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In this
piece Shamir suggests the two paths from which we must choose are
the church of Christ (the church of God)--or the church of "the
Jews" (Yisrael)-the church of no God. I would like to suggest that
while it is perfectly understandable how Shamir, in the fervour of
evangelical enthusiasm (4), would come to this view that the real
battle is between the true church of God in Christ and the forces of
mammon. And my authority here is ultimately my own "master" who in a
piece from which my title comes, "The Two Paths", concluded his
preface with these words: "..the way divides itself, one way leading
to the Olive mountains--one to the vale of the Salt Sea. There are
few crossroads that I know of from one to the other. Let him pause
at the parting of the Two Paths."
Israel/Palestine
Just a few
years ago I knew nothing more of the Middle East than that it was a
place of "violence". I had no opinions on the subject in spite of my
historic "radical" views. And indeed this omission was
understandable for the roots of those radical views and those
radical times were intermingled with Jewish leftists. And the
subject of Palestine normally (then, now and in-between) found the
"left" strangely silent. I began to come to some very little
understanding of the situation with the events of the 2nd intifada
and the brutal and escalated savagery of the state of Israel against
the native peoples (already essentially prisoners, though I did not
yet know this). I was sufficiently well versed in the situation to
have remarked immediately after Sept. 11 2001 that what we would be
seeing would be the "Israelization of America”.(5) But it was only
thru the accidental (and later determined effort to pursue) access
to the writings of the prophetic and eloquent Jewish dissident
Israel Shamir that I learned the deep, true and historically
connected story of Palestine. And why in the words of John Pilger:
Palestine Is Still the Issue.
Why that is
so may be summed up in this quote (which will be one of many) from
Shamir: "Israel/Palestine is the model of the world Americans
want to achieve. It has peasants and their flocks dying of thirst,
and on the hilltop there are villas and swimming pools for the
chosen folk. It has a huge army and it has many labourers without
any rights. In order to turn all the world into Palestine they began
now World War 3 against the Third World."
Note that
at this point Shamir refers to the "world Americans want to
achieve". Later in his evolution Shamir would progress to Karl
Marx's definition of America as a "Jewish State". (6)Eventually he
would expand beyond and before the current Judea-American juggernaut
to postulate a perpetual Yisrael, excreted from the true church
seeking to set itself up on the Opposite Hill (7)and turn all the
world to darkness (that is world without God)--with only the Chosen
Folk as God and the Wild Beasts (despiritualized goyim))as mere
background noise.
Secular World, Spiritual
People
At a dismal
academic discussion I had the misfortune to be attendant upon
recently a nominal representative of religious scholarship thru a
fog of institutionally acceptable abstruse academic discourse seemed
to be suggesting to the other roundtable members that in spite of
the intellectual's dismissal of religion the population seems
determined to pursue its promises and demands however conceived. To
which the representative "market enthusiast" of the panel replied:
of course historically religion was only one of the "externalities"
to economists. He suggested for religion and "the humanities"
generally to bring themselves into the market. At this point a no
doubt naive and honest audience member asked the obvious question:
well what do you mean by the market? Obvious because to this point
one word, one term had been repeated endlessly by all the panellists
over all others. "The market" (or just "Markets"). That definition
was considered unnecessary was taken as much a given as would the
term God or "The Gods" before a panel of theologians. The
anti-globalization spokesperson, Doug Henwood, self described
"Unreconstructed Marxist" jokingly suggested in response to the
religious scholars line of questioning (8)that he would like to see
a return to secular government in the U.S. because it was in the
hands of "right wing religious nuts." To the leftist's assignment of
Christian ideology as the pervading force behind current aggressive
Americans military policy and to the general intellectuals'
rejection of religious content as anything but "external" to
reality, Shamir poses a widely divergent alternative scenario.
End of the World or
Aberration Ending?
Commenting
on Immanuel Wallerstein’s "The End of The World As We Know It"
Shamir writes:(9)"He came to the conclusion that a very long period
of human history has reached now an unpredictable end. Wallerstein
thinks the 'world as we know it' came into being some 500 years ago
in Western Europe and has come to its crescendo in the United States
of America. It is characterized by a specific aberration of human
development called "Progress". And Shamir concludes: "Wallerstein
made a heroic effort, not altogether successful, to describe the end
of the world in materialistic terms. I am not sure whether it is
possible. Our world in general evades such description. Moreover, I
do not think it desirable. We are conditioned to accept materialist
reasoning only, and reject explanations that defer to forces of a
different plane. It is an important part of the aberration that
people came to reject the spiritual component of the world. Until
the Aberration the very idea of a totally materialistic world,
explainable by sheer materialist laws, would have been an oddity."
The Mammonites...
Elsewhere in this same piece
Shamir writes: "In the beginning of the 20th century a new social
and spiritual force came into being. In an article of mine I called
it "The Mammonites": the worshippers of Mammon". Note the date
Shamir gives for its origins. Yet a few years before that another
eloquent prophetic speaker with whom I happen to have some
acquaintance was also noticing (already) this same phenomenon.
Returning to and expanding on our earlier note: "Adam Smith
formally, in the name of the philosophers of Scotland and England,
set up this opposite God on the hill of cursing against blessing,
Ebal against Gerizim and declared that all men naturally desired
their neighbours goods and that in the name of covetousness all the
nations of the earth should be blessed..." John Ruskin urged his
companions of St. George to have no concourse with "such idolatry".
Britannia of the Market,
Goddess of Getting On
John Ruskin
was once asked to speak to the citizens of Yorkshire on the occasion
of the building of a new "Exchange". Ruskin spoke but declined to
tell them how to build their exchange (their purpose in inviting
him) because, as he said: he did "not care about this Exchange of
yours." You see said Ruskin: "You cannot have good architecture
merely by asking peoples advice on occasion". After giving a brief
history of styles of architecture of the past in Europe and the
various "faiths" on which they were founded, Ruskin then asked his
audience, "what we worship and what we build?" His answer: "the
ruling Goddess may be best generally described as the Goddess of
Getting On or Britannia of the Market". "And all your great
architectural works are, of course built to her."
It would be
convenient for my purposes if Ruskin had here or in the previous
reference to Adam Smith used the term mammonite; or at least mammon.
He does not; but we shall find it present not infrequently I am
confident in future references and these predating its appropriation
by Shamir.
...Or The Jews
"The short
interregnum of civil society built on the ruins of the Bastille came
to its end with the establishment of the Jews as the new Priestly
caste. The alternative Church of our society, the Jews, survived in
abeyance for hundreds of years. As long as the Christian Church
attended to the discourse, the Jews plainly had no chance to
compete; but when its power was broken by liberty-seekers, the
alternative arrangement came forward." --Israel Shamir, Pardes
Thus Shamir
spells out the theoretical framework whose gradual evolution we
briefly traced previously [10) He follows the historic biblical path
from Hebrew prophet calling on his people to repentance to a new St.
Paul calling everyone but especially the unconverted Jew to free
themselves from Yisrael.
Shamir
distinguishes between individual Jews and "The Jews". He states:
"...there is no subjective personal guilt associated with individual
Jews unless their specific actions or inaction are criminal or
sinful per se." In fact, he states, his primary purpose is to "help
an individual to decide whether he wants to be a Jew or not, in the
same way one may choose whether one wants to be a communist or a
Quaker".
From Prophet to Apostle
Clearly his
choice of material is selected to convince the individual to
disengage themselves from the sway of the "Judaic tendency". To join
"St Paul, St. Teresa, Karl Marx, Trotsky" and Edith Stein, Alexander
Men and Neta Golan in breaking with "The Jews". In fact in most of
his recent work and short commentaries Shamir seems to adapt a more
benign Anne Coulter approach focused in another direction. While Ms.
Coulter wished to conquer the Muslims by force and convert them to
Christianity Shamir calls on the Jews to come to church and convert
themselves from the "poisonous ideas of Judaism."(11) We will
attempt to, albeit briefly, examine just what Shamir sees as the
"poisonous ideas of Judaism" and how they have existed historically
in later sections discussing St. George's fight with the Mammonites.
The question for me at this point in regard to Shamir's recommended
stratagem is: what church does he seek the renegades from Yisrael to
enter into.
What church/Who's God
I don't know
if Shamir is personally acquainted with the peace activist Kathy
Kelly. But I believe the type of church he would like to bring the
Jews into would include the one I heard Ms. Kelly speak at recently.
In a piece written in response to that event I note the makeup of
the crowd as "female, old and short". Hence, the title of the
article: "Little Old Ladies for Peace". 75% of the audience were
women, 90% were old (as old or older than I am and I, as Shamir,
have been around about half a century). And I wrote): "interestingly
enough , short, as...When the audience (incrementally the first
time) began to stand for singing I realized I could see clearly out
over the entire congregation without ever meeting anyone eye-to-eye
(and I'm only a little over six feet)!" The service honouring "the
victims of war" at which Ms Kelly was the featured speaker reminded
me of an old bible-school song from my childhood: "Jesus Loves the
Little Children". And, (again I wrote): "And that's where the old
bible-school song I remember from my childhood came into my head.
For as these people took it as God's word and their mission to save
the little children and love the little children. George Bush and
his followers (and leaders) took it as the same God's word and their
mission to bomb the little children. And poison the little children
with uranium. And shoot them at roadblocks. And kick in their
houses. And scatter their possessions. And strip their fathers on
the roadside. And occupy their lands. And my question was: how could
these two groups of people come to such different conclusions about
the desires and requirements of the same God. The God of George Bush
and of the Little Old Ladies for Peace.
The God of
George Bush appears to be the more prominent one in a cursory
examination of American surface reality. The angry "anti-American"
American patriot John Kaminiski mocks this God/Church in his Easter
message: "Happy Easter, 2004 everybody. Praise the Lord. And as you
sit in your proper pew this Sunday morning, blubbering out your
favourite version of He is risen, ...Americans, just like the
Israelis, are now known for killing innocent people as they worship
their God in Church. Raise your eyes to the heavens you prize so
highly. And imagine an American B-52 dropping a 500 pound bomb right
on your head... splattering you and your beloved family all over
your sacred altar". Quite a different Easter Vision of He is Risen
than Shamir presents in his description of the Holy Week activities
in Jerusalem(12).
The Diary of Expiring
Delirium
Which brings
us back to our panel (13). And Doug Henwood's comment on the "right
wing religious nuts leading America." Shamir would, I believe, see
these neo-con Christian-Zionists as a minor element in the over -all
ecclesiastical field and actually only a part of the greater Yisrael.
Shamir seems to suggest in recent works outside as well as within
Pardes that these ones can be segregated out from Yisrael and
returned to the better parts of their Christian Heritage. (14)
"God was a
poor theologian", so said to me an "individual Jew", Hebrew scholar,
and admirer of Thomas Friedman recently. What he meant was that the
"sacred texts" could be interpreted in many different and often
antagonists ways. (15) I don't really feel Shamir as well is at his
best when he delves into theology; though that seems to make up a
large part of Pardes.(16) It is not my intention to follow that
theological discussion in this paper, but only to attempt to present
Shamir's conceptual understanding of the "poisonous ideas of
Judaism," its historic being and its current dominant (thus sayeth
Shamir) status. First, however I wish to examine somewhat more John
Ruskin's views on Shamir's other construct: the Mammonites. It might
be appropriate to restate at this time that where Shamir sees the
dominant false path as being the Jews, Yisrael, Ruskin and I see the
worship of Mammon generally as the dominant false path with the
"poisonous ideas of Judaism" being only one example of the larger
darkness. (17)
Saint George and the
Dragon
"We begin
today another group of ten years, not in happy circumstances... in
much bodily fear; that is to say afraid of the Russians, afraid of
the Prussians, afraid of the Americans, afraid of the Hindoos,
afraid of the Chinese, afraid of the Japanese, afraid of the New
Zealanders, and afraid of the Kaffirs: and very justly so, being
conscious that our only real desire respecting any of these nations
has been to get as much out of them as we could." Thus John Ruskin
began his long series of letters known as Fors Clavigera.
(Can we say that anything has changed in the 130 some years since
then?) I use Fors as the main source for presenting
some understanding of Ruskin's views on Mammon because it is the
most convenient for me; though we will probably reach other works as
well in our search for an understanding of the enemy (18)
We have here
the essence of the matter right in the beginning. Ruskin elaborates:
They have no right to complain of us, notwithstanding, since we have
lately, lived ourselves in the daily endeavour to get as much out of
our neighbours and friends as we could and having by this means,
indeed, got a good deal out of each other, and put nothing into each
other, the actually obtained result, this day, is a state of
emptiness in purse and stomach ."
To respond
to this circumstance Ruskin proposed the St. George's Guild. An
effort to (ultimately) create a national store instead of a national
debt. But in the meantime to "do good work whether you live or die"
and to engage in a series of philanthropic, educational and
agricultural acts consistent with his vision of what was necessary
in St. George's war with the Dragon; the "very real" symbol of
malignant forces elsewhere described as Mammon. And our treasure
hunt has yielded a fortunate end because on the 325th page of volume
one of Fors (19) I find: "..if pious people would
understand… that, if there be indeed any other God than Mammon, He
likes to see people comfortable and nicely dressed, as much as
Mammon likes to see them fasting and in rags..".. In the preceding
paragraph Mammon is described as the "nativity of an adverse god."
And we are fortunate to have found this reference to Mammon so soon
because, as Ruskin interprets Victor Carpaccio "...the real
difficulty in dragon-fights… is not so much to kill your dragon, as
to see him; at lest to see him in time, it being too probable that
he will see you first."
Ruskin was
less optimistic than Shamir on the possibilities of "orthodox"
religion; the existing church providing an alternative. In volume
two; he writes: "after experience of no fewer than one thousand
fives hundred sermons, most of them by scholars and many of them by
earnest men… I now solemnly state I never heard one preacher deal
faithfully with the quarrel between God and Mammon, or explain the
need of choice between the service of those two masters. And all
vices are indeed summed, and all their forces consummated, in that
simple acceptance of the authority of gold instead of the authority
of God; and preference of gain, or the increase of gold, to
Godliness, or the peace of God."
St George In Palestine
I am ashamed
to say that I just recently discovered (20) that St. George 's
remains reside in Palestine. If this is so, the Palestinians are
sure to win with St. George's help; though our 19th century master
of his guild (21) would be more likely to cite the reason Shamir
gives in "The Green Rain of Yassouf".
"The
Palestinians can't imagine themselves without the land and its
unique way of life. Thousands of years ago, after the Great
Mycenaean Drought was over, their ancestors formed a symbiosis with
the olive, and the vine and the donkey and small mountain spring and
their shrines on the hilltops. This single complex of the landscape,
the people and the Divine spirit was the great achievement of
Palestinians..." Hence the
Palestinians are bound to win because, the story of Solomon's (or
Sheikh Abu Zarad's) judgment is "but a parable of Divine judgment".
The death of
a Palestinian normally occasions no notice in the U.S. unless they
contrive to take an Israeli Jew with them in the process (22) The
relatively recent death of an American in Palestine did not receive
much better results; but on the fringes of opinion outside the two
party matrix some individuals perhaps with some personal stakes in
the matter did notice and do try to keep alive the memory of Rachel
Corrie. Shamir wrote an article about her, "The Maid and the Ogre"
--and I happened recently to have had some contacts with someone who
was there at the time and who as part of his pathway to peace spends
considerable amount of his time speaking to Americans about Rachel's
death and the situation in Palestine/Israel. I attended one of his
presentations recently and he described the occupation of Palestine
as a U.S. occupation. His perspective was the exact opposite of
Shamir's. (23)
Greater Israel/Historic
Yisrael
Many
commentators have noted the plans for a greater Israel laid out
rather explicitly by an Israeli strategist sometime before the
invasion of Iraq. That invasion being one of the steps to the
remaking of the map of the Middle East in the interests of an
expanded Israeli "Security State". For Shamir this is only one
incident in the dreamed implementation of historic Yisrael. A force
that has come close to extinction on more than one occasion,
remained "in abeyance" now upon the ruins of the "failed revolution
of 1968" manifesting itself in the "Rise of the Jew's to positions
of near dictatorial prominence in several key areas: media, finance,
government. At the very least to a degree of influence altogether
inconsistent with their numbers. To speak of such things was
evidently offensive to Rachel Corries friend (and many others) as he
quickly dismissed as unsavoury my attempt to broach the issue (24).
Shamir anticipates that response and so quotes prominent Jewish
officials themselves such as Stephen Steinlight (25): "Our present
privilege, success and power," says Steinlight must be maintained.
He (Steinlight) suggests using "The Jewish power disproportionately
concentrated in Hollywood, TV and news industry" to that purpose. Of
course the present power, success and privilege of the Jews is amply
documented even though it remains the "elephant in the living room"
to the general American and (to a lesser extent) European public.
What is more contentious is Shamir's historic analysis of the
"poisonous influence of the Jews" as presented in Pardes.
"Touched by
God, forged by his Covenant, Israel was a super-reality in the
pre-Christian world. With the coming of Christ, this super-soul
experienced catharsis and its bigger and better part was baptized
into the super-soul of the Church. But the excreted part did not
die. It remained partly in the spiritual world, partly in the
material world" "It vaguely remembers what it was chosen for and
tries to act, but without Christ, its efforts (Call it Yisrael)
create mischief. From the Christian point of view, Yisrael is in the
state of rebellion against God..." The "sacred texts" of Yisrael
were established after the time of Christ and as a response to
Christ. The church for some time did not understand this and thought
in "The Jews" they were still dealing with the prophetic Judaism but
eventually understood and various church leaders warned against the
dangers of the "Judaic tendency". Shamir sites multiple historic
examples where Yisrael almost disappeared (through persecution,
assimilation in the church, or intermarriage)--but with the
establishment of the tangible fact on the ground of Israel the
modern nation state and especially with "rise of the Jews" since the
"failed revolution of 1968" organized Jewry (Yisrael) the church of
the chosen folk has risen to new heights of danger and possibility.
"Yisrael wants to profane the world--save Jerusalem. The Jews
want to re-enact on the global scale the feat of King Josiah, who
destroyed every holy place in the country in order to establish
uniqueness of the Jerusalem Temple." Shamir quotes Simone Weil:
"If the Jews of their better days were to come back to life and
be armed, they would exterminate all of us…" "It is commonplace
that the Jews wish to dominate the world. But they do not seek the
dominion of a King, but that of a church, in the very end a
theocratic church-state. The Jews do not want to convert Gentiles
...for Jews, it is as easy as for a cat to become a man as for a Goy
to become a Jew. The demands of the Jewish church on its Gentile
laity are not very strenuous, they may do what they want they may
amass riches and power, provided they give up their soul... "In the
Jewish universe, the Gentile should submit to the Jews."
For Shamir
(In Pardes at least) Mammon is just a sort of 2nd Class Judaism For
Gentiles. "Mammon is the Gentile turned face of Yisrael". "It’s a
Judaic attitude for the model relationship outside of the Jewish
community, developed for dealing with the Goyim." "In plain words,
neo-liberalism is a Godless Judaism."
Ordinary
Jews don't necessarily "...understand the plans of Yisrael. They are
obedient--and this is sufficient." What are the "plans of Yisrael?"
"In short,
Yisrael like Israel before her wants to unite the world under her
spiritual guidance. The Temple of the God of Israel is to be located
in Jerusalem, the center of this Jewish-ordered universe and all
Nations will bring tribute to it. The Nations will worship God by
serving Yisrael."
"In 1962,
Look magazine invited the founder of the Jewish state
David Ben-Gurion to picture the world 25 years into the future. He (mis)-predicted
that World Government would already be in place by 1987, with the
Supreme Court for Mankind (the higher ecclesiastic body) to be
established in Jerusalem, as well as a shrine there, commemorating
the Jewish role in the bringing together of mankind."
The Jewish
Theologian Saadiya Grama sums the larger theoretical (racist)
explanation for why this can and must be: "The difference between
the people of Israel and the nations of the world is an essential
one. The Jew by his source and in his very essence is entirely good.
The goy, by his source and in his very essence is completely evil.
This is not simply a matter of religious distinction, but rather of
two completely different species". (26)
The Two Paths
For Shamir,
Israel Adam Shamir, of the Padres, these are the 2 paths: the path
of the church of God in Christ and the path of Yisrael, the church
of No God by itself. His path to this view importantly runs thru his
conversion which I spoke of early. Here is Shamir's own description
of this (I believe) clearly defining personal event:
I would like to share with you my elation: today, on Tuesday, 8
October 2002, ... I was received into the Mother Church of the Holy
Land, and became a Palestinian Christian. The baptism was a happy,
joyous and festive occasion, and it took place in the wonderful
ancient cathedral of Mar Yakoub, the old see of St James, the
brother of Lord and the first Bishop of Jerusalem. It is adjacent to
the Golgotha and to the great Church of Resurrection, and it is the
home church of local Arab-speaking Palestinian community. I was
baptized in the old deep octagonal Byzantine font so many saints and
bishops of the Holy City were baptized in. My skin still feels the
touch of olive oil and myrrh, soft, supple, fragrant. I was anointed
before the full immersion, and the water in the font also felt like
precious olive oil, this main substance of the Holy Land. I was
brought into the church by the Archimandrite Attalla Hanna, Father
Theodosius, the highest-ranking native Palestinian priest of the
Mother Church, who was released from his captivity. Instead of
Israel, the father of Jews, I was given the name of Adam, the father
of all men. It was midday when I stepped out into the atrium,
feeling like a groom in his wedding day, and was met by the bells of
the Holy Redeemer. It reminded me of this dream of Theodore Herzl,
to bring the Jews into Church on midday with all bells a-ringing.
The monks and parish folk blessed me 'mabruk' and indeed I feel
myself much blessed to join my Palestinian brothers and sisters in
their church. I share my witness with you, and make it known to my
brothers the Jews: there is no joy greater than to be in communion
with God and with the people of the land. Now, I can repeat after
John, 'for the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ'.
For John
Ruskin and myself; the two paths are the word of God and the way of
Mammon.(27) A Fors correspondent describes the
incarnation of Mammon in Ruskin's time:
"It is no use to be more polite, if we are less honest. No use to
treat women with more respect outwardly, and with more shameless,
brutal systematic degradations secretly. Worse than no use to build
hospitals, and kill people to put into them; and churches, and
insult God by pretending to worship Him. Oh dear! what is it all
coming to? Are we going like Rome, like France, like Greece, or is
there time to stop? Can St. George fight such a Dragon? You know I
am a coward, and it does frighten me. Of course I don't mean to run
away, but is God on our side? Why does He not arise and scatter His
enemies? If you could see what I see here! This used to be quite a
peaceful little country village; now the chemical manufacturers have
built works, a crowd of them, along the river...The place where this
hideous colony has planted itself is, I am sure the ugliest, most
loathsome spot on the earth."
"The works themselves, with their chimneys and building make up the
most horrible picture of progress you can imagine. The land, now
every blade of grass and every tree is dead... There is a forest of
chimneys visible, to make up I suppose for the trees that are dying.
We can hardly ever now see the farther bank of our river that used
to be so pretty, for the thick smoke that hangs over it. And worse
than all, the very air poisoned with their gases. Often the vilest
smells fill the house.
It nearly maddens me to see the trees, the poor trees, standing bare
and naked, or slowly dying, the top branches dead, the few leaves
withered and limp. The other evening I went to a farm that used to
be (how sad that used to be sounds) so pretty, surrounded by woods.
Now half the trees are dead, and they are cutting down the rest as
fast as possible, so that they can at least make use of the wood.
The gas makes them useless." "...I came away wondering, if this goes
on, what will become of England. The tide is so strong--they will
try to make money, at any price. And it is no use trying to remedy
one evil, or another, unless the root is rooted out, is it?--the
love of money." (28)
Ruskin's
"sermon" in reply was on the 14th psalm: "...the fourth verse of the
Psalm declares that all the workers of iniquity eat up Gods people
as they eat bread. Which appears to me a very serious state of
things, and to be put an end to, if possible...."
Yet here
again Ruskin finds a different assessment of the capacity of the
"orthodox" church to differentiate: "...but evangelical persons
conclude thereupon that the works of iniquity and the Lord's people
are one and the same. Nor have I ever heard in the course of my life
any single evangelical clergyman so much as put the practical
inquiry: Who is eating and who is being eaten?"
"Again the
first verse of the Psalm declares that the fool hath said in his
heart there is no God; but the sixth verse declares; of the poor
that he not only knows there is a God, but finds him to be a refuge.
Whereupon evangelical persons conclude that the fool and the poor
mean the same people; and make all the haste they can to be rich.
Putting them and their interpretations out of our way the Psalm
becomes entirely explicit. There have been in all ages children of
God and of man; the one born of the Sprit and obeying it; the other
born of the flesh and obeying it. (29)I don't know how that entirely
unintelligible sentence "There were they in great fear" got into our
English Psalm; in both the Greek and Latin versions it is: "God hath
broken the bones of those that please men". And it is here said of
the entire body of the children of men, at a particular time, that
they had at that time all gone astray beyond hope; that none were
left who so much as sought God, much less who were likely to find
Him; and that these wretches and vagabonds were eating up Gods own
people as they ate bread. Which has indeed been generally so in all
ages; but beyond all recorded history is so in ours. Just and godly
people can't live; and every clever rogue and industrious fool is
making his fortune out of them, and producing abominable works of
all sorts...material gasometers, furnaces, chemical works...with
spiritual lies ...unheard of till now in Christendom."
Make no
mistake it is "the Mammon devil" that is the source of this mischief
for when he "gets his bellow put in men's' ears" (30) the ear is
deafened with its own murmuring till: "He that stoppeth his ears at
the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself and shall not be
heard."
Ruskin and
Shamir are in agreement on the inadvisability of eliminating the
spiritual from our analysis of the world: "Now, whatever chemical or
anatomical facts may appear to our present scientific intelligences,
inconsistent with the Life of God, the historical fact is that no
happiness nor power has ever been attained by human creatures unless
in that thirst for that presence of a divine King and that nothing
but weakness, misery and death have ever resulted from the desire to
destroy their King and to have thieves and murders released to them
instead."
"And
now--but one word more--either for you, or any other readers who may
be startled at what I have been saying as to the peculiar stress
laid by the Founder of our religion on right dealing with wealth.
Let them be assured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the
attributes or powers of evil that "Mammon" is assigned for the
direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound to serve. You
cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation be Gods solider and his.
Nor while the desire of gain is within your heart, can any true
knowledge of the Kingdom of God come there."(31)
Ruskin
learned about Mammon from his master, Thomas Carlyle: "Oh it is
frightful when a whole Nation… has forgotten God, has remembered
only Mammon and what Mammon leads to." "Laissez-faire, supply and
demand--one begins to be weary of all that. Leave all to egoism, to
ravenous greed of money, of pleasure, of applause--it is the Gospel
of Despair. Man is a Patent-Digester then; only give him Free Trade,
Free digesting room; and each of us digest what he can come at,
leaving the rest to Fate. My unhappy brethren of the working Mammon,
my unhappier brethren of the Idle Dilettantism, no world was ever
held together in that way for long." "…truly it is beautiful to see
the brutish empire of Mammon cracking everywhere; giving sure
promise of dying, or of being changed."(32)
Why spend
so much time on an obscure Englishman that no living persons besides
myself probably cares about? Well, Shamir acknowledges Tolstoy. (33)
Therefore, we will let Tolstoy answer: ""Ruskin was one of the most
remarkable men, not only of England and our time, but of all
countries and all time; he was one of those rare men who think with
their hearts …and so he thought and said not only what he himself
had seen and felt, but what everyone will think and say in future."
Tolstoy
thought so, also; Ghandi, and Berdyaev, William Morris and
Burne-Jones and (20 some odd years after Ruskin's death) the members
of the British parliament who in their annual survey voted Ruskin
the most influence individual on their own lives.
So as
Ruskin's words are as true today as yesterday; so Mammon is as
virulent an opponent, a false path "strewn with leaves of another
kind" today as ever. The individual actors (such as "the Jews"…)
come and go but the "Powers and Principalities" remain the same.
It is not
only in defining the "false path" that I disagree with the Shamir of
Pardes. On the true path, I tend more to Tolstoy's (and Ruskin's )
(34)definition of the Church than Shamir’s more "orthodox" or
mainstream one. "Only deeds of truth, by introducing light into the
conscience of each individual can dissolve the cohesion of error and
detach men one by one from the mass united together by the cohesion
of error. This work has been going on for 1800 years. It began when
Christ's commands were first given to Humanity and it will not cease
till, As Christ said, all things be accomplished. The Church
composed of those that sought to unite men in unity by the solemn
affirmation that it alone was the truth, has long since fallen into
decay. But the church composed of men united not by promises or
consecrations but by deeds of truth and love, has always lived and
will live forever. " -Tolstoy
I must admit
I miss Israel Shamir the wonderful Hebrew Prophet and care not so
much for the rather ordinary occasional and uninspiring
proclamations of Adam Shamir the orthodox Christian evangelical. I
hope again for some more lovely Galilee Flowers along
my own path. But I don't begrudge him his own perspective much less
his own happiness in the "Peace that passeth all understanding." As
I wrote in my own Easter message two years ago: "It’s not a matter
of politics. .... It’s really quite simple: Anyone who opposes (U.S.
permanent war) must work together with everyone else who also
opposes no matter how much ideological or personal disagreement may
exist. The other side is united and monolithic. One mantra blared
thru speakers of TV and newspapers and government briefings. If any
of us survive we can work out our differences then."(35)
There are
many individual ways to that dominant fork in the road. There is
room equally for the "anti-semite" Shamir and the anti-communist Lew
Rockwell. For the lamenting patriot Diane Harvey and, the "Anti
American" American John Kaminiski .... For the New Age Jean Hudson
and the civil servant Scott Ritter. For the Indian Goddess
Ahrundhati Roy standing in the way of the rivers of water of
Mammon's making and the Argentinean women banging their pans in the
street. For the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance, the true religious
person of any faith, the Great Concourse of the Dead, and certainly
for: : "the rural people whose huts they pillage, whose farms they
ravage and over whose art they reign (who) must still be diligently
silently and with no time for lamentation, ploughing, sowing,
cattlebreeding. Else how could Frank or Hun, Visigoth or Roman live
for a month or fight for a day". (36) For: "The two ignored powers,
the Providence of Heaven, and the virtue of man--have ruled and rule
the world, not invisibly, and they are the only powers of which
history has ever to tell any profitable truth. Under all sorrow
there is the force of virtue; over all ruin, the restoring charity
of God, to these alone we have to look, in these alone we may
understand, the past and predict the future destiny of the ages."
(37)
notes:
1. At his inauguration.
2. Really since his
"conversion" or the full effects of it manifest.
3. Sometimes listed as The
Pardes, alternatively as Pardes: an etude in cabbala It is
available from the author – just write to
Shamir@home.se with subject Pardes.
4. Not unlike that of Bob
Dylan (Robert Zimmerman) after his similar experience in the 1980s.
I owe this suggestion to my son Lee Allen.
5. "Think of it as the
Israelization of America. With the U.S. A....as Israel. And the rest
of the world as Palestine" (Sealing the Crack in History).
6. "Marx concluded: 'The
practical domination of Jewish spirit over the Christian world has
achieved in North America its unambiguous complete
expression."--Israel Shamir quoting Karl Marx in "Cornerstone of
Violence"
7. "...Adam Smith formally
in the name of the philosophers of Scotland and England, set up the
opposite God, on the hill of cursing against blessing, Ebal against
Gerizim..."--John Ruskin, Fors Clavigera
8. Religious Scholar was
attempting to suggest globalization as a form of secularization.
9. In "Apocalypse Now".
10. See section Israel/
Palestine; final paragraph.
11. It is interesting to
note that while Ms. Coulter's violent views receive best seller
status in the west; Shamir’s books are banned or forced to marginal
publishers--perhaps he could try a blonde wig and mini-dress.
12. Three incredible days
passed in Jerusalem. On Friday night, burial processions carried out
the shroud of the Lord from the small ancient church of St James
into the parvis of the Holy Sepulchre. Yesterday, tens of thousands
of native Christians and pilgrims flocked into the great edifice of
the Holy Sepulchre to celebrate the annual but always new and
surprising miracle of Holy Fire coming of the Tomb of Christ. It is
a beautiful and colourful feast, when processions of various
denominations march in and out, while young Syrian and Armenian boys
throw wild and inspiring dances.... And with sunrise on Easter
Sunday came a beautiful day, a day of new hope and new promise
13. The panel in general
being in the sum of their speech a prime example of the title of
this section borrowed from Ruskin.
14. One of the more curious
things to me is how Shamir seems to place great positive value on
the Mel Gibson film as returning (perhaps these) Christian -Zionists
to "the church".
15 As the little old ladies
for peace vs. George Bush above.
16.In his second "book"
collection (unpublished but available on the internet: Our Lady of
Sorrows)--Shamir actually tears apart some of his earlier works to
inject additional theological comment which I feel is a direct
consequence of his conversion, and do not feel adds to but rather
detracts from the quality of the work.
17.Ruskin himself barely
mentions the Jews; obviously because as Shamir would be the first to
point out the "Rise of the Jews" is a recent phenomena.
18. It may prove something
of a treasure hunt to see if that term actually is used anywhere.
19. What I suppose is a
quite unusual modern printing from the same year curiously as the
"failed revolution of 1968".
20. I can't off hand find
the reference to confirm this.
21. Sometimes himself
referred to as Saint Crumpet.
22. See "If Americans Knew"
website for comparison of coverage of Israeli and Palestinian deaths
in U.S. Press.
23. For my part I tried to
argue Shamir's perspective as I felt the "U.S. imperialism" analysis
given to be too far in the opposite direction from reality.
24. And (of course)
anti-Semitic--worse "Conspiracy" focused.
25. This in "The Sparrow and
the Beetle" from Galilee Flowers.
26. Quoted by Shamir in
Pardes
27. Of course Yisrael was in
"abeyance", to use Shamir's phrase at this time, yet no one is a
more thorough and knowledgeable historian of classical and Christian
i.e. European history and basically "the Jews" do not enter into
Ruskin's analysis there either.
28. Fors Clavigera volume
two Sept. 18/ 1873
29. Here Shamir and Ruskin
are in agreement.
30. Comment here on Holbeins
Dance of Death.
31. Time and Tide, John
Ruskin.
32. Past and Present, Thomas
Carlyle.
33."..the tragedy of Leo
Tolstoy's last days."--Pardes.
34. Ruskin expressed a
similar view tho, by fors appointment no doubt, I can't find it at
the moment it. It will have to be trusted to my assertion that it
does exist.
35.Palestine and Beyond,
Apr. 2002.
36. John Ruskin.
37. John Ruskin. |
