The Netanyahus: A Funny Novel About A Job Interview Gone Very Wrong. Book 18 of 2022

 A couple of weeks ago, I listened to an interview of American novelist  Joshua Cohen on the Ha'aretz Weekly podcast. Host Allison Kaplan Sommer talked to Cohen about receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton for his novel, and learning about the award while he was in Israel.  

Of that coincidence, Cohen said, “If I thought that I was going to win the Pulitzer for a book called ‘The Netanyahus’ I would have to be crazy to want to be in Israel when that happened.” The interview occurred shortly after Cohen arrived in Israel for the Jerusalem International Book Forum and Writers Festival. 

Cohen said he was still in shock that he had won the biggest literary prize in the United States for a novel “that has characters in it that most Americans can't pronounce their names.”  

Its main character is the brilliant but embittered Professor Benzion Netanyahu, best-known today as the father of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Benzion Netanyahu in the book (and in life) was a demanding, pushy, malcontent.  Cohen said that as he was writing he “kept on thinking of the line in ‘The Big Lebowski’ where the Dude says to Walter: ‘You’re not wrong, you’re just an asshole.’ And that was Benzion Netanyahu."

The other main character, Bezion's opposite and foil, is Ruben Blum, the only Jewish faculty member in the fictional college in upstate New York where Netanyahu comes for a job talk.  Blum is a too-willing-to-please stereotype of a Jewish professor. Cohen insists Blum is in no way based on the brilliant Harold Bloom whom Cohen was able to spend a lot of time with before he died in 2019. But it was Bloom's meeting Benzion and his family in the late 1950s that inspired the book.

Two of my favorite chapters are the letters Blum receives about Benzion Netanyahu.  One is glowing to the point of radiance. The other is from an Israeli colleague and is the scathing letter we have all fantasized writing about a thoroughly terrible colleague.

The ending is lovely--the comedy reaches its slapstick peak, then the novel ends. The afterword explains the genesis of the novel and talks about the lives of all of the Netanyahus.  

I read the novel in a few days. It is so much fun.

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By the way, the long title of the novel has an 18th Century length and feel:

The Netanyahus: An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family. (20 words) 

An actual title of an18th Century novel:  

Love And Madness. A Story Too True. In A Series Of Letters Between Parties Whose Names Would Perhaps Be Mentioned Were They Less Well Known Or Less Lamented. (27 words)

First seventeen books of 2022:

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Perelandra by C.S. Lewis: Book 17 of 2022

I loved Perelandra by C.S. Lewis when I first read it almost forty years ago. I re-read it in the 90s, but have not re-read it in this century till now.  It certainly confirmed for me that one of the delights of re-reading in late life is finding so much of the book new and surprising.  From the moment the hero confronts the villain, all the action was new to me. 

The occasion for re-reading the book was the publication of a new book by my friend Jim Como about Perelandra titled:

Mystical Perelandra: My Lifelong Reading of C.S. Lewis and His Favorite Book. 

As the subtitle asserts, Perelandra was Lewis' favorite book among the 39 published during his lifetime--several more were published posthumously.  

My friend Cliff and I are driving from Darmstadt, Germany, to Copenhagen next month and plan to read Jim's book on the trip. We also agreed to re-read Perelandra before the trip.

In the book, Lewis imagines Venus as a beautiful world of floating islands.  The hero of the novel is Elwin Ransom, a philologist. He is sent to the world by angels to save the world, but not exactly knowing what to do.  For much of the beginning of the novel, Ransom swims the towering seas of Perelandra, then eats the beautiful and wildly varied fruit on the floating islands.

It is a world that is just beginning with its own green-skinned Adam and Eve.  At the opening of the novel there is no sin in the world.  Sin appears in the form of the physicist Edwin Rolles Weston. He invents a spaceship capable of interplanetary travel and flies to the unspoiled world with his soul already taken over by Satan.  By the middle of the novel the soul Weston is mostly gone from his body. Ransom starts referring to Weston as the Un-man. 

The end of the novel is a fist fight on land and in the sea that ends in an underground cavern with a bottomless pit of fire! It is a fun story that finally ends with the crowning of the King and Queen of the new world. After fifty pages of fast-paced fights and action, the final scene is stillness and formality.  

Although Perelandra  is a re-telling of the temptation story from the first book of the Hebrew Bible, the book is definitely not a Jewish story.  All of its theology is deeply and explicitly Christian.  

If you Google search Perelandra, the first and third links have nothing to do with the book.  The first is Perelandra Natural Food Center in Brooklyn, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The third is the Perelandra Center for Nature Research, Ltd. The unspoiled world of floating islands makes a much more vivid picture of natural perfection than the vague description in Genesis.  I emailed the store in Brooklyn to ask about the name and got the following reply:

Hi Neil,

Yes it is! The founder of the store was a big fan of that book.

Best,

Allison

First sixteen books of 2022:

The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Flying to Kyiv from New York on February 24--The Flight Ended in Warsaw

Today at #RazomforUkriane, I worked with a Nikita.  He is a 36-year-old project manager for a U.S.-based utility company. As we assembled IFAKs (Individual First Aid Kits) he told me that on February 24 (The day the Russian Army invaded Ukraine) he was on a flight from New York to Kyiv. As the plane neared Ukraine it was diverted and landed in Warsaw.

"I was going to Kiev on Feb 24 to see Louis CK stand up concert which was supposed to be on February 25," he said. "I also do stand up comedy when I get a chance in my personal life and since war started we had a charity concert to raise funds which we sent to Ukraine." He has I also donated funds directly to people I know in Ukraine and other organizations.

Nikita spent the next week in Poland helping the refugees who began crossing the border into Poland within hours of the start of the war.  At one point he rented a car and drove refugees from the border to where they knew someone or wherever they wanted to go.  He helped with food and supplies, then returned to America and his job. 

He is 36 years old.  He emigrated to America from the Russian Federation in 2000 with his family when he was 14. "I am from Russia, but my heart is with Ukraine," he said.  "I have lots of friends in Ukraine and I love that country with all my heart and I don't support Russia in any way and I am 100% with the Ukraine."

Nikita makes Instagram videos in English and in Russian under the name: forced2disagree.  

"The videos are titled "Less is More" and are they are about people around the world," he said. "I tell a short story about a person that I personally met or know. And I can't wait to go to Ukraine and document many stories there and help in other ways as well."

 

Talking Musicals, Radio, War Movies and Tanks at #RazomforUkraine

 

I arrived late for my shift at Razom today. PA Route 222 stopped for miles outside of Ephrata.  I slithered off the highway in the breakdown lane and got to the PA Turnpike by a half-dozen back roads I know.  

Today was a small group, just eight of us in the afternoon.  Together with the morning crew we made many hundreds of Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs). 

I spent most of the afternoon stuffing Halo chest seals into the kit at the beginning of the line. It's sad to think of the need for these bandages, but good to be able to help get them where they are needed.  

Toward the end of the day, I worked opposite Joey (in the foreground of the lower picture).  He works in radio doing voice overs and running several radio-related businesses.  We talked about working in radio, then in theater, then he told me he had performed at the Fulton Theater in Lancaster when he was going to Temple University.  

We joked a lot about "Footloose." I said it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen, but with the best soundtrack.  Joey had been to an annual festival in Payson, Utah, the town where the movie was filmed. The town is called Bomont in the movie. I told Joey I had seen the musical version of "Footloose" in the Fulton Theater and really liked it--the musical was much better than the movie and the songs were even better live.

We then talked about war movies, which ones we liked and which ones we didn't.  We are both fans of the HBO Series "Band of Brothers"and "The Pacific."   

Several of us will be back tomorrow. Part of a larger crew.  The biggest crew is always on Saturday.  

The Federalist Papers: Book 16 of 2022

 

During the past year and a few months I have been reading The Federalist Papers, 85 essays by Alexander Hamilton (51 essays), James Madison (29) and John Jay (5). They were published in the state of New York under the pseudonym Publius in 1787-88 to convince New Yorkers and the rest of the United States to adopt the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation.

The work was successful. The Constitution was adopted. George Washington became

the first American President. Convincing people an executive branch was necessary was at the center of the argument of the Federalist.

“Those politicians and statesmen who have been the most celebrated for the soundness of their principles and for the justice of their views, have declared in favor of a single Executive and a numerous legislature. They have … considered energy as the most necessary qualification of the former, and … the latter as best adapted to deliberation and wisdom….” (Hamilton, #70) 

Restraining the power of the executive was built into the Constitution:

“[A]ccumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” (Madison, #47)

“Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.” (Madison, #10) 

The rationale for the Constitution and central government is in Federalist 51:

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” (Madison, #51) 

“[W]hatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government.” (Hamilton, # 84) 

“The house of representatives .. can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as the great mass of society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together … but without which every government degenerates into tyranny.” (Madison, #57) 

Government by the people is part of the argument:

”The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid bases of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.” (Hamilton, #22; his emphasis) 

“The danger from legislative usurpations, which, by assembling all power in the same hands, must lead to the same tyranny as is threatened by executive usurpations.” (Madison, #48) 

”We have heard of the impious doctrine in the old world, that the people were made for kings, not kings for the people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the new, in another shape…? (Madison, #45) 

”An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy so that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” (Madison, #58) 

And the reason our Constitution is relatively brief:

“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.” (Madison, #62) 

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those that are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” (Madison, #45) 

And the need for a national army is part of the argument:

“The Constitution preserves the advantage of being armed which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation where the governments are afraid to trust the people with arms.” (Madison, #46) 

“A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral.” (Hamilton, #11) (Does the world view our present foreign policy as robust?) 

“[The] danger will be evidently greater where the whole legislative trust is lodged in the hands of one body of men…” (Madison, #63)

During the time I was reading this book, I also read a biography of Thomas Jefferson, the book 1776 about that fateful year in American history, Prisoners of Geography about the incredible blessings of the America's place on the globe, and Civilization which describes America's path to becoming a superpower from its founding. Links to these books are below.

Learning about Hamilton and Madison as I read The Federalist changed my view of the essays in the book.  Hamilton had strong royalist tendencies.  During most of Washington's Presidency, Hamilton was involved in intrigues against Jefferson.  Hamilton wanted a strong connection between America and the English and also wanted the American nation to have a monarchial elite.  Jefferson fought against Hamilton. 

The matter was decided in fact when Washington refused to run for a third term and refused all the trappings of monarchy.  Since Washington's Presidency was followed by John Adams, Jefferson and Madison, there was no way monarchy could take hold. And then Hamilton was killed by Aaron Burr, ending the royalist faction.  

It is also strange to think that at its founding, America was a place where dense and logical argument would affect public opinion. 

First fifteen books of 2022:

First Principles by Thomas Ricks

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Making Jokes While Packing Medical Supplies for Ukraine

 

Four days last week, I was working in a warehouse in New Jersey, part of a team of #RazomforUkraine volunteers assembling Individual First Aid Kits (IFAKs). In total we packed more than 8,000 IFAKs last week for shipment to Ukraine during the week. We work hard filling the small packs with medical supplies, but we also have fun while we work.

On Wednesday last week, I was refilling boxes with a dozen different kinds of medical supplies while ten people assembled IFAKs.  A new volunteer noticed me grabbing boxes of supplies from different places and said, "Do you have x-ray vision or something?  How do you know what is in all these boxes?"  

I laughed and said I was there enough to know where everything is.  Which led to a the question, "What superpower would you want?  Pick one."

We then got into a discussion of the social downside of having super powers: other people get envious; you lose friends; your family starts to wonder why you are so special....

On Friday at the end of the day we were setting up three lines for assembling IFAKs.  As we lined up the supplies and boxes on the pallets, we started talking about the lines competing about who is fastest.  I was telling one of the guys that if this were the Army, the lines would definitely compete with each other and start insulting each other--saying their line was the best.  We started making up things the lines would say to each other.

On Saturday, one of the volunteers who I have worked with for weeks saw me opening boxes of cloth tape and asked if I was qualified for that job.  I told him that in the 1970s when the Army first got Photocopiers, I had to attend a three-hour class to be a qualified photocopier operator.  Once I had done that, I was definitely qualified to open rolls of tape.

Each day I volunteer, I leave the warehouse tired and happy to be part of doing to help Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invaders.  And most days, I am smiling about how much fun it is to be part of a team with a mission doing good.

Victory Day, May 9, Is Also the Day I Broke 13 of 40 Bones

May 9 is the date Russia and several former Soviet countries celebrate victory over the Nazis.  Nazi Germany unconditionally surrendered very late on May 8 which was May 9 in Moscow, which is why the rest of the Allied nations celebrate VE Day (Victory in Europe) on May 8.  

Which meant May 9 was both very good--defeated Nazis are the best Nazis--and also very bad, because May 9 is the date of my two worst bicycle accidents.  

On May 9, 2007, I broke ten bones in a 50mph crash and flown to the hospital by MEDEVAC. The story is here. On May 9, 2020, I splintered my left elbow in a low-speed crash. The surgeon had to break my lower arm to fix my upper arm.  So a third of the forty bones I have broken, I broke on May 9 on a bicycle.  

I broke four other bones in four other bicycle crashes for a total of 17.  Cars, motorcycles, football, fights and missile explosions add up 23 for a total 40 broken bones in 69 years--fewer than one per year.

Before publishing this post, I had to listen to the news from Ukraine today.  I was worried I would hear about Russia marking the anniversary with some new atrocity.  Russian President Vladimir Putin made a speech saying the war he started against Ukraine is to defend Russia.  

The Russians staged the annual parade in Moscow to showoff their military prowess. The big display always had a hollow ring, but this year with the string of defeats Ukraine inflicted on the Russian army, this year's parade sound like a defeated boxer saying "He didn't knock me out."

If I were a superstitious guy, I would stay home and watch movies today. But I will ride with my friends. There are only 365 days in a year, and more than 25,000 days in a life as long as mine. Dates are going to repeat.  

 

First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country by Thomas Ricks Book 15 of 2022

 The very long title and subtitle of this book comprise a good summary of its content from beginning to end.  The founders of America were deeply influenced by the Greece and Rome, by the examples of their leaders, by their culture and by their writings.  

Thomas Ricks shows how the classical world shaped the lives and leadership of the first four American Presidents.  Each of these Presidents:  George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison took very different lessons from the classical world, but that influence was evident throughout their lives and especially in their Presidencies.  

For George Washington, the only one of the first four Presidents who did not attend college, the classic world, especially the Roman Republic, was his example for how to live. He carried himself with dignity in every situation and rarely showed emotion. Only a few times during the Revolutionary War did he allow himself a public display of anger. Even fewer during his Presidency. Although he did not study the classics, the classical world was in him from his teens to the end of his life.  Even his final great act of leaving the Presidency amid a clamor for him to run again was guided by the example of Cincinnatus returning to his plow.

John Adams was vain and contrary and acerbic with little of the quiet dignity that guided Washington, but the Roman Republic guided his thinking and actions. He read and re-read Cicero and thought his times the most well-document period of ancient history:   

The period in the history of the world the best understood is that of Rome from the time of Marius to the death of Cicero, and this distinction is entirely owing to Cicero’s letters and orations. There we see the true character of the times and the passions of all the actors on the stage . . . Cicero had the most capacity and the most constant as well as the wisest and most persevering attachment to the republic. Almost fifty years ago I read Middleton’s Life of this man . . . Change the names and every anecdote will be applicable to us (the Founders). 

Thomas Jefferson, the third President, was more influenced by Ancient Greek history and culture.  For him, Athenian democracy provided the guide to all of his leadership from the writing of the Declaration of Independence to his two terms as President.  The Declaration of Independence would be an amazing document in any era or any place, but as a statement of a fledgling nation rebelling against the greatest military power of their time and saying all men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--that was amazing.  (The end of slavery was in Jefferson's first draft, taken out by the Continental Congress.)

Throughout Washington's Presidency and into Adam's term, Jefferson fought against those within the government who wanted America to be a monarchy. Hamilton was first among those who wanted America closer to England and led by a hereditary monarch. 

Compared with the iron will of Washington and the combative Adams, Jefferson was a more affable. He was a lover of parties, at home in France, and enjoyed life. 

James Madison, the fourth President, was by far the most bookish and studious of the first four Presidents.  The Declaration of Independence was a singular act of rhetorical genius from Jefferson, whom John F. Kennedy thought the most brilliant of the Founders. The Constitution grew out of a year in which Madison studied everything he could find from the ancient world and contemporary sources. He wrote a document that became the beginning of the Constitution, was instrumental in the work of creating the final document, and then he wrote of the one-third of the essays  that explained and defended the Constitution. The 85 essays that he, Hamilton and John Jay wrote became the Federalist Papers.   

While the book focuses primarily on the first four Presidents, other founders come in and out of the story.  Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and Ben Franklin are important to the story Ricks is telling.  

Seeing how America began and how the first Presidents saw the world helped me to better understand where we are now.  On one hand, reading this book shows the almost infinite distance in character from dignity of Washington, the firm resolve of Adams, the brilliance of Jefferson, and the reasoned determination of Madison to malignant stupidity of the 45th President.  If is almost impossible to believe a list with those four and Abraham Lincoln and both Roosevelts and Harry Truman could also contain Trump.  I have trouble believing they are of the same species.

Read the book and enjoy where we came from. It gave me a glimmer of hope for where we could be going. 

First fourteen books of 2022:

Political Tribes by Amy Chua 

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen

Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua (The Tiger Mom) Book 14 of 2022

Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations 

Yale Law Professor Amy Chua set off a firestorm in the world of parenting with her 2011 Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.  She said the book was a self-mocking memoir of how she strove to be a traditional strict Chinese mother to her 21st Century American daughters.  

I did not read the book at the time, though I recognized a fellow traveler, a strict parent in this century is more counter-cultural than a hippie in Oklahoma in 1965.  I did not think about the book again until February of this year, when I heard Chua interviewed by Bari Weiss on the Honestly podcast. The episode is here.

As I listened to the interview, I became very interested in her latest book Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations published in 2018.   

Amy Chua

Right from the Introduction, Chua made a strong case for the effect of tribal divisions within America, and how neglect and dismissal of tribal divisions led to disaster after disaster in America's wars and other foreign policy in the past half century. She also introduces the "tribe" that brought Trump to power:  the peculiar American heresy known as the "Health and Wealth Gospel." She talks about one of her students who saw his family sucked into the strange Pentacostal Christianity that worships wealth and is devoted to Donald Trump.

Chua shows that when a small minority controls the majority of the wealth in a culture, the rest of the culture will turn against that minority, sometimes violently.  In Vietnam during the time of the war, a Chinese minority of just one percent of the population controlled more than half of the wealth of the country.  People of North and South Viet Nam were united in their hatred or the Chinese merchants. When America talked about making Viet Nam a capitalist nation, the majority heard America was backing the Chinese.

The Baathist minority under Saddam Hussein in Iraq was a minority with power that was hated by the entire nation. Iraq dissolved into a predictable civil war of Sunni against Shia after the American invasion, with the Kurds defending their territory in the north. But all factions agreed that they were going to get rid of the Baathist minority that controlled the wealth and the government under Saddam.

The book gave me a sad and useful perspective on the tribal forces behind America's military defeats over the past century. Chua also showed the tribal nature of Trump's path to power.  Maybe because the book was written in 2018, the ending is more hopeful than her evidence warrants.  Trumpism is quite alive and the Republican party is a cult. It's great they are out of power, but for how long?

First thirteen books of 2022:

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

A Brief History of Earth: Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters by Andrew Knoll

Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

Understanding Beliefs by Nils Nilsson

1776 by David McCullough

The Life of the Mind by Hannah Arendt

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson

How to Fight Anti-Semitism by Bari Weiss

Unflattening by Nick Sousanis

Marie Curie  by Agnieszka Biskup (en francais)

The Next Civil War by Stephen Marche

Fritz Haber, Volume 1 by David Vandermeulen