European Costumes

 

I would like to start with a memorable quote from The Little Prince:

“I have serious reason to believe that the planet from which the little prince came is the asteroid known as B−612.

This asteroid has only once been seen through the telescope. That was by a Turkish astronomer, in 1909.  On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said. Grown−ups are like that...

Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B−612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.”

This little view of dress codes always amused me.

Do you watch the Sunday morning news shows?  The studio is very sleek with electronic screens all around and a glass desk.  The men presenting the news always wear a suit and tie, with impressive style and elegance, and even more, the lady presenters always wear a fashionable dress, and high heels.  Extremely high heels.  I am not just saying this, I noticed the cameras invariably focus on these high heels…

What is it about high heels?  I remember an article about shoes in Oprah’s magazine. She categorizes shoes as sensible to walk in, and as those that you just can stand on.  Sometimes, only for a short time.

I received a zoom link to an especially important event:

2020 Balkans Forum Against Anti-Semitism

In a historic act, the Parliament of the Republic of Albania, in partnership with the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM) has taken an important step in the fight against anti-Semitism and bigotry, when it will host the "2020 Balkans Forum Against Anti-Semitism" on October 28th, 2020. 

This event was over 3 hours.  Some speakers were in Albania, but many speakers were seen on the screen from all over the world.  The presenter was a tall, good looking lady, standing in the room facing the screens on two walls.  She was wearing an elegant pants suit with high heels shoes.  I was wondering how long she could stand on those high heels.  In the last half hour, she indeed got tired and walked over to a bar table in a corner and sat on a stool.

Another TV encounter that struck me this past summer was President Trump’s interview with Chris Wallace.  It was the president’s choice to hold the interview outdoors.  Both men were sweating so profusely, you could see drops of sweat steaming down their foreheads.  But they were very proper, sticking to the European dress code!

Why do we need dress codes?  Historically you could be able to tell who royalty is, who is clergy, and who is a famer, just by the way they dress.  But these days when you attend conferences, you may see young men with T-shirts and jeans.  That was before the pandemic.  Now in zoom meetings the rumor is that most people stay with Pajama bottoms, and just change their tops…

Prejudice 2.

(I wrote about all misconceptions about equality with women, blacks, gays and more.)

I heard an interview of Rabbi David Wolpe (Sinai Temple, Los Angeles,) with Stephen Jackson, an American basketball player.  

I did not follow Stephen Jackson’s remarks, but after hearing this conversation I found some quotes in the athletic.com website:

{When Stephen Jackson promoted antisemitic tropes last week, the NBA community faced another chance to fight prejudice… 

Stephen Jackson eventually denounced Hitler after refusing to multiple times, but he immediately then claimed that the Rothschild's “own all the banks” and after acknowledging that doesn’t correlate to all Jews, he said, “that correlates to money though.” }

(Later I heard another basketball player, Desean Jackson, had a remark about what Hitler said.  He got an education from a holocaust survivor who is going to see Auschwitz with him.)

This is a very dear subject to me, this conspiracy theory against the Jews, claiming they own all the banks, they own Hollywood, they plan to control the world.  These are clearly lies that originate from prejudice and misconceptions.  But I’d like to point out that many people still believe these lies and quote them without a second thought.

I would start with Rabbi Wolpe's comment.  This comment is the most convincing and factual to dispel these beliefs:

{I know people with tattoos on their arms.  We know all about suffering and prejudice.  During WWII massacre of the Jews, 6 m out of 18 m were murdered.  That is one third of the Jewish People! If the Jews had that kind of power, in control of the banks and money, how could that happen?}

But, for some reason, many people, ignorant as well as smart, like to believe in conspiracy theories.  Americans in power who point to the Rothchilds, and "look at all the Benjamin's" from the esteemed congresswoman Ihlan Omar.

I encountered myself some of these ignorant remarks in the scientific community where I worked for over forty years.  When I first met my Chinese coworker, in the laboratory in Torrance, she heard that I am from Israel.  Her immediate remark was: "You are Jewish.  You must be rich."  I was astonished!  I tried to educate her, but this woman could only repeat experiments with perfect results.  As far as general knowledge of history, she was hopeless.  Her husband, on the other hand, was a well-read doctor.  So, I gave her Abba Eban's book: "Jews and civilization."  It was made into a TV series on PBS back in the eighties.

One of the memorable points in these series is the historic fact of why Jews became bankers.  As the Church and aristocracy were ruling Europe, Jews were never allowed to own land.  Most peasants and farmers were illiterate, unlike Jewish boys who started reading the Torah at the age of five.  The fact that they were literate and knew some numbers made them successful in banking.  Another reason for the Jews becoming bankers was that Christians were forbidden to loan money with interest.  So this task was passed over to the Jews.

Another lab member was a bright young Syrian pediatrician who won a scholarship to study in the US.  She also heard that I am an Israeli.  I told her later that my parents came to Israel from Iran.  One year we attended a pediatric conference together and we shared a hotel room.  In the evening, at a private moment, she asked me: "Why did your parents leave their country?"  She was incredibly surprised to hear my answer:  "The Jews of Mashad, where my parents lived, were forced to practice Islam.  They had to study the Koran and all their names were Arabic names.  They yearned for a place to practice their religion freely.  That is why they came to Israel." 

My family was not from Europe and we had no relatives who were holocaust survivors.  As a curious student I was interested in learning about the persecutions of the Jews throughout history.  One of the crucial chapters was the period of the pogroms in 19^th century Russia. It culminated in the publication of the book: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  It is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax, which was shown to be plagiarized from several earlier sources, some not antisemitic in nature, was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the 20th century. According to the claims made by some of its publishers, the Protocols are the minutes of 24 sessions of a meeting of the "twelve tribes of Israel", during which Jewish leaders discussed their goal of global Jewish hegemony by subverting the morals of Gentiles, and by controlling the press and the world economies.

This is from the Wikipedia entry under Modern Era:

The Protocols continue to be widely available around the world, particularly on the Internet, as well as in print in Japan, the Middle East, Asia, and South America.

I will close with a question: How is it ever possible to overcome this prejudice that Jews have money and control the world?  More conversations, more education?  Or just open hearts and compassion?

What should you know about the virus?

I am writing this in the days of the Covid19 Pandemic.

Do you know what is a Virus?  When I ask people this question, the answer is related to their age.  High school kids immediately answer: It is RNA, one strand of the DNA.  With older people, their answer varies with their profession and aptitude to understand science.

I will skip the complex science and just explain this: the basic point is that a virus is made of the genetic material.  What is our understanding of the genetic material?  The exact structure of the genetic material was discovered by scientists in the 1950's.  The timing of this historic break-through and its effects on racism and discrimination against women is quite important.

I also ask the question: "Why is it important for the society that it citizens understand the nature of genetics?"  There is no better way to demonstrate that we are all human!  

I could tell you about the personalities of the scientists involved.  I can bring some simple answers and I would love to tell more to those who are interested.

The chemical structure of the genetic material was discovered in the fifties.  Until then it was not clear how and why some people are black, and some are white.  Most people believed blacks are inferior because of the color of their skin.  One issue of the National Geographic Magazine   was dedicated a few years ago to racism.  I read some of the articles and I could not comprehend some of the things that people believed about blacks. 

Before these discoveries most white men believed that women did not have the same thinking and analytic skills as men.  Some capable women writers and musicians had to take male pseudonyms, so they could publish their creations.  The Nobel Committee had a hard time awarding the Nobel Prize to Marie Curie, so she had to accept it with her husband.

The nature of epidemics was not understood at all.  The black plague may have reduced the world population from an estimated 475 million to 375 million in the 14^th century.  People were scared and so ignorant, they pointed blaming fingers at the Jews: They are the ones that are poisoning the water wells and causing all the deaths.

The two scientists that discovered the chemical structure of DNA, the genetic material in human cells, received the Nobel prize in 1962.  They were two white men: Watson and Crick.  Years later they admitted that they got an important clue from an X-ray photograph taken by a woman: Rosalind Franklin.  She died at the age of 36, from cancer caused by over exposure to radiation.  I recommend her biography that came out in 2002: The Dark Lady of DNA.

I am very hopeful that our children and grandchildren, growing up after these discoveries, will be free of prejudice.  For them DNA structure, computers and smart phones are a matter of fact.  They should understand better the nature of viruses and epidemics.  They should treat epidemics with logic and scientific knowledge.

We pride ourselves in a free democratic society. We expect people to follow rules and respect them. I maybe too naive to believe that most people would trust scientists.  However, I hear more and more people are ignoring the advice of experts.  Poking fun at scientists. It really upsets me. 

I still hope for a better world.

  

Why Madagascar

This is the story of the most exciting trip I ever took in my life.  It was my trip to the Islands of the Indian Ocean during seventeen days from late November to early December 2019.  Many people I have known are world travelers and they are either on a trip or planning their next trip.  But so far, I never met anyone who traveled to Madagascar. 

It was a quick, easy decision to make.  As soon as I received the email from my friend Irit, including the trip itinerary, asking me if I would like to join her, I immediately knew this was my trip.  During the six months that we were planning the trip, many people were asking me: Why Madagascar?  This was a strange question, as in my mind the answer was obvious: I could not think of a more exciting place to go visit! First, I don’t know much about it, and no one ever talked about going there.  So sure, I’d like to go find out!

Irit happened to know the specific guide for this tour, who she met on a previous trip to Morocco.  It was advertised on an Israeli tour company website, and I would like to say that I have been to many tours with Israeli guides, and they are usually very knowledgeable and give you a thorough explanation of a place’s history, geography, nature and culture.

I would start with a brief description of the itinerary:

We flew from Israel to Rome then to Mauritius.  From Mauritius we boarded the Italian cruise ship Costa Mediteranea.  We were 28 Israelis among some two thousand passengers on the ship.  We sailed to the Seychelles and visited the largest island Mahé, with the capital city Victoria, and then two smaller islands, Praslin and La Digue.  We then sailed to Madagascar, where we docked at three different ports at the north part of the island: Diego Suarez, Nosy Komba and Toamasina.  Our next port was San Demi, Reunion Island.  And then we sailed back where we started at Mauritius. 

All these places and names did not mean much to me before.  But after this trip I gathered so many facts and experiences, that I feel so much more enriched!  I very vaguely remember the geography lesson from high school telling us about the super continent Pangaea. The great reality for me was that here I witnessed the result of that old super continent Pangaea breaking apart over a hundred eighty million years ago.  India broke away from Africa and pushed toward Asia, creating the Himalaya Mountains.  Madagascar separated from Africa and was the largest island in the Indian Ocean.  All the other islands were the mountain tops of the old super continent.  I learned that these islands we visited, each had a different geological age, with the youngest still having an active volcano.  That was Reunion Island aged a mere 65 million years.  I also witnessed the endemic forms of animals and plants specific to these islands as they were isolated from all other continents.

The cultural lectures by the resident scholar on the ship, who explained the history, nature and culture of each island, were supplemented by our guide Yaron, the zoologist.  He walked us through the botanic gardens, museums and bazaars and enriched our knowledge of the people and their ways of life.  On each island we also had a local tour guide, who organized our delicious group lunch and told us many interesting personal stories. 

At the Seychelles our local guide Steve was an employee of the tour company 7 degrees south.  He told us that the owner of the company was a French lady who married a local guy.  She named the company after the location of her office south of the equator.

Our ship was docked at Mahé.  We traveled in every possible means of transportation from island to island.  From Mahé we rode a catamaran to the next Island Praslin. Then a boat to La Digue, then we rode on trucks to the restaurant which was set up on a wooden platform under a makeshift metal roof.  Lunch included delicious vegetables and some fish.  We were surprised by a sudden pouring rain that created a huge noise on the roof.  We struggled through the rain to watch the tortoises enclosed nearby.

Next, we spent a day in Mahé.  We saw many trees typical to this tropical hot and humid weather:  we learned to recognize the coconut, cacao, mango and many other trees.  I most enjoyed the visit to the botanic gardens named Baie Lazare.  I loved all the unusual plants: Crepe and Alpinia Ginger, Carambola (star fruit,) elephant apple, water apples, Mahogany tree from Honduras.  I enjoyed even more our visit to the 25 Acre spice farm, Jardin Du Roi: Stick insect, Bread nut, Mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper and more. 

I had an amazing wonderful surprise at the three ports in Madagascar.  The best part in these ports were the welcoming group of colorful singers and dancers greeting us just as we disembarked the ship.  We first saw them in Nosy Be, a group of beautiful ladies dressed in long dresses of bright white-yellow-orange, their dark faces painted with yellow flowers, singing and dancing for us to the beat of the drummers.  The beat was very fast with complex African rhythms, that made me want to jump in and happily dance with them.

Next port was Antsiranana, we heard the singing to the beat of go-go-go, fast, loud and very catchy, then we saw the line of singers in white and bright pink T shirts.  The musicians were sitting by the shade of a structure, wearing the same T shirts but with added green flowery skirts, beating on various drums.  Their dark faces beautiful and smiling happily.  Some of us naturally joined the dancers and moved to the special beat of their drums. 

At the third port in Tamatave, the dancers greeting us were wearing blue shirts, white and blue long flowery skirts, straw hats on their heads and in their hands, they were holding straw baskets moving them from side to side to the beat of the drums.

These beautiful images and sounds of the dancers and musicians stayed in my mind and left a strong unforgettable feeling of happiness.  These people were poor, they never had fancy houses or electrical appliances.  Yet they were so satisfied with their lot.  They always had plenty of food with fruits falling from the trees everywhere, and fish from the ocean.  Their faces were kind and forever smiling.  I was filled with this great mixture of colors and sounds and facial expressions from a place so exotic.  I was full of gratitude to Irit for making this trip a reality.

I learned all the historical facts about these islands.  There were many visitors and conquerors, first the Arabs, then the Portuguese, the French, the English.  Most islands were now independent, except La Reunion which remained as the 21^st district of France. 

I also learned about their economy, which was based on agriculture and products of sugar cane and various spices.  We visited a Vanilla farm and a Rum factory.  Recently they all benefit from high end tourism, as well as call centers.

I also enjoyed the company of my fellow travelers in the group.  We had plenty of chances to interact and get to know each other.  Each had his own contribution to the experience of these amazing places in the Indian Ocean.  The blue color of the ocean and the smiling faces of my friends and the locals will stay in my mind for a long time.

I returned home and stayed in a high mood for weeks.  I was very pleased about my choice to visit Madagascar and neighboring islands.  Some of my friends were still asking me: Why did you chose to go to Madagascar?  I hope I gave a good answer.