eat.
Islam is more of a rule-oriented religion, where you have to follow strict and clear guidelines if you want your act of worship to be valid and effective. On first inspection it seems overly complicated, but in a way, it seems very clear and the complications are only there to prevent people who are trying to find loopholes from cheating. One example of that is having to be told that chewing gum invalidates fasting, since you swallow the flavor of the gum, even involuntarily.
So, essentially what it boils down to is this: When it’s Ramadan, you eat when the sun is down. When it’s fajr (first prayer of the day at dawn) it’s too late to eat. It’s too late to drink. You also don’t smoke, have sexual relations, masturbate, put anything into your mouth or another orifice that would cause your body to receive nourishment for the duration of the day. You attempt to avoid doing anything that would cause sexual arousal and stay away from immoral things. You try to clean up your act and don’t intentionally use foul language or do foul things. When night time comes and you do the sunset prayer, maghrib, you can eat, drink, smoke (if that’s your thing) and engage in sexual relations again. There are exceptions, but I won’t go into all of the details here.
The point of Ramadan is to remind you to be humble by creating empathy with those who do without because they have nothing, rather than voluntarily, people who fast all the time because they’re too poor to eat. It’s a time to refocus your mind on God, drop bad habits, create new, good ones, by studying scriptures and praying more. Ramadan is like a once-a-year opportunity to try to reinvent yourself into what you should be (to be a good Muslim) and to move further away from where you were before you began your fast. As Khalid put it the previous week, you should never meet two Ramadans with the same perspective. You should always grow. Not that I imagine he would say personal growth is restricted to Ramadan.
Here’s a real short video that gives a real good overview of Ramadan from a Turkish family’s perspective:
I’m looking forward to attending the workshop again this coming week. It’s really great, and if you didn’t know, open to anyone with a picture ID. You don’t have to be an NYU student.
Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to go to the Islamic Cultural Center of New York on a field trip for my summer anthropology course: “Islam in the West”. If you don’t count my visit to the Islamic Center at NYU’s Spiritual Life Center, this was my first visit to a mosque. I don’t suppose you can count that, though. NYU’s Islamic Center had a prayer room, but this is the first full-on mosque I’ve visited. Because of how much I’ve read about mosques and how often I’ve seen them in videos, and perhaps because of my trip to NYU’s Islamic Center, the setting felt familiar to me. I didn’t see anything that I didn’t expect. That’s not to say I wasn’t impressed. I just wasn’t surprised.
The one thing that I did find a little unusual was the apparent lack of care for the exterior of the building. The colors seemed a little drab, the doors were slightly rusted and the sign was (obviously) in need of a little help. I also noticed that the trees have been allowed to grow on the front side of the building, obscuring the view from the street. I can’t help but wonder if it was done intentionally to make the building appear non-threatening to the non-Muslim majority, especially in the wake of 9/11.
Back entrance to Islamic Cultural Center of New York (From ICC Website)
The main entrance (in the picture above) isn’t used often. It’s only opened for Jumah, the Friday prayer that comes with a sermon, like Jewish and Christian Sabbath services. The ‘daily entrance’ is around the corner on 97th Street. It’s actually really nice, with wooden terracing for plants, but I didn’t get a photo of it (photo above is borrowed from their site). I was running late because I was waiting at the main entrance for quite a while. I forgot about having to use the other entrance.
When you enter the building through the daily entrance, you wind up on the bottom floor, which is below ground level. There’s a shop that sells Islamic books, Qurans, dates (the fruit) and other related items. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time browsing the store. I’d like to go back and look around. I have a feeling there’s stuff there that isn’t widely available in commercial bookstores.
Just past the gift shop on the right is a daily prayer room. The daily prayer room was lit with soft light and was quiet. A few people were praying. I saw a man sleeping along the wall. The carpet was very comfortable and the atmosphere was reverent. I suppose the people in there at that time of day are the ones that are really looking for answers, since it wasn’t close to a normal prayer time yet.
A curtain divided the female prayer area from the male prayer area. I found out that the reason for the division of genders is that when you’re in the mosque it’s to worship, not to be distracted by women’s back ends being up in the air around or in front of you. The explanation is much more common-sense than what I’d assumed.
When I went in and sat down with a few guys from my class, we started talking about the use of misbaha/tasbih, which are prayer beads. It’s sort of like a Catholic rosary, meant to help you keep track of prayers. The guy I was talking to told me that after the salaat prayer (one of the five daily ritual prayers), some people use prayer beads to continue praying a while longer. He said it’s strongly recommended, but not required.
Then my phone rang. Embarrassing.
Interior of the Dome at ICC New York
About the time I came back, our tour of the building started, though it wasn’t so much a tour as an information and Q&A session with one of the assistant imams. He took us up to the main prayer room, which is under the dome that can be seen from outside. He told us about the basic tenets of Islam and then started answering questions from the class about women’s roles in Islam, how the authenticity of hadith are verified, polygamy, and other similar topics.
99 lights hang from the ceiling under the round dome, some say to symbolize the 99 names of God that are known. According to Islamic theology, God has an infinite number of names.Prayer lines on the carpet of the mosque.
He briefly mentioned the architectural design of the room we were in, the main prayer area. He said the room was stripped of everything except the essentials and that the decoration was kept to a minimum, to prevent distracting people from the worship of God. He explained the use of the lines on the floor and how Muslims line up foot to foot and shoulder to shoulder to pray, which is done because of the story about how Muhammad, the Prophet, told people to stand close and not leave any room for Shaitan (Satan) to get between them and disturb their prayers. Islam as a belief system places heavy emphasis on community, unity, and group actions that maintain proper behavior. It’s harder to do something bad when you’re constantly engaging with your community.
Tapestry of the Kaaba in Mecca, donated by Iran.
He also told us that this tapestry of the Kaaba, which is located in Mecca and the site of pilgrimage of millions of Muslims every year, was donated to the center by Iran. The ICC is primarily maintained by monetary contributions from foreign governments, most notably Kuwait. Not that that should be alarming to anyone. There are lots of establishments in the US that receive funding from overseas. Also, we have a pretty solid political relationship with Kuwait. We have quite a few military bases there. I spent a year living on one.
The mihrab, which indicates the direction of prayer. Muslims always pray facing Mecca.Qu’rans on shelves in the main prayer area.Donation boxes for zakat, sadaqat, and mosque maintenance.
The Q&A session lasted up until it was time for the fourth prayer of the day, maghrib, the prayer that happens just after sunset. This time of year, that’s at 8:30 PM. I didn’t have to hang around for that, so I visited the restroom and then left.
Area for wudu in the male restroom at the New York ICC.
The restroom was the last place I expected to find something unusual, but I was surprised to notice that there were no urinals, just stalls. I double checked to make sure I was in the correct restroom. The other one had a picture of a woman in a hijab on the door and women were going into it, so I hadn’t accidentally gone into the women’s room. Also, there was a bench set up inside where people could comfortably perform the ritual cleansing before prayer: wudu.
I don’t really know what sort of crowd visits this mosque on a Friday, but during the week we were told that it’s primarily cab drivers who stop to pray and then go back to work. Either way, it seems to be a very nice, well maintained building and a great resource for people in Manhattan who need to pray, or for non-Muslims to stop in and ask a few questions.
Washington Square and the NYU Spiritual Life Center (short building, just left of center)
Wednesday evening, I had the opportunity to visit New York University’s Spiritual Life Center at Washington Square in Lower Manhattan. NYU has organized a series of workshops that will take place every Wednesday night from last week until Ramadan begins, with each session focusing on a different aspect of Ramadan. I attended the workshop with a group of students from CCNY as a sort of field-trip for my anthropology course: “Islam in the West,” which explores the immigration of Muslim communities to Western nations and their interactions with the cultures and communities of their host nations.
I don’t want to dwell too long on the building, but the Center is very, very nice. I heard that the building is relatively new and the interior is very well appointed and in good condition. The first floor of the building is devoted to Catholics. The first floor is for Muslims. I don’t recall what other religious traditions have space in the building, but I was told that the building has a meditation room where people of all faiths can sit quietly and pray and/or reflect.
The fourth floor was designed specifically with the needs of Muslims in mind. Separate from the bathrooms (which were really nice too) there are men’s and women’s ablution rooms, where Muslims can perform ritual washing (“wudu”) before prayer. Outside of the prayer room there are shelves built into the walls where people can leave their shoes (Muslims don’t wear shoes in their sacred spaces). The room itself is carpeted and looks out over Washington Square Park. The qibla, the direction towards Mecca, which Muslims face when they pray is marked by a prayer rug.
Qibla direction for NYC
I found it interesting that the prayer direction is northeast. I assumed it would be southeast, since that’s where Mecca is on a map in relation to New York City. I’m probably not taking the curvature of the Earth into consideration or something.
When I first arrived on the floor, I initially felt a bit out of place, but that feeling passed more quickly than I thought it would. I didn’t ask other people in the class who aren’t Muslims, but I wonder if my experience was a bit different, given how much I’ve studied Middle Eastern and Islamic History?
Since we were new faces, a guy came up and said hello to us and showed us where to go. It turned out that he was the guy in charge of the workshops and the one who was giving the lecture that night. I think he said his name is Khalid, but I could be wrong. Regardless, he was a pretty pleasant guy. He’s also a very, very good speaker.
Muslim Prayer Room, NYU Spiritual Life Center
The workshop event was scheduled to begin at 6:30 PM, but it was preceded by the afternoon prayer, ‘asr. I know that sounds off, but the prayer times are scheduled according to daylight hours rather than Western concepts of what constitutes morning, afternoon and evening. For more information on Muslim prayer times, click here.
Watching the prayer up close and personal was an interesting experience. It seems like every popular movie that has anything to do with Islam or Muslims starts or has a scene overlooking a city-scape with the muezzin call playing in the background. It comes across as exotic, foreign, and given recent events in the world, a bit dangerous. But, when you’re sitting on a carpeted floor overlooking a park, chatting with people about life, school and work and a guy begins a call to prayer from the corner of the room, it has a different tone.
The room became hushed and the Muslims present gathered in lines (there were a decent amount of non-Muslim participants in the room), women on one side of the room and men on the other, to pray. It felt like being in a Christian church, listening to a pastor give the opening prayer while the congregation stood quietly with heads bowed. The ritual prayer (salaat) was pretty much what I’d expected to see. What was interesting, though, was noticing the differences between prayer styles. Depending on where a Muslim is from, they might do certain parts of the prayer a little bit different, but every Muslim believes in the ritual prayer as an integral practice of Islam.
After the prayer, everyone sat down and faced the lectern at the rear of the room (opposite the windows and the direction of prayer). I noticed that the women and men maintained their separation throughout the evening. When I first heard about that I assumed it had something to do with keeping women subservient, since the portion of the room where women pray is typically the back of the room, but the real reason is much more common sense than that. When you go to pray, when you go to learn about or hear about God, you’re there for God and worship, not to be distracted by the opposite gender. The only people that roamed wildly between the men and women were the children.
The actual workshop took off a bit awkwardly for me, but somewhere after the group project of coming up with an idea for a commercial about Islam and what demographic to market it to and the beginning of the lecture about Ramadan, everyone, including myself, seemed to settle in and get comfortable. The theme of the talk was to think about why you do the things you do, and not just when it comes to Ramadan, but anything. Why do you hang out with people who are bad for you? Why do you keep drinking if you know you shouldn’t? Why do you put on your hijab (head scarf that some Muslim women wear) in the morning? Why do you get up and pray fajr (the before dawn prayer)? Why do you fast during Ramadan? The point of the talk seemed to be to remind people that rather than just doing what they’ve always done because that’s how it’s been done, they should ask and know the reasons behind it.
The speaker (again, I think his name is Khalid) used an analogy of a woman who always cut the tip of the leg off her roast lamb leg because that’s how her mother had always done it, only to find out from the grandmother that it was unnecessary and the only reason she started doing it was because their oven was too small to fit the whole leg at one time.
The talk did touch on other points. The other thing I remember most clearly from the talk was a story that the speaker related. I think it was from a hadith (a recorded quote, saying or habit of the Prophet Muhammad). The short version is that a man killed 100 men and then realized he needed to change his life. He asked another man if he could be forgiven for what he’d done and the man said he could, but to be forgiven he’d have to go to another town. So, the man set off on a journey to the other town to find forgiveness but along the way he died. Two angels appear and begin arguing over whether to take him to Heaven or Hell. God intercedes and tells them that if he is closer to the second town (to forgiveness) then take him to Heaven; otherwise take him to Hell. In reality, the man was closer to the first town (Hell), but because God is merciful, he made it appear as though the man were closer to the second town, and the angels took him to Heaven. The moral of the story is that God is merciful and looks for excuses to be merciful. I thought that was a nice idea.
The talk ran a bit long and by the end I was ready to get going, but overall I enjoyed the experience. It could probably be considered overgeneralizing, but the experience reinforced my belief that Muslims as a whole are average people with average hopes, average problems and average dreams, just like anyone else. It also reinforced my belief that there are more similarities between Christianity, Judaism and Islam than differences. I think people try to create and widen differences whenever possible out of fear and misunderstanding, but sitting in that room and hearing messages about hope, mercy and fasting to remember the poor and hungry, I felt as though it could have been any religious youth group; not necessarily just Muslims.
This is a paper I wrote for an undergraduate history course called Modern Middle East. I was taking a very involved course on the Arab-Israeli Conflict at the same time, so my papers for the Modern Middle East class focused on Palestine and Israel as well. The paper was given 15/15 points. I’d like to have written more, but it was only supposed to be 5 pages. If I’d had more time (or a requirement for more pages!) I’d probably have written more about how the Arabs and Jews both deliberately exaggerated to the events at Deir Yassin to their own advantage, and detriment.
Deir Yassin Massacre Victims via Palestine Solidarity Project
Impact of the Deir Yassin Massacre on the Palestinian Exodus in 1948
In 1917, Britain conquered Jerusalem and ruled the region through a military administration. In 1920, the San Remo Conference awarded Britain the mandate of Palestine, which was sanctioned by the League of Nations in 1922.[1] By 1947, the British had grown weary of the sectarian violence between the Zionist Jewish and Arab populations in Palestine and as part of an overall downsizing of their colonial holdings after the economic stresses of World War II turned over the Palestine Mandate to the United Nations, which decided, in UN General Assembly Resolution 181, to solve the problem by separating the parties through land partition.[2]
The 29 November 1947 UN partition plan would have granted 55% of the land (much of it desert) to the Jews and 40% to the Arabs, with Jerusalem and Bethlehem falling under international control. The Jews accepted the plan, reasoning that it would provide them a foundation from which to build a Jewish state. The Palestinians, on the other hand, rejected the partition and launched a three day general strike followed by a wave of anti-Jewish terrorism in the cities and on the roads.[3]
As British Mandatory rule drew to a close in early 1948, the conflict between immigrant Jews and native Arab Palestinians erupted into an open civil war. On May 14th, 1948, the day before the Mandate ended, David Ben-Gurion, the Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization and chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, changed the nature of the conflict by declaring the establishment of a Jewish state. The fighting between Jews and Arabs stopped being a sectarian struggle and evolved into a national struggle, not just between the new Israelis and the Palestinians, but between the newly formed Israel and the surrounding Arab states, who joined in the fighting. The war in 1947 – 1948 later became known as the War of Liberation to Israelis and as al-Nakba (“Disaster,” or “Catastrophe” in English) to the Palestinians and Arabs in the Middle East.[4] The Arabs were soundly defeated, leaving the Israeli state in control of more land than originally granted to it by UN Resolution 181, which the Arabs rejected under the assumption that the combined powers of the Arab armies could defeat the Jews.[5]
The conflict was a total defeat for the Palestinians. They not only lost control of a majority portion of the Palestinian Mandate territory, but they also failed to establish political independence. Only the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (with larger boundaries than today) remained outside of Israeli control, but they were claimed by other countries who had participated in the war against Israel: Egypt and Jordan. After the 1948 war, Jordan retained control over the resource-rich West Bank and East Jerusalem while Egypt controlled the Gaza Strip.
Perhaps the worst blow to the Palestinians, however, was being driven from the land and being prevented from returning. During the fighting, Palestinians fled their homes in droves in advance of or during combat between the Jews and Arabs, or to evade Arab militias who abused villagers. A total of approximately 750,000 Palestinians were displaced by the 1948 war in Palestine, and the issue showed up time and again in peace talks in the form of demands for the right-of-return of refugees.[6] Today, the number of refugees has ballooned to approximately five million as new generations of Palestinians are born in refugee camps and inherit the refugee status of their parents.[7]
Many factors contributed to the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, including expulsion orders, such as those signed by Yitzhak Rabin (later a Prime Minister of Israel) that ejected the Arab population from Lydda;[8] voluntary self-removal of the wealthier classes to other countries to avoid loss of capital during the fighting;[9] the flight of Palestinian leadership;[10] and as a result of Israeli actions during the implementation of “Plan Dalet” (also known as Plan D). Plan Dalet would later become known as a very controversial strategic operation which aimed at:
gaining control over the territory assigned to the Jewish state and defending its borders, as well as the blocs of Jewish settlement and such Jewish population as were outside those borders, against regular, para-regular, and guerrilla forces operating from bases outside or inside the nascent Jewish State.[11]
To its critics, especially those in Arab states, the plan called for nothing short of the ethnic cleansing of the land allotted to Israel in the 1947 United Nations General Assembly’s Resolution 181, which partitioned the land of Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.[12]
Plan Dalet wasn’t necessarily a political blueprint for the expulsion of Palestinians en masse. It was governed by military considerations and, given the nature of the war and the admixture of populations in Palestine, securing the interior of the Jewish state from ‘external’ threats required the depopulation and destruction of villages that housed hostile militias and irregulars.[13] It was also common for roving irregular forces from other Arab states to impose on villages by demanding housing, since they were there fighting for their interests, supposedly.[14] The people of Deir Yassin had decided to remain neutral in the conflict, refusing entry to outsiders, and worked out a system of signals with the nearby Jewish settlement of Givat Shaul to alert them that roving militias and irregulars were in the area. Deir Yassin hoped that by cooperating, their town would be spared the hardships of war.[15] They would, however, be disappointed.
A widely implemented tactic by the Arabs was to cut off supply lines between the Jewish coast and Jewish population centers inside the country, like Jerusalem and the Etzion Bloc. Opening up these supply lines became a priority.[16] At David Ben-Gurion’s insistence, a force of 1500 Jewish troops was mobilized to take part in Operation Nachshon. No longer would the Jews passively protect their convoys with guards; they would instead conquer and hold the routes themselves, as well as the heights surrounding them.[17] It was during Operation Nachshon that the Deir Yassin massacre occurred. The operational order of 3 or 4 April states that “all the Arab villages along the [Khulda-Jerusalem] axis were to be treated as enemy assembly or jump-off bases” and according to Plan Dalet, villages so defined, if offering resistance, should be depopulated (through forced migration) and destroyed.[18]
It’s not clear why, but the Haganah command allowed two Jewish militant extremist groups to participate in Operation Nachshon, perhaps because of the importance of securing the routes and the need for able bodied fighters. Irgun Zevai Leumi (Irgun) and Lohamei Herut Israel (Lehi, aka the “Stern Gang”) were widely regarded as terrorists by British mandatory authorities and the Israeli defense establishment itself.[19] For example, in 1946 the Irgun, acting under the direction of Menachem Begin, who would in 1977 become the Prime Minister of Israel under the Likud Party, ordered the bombing of the King David Hotel, which housed the British Mandate headquarters. The final casualty list included ninety-one British, Arab, and Jewish dead.[20]
The result of the Irgun and Lehi’s participation in Nachshon was a massacre of civilians. Despite Deir Yassin’s non-belligerency agreement with neighboring Givat Shaul, Irgun and Lehi forces entered the town to occupy it and met with unexpectedly strong resistance from residents who probably felt betrayed by their Jewish neighbors. During the fighting, Irgun and Lehi forces blew up several houses and gunned down families in the streets. They also rounded up groups of unarmed residents of both sexes and murdered them en masse. Some residents were paraded through the streets of Jerusalem before being taken back to Deir Yassin to be murdered.[21] A Haganah Intelligence Service report states that “whole families – women, old people, children – were killed.”[22] The following day the author of the report added: “[Lehi] members tell of the barbaric behavior of the [Irgun] toward the prisoners and the dead. They also relate that the [Irgun] men raped a number of Arab girls and murdered them afterward (we don’t know if this is true).”[23]
Regardless of whether or not it was true, reports like the one above and the stories told by the survivors rapidly spread throughout the region, becoming headline news. Altogether, about 100 – 120 villagers died that day, but the event became amplified through gossip and the media to such a degree that it became extremely influential in affecting the flight of the Palestinian population.[24] When trying to justify their actions after the fact, the Irgun cited the fear and panic the act caused and its beneficial impact on the Israeli war effort.[25]
The massacre and the way it was emphasized and possibly exaggerated in the media strengthened the resolve of Arab leaders to aid the embattled Palestinians and defeat the Jews. It also caused problems for the Jewish forces when criticized by the Western media, but the most important aspect of the massacre was the role it played in increasing flight from the Palestinian villages.[26] In Beit Iksa, fear caused the start of an immediate evacuation. The same occurred in al-Maliha and the residents of Fajja, near Petah Tikvah, Mansura, and near Ramle quickly called their Jewish neighbors and promised to not fight. In Haifa and surrounding villages, Palestinians heard rumors of Jewish atrocities at Deir Yassin and took flight. In the village of Saris, Arabs offered the attacking Haganah no resistance whatsoever, for fear of sharing Deir Yassin’s fate. [27] The fear of another Jewish massacre of civilians had an impact on the behavior of Palestinian villagers across the territory.
The British noted that whether or not all of those atrocities actually took place, the Haganah and the Jews had certainly profited from it and Jewish political leaders determined that the Deir Yassin massacre was one of two pivotal events in the exodus of Palestine’s Arabs, the other being the fall of Arab Haifa.[28] The psychological impact of the massacre may not have been the main cause of the Palestinian refugee crisis, but it certainly increased the number of people affected, making resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict that much more difficult for generations to come.
[1] David Lesch, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History, p. 95. [2] Ibid., p. 134. [3] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 13. [4] Ibid., p. 145. [5] Tom Segev, One Palestine: Complete, p. 496. [6] Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage, p. 7. [7] “Palestine refugees”, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. [8] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 429. [9] Ibid., p. 67. [10] The Pittsburgh Press, “British Halt Jerusalem Battle,” 1948. [11] Quoted in David Lesch, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History, p. 137. [12] David Lesch, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History, p. 137. [13] Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 164. [14] Ibid., p. 123; p. 114. [15] Ibid., pp. 90 – 91. [16] Ibid., p. 66. [17] Ibid., p. 233. [18] Ibid. [19] The Glasgow Herald, “Irgun Accept Ultimatum,” 22 September 1948; The Pittsburgh Press, “Two Palestine Hostages Dead, British Told,” 30 July 1947; St. Petersburg Times, “Jews Arrest Stern Gang Terrorists,” 19 September 1948; St. Petersburg Times, “French Uncover Plot To Bomb London,” 8 September 1947. [20] David Lesch, The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History, p. 129 & 259; The Glasgow Herald, “Irgun Message Admits Guilt in Death Blast,” 24 July 1946. [21] Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p 237. [22] Ibid. [23] Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 238. [24] Ibid., p. 238. [25] Ibid., p. 239. [26] The Indian Express, “Arab States Out To Undo Jewish State: Azzam Pasha Outlines New Policy,” 21 May 1948. [27] Benny Morris, Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited, p. 240. [28] Ibid.
Bibliography
“Arab States Out To Undo Jewish State.” The Indian Express 21 May 1948: 5. Web Archive. 18 May 2012. .
“British Halt Jerusalem Battle: Fresh Troops Pour into City To Keep Peace.” The Pittsburgh Press 3 May 1948: 1. Web Archive. 8 May 2012. .
“Irgun Accept Ultimatum.” The Glasgow Herald 22 Sep 1948: 5. Web Archive. 17 May 2012. .
“Irgun Message Admits Guilt In Death Blast: Communique Purported From Underground Claims Warning Went Unheeded.” The Montreal Gazette 24 Jul 1946: 1. Web Archive. 17 May 2012. .
“Jews Arrest Stern Gang Terrorists.” St. Petersburg Times 19 Sep 1948: 1. Web Archive. 17 May 2012. .
Khalidi, Rashid. The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood. New York: Beacon Press, 2007. Kindle edition.
Lesch, David W. The Arab-Israeli Conflict: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
McGhee, George Crews. On The Frontline in the Cold War: An Ambassador Reports. Santa Barbara: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1997. Google eBook.
Morris, Benny. The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.
“Palestine refugees.” n.d. United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Web. 17 May 2012. .
Segev, Tom. One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2001. Print.
“Two Palestine Hostages Dead, British Told: Sergeants Hanged, Underground Claims.” The Pittsburgh Press 30 Jul 1947: 1. Web Archive. 17 May 2012. .
The following is a paper written for an undergraduate Jewish studies course titled, “The History of God,” which was intended to present God in a historical manner, using the Bible as the main source document and the Documentary Hypothesis as the main tool for interpreting its contents. The paper addresses Isaiah 2:2-5 to 6:22.
The professor left the following comment on the paper:
You show there are real forces beneath this passage – that it’s helping hearers find a way out of their problems. Bravo… You see the fact that religion and doctrines address people where they hurt.
There were a few minor criticisms, but I’ve corrected the most glaring one before publishing it online. Also, despite the criticisms, the professor felt the paper was, overall, on the mark and marked it with an A/A-. I’m not sure about how he rates things. He usually left two grades on papers like that.
The Prophet Isaiah (Image from Wikipedia)
Isaiah 2:2-5 to 6:22 is a complex message that describes Judah and Jerusalem’s future according to Isaiah. It presents a utopian view that sits in stark contrast to Isaiah 1, where Jerusalem is compared to a booth in a cucumber field, surrounded and isolated, or as an unfaithful whore, found in the previous chapter.[1] It looks even more out of place compared to the contents of Isaiah 3, which describes the destruction of Jerusalem and Judah. However, the message being delivered has a purpose and fits an established framework.
According to the Documentary Hypothesis, Isaiah 1-39 was written by an individual referred to as Isaiah 1 in approximately 720 BCE. Isaiah 40-55 are attributed to a second author, and 56-66 are attributed to a third author.[2] These authors all wrote at different times and wrote for different purposes. Isaiah 1’s purpose was to explain the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians, to fit it into an established framework that the people would recognize and understand, and then to give hope to the southern kingdom of Judah, that they could be preserved if they mended their ways.
Isaiah 2:2-3 describes the existence of Jerusalem in the future, when it has become a cultural center. Verse 2 establishes that Jerusalem will exist in the latter days and that all nations will flow to it. This was probably a very important message for the people to hear and be reminded of after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to the Assyrians. The defeat of Israel not only called into question their political independence but the religious foundations of their society as well. According to Nathan, three-hundred and thirty years before in approximately 1050 BCE, God had promised to maintain the political solvency of David’s kingdom forever, telling him (through Nathan), quite literally, “Your throne shall be established forever.”[3] So, when the Assyrians destroyed the northern kingdom, Isaiah had to find a way to explain it, justify it, and then give hope that it did not mean the end of their way of life.
The only way to justify God’s apparent failure to uphold His end of the covenant was to say that He actually had not failed; the Israelites and Judeans failed God. Isaiah reasoned that God must have failed to protect the northern kingdom because the Israelites had turned their backs on God, or at the least, it was a plausible solution to the problem of explaining the breach of the covenant. He applies this logic by introducing a new concept, that sacrifice is not enough, and God never really wanted sacrifices in the first place. God tells the people He will not listen to them because their hands are full of blood. He tells them that instead of sacrificing, they should have been doing good, seeking justice, correcting oppression, upholding justice and pleading the widow’s cause.[4]
The point of this break with tradition is to shift people’s focus from the Temple rituals to practicing religion in their everyday lives. This idea is reinforced in Isaiah 2:3, where Isaiah prophecies that people will flock to Jerusalem in the future, not for its food or the climate, but for the law. “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord… that he may teach us his ways…For out of Zion shall go the law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”[5] This was not his attempt to stop the Temple rituals, but it was his way of laying the seeds of future faith, when the inevitable happened and the temple was destroyed.
Isaiah 2:4 further reinforces the Davidic Covenant and simultaneously acts to reassure the people that all will be well. It introduces the idea of God being bigger than just Jerusalem. He’s so big that He “judge[s] between nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples…”[6] This verse takes God out of the Temple. It separates Him from ritual and puts Him above the affairs of nations. It not only expands His powers, but it frees Him and his followers from religious destruction if the Temple is destroyed. The second half of Isaiah 2:4 describes people of the nations around Israel turning their weapons into agricultural instruments. They “shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”[7] When confronted with the utter destruction of the northern kingdom, it must have been welcome news to hear that in the future, there would be no war, and, hence, no threat to Judah’s existence.
Isaiah 2:5 is a call to action. It asks the house of Jacob to come and walk in the light of the Lord. The ensuing diatribe in 2:6-22 against the materialism and idolatry of the descendants of Jacob, presumably in the southern kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem, which have yet to be conquered, is probably intended to give the original recipients a road map for change that will allow them to avoid the same fate as their northern neighbors. Isaiah 2:6-22 basically tells them what they’re doing wrong, with 2:5 being the lead-in, warning them to steer clear of the following things that are against God’s will.
Isaiah 2:2-5 is a reminder to a people facing an imminent danger that threatens their way of life. It is a way out, a way to avoid the fate that befell the northern kingdom, and it is part of a message that explains why God did not uphold the covenant given to David, thereby saving the religion from destruction. By reaffirming the Davidic covenant and justifying the destruction of the northern kingdom, Isaiah reaffirms God’s dedication to David’s people and their well-being. Isaiah 2:2-5 is also an important turning point in the religion, bringing God out of the temple and into personal life.
[1] Isaiah 1:8 and 1:21. All references to Bible passages are from the English Standard Version. [2] Arthur Patzia and Anthony Petrotta, Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies…. [3] 2 Samuel 7:16. [4] Isaiah 1:11-17. [5] Isaiah 2:3. [6] Isaiah 2:4. [7] Ibid.
Works Cited
Patzia, Arthur G. and Anthony J. Petrotta. Pocket Dictionary of Biblical Studies: Over 300 Terms Clearly & Concisely Defined. InterVarsity Press, 2002. Google eBook.
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Amazon Digital Services: Crossway, 2011. Kindle eBook.
Note: This is a paper that was written for a Modern Middle East undergraduate history course. The paper was supposed to be five pages long, but I went a little overboard. Even so, I don’t think I even came close to fully covering the topic, not that I really could in a semester, or in one short research paper. Nonetheless, this paper received an A.
Zionist Military Operations Outside UN-proposed Jewish State, 1 April to 15 May 1948. (Source: Greenpolitics)
At the end of World War I, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the entire Middle East was in a state of flux. What used to be a single sovereign entity was carved up into modern nation states by the victorious European powers. At a conference in San Remo in 1920 Britain and France, according to an arrangement known as the Sykes-Picot Agreement (1916), drew the borders for four new states: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. In 1922, Palestine was further divided into Palestine and Transjordan. These new countries were legitimized as mandates of the League of Nations, states that would be protectorates of European powers and eventually gain independence. Thus, Britain retained control of Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan and France retained control of Syria and Lebanon, directly and indirectly.[1]
Over the following decades, each of the mandate states threw off the shackles of colonialism and won independence, with the exception of Palestine. The pursuit of national independence for Palestinians has been impeded by a series of complications, starting with the Balfour Declaration of 1917:
His Majesty’s Government [of England] view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.[2]
The Balfour Declaration is a letter that was issued by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Arthur James Balfour, to Baron Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community. British government officials believed that the Jewish ‘vote’ needed to be won to ensure victory in World War I. If the British didn’t secure Jewish backing, the Germans would “buy them” and use them to influence Russia into signing a separate peace treaty with Germany, allowing the Germans to focus on the western front.[3] The Balfour Declaration was a response both to the fear of the supposed power of world Jewry and the sympathetic nature of some British government officials to the Zionist cause.[4] Zionist leaders did their best to encourage these feelings, resulting in the inclusion of the wording of the Balfour Declaration in the League of Nations sanctioned British mandate for Palestine in 1922.[5]
Contrary to the popular idea that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land, the area was well populated. At the beginning of the Zionist influx into the Palestine Mandate area, there were approximately 450,000 Arab and 20,000 (Arab) Jewish residents.[6] Direct British rule and British efforts to fulfill the obligations of the Balfour declaration combined with the influx of European Jews created a volatile situation that retarded the national development of Palestine. Instead of developing modern governing institutions like other newly formed Middle Eastern nations, Palestine’s residents spent the mandate period in conflict and constant competition between British, Jewish and Arab interests.
The major conflict between the two groups was based on the meaning of the Balfour Declaration. The Zionist interpretation of the Balfour Declaration was that it intended the creation of a Jewish state that, as Chaim Weizmann (Chair of the Zionist Commission and later first president of Israel) said, would be as Jewish as England is English.[7] Critics of the Zionists interpreted the Balfour Declaration’s goal as the creation of a Jewish cultural center inside an independent Arab state. The ambiguity was introduced into the document to give the British room for diplomatic maneuvering, but in the end, all it did was complicate their position in Palestine. They were never able to resolve the contradiction inherent in their promise.[8]
The confusion in policy created by the Balfour Declaration led one senior British official to say, just prior to leaving the country, that Britain had “nothing but fluctuations of policy, hesitations…no policy at all.”[9] The British alternately supported Jewish development of a national home and Arab national aspirations in a precarious balancing act intended to maintain the status quo. This remained true until their withdrawal from Palestine in 1948, twenty five years later. When the last British High Commissioner departed Haifa, there was no formal transfer of powers to a new local government because there was no government in Palestine. When the mandate ended, the Jews and Arabs were left to struggle for supremacy.[10]
The internal struggle for power in the years and months leading up to the end of the British mandate for Palestine and the subsequent war that started on May 15th, 1948 with the end of British mandatory rule between Jewish and Arab irregular forces from the surrounding nations saw the birth of the state of Israel and the failure of the Palestinians to establish a nation. The reason for the success of the Jews over the Arabs boils down to three key differences: unity, external support and military power. The Jews entered Palestine with a unified goal, if not a unified ideology. They enjoyed wide support from Jewish and Christian communities around the world, as well as the backing from Britain guaranteed by the Balfour Declaration. They also took advantage of their ties to Europe to advance their military prowess, which proved decisive in the 1947-1948 conflict with the Arabs, also known as the first Arab-Israeli War. The Palestinian Arabs, on the other hand, were completely unprepared for the task ahead of them.
During the early years of the mandate, the Arab notables felt it was only natural that they should govern the land they had lived on for centuries.[11] They were convinced that at some point the British would come to their senses and stop supporting the Jews. In the meantime, the Arab notables in Palestine did what they could to maintain their social status, including working with the British mandate authorities, who supplied them with positions of authority.[12] For example, the British created the office of Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and assigned al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni to the role. Later the British created the Supreme Muslim council, which Husayni headed.
The reliance of Arab leadership on the British caused them to mostly work with, rather than against, the mandate government, which also meant that they were indirectly supporting the Zionist occupation of what they considered to be Arab land. The Arab notables attempted to negotiate with the British privately while condemning British support of Zionism publicly, all the while working to ensure there would be no disruptive mass political demonstrations that could destabilize their social and political positions.[13] The need to stay on good terms with the British undermined the authority of the Arab notables in the eyes of the public.[14] Further complicating the Arab political atmosphere in Palestine was the constant rivalry between the two prominent families in the region: the Husaynis and the Nashashibis. Their attempts to create rival power bases in Palestine prevented Arab unity. The inter-Arab rivalries and reliance on the British, together with the need to suppress popular movements to maintain their positions, caused the Palestinians to never be capable of forming a unified front, which effectively neutered the Palestinian political body and Palestinian aspirations of nationhood. It would be fair to say that the goals of the Arab leadership (to maintain their positions) did not match the goals of the Palestinians, but due to the Ottoman top-down power structure, the average Palestinian had no way to directly influence the decision making process until later in the mandatory period, when guerilla leaders like al-Qassim began to rally popular support.
Compounding the problem was the lack of any meaningful external support for the Palestinian Arabs. To start with, none of the Arab political institutions formed in mandate Palestine were recognized by any international authority, not even by the Arab states, who took it upon themselves to speak for the Palestinian Arabs.[15] But, their motives weren’t entirely pure either. Throughout the mandate period, the surrounding Arab states had, despite repeated requests, failed to supply the Palestinian Arabs with arms, food, or any financial support. The Arab states each had different agendas in terms of what they wanted to accomplish in Palestine, but the rights of the Palestinians themselves probably ranked very low on their list of priorities. Most of the surrounding states were solely interested in land grabs to increase the power of their respective states in terms of inter-Arab regional politics.[16]
By the time hostilities broke out in Palestine after the November 1947 announcement of the UN Partition Plan, the Arabs felt a distinct sense of abandonment. They had no effective leadership and they had been isolated by the surrounding Arab states. According to Rashid Khalidi,
The Palestinians entered the fighting which followed the passage of the UN Partition Resolution with a deeply divided leadership, exceedingly limited finances, no centrally organized military forces or centralized administrative organs, and no reliable allies.[17]
According to a Haganah Intelligence Service – Arab Division executive, the average Palestinian had come to the conclusion that they could not hold their own against the Jews.[18] HIS – AD further reported that most of the Arab public would be willing to accept the 1947 UN Partition Plan and lacked a desire to engage in a war with the Jews because of a lack of weapons and internal organization.[19] Many were unwilling to fight because if they died, there would be no compensation for their widows and/or orphans.
The following is a paper I wrote for a Jewish Studies class I’m taking called “History of God.” The point of the paper was to examine a set of verses from the Old Testament from a historical perspective, discussing what the verses reveal about the people it describes, or that wrote it. This paper relies heavily on the Documentary Hypothesis theory and the concept of Spiral Dynamics as put forth by Ken Wilber.
For clarity, the paper was graded by George KC Forman and received an A-, as well as some notations about grammar and style corrections (which haven’t been made here). The professor’s notes on the last page are:
So close! Ask yourself, what was happening in J’s Day? What’s his point. Yes, free will. But to what end? Kingdom has arisen; we now have cities and power in Levant. So free will is in service of Solomon’s reign. How might story fit with that people’s needs and worries? Why free will? Why portray the many languages? I’d given this story answers the need for cooperation, under aegis and king. Unite, it says, to gain power, etc. But good work. Where is this doc. hypoth. book? Sounds great! A-
Essay:
The Tower of Babel
The story of the Tower of Babel, found in the Book of Genesis in the Bible, is fascinating and complicated and is open to many levels of interpretation, especially since it is a story that was probably not original when it was added to the Bible. What does it mean that the people were attempting to build a tower “that reaches into the sky”?[1] And what does God’s response indicate about the nature of the relationship between man and the divine? What can we learn about the needs and wants of that society by analyzing these verses?
The story of the division of human language isn’t unique to the Bible, but that in itself isn’t remarkable. Something as mystifying as why all men don’t speak the same language is a problem that people from various cultures would have tried to solve the best way they knew how: attributing it to an act of the divine, leaving modern readers with a variety of similar myths. Obvious parallels exist in the stories of the Enuma Elish, the building of Babylon’s ziggurat, and a Sumerian story that tells of a time when all people spoke the same language. The closest parallel is a Sumerian epic titled “Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta.”[2] It starts out describing a time when man had no rival and everyone spoke the same language, but:
Enki…the leader of the gods
Changed the speech in their mouths
Brought contention into it,
Into the speech of man that (until then) had been one.[3]
Whether J came up with the story of the Tower of Babel or borrowed the tradition, its inclusion in the religious tradition of the Hebrews is still significant. It indicates clearly that people identified with the story and felt that it reflected their own relationship with God.
According to the Documentary Hypothesis, the stories of the Pentateuch were not written by one author, but rather four authors and then collated into a single work by a series of redactors. These sources are J (Jawhist/Yawhist; approx. 950 BCE), E (Elohist; approx. 850 BCE), D (Deutoronomist; approx. 600 BCE), P (Priestly source; approx. 500 BCE) and R (the Redactors / Editors). Developed by Biblical scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries, the Documentary Hypothesis uses linguistic cues and source criticism to try to explain the apparent contradictions and repetitions in the Pentateuch. The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is generally attributed to the Jawhist source, making it one of the earliest written stories of the Bible, despite its placement. According to the Documentary Hypothesis, J’s writing focuses on the interaction between God and man’s free will.[4]
Understanding how J writes can be helpful when examining the Tower of Babel story as presented in the Bible and for determining what it might mean about the people it describes. One interpretation is that it’s an origin story for the existence of different languages and cultures in the world. The beginning of the story says, “At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words.”[5] By the end of the story, God has confused their languages and caused them to be scattered all over the world. However, this story conflicts with an earlier account that says (emphasis added):
4The descendants of Javan were Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Rodanim. 5Their descendants became the seafaring peoples that spread out to various lands, each identified by its own language, clan, and national identity.[6]
The earlier account already describes the creation of multiple languages and cultures, directly contradicting the later Tower of Babel account. Also, Genesis 11:1-2 implies that all of the people in the world traveled together in one group, which contradicts the earlier account of Cain and Abel. When Cain was banished, God put a mark on his head so no one else would kill him and he went to the land of Nod.[7] This implies that there were people in Nod already that Cain had to be fearful of and that people weren’t traveling together in one group.
This is where it helps to understand the Documentary Hypothesis, which explains that the account in Genesis 10 was added much later, by P (the Priestly source). However, it doesn’t explain the contradiction in the Cain and Abel story, which is also attributed to J.[8] Because the two stories by J are contradictory, the Tower of Babel story must have been included for a symbolic reason, rather than to record factual events in the sense that a history book records factual events. It wasn’t the content itself that was important. It was the message it carried. Approaching the Tower of Babel story from this perspective lends support to the idea that it was borrowed from another culture’s religious tradition. The tower mentioned in the story is probably borrowed from the ziggurat dedicated to Marduk in Babylon called Etemenanki. The plot of the story is probably borrowed from earlier stories, like the Sumerian epic mentioned earlier.[9] So, how can this story tell us anything about the Hebrews?
For the story to be included in the oral and later written tradition of the religion means that the people identified with it strongly. While it’s not possible to apply the details of the people in the story to the Hebrews exactly, it’s possible to analyze the text and draw conclusions about the relationship between man and God, as they saw it. Understanding that the story is symbolic and knowing that one of J’s common themes is the struggle between man’s free will and God, it’s also reasonable to believe that this story is about man’s exercise of free will and the limits of man’s authority over the world.
The Tower of Babel story is about power. Genesis 11:2 describes a tribal, migratory people passing through the Fertile Crescent into Mesopotamia and arriving at a place suitable for settling. Upon arriving, their first thought is to establish themselves in the region through a show of power. They decide to build up a city and a tower that will reach into the heavens. Because they are united, they are able to make quick progress in reaching their goal. However, God has another plan for mankind and takes an active role in the world to push man onto the path He’s chosen for them.
The dialogue attributed to God in Genesis 11:6 gives Him a very anthropomorphic, active and human personality. God appears to be either afraid of what man might accomplish or jealous that man is able to create something monumental, which is a type of action that should be reserved for Him. To stop man from completing the tower, and thereby demonstrating his power of the world, God goes down and “confuse[s] the people with different languages…[so] they won’t be able to understand each other.”[10] After their languages are confused, the people have no choice but to abandon the project. They migrate away from the Tower of Babel, probably sorted into language groups.
It is hard to look at this story and find a way to paint God in a positive light, other than to say that perhaps this was part of a larger design, such as ensuring the fulfillment of his earlier command to Adam and Eve to go forth and populate the Earth. Adam and Eve’s descendants could not accomplish that task if they all stayed in one city. However, I think the key phrase from this passage is in verse 6: “The people are united…. Nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them!” The author of the story perhaps believed that man could achieve anything he put his mind to through unity with his fellow men, with only an act of God being able to stop him. Communal action to support and increase the power of the group is a very tribal action. The inclusion of this story in the religious tradition of the Hebrews could have greatly reinforced the importance of group solidarity, as well as the concept of not transgressing what is sacred at the same time.
The story of the Tower of Babel in the Bible is one version of a larger body of stories that attempt to explain or describe the division of the human race into language and culture groups. The story is not unique to Genesis, but the unique adaptation of the story helps to reveal how the ancient Hebrews may have thought of God, and what they thought of man in relation to that power. It is clear that when this story was introduced into the religious tradition, God was a much more active and anthropomorphic being than He is today. Most importantly, the story describes man’s potential in the world, his ability to do the unbelievable through group solidarity and effort. Where man’s power ends and God’s begins is a boundary that is constantly being redefined, even in the modern age over issues of cloning, for example, but it’s also an ancient argument that has been expressed in one of the earliest portions of the Bible and will continue to be expressed and redefined by generations to come.
[1] Genesis 11:4. [2] Jim Rovira, “Babel in Biblia.” [3] Ibid. [4] William Lyons, “Teaching the Documentary Hypothesis to Skeptical Students,” p. 134. [5] Genesis 11:1. [6] Ibid., 10:4-5. [7] Ibid., 4:14-16 [8] Timothy R. Carmody, Reading the Bible, p. 40. [9] Jona Lendering, “Etemenanki (The tower of Babel).” [10] Genesis 11:7.
Works Cited
Carmody, Timothy R. Reading the Bible: A Study Guide. Mahwah: Paulist Press, 2004. Web.
Lendering, Jona. “Etemenanki (The tower of Babel).” n.d. Livius: Articles on Ancient History. Web. 09 March 2012.
life Application Study Bible: Personal Size Edition. 2nd. Carol Stream: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004. Print.
Lyons, William L. “Teaching the Documentary Hypothesis to Skeptical Students.” Roncace, Mark and Patrick Gray. Teaching the Bible: Practical Strategies for Classroom Instruction. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005. 133-134. Web.
Rovira, Jim. “Babel in Biblia: The Tower in Ancient Literature.” July 1998. Babel. Web. 09 March 2012. .
The following is a book review I had to write for a history course titled, “Traditional Civilizations of India.” The book is fictional, but deals with issues that helped to explain and give a starting point for research into the Vedic religion of India. Essentially, a very un-religious person dies in a very religious village, and no one knows quite what to do with him. The book focuses on the conflict between religious obligations and temptation and how to navigate between the two to do what’s right. In the end, it leads to a spiritual awakening for the main character, going out into the world and seeing first-hand how the people actually live, which is somewhat reminiscent of what happened to Siddhārtha Gautama, the Buddha. I have no idea what my grade was for this paper, because it was turned in on the last day of class, but my final grade for the course was an A+.
“Alive, Naranappa was an enemy; dead, a preventer of meals; as a corpse, a problem, a nuisance” (Murthy 3). The central issue of the book Samskara, by U. R. Anantha Murthy, revolves around the death of a Brahmin who broke all the rules and flaunted it. In Durvasapura, a village of supposedly orthodox Brahmin, Naranappa stood out as the exact opposite of everything a Brahmin should be. He was wild, partied, socialized and had sexual encounters with people outside of his caste, destroyed holy relics and ate sacred fish. In other words, he broke every taboo associated with being a Brahman. His behavior while alive seriously complicated the means of disposing of his body after death for all those around him. The fact that he died from plague and his corpse was a health hazard to the rest of the group seems to have gone completely unnoticed in this story. The focus, instead, is on the spiritual ramifications of dealing with Naranappa’s remains. Who is responsible for performing the rites, and should the rites be performed at all?
According to the leader of the Durvasapura Brahmin, Praneshacharya, the “Crest-Jewel of Vedic Learning,” a deceased Brahmin’s funeral rites should be performed by a relative or, in the absence of a relative, any Brahmin will do (Murthy 5-6). This would seem to solve the problem, since Naranappa has living relatives in the village. Unfortunately, he managed to alienate them all before dying. Naranappa and Garuda shared a common ancestor, but Garuda had quarreled with Naranappa’s father over ownership of an orchard. When Naranappa’s father died, Garuda attempted to gain possession of the orchard by receiving a ruling in his favor from a guru. Naranappa ignored the ruling and, according to Garuda, they swore they’d have nothing to do with each other for many generations after that. Lakshmana, Naranappa’s other relative, is married to the sister of Naranappa’s deceased wife. Lakshmana argues that Naranappa’s abandonment of the woman, and her subsequent insanity and death are things that he just cannot condone (Murthy 7). So, there are no relatives willing to perform the funeral rites. This causes the responsibility to shift to the Brahmin community as a whole.
Rather than create an easy opportunity to get Naranappa’s funeral rites done, this does nothing to solve the problem. Naranappa’s behavior has caused him to become polluted in the eyes of the Brahmin. Having anything to do with him would cause them to become polluted and lower their social and spiritual standing in society. According to Jonathan Haidt:
Hinduism very explicitly places all creatures onto a vertical dimension, running from the gods above, to the demons below. People rise and fall on this vertical dimension based on the degree to which they behave like gods or demons in this life. [1]
For high caste Hindus, proper behavior is regulated by The Laws of Manu. It tells them how to avoid becoming polluted and part of avoiding pollution is avoiding people who are lower on the vertical dimension, those who are impure. This is made evident at the very beginning of Samskara, when Praneshacharya mentally debates whether or not to answer the door for Chandri, since even speaking to her would pollute him and he’d have to wash again before dinner (Murthy 2). If speaking to someone from a lesser caste causes pollution, then certainly handling the dead body of a Brahmin who spit in the eye of Brahminism would be excessively polluting.
The Brahmin in Durvasapura are aware of the risks of pollution involved with performing funeral rites for Naranappa, and rather than take on that burden, they are intent on finding a way to avoid it, even at the cost of slightly tarnishing their Brahminism. Obviously, performing the funeral rites would be the greater evil, and the more polluting option. With that in mind, one of the Brahmin, Dasa, proposes that they ask the Bramin of Parijatapura to perform the funeral rites, on the grounds that they were friends with Naranappa and shared meals together (Murthy 12-13). This is important, because a person wouldn’t eat meals with someone that they consider polluting. Unfortunately for the Durvasapura Brahmin, the Parijatapura Brahmin understand the precariousness of their social standing and are unwilling to perform the rites. Praneshacharya says that “friendship is as strong a bond as blood,” but obviously the fear of pollution is the stronger force in society (Murthy 13).
With Naranappa’s body still lying unattended and no one volunteering to take responsibility for the funeral rites, the question of his status as a Brahmin is raised, perhaps in the hopes of pushing him off onto a lower caste. If Naranappa were declared to not be a Brahman, then it wouldn’t be required that a Brahmin perform his rites. Naranappa managed to break all the rules. He drank liquor, ate meat, socialized with Muslims, engaged in sexual relations with low caste women and destroyed sacred objects and animals. He completely threw out the concept of purity and pollution and even made remarks like, “If I were still a Brahmin…,” that indicate he clearly considered himself to be outside of the Brahmin caste (Murthy 23). But, was it enough to remove him from the caste system in the eyes of the greater Indian community? There is some social mobility in the caste system, in moving from one to the other, but is it possible to be removed from the Brahmin caste posthumously? According to Praneshacharya:
…he may have rejected brahminhood, but brahminhood never left him. No one ever excommunicated him officially. He didn’t die an outcaste; so he remains a brahmin in his death. Only another brahmin has any right to touch his body. (Murthy 9)
So, this brings things back around to the original problem. Naranappa died a Brahmin and must be given rites as a Brahmin, but because he’s extremely polluted, no one wants to perform them.
Despite the fact that Praneshacharya is a Crest-Jewel of Vedic Learning, he is unable to come to a conclusion regarding the disposal of Naranappa’s body, which is all the while rotting and literally polluting the entire agrahara with plague and a horrible stench. Without debating the reasons for Praneshacharya’s inability to make a decision, there are several options that were available to him, most of which he was aware of, and all of which he should have been aware of.
The first solution is one that is introduced at the beginning of the story, when the Brahmin first gather to discuss the funeral rites.Praneshacharya says:
Garuda said: an oath stands between him and Naranappa. Yet the Books of Law have ways of absolving such oaths—you can perform a rite of absolution, give away a cow, make a pilgrimage. But this is an expensive matter and I’ve no right to ask anyone to spend his money. (Murthy 9)
Immediately after saying this, Chandri offered up the gold that Naranappa had given her to pay for the expenses of the funeral rites. Why did Praneshacharya not state that the gold should be used to absolve the oath, as well as perform the rite? It would have remedied the situation immediately, and since the gold was freely given for that express purpose, then there was no harm in it, only inconvenience to Garuda. Would it have been polluting? Perhaps, but on the other hand, if Praneshacharya had given the advice, then Garuda could have rested easy in the knowledge that the best learned person in the community had told him it was right.
Another option available to Praneshacharya would have been to take the gold and perform the rites himself. As the head of the community, Praneshacharya is ultimately responsible for the well-being of all the agrahara’s inhabitants. To leave a rotting corpse lying unattended, spreading disease, while people bicker over fine points of doctrine is wholly irresponsible. Despite the pollution, he should have made the sacrifice for the greater good of the community. To balance out the pollution of performing the rites, he would have restored the normal flow of life in the agrahara, including the worship. Surely that counts as good. Additionally, he could have donated the rest of the gold to a temple.
Outside the context of the story, the translator indicates in the afterword that as a Crest-Jewel of Vedic Learning the answer to the problem should have been obvious to Praneshacharya. The translator says that the answer to the problem is found in a text called the Dharmasindhu. He says that “certain simple ritual modifications and offerings would have solved the problem, as the guru of Dharmasthala clearly suggests” (Murthy 145). In the story, Chandri’s gold made the funds that would likely be necessary for such ritual modifications available to Praneshacharya. Why didn’t he know about the Dharmasindhu? Well, the most likely answer is that Samskara wouldn’t have made for a very good story if he had known how to solve the problem before it began. Besides, the real conflict of Samskara isn’t so much about the inability to find a solution to performing the funeral rites for Naranappa as it is about a conflict between traditional religion and modern life, but that is not the topic of this essay.
In the sort of situation presented by the story, some amount of pollution was unavoidable.Praneshacharya should have realized this right from the start, and instead of trying to find a perfect way to solve the problem, he should instead have been looking for the least polluting solution.Resolving the problem would have saved the agrahara from the stench and complete disruption of their lives.It’s hard to believe that none of the villagers knew the danger of having a plague-killed corpse sitting in their village. Removing the body would have likely saved the lives of some of the brahmin as well.Taken together with providing the brahmin a way to resume their prayers, the pollution caused by performing the funeral rites would likely have been balanced out, whether the person that performed them was Praneshacharya or another brahmin.
[1] J. Haidt’s work is on a single web page. As such, no page numbers are available.
Works Cited
Haidt, Jonathan. “Elevation and the positive psychology of morality.” 10 May 2001. University of Virginia: Faculty. Web. 13 November 2011.
Murthy, U.R. Anantha. Samskara: A Rite for a Dead Man. New York City: Oxford University Press, 1979. Print.
A friend of mine came across this documentary and passed along the link. I’m studying Middle Eastern history as my major, so he thought it would be relevant to my interests. It’s 79 minutes and the audio gets steadily further and further out of sync with the video, but hey, it’s free, and it’s worth the information you’ll glean from it.
What I saw in this video is nothing more than what I expected. I have little faith in the US government anymore. I mean, seriously. They can’t fix our economy. They can’t stop giving tax breaks to huge corporations. They can’t take care of Americans. They can’t do anything but blow up other countries to hide their own deficiencies. It also bothers me how caught up most people are in glorifying war and the military in this country. I think Americans are losing sight of what this country is supposed to be about. War isn’t a destination. War was a means of achieving a free society where people have inviolable rights. All people. Not just the ones we like. War is not glorious, and just because someone is from another country, they don’t lose their human rights. They’re still human beings. Why would we take someone for whom we have no evidence of wrongdoing and then treat them worse than we treat serial murderers, rapists and child molesters in the US?
I can understand the situation that was created in these prisons and it’s completely absurd to blame the front-line soldiers. In the military, there’s a whole other culture, distinct from regular American culture, and there’s a separate legal system and even a different way of thinking about things. For the most part, you do what you’re told, even when things start to spiral into the absurd, because that’s what you get trained to do: follow orders. When soldiers question orders, they’re reprimanded, disciplined and sometimes humiliated in front of their peers. They can lose pay, rank or status. So, there’s a lot of pressure to just follow orders, and I’m sure first-hand experience with public humiliation makes it easier to take the first step towards severe humiliation of prisoners whom your told have no rights and are something less than human.
So, things just get done because that’s what was ordered, and because everyone else is doing it. What I’m describing is just based on what I remember from my experiences in non-combat units. I can’t imagine the added pressures involved in dealing with people that you’re told are enemy combatants. This whole situation seems like something Stephen King would have cooked up for a horror novel, rather than reality. In the end, though, the unit commander should be ultimately responsible for the actions of the unit, both good and bad. A common saying in the Army is that “shit rolls downhill,” meaning from the top of the chain-of-command to the bottom, but it should also roll back up when something goes wrong like this.
Instead of trying to find ways to justify unwarranted violence and illegal torture, our politicians should be finding ways to stop blowing up other countries, defend our own, and fix our financial issues.
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