Passover is over. Leftover matzo is begging to be eaten. The superhero (supervillain) action figures of Moses and Pharaoh that sit on the mantle for the holiday are taken down.
I have combined the two. Shown are celebrity photos I’ve taken of the two stars of Passover on a matzo background. Please enjoy.
© 2022 Bob Schwartz
JOB
Explain it to me. I talked to my friends, I talked to God, but I didn’t get an answer. The good prosper, the bad prosper, the good suffer, the bad suffer. You’ve talked with God up close. Do you have any ideas?
MOSES
I am as in the dark as you. You can’t win an argument with God. I’ve learned that. Sometimes I felt like a glorified secretary taking dictation. I didn’t know why God even needed me. Why not just make a general announcement to everybody? So, no, I don’t have an answer for you.
JOB
I got pretty far with God, just not far enough. God chastised my friends for being know-it-alls. Between me and God, I didn’t win but I didn’t lose. In the end, I said let’s agree to disagree, and that was that. I got everything back, but that really didn’t make up for what I went through. You know how it is, though. You want some kind of reasonable principled explanation, but never get one.
MOSES
I never got one. The question we’ve got to ask, you, me, your know-it-all friends, all those I led who look up to me, is whether there is an explanation at all, and if there is one, whether we are owed one. You and me, we are both famous, maybe me a little more than you, and I think when we get through all the fine and fancy words—a lot of words—maybe nobody knows anything.
© 2022 Bob Schwartz
The evidence mounts that Russia has committed and will continue to commit war crimes in Ukraine. The rhetoric of outrage grows louder, insisting that Putin and others be held accountable, tried and convicted.
Here’s something else.
Russia has ruined and will continue to ruin Ukraine, leaving behind a scorched earth that will take at least a generation to fix.
Here’s the difference.
There is small chance, or none, that there will ever be a court in which a case is made (despite plenty of evidence), the criminals voluntarily surrender to the court’s jurisdiction (they would then be tried in absentia), and the criminals forced to suffer punishment if convicted.
(See Explainer: How could Russia’s Putin be prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine? and War Crimes Watch: Hard path to justice in Bucha atrocities)
There is a certainty that Ukraine, even if Russia left today, would lie in devastating ruins. Ruination that progresses every day in this interminable war.
One is a noble wish and hope. The other is a fact.
Rhetoric has its place, especially in terrible times. But it is not without drawbacks. A call for action may be necessary but not sufficient. Sufficient action and outcomes give body to rhetoric. In the case of war crimes, if we are candid and practical, we should not be expecting outcomes that match the outrage. The mismatch may only make the champions of freedom look ineffectual, just as the reliance on sanctions has proven less effective than promised.
From the start, there have been no “good” choices for the West, as in choices that did not carry uncertain costs, risks and outcomes. In choosing, we should at least be honest about what are the certain outcomes. War crimes trials are unlikely. The decimation of Ukraine is now.
In the legendary town of Chelm, the men are fools who think they are wise.
Chelm is actually a real town in Poland, a city of around sixty-seven thousand today. Ruth von Bernuth writes in How the Wise Men Got to Chelm:
Chelm has played the role of the foolish shtetl par excellence since the end of the nineteenth century. The tales of its so-called wise men, a sprawling repertoire of stories about the intellectual limitations of the perennially foolish residents of this venerable Jewish town, have come to constitute the best-known folktale tradition of eastern European Jewry.
There are many Chelm stories, most famously retold by Isaac Bashevis Singer, who had an affinity for these “wise men.” His story The Elders of Chelm & Genendel’s Key begins:
It was known that the village of Chelm was ruled by the head of the community council and the elders, all fools. The name of the head was Gronam Ox. The elders were Dopey Lekisch, Zeinvel Ninny, Treitel Fool, Sender Donkey, Shmendrick Numskull, and Feivel Thickwit. Gronam Ox was the oldest. He had a curly white beard and a high, bulging forehead.
Since Gronam had a large house, the elders usually met there. Every now and then Gronam’s first wife, Genendel, brought them refreshments—tea, cakes, and jam.
Gronam would have been a happy man except for the fact that each time the elders left, Genendel would reproach him for speaking nonsense. In her opinion her highly respected husband was a simpleton.
Once, after such a quarrel, Gronam said to his wife, “What is the sense in nagging me after the elders have gone? In the future, whenever you hear me saying something silly, come into the room and let me know. I will immediately change the subject.”
Genendel thought a moment and suddenly exclaimed, “I have it.”
“Well?”
“When you say something silly, I will come in and hand you the key to our strongbox. Then you’ll know you’ve been talking like a fool.”
“When you say something silly, I will come in and hand you the key to our strongbox. Then you’ll know you’ve been talking like a fool.”
Gronam was so delighted with his wife’s idea that he clapped his hands. “Near me, you too become clever.”
Soon a problem arose requiring Gronam’s wisdom:
A few days later the elders met in Gronam’s house. The subject under discussion was the coming Pentecost, a holiday when a lot of sour cream is needed to eat with blintzes. That year there was a scarcity of sour cream. It had been a dry spring and the cows gave little milk.
The elders pulled at their beards and rubbed their foreheads, signs that their brains were hard at work. But none of them could figure out how to get enough sour cream for the holiday.
Suddenly Gronam pounded on the table with his fist and called out, “I have it!”
“What is it?”
“Let us make a law that water is to be called sour cream and sour cream is to be called water. Since there is plenty of water in the wells of Chelm, each housewife will have a full barrel of sour cream.”
“What a wonderful idea,” cried Sender Donkey.
“A stroke of genius,” shrieked Zeinvel Ninny.
“Only Gronam Ox could think of something so brilliant,” Dopey Lekisch proclaimed.
Treitel Fool, Shmendrick Numskull, and Feivel Thickwit all agreed. Feivel Thickwit, the community scribe, took out pen and parchment and set down the new law. From that day on, water was to be called sour cream and sour cream, water.
Of course:
That Pentecost there was no lack of “sour cream” in Chelm, but some housewives complained that there was a lack of “water.” But this was an entirely new problem, to be solved after the holiday.
Gronam Ox became famous all over the world as the sage who—by passing a law—gave Chelm a whole river and many wells full of sour cream.
Are we fools like the wise men of Chelm? We are if our confidence in our wisdom precludes the possibility of our foolishness. We laugh at the absurdity of proclaiming water to be sour cream and at those who foolishly agree. We need enough humility and doubt to avoid being a laughingstock or worse. We need someone to hand us a key when we have been talking like a fool.
The Whitefish from Brooklyn
The whitefish came from Brooklyn
(of course first from the sea)
where it was (dead already)
lost in a fog of hardwood smoke.
Golden skin head tail and especially eyes
I pulled delicious flesh from bones
(bones once essential for it
now objectionable to me).
It may not have gone to heaven
I am there as it sits on the plate.
May its memory be a blessing.
© 2022 Bob Schwartz
Note: For some reason sensitive about such things, I contemplated whether or how to illustrate this poem. Pescatarians would be okay, but what about vegetarians and vegans? Considered were photos of a live fish or even a Canadian stamp. But the poem itself is about my carefully dissecting a caught and processed fish, so I might as well not post it at all. Which I have, and have pictured the package. Difficult waters to navigate.
Spring (Remember What)
Vivaldi and the birds of spring
made me forget everything
remember all I didn’t know
and need
© 2022 Bob Schwartz
It is often said, correctly, that the first casualty of war is truth.
A corollary, understandably, is that the first casualty can also be realism.
Understandably, because war is also a spiritual exercise, fueled by a mix of faith, ideology, desire, courage and hope. Those are not unrelated to realism. But depending on people and circumstances, they operate on a different plane.
Hearing often that Putin’s Ukraine invasion has not so far met his expectations, a realistic question is, in the event, what will he do? So a hopeful and uplifting answer is that the now renowned valor of Ukraine will slow him so much that he stops, and then withdraws. A realistic answer may be that if he is willing to have his people and his country bear the pain, in a head-to-head with Ukraine, even with Western resources added, Russia has an overwhelming advantage.
Hearing that the Russian people will rise up and depose Putin, the heart cautiously swells with that possibility (cautiously, because one never knows when one devil may replace another). Realistically, a tyrant who has spent decades honing his skills as a vicious top dog autocrat, and building an enforcement machine, will not be toppled so quickly.
Hearing that Putin is a war criminal, based on what we have already seen and are likely to yet see, is precise. And realistically beside the point. The label will have no current effect, and if Putin is the desperate and irrational animal some say, it may even make things worse, but in any case no better. The West continues to confuse, sometimes deliberately, rhetoric with action.
Is realism the opposite of hope? Can they coexist? They can and should coexist in appropriate measure. Too much realism can be dispiriting. Too little realism can prevent needed action. For the sake of Ukraine, let’s hope the leaders and talking heads know and respect the difference.
© 2022 Bob Schwartz
Western leaders and politicians are torn and vacillating about how deeply to intervene in Ukraine.
In his speech to British Parliament this week, Zelensky chose words from Hamlet to describe the desperate existential situation for Ukraine: “To be or not to be.”
The genius of Shakespeare, why he has lasted so long in culture, is his ability to crystalize human experience and history. That phrase is the opening of one of Shakespeare’s most famous soliloquys. Hamlet weighs the ultimate choice between suffering and suicide. It begins:
To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Though they don’t often earn it, this is one of the times Western leaders and politicians deserve a little of our sympathy. Whether it is an offer of arms, a no-fly zone, or troops on the ground, the potential consequence of intervention is dire—and politically controversial. The failure to do more has its own consequence, more likely than potential, of Ukraine’s bold resistance falling in the face of vastly superior Russian power. It is existential.
If this play ends well, Russia will eventually be exhausted without the West taking extreme military measures. If it ends badly, without that intervention, Russia will continue its scorched earth terrorism, leaving little of Ukraine that existed just weeks ago. In that case, we, those leaders and politicians, all of us, will replay the decisions made now. Except that this is no play.
Glory to Ukraine.
NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is an invitation-only membership alliance that includes 30 nations, big and small. It expanded after the fall of the Soviet Union to include many former Soviet states, including Estonia. But not Ukraine.
The NATO mutual defense provision is Article 5: an attack on one is an attack on all. However, Article 5 is often not fully understood. To reach its mutual defense mechanism, which is not automatic, all member nations must agree to invoke it, and then each member nation may decide how much, if at all, they want to be involved.
There is one way of looking at NATO as a solemn solid inviolable bargain. But the conditions attached to Article 5 indicate that it is a little porous and open. Not to disrespect a valuable tool of global freedom, but a little bit of “only if you feel that you can or should.”
All of which brings us to the distinction between letter and spirit. The letter of NATO is pretty clear. If you are in it you get the benefits and responsibilities (such as “tell us if you are willing to fight or not”). The spirit, of course is much bigger. NATO was established in the wake of World War II, to assure a stance of “never again” will we stand down, always again will we stand up, when lives and freedom are threatened.
With absolutely no disrespect to Estonia, it has made a very favorable deal. If even one Russian soldier crossed its border and committed one act of war, Article 5 would be considered (maybe invoked, see above), and the integrity of its territory and the lives of its 1.3 citizens would be protected by the most powerful armies in the world.
For three weeks, the integrity of Ukraine and the freedom of its 42 million people has been under attack, attacks that will not soon end. Yet expert statecraft and realpolitik have been dictating that NATO need not be directly involved, should not be directly involved.
In 1937 Jean Renoir made the film Grand Illusion (La Grande Illusion), on all best of all time lists, including best anti-war movie. World War I was a fresh memory, the foundation of World War II was being laid. These borders, these nationalities, are all grand illusions that we embrace but only lead us farther away from the primacy of our humanity.
It may be that one small free nation deserves the full force of military might, while another much, much bigger nation, because it sits on the other side of the NATO border, deserves all the non-military help we can muster, including our spiritual support, but is going to be left to fend for itself. That is a grand, and ultimately tragic, illusion.
Bob Schwartz 