Die shayne Artisten kempf'n far die Aniyem

Brooklyn Bridge: Beautiful hipster arrested for the poor

... און דען: פון פרייהייט, גלייכהייט

א גן עדן אויפבוין וועט דער ארבעטסמאן

"And then: From Freedom and Equality a Paradise will be built by the Worker!"

Hard Times

"Father earned today some money and daughter is sent for milk," Roman Vishniac, 1937

Occupy Wall Street has placed the alarming gap between rich and poor in our country front and center. For me the first images of poverty and destitution that come to mind, aside from the actual scenes of everyday life in some parts of New York, are the photos of Roman Vishniac from pre-war Jewish Galicia. For those of you who don't know, the photographs that made up the famous book of pictures, "די פארשווונדענע וועלט", The Vanished World were probably, in part, commisioned by The Joint Distribution Committee, an organization founded by Jews in 1914 to assist Jews (mainly in Palestine) in dire need during WWI. Its mission soon widened to funnel monies to poor and distressed Jews across the globe. As it turns out Vishniac was very selective in his photographing of Jews in Galicia; this is obvious to anyone with eyes in his head. So the New York Times ("A Closer Reading of Roman Vishniac," Magazine, 4/1/2010) broke the story of Vishniac and the Joint's collusion in presenting a very particular picture of Jews in Eastern Europe. The "damning" evidence, this sentence from a biography of the famous photographer: "The Joint Distribution Committee representatives in Berlin asked Roman, who was known for his photographic work, to travel to Eastern Europe, in order to document daily life in the shtetls." So what? Yes, later Vishniac would present the work in a different light, but for God's sake the man, an artist, went on a mission for the poor to the region his family had fled from years earlier and yes, produced propaganda on behalf of the poor! Halevay! If only in our day we had a Roman Vishniac...

Adirondacks

From 'Wild Northern Scenes: Or Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod' by S.H. Hammond,' New York 1857

I have been to the Adirondacks several times and in all seasons, and this tome is one of the most interesting I have found. The dedication page is worth quoting in full:

To John H. Reynolds Esq. of Albany.

You have floated over the beautiful lakes and along the pleasant rivers of the broad wilderness lying between the majestic St. Lawrence and Lake Champlain. You have, in seasons of relaxation from the labors of a profession in which you have achieved such enviable distinction, indulged in the sports pertaining to that wild region. You have listened to that glad music of the woods when the morning was young, and to the solemn night voices of the forest when darkness enshrouded the earth . You are therefore familiar with the scenery described in the following pages.

Permit me then to dedicate this book to you not because of your eminence as a lawyer, nor yet on account of your distinguished position as a citizen, but as a keen intelligent sportsman, one who loves nature in her primeval wilderness, and who is at home, with a rifle and a rod in the old woods.

With sentiments of great respect,

I remain your friend and servant,

THE AUTHOR

Please God! A gut'n Kvitel far 5772

Hans Beckert appears before the court. 'M', Fritz Lang, 1931

"Do you know your case is going badly?" asked the priest. "That's how it seems to me too," said K. "I've expended a lot of effort on it, but so far with no result. Although I do still have some documents to submit." "How do you imagine it will end?" asked the priest. "At first I thought it was bound to end well," said K., "but now I have my doubts about it..."

"You don't understand the facts," said the priest, "the verdict does not come suddenly, proceedings continue until a verdict is reached gradually."

-Franz Kafka, 'The Trial'

Buteo platypterus

Broad-winged Hawk on the deck

"I first met the Broad-winged hawk as a child in the forests of southern Kentucky. I saw it only occasionally during the breeding season... Like the early naturalists, I knew nothing of its extraordinary migration and assumed, in my ignorance that it lived in the area all year... A few years ago, in Costa Rica, we watched Broad-wings, Swainson's hawks and turkey vultures stream over the rain forests of La Selva, a seemingly endless procession gliding northward on motionless wings."

On average, the count of Broad-wings migrating over Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania is 8,527 a year, the biggest count of any raptor seen during the migration season.

From Kenneth P. Able's, Gatherings of Angels, Migrating Birds and their Ecology, 1999.

We owe a cock to Asclepius

Ganymede, Attic red-figure krater, 5th century BC

Holding the traditional pederastic gift of a rooster from his lover Zeus (on obverse of vase)

"Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius, pay it and do not forget." (Phaedo 118a)

Eva C. Keuls (The Reign of the Phallus, 1985) had this to say about the enigmatic last words of Socrates: "It was in fact a joke and by our taste a coarse one, understandable only against the background of the consistent portrayal of Socrates as satyr-like in appearance and perpetually randy." Keuls then goes on to claim that Socrates actually uncovered his groin rather than his face as is conventionally understood and revealed an erection (the Greek as far as I can tell only says that he uncovered what was veiled); it is then that he uttered the famous last words quoted above. Then in a nod to the god of health for his last hard-on, Socrates offered the rooster.

Money, Sex and Power

Fresco of Priapus, Casa dei Vettii, Pompeii

"Depicted weighing his enormous erect penis against a bag of gold."

This is neither the time nor the place to go into the connection made by some after Lacan between the Phallus and Money. However I believe it is appropriate to point to some ancient Mediterranean cultural convergences with respect to the fresco above. As I look at this image I can't help but think of some other Mediterranean characters.

Judas Iscariot, as is well known, betrays Jesus to the Priests for 30 pieces of silver. Many Christian writers elaborated on the story as it is related in the Gospels, and one lesser known legend of the demise of Judas is from Papias of Hierapolis, preserved in the writings of Apollinaris of Laodicea (d. 390).

"Judas was a terrible walking example of ungodliness in this world, his flesh so bloated that he was not able to pass through a place where a wagon passes easily... His genitals appeared more loathsome and larger than anyone else's, and when he relieved himself there passed through it pus and worms from every part of his body, much to his shame." (trans. from Michael W. Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, pg. 757)

Susan Gubar writes in Judas: A Biography, "Having grown larger than a cart... flabby Judas... sprouts enlarged genitals. Yet unlike the Greek god Priapus, who is endowed with a huge erection, Judas gains no phallic potency."

And there's more of the "grotesque" to add to this cultural mix. From the Talmud, Baba Metsia we read of another Jew who informs on his fellow, only to regret it later. In what may be a parodic adaptation of the Papias tradition of Judas we read of the trials and triumphs of the enormous sage Rabbi Eleazar the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai (what follows is a series of excerpts strewn together so the reader here will have to make sense of the picture portrayed in quotations): "When R. Ishmael son of R. Jose and R. Eleazar son of R. Simeon met, one could pass through with a yoke of oxen under them and not touch them. Said a certain [Roman] matron to them, ‘Your children are not yours!’ They replied, ‘Theirs [sc. our wives’] is greater than ours.’ ‘[But this proves my allegation] all the more!’ [She observed]. Some say, they answered thus: ‘For as a man is, so is his strength.’

... The member of R. Eleazar the son of R. Simeon was [the size of] a wineskin of seven 9 kabs... [n.b. not in the vilna shas but in many mss.]

Every evening they spread sixty sheets for him, and every morning sixty basins of blood and discharge were removed from under him...

Then there came sixty seamen who presented him

with sixty slaves, bearing sixty purses.

One day she [his wife] said to her daughter, ‘Go and see how your father is faring now.’ She went,

[and on her arrival] her father said to her, ‘Go, tell your mother that our [wealth] is greater than

theirs’ [sc. of his father-in-law's house]."

Circumcision and Covenant

"Beschneidung Jesu," Friedrich Herlin, Oil on Panel, 1466

"The metaphysical notion of covenant transcends the physicality of circumcision." Thus writes Sharon R. Siegel in the journal Meorot. From there Siegel proceeds to formulate a theological basis for the formal religious incorporation of a baby girl into the Jewish people and then proposes a liturgy that stresses the girl's entrance into the covenant. Sound familiar?

Yes, if you know anything about Pauline Christianity. Daniel Boyarin has written in A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1994), that a significant topos of Christian writings from Paul forward was that "the materiality of physical, national, gendered human existence is transcended in the spirituality of "universal" faith."

Sequoia sempervirens

Humboldt Redwoods State Park

"The root system of the coast redwood is surprisingly shallow for such a tall, heavy tree. But it compensates by being unusually broad, reaching a radius of as much as 100 feet (30 meters), particularly in the case of the tallest trees along streams."

Peter R. Dallman, 'Plant Life in the World's Mediterranean Climates,' 1998