The Zeitgeist

ISIS or ISIL head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He's no Romeo.

ISIS vs. ISIL. What’s in a Name?

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the Bard of Stratford posited and Juliet articulated “What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Juliet, vexed by the danger of a relationship with Romeo by virtue of his family heritage but nevertheless in love with the boy is making the point that who someone is matters more than what that person is called.

On a far less romantic note, way more dangerous than Capulets or Montagues (or Sharks or Jets in the New York iteration) is the Middle Eastern terrorist group alternately known as ISIS or ISIL, against which President Obama has declared war upon.

Thirteen years ago when former President George W. Bush launched the War on Terror, we had no such confusion as to the moniker of our foe, we knew them as al-Qaeda. Today, depending on who you’re listening to, we could be up against two different enemies who are actually one and the same. No, our adversary doesn’t have a split personality disorder – they know quite clearly who they are and what they stand for. We are the ones sowing the confusion.

If you listen to the President, or to John Kerry or to Chuck Hagel or to various members of the defense establishment, we are committed to “degrade and destroy” a group named “ISIL,” which stands for the “Islamic State In the Levant.” However, when watching the news, seeing some members of congress, hearing pundits and talking heads, reading news sites and such we are told that we’re fighting a nefarious organization named “ISIS,” which is short for the “Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.”

Within any given newscast, we can see Administration spokespeople wax on about ISIL while the anchors, analysts and correspondents keep saying ISIS, sometimes directly to one another within the same conversation. How are we to agree on a long term strategy to eradicate this evil if we can’t agree on what to call them? A rose by any other name, indeed

I believe we should all agree on “ISIS” and push the Administration to change their tune. Here’s why:

● “ISIS” is easy to pronounce, like “Hamas.” It just sounds better. ISIS is a nemesis. “ISIL” always comes across as awkward; it causes the tongue to make an unnatural pause before saying the next word. ISIS makes for better looking headlines, with the final “S” more graphically attractive than looking at an “L.” If we’re to spend a lot of time over the next few years talking about this group, we should make it as pleasant a linguistic experience as possible.

● “ISIS” sounds like the name of some ominous and dastardly group, like “Kaos” from Get Smart. Would Agents 86 and 99 have made any headway against “Kaol?”  All evil and violent NGOs have cool names.

● “ISIL” on the other hand sounds like the last four letters of some cholesterol, diabetic or cardiac pharmaceutical – the kind that gets advertised all day on CNN, Fox and MSNBC. Is it ennobling to be up against a pill, even if most of these medications warn you of the danger of heart attack, stroke or death?

● The “L” in “ISIL” is for the “Levant,” an old-world word that stands for the Middle East, particularly for the area between the Mediterranean and Iran. Most Americans wouldn’t know where the Levant was if it fell on them – also – why give this group regional status? Isn’t it the President’s objective to bomb them back into some corner or Syria anyway?

There’s a scary-looking black-clad guy named Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who is the head of ISIS (or ISIL). Perhaps when our team of Navy Seals eventually gets to his lair in Syria, just before we pull the trigger, we can ask him which English-language acronym he prefers? After all, a Caliph should be able to write his own epitaph. Maybe we could send a message to his YouTube account asking him to clarify this debate for us before his next televised beheading?

My bet is al-Baghdadi will go for ISIS as he and his group seem to be very image conscious and media savvy. But in all seriousness, the American people will soon be clamoring for an end to the ISIS-ISIL ping-pong, especially if we’re being asking to support another trillion-dollar war effort. Juliet may not have cared much about names and labels but the American people deserve an adversary whose name is easy to pronounce and as we know from the play, ultimately the names did matter, which is why I’m “pro-ISIS” and “anti-ISIL.”

The Zeitgeist

Portrait of my late mother, Alice Barbanel at 21.

The 90 Day Post-Mortem Mourning Report on Mom

Or, How Kaddish Helps.

I don’t know where to put Mom. Not Mom in actuality, but her portrait. Mom passed away roughly three months ago and my conundrum is where to hang a wonderful painting of her as a 21 year-old. The portrait had been languishing in my parents’ basement in a rotting frame and after her demise I rescued it (because I couldn’t rescue her) and had it remounted and reframed.

It’s not that I have a dearth of available wall space in my house, it’s that I have no idea where would be most appropriate – how often do I want to see this painting and how prominent a place do I want to accord it?

It’s not as though Mom isn’t in my heart and mind enough already. I miss her terribly and have been not just since she passed but also for the last year and a half of her life when she was afflicted with a serious case of dementia that in many ways stole her away from all of us long before she drew her last breath.

Grief is palpable, like a thick fog redolent with mist and oppressive humidity. It weighs on you by day and by night.  King David, author of many of the Psalms wrote in Psalm 6 that “I am wearied with my sigh, every night I drench my bed, with my tears I soak my couch.” My grief for Mom typically washes over me (and then exits) in a few 30 to 90 second tsunami-like waves of intense sadness and despair in the mornings and evenings (when I’m not working) and in all kinds of nightmares that pop me out of bed at 3:30 a.m.

There is no escape from the Angel of Death, we will all meet up with him eventually. The Sons of Korach, authors of many outstanding Psalms put it bluntly in Psalm 49, “Shall he then live forever, shall he never see the grave?” and “like sheep they are destined for the grave.” And so it was for my mother, notwithstanding her ferocious will to live, the Lord had other plans for her soul.

Dealing With It

Left behind in addition to her children and grandchildren is her spouse of more than five decades (no small accomplishment in this highly disposable modern world), my Dad. Unlike many in my generation, Dad has never lived alone before. He went from his mother’s house to my mother’s house. Dad loved my mother and he fought tooth and nail to keep her alive, but no man, no matter how determined and no matter how many resources he brings to bear can ultimately stay the hand of eternity.

Being a card-carrying member of The Greatest Generation, Dad may be heartbroken but he is not bent. He is resolutely steadfast, stoic and determined to still be a lion, even in winter, because he’s the patriarch of the family, a role he takes very seriously. Recent angioplasty? Handled with aplomb. Figuring out meals? No problem. Contemplating the acquisition of a new car and a significant other? Looking forward. Wallow in grief? Not his style. Got to keep on keeping on, even at 87.

Me? I’m not made of my Dad’s kind of tough stuff. My personality is more like my late mother’s for the good and for the bad (our parents are just human beings, they have their strengths and weaknesses like everybody else) which makes me a bit more sensitive to loss and the ramifications from that.

The Brothers Gibb once queried musically, “how can you mend a broken heart?” In Psalm 147 King David asserts that G-d “is the healer of the brokenhearted and the one who binds up their sorrows” which is one reason why religiously observant Jews say the Mourners Kaddish for 11 months after a close loved one has gone on to the next world. Kaddish is all about the mending.

The Jewish Mourners Kaddish, recited at services three times a day, every day, is not really so much a prayer for the dead or for the benefit of the deceased. It is rather a prayer in praise of G-d and a reaffirmation of the faith for the mourner who recites it – in a sense it’s a prayer for the living, for those left behind. It’s like an Eastern mantra (because it is repeated so often even within a given service) in that its purpose is to impart of measure of transcendental calm for someone who is anything but.

We also say Kaddish to honor the departed in the eyes of the living, as a sign of respect for their lives and the love they gave us, which is one key reason we stand while reciting it.

Until about four and a half years ago I was what could be called a “Shabbat Orthodox Jew,” my Judaism was primarily about Friday night and Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The rest of the week, not so much. Services every day? Seriously? A huge percentage of my friends were and are still like this, as is a large percentage of my shul (synagogue) so it’s not like I was alone in this lifestyle, far from it. I wasn’t even putting on tefillin (phylacteries) in the mornings. As it is for many Jews, this changes when confronted with tragedy.

It is said that there are no atheists in foxholes. The Modern Orthodox extrapolation of that are increases in prayer and observance when dropped into that aforementioned foxhole. And dropped I was, big time. Concurrent with the then impending collapse of my business due to the recession and all its attendant personal financial challenges, my former wife decided to leave our home and file for divorce – a divorce I absolutely didn’t want. This threw me into two years of steady grief and intense anxiety owing to feeling as though I had part of my very soul ripped out and wondering how I’d put my life back together. It was so bad for a time that my friends and family were seriously worried about me. The stress of it all triggered a raft of serious health issues as well (which thank G-d are now mostly behind me). Confronted with these disasters I took to donning tefillin in the mornings and praying at home for the good L-rd’s mercy and salvation.

Just as things started to ease-up for me after a couple of years and I had a few months of relative tranquility, just then my mother started her two year steady descent into death by dementia, which put me back into daily high anxiety mode, meaning I essentially just spent a combined total of more than four years in a perfect purgatory culminating in my mother’s demise, which brings me to Kaddish.

To say the Mourners Kaddish you have to be a part of a Minyan, a quorum of 10 Jewish men (you can’t say it home alone) and where there’s a Minyan, there’s a service and in these services it is most often the obligation of a mourner to lead the prayers, particularly during the week. That’s going to get you into shul every day.

For me Kaddish works as a grief mitigator. In the Minyan there are folks just like you, who in the words of Bill Clinton, “feel your pain,” because they’re going through it themselves. It’s a Hebrew and Aramaic language support group with the people there also imploring the Almighty to prop you up. By forcing the mourners to lead the services it propels the mourner to publicly overcome his grief and acts as a catharsis of sorts as the barrage of Hebrew psalms and prayers wash over you and move through you. I wish there were Shiva and Kaddish for divorce, as it probably would have helped at the time.

When I was a kid in sleep away camp I remember that at Shabbat services (this wasn’t a religious camp, so what limited services we had were sandwiched in between a steady diet of nonstop sports) we kids would all look on in fascination at who might be saying the Mourners Kaddish, as the notion of this kind of loss was unimaginable to a 10 or 12 year old. Now I’m the guy standing for Kaddish at Shabbat services. In the very large shul I attend, somehow even though there are many mourners at the daily services, on many a Shabbat I seem to be the only person in a room with more than 400 people that needs to say Kaddish, so there I am often on Saturday mornings as the solo point person intoning the ancient Aramaic of the Mourners Kaddish to a hushed hall.  Cycle of life.

Not being married now, or anywhere near close to it and not having had kids I sometimes wonder who will be there to say Kaddish for me? I’m sure my brothers will, but that’s not the same thing.

On my way from shul a couple of Saturdays ago I ran into an acquaintance from the neighborhood who had also recently lost his mother. I asked him how he was doing and he asked me back, “how is the 11-month prison sentence going for you?” “Prison sentence?,” “Yeah, all that Kaddish for a year.” He was viewing it as something of a punishment. I told him that it’s actually been helpful for me but most significantly, I said that “my mother was always there for me, always. For sure I can be there for her for 11 months, it’s the least I can do.”

And so, in line with that, I have to find a place in my home to hang that painting of her, because that and Kaddish publicly demonstrate what I felt for her and my gratitude for all she did for me.

The Zeitgeist

 

The Chief Mutant Human Clergyman worshipping the "Holy Weapon of Peace" in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (left) and a typical shoulder ground to air missile launcher.

How Malaysian Flight 17 and the Gaza Situation are Connected

What does the Israeli ground incursion into Gaza and the downing of Malaysian Flight 17 over Ukraine have in common? Seemingly, it would seem nothing, but in actuality, everything.

Over the past two weeks hundreds of missiles have rained down on Israel from Gaza, with some of them actually reaching Israel’s major cities. The level of rockets fired by Hamas are an upgrade from their last fusillade of a few years ago but still not fully at first world standards – not because Hamas doesn’t want better weapons, but because of Israel’s continued interdiction of Iranian arms shipments. The lack of Hamas missile lethality is a credit to Israel’s missile defense systems, not a diminution of Hamas’ intentions.

Last Thursday over the Eastern Ukraine, in an area being held by an ad-hoc group of so-called ethnic Russian freedom fighters (but really in the main by Russian special forces units in Vietcong-style camouflage) a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 with 298 people aboard (including three infants) was shot clear out of 33,000 feet of sky by a sophisticated ground to air missile supposedly launched by these ethnic Russian patriots. Ukraine doesn’t have an Iron Dome missile defense system so the wreckage of Flight 17 became a horrific debris field of body parts and mechanical detritus.

Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport (and its only major airport) is a scant 11 miles from the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel’s largest city. But really, Tel Aviv is a megalopolis like Los Angeles or Miami with dozens of governmentally independent municipalities comprising a sprawling metropolitan area where about three million of the country’s seven million people live. Most significantly, Ben Gurion is situated a mere four miles from the Palestinian Arab town of Rantis in the disputed West Bank. It wouldn’t take sophisticated weaponry as was used to down Malaysian Flight 17 to wreak havoc with Israel’s commercial and civilian air travel. Gaza-caliber missiles fired from West Bank rooftops would effectively shut down air travel into and out of Israel and in a horrific specter, shoulder-launched ground to air missiles could take down civilian aircraft with men, women and children aboard in a matter of seconds. US airlines have already suspended flights just out of concern from Gaza missiles.

The Gaza war was undoubtedly initiated by Hamas at Iran’s urging to get the Iranian nuclear negotiations with the West wiped off the front pages and major newscasts. And it worked.  The Iranians (who supply materiél and money to Hamas and Hezbollah in the North)  convinced the U.S. and the West to give them more time to negotiate over their uranium enrichment program. Time is money – with economic sanctions eased considerably in consideration for yammering with the Western diplomats, the Iranians can enrich more uranium, install more centrifuges and make life better for their people all at the same time. The Iranians have made it crystal clear that their ultimate objective is world domination and the obliteration of Israel as part and parcel of that process. Hamas is a proxy in this effort.

The public blandishments by the Iranians about their supposed peaceful nuclear program reminds me of the 1970 sci-fi film Beneath the Planet of the Apes starring James  Franciscus, in which the subterranean mutant human survivors of a 20^th Century nuclear conflagration are the guardians of a doomsday hydrogen bomb that their chief clergyman calls a “holy weapon of peace” and a “divine bomb.” Upon hearing this, Franciscus, as the astronaut Brent can’t restrain his emotions of derision, disdain and ludicrousness and stammers in a mocking way, “holy weapon of peace!” while half-laughing. But the bomb was no joke and in the end of the film (spoiler alert here if you’ve not seen it in the last 44 years) the Earth is destroyed by it.

The Iranians are on that track and if they had their druthers they’d propel Hamas to control of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank (just as Hamas forcefully ousted Fatah from Gaza) and would supply them with thousands of missiles with which to shut down central Israel, sow terror on land, sea and air and actively fulminate for a second Holocaust against the millions of Jews in Israel.

Hence the Israeli government’s determination not to have El Al, Delta, United, Air France, British Airways and other airlines’ flights blown to bits in the air over central Israel or bombed while on the tarmac by allowing the proliferation of dangerous missiles adjacent to its very narrow territory and its equal determination not to allow more genocidal extremist regimes to camp out on its doorstep.

While the so-called Russian separatists in Ukraine are not exactly Hamas, the net result of their recent actions and ambitions are the same and in a sense the struggle of the Ukrainians and the Israelis for freedom and security in the face of bloodthirsty bullies are very much in alignment.