What Else Don't They Know? by Jack Engelhard Feb 19, '04 / 27 Shevat 5764
Jack Engelhard is the author of the novel Indecent Proposal and the award-winning memoir Escape From Mount Moriah. His novel The Days of the Bitter End is being prepared for movie production
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Did you know that English is now America's second language? We don't know what the first one is, but it ain't English.
History says that some original settlers voted for Hebrew. Yes, that came close to being America's native tongue.
I mention this because I'm in a Greyhound bus bringing me back from Manhattan and the man in front is yelling some foreign language into a cell phone and he won't shut up. I can't think. I can't write. Have you noticed? In this world of cell phones, there is no more silence. Everybody's talking. No Smoking? We've got those signs all over. How about No Talking?
Why am I telling you all this? Because I'm here on this bus and it's about time I wrote another column. The world is waiting.
I'm almost not kidding. After the most recent column on Mel Gibson, I'm exhausted. I learned this much from the more than 200 heated responses: Misunderstanding comes easy. When our differences come out into the open, we tend to stop listening and instead retreat to our respective foxholes and begin firing. To mix the metaphor, the best we can do is agree to disagree. You root for the Red Sox, I root for the Yankees, but (as it should be) we still play ball and shake hands after the game.
So I'm on the 6:40 bus where I'm writing (part of) this column, which perhaps should be "A Day In The Life Of…" I've got a notepad that's running out of paper and a pen that's running out of ink, so we're in a hurry, and you're wondering why I don't get to the point, and so do I. Maybe there is no point. There is so much going on, who can focus on one thing? But here's what happened, a couple of hours earlier.
I'm in the Tribeca section of New York, where all the movie business happens, and I'm in the office of my producer, a man who co-wrote the screenplay with me for a movie to be named The Days of the Bitter End. I think we'll keep that title since it's based on my novel of the same name, which is, by the way, the greatest novel of all time. I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment.
So we're going over last minute changes on the script when along comes the word "Gestapo".
My producer pauses and says, from years of seasoning in the trade, that people won't know that word, especially the young.
I say, "Are you kidding?"
Briefly, if you're among the billions who forgot to read the novel… Ben Jaffa is a doorman (it's the early 1960s) at the legendary Bitter End nightspot in Greenwich Village and he's having a wonderful life in this beat/hippie environment. But, he's also a recent arrival, a Holocaust survivor.
So he's in his apartment (used to be called a "pad") that he shares with his buddy, when there's a knock at the door. Ben knows that can only mean one thing, and goes berserk.
His friend, Richie, says, "Hey, Ben, chill. You're in America. There's no Gestapo."
This, says my producer, won't work.
Really? Yes, really, says Roger. So we take it to a test. Roger brings in a group of young college kids from the office next door and has them read that page. Any problems? No, great dialogue, they all agree, except for one word. What word?
"Gestapo. We don't know what it means."
I'm on the bus thinking about all this, as I knew I would. I knew it would haunt me. Here's the point. If they don't know something as elementary as "Gestapo", what else don't they know? Not just these kids, but all kids, and maybe most adults. What else don't they know? Do they know there was a Holocaust?
Or do they think of the Holocaust as I once thought of the Great Depression?
"Oh, yeah, tell me about it sometime."
Do they know that Israel is not a colonial outpost, but rather the oldest (Jewish) nation on earth, and the oldest democracy to boot? (Read the Torah, and the obligations of a king.) Do they know that Israel is outnumbered 300 million Arabs to five and a half million Jews within the Middle East neighborhood, which hardly classifies Israel as the Goliath it's made out to be in the news media and along the ivy of our college campuses?
Do they know that Arabs living in Israel have far more freedom than Arabs living in Arabia?
Do they know that churches and mosques compete in number with synagogues in the Jewish land of Israel, while no church or synagogue is permitted in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries? Do they know that there has never been a sovereign "Palestinian" homeland - so who is occupying whom? Do they know that Israel's legitimacy was mandated through the Bible and later by international acclamation, but, through trickery, it has been reduced to a fraction of its intended size?
Do they know that Arab youths in Israel get the jump on Jewish youths - since Arabs are not compelled to serve those three years in the IDF - so that by the time Isaac enters college, Ishmael is already getting his diploma? And from where? Hebrew University. (Apartheid?)
Do they know that (victorious) Israel relinquished territory larger that itself (the Sinai) for the sake of peace? (Expansionist?)
Do they know that Israel's fence is the same "wall" we all erect when we lock our doors day and night to keep our families safe from murderers?
No, they don't know. And that's why we have Arafat boot-lickers like ISM/Adam Shapiro and "rabbi" Michael Lerner and his legions. (Jews and non-Jews.)
I could go on, but enough for now on this, except that "all the things they don't know" accounts largely for the fix we're in. Someone forgot to educate our people.
By what unpardonable neglect did we allow Noam Chomsky get to them first?
Moving right along, or rather coming to a halt, as my bus just pulled up to my stop, I rush for my car, hoping it will start, it's so cold. It does and soon I'm home, kiss my kids, but barely kiss my wife, since who has time for a wife, there's so much going on. Kiss, kiss, bye-bye.
I rush for the TV to find out what I've missed. Man cannot live on fiction alone. Another 9/11 maybe? Another bus bombing in Israel? More terror in Iraq? Always something.
I am a news junkie. It's like that tree in the forest and if it falls, does it make a sound if no one's around to hear? Same with me, can there be news if I don't tune in?
I flip to Fox News and here's Sean Hannity shamelessly promoting his own book on his own show. Is this kosher? What about real writers who don't have their own TV show, what shot do they have? Just the other day I read in the New York Times how some big-time writers send in love letters to Amazon about their own books, but under anonymous identities.
That's why I said The Days of the Bitter End is the greatest novel of all time. If they can do it, so can I, only, Chelmish me, I'm not being anonymous.
So now it's 10 o'clock and time to catch Mel Gibson being interviewed, for an hour, by Diane Sawyer on ABC-TV. Yes, all about that movie coming out in a few days, timed, coincidentally, to parallel Israel's standing trial at the Hague. Thus, more Jew-bashing making the rounds again and again, but a subject for another time. So back to Gibson. True Christians (and thereby faithful to Israel) will love his movie as a message of love, but out in the Arab world, and in large parts of Europe, they will love it as a message of hate. That's how I've got it figured.
Well, I covered that already (for the time being), didn't I, in that Gibson column that prompted all that uproar? But I must add this. Given his ("woe is me") performance with Sawyer, my mistrust of this man has only been reinvigorated. (To my Christian friends, especially those with whom I've exchanged emails toward healing, please do not confound my skepticism of Gibson with my respect for you and your faith. Gibson is an actor. He is not Jesus.)
But enough. I'm tired. I think I need a vacation. I think we all need a vacation. Will someone please switch the world to Brahms and Beethoven?
By the way, that guy on the bus, he was yelling Russian into his cell phone.
I know it wasn't Hebrew. I remember Hebrew from my Yeshiva days, and tell me, is that still going to be the first language when I finally make Aliya?
Layla tov from America.
Postscript: I found some of the responses to my Feb. 5 column awfully strange, arriving with such comments as, "Hey, Gibson's movie is all about love, you jerk." Or, "Gibson's movie is all about forgiveness, you idiot." Thanks, Gibson's message of love and forgiveness received. Though you're the minority, glad you're taking it just as I expected. Apparently, according to some readers, Jews are not allowed to be offended and are forbidden to dissent and respond. We're supposed to take it sitting down, and if we don't, we're guilty of Christian-bashing and provoking an anti-Semitic backlash. How utterly ridiculous and unfair! What kind of "dialogue" is this? Only you and Gibson are allowed to speak? We tried silence 60 years ago, and over the centuries, upon the assumption that if we remain mute, the hatreds and blood libels would evaporate. But silence did not work for us. So today, we're using another approach. We're speaking up. So excuse us if we feel pain, and excuse us if we defend ourselves. This is America, after all. Finally, yes, true Christians (surely the vast majority) are friends of the Jews and lovers of Zion, and will remain so no matter what's playing at the Ritz. And thank G-d we have you on our side.
