“I expect that the 2019 attempt to construct the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea will be remembered for desecration of the native Hawaiian’s beliefs, a commitment to damaging very high altitude workers health, and a continuation of the willful ignorance to the laws of the USA.” IgnoranceAstronomyOshaAltitudeMaunaKeaTmtLawsDamagingDesecration Author:Steven Magee
“So I close this long reflection on what I hope is a not-too-quaveringly semi-Semitic note. When I am at home, I will only enter a synagogue for the bar or bat mitzvah of a friend's child, or in order to have a debate with the faithful. (When I was to be wed, I chose a rabbi named Robert Goldburg, an Einsteinian and a Shakespearean and a Spinozist, who had married Arthur Miller to Marilyn Monroe and had a copy of Marilyn’s conversion certificate. He conducted the ceremony in Victor and Annie Navasky's front room, with David Rieff and Steve Wasserman as my best of men.) I wanted to do something to acknowledge, and to knit up, the broken continuity between me and my German-Polish forebears. When I am traveling, I will stop at the shul if it is in a country where Jews are under threat, or dying out, or were once persecuted. This has taken me down queer and sad little side streets in Morocco and Tunisia and Eritrea and India, and in Damascus and Budapest and Prague and Istanbul, more than once to temples that have recently been desecrated by the new breed of racist Islamic gangster. (I have also had quite serious discussions, with Iraqi Kurdish friends, about the possibility of Jews genuinely returning in friendship to the places in northern Iraq from which they were once expelled.) I hate the idea that the dispossession of one people should be held hostage to the victimhood of another, as it is in the Middle East and as it was in Eastern Europe. But I find myself somehow assuming that Jewishness and 'normality' are in some profound way noncompatible. The most gracious thing said to me when I discovered my family secret was by Martin, who after a long evening of ironic reflection said quite simply: 'Hitch, I find that I am a little envious of you.' I choose to think that this proved, once again, his appreciation for the nuances of risk, uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. These happen to be the very things that 'security' and 'normality,' rather like the fantasy of salvation, cannot purchase.” ReligionAtheismSecurityIndiaSalvationIslamIraqDebateGermanyTemplesMiddle EastShakespearePolandNormalityAncestorsJewsEastern EuropeIstanbulEinsteinAntisemitismMoroccoSpinozaTunisiaPragueMarilyn MonroeBudapestJewishnessEritreaArthur MillerKurdish PeopleSynagoguesDesecrationDamascusJewish QuestionMartin AmisRabbisReligious ConversionDavid RieffAnnie NavaskyBar And Bat MitzvahBest ManRobert GoldburgSteve WassermanVictor Saul Navasky Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a 'furniture facility.' It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local 'youths.' Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn't a Jew left in the town, and there hadn't been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.” ReligionCommunismWorld War IiAnimalsJudaismEuropean UnionHebrewRelicsJewsNazisRitualsYiddishVandalism1945ObscurantismSynagoguesAnimal SacrificeTombstonesDesecrationWomen And ReligionWroclawAbattoirsAnimal SlaughterJerzy KichlerMikvahsWhite Stork SynagogueWomen In Judaism Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir
“The government of Hawaii has been arresting the native Hawaiians that are objecting to the development of Mauna Kea. The Hawaiians regard it as the most sacred place in Hawaii. They view the summit of Mauna Kea as their place of worship and they regard the Mauna Kea Observatories as desecration. Could you imagine several of the world’s largest telescopes being built at the Vatican in the middle of St. Peter’s Square? It is the same thing!” WorshipSacredHawaiiSummitHawaiiansObservatoriesVaticanMauna KeaDesecrationSt Peter S Square Book:Summit Brain Source: Summit Brain
“How in any way does EQUALITY with other people equate to 'religious persecution'? Does the survival of a religion depend on the vilification and desecration of the humanity of others?” ReligionHumanitySurvivalEqualityReligious PersecutionVilificationDesecrationEquate Book:Dead Man's Hammer Source: Dead Man's Hammer
“One cure for the pain of desecration is the move towards total PROFANATION: in other words, to wipe out all vestiges of sanctity from the once worshipped object, to make it merely a thing OF the world, and not just a thing IN the world, something that is nothing over and above the substitutes that can at any time replace it. That is what we see in the spreading addiction to pornography - a profanation that removes the sexual bond entirely from the realm of intrinsic values. It involves wiping out one area in which the idea of the beautiful had taken root, so as to protect ourselves from the possibility of loving it and therefore losing it.” PornographyDesecrationProfanation Book:Beauty Source: Beauty