For those tired of hearing that Jews are in danger and that Israel-hatred is only the latest form of Jew-hatred, this movie, Unmasked Judeophobia: the Threat to Civilization is for you.  That’s right, those really are the people who need to see this movie, but they need to see it only if they are willing to cleanse their minds of the countless layers of sediment that the New York Times, Haaretz, television network news, and Hollywood party chatter has built up over their eyes and stuffed into their ears.  Because for those crumbling pillars of western civilization, truth is false, big is little, careful is belligerent and right (and the right) is always wrong.

But everyone else should see it too.  There are three reasons why.

First, the film carefully and concisely packs into 81 minutes the birth, metamorphosis and metastasization of Jew-hatred.  It shows how the early anti-Semitism of the Catholic Church was fueled forward by the angry sense of betrayal of Martin Luther and the other Protestants, which was then transmogrified into racial hatred by the Nazis, which in turn was embraced and transformed into the hatred of the Jewish nation-state, or anti-Zionism, by the Arab Nazi-acolyte al-Husseini, which is now being fed back to the far left, the far right and much of Europe, as the loop is replayed and reinforced.

This film carefully and clearly reveals that process, through the use of expert testimony and documentation, explained by the leading thinkers in the field. And in it you will learn why Greenfield believes Judeophobia is a more accurate and more powerful term than is anti-Semitism, which, like the former universal guilt over the Holocaust, has lost its teflon-like ability to protect Jews from further harm.

The second reason why this film needs to be seen is that its very existence proves its thesis true.  The location of most of the screenings in England could not be advertised because of serious security concerns.  If a movie about Jew-hatred cannot be seen in 21st Century England without fear of physical assaults and mayhem, Houston, we have a problem.

And finally, the completely obtuse responses by the major movie critics of the English language – in the New York Times , in Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter make clear that the refusal to understand Jew-hatred is almost as powerful an affliction as is Jew-hatred itself.  It is hard to find another explanation for the fact that what appear to be otherwise intelligent people can watch a movie and then criticize it for proving what it sets out to prove.  Indeed, the mainstream critics simply refuse to acknowledge there is a problem, and instead prefer to blame the victim – for acknowledging they are victims!  Read on.

“Unmasked Judeophobia: the Threat to Civilization,” is Gloria Z. Greenfield’s second documentary.  The first,  released in 2008, was “The Case for Israel,” which showcased Israel as democracy’s outpost in the Middle East. Earlier in her career, Greenfield was deeply involved in the field of radical feminism.  But when, over time, the radical feminists made it clear to Greenfield that support of Israel would not be accepted within the fold, Greenfeld left the fold.

As she watched audiences respond to her first film, it dawned on Greenfield that whether or not Israel is a shining democracy in a sea of tyrannies, for most people the only issue that mattered was the conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis, and that for such people the conflict was about territorial policies.  The widely held belief – conscious or not – was that it is in the control of the Israelis to end the conflict – all they have to do is give up some (more, of course) of the land, and the problem would go away.  And everyone wants the problem to go away.

That way of thinking about the conflict has several advantages: it means there really can be a solution; it allows cursory observers to read and listen to the mainstream media with a nod and a flip of the page; and it allows what should be ancient history to remain buried.

But, Greenfield believes, it isn’t true.  And there still are people out there who want to know the truth who will, if you can make the solid case, comprehend the situation and begin to make a move towards addressing the problem.

Greenfield realized that she needed to produce a documentary that would educate “the good and decent people, provide them with the context for the hatred that was being expressed towards the nation-state of the Jewish people, and that would also give some context to the global resurgence of lethal Jew-hatred – this hatred towards the Jewish people and towards Israel as the collective Jew.”

Greenfield means for this film to be a modern “tekiyah gedolah” – the mighty shofar blast that warned the ancient Israelites of danger.  Because, she says, once again, the Israelites are in real danger.

In this documentary, Greenfield set for herself a mighty task.  She divided the eighty minute film into several different “chapters,” so that it can be stopped at various points in order to facilitate discussion, or simply to help viewers organize and understand the different permutations of  Judeophobia.  It is a disease that has traveled and adapted through time and space, shrinking in the wake of the Holocaust, adapting and transforming to the needs of whoever wished to vilify the Jews at whatever moment they most needed a convenient scapegoat.  Greenfield shows how Jew-hatred builds upon the evil lies of the past to create a new and detested monster that can be hated anew in the present.

How does she do this? Greenfield weaves together testimony from the most knowledgeable analysts of the day, people like Robert Wistrich, Ruth Wisse, Manfred Gerstenfeld, Natan Sharansky, Elie Wiesel and so many others who examine Jew hatred through the lens of human history.  This enable us to understand the moments of transformation and distribution, guided by those who have spent lifetimes and filled volumes meticulously reviewing the evidence.  But Greenfield is able to keep the narrative flowing with skillful editing and an ever-ready ability to snip out extraneous information under which the enterprise would otherwise collapse.

We also hear from contemporary commentators who share the view from their perspectives, people like Bret Stephens and Prof. Alan Dershowitz and Amb. John Bolton.  These are people with ringside seats – at the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Law School and the United Nations – to today’s attacks on Jews and on the Jewish State.

People who saw the film during its recent screenings throughout England were all wildly enthusiastic about its strengths.  Clyde Hyman is a Scotsman who has lived for many years in Golders Green, a Jewish suburb north of London.  Hyman was unabashed when he told The Jewish Press that the film, “scared the [deleted expletive] out of me.”  Hyman is an activist who generally denounces fellow pro-Israel Brits whom he describes as “practitioners of dynamic apathy,” but, he said, this film “really put all the pieces together in a wonderful way, like a jigsaw puzzle pulls together what look like unrelated bits.”

Simon Barrett is a British television journalist and Christian Zionist.  Barrett interviewed Greenfield last week on his show, “The Middle East Report,” a weekly current affairs show on Revelation Television.  Barrett is a skilful interviewer and on his show he allowed Greenfield to talk frankly about her hopes and plans for “Unmasked Judeophobia,” interspersed with extended clips from the movie.

When Barrett spoke to The Jewish Press, he expressed dismay that the people who hosted screenings of the movie in Manchester and in Birmingham would not publicly disclose the locations.  As he put it, “the haters have already won if people are too afraid to publicize this film.”  While Barrett acknowledged that it is very different for him to sit in a television studio and not have to live with the possible negative consequences of public attacks, “they’ve got to overcome that spirit of fear, or we really will all watch as the world goes mad.”

Even the film’s score is worthy of note.  Sharon Farber created a subtle musical accompaniment that never overpowers the visual, but rather weaves in and out, ominously rising where the drama increases and then fluttering to a whisper when more sensory stimulus would be a distraction.

One of the few criticisms this reviewer heard from knowledgeable pro-Israel activists such as Helene Fragman Abramson, of Princeton, New Jersey, is that the documentary lays out the problem, but then viewers are left without a game plan. Abramson saw the documentary last year in New York City, at an event hosted by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.  Senior leadership at CAMERA are co-producers of the film.

As if in answer to Abramson’s complaint, just last week Greenfield’s production company, Doc Emet Productions, released With Clarity and Courage – An Activist’s Guide as a companion to the film.  The publication is available here.  It was written by Anna Kolodner, former executive director of the David Project Center for Jewish Leadership, and contains detailed information on how to combat Judeophobia.   So in addition to delivering an absolutely first rate, must-see documentary, Doc Emet Productions has now provided a follow-through game plan, or at least the tools for activists to use to create their own.

Upcoming Screenings

To rent the movie for public events or private screenings, or to see where the film is being shown in  your area, go to www.unmaskedthemovie.com.

Hungary’s House Speaker László Kövér has replied to Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, who recently renounced a Hungarian state honor in protest at what he sees as the government toleration of rising anti-Semitic sentiment, the Budapest Times reported.

Kövér defended Hungarian writer József Nyírõ, who was a member of parliament for the wartime fascist Arrow Cross Party, which collaborated in the extermination of Hungarian Jews at Nazi Germany’s bidding. Nyírõ was recently made compulsory reading in Hungarian schools.

“When passing judgement on creative minds, it is primarily their creation that should be considered, and double standards in that must not be applied,” Kövér wrote. The founding member of the ruling centre-right Fidesz party described Nyírõ’s political activities as “negligible but doubtlessly and tragically mistaken”.

According to the BT, Wiesel acknowledged Kövér’s reply but declared it unsatisfactory. Kövér failed to address Wiesel’s concerns about a growing cult around the inter-war regent Miklós Horthy, who led Hungary into the Second World War as an ally of Nazi Germany.

US President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared May “Jewish American Heritage Month”.

In a ceremony kicking off the month, the president praised Jewish Americans for bearing “hardship and hostility” with the “deep conviction that a better future was within their reach”.

He also noted the achievements and national contribution of Jewish Americans such as Supreme Court Jusice Louis Brandeis, physicist Albert Einstein, and writer and art collector Gertrude Stein.

“Our country is stronger for their contributions, and this month we commemorate the myriad ways they have enriched the American experience,” Obama said.

The first Jewish American Heritage Month occurred during the presidential term of George W. Bush.  It was introduced by Jewish Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D- FL) and passed in December 2005.

In Washington DC, events for Jewish American Heritage Month will take place at the Library of Congress, National Archives, National Gallery of Art, and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.  Events will also take place in various locations throughout the United States.

The secret posthumous baptism of key Jewish figures by the Mormon church has caused outrage in the Jewish community and led to an apology by Mormon leaders.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center condemned the Mormon church for performing baptismal rites on the parents of Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Wiesenthal’s parents, Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal, according to the Associated Press. The baptisms took place in late January at temples in Arizona and Utah.

The proxy ceremonies are believed by Mormons to allow the deceased into the afterlife by giving them the Gospel.  Names are submitted by Mormon Church members, and are then given baptisms without their presence, or the presence or even notification of their families.

After Jewish groups protested the practice of baptizing members of their faith without their consent or the consent of the families of the deceased, the Mormon Church issued a promise in 1995 not to continue the practice.

Yet records indicate Wiesenthal’s parents, Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal, were baptized in proxy ceremonies performed by Mormon church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January.

The Mormon Church has baptized many figures involved in the Holocaust – and not just Jewish victims, such as Anne Frank.  Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun were also baptized by the Church in separate ceremonies decades apart, with Hitler being “bound” to his parents in a ceremony in 1993.

Other Jewish figures, such as the great Jewish sage and scholar Mamonides (Rambam), Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein, and author Elie Wiesel have also been baptized, as well as hundreds of Holocaust victims.

“We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement by the Associated Press.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints replied with an apology in a statement issued Monday.  “We sincerely regret that the actions of an individual member of the church led to the inappropriate submission of these names [of Wiesenthal’s parents],” Micharel Purdy, spokesman for the Church said.  “We consider this a serious breach of our protocol and we have suspended indefinitely this person’s ability to access our genealogy records.’’

The discovery of many posthumous baptisms has been conducted by Helen Radkey, a former Mormon who has dedicated herself to uncovering this practice and the specific individuals who have been baptized.  She also found that the family members of several US political figures – the mother of President Barack Obama and the atheist father of presidential candidate Mitt Romeny – had undergone the ritual.

Mark Podwal is a busy, busy man.  He has spent the last 38 years making every conceivable kind of art: innumerable paintings, 28 illustrated books written by him and Elie Wiesel, Harold Bloom and Francine Prose, children’s books, haggadot, ceramics and graphic works. Dubbed the “Master of the True Line” by author Cynthia Ozick, his pro-Israel cartoons and drawings have been featured on the Op-Ed pages of the New York Times since 1972.  Lately his passion for the Jewish community in Prague has expressed itself in a book, Built by Angels: The Story of the Old-New Synagogue and a documentary film House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague narrated by Claire Bloom.  His art is found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Fogg Art Museum and Library of Congress.  The Forum Gallery in New York has represented him since 1977.  He also happens to be a Board certified Dermatologist.  What is easily most remarkable about this breathless list of accomplishments is that his artwork has consistently focused on Jewish legend, history and tradition. 

In one of his earliest Jewish works, Podwal used the words of the Prophet Jeremiah to illustrate Lamentations (1974) in a series of searing images delineating the tragedies of Jewish history that the prophet foretells.  Podwal’s signature style is already evident; a powerfully simple line combines with acidic social commentary to bring an ancient text into contemporary consciousness.  The frontispiece is a line drawing that copies the well-known Baroque arch and framing columns of countless copies of the Talmud and sacred texts.  On the pediment “Echah” is inscribed with “Kinot for Tisha b’Av” in Hebrew in the empty archway.  A lone noose hangs above the inscription, wrenching us from ancient history to modern day persecutions.

So too the verse “The adversary has spread out his hand upon all her treasures. For she has seen that the heathen have entered into her sanctuary.” (1:10) Podwal keeps us in the present, depicting two Nazi storm troopers marching off with the Temple menorah found on the Roman Arch of Titus.  Similar in sentiment, but somehow more vicious, is the illustration from chapter 5:1-2 where we see the Roman Capitoline Wolf (symbol of the founding of Rome) staring defiantly at us and ironically crowned with a 18th century Polish Torah crown, grasping an ornate menorah in its savage teeth. For Podwal Rome continues to oppress well after its own demise.

And then there was “Schmuel the Shoemaker.” In You Never Know: A Legend of the Lamed-vavniks (1998), written by Francine Prose.  The notion of holiness hidden in our midst is lovingly explored in this Eastern European Jewish tale.  Podwal’s illustrations are uncharacteristically restrained.  The hero is seen most poignantly as a humble man hidden in the purple of shadows, contemplating what the needs of his little town are.  Nonetheless, this simple pious Jew who simply wished to help his fellow man saved his entire town from disaster.   We are urged by his illustrations to reflect upon the subtle notion of how simple kindness can engender great blessings.

The legend of the king of the demons, Ashmedai, dominates the last quarter of the book with some of Podwal’s best images propelling the story.  The wicked Ashmedai is seen as a grumpy gremlin, adorned with enormous bat wings and little white horns.  After he steals the king’s ring and therefore his power, we see him transformed as a look-alike King Shlomo and the real king reduced to wandering the world as an impoverished vagrant.  Even though he finally regains his magic ring and his rightful throne, the king is chastened, filled with a new kind of wisdom.

Richard McBee is a painter and writer on Jewish Art. Contact him at rmcbee@nyc.rr.com

History’s Limits


Elie Wiesel encapsulates the problem of Holocaust art by insisting that, “Auschwitz defies imagination and perception; it submits only to memory. It can be communicated by testimony, not fiction.”

Art as an approach to the Holocaust would seem to be seriously misguided, if not transgressive of memory. Nevertheless, he admits that even a survivor’s attempt at retelling “escapes language,” and therefore, if “we are incapable of revealing The Event, why not admit
it?”

Yet, there are demands of historical responsibility that survivors feel compelled to answer. Finally, in despair, Wiesel demands that survivors must rise above such doubts because “the future depends on our testimony. We invoke the past to save the future [in a] commitment to life and truth.” (Elie Wiesel, Does The Holocaust Lie Beyond The Reach of Art?, New York Times, April 17, 1983).

Factual first person narratives that Wiesel grudgingly allows assume a powerful place in repre-
sentations of the Holocaust. The authority of survivor testimony is crucial in the process of writing a history of the Holocaust because history is fundamentally based on fact that it is as free of interpretation as possible. The quest for meaning on the other hand, whether for
historical or contemporary purposes, is a pursuit of an inherently different kind, recognizing the role of interpretation.

While Elie Wiesel, as a self-appointed guardian of the memory of the Holocaust (or the impossibility of such a cogent memory) is “deeply saddened and worried” about Holocaust art, the production of such art has continued unabated over his objections. This kind of art is central to the search for meaning about the paradigmatic event of the 20th century.
Nonetheless, such interpretation must be able to claim itself to be authentic, based on the facts of what occurred, if it is to be taken seriously.

Art Spiegelman’s Maus; A Survivor’s Tale marks an important rupture in the lineage of survivor testimony. It presents a narrative of survivor testimony through the lens of an adult child of a survivor in a highly unorthodox medium, an early example of the graphic novel or commix format. This represents a shift from authentic testimony to a profoundly mediated testimony.

James E. Young, in his work on memory and the Holocaust, At Memory’s Edge, observes that in Maus, “testimony is an event in its own right” [and] also the central role he [the author, not the survivor] plays in this event.” This represents a shift in which the mediation becomes an impenetrable barrier to the testimony itself.

This shift signals the historical reality of the death of more and more survivors, until the direct access to living testimony becomes an impossibility. It is this inevitable process that Spiegelman addresses, and with which he effectively challenges Wiesel. Once the survivors are all gone, who will carry on the struggle to invoke the past to save the future? What will become of the truth’s commitment to life?

Maus, A Survivor’s Tale is a two-volume work of close to 1,500 comic book style frames that was finally published in 1992, after 13 years of drawing, interviews and research. It is a vital link in the complex process of representations of the Holocaust. Maus transforms the
historical process of testimony into an artistic process in the search for a larger meaning.

With Maus, the representation is based on a third person account of that memory’s transmission. Both the first and second volumes open with actual events in the author’s life establishing his voice as primary. This move from historiography based on closeness to the event, to a cultural representation that claims integrity based on aesthetic insights and an acknowledgement of distance from the event is precisely what Spiegelman’s Maus confronts us with.

Maus as Disjuncture

Volume One begins shockingly with a quote from Adolph Hitler: “The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” This establishes the artist’s rationale to use mice to represent the Jews, subverting the Nazi image of Jews as vermin by adopting it, as many minorities adopt similar vilifications, as a badge of honor. Spiegelman retaliates within his own paradigm by casting the Germans as cats, the natural enemies of mice; the Poles as pigs, and the Americans as good-natured dogs. 

The prelude to first volume, My Father Bleeds History (1930′s-1944), shows Artie as a child in 1958. A minor event transpires to the young Artie, and his father, Vladek, reacts by obsessively recalling his experience in the ghetto.

In Chapter One, the time shifts 20 years later; Artie is now an adult who demands that his father tell his story. Vladek, on an exercise bicycle, begins the story of his life in Poland before the war. The central frame of the page shows Vladek on the bike, the tattooed number
on his arm just visible.

The present, pictured on the exercise bike, intrudes repeatedly as the narrative of Vladek’s pre-war past proceeds. Vladek himself attempts to censure Artie from including details of his personal past from the book he is working on. Artie’s acquiescence to his father’s demands makes him an accomplice in distorting history, which he betrays by reporting it to the reader.
Spiegelman seems to question where our loyalties should lie; with the process of revealing the past in a complete testimony, or with the respect for parental wishes, and finally, respect for the dead.

Throughout the course of the entire narrative, the past and present “collapse into each other,” observes James Young. Pointedly, we see in Chapter Two Vladek at the birth of his first son Richieu in 1938. He relates that the child did not survive the war, and then immediately recalls Artie’s difficult birth after the war.

The recounting of the event in the past upsets Vladek, pictured in the present at the kitchen table opposite Artie, and he knocks over his pills, losing count. The struggle to keep memories in order and the “health” in their recounting is metaphorically exposed in this incident.

The narratives are deeply intertwined in countless ways throughout, as the story continues of Vladek’s early marriage to Artie’s mother, Anja, and his textile business in Poland. The rise of the Nazis is glimpsed as he relates how he is drafted in the Polish army in 1939. Suddenly,
Vladek digresses with an oft-repeated story of how he now has cataracts and recently was operated on to implant a glass eye. We are drawn relentlessly into Artie’s perception of his aging father as the shifting viewpoints are continually reflected in both narratives. It becomes hard to determine which narrative is the dominant one.

Chapter Three continues with family squabbles between Vladek, his second wife Mala and Artie intertwined with the pre-war narrative as Vladek finds himself in the Polish army, shooting at the invading Nazis. He is captured by the Germans and interred in a work camp. In yet another disjuncture, Vladek describes the harsh regime of the camp, interjecting that “every day I bathed and did gymnastics to keep strong… and every day we prayed. I was very religious and it wasn’t else to do.” The mention of religiosity, combined with a Hebrew phrase in the panel, comes out of nowhere.

On the next page, Vladek reports a dream he had in the work camp of his dead grandfather, an ancient mouse clad in tallis and tefillin, who predicts that he will be free “on the day of parshas Truma.” Spiegelman flashes back to the present to explain what this reference to the Jewish calendar means. Continuing the disjunction, Vladek relates that indeed he was released
on the Saturday that coincided with the congregational Torah reading of parshas Trumah.

In what may stretch the credibility of his father’s testimony, he relates that he, in fact, married Anja on the week of parshas Trumah in addition to the fact that Artie was born in 1948 in, yes, parshas Trumah. The interjection of a Jewish religious perspective on this otherwise totally secular narrative lends yet another puzzling element to the existing complexity.

Finally, the chapter ends back in the family home in Rego Park, Queens with Vladek impulsively throwing Artie’s only coat into the garbage. His father’s puzzling action simply adds to the discord within their relationship.

Spiegelman, while explaining his use of animals instead of humans, maintains that these strategies “show the masking of these events in their representation.” Young further comments that thereby these masks are “drawing attention to themselves as such, never inviting us to mistake the memory of events for the events themselves.”

It seems to me that Spiegelman’s method is more radical. His use of mice, pigs, etc. is but part of an overall strategy of disruption that calls attention to the process of obtaining his father’s story every step of the way. He is insisting on distinguishing between the memory of the Holocaust that his father possesses and the mediation of that memory necessary to transmit it to an audience of the next generation.

The extent of such disruptions blossom in Chapter Five as Artie, seen in bed with his wife, gets a desperate call from his stepmother, Mala. The aged Vladek has climbed out onto the roof in an attempt to fix the drainpipe of his Queens home. This bizarre episode segues into the four-page “Prisoner on the Hell Planet,” a 1972 commix by Spiegelman that relates the suicide of his mother, Anja, in 1968.

The narrative continues showing Vladek and Anja forced into a ghetto, then fleeing as fugitives and finally captured and deported to Auschwitz. Constantly interspersed is the contemporary relationship between Artie and his father that becomes more and more strident. The final revelation that Vladek, in his confusion and grief over the suicide of Artie’s mother, had burned her memoirs, was too much for Artie. In the last frame of Part One, Artie walks away from his
father’s house muttering a terrible curse, perhaps the ultimate fracture of memory: “murderer.”

Art Spiegelman’s Maus presents a deeply disturbing picture of how a survivor’s memory is transmitted to the next generation. Next week, we will explore Volume Two that finally reveals the multiple survivors in this tale.

Note: I gratefully acknowledge insights from James E. Young’s At Memory’s Edge published by Yale University Press, 2000.

Richard McBee is a painter of Torah subject matter and writer on Jewish Art. Please feel free to contact him with comments at www.richardmcbee.com.