The Wrecking Season

It's been hard to avoid seeing, if not following, the recent debate over pop singer and actress Miley Cyrus and her media antics. Citing Sinead O'Connor as an influence dragged the Irish singer, who enjoyed her own 15-minutes of controversial fame in the past, into the fray. O'Connor publicly warned Ms. Cyrus that she was simply being exploited by a misogynistic music industry that cares not for the rights and well-being of artists. That exchange has set off a flurry of debate on female sexuality. For example, Sociologist Dr Lisa Wade, on her blog, shares her 'two cents' on the issue, saying Cyrus and O'Connor are "both right, but only half right."

Wades conciliatory contention is interesting, but I think ultimately wrong. Her entire thesis hinges on one line, one postulation: "Is Miley Cyrus a pawn of industry patriarchs?" Wade says no. But, she offers no evidence that Cyrus has not been manipulated, either overtly or subconsciously. Indeed, based on everything we've seen, she lacks the maturity and depth to be making the sort of long-term decisions that would infer that her behaviour is a valid of expression of feminist power and privilege in the 21st century. What she appears to be doing is selling her body for money. As Occam's Razor suggests, sometimes the simplest answer is the truth.

More important, in my opinion, is the disturbing lack of debate on the infantilism of sexuality. We've accepted as a norm that forty year-old women wish to look twenty-five, as an affirmation of beauty and fertility. Now, we're seeing 20 year-old women looking - right down to the Brazilian wax - and dressing like 12 year-olds, in order to be, in their minds, arousing. But are they?

Cyrus's appearance in her music video 'Wrecking Ball' is not remotely sexy. What she presents is a puerile caricature of sexiness: there's nothing provocative or enchanting; no sense of feminine mystique or sensuality. Cyrus comes across as a little girl play-acting, not a mature woman seducing. The fact that so many men, and more importantly, women buy into this reduction of sexuality to children's theatre is, frankly, very disconcerting.

There's been a sense that feminism, as a movement and ideology, has taken (at least) two steps backward the past few years; whether true or not, this is an issue worth open discussion. I suppose we can at least thank Cyrus for invigorating a debate on feminism and female sexuality that has needed to enter the mainstream for a long time.

The Music Man

The new Star Trek film wasn't great but it did at least include a very brief cameo of one of my favourite people: Leonard Nimoy.

Although greatly admired as an actor and director, the role of his Jewish background in his work isn't always appreciated. In the book “Stars of David” by Abigail Pogrebin, Nimoy talks about his experiences dealing with anti-Semitism growing up in Boston. “Jews were always to keep a low profile,” he explains, “so as not to become targets.”

Fortunately, Nimoy learned to incorporate his Jewishness into his career. One of his first parts was in a play that featured a Jewish family. “I was seventeen years old...playing this Jewish kid in this Jewish family just like mine; it was amazing.” That role led to several performances in Yiddish-language theatre. Yes, Nimoy was fluent at a young age because his grandmother only spoke Yiddish. 

His portrayal of Spock, an alien, has always moved me because of the depth with which he played the part. To a large degree, he used his background as a Jewish-American to create a character that both wants to fit in and retain its own cultural identity.

As an adult, he’s continued to explore his Judaism and the Jewish-American experience.  After a discussion with a rabbi cousin of his on the feminine presence of G-d, he decided to explore the subject in pictures.  In October 2002, Nimoy published “Shekhina”, a photographic study of women, which provoked some controversy because of his use of nude models wearing traditionally male Jewish garments. 

Recently, he’s joined forces with the Milken Archive, (which I mentioned in a previous post) as the host of American Jewish Music from the Milken Archive with Leonard Nimoy.  The online series covers a wide-range of Jewish music from religious works to songs of Yiddish stage and film. Information on streaming the series is available here.

Incidentally, the Milken Archive website contains all sorts of current and never-before-released content and information on Jewish music and culture in America. It’s well worth checking out.

We Can Be Heroes

Time and again, as I've studied various aspects of the Holocaust  and its callous and most permanent effects on my family in Eastern Europe, I've been struck by small astonishing stories of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances.

The Holocaust wasn't simply some unexpected event, like a freak hailstorm. It was the desired result of cynical actions by real people against other people, in many cases neighbours and colleagues. Which is why it's so vital to seek out and reflect upon individual stories rather than view the Holocaust in terms of numbers and dates.

There are no shortage of tragic stories, tales of horror and sad, heart-rending cruelty. There are far fewer tales of heroism, but there were heroes; undoubtedly  many met the same fate as the Holocaust's primary victims. But make no mistake about it, the Holocaust's engineers understood that they could beat populations into submission, just as they reduced other populations to ashes. Who among us would risk our lives for strangers? Who would risk the welfare of their own family for nameless children?

Heroes come in many forms. I recently stumbled on a book about one such story. "Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project", tells the story of Polish gentile Irena Sendler who smuggled around 2500 Jewish children single-handed from the Warsaw Ghetto. She was recognized in 1965 by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations but her story largely forgotten for decades.

But as I've said, heroes come in many forms. The book describes the efforts of three grade 9 girls, Megan Stewart, Elizabeth Cambers, and Jessica Shelton, and an 11th grade girl, Sabrina Coons, who discovered the story of  Irena Sendler and made it their mission to learn more about this remarkable woman and, more importantly, share it with as many people as possible.

Irena Sendler died in 2008. The girls had an opportunity to meet her in 2001. Since then they've continued to tell the story, presenting a performance on Sendler before hundreds of audiences. The project is now being supported by the Lowell Milken Center, a sponsor of similar projects on the power of "unsung heroes."

While the heroics of Sendler's amazing feat goes without saying, it's also worth recognizing the merit of schoolchildren who saw a story that must be told, and ensured that it was.

Magic Carpet Ride

Although most Israeli sources say “Operation Magic Carpet” began in June 1949, in fact, the first phase began during the early months of 1948 War of Independence. The plan was launched by the Jewish Distribution Committee (“The Joint”), which chartered aircraft to rescue 4500 Jews from Yemen’s capital Aden, the site of a bloody pogrom in 1947 in which 82 Jews were murdered and synagogues, homes and shops destroyed.

JDC, and the Jewish Agency, which facilitated resettlement for the Yemenites in Israel, revealed the operation 64 years ago this week. The operation would continue throughout 1949 until over 40,000 Yemenite Jews had been brought to Israel. 

Incidentally, one of the most active airlines during this phase was Alaska Airlines. Read all about it here.                                                                        

And listen to a rare interview with James Wooten, who was President of Alaska Airlines (and a pilot) back in 1949.