Wall-E’ World

In recent years, we’ve seen our world destroyed in a wave of dystopian, post-apocalyptic depictions via fiction, documentary and currently computer generated imagery (CGI) with “Wall-E.”

In 2007, the Pulitzer Prize for literature went to “The Road,” Cormac McCarthy’s hauntingly beautiful, but dark as night, novel about a father and son traipsing across a scorched, barren earth.

While readers were raising “The Road” onto the best-seller lists, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” was packing theaters. With the simplicity of a power-point production, we saw how humanity was sliding into the sea.

Now with “Wall-E,” Mother Earth has been abandoned by humans, leaving a lone robot to clean up.

Each work, in its own way, presents a bleak vision that hasn’t been seen in pop culture since the Cold War, when doomsday scenarios were a constant, from “Fail Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove” to television’s “The Day After.”

But while threats of nuclear-style Armageddon was the cause célèbre back then, a sense of environmental catastrophe is rampant today, transmitting its potential effects everywhere.

Omnipresently, many corporate brands are rethinking their image as they lay claim to Green. Fashion-wise, green is the new black. And with good reason, as businesses are responding, because environmental sustainability is now one of consumer purchasing behavior’s top influences.

Along those same lines, Hollywood has created “Wall-E,” the first Pixar movie that speaks to both adults and children — each on their own level. While “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo” were great fun, I still pretty much saw the same narrative my kids did. In “Wall-E,” while the kindelach enjoyed the light comedy and special effects, I understood its weightier theme of planetary destruction and came away carrying the burden of the future all the while knowing, when they get a little older, they’ll realize the deeper themes.

For a generation born right smack-dab into the 9/11 era, theirs has much to be concerned about.

Alongside the environment, the essential economic structures of our society seem just as precarious. Unstable financial institutions are propped up by the federal government. Once symbolized as icons of strength and stability, personified by the bull and by owning a piece of the rock, pieces of Wall Street are crumbling. Automobiles, the mark of American ingenuity, are veering off the road. And newsprint, woven into the fabric of the Constitution, is getting shredded.

Semantically, eco-sustainability takes on a dual meaning, as it’s both ecological and economic. The two are intertwined.

And, if there is a group of people who know a little something about sustainability, it’s us — the Jews. After all, look at what we’ve endured. Look how we’ve sustained. As a country, America should look to Israel as it embodies that notion, not only in its being, but in its newly created philosophy of going Green.

While Israel is surrounded by countries that are abundant in oil, Israel is not. Indomitably, Israel has taken on a mission to break the oil addiction with electric car recharge stations all over the country. Solar panels on rooftops are everywhere, and pay phones and streetlights are powered by the sun.

Granted, Israel gets a lot of sunlight, but the determination to find a solution to the ecological challenge came from the business community — the economic engine of Israel.

Early on in “Wall-E,” we see the skyline of what we think is an enormous city, possibly any of many inspiring American cityscapes. Upon closer viewing, we come to a different, far more disheartening realization.

Just as our generation avoided nuclear Armageddon, sustainability signifies a new future challenge.

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Abe Novick, whose work is at abenovick.com , writes monthly for the BALTIMORE JEWISH TIMES on the intersection of American and Jewish culture.

Hulk, The Jew

Years ago, whenever I would ask my summer camp bunkmate Chanan Beizer, expert on all things comic books, who would win in a super hero fight, Hulk or ___, the answer would always be Hulk.

“Spiderman’s webs would be torn to shreds”, he’d reply to my query. “Iron Man would look like he came out of a trash compacter”, he’d retort. And, “Captain America would be wearing his shield on his kepele like your mother’s floppy beach hat.”

After taking in The Incredible Hulk again (some 30 summers later), I was again fondly reminded of the sheer brute strength that the green monster possesses. And, how it’s a universal Jewish allegory, for a misunderstood young geek to long for greater power over his life.

It’s no secret that Hulk, like his fellow comic book cronies were all born of Jewish creators and like the Golem, were molded to protect us. Hulk was born years after Jerry Siegel and Joel Shuster created Superman and the superhero genre. He came to life in the 60s and at a time of change for Jews. Israel at that time, already nurtured out of the desert, again had to do battle against an army of Arabs, who were bent on destroying it.

Seeing the latest version of Hulk in today’s context, I couldn’t help wonder how germane the tale still is today.

For much of the world, Israel is The Hulk, because that’s the only side of Israel the world sees. It doesn’t get to see the scientist, Dr. Bruce Banner quietly working, creating Nobel Prize winning experiments and amazing technological breakthroughs for humankind. They see this big green monster, throwing tanks and creating havoc on the screen.

They don’t see the cause that turns Banner into Hulk. They don’t notice that Bruce doesn’t like turning into Hulk and does everything humanly possible to suppress his alter ego and the destructive transformation.

Pesky bullets and tiny rocket launchers have a minimal physical effect on Hulk, just as the stones Arab kids throw have little impact on the IDF. It all looks so harmless, until the giant arises and hurls back with a mightier and greater force, that the provocative aggressors become the victims.

In one scene in the movie, the Army General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, (played by William Hurt) corners Dr. Banner in front of his daughter (Liv Tyler) and launches gas canisters at him saying, “Now she’ll see what he’s like”. Hulk is purposefully provoked to change because he’s being attacked. And once the Hulk appears, the cameras roll and he is to most everyone, including her, a monster.

In the Six-Day War, an event that created a perceptual change in the world’s eyes of Israel, it was surrounded and attacked by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. Ever since Israel won that war and became the victor, the world has not seen Israel in the same light.

It was during that same era, and throughout his time on the pages of Marvel Comics, when the Hulk was created that he too went through a number of character changes. (Did you know that in the first issue, Hulk was grey?)

But from the earliest stories, the Hulk has been concerned with finding sanctuary and quiet. It’s only when incited, does he react emotionally and flare up.

While the Hulk is a comic book character the fact that he, and so many others, from Iron Man and Spidey to the Caped Crusader are still relevant today, outlasting plenty of other genres, speaks volumes to both their influence and relevance as iconic symbols of pop culture.

Their everlasting appeal and annual return at this time of year, helps me to remember that summer so well.

For Chanan and me, those hot months seemed to bake and leaven our teeming teen muscles like the radiated ones in Dr. Bruce Banner, emitting forces previously unknown, as we attained the zenith of physical strength.

Alas, it was 30-years ago.

Gummy Jews

Special to the Jewish Times


Just as the Jewish state is smooshed in a vise between sides that want to drown it in the sea, the state of Jews in America is pulled like gummy Passover candy in various directions.

Here in the United States, many Jews who typically lean leftward are wary of an Obama presidency. That’s due less to his actual stance on Israel and more by his association with the radical Rev. Jeremiah Wright and rumors that have circulated on the Internet that Obama is a Muslim. Even if we know it to be bogus, a little voice inside is, hmm … suspicious.

On the other hand, with the last eight years of Bush, who was just in Israel (again) and its champion, it’s evident to see how Jews, liberal on most issues, feel uncomfortably conflicted when it comes to supporting Israel.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/arts/31jews.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

For them, having lived with President Bush since the millennium, to paraphrase Groucho Marx in “Horse Feathers,” “Whatever Bush is for, we’re against.” So if he’s for Israel, then something’s got to be wrong with supporting Israel. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PY7N4iRgLQ)

I’ll never forget being at Camp Ramah as a 10-year-old, and I had a counselor named Shiah. He was tall and handsome and when I asked who he wanted to be president, he said, “Nixon. He’s a friend to Israel.” Well, when I told my mother as she picked me up on camp’s last day that I was for Nixon, she almost plotzed. Little did I or the world know then what Nixon really thought of Jews.

But in those days, for many Americans Israel was still a David. The amazing success of the Six Day War was fresh and Jerusalem was our shining city on a hill. Kibbutz was a term we still heard and Soviet Jewry was the cause.

Since then, things have gotten a little more complicated. Begin and Sharon invaded Lebanon and suddenly we were no longer the nice guys. College campuses fueled hatred equating the mogen david with the swastika and any sense of moral order and equilibrium came apart. Again, whether it was true or not had little to do with the impression made in the mind. When such symbolism and iconography are branded into the consciousness, it burrows a hole inside and festers.

The logic then follows: I am a liberal. Many liberals are against Israel. Therefore, I should be against Israel.

But I ask those who contemplate such a view, what happens when “Israel” is replaced with the word “Jew”? In a deft maneuver, that’s happening. It’s no longer just a political attack.

In this month’s issue of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg has a cover story entitled, “Is Israel Finished?” In it, he cogently lays out the many-sided conundrums of Israel and how they’ve evolved. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/israel

What I found most disturbing are some choice quotes. Here’s one.

Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has said, “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.”

It’s been said that you can be anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. But how far can criticism go before it becomes hate? Forcing the paradox, Israel’s enemies manipulate the earlier syllogism.

For American Jews who think Israel is for Israelis and as they’re not Israeli, they can spout all the anti-Israel talk they want without sounding anti-Semitic, there is all the more reason for Israel to proudly re-emphasize itself as a Jewish state — a Jewish state that is also the only democracy in the region.

Subsequently, as the falafel stands and flags celebrating Eretz Yisrael at 60 are stored away, American Jewish leaders need to re-navigate the dynamic, complicated territory in the minds of American Jews for supporting Israel at 70.

The Brand Of The Jews

In a global era when every waking moment is a brand new brand experience, where we are bombarded with words and logos, from products and services to branded peopleæwhat is the Brand of the Jews?

By that, I don’t simply mean the Mogen David either, (like the one Gilda Radner wore on the backside of her Jewess Jeans in the old SNL spoof.)

Rather what I mean is, that if there were a word, one word, that personifies and elicits Judaism, what would it be?

I wonder because it’s important to understand that in our overloaded, overextended, time-crunched, soundbite, info age, where our mental storage capacity has about as much room as a cramped Lower East Side apartment with five sets of extended relatives living inside it, a word is a branding device that serves as a trigger to a wider world. When we refer to “Jewish”, what word do we want people to associate with it?

What imagery? What emotion? What do we want to yield?

Recently in the world of politics, the Obama campaign looked at the country and realized we were looking for “Change”. He grabbed a hold of its gist and made it his.

Hillary on the other hand, ran on experience and when that wasn’t working tried to borrow “change” but it was too late. Obama claimed it and owned it.

So in this age of verbal singularity and of linguistic oneness where a word can hold so much power, what word comes to mind that embraces Judaism?

It should be obvious as it’s the same one we say every day, and we bind as a sign on our hearts, and on our doorposts, between our eyes and it’s in the Shema. Yes, it’s “One”.

After all we’ve gone through, ever since the Diaspora spread us out on every far flung continent and region of the world, still (and to paraphrase the words of Gertrude Stein), “A Jew is a Jew is a Jew.”

While there are branches that have grown out from the tree, we all stem from the same trunk and we all hold one thing in common, dating back to Abraham—one God.

It’s what unites us.

But because those branches have grown so far and have intertwined with other religions and cultures, sprouting unique offshoots, rather than cut them off, we need to enrich them by realizing and communicating what we all have in common.

Recently, I attended an evening of music and coffee and met some Ugandan Jews who keep the Sabbath, sing Hebrew songs and obey the laws of kashrut. I didn’t even know there were Jews in Uganda. Did you?
But while they were so different culturally, they were still Jews. They even donned embroidered kipot (how’s that for symbolism), woven with vibrant colors of their culture incorporating universal Jewish iconography.

That we were one, under the same tent (ok, it was the roof of a synagogue in Roland Park) was a pretty incredible experience. It also got me thinking about our commonality and what that was and how important it is, if Jews are to remain a relevant force, on a global scale. (Not to harp too much on the Obama phenomenon), but we better find what unites us and makes us, hm…well, one, rather than what divides us as Jews.

Why now? Two reasons. One is simply the need to encapsulate our message to an immediately understood, intuitive level that speaks across continents. Given the inordinate amount of information out there, human beings don’t have the capacity to absorb the complexities of 600+ commandments. We don’t lose ‘em, but we need to create that unique position, that niche that identifies us globally in the mind first.

The second is, the world is flat and we can now communicate with each other on a plain we never could before.

One world. One God. One people.

Real Fiction

Abe Novick
Special to the Jewish Times

By now many of you know the story of Monique De Wael. She’s a Roman Catholic who concocted a false identity “Misha” and made up a phony life where, as a Jewish 6-year-old child in Europe in 1941, she was raised by a pack of wolves.

In her fabricated memoir, “Misha: A Mémoire of the Holocaust Years,” currently translated into 18 languages with a film already released in Europe, she also kills a German soldier, wanders into and escapes out of the Warsaw Ghetto and across Europe.

Misha’s story is a lie. She is not Jewish and spent the war safely in Brussels. It took years for the truth to be revealed — after she shared her story with so many (including numerous Jewish organizations) willing to believe it. Even Elie Wiesel lent his name to the book.

When confronted this month with the overwhelming evidence, Ms. De Wael announced, “The story is mine. It is not actually reality, but my reality, my way of surviving.” Surviving what?

What’s sad about this episode, but also important to recognize, is that this latest revelation comes when truth and lie are possibly beyond blurring — they’re one. The line, ever so gossamer, has inched so close that, like an Al Gore shoreline, it will be lost.

While we replicate the Holocaust experience in museums and in movies, books and documentaries, remembering history has turned into re-creating history. Projecting our own lens against it, cutting and inserting our own self-identity onto the screen, Zelig-like, we’ve artfully retouched and replaced the older images.

Plato talked about a cave where what we see as prisoners are nothing but shadows on the wall. We take those to be reality, whereas the ultimate truth was only to be reached by reason and dialogue.

But the cave allegory is obsolete; we’re the ones making the shadows and so are in on the illusion. We’re the creators and the consumers. The stories and shadows are fakes because they’re as fraudulent as we are. Everywhere, pop culture is rife with the promotion and creation of new and multiple identities.

It began in the early days of the Internet when everyone could now create multiple screen names. Back when AOL was the main gateway, no one was who they said they were. So anyone (perhaps most everyone) was lying.

But with everyone doing it, it became accepted. In fact, if you actually used your own name or told who you really were, you were embarking on a dangerous path.

Then came blogs, where truth and opinion co-exist without an editor to weed out the bunk. Today, one can even have an avatar, a completely made-up, lifelike figure who can be your alter ego and you can create an entirely false reality in Second Life.

Ostensibly, along with the ease of this form of identity fabrication, where it’s commonplace to steal, hide, falsify and disguise, we’ve manipulated ourselves to the point where our collective history is fraudulent and our memory in jeopardy.

Sadly, the Holocaust, the ultimate line to defend against this encroachment of blur, has fallen into this vat, this Babel of mixed media where everyone who wants to tell a story can and is given the same tools to stir and mix it up.

News journalists, ones who are trained in getting just the facts, are calling on publishers, especially of memoirs, to do a better job of fact checking. But with more and more hard-core investigative reporters being trimmed from the ranks of respected news organizations, I wonder who’s going to be there to protect the truth.

Misha’s story falls into a larger jumble, a hodgepodge and mishmash of quicksand that we’ve gotten ourselves into. Getting out won’t be easy.

Diaspora 2.0

One of the great things about Judaism, is the direct connection. No middleman. No priest. No son. Just you and God.

And in a wireless world, a world with more and more ways for individuals to post their own self-identities, their inner souls and to create their own programming, having the means to broadcast one’s private id anytime and anyplace, has created another potentially transformative epoch for Judaism.

In the flat world, the Diaspora world, while Web 1.0 widened the sea, Web 2.0 has deepened it. More of us are constantly linked onto the Internet but we’re also now its producers, as well as its consumers. So while the experience has become richer and more far reaching, it’s also more complex.

Question: Is your synagogue wireless? Well, if everyone carries around the Internet in their pocket, does it really matter?

Recently, I was sitting around the Sunday morning kibitz table in the social hall, when I noticed a group of us were all pounding away on our laptops. We were helping each other through the tech jungle, connecting onto one wavelength, while altering the course of typical conversation on another. Amongst ourselves, in a wireless world, do Jews communicate more directly or less?

On another level, while wireless devices are verboten in the sanctuary, it occurred to me that the idea of wireless connectivity inside the sacred hall is implicit. The public, social/tribal aspect and the private/meditative dichotomy makes for the ultimate mirror of a social networking environment. After all, everyone’s in one room, but no one’s talking to each other. We’re all in our own little worlds. And supposedly we’re sending out some kind of frequency. Whether it’s being received by a transponder and reciprocal is another question. But as far as a collective human current, I’m wondering if it’s not that much different than the world technology is creating for our lives outside of shul.

Are we all just little wireless devices sending out a signal?

Ever so conformingly, I never thought I’d become one of themæ one of those guys with the Bluetooth in their ears.

Sure, I’d wear an ear phone with a wire while driving, but hardly anyone ever saw me (aside from my kids in the backseat.) Also, the wire would get all snarled and though I wore it with the best and safest of intentions, it was probably more dangerous trying to keep it untangled and straight.

So I went wireless and now my Blackberry talks to my Bluetooth. I’m a black & blue Jew, but better for it. I’m a convert now--true blue believer, and a much safer one too.

But like a lot of technology, it creeps in and stays attached and has become more like an added appendage. The little doodad is becoming more and more permanent. While wireless in theory, the connection to ones physical being may as well be soldered.

While many of us resist technology on one level, we can’t help but join the ranks of sci-fi Trekkies on another. With more and more people donning the earpieces, it’s like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Each day, another’s wearing one and then another. Soon we’ll all have ‘em.

Here in my town, while all of Baltimore is tuned into a show called The Wire, how many of us are wirelessly watching it on our iPods, Nanos and Apples of various colors, shapes and sizes?

Likewise and on one level, for Jews, we’re all sharing in the same experience. On another, we’re blending the received content with our own unique mix of media.

Profoundly, in many ways that’s what the Talmud is all about; the word of God but with a blend of voices.

Technologically, it’s a long way from where we were just a few years ago. We’re wired on coffee while wireless at the Starbucks watching The Wire.

Now that’s something to kibitz about.

Twisting TV Jews

January 25, 2008

Twisting TV Jews

Abe Novick
Special to the Jewish Times

You don’t have to be a writer these days to appreciate their value when it comes to good, honest television. And you don’t have to be Jewish to appreciate this month’s series on PBS, “Jewish Americans.”

Amidst a writers’ strike that made the Golden Globes spin to a near halt and brought a dearth of new programming, MPT’s reported ratings for “Jewish Americans” are as populous as a boat from the old country pulling into Ellis Island.

But while many Americans have sat around their TVs, watching the story of Jews arriving, struggling and succeeding in this country, many of us may be unaware of what Iran’s state television recently produced.

Countering PBS’ meticulous attention to history, in typical Bizarro World fashion, a show called “Zero Degree Turn,” about the fate of European Jewry, aired in Iran in 2007 and is now threatening to be marketed beyond. It was one of that country’s most expensive and elaborately produced programs ever.

Apparently it was a ratings hit. It told the story of a young Iranian who goes to Paris to study at university before World War II. He becomes involved with a young Jewish woman who fears the growing strength of the Nazis in Germany.

In a sympathetic twist, from a country with a knack for twisting truth, scenes actually showed men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes forcibly taken out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers. That’s a little strange coming from a country whose president has denied the Holocaust.

But while the series of 22 installments has already aired, its radioactive effect is still being picked up on blogs and in print, including in The Jerusalem Post just this month.

Not surprisingly, while it actually got some positive reviews for at least admitting the Holocaust took place, it was full of factual errors including propagating the lie that Zionists and Nazis collaborated to provoke Jewish emigration. This theme and an emphasis on the struggle between Zionism and Judaism is worked into the story line. While both are misrepresented, Zionism is positioned (as is often the case in the Arab world) on an equal plane with Nazism.

The director of the series, Hassan Fathi, said about it, “I decided to produce this series in 2002, and in those days the Holocaust was not an issue. Even if one single Jew is killed in German camps, the world should be ashamed. By the same token, if a single Palestinian dies, the world should be ashamed. I sympathize with the Jewish victims of World War II, to the same extent with women and children victims of the war in Palestine.”

Another erroneous problem, lest we forget, is that Zionism was around long before WWII and the Holocaust. To promote the canard that Israel was conceived due to the Holocaust, is to position the Arab world and in particular the Palestinians as the victim. It’s as if Arabs are being punished by having to live with Israel in the midst of their territory, even though they had nothing to do with what happened in Europe.

So as Jews in this country tune in and see their history retold with the effort of dedicated writers, teams of researchers armed with facts and with the aid of historic photos and footage, another side of the world dramatizes their warped story.

And by producing a show with some shades of truth, perhaps just enough to gain some class, some legitimacy, it will be taken seriously by ignorant viewers who’ll watch it as if it’s “Schindler’s List.” Because Ahmadinejad is such a clown, because his claims are so preposterous, perhaps they think a softer, glossy version is what’s needed to spur on a debate.