history

ON JULY FIFTEEN OF 2008, Rhode Island Republican Governor Donald L. Carcieri signed an executive "Illegal Immigration Control Order" [pdf] into law. It begins with some storytelling.

WHEREAS, most Rhode Islanders and most Americans are descendants of immigrants from all regions of the world

Stop. Most are, true. And you know who aren't "descendants of immigrants from all regions of the world"?

Mexicans, for one. We are not "immigrants" on this land. We are Indians who have been invaded and occupied (just as Iraq has) by Imperialist Euro-forces, and who eventually blended with our greedy, self-justifying, resource-thirsting overlords by means of rape, occupation, an eventual perverse desire to blend and be like the rulers, and in time simply because we've all been living on the same land since then.

Not immigrants. Indians. People indigenous to the continent long before map lines were drawn by invading forces.

Farmers. Workers. Campesinos. For the longest time, we (this is how my nanita and abuelo made their living with my father) have been migrating farmers on this land, for thousands of years we have been quien lo trabajo esta tierra. And for all this time, we have been moving about with the seasons and the flow, just like rivers, just like pollen, just like water through the soil.

It was los perfumados with their WHEREAS clauses who blew in here with butchery and deception and greed and now want to tell stories about opportunity and ownership.

This comes from the Jewish Heritage E-Report (June 27, 2008)
World News about Jewish Art, Architecture & Historic sites from the International Survey of Jewish Monuments (ISJM)
Edited by Samuel D. Gruber / Contact and send news items to
samuelgruber_at_gmail.com

Jamaica: Documentation of 18th Jewish Cemetery at Hunt's Bay
(Ainsley Henriques, Rachel Frankel, Anne Hersh and Samuel Gruber contributed to this article)

In January (2008), Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions (CVE) sponsored a successful project to inventory and document existing conditions of the historic Hunt's Bay Jewish Cemetery, the oldest known Jewish cemetery in Jamaica. ISJM provided logistical support and funds to purchase equipment necessary for the survey. The cemetery was the burial place for Jews, many fleeing the Inquisition and anti-Semitism in Europe. They came to Port Royal, the 17th century entré port, a desolate sandy spit at the end of what is now known as the Palisadoes peninsula enclosing Kingston Harbor. They found freedom to worship with few restrictions (but higher taxes).

Hilary Rosen became persona non-grata in this technologist's household for her years at the RIAA. She almost single-handedly killed creative freedom of expression thanks to the war she waged against the fair use of copyrighted materials. We really don't like her legacy at all.

So when I heard the former lobbyist had joined the Hillary Clinton campaign, I wasn't shocked. It made perfect sense. The lobbyist and the lobbyist loving politician. WTF.

Yet, grock how the woman grated the crap out of me every time I'd see her on CNN vigorously defending Hillary Clinton's shenanigans on the campaign trail. Last night though, she had a quick appearance during the election coverage and I noticed something different.

People were discussing Hillary Clinton's non-concession speech and you could see that Rosen was really more than pissed, she was truly disappointed. So when I read her post on Wednesday's Huffington Post, I wasn't just blown away for how candid it was. I really got that it was heartfelt and sincere :

I have been reading two books that deal with pre-Columbian America: 1421 by Gavin Menzies and 1491 by Charles Mann. Both present controvesial but interesting theories of what happened before Columbus in the Americas. I find my self only partly convinced by each book and, in fact, think that the two theories wind up, in their extreme forms, to be mutually exclusive.

My mother was an Anthropologist and as a kid we often went to museums of all sorts. I was exposed to pre-Columbian art and archaeology, but never found it as compelling as European and Asian art and archaeology. Looking back, I felt little connection with pre-Columbian cultures. I had more connection to modern Native American culture than ancient, as if in some ways I bought the olf fallicy that Native Americans didn't really have a history of their own. I think I first awakened to the pre-Columbian cultures in graduate school when I was lucky enough to see the Treasures of Sipan exhibit at UCLA (the only US museum that got to display the exhibit...it is permanently housed in Peru). This was billed as being as spectacular as the Treasures of King Tut which I had seen and was amazed by as a kid. I scoffed at that, but still went to see it. It was just as spectacular as any ancient art and I was blown away. The Treasures of Sipan showed artifacts from a nearly untouched tomb from the Moche culture in South America. It made me appreciate just what the ancient Andean cultures were really like and was the first time I felt an affinity with a pre-Columbian culture.

Recently I wrote a piece kind of throwing together the ideas of human evolution and personal genealogy, two things that clearly are ultimately connected because they both come down to simple genetics and who begat whom, but in reality are so separated in time that we cannot properly connect them. But those who accept genealogies and DNA tests for paternity have to accept evolution, because the concepts are the same. Ultimately genes work a certain way and we understand how they work quite well. Evolution is no great mystery or controversy. What is amazing is that Darwin, with no concept of genes, came up with a system that once genes were studied was found to fit very well how genes actually work. Genetics and Evolution started as separate fields, but amazingly the two separate fields merged almost perfectly. To me genealogy is simply what we can see up close of our evolutionary path. Once we get a few generations back, the branches of our ancestry become quite tangled and hard to see...but they are there. And their imprint is in our genes.

Recenly some new developments occurred in studying human evolution that I now want to fit into my previous thoughts on the subject. Slowly it seems like the path of human physical and cultural evolution is being outlined, and I am enjoying each new piece of information.

Don't you wish all history lessons were like an Eddie Izzard standup bit? Because that's the genius of his act. There's nothing too far off the historical record in anything he says. It's just the way he puts it that's hilarious. And the fact he can make people laugh about Hitler, Lenin and Pol Pot all the while declaring us accomplices to their atrocities ... well, that's something beyond genius.

One of my annual diaries (when I remember to do them) is honoring the Warsaw Ghetto uprising during WW II, which happened to coincide with Hitler's birthday in 1943. I happen to feel that it was a particularly good birthday present for Hitler: the defeat of his elite force by a bunch of half starved, barely armed Jews.

This year the anniversary is particularly poignant because, as in 1943, Passover began at sundown on April 19th and April 20th, the day the uprising took off, was the first day of Passover.

Last night, at the Seder we attended, the hostess compiled her own Haggadah for the evening. Within it she included something that seemed out of place and too modern...except that it was perfectly appropriate for a night that in 1943 was the Passover Seder, such as it was, just before the Warsaw uprising. In her photocopied Haggadah she included this (source unknown):

We remember the heroism of the Jews--men, women, children--who fought in the ghettos, in the forests, on the war fronts, together with all of democratic humanity, to stop the curse of fascism from engulfing the earth. We will be true to their memory by being vigilant in the cause of peace and freedom in our land and throughout the world.

In memory of Passover 1943, here's to the very appropriate gift the Jews of Warsaw gave to Hitler:

April 20th is Hitler’s Birthday. In 1943, Heinrich Himmler wanted to give Hitler a particularly nice birthday present. He decided that in honor of Hitler’s birthday he would eliminate the entire Jewish Ghetto of Warsaw, which had been causing trouble in the early months of 1943. The idea was to eliminate a group of uppity Jews and please Hitler in the process.

Every year at Passover I write a diary focused on the origins of Jews. This year I have one new insight into the origins of Judaism, and it comes from a direction that isn't quite what I was expecting, and it both goes along with and maybe modifies what is in the bible. So if you have read this before, keep with it, because I caught on to one of the earliest signs of something new in "Israel" originating in Egypt...just like the Passover legend suggests.

Passover celebrates, supposedly, the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This escape is considered one of the defining moments in Judaism, perhaps THE defining moment. Into this event is placed the entirety of the ancient Jewish identity, supposedly divided into "12 tribes," as well as the defining of Jewish religious law. That is a lot to put into one holiday!

The problem is that the bible account is internally inconsistent and is clearly a mixture of several traditions and myths. That does not mean that there aren't kernels of truth in it, but it is not clear how many events are covered by the Exodus story and what times those various events took place, or if any of the characters involved were real people. What is clear is that the story was written LONG after the events it claims to describe took place, which is common for ancient legends. The bible cannot be taken literally because it is often internally contradictory. That is odd if it is the revealed word of God…but it is very understandable if it is the collected lore of a small group of semi-nomadic people (Hapiru? Shasu Bedouins?) who eventually established a small state or collection of tiny states and were desperately trying to define their identity in relation to their often much stronger and very aggressive neighbors.