Modern-Day Triumphs of Arrogance and Megalomania (My Top Picks)

Chinggis Khan aka Genghis

That I find these to be the most hideous monuments of our time is not entirely due to aesthetic considerations. Not just beauty, but ugliness, too, can have variable depths. These aren’t just sheet-metal deep, sometimes the most abject delusions are packaged into them from their moment of conception. I’ve only seen two of these up close and in person, and hope I never need to see the other two.

Mao as a Young Man. Changsha, Hunan (2009)

You may not see what it is in reality, but it sees exactly who you are, identifying you by your facial features and then placing them in connection with your disharmonious thoughts, and possibly also with your DNA. I couldn't bring myself to follow my plan to put up a photo of the giant new prayer wheel of harmony among the nationalities erected by Xi in Shangri-la. Unable to stomach it I put this photographic atrocity up instead. When humanity is done for, what sense would it make to be a humanist?

Origin or Organ? was the question on everyone’s minds

Oh, and rest assured, if you are sufficiently rich, brash and megalomaniacal — unable to admit the least shortcoming let alone failing — the modern-day Christianity advocates will mail in their donations and vote as a block for you. Their deity knows best how to make use of them, you might think. Their view of Jesus renders him completely unrecognizable, in both physical appearance and in ways of thinking. Search in vain for a hint of kindness and generosity of spirit.

What we get fed on tends to be what comes out of our mouths. I’ve for long been fed up with those popular diets, and nausea can after all lead to a kind of relief. So if you could, find it in yourself to forgive me for this dismally uninspiring blog that hardly deserves the light of day.

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Please read something else

If you have the stomach to read more, the Daily Mail had this story about the Genghis Khan monstrosity. 

Fortunately for us, his tomb can never be found.

“Mao Zedong Memorialized in 2,000 Statues.”  BBC News blog.

• Peter Schwieger, “Dynamic of Shangri-La or Turning the Prayer Wheel for the Protection of the Multiethnic Society,” contained in: Jean-Luc Achard, ed., Études tibétaines en l'honneur d'Anne Chayet, Librairie Droz (Geneva 2010), pp. 269-278.

• My brother recommended I listen to the popular history podcast “Real Dictators,” easily found by searching the web if you are interested. Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m hearing enough about the tyrants currently running or ruling. I need to turn my mind to other things. You know, in an effort to keep myself human.

The Scholem Room Reboot

The National Library has moved the Gershom Scholem book collection out of its old dark and crowded quarters into a bright and open new room that doesn’t quite spell occult gloom the way the old did.

As far as Scholem (1897-1982) is concerned his “occultism” is the sheerest of illusions, since Scholem was a rationalist modernist academic. Ironic that it was through his writings that so may people were first informed about Kabbala and even inspired to involve themselves in its contemporary traditions. Still others, particularly his students at university, have in fact been inspired to pursue the academic study of Kabbala. Several among them could lay claim to his mantle, but I wouldn’t care to mention any names for fear of offending one or the other.

If read with a lawyer’s eye, touching might be permitted after all.

You can see his desk depicted above, but as the sign says you shouldn’t touch it. That seems a shame, I kind of wanted to touch it and absorb some of that well toned rational skepticism.

Moving to the back of the room, along the way scanning the book spines for something interesting, I found a classic on how Orpheus and early depictions of Jesus shared iconographical features with King David. Then I came across what can only be described as a reliquary shrine. It features personal belongings of a particular kind, items related to book culture — pens, inkwell, rubber stamp, ex libris — but also a postal scale (?), a letter opener, a desk name plate, a Japanese netsuke and a larger piece of art depicting an assortment of animals lapping up the drippings of a bee hive beneath a palm tree.  

That picture in the picture is worth a couple of words, even if not quite a thousand. The Hebrew letters beneath the picture prove to be from Isaiah.

“There will graze a wolf and a lamb...”  Well, not to place any trust my Biblical Hebrew, let me give the King James version of it:

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock: and dust shall be the serpent's meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith the LORD.

Isaiah 65:25 

Some would take “holy mountain” to mean Jerusalem and Jerusalem alone, but I would take a broader view. If you allow me to say so, I read this as not only a message of peace with “food justice” for every type of being, but a prophecy that the future is vegetarian, that we will all join together to prevent the destruction of our planet shortly before it gets too late, with no violence or coercion of any kind for any reason. Okay, go easy on me,  I know it is supposed to be about the coming of the messiah, a subject that was very much in the forefront of Scholem’s research during his entire life. He was so interested in messianism he even did a huge book about the most famous of Judaism’s anti-messiahs, Shabbatai Tzvi. This longing for a messianic age could be enough to explain why the picture with its verse was kept at his desk. You’ll forgive me if pictures of lions at peace with lambs evoke prospects of an alternative and entirely possible future.

The green light indicates the exit

Scholem belonged, if not always comfortably, within the Eranos circle that tilted toward “perennialist” or traditionalist versions of religions, with the idea that all religions share the same ultimate or mystical experiences or aims. This perennialism has been taking a beating lately (thanks to nationalist particularism), but it is sure to make a comeback in one form or another, it always does. Today perennialism is sometimes caricaturized as elitist, conservative and inflexible, but I suggest it might really be about shared human aspirations, values, commonality and continuity — the very things that keep us grounded enough to be flexible under changing circumstances. Lazy minds confound it with what we call ‘new age,’ rooted as it is in Theosophical Society revisionism, something Scholem had no patience for. The National Library’s own website put up this page about his critical views toward one Jewish Theosophist by the name of Elias Gewurz.

I think Gershom Scholem is worth knowing more about for many reasons, including some you will have to discover for yourself without my help.

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One place to look, better than anything you will read here. is this piece for Forward written about the Scholem collection before it moved: 

https://forward.com/culture/399879/how-this-bible-got-to-jerusalem-and-other-secrets-of-gershom-scholems/

Chen Malul, Gershom Scholem’s Mystical Experiences: How the Famous Scholar of Kabbalah Experimented with Secret Mystical Techniques, posted on July 31, 2019. The evidence for his experiments with Abulafian prayer techniques at a particular stage of his life is quite slim, but it could carry a lot of weight.

For a quick and painfree introduction to Shabbatai Tzvi, watch this short video. He’s an important character in the long, long history of Jerusalem.

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“A little child shall lead them.”

—Isaiah 11:6

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Postscript (April 15, 2024)

Edward Hicks (American, 1780-1849). The Peaceable Kingdom, ca. 1833-1834.

Christian Orpheus mosaic from Damascus Gate area, Jerusalem

Robert Eisler, Orpheus—The Fisher: Comparative Studies in Orphic and Early Christian Cult Symbolism, J.M. Watkins (London 1921).  Call number in the National Library: 56 C 3649.

Perhaps only a child* who hasn’t yet learned the importance of our warring categories could guide us toward reconciliation and peace.

Watching this provoked me to rethink children and wisdom and childlike wisdom: 

Reza Aslan: Any child could understand themes central to Israel & Palestine

(*Nobody would be so naive as to conflate the child with the man-baby. Of man-babies we have had enough.)

The Stacks Down There

As I understand it when you order up a particular book, the robot fetches the whole box it’s in. It’s stuffed in it together with 50 or 100 other books. Conveyor belts convey the box to a room with librarians who have to select out the particular book of your desire with human hands. The book they send up to the circulation desk while the box goes back down to the stacks below.

The room where the desired book gets extracted isn’t visible publicly through the glass, so I have no empirical evidence on that part of the process. And if you return a book to the library? I suppose we can only guess that the process is reversed.

The stacks themselves are just jawdroppingly gaspworthy.

(Was that an L.A. thing to say?  Anyway, they truly did drop and I did gasp. Anyone would.)

It’s possible to observe the observer

Remember card catalogs?

One winter break at Uni when I needed to keep food on the table I worked a temporary job measuring the numbers of cards in each drawer so they could be more evenly divided between them. It wasn’t the simplest or most mindless work I’ve done.

Anyway, this museum display of a small cabinet of cards reminded me of those days. It looks a little pathetic there standing still all alone when you’ve just witnessed that giant robot at work. A few drawers seem to be pulled out partway “ironically,” and what’s that I see lining their bottoms, Sandpaper?

If I were Dante and knew enough Italian I could probably find a splendid way to express in perfect terza rima how the books feel about being banished to the Netherworld without a fight. But I fear they would speak too plainly. I fear I may not sleep at night. I fear I’ll be held to blame inanely, and that would not be right.

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This is one of a series of blogs about the new National Library in Jerusalem. More are on their way.

J.B. wrote:

...So that's what awaits many of us. Not a grim fate but a rather stark one!

P.K. wrote:

😱

Or perhaps

😬

A First Step inside the New National Library

 

In the course of our self-guided tour, we did get shooshed once for being too noisy, but still, it’s impressively and unexpectedly quiet. The years of planning involved acoustic engineers who found ways to minimize the echo effect by making use of ceilings with amazingly thick cushions. In an upside-down world we might lie down on them to rest if it weren’t for the metal sprinkler knobs. Imagine saving all the precious books from fire only to have them flooded with water. The staircases are so worth climbing even if your bursitis might long for elevators. We stayed with the staircases to better appreciate the changing perspectives.

We never made it up to the squinting eye floating above it all. You may imagine it would be for administrators only.

As a librarian friend commented after seeing photos, there is something very pleasing about seeing books shelved in circles.

Here and there we did notice that, hardly ever making a sound, the construction work is continuing. In a few weeks we may be able to order books that are not on display in the reading rooms up to the desk from the robotic stacks deep below.

If you do make that trip to the Holy City, this would be your best place to sit down with a well-written book about Jerusalem’s over 3,000-year-old history. Or you could find out more about that pilgrimage site you just visited. Middle Eastern, Islamic and Jewish studies books are very much in evidence as you would expect, but a lot of other subjects are there for you to slip off the shelves of the open areas, including a very rich collection of works by the early Christian Fathers and Syriac Christians in particular. However, if you require the works of Shankaracharya, you’ll be banished to Mount Scopus.

Rearranging reflections at the exit

Read more!

The old library had a special room for the Gershom Scholem collection specializing in Jewish mysticism but with a lot of early and rare books about other spiritual traditions. It became more and more cramped over time. I haven’t gone inside the new Scholem room yet, but you can see a photo of it here at the library’s own website.

If you missed the blog about the opening of the library, click here.

Opening Today, the New Israel National Library

 

These east windows reflect the landscape in the next photo.
To reach the entrance, walk very far along the lefthand side

Looks like an amphitheater at this end (the east end)

I went walking in the last hours before Shabbat began about a month ago, I wanted to be alone with my camera and I was. The site of the new library is across the valley from my home, just a couple of bus stops.  Not much of it can be seen from my side. Some trees get in the way. As I see it it’s a giant skateboard ramp, one Paul Bunyan would have used had he ever thought of skateboarding.

Eastern end looking up

A peek around back

Landscapers have gone wildly beyond themselves

These are the busses you might need to take

Due to the uncertainties of war, the opening of the new library, once scheduled for October 22, was delayed until today, October 29, 2024. I took these snapshots last month late on a Friday when the whole area was practically free of pedestrians and cars were few. Go there today and I would expect to see many.

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I suggest you go to the new webpage of the National Library, headed by an impressive aerial photo: https://www.nli.org.il/en.  According to this website, on the day I accessed it, the opening date would have been October 22. If you click on the link today, everything has changed. Now I see that this is not a complete opening as most of the services will be either nonexistent or limited, and that includes the opening hours. Most discouraging of all, no more than 300 people will be allowed inside at any one time. I suppose this is due to the situation. The new library, after an unsuccessful coup attempt by politicians last Febuary,* promises to be inclusive and open to everyone. Let it be so.

(*The coup — an attempt to strip the library of its independence from the government — was stopped in its tracks when the university threatened to withdraw all of its books from the new library. Since that means most of the books, that would have been a problem.)

This Times of Israel story is wildly enthusiastic about how great it all is and will be:  Jessica Steinberg, “Long-awaited National Library set to reopen with 11 floors and millions of stories” (Sept. 13, 2023).  

There is also a Ha'aretz story, but it is likely locked up behind a paywall, so why bother?

Here is a more recent story from the Jerusalem Post. 

• My main personal regret about the new library is this: It was long ago decided that books and journals related to Asian Studies* would be exiled to the Hebrew University Library at Mount Scopus on the opposite side of the city, a bus route that often takes more than half an hour plus wait time. That means major inconvenience for some of us. 

(*They do not include the Middle East in their definition of “Asian Studies.”)

The Quiet of War

 

If you knew this place you would know it is hardly possible to squeeze through the crowds, particularly as you approach that low open gateway on the right side of the photo. Go through that gateway, turn right down a few stairs, and in a minute you will be sailing through the Crusader-built entrance to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This place is the main reason the whole world, particularly the Christians who make up over ¼th of the human population, comes here, to the Christian Quarter.

The large open archway on the left of the picture marks the Muristan, or I should say the rebuilt Muristan. The main center of life during the Crusader occupation (1099-1187 CE), it was simply allowed to fall into ruins after they left. Only in the late 19th century was it rebuilt to look more or less as it is today, often incorporating bits and pieces of the earlier ruins.  It is full of shops, especially shops with leather products (seeing this photo makes me smell the leather) along with felafel and shishlik restaurants. It’s likely to cost you 10 shekels a shot, but I still recommend the coffee with hel and loads of sugar, a lifesaver against fatigue. Not today, mind you, but in that future time when people will be around.

To me this photo tells it all. Pilgrimage tours to the holy city have screeched to a standstill. The hotels and shopkeepers are not the only victims of this war, as we know so well. The news is relentlessly invasive, and sometimes we simply must take refuge from it to try and heal the mental wounds inflicted, not on ourselves alone but on everyone. Peace be upon us, upon us all.

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If you need more evidence of the emptiness of al-Quds aka the Old City today, just try watching some recent “Relaxing Walker” videos. Here is one that walks you through first the New and then the Old City.

If you would rather see the commercial areas of Gaza shortly before the latest conflict got started, go to the channel called Arab Ambience. Of course it looks very different these last two weeks. If you watch the news you already know. 

If you never heard the name “Muristan” before, try the Wiki entry.  Read the first parts of it at least and see the photos.

David Grossman, “Who will we be when we rise from the ashes? Are we capable of understanding that what has occurred here is too immense and too terrible to be viewed through stale paradigms?”

Squill Flower Spikes of Jerusalem

 

It’s that time of year when the weather turns cooler and at long last the first light rains come down on Jerusalemites. It’s Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, when many eat and even sleep in palm-leaf covered huts in their back yards or balconies or in some cases on the sidewalks in front of their apartment buildings. One of autumn’s welcoming signs is the Squill Flower, or Khatsav (חצב) in Hebrew. It keeps its huge liquid-filled tubers dormant throughout the heat of summer. That way it can shoot up its dramatic spikes full of white star-like blossoms, often as tall as you are, when the annual drought is just about over. Without doubt it is one of nature’s more beautiful oddities, and that is what it is, both beautiful and odd.

That’s the Monastery of the Holy Cross
you see in the distance

Here is the Hebrew Wikipedia entry on "Khatsav." For fun you can try and put it through Google translate to see what the English looks like.

If you are a real botanist you will love this page, but even if you’re not, it has some fantastically detailed photos of the plant that include all its parts in every season of the year. In case the link just given doesn’t work for you, try searching the web for “Flora of Israel and Adjacent Areas" by Avinoam Danin and Ori Fragman-Sapir. The whole site is worth exploring, and if you are English-reading, start here and give it time to display over 3,000 items.

Last but best, here are two beautiful paintings by the Orna Bentor who died this year, courtesy of her webpage:

https://www.ornabentor.com/