Haredi Israelis

If this claim from the former research director of Vienna's Boltzmann Institute is accurate, I wonder why Islamists bother attacking Israel, when they could just sit tight and wait a few years. Once the Haredi are the majority, who will defend Israel when the Islamists move in? 

“In Israel, the extreme orthodox Haredi segment of the Jewish population holds a vision of the proper and desirable social order that is at odds with the country’s modern, progressive, mainstream society. They believe in gender segregation, reject secular and scientific learning, and consider the study of Torah to be the only worthwhile activity. Most of their men eschew wage-earning professions and live instead on government subsidies and on money earned by their wives. The wives believe that financially supporting the husband’s lifelong full-time Torah study by working, birthing, and raising as many children as possible is the fulfillment of a woman’s role in the divine order. The Haredim disapprove of the state of Israel as an entity and vigorously oppose the recent attempts to include them in the military draft. Though disengaged from their nation, for tactical reasons, they maintain high voter turnout, voting as a bloc and as instructed by their rabbinical leadership. This makes them a critical factor in coalition building and lends them considerable weight. It’s a clever strategy. No need to fight, no need for the men to slog away at boring jobs. They need only industriously impregnate their women. 

Currently, the Haredi population accounts for about 21 percent of Israel’s Jewish population. At their rate of 6.7 children per woman, projections place them near or over 50 percent of the Jewish Israeli population by the end of the century. They make no secret of their wish to impose strict religious rules of behavior on the rest of the population, and by their numbers, they will be able to do that. Their triumph will, alas, be short-lived. Israel will have a population half of which is pacifist, its males economically unproductive and, with their sedentary scholarly lifestyle, not physically fit, its females pregnant, lactating, and overworked; it won’t make them very competitive in a neighborhood dominated by hyperactive, aggressive Arab males and their equally procreation-inclined wives. The Haredim seem on course to win control of Israel, briefly, until they lose it all to the Arabs. And the secular Israeli state is hastening this outcome by paying bonuses for each additional child. This program failed to incentivize its modern citizens and ended up benefiting only the minority that is poised to bring the house down.”

What Do You Think of This?

Following the almost complete alteration of meaning of ‘disinterested’, (it now means ‘uninterested’ almost universally), I have noticed that ‘definately’ is becoming almost interchangeable with ‘definitely’.

There is a strong argument that English is successful precisely because it is flexible. There is also historical evidence that demonstrates spelling has only recently been standardised. However, some might say ‘definately’ is the thin end of the wedge.

For me, the spelling of a word isn’t that much of a worry, provided it is still understandable. But the loss of nuance that has occurred with the repurposing of the earlier ‘disinterested’ makes me sad.

What Do You Think of This?

I was surprised to see a clip on the BBC news the other evening purporting to show Iranian armed men hunting for an American serviceman whose plane had apparently been shot down in their country. I found it unsettling that the BBC chose to air this footage. I wondered if they would have done the same if the technology in World War Two had allowed them to get hold of some footage of Wehrmacht or SS officers setting out to hunt down Allied airmen shot down in enemy territory.

In Children of Men, PD James points out that “you don't need to manipulate unwelcome news; just don't show it.” Most evenings, the BBC follows this advice very closely. Huge events it doesn’t care for are ignored or get the briefest of coverage, while tabloid nonsense pads out the half hour. To me that makes the decsion to show viewers footage that I suspect comes direct from the Iranian regime’s propaganda machine particularly mystifying.

What do others think?

Recent Reading - A Misalliance by Anita Brookner

A Misalliance tells the story of Blanche Vernon, a well-off London woman who is getting used to being on her own, following her husband Bertie's decision, taken a year ago when the book starts, after twenty years of marriage, to leave her for a younger woman. Bertie sounds amusingly inadequate as a respository of devotion:

"disappointingly vague about colours and tastes...[When asked what he'd had for lunch] he would appear to search painfully in the recesses of his memory. 'Meat', he would say finally. Or, 'Some sort of fish.'"

However, Blanche had believed "marriage [was] a form of higher education, the kind that other women gained at universities". With the loss of her marriage, she is left not only alone but unqualified. Consequently, as Brookner explains when introducing her:

"Blanche Vernon occupied her time most usefully in keeping feelings at bay."

To this end, Blanche drinks quite a lot of white wine in the evenings and spends a great part of her days at London's National Gallery, where: 

"she did not expect art to console her - (why should it? It may be that there is no consolation) - but, like most people, she did expect it to take her out of herself, and was constantly surprised when it returned her to herself without comment". 

When not at the gallery, Blanche volunteers in a hospital cafe.

It is at the hospital, after contemplating Bacchus and Ariadne at the gallery, that Blanche meets Sally who "had the smile of a true pagan" and her small step-daughter, who has been brought to be treated for her sudden refusal to speak. Blanche forms an unlikely alliance with the duo - or rather she attaches herself to them 

The book's central theme seems to be that there are two kinds of people. On the one hand are the pagans like Sally Beamish and Bertie's new woman, Mousie, characterised as an "emotional thug". This group are amoral and grab what they want and live in the moment and entirely for their animal selves. On the other hand, there are those like Blanche, who don't, (which doesn't necessarily make them terribly nice: "Blanche was not a foolish woman, although she eagerly contemplated foolishness in others.")

Anita Brookner's writing is full of precision and observation - dotted with occasional sly wit. However, while reading, there were moments when the sensation of being trapped by an extremely intelligent, very intense obsessive produced a kind of claustrophobic panic in me.

Which is unfair as the book is exquisitely written and emotionally perceptive - and regularly quietly funny. Additionally, as a document of social history, A Misalliance is fascinating. Almost no one lives like the women in this book any more - Blanche has little or no concern about money and leads an orderly autonomous life, untouched by any pressure to earn a living or make a career. At the time Brookner was writing I am sure such a person was typical of the English urban upper middle classes. Indeed, my childhood was crowded with such people, including my mother and her friends - and even cousins little older than me expected such an existence. Now the areas of London that Blanche and her like once took for granted as the ones they could live in are unaffordable for anyone but the recently created breed known as the super-rich. Also, leaving aside where such people might be able to afford to live, these days the Blanches of this world can rarely manage financially at all without working - nor would they necessarily be allowed to feel comfortable about having no career - a decision to "stay at home" has begun to need justification. 

The book ends enigmatically. As Blanche has already speculated "it may be that there is no consolation".

But there is always, thank heavens, reading. And Anita Brookner is, whatever the mild irritations of her manner, worth a read.

The Great Leap Forward (well, mostly upward actually)

Thank you to the New York Times for informing me that The Jump Book exists. A book of photographs of the most unlikely people jumping. Rather great. Take a look. The Duke of Windsor or Richard Nixon - which is the most surprising?

Recent Reading - March of the Long Shadows by Norman Lewis

Moderately entertaining, well-written, faintly surreal novel set in post-war Sicily. Certain characters seemed to have appeared direct from a Wes Anderson movie, but since the book predates Wes Anderson, perhaps he has read it and drawn inspiration from it - or possibly he could make a movie based on it. 

Lewis has a strong sense of the absurd and there are a lot of laughs in this novel, if you like fairly dark humour. Examples chosen at random:

a) one character announcing "To really enjoy a war...you have to be as far from the action as possible and of course on the winning side. Given those two essentials the experience is incomparable"

b) this description: "Marinella, a small manic seaside town of a kind only to be found in Sicily, with a wild mixture of crenellations, Moorish arches, stained glass, crazy pavement and broken statuary. People went there to fornicate surreptitiously in the vicinity of a ruined temple of Venus, to gape at an angel's footprint in the rock, to cuddle the polished shaft of a prehistoric phallus and sometimes to commit suicide by sliding down an increasingly steep grassy slope which finally precipitated them into a deep sea saturated with the benign magic of coral."

c) a character described thus: "He was a tactless man who had ruined his career by criticising people it would have been safer to leave alone, including Mussolini for seducing every woman who ever came to see him, Marshall Badoglio for losing battles and the Pope for his alleged possession of a gold telephone. As a result, having once been a consultant in urinology [stet], he now presided over a unique collection of fossilized toads and several cases of pickled exhibits demonstrating the growth of the foetus in the horse."

The book, via this passage, also led me to finally understand why I could never live among high mountains:

"I had been offered a remarkable house on a cliff's edge near Ragusa. 'Buy it', the locals said, 'It's going for nothing.' I took a friend along to ask his advice. The view everyone raved about was of a rock pinnacle known as U Vicchione (the Old Man) rising a thousand feet sheer from the sea. I handed my friend a pair of 12-power binoculars at the precise moment when one of Europe's last sea eagles perched on its summit drew the wedge of its tail-feathers tight and unfolded its enormous wings, about to take off. He passed the glasses back and shook his head. 'Overpowering', he said, 'it is far too beautiful.' 'Is that possible?' 'You want to settle permanently in a place like this?' 'That was my intention.' 'After three months this view would overpower you. You'd sit with your back to it, and then you'd move into a room facing the other direction. To live in a house you don't need eagles. You need swallows under the eaves. Forget about it. This isn't for you. What's wrong with a moment of calm in one's life?'

I also liked this description of the sensation of knowing you are soon to leave a place in which you have been living - and to which you will probably never return:

"I was attacked by a feeling of impending loss. It was describable as a kind of anxiety to fill in every minute of what was left of time in Palma [the town where the novel is set], to imprint its scenes on the mind, to gather up as a matter of urgency the last of the Sicilian experiences and sensations that would soon be beyond reach. 'When the tree is gone', says their proverb, with its memory of Arabian sands, 'we appreciate its shade.' This was a preposterous island, but enslaving as well, and I had developed an addiction to its hard flavours, its theatricalities and its restlessness. Everything had to be salvaged, nothing squandered of these last hours. Running a bath I listened to the throaty outpourings of water brought from some ancient conduit, feeling its coolness flood into every corner of the room, and sniffing its odours of ferns and earth. I pushed open the window and a blade of sunlight sliced through into the room's twilight. The pigeons were clapping their wings in the courtyard, and a girl on a rooftop sang an African song ..."