Opinion
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Dry Bones ON THE ROAD
THE KADIMA GOVT
HAS CRASHED, BURNED,
TUMBLED DOWN AN
EMBANKMENT
Editorial
When Celebrity Trumps Sanity
"The dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small,
but deceitful number of people called Zionists. Although they are a minuscule minority, they have been
dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-
making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner. ...
This means that the great people of America and various nations of Europe need to obey the demands and
wishes of a small number of acquisitive and invasive people. These nations are spending their dignity and
resources on the crimes and occupations and the threats of the Zionist network against their will."
— Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
to the United Nations, Sept. 23
I
f you find it difficult to pronounce the
name of the president of Iran, don't
worry; just call him trouble. Big trouble.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to the
United States was a great success for the
leader of Iran. He again proved that he
can call for genocide, promote terrorism,
stonewall nuclear inspectors, preach anti-
Semitism and abuse human rights and still
be treated like a celebrity. Since he returned
home to Iran, the mullahs and others have
been doing their best to make it clear they
agree with him. Ahmadinejad appears to be
the most popular Iranian export besides oil.
Ahmadinejad pointed out in multiple
forums that he is not ostracized by the world
— but rather the United States, Europe
and Israel are the real objects of scorn. The
applause and hugs he received after his
incendiary comments, and his superstar
reception, can only make him stronger in
this belief and even makes one wonder if he
is not correct.
Consider Larry King, the softball Cable
News Network interviewer, asking him about
his kids and letting him spin his tales with-
out challenge. That might work with Paris
Hilton and Brittany Spears, but someone at
CNN should know the difference. The issues
are serious, so why not give the job to a seri-
ous journalist with a mastery of facts, figures
and history?
And how about the peace-loving Quakers,
Mennonites and others from the World
Council of Churches who invited him to din-
ner? Rather than promote peace, they pro-
moted Ahmadinejad, much like Columbia
University in New York did last year. But at
least at Columbia, he was challenged about
politics and not feted as partner to interreli-
gious dialogue.
The celebrity treatment made it appear
that the party-pooping protesters — partic-
ularly the pesky Zionists and the Westerners
AND WE, THE
FRIGHTENED
PASSENGERS
WATCH AS
obsessed with human
rights — just wouldn't
listen to the man. But
the truth is that we are
listening to him and
other Iranian leaders, and
following their actions,
which are bloodier than
their words. Maybe it is
the others who are not listening or watching
— or worse yet, simply don't care or agree.
It is ironic that at the height of the
American political season, when journal-
ists, political partisans and even religious
groups are ready to pounce on whatever a
candidate says, seems to say or fails to say,
that Ahmadinejad gets a pass and a level
of respect we withhold from our own. With
Democrat or Republican we are ready to
jump to question integrity and honesty
and ascribe ulterior motives while with
Ahmadinejad we simply have policy differ-
www.clrybonesblog.com
ences and an alternative view of the world.
It is human nature to tune out some-
thing you don't want to hear or to not want
to believe the worst. But it is dangerously
naive to do so when the speaker is ped-
dling hate, bankrolling terrorism and
developing nuclear weapons. Hoping for
the best shouldn't require that one is delu-
sional or prevent us from acting on the
basis of facts.
And the facts are that Iran is dangerous.
The real challenge of Ahmadinejad is not to
understand him, but to withstand him. Ei
Reality Check
An Old-Fashioned Walk
M
y father insisted on walking to
shul for the High Holidays. Our
family was not Orthodox and
he had no problem with taking the car on
Shabbos. But on the Holidays it was always
shoe leather.
The older I got, the more it rankled me.
"Look," I'd say. "The Torah says we're not
supposed to do any work on the Holidays.
But it isn't like we're in 17th-century Poland,
where hitching up a team of horses was a
considerable amount of work. Getting in a
car and pressing the accelerator is certainly
less strenuous than walking a mile."
"Interesting theory," he'd reply.
When I was a child in Detroit the walk
was short. Just a few blocks down Linwood
Avenue to a little shul where my grandfa-
ther had once been the chazzan.
The Jewish community was so compact
that there was, quite literally, a synagogue
on every block of both Linwood and
Dexter. You were almost never out
of earshot of the sound of prayer.
Even better, my grandmother's
house was just a block-and-a-
half up Highland from the shul,
and so it was a quick trip to the
waiting holiday meal.
The walks got a little longer
when he moved to Northwest
Detroit. It was maybe half a mile
from our house to Ahavas Achim,
on Schaefer and Cambridge.
The downside was that we had
to walk right past Greene's Hamburgers at
Schaefer and Seven Mile and then the House
of Foods, where our weekly Sunday morn-
ing feast was always purchased. This was an
especially difficult reminder on Yom Kippur.
When we moved to Southfield, it grew to
a walk of nearly a mile to Beth Achim, on
12 Mile. Kind of a boring jaunt it was, too,
through the subdivisions. But my dad did
not relent, and the walk was
made on every High Holiday
from 1968 until he was physi-
cally unable to do it.
My brother and I talked
of many things with him on
these walks. Religious ques-
tions, the fate of the Tigers,
politics, the relative merits of
hard and soft matzah balls.
My father's preference was
that when you stuck a soup
spoon in one it should shoot
off the far end of the bowl. But that was
distinctly a minority view.
In time, I came to look forward to the
walks. It was a time when we were all relaxed;
my dad from his accounting practice,
my brother from law school and then the
cases he was handling and me from what-
ever nonsense was going on at the newspaper.
When I got married and joined Temple
Israel, I would still drive back to my father's
house on the second day of Rosh Hashanah
so I could make the walk with him.
It was only then that I realized that
the walk had never been about religious
restrictions with him. It was about keeping
these days separate from the rest of the
year by doing something you would not
otherwise engage in.
The walk was my father's way of taking
himself and his sons out of the passage of
ordinary time, to make a special place for
us to be together on the way to prayer so
that we would remember it always.
I haven't walked to services on the
Holidays for many years now It's a trek of
several miles the way we live now. But how
I wish I could take one of those walks with
my father again. L
George Cantor's e-mail address is
gcantor614@aoLcom.
October 9 e 2008
A35