ISRAEL INLAW - IRAN OUTLAW

This four-word phrase has been entering my dreams during the nights and my thoughts during the day, sticking there like a piece of bone stuck between two teeth – and it refuses to move. The recurring phrase has been annoying but also suggestive. On the one hand it is a wordplay, “inlaw” versus “outlaw”. The proper meaning of “inlaw” is a relative – someone related to us, whereas “outlaw” is not so much a stranger as someone evil and rejected. When this wordplay is applied to Israel and Iran, it creates images and ideas of good and evil in the context of political geography. But the wordplay also suggests that, unlike Israel, Iran is outside of legal boundaries.

I have played with the contrast and the double meanings of “inlaw”, which for Israel calls up “home country” and “family”. In current political contexts the juxtaposition of “inlaw and “outlaw” suggests “friendly insider” and “inimical outsider”. Thus “Israel inlaw – Iran outlaw” implies current political realities. “Israel inlaw” suggests the interests of the West, whereas “Iran outlaw” here implies “anti-West” or “enemy of Western civilization”. This is not to imply that Muslim values and outlook are irrelevant or harmful, but merely that they are rooted in and address different meanings out of a cultural world. As a matter of fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the first and only country that has made the denial of the Holocaust the centre of its foreign policy. It has done so with competitions using caricatures, with international conferences, with exhibitions, with public announcements and, when an Iranian delegation visited the city of Weimar, it avoided viewing the memorials to the thousands murdered in the Holocaust.

H.D. Kirk

A HALF CROWN HERO

[Second post from HDK for 1/17. Coincidentally there is now a movie out - "The King's Speech" - which touches on the abdication David mentions below. An interesting bit of history. -lt]

When King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 many objects created to celebrate his coronation became either redundant or famous. Among these were mugs showing the King’s crowned image. Since St Christopher School was not particularly royalist, it is not surprising that some enterprising character decided to buy up a thousand of these mugs at a throw-away price - thus the school suddenly had an overflow of coronation mugs for its afternoon cocoa and rusks sessions. Perhaps it is also not surprising that a twelve-year old Jewish refugee boy from Holland, here called Eric, would come up with the idea of accumulating these mugs and, ultimately, selling them when they became valuable. Eric therefore would, at every meal, hide a couple of mugs in his pockets and store them in a trunk under his bed in the dormitory.

It is unclear what Eric had arranged to do with them, but one very perceptive master, Christopher Buckley, later a famous historian, had got wind of Eric’s plans. One night Eric was at his second floor bedroom window with a suitcase. That suitcase, filled with coronation mugs that he had not even carefully packed and protected in newspaper, he had attached to a rope so that he could let it down from his window slowly to an associate in the yard below. However, the associate did not show up and, instead, it was Christopher Buckley who stood below and received the mug-filled suitcase in his open arms and set it down carefully on the ground in the yard.

The result was typical St. Christopher School fame and Eric became regarded as a wild but creative fellow. Although the mugs were promptly returned to the dining hall, Eric’s feat led to his reputation as a juvenile gangster who could be expected to become wealthy. As it happened, Eric did later come into some money through an uncle and, after he returned from his visit to London with his pockets filled with half crowns, he generously handed dozens of these coins to all of us and became our “Half Crown Hero”.

When I came to New York in 1938, I heard rumours that Eric and his mother had moved to Hollywood. Since the connections between refugee immigrants were such that information about us sifted through gossip, I learned of Eric’s whereabouts through friends and others among the refugee community. Although I never again met Eric in person, he remained for quite some time on the horizon. Through other refugee boys, I learned that Eric had embezzled money and, discovered, had been sent to jail. However, his mother and her second husband, having managed to buy a ‘Five & Dime’ store, may have helped him to get back on his feet.

H.D. Kirk

LEARNING TOLERANCE - an episode at St. Christopher School

[First of two for today - HDK had a productive day working with Janice despite hip & leg pain. -lt]

One day an eleven year old boy from Holland came to St. Christopher School in Letchworth, brought there by his mother. I call him ‘Eric’ here because I don’t remember his name, but he discovered some of my special secrets. For a long time I had the fantasy that I would try to visit the Czech sisters who lived in the main house on the second floor. Their names were Iva and Zora Suchkova and their father, a socialist deputy in the former Czech Republic, had been killed and his body thrown at the front door of the family dwelling – and that same day the girls’ mother took them out of the country and brought them to the school. Iva was about my age and Zora two or three or three years younger but, because they came from abroad and Zora’s English was still very weak, she was allowed to stay in the same bedroom with Iva on the second floor of the main school building. The students at St Christopher thought of the foreign Czech girls and me, as strangers - even though I had been in the country for some time and spoke English well.

St. Christopher School was co-educational and considered a modern school, although folks in Letchworth tended to think of the school, its teachers, and its students, as outlandish. We were expected by others to do strange things and sometimes outrageous things - some of us did so in fact. One day a boy from Mexico or Spain, having heard that I was a Jew out of Germany, approached me at supper table with what he thought was a secret. He told me that he had heard the rumour that, on Sunday next, there would be a speech by an Anglican priest at the Anglican church in Baldock, near Letchworth, on the subject of the conversion of Jews to Christianity. That boy, knowing that I was a Jew, approached me and suggested that we go and make trouble at the meeting (he apparently was a radical who liked to upset the status quo). He expected me to be interested in going with him because he correctly assumed that I did not like being missionized, or the activities of missionaries toward Jews. So I agreed with this boy that I would join him in making trouble for this missionary. What I remember of the Sunday afternoon at the Baldock church was that, when the minister or missionary had stopped speaking, I raised my hand and asked him some questions – though I don’t recall what it was that I said at the time. He answered me very calmly and without taking offence. But apparently I wanted to upset his applecart and, I don’t recall how I did it or what I said but, when the headmaster Mr. Harris, got up to calm the situation, my fellow student and I tried to duck out - but found Mr. Harris at the door. He tried to say something to us but we did not stop to hear it, instead racing off on our bicycles – and we began riding up the hill toward our dormitory.

When my companion suggested that we stop at a pub and have a glass of hard cider or two, it seemed just the thing to do. So we got off, leaned our bikes against the wall of the pub, and consumed a pint or more of the local very hard cider. When we left and got back on our bikes and tried to ride back up the hill to school, a local policeman stopped us saying something like, “Boys, you seem sick – or more likely drunk. Since you are riding in the direction of St. Christopher School, I am assuming you are students there. Perhaps I had better accompany you and take you in to speak to the headmaster.” I don’t know how we dissuaded him from taking us back to school, but I do recall that we promised him not to ride bicycles again in an inebriated state. We arrived back at the school just in time for the Sunday evening traditional soup and “rusks” – very dried bread left over from our weekly rations. But before we could get off our bikes, we were met by the head boy who said that he had a message for us from Mr. Harris, who wished to see us after our Sunday soup intake in his office. Mr. Harris, unlike his wife, was not a taskmaster, but his control of students depended on his calling on their consciences.

That evening Eric and I slunk quietly into the dining hall and, after our soup and rusks, went quietly to knock on Mr. Harris’s office door. There he sat at his desk in his old coat and smoking a pipe. Asking us to sit down with him, he let us know that he knew of our excursion to the Baldock church and he said to me that he understood why I would want to defend the Jewish religion against any assault from Christian churchmen. But he also said he felt that I anticipated trouble when there was none and that the minister and his guest speaker at Baldock were in no way anti-Jewish. He therefore suggested that I telephone the priest in Baldock and apologize for any offence my outburst may have given him and his guest. Because of the great respect that I and my fellow student had for Mr. Harris, we went to a telephone and made the call to the priest at Baldock. It was not he who answered the phone but his wife, who had evidently heard of the encounter. She said to us that her husband had understood why we had spoken as we did and that he understood why a Jewish boy, recently out of Nazi Germany, felt the need to defend his people and religion.

To my great surprise and relief no offence had been taken and, furthermore, my fellow student and I were invited to the priest’s house for tea on the next Sunday afternoon. I remember very little of the event except that it led to a long-term connection with the priest’s family. I was many times invited to family meals and to meet members of the congregation. Sometimes I even attended services at his church, a relationship that lasted until my graduation and beyond. Even after having gone to Manchester University, I kept in touch with the Baldock priest by sending the occasional greeting card and, when visiting the school, would be invited to tea in Baldock at the priest’s house. That is how I learned that a forthright stand in defense of one’s people and religion can be a step toward friendship and understanding with people of another outlook and way of life.

H.D. Kirk

THINKING ABOUT SELLING A HOUSE LEADS TO IMPORTANT MEMORIES

[First blog from HDK - an auspicious start to the new year! -lt]

I bought a house at 756 Harding Lane, in the village of Brentwood as a shelter for a new life with Beve Tansey, and whose children Lisa and Ben became my very close associates as children through a new marriage. Perhaps a word could be said about what it means to discover the children of someone who has lived a very different life until she met me and whose children had to also make new connections with someone who would perhaps become their stepfather.

I remember an evening at an outdoor café when Ben, then about twelve years old, was sitting between Beve and me eating his favourite - crab legs – which I suppose I had ordered as a sort of ‘come on’ or bribe to have this young teenager pay attention to me as someone other than an intruder into his family. At one point I turned to him and said something like, “I am not trying to replace your father.” In response, the twelve year old laughed out loud and suddenly disappeared under the table. When I looked for him, he held on to one table leg and sat crossed-legged with the table leg between his legs. Obviously he had wanted to disappear and, equally obviously, Ben had not liked my question. I don’t remember much else about that evening except that he let me know in various wordless ways his displeasure at my intrusive behaviour. From that inauspicious beginning there has developed, over some two decades or more, a very close relationship and I have become much more than a stepfather. Over the years, Ben has come more and more to rely on me as someone who can help him with the problems of his education and, more lately, as a critic of his writings as a journalist. So, I believe that the relationship between this stepson and me has not only been fruitful, but has become a paradigm of what a father/son relationship might ideally become.

My relationship with Lisa was never quite as problematic. She, also early in my appearance in her world, put me to the test and I think I have already spoken of it somewhere else – perhaps in the history of my relationship with her mother. Perhaps it would be too redundant to tell it again. One evening while Beve and I were sitting in her kitchen drinking beer and eating pretzels there was a knock on the door and Lisa came in wearing her nightshirt, and with a notebook and pencil in her hand. We may have looked questioning at her and she blurted out, “Please tell me more about your debts.” When I expressed my surprise at the question she explained that it had to do with my remark, probably overheard at a previous meal that I had incurred together with my brother, Mike, a considerable debt. Now it became necessary to give a reasonable explanation and, returning to the events referred to, I recalled that I must have spoken about the fact that my brothers and I had taken out a significantly large bank loan in order to pay the expenses incurred at our mother’s death. The youngster’s concern was satisfied when she learned from me that, because of our mother’s sudden death, which required my sudden journey from Montreal to Los Angeles, and my brother’s similarly from Alaska to California, under those extreme circumstances we discussed what we had to do immediately to pay for mothers’ death-related expenses. It was only then that I realized young Lisa’s interest in finances arose from a concern for her mother’s well-being and safety and I did not hesitate to explain that not only did I have no debts, but a sufficient amount of savings, and that my use of the term “debts” arose from the fact that I had with almost no notice raised enough money for a trip to California, and also enough to pay for possible unexpected expenses while there, which is why I had gone to the bank at an early hour to buy travelers cheques and to remind the bank clerk of my accounts. Evidently I had not made a very clear picture for Beve’s children of what I meant by “borrowing money”.

Looking back, I wonder sometimes how these early anxieties of Beve’s teenage children transmuted into the strong feelings of our relationship as it developed over the next two or three years. When I think back to the period of uncertainty, which my entry into the new relationship must have engendered, I can only wonder at how firm it has become over the years. A test of this firmness came at a sad moment – after a difficult illness leading to her death when Beve’s children and I came together to plan for her funeral. I remember something that was illegitimate at a Jewish cemetery. I had been told earlier that no manufactured objects could be lowered into the grave, but I had planned to write something very personal that I wanted to be on the casket as it was lowered into the grave. Having been warned that it could not be done, I decided to do so unobserved. I was allowed to throw first shovelfuls of sand onto the casket in the open grave then others did likewise until the gravediggers came and closed the grave up totally. Against the rules of the cemetery I had taken with me a glass-covered picture of Beve and me at our wedding which I had in my pocket and which I wanted to be somewhere in her grave. I don’t know whether I’d planned it that way but, as the last shovels of sand were being put onto the casket I knelt down at the grave and, as surreptitiously as I could took the picture of Beve of me out of my pocket and pushed it into the sand as it was being covered by two shovel-wielding workers. And so I did manage to send along a reminder on her long journey into eternity.

Somehow I have long felt that my “illegitimate” act of loving remembrance has been in line with the kind of relationship of exploration and discovery that I still happily have with Beve’s children.

H.D. Kirk

Welcome to "HDK's Current Comments"!

Hello! Welcome to the blog that will contain the weekly thoughts of H. David Kirk as he considers and comments on current events.

HDK often focuses on issues relating to Israel and Islam. His life history informs his thinking in a way that results in powerful insights on matters large and small. As his current "editor" and webmonkey, I welcome you to what I hope will be his weekly ramblings on whatever topic catches his interest that week. I hope they may move you to comment back! Thanks.

-lisa