\\

Judaism as a Civilization
Mordecai Kaplan
1934

\\

When I was in the third grade, I went to the South Bend Morris Theater to see my piano teacher play Golda in Fiddler on the Roof. I was delighted by the cast’s robust rendition of “Tradition,” a song about the importance of keeping traditions in a Jewish life. But I can still recall my mother’s down-turned expression as the women sang about matchmaking and its sometimes imperfect results. Marriage arrangement, a tradition often practiced by Chasidish and Orthodox Jewish communities for centuries and to this day, is one example of an activity that has been seen by some to represent values and behaviors contradictory to modern society and in need of critical revision. In Judaism as a Civilization, first published in 1934, Mordecai Kaplan addresses this same general discomfort many long-held Judaic traditions evoke for their modern American observers. Considering how industrialization, urbanization, and globalization have changed society and Jews’ roles within it, Kaplan explores what he supposes to be Judaism’s obligation to adapt and accommodate society’s modernization.

Cogently analyzing the importance of transforming and relinquishing some Judaic traditions in what he describes as a creative and necessary process, Kaplan helps the reader to consider the beauty of modifying one’s beliefs and the complex consequences of lifestyle alteration. His intention is to view Jewish history as one of constant adaptation and reimagination, claiming that the malleability of one’s practices to suit one’s context is a powerful matter of conscience and character, to be valued as a dignified evolution in response to social needs. Demonstrated by his nontraditional conceptualization of Judaism as a civilization rather than a religion, Kaplan ensures that unique, modernized thinking is central to his assertions about what Judaism has been, is, and should be. Despite his often compelling argument, however, the thought of willingly altering the Judaic traditions I grew up with—not for the sake of values or ideas, but simply for the sake of change itself—left me with a similar yet distinct discomfort from the feeling that provoked my mother’s frown eleven years ago.

Warning his readers about the pending departure from traditional Judaism, Kaplan explains that the necessity of an evolving Judaism stems from its inherent status as a civilization. Civilizations, Kaplan says, are characterized by a people’s willful organization into a nation, whose membership they accept as a fundamental component of self-conception. He takes pains to explain the ways in which Judaism possesses all requisite features of a civilization: a unique land, language, mores, laws, folkways, folk sanctions, folk arts, and social structure. Embracing a conceptualization of Judaism as a civilization, Kaplan reasons that such a civilization is valuable and justified by its very existence, without an appeal to external values or metaphysical commitments. Understanding this, Jewish communities will be more inclined to maintain their Jewish lifestyles, since they will no longer feel that the underpinnings of their identities are at odds with contemporary concerns presented by scientific and industrial expansion.

Kaplan asserts at the start of his argument that the Jewish people fulfill a civilization’s primary requirement of possessing land. He acknowledges that although the Jewish people have not always owned a concrete land of their own, they have always possessed the psychological yearning for a homeland, allowing them to freely embrace their Jewish lives in relation to it. Emphasizing land’s role in distinguishing a people from a civilization, he claims that the inception of the Judaic civilization in fact resulted from their occupation of Palestine prior to the formation of political tribes. Although the Jewish people have long since dispersed from this central location, Palestine has always provided the geographic origin necessary to allow this people to partake in what Kaplan calls nationalistic behaviors, which establish Judaism as a civilization and extend their beliefs beyond the weaker scope of religion. He insists that the ancient Israelites’ unified gathering in Palestine provided them with a collective character entirely autonomous from their belief in God. “This fact,” he writes, “renders the survival of Jewish civilization independent of the traditional belief in otherworldly salvation”. According to Kaplan, because the identity of Jewish civilization has always, in fact, had very little to do with the Divine, and much more to do with the Jewish people’s physical placement and nationality, they were able to foster the characteristics of a civilization that would unify them through millenia of persistent troubles and diaspora.

Judaism as a Civilization was largely controversial at the time of its release because it challenged the prevailing belief of Judaism as inherently tied to the belief in God. Giving rise to the Jewish Reconstructionist Movement, Kaplan’s opinions were and still are revolutionary because they call the Jewish people to re-root their Judaic identities in nationalistic rather than religious sentiments. Despite the emotional challenges such a demand creates, Kaplan’s assertions aid in forming a novel sense of Jewish inclusiveness. Judaism as a Civilization seeks to distance Judaism from a religion confined by rigid traditions, and move toward a civilization that adapts to the desires of the people—a feature that is necessary to make the Jewish people comfortable with their faith. By advocating for increased participation of women in Jewish leadership positions, the Reconstructionist perspective was all the more celebrated among many Jewish women in 1930s America. Although Kaplan’s argument disputes long-held beliefs about Judaism, it did not do so blindly and may have appealed to many by fashioning a more versatile representation of Judaism.

Understanding Kaplan’s argument requires one to wrestle with his radical minimization of the importance of belief in God. While considering his argument, I struggled to appreciate what seemed to me to be his often reductionist conceptualization of Judaism. Kaplan deliberately and openly excludes belief in the monotheistic Hebrew God as a fundamental contributor to Jewish civilization, but thereby denies one of the most basic building blocks of that Israelite “civilization” from its earliest days in Palestine. Instead of any unifying intellectual or moral commitment, Kaplan claims that “as a civilization, Judaism is not a static system of beliefs and practices but a living and dynamic social process”—that civilization is “conditioned by the nature of the environment.” But his insistence on Judaism’s dynamic and changing nature calls into question any stable characteristics unique to the civilization. If beliefs and morals are to be held in such low regard to the historical coherence of the people, what inherent enduring characteristics can be said to exist that hold the people together? Kaplan’s farfetched emphasis on Judaism’s flexibility prevents him from acknowledging any constancy uniting the Jewish people throughout the distinct periods of their religious evolution. Instead, he fashions a modern-day representation of those who follow Judaism as a segmented people defined by the variable social preferences and environmental characteristics of the time in which they live. Because of this problematic consideration, its modernism notwithstanding, Kaplan’s assertions are ultimately inadequate for a coherent Judaism, in light of their blatant focus on only its extrinsic qualities.

Confronted with what he describes as another crucial evolutionary transformation in the 1930’s in the Jewish civilization, Kaplan argues that all Jewish people are entitled to and should re-define Jewish practices to maintain a sense of Jewish meaning in their lives. He defends the “standpoint…[that] whatever helps to produce creative social interaction among Jews rightly belongs to the category of Jewish religion, because it contributes to the salvation of the Jew” and “[keeps] the Jews of the world united.” The very unifying feature of the Jewish civilization, he argues, is its need to conform to constantly changing environmental and cultural developments. Herein lies Kaplan’s incoherence.

Although he asserts that Judaism’s evolution must occur in conjunction with the modernization of society, Kaplan ultimately argues that this evolution must support the Jewish people’s happiness. He discusses how “salvation [now] depends on making the most of the opportunities presented by this world” and that “as a civilization, Judaism…enables the Jewish people to be a means of salvation” (513). Rather than seeking a relationship with God through daily prayer or ritual, this line of thought demands that the Jewish people support one another in only a vague sense. Through claiming that salvation exists within the Jewish people and is not granted through the generosity of God, Kaplan undermines a vast conventional tradition, along with the daily ritual that goes along with it, and places sole emphasis on the liberating qualities of the Jewish community itself. Rather than creating a sense of comfort for the Jewish people, Kaplan’s devaluation of the relationship between them and God renders the people in a state of religious disorientation. In fact, such a dissociation invites inquiry into the continued significance of all of Judaism’s institutions—if we abandon both God and tradition, then what force does anything have?

Kaplan’s attempts to provide a perspective on Judaism distinct from religion may be novel, but in the end prove too radical. I choose to believe that Judaism will always have a traditional constancy which primarily contributes to its beauty, importance, and meaning. Meanwhile, Fiddler on the Roof is always going to be one of my favorite musicals, and I’m always going to relish its songs’ timeless Jewish luster. 

\\

STEPHANIE GOLDSTEIN is a sophomore in Barnard College and a contributing editor for The Current. She can be reached at shg2111@barnard.edu. Photo via amazon.com.

By Lily Wilf

\\

The Gatekeepers
Dror Moreh
Cinephile and Sony Pictures Classic, 2012

\\

Israeli national security is, understandably, a top-secret affair. The Shin Bet, Israel’s equivalent of U.S. Homeland Security, is one of the country’s three intelligence agencies responsible for all counterterrorism intelligence and operations involving prisoner interrogations and targeted killings. Nicknamed “the Shabak,” the Shin Bet operates outside the military and answers exclusively and directly to the prime minister, maintaining both a top secret and top priority profile. Its motto of “Magen V’lo Yiraeh”—“defend and be unseen”—reflects the expectation that Shabak members commit to total invisibility in protecting their country. That is what makes The Gatekeepers so intriguing. Breaking radically away from their agency’s tradition of secrecy and anonymity, six ex-Shabak heads openly express their views in this Israeli documentary on a range of sensitive military and political issues, asserting a shocking sense of urgency and displaying brutal honesty.

The impassioned and sometimes heartwrenching testimonials of these retired intelligence chiefs expose a deep-seated distrust between Israeli politicians and the Shin Bet during the fragile decades after the 1967 Six Days War. Victory for Israel brought great territorial growth and a matched increase in security risks, resulting in heightened Shabak activity and a rise in public scrutiny of the government and its security operations. As the six men reminisce about their actionpacked careers in the Shabak, it seems that any and all glory is overcome by grief.

The men reflect in gruesome detail on intelligence gathering and targeted killings, recounting missed opportunities and failed missions. With remarkable transparency, they tell of discord between themselves and members of government who often refused to support the Shin Bet in the face of critical press and public opinion, and who even went as far as to condemn operations that went amiss. The ex-Shabak chiefs agree across the board that their jobs required unrelenting patriotism and the knowledge that they could rely on nobody but themselves. Years later, it seems, their patriotism is intact but their self-confidence is shattered. Crucial security decisions they once made without compunction are now the objects of remorse. The backing that they so desperately expected from politicians does not even exist within themselves.

The Gatekeepers is comprised of seven segments with short, powerful titles such as “Forget About Morality” and “Our Own Flesh and Blood,” which boldly frame every interview inside complicated questions of morality and ethics. The effect is tense and at times uncomfortable, echoing how these men feel about their years at the head of an agency responsible for the countless killings of terrorists, and not infrequently, unlucky bystanders. Strategic and moral dilemmas are standard in the world of counterterrorism and intelligence, but grim honesty and pessimism from top security figures is certainly unexpected.

It is shocking that these men would agree to disclose any details at all about their tenures as head of the Shabak, let alone comment on grave Israeli security flaws for audiences worldwide. In one striking scene, Avraham Shalom, who resigned from the Shin Bet in 1986 after he was accused of ordering the killing of two Palestinian prisoners and orchestrating a cover-up story, says that modern day Israel “is a brutal occupation force” in the West Bank and Gaza which acts as Germany did toward its European neighbors in World War II. Avi Dichter, who was the director of the Shin Bet at the turn of the century, proclaims now that Israel “cannot make peace with military means.”

Of course, this is not to say that these six figures discredit past and present military efforts to protect Israeli citizens and secure Israeli borders—quite the opposite. But there is a disheartening sense that the Shabak is a game no person with scruples can play.

Shabak activity leaves behind footprints of cruelty and heartlessness, and the interviewees do not foresee change. Collateral damage and torture persist, as does war. Ami Ayalon, head of the Shabak from 1995-2000, summarizes the problem neatly: “We win every battle, but we lose the war.” While riveting, and perhaps enlightening, the interviews with these men in which they describe Israel as a fighter hopeless in the face of ethics are themselves antithetical. Former Shabak heads Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin, Carmi Gillon, Yaakov Peri, and Avraham Shalom may have done their best to defend, but their participation in this movie makes them everything but unseen. There is a secrecy expected in good defense, and certainly in secret service, which calls for a confidentiality and trust these men seem to have left behind at the Shabak. If these men do not trust politicians, do not trust themselves, and do not trust the secret service’s slogan—how can we trust them?

\\

LILY WILF is a first year in Barnard College and a layout editor for The Current. She can be reached at liw2103@barnard.edu. Photo by Flickr user MacGuffinPodcast.

Admittedly vague, The Current’s subtitle offers an interpretation of our publication’s purpose: a journal of contemporary politics, culture, and Jewish affairs. What constitutes these different items is a question I am often asked by prospective writers. I usually struggle to find an answer. Charged words like “culture” always seem somehow dishonest to me. After all, is culture not redefined inductively on a constant basis? During my tenure with The Current, I have learned to suspend the compulsion to fit what we do into taxonomic boxes, and simply accept each issue as a new opportunity to expand our scope.

This issue represents one of those moments when loose categorical criteria wind up being helpful to us editors. I might presume to liken the fall 2012 issue of The Current to a great novel, which uses situational narratives to articulate a compelling understanding of the universe in ways that brute dialectic and academic philosophy often fail to replicate. Through creative storytelling, historical reimagining, and a healthy dose of literary finesse, this issue you are about to read attempts to participate in a similar project, circumventing the rawness of speculative argumentation in order to penetrate more deeply that ever-elusive “culture” we so proudly purport to document.

Beginning this issue of the The Current is our Creative section. In it, we have two Boroughings and two Far Flungs. Dara Marans recounts her experiences at a Williamsburg speakeasy for Orthodox Jews; David Fine describes conversations with fellow audience-members at a taping of America’s Got Talent; Eric Shapiro regales us with his exploits in Spain; and Andrea Garcia Vargas writes in harrowing detail about her attendance at a flag-burning in Jordan.

Following the creative section are essays by Gilana Keller and Maddie Wolberg. Keller examines the actions of Columbia’s administration in the 1950’s, which fired a professor as a result of her Communist connections, while Wolberg recounts the surprising rise of Jewish women in the Argentine Leftist political establishment. Both authors hearken back to decades-old traditions of liberal change in the New World, and through the narratives they construct offer tremendous insight into the underpinnings of our current age.

In our Literary and Arts section, we have several reviews. Hannah Novack writes about Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, a new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art that showcases how photographers have manually manufactured visual realities for the artistic and mass-consumer publics for over a century.

Divya Subramanian reviews Michael Chabon’s newest novel Telegraph Avenue. Although Subramanian claims that it does not live up to the Chabon’s ambitions, the book does bear the characteristic flair of the author’s earlier works.

Joshua Fattal writes about two exhibits of Jewish Manuscripts, one at the Columbia University Libraries and one at the Jewish Museum. In his review, he explains how the two venues showcase their respective collections with very different methodologies. Each exhibition has its own shortcomings, but Fattal argues that the two ultimately complement one another.

Finally, our End of the World features a fictional piece by myself entitled “True Story.”

This issue invites the reader to define the parameters of our submissions for themselves, tracing each piece as it dances around the indeterminate core of what we aim to do. We believe these impressions of events and experiences, past and present, provide a detail-oriented account of the broader cultural strokes that add color to university, American, Jewish, and human life. We hope you’ll agree.

-Jeremy Liss, Editor in Chief

By David Fine

\\

America’s Got Talent is a reality performance show set in the incongruous halls of Newark’s Performing Arts Center. The PAC, as everyone calls it, bears witness to spectacles of American “talent” of such a strange, wide variety during the show’s run that if aliens caught an episode light-years away they might assume we were declaring war on them – or offering to surrender, depending on which segment they picked up. The PAC’s wood-paneled, acoustically optimized performance space offers deep-cushioned seating and an air of legitimacy that is all but sucked out of the room when Nick Cannon, the host, walks onstage. The crowd erupts as technicians scurry about completing final preparations. It is summer and I am there on assignment for Tablet Magazine, an online Jewish politics, arts, and culture publication (AGT must fall somewhere at the crossroads of the three).

Edon Pinchot, a rosy-cheeked, very short fourteen-year-old crooner had made it to the show’s semi-finals and Tablet wanted the story. Aside from an ability to give you goosebumps with his rendition of David Guetta’s “Titanium,” Pinchot is a Modern Orthodox Jew. Cover him I did:

“Justin Bieber might say the Shema before every performance,” the piece began, “but it’s doubtful he understands the prayer’s meaning as deeply as Edon Pinchot, the 14-year-old breakout star on NBC’s reality talent show, America’s Got Talent.”

To Tablet’s readers, Edon was the story, but I left the PAC knowing the truth. The story that night was Emma, Trudy, and Elaine, three ladies I sat next to in the AGT crowd, three ladies who represent all that’s good and just and fair in a world where America’s Got Talent exists.

Emma, Trudy, and Elaine (pseudonyms I’ve granted them in order to protect their reputations) trundled into my empty spectator balcony box five minutes after the show started and shuffled by me to take their seats, each apologizing as they passed. As their bodies swung by my face I caught strong whiffs of floral perfume I hope was purchased in the discount section of Filene’s. Metal jangled on wrists and necklaces drooped into my face and they issued a general flurry of kretzes settling into their seats.

Elaine sat down next to me and promptly squeezed my—unprepared and therefore flaccid (that’s why, I swear!)—bicep, leaning close. “This. Is. So. Exciting. So exciting!” She whispered in an almost too authentic New Jersey grandma accent. Her breath smelled like cinnamon trident gum and her eyes glowed only in the way that an AGT disciple’s can.

“Let go of the poor kid,” Trudy interjected. As Elaine’s clutch reluctantly loosened on my—by now flexed and very, very large—bicep, Trudy gave me a knowing glance. She was the ringleader, and she knew that she had brought the circus to my balcony box.

I wish I could say Emma paid me much attention, but that would be a lie. A dirty, dirty lie. A cruder documentarian might suggest that Emma was the so-called GILF of the New Jersey Three. One might note that she wore an altogether too low halter-top, and a less charitable reporter would say that the makeup cake on her face ran the deepest. As soon as she sat down she trained her stubbornly highlighted hair down toward the judge’s table.

I wondered why, unlike her two compatriots, Emma refused to be entranced by my youthful demeanor and full head of hair. The reason soon became clear.

“Howard! Howard! HOWARD!” she yelled into the perma-frozen bush of Howard Stern’s hair during a break in the performances.

She was leaning over the balcony, waving her bejeweled hand as rapidly as she could, looking as if she was ready to launch herself down to Howard the moment he acknowledged her.

“It’s her birthday,” Trudy explained.

“And she loooves Howard,” Elaine continued.

“Always has,” Trudy shrugged.

“He didn’t notice me,” Emma turned in dejection to tell us.

“Maybe scream louder next time?” I offered meekly.

She just glared and turned back, staring at her hero. I pouted as the next act came on. This next one was of the local variety: a New York street performer who could contort his body in terrible, terrible ways. All four of us stared, mouths agape, as this guy twisted his body in unfathomable directions.

The performer’s techno background music faded, the stage returned to normal, Emma turned to us, said, “weird,” and went back to yell Howard’s name at the top of her lungs (looked like she took my advice).

Trudy pulled no punches and declared the man, “a freak,” and, “so disgusting.” Elaine, the perennial AGT fan, observed, “I’ve always hated him. If he wins I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You’ll most likely keep watching because you are a slave to the strange and hypnotic power that manufactured reality TV casts upon our nation,” I did not say to her, nodding my head in silent agreement instead.

And so it went for each of the performers that night. Dancers, singers, mimes, and power lifters alike laid their “talents” at Emma, Trudy, and Elaine’s altar. The tribunal would offer in turn either their unadulterated praise or opprobrium, depending on their predilections and tastes of the moment.

These ladies were brutal. They had seen much in their lifetime, and, judging by the many jewels and precious metals adorning their hands, had conquered many rich nations. Legion was their judgments, and solid were their opinions.

We began to talk in between acts about issues other than AGT. Once Emma realized I wrote for a Jewish publication, she asked me anxiously, “You’re going to write about how Obama is destroying Israel, right?” She looked at me, fear in her eyes, the loose skin around her neck moving up and down as she nodded, anticipating my answer. I assured her I would and she patted me on the shoulder.

I must say I was nervous for Edon to come on. Sure, the entire nation might have been watching, but the collective eyes of America’s TV viewing population were no match for the New Jersey Three’s judgment.

By the time it was Edon’s turn, they had needled my true purpose out of me, and so when they announced him, Elaine once again clutched my—now properly prepared and flexed—bicep and exclaimed, “It’s your boy!” Trudy had to pry her off, and we all watched in trepidation as the fog cleared and Edon began to sing.

He was Edon as expected. Pitch perfect and cute as a button, though I wished he had eschewed the addition of an accompanying band and had picked a song not by One Republic. Overall, though, I would say that he was one of the saner, better acts of the night.

According to the Three that was exactly the problem. Emma just shrugged and turned back to Howard baiting.

Trudy delivered the verdict: “He’s not going to make it.”

“What?” I responded downcast and dejected.

Elaine patted me on the arm and said, “He’s just not interesting enough.”

“He doesn’t have a shtick, he needs a shtick.”

I tried to defend my man to them—“he’s the best singer by far”—but I silently mourned Edon’s fate. Though votes would not be tallied and announced for two more days, I knew that Edon would not make it through. If the New Jersey Three said so, then it was so. Sure enough, Edon did not make it to the next round and went back to the Chicago Jewish day school from whence he emerged.

As the performance wound down, the three women—each of whom I swear could play the voice of Kyle Braflasky’s mom on South Park—began yawning. It was late and their senses had been continually assaulted for quite a while. When the show came to a close and the lights went up, we turned to each other and said our goodbyes. Elaine gave me a forceful hug and Trudy gave me a forceful handshake.

Emma turned to me and said dissolutely, “He didn’t notice me.”

“I’m sorry…Happy birthday, though.”

“Maybe if I had flashed him?”

I silently nodded in agreement and watched as the New Jersey Three receded back toward their Jersey enclaves, sated after savoring a pyrotechnic slice of Americana.

\\

DAVID FINE is a senior in Columbia College and a senior editor for The Current. He can be reached at daf2122@columbia.edu. Photos by Virginia Sherwood, courtesy of NBC. First image design by Matthew Sherman.

By Dara Marans

\\

The Victorian homes daintily lined the streets. This was a pleasant excursion into Brooklyn on a weekend evening that provided an alternative to the subculture of techno music. Instead of a warehouse-style nightclub, a house was its replacement—painted pretty purple and green, with a bright front porch and white columns. The Hester Club, where strangers wine & dine in a private Jewish home.

The hostess pulled out a large roll of blue tickets with perforated edges, sending me back momentarily to my childhood memories that were speckled with carnivals. But as I peeked my head around the entryway into the living room, cotton candy and water-gun games were nowhere in sight. Instead, folk music streamed from the parlor, and circular tables dotted the room. The space was filled with mingling foodies, Hasids, hipsters, hipster Hasids, and married couples, all dispersed throughout the room—some listening to music, easing into the environment, and observing the scene, while others created friendships, sampled the food, and were observed. I was handed a menu that made me want to eat the paper—it looked so good.

With limited space and room for just under 100, the environment at The Hester Club successfully encourages socializing and table-mixing among this multi-generational crowd. I spotted two open seats next to a man sporting a long white beard, opting to sit at this three person table where I remained for the majority of the evening while numerous patrons rotated in and out of the seats, pulling up and sharing chairs and stories. Baruch was a neighborhood regular who, as other patrons would later tell me, was a figure known throughout the community for his ubiquitous presence, and consistent with my first impression, his salient facial hair. I was quickly learning from him and other guests that I was attending an event that challenges the immediate environment it occupies. The Hester is located in the heart of Ditmas Park in Flatbush, Brooklyn, a neighborhood full of Orthodox Jews and home to a rabbinate that would consider this venue a licentious activity, if its current undisclosed nature were to be found out.

The Hester Club models itself on the speakeasies of the Prohibition era. According to legend, 19th century Pennsylvanian Kate Hester ran an illegal saloon, telling her patrons to “speak easy” to avoid being caught by the authorities. Assuming the pseudonym of Kate Hester, Itta Werdiger Roth runs The Hester Club, and she too employs a secretive element to her night of entertainment. Itta reveals her address only just before the event and, like the legendary Kate of her past, she uses a ticket payment system to avoid having a liquor license. The name for the Club was also chosen based on the word hester, which has Biblical origins and translates from Hebrew into “hidden.”

Unlike Kate’s saloon, this underground venue fuses live music with organic, home-cooked food – including sultry, toasted sandwiches. My favorite part: it’s 100% kosher. The Hester Club provides a safe space in a religiously-committed community, and it adheres to halacha, or Jewish law, in an effort to graciously welcome in all types of individuals, regardless of religious affiliation or background. An observant Jew supervises the entire meal preparation from start to finish, ensuring that a high level of kashrut is maintained. Jewish rituals are not the focus of this evening of entertainment, but values of serious modesty are nonetheless still upheld; in an email sent before the event, patrons were instructed to “Remember—no dancing!!”

Despite this friendly reminder, individuals of all shapes, sizes, colors, and ilk were welcomed into Kate’s living room. There were bare shoulders and covered knees; hair wigs and colorful tattoos; nose rings and curly sidelocks. The venue merged local clientele with patrons from other boroughs, a diverse medley of musical enthusiasts, eager students, and former Shabbat lunch guests from around the corner.

The dinner menu was light, yet tasty and promising. A server scanned the three rooms with a box of prepared sandwiches tucked into white wax paper sleeves; the ticket exchange was prompt and simple. This pop-up restaurant is environmentally hyper-conscious and bans the use of disposables, opting for Ikea cutlery instead. Self-described as organic, local, and fresh, The Hester Club’s dishes cost 2 blue tickets each, with the menu featuring seasonal items: an opening of house wedges (beets, rainbow carrots, red potatoes and breakfast radishes accompanied by roasted garlic and parsley sour cream); sandwiches on artisan sourdough bread (choice of sheep-milk cheese, fresh figs, raw honey, arugula and red radish or Japanese pickled finger eggplant and cucumber with miso sunflower tahini and crunchy sprouts); a dessert of summer peach pie with basil ice cream and candied suyo-jade cucumber. A creative pair of seasonal cocktails is available for those who wish—an old fashioned and a fig, or a watermelon margarita. Of course, everything had to be tasted.

The live music at the supperclub began in the ’60s with a folk and garage-blues band and ended in the ’20s with a Brooklyn jazz band. I love jazz music above all other genres and appreciated the opportunity to listen in a comfortable, private space. The merging of eras and musical styles at the Hester Club was an interesting attempt at breaking down definitions, expectations, and presumptions about what it means to have an artistically enriching musical experience. Two bands perform at each monthly gathering, one of which is always somehow associated with Jewish culture. Patrons who are interested in an evening of lounging and light chatting can opt for the relaxing couch corner and choose one of several sofas, or a scattering of wooden tables bordered by individual chairs.

The Hester Club redefines Jewish nightlife by providing a culturally rewarding experience while simultaneously providing an environment to be comfortably Jewish. From the jazzy tunes to the Japanese pickled sandwich, The Hester Club provides an integration of flavors that satiated my tastes. It fills a niche need within a growing community in a hip area, specifically in a young singles scene. Going to a warehouse party may not be the appropriate activity for some on a weekend evening. But Kate Hester provides an alternative night of fun, of mingling, of drinking, of observing, and of feeling a part of a diversely religious community—entwining them all within the comforts of her wine-colored living room.

By Andrea García-Vargas

\\

The protestors started at Al-Husseini mosque, after the Friday noon prayer. They waited for dozens of praying men to finish their salah and stand up from their ragged mats. Then, they set out.

They came in keffiyehs, hijabs, jeans. They stood on the roof of vans wearing Che Guevara shirts, chanting through megaphones. They were men, they were women. They were children carrying slogans.

I was not a protestor. I carried no slogans on a banner or A4 sheet of paper. I wore a lurid pink scarf around my head and my frizz poked out from the edges as I zipped in and out of the crowds with a Canon in video mode in my hand. I was playing the role of the intrepid video-journalist from the West, and this was my documentary—to be posted later on Facebook.

My outsider’s gaze went only so far. The people standing in front of markets and stores were not protestors. They were not embraced by the spirit—they were watchers, and they were mostly men in plainclothes, standing among the melons and the apples watching the gleaming banners in Arabic script. And they watched me in my attempt to blend in. To them I wasn’t a video-journalist. I was a woman. I was also ambiguously Arab, though my bright pink headscarf didn’t fit in with the drab grays. If I revealed myself, would I be as much a part of the problem in their eyes as King Abdullah II and his government?

I had reached the end of the street, where the procession had stopped and began to gather around the truck with the Che Guevara shirts. I stood and I filmed, slowly gliding over the policemen to my left-held hands and created a blockade. I stood apart from the chatty passersby so I could capture the chanting, the guttural Arabic emerging from hundreds of protestors into a single voice.

I was right behind a policeman who kept moving from foot to foot like a pendulum. The van roof with the Che Guevaras was intermittently blocked from my view. And then he moved his head.

And then, fire.

The van was dangling a flag. A burning flag. I didn’t know what flag it was, but it was a burning flag and that was enough: I had to get close. I don’t remember much, but I remember running to the van. I don’t remember carrying my camera in my hand, which made for some shaky footage. I remember trying to find the end to the line of police officers but the van was blocked off. I couldn’t get to it. To the flag. The Jordanian flag? Wasn’t that illegal?

I turned off my Canon. Two American boys—actual boys, barely hitting 18—stood with their cameras similarly poised to take in the scene. “I was all for it until the end. My whole opinion just flipped,” one of them said.

The other one laughed in ridicule and shrugged. “Whatever.”

I didn’t know what the first boy meant, and I didn’t stop to overthink it. My mind was in shreds over seeing a burning flag—the most forefront symbol of hatred I could think of. Hatred towards Abdullah, towards the government, towards Jordan. Hatred that would be followed by imprisonment. Just criticizing King Abdullah got you a couple nights in prison, or a visit from the police at the very least. Burning the nation’s flag—I couldn’t fathom what the punishment would be. I had a feeling that my vague, Orientalizing notion equating the Middle East with human rights abuses was prejudiced, but I knew so little at the moment about what would happen next that I didn’t know what else to think. I stood to the side, frightened, waiting to see what the policemen would do next.

Then the police line broke. The van drove away through the gap. Nobody followed it. Nobody surrounded it to pummel it or holler angry nationalist cries. The people, glistening in the sweat of Jordan’s summer, began to break, too. It was as if nothing had happened.

For a few moments, I was stunned. In my confusion, I took out my Canon and turned it on to capture a panoramic video of the dispersing crowd. Through the viewer, I saw one spot in the crowd where no one was standing. That must be where the remains of the flag were. But no one was gathered around it. People were barely looking down on it. I walked to the spot, the camera’s viewer still on my right eye. I turned my camera down to see the familiar red, white, and blue.

It’s a strange thing to see your country’s flag contorted from its normal colors into a blackened mess. It is nothing like seeing it on TV, like on CNN or Fox News. Televised flag-burning is a plane of hyper-reality, so much so that it’s almost too horrible to believe, usually accompanied by angry men in dishdashas wailing in delight as the flag shrivels. But this—this wasn’t hyper-reality. It wasn’t wailing, delighted American-haters. It was a crowd of Jordanians that had briefly shouted on the burning flag and now was leaving as though it had never happened. Nobody stomped on the flag. Several people carefully stepped over it. And I picked it up.

My makeshift hijab stopped being a disguise: Having a burnt American flag in my hand was evidence enough of my citizenship. It was in my hands, and I was suddenly a participant in this historical narrative I had been videotaping as an outsider all along. I had a slice of history in my hands, and I would never let it go. As I examined the colors bleeding into each other and traced my fingers where the staff should have been, I went from being a woman in a hijab to an American, and people began to stand and stare. But I didn’t think of it. My head felt fuzzy along the temples, and all I could do was look at my flag, my burnt flag.

And then someone shot a photo of me. The moment became eternalized. I blinked, and turned. It was a woman in a hijab, and she had captured me, the American, in a hijab. That picture would later make me the poster child for American apologia on a Jordanian “news” website (more like yellow journalism) and quote me as having “cried over her flag, but understood what her country had done wrong.” But though that picture would be misused to promote an anti-American government agenda, I would just laugh. Because what I would remember from her wouldn’t be that article. It would be when she put her camera down and said, “We disagree with America as a political idea. Not with the citizens,” and when she smiled.

I would remember smiling back at her broken English and saying, “I understand.” I would remember standing in the hot Jordanian sun as it baked the drying tar on the flag in my hands.

The crowd had now completely left. A few men stood in front of the stores, going back to tending their melons and their apples. I took my scarf off and wrapped it around the flag. I would later fold it carefully in my luggage and at customs in Washington D.C., feel my heart palpitate when I thought the customs officials might search my bags and find what could be an incriminating piece of evidence. I would hang it in my room and look on it, an artifact of the history I had been part of.

Self-consciousness came crashing down on me when I saw the lone street in front of me, with Jordanian men on the side and my bare head, but I kept my flag covered. I didn’t want people down the street, the people who may have cheered to see the flag burn, to see me with it. I wanted to keep it safe.

I tucked it under my arm and walked back up the street.

\\

ANDREA GARCIA-VARGAS is a senior in Columbia College. She can be reached at acg2145@columbia.edu. Photo by Andrea García-Vargas.

By Eric Shapiro

\\

When you spend too much time in a city, especially a foreign city, you grow mysteriously desensitized to life as it progresses around you. The majesty of the metropolis–any metropolis–is eaten away steadily, slyly, by the humdrum cadence of daily living. Suddenly what were once thrilling views and sounds become an inert backdrop to commonality. With each cobblestone tread under foot, hoards bumping apologetically all around, you’re thrust coolly into your pod of solitude: each man an eternity unto himself, another errant cell the urban universe. Ironically, there is nothing lonelier in this world than millions of people.

In my mind I’m followed by the memory of a casual day, walking home along Paseo del Prado, enjoying canary streetlamps lighting up old bonnets pushing grocery carts, picture-takers, young girls hanging onto their dinner dates. There’s a spring in my step, with each foot forward letting the beat of my melancholic monologue fill my headspace with cool. I look at my watch and note that I’ll be drunk in about two hours–did I mention I’m in Madrid?–and oh, goodness, there’s nothing wrong in life right now, not in my world. Amidst the tourist shops and cafeterias, the smudgy windows betraying casual espresso-sippers who fall in love with letting the world go by, head bobbing in time with an invisible rhythm, I hear a timid voice, a timid paw shaking timid coins covered with city soot, a pathetic plea for money. I pat down my right thigh to find some change: Monopoly money to me in this foreign land. Keys, phone…mierda, I think in my faux-bilingualism, me faltan monedas. My rhythm’s broken but I persist ahead in brokenness. I’m too ashamed to look the man in the eye, to smile, to shake his hand if mine is outstretched but empty. Better to keep walking, my instinct tells me, though I feel each step shaming me further, further.

I guess it’s the accidental eye contact. Knowing he’s watching me, I grow guilty; in my guilt I remember my ethics. I take a few more steps and turn around, hoping he doesn’t notice that my most basic reaction was to ignore him. His face, clothes, and hair are plastered with grime, and his beard is an almost fashionable two-day-salt-and-pepper. He’s embarrassingly new to mendicancy. I stand there, feeling the air rush past in the wake of all those indifferent to our critical mass of humanness, we unhappy two, solitary obstacles keeping pedestrians from Nowhere.

“Que tal caballero–no tengo dinero pero le quiero comprar unos comestibles, ¿que quiere?” I ask the man as best as my halting Spanish allows if I can buy him something to eat. He fumbled his way back, and I assumed he was one of those picky ones, the trash-covered mendigos who claim to have just eaten and would prefer the pocket money for some reason. “¿Bocadillo?” Curious looks, few words. His eyes belie his fear of me, as if I might try to hurt him, to steal the 23 cents out of his coffee cup. It takes a while for me to realize that he cannot understand what I am asking him: he did not notice when I called him caballero, a gentleman, nor that I offered my practical sympathy in his plight. Abandoning my disguise as a native, I annunciate now and drop my feigned madrileño accent. More words, more mutual incomprehension, eventually: “pan y leche.” A simple task.

I entreat the man to stay put for five minutes. It’s getting dark, I think, and while I certainly don’t want to purchase unnecessary bread and milk for myself, I suppose I am most concerned with reassuring this man that I will be back, that he won’t have to be hungry tonight. I put my hand over my chest and feel paternalistic, trying to indicate to him, as if to a child, that I won’t abandon him. I’ll be back, I say, te prometo. I promise you.

Against the tide of aimless strollers, I hang a left onto Calle Atocha in search of a Chino (something akin to a bodega, a pejorative name for the Asian immigrant families who own them). And I’m struck suddenly by the spectacle there. I find myself at the epicenter of an unusual storm of human traffic on this otherwise ordinary weeknight. Loud drums erupt in catchy bursts, forming a danceable rhythm. Everyone seems to be staring at something; the same mass of mannequins as before, now arranged in some oblong elliptical stasis. The street’s blocked off, with tough-guy policia looking perpetually suspicious. Intrigued, I venture my way around this constellation, and as I near the center I am overtaken by a positive energy that makes me want to smile in public, and grow ashamed. People dancing, getting into the open-air rhythm. Whatever this display is, it is elaborate, amusing, paralyzing. I venture further into its orbit to investigate.

I peel my way through tired onlookers and encounter now a population holding posters. Their artistry is minimal, yet the images were all too familiar to me, the five-month observer in this nation of recurrent grievances. I didn’t care to take too seriously the trite pictorial cries of disenfranchisement, the self-diagnoses of the notoriously moribund Spanish workforce. Looking around, I glean repetitions of labor, desigualdad, and other buzzwords of popular economic angst. My attitude reveals how callous I am to the chic and happy plight of these Spanish youth in their hour of discontent. In Spain, they are called Ni Nis: a generation of young people who neither study nor work, aimlessly abiding their country’s economic misfortunes. I think of a t-shirt slogan I’d seen back in the states that read “Occupy All Streets” and laugh—the consequence of ubiquity is impotency. On this night, and on so many others, my Spanish peers seem to celebrate their economic hopelessness more than they despise it.

I watch for half a minute or so before I come to and remember my nameless friend, the man with the cracked cheeks and the childlike look of struggle in his eyes. I hope he doesn’t leave or—worse—become disheartened at my tardiness. I ate well today. He will not sleep tonight.

The scene’s celebratory character invites my saturnine judgment, but I resolve to tarry not in contemplation and redouble my commitment to my friend. With jubilant moral certainty, and emboldened by something near to anger, I maneuver with abandon through the throngs in search of an open store. El Rincon: closed. Fuck. I need to know my own area better. Eventually I find something still open. I grab a generic loaf of bread off a floor-level shelf. Milk. Cashier. Street. I’m met again with the sight of the masses, surrounding a drumline now performing a choreographed routine. This is pathetic. While they practice protesting like a holiday parade, trash and grown men lie on the streets tonight. Their spectacle raises issues these boys and girls don’t understand.

I hurry back to my friend to find with sober joy that we have not abandoned each other. He is prostrated, as before, on a scrap of moist cardboard near the curb. Couples and families entering and exiting the cafes and stores—I watch as every last one of the endless crowd overlooks the beggar. He rests his forehead on the ground in complete humility; he doesn’t yet know I’m back. Ignored, helpless, bereft of all dignity; this man has real struggles, none of which can be solved by public demonstrations and musical performances.

I tap his shoulder, and he raises up his face. The streetlamp behind me that catches a nascent sort of tear in his eye. I’m not your angel, I want to tell him. I hand him the black bodega bag. He clearly hadn’t expected me to return. He rises from his supplicating position and grabs at the handshake I’m offering. He pulls me in for a hug; never mind the poor, greasy stench of his body, or the roughness of his hands. I know this is a moment I will come to cherish. In broken Spanish, he returns a few biographical tidbits. His name is Georgi; he is an immigrant from Romania. He lives with his wife and son in Burgos, a city in the north of Spain. The boy and woman had been arrested—unlawfully, he protests—and he came to Madrid seeking legal advice. I wouldn’t have bought the story from another’s lips; but on occasions like these, you simply know, and don’t bother with narrow-minded suspicions. Georgi has been on this corner for two days, and had come up with a total just north of a few Euros. He needs money to go home, hasn’t eaten since his arrival, and anticipates being in Madrid for another week at the rate of his earnings. He thanks me for the food, but told me the real gift was my presence. In the whole city, he has not spoken to anyone else in two days.

In his grateful stupor he begins to instruct me in the workings of the universe, but his Spanish is bad, far worse than mine. He has trouble trying to thank me. But he frequently pointed reverently to the sky, and then to me, and muttered about Dios and Jesus as he took my right hand between both of his. Unworthy of the role he seemed to feel I was playing, I simply nodded, and conceded to this man his religious experience as he forgot his cup, his change, and even the bread I had just bought, and relished the sheer fulfillment of our interaction. We talked some more as he cried and blessed me, and I smiled even as his greasy palm patted my cheek.

As I take my leave, I ask him where he will sleep tonight. “Todavia no sé; hay solo un autobus que va a mi hogar cada dia; no tengo suficiente para ello,” he tells me, there’s only one bus to his home, and he can’t afford the ticket. I want to think that I’ve done enough, having now invested nearly half an hour in the entirety of the affair. But it seems to me the weaker choice. “¿Cuanto cuesta el billete?” I ask. How much is a ticket?

“20 euros.”

I do some quick math. Four euros got me bread, milk, and a brief moment of that cosmic sort of joy that renews your faith in things. I pull a 20 out of my wallet and hand it to him. He gleefully thanks and hugs me; I smile and watch as he grabs his plastic bags and runs as fast as his starved, tired legs can carry him towards the bus station.

By Gilana Keller

\\

Academic censorship has become a buzzword on campus of late. The recent and short-lived Barnard policy requiring flyers to contain administrative approval caused an uproar amongst governing boards on campus. The Student Governing Board claimed, “that it unnecessarily imposes a burden on student speech on campus.” Although the administration responded swiftly, the event raises the question once again of free speech on campus. Sixty years ago a case far more dramatic and with a far less satisfactory ending, occurred on this campus.

Although Columbia University presidents and trustees maintained during the cold war that the university protected its professors from McCarthyism, the case of Gene Weltfish proves otherwise. In 1952, Weltfish was called in front of the House un-American Activities Committee, and a few months later the university dismissed her under a shady rule recently created by University President Grayson Kirk and the trustees. Although she did have ties to communist groups, Weltfish denied any personal sympathies with communist causes and distinguished herself in the Anthropology department with her academic work. Her case shows how, when faced with a professor who spoke publicly about views that aligned with communism, the University gave into the same sort of McCarthyist tendencies it publicly criticized. Worst still, President Kirk did so under the guise of “academic freedom,” stating that Weltfish’s dismissal protected academic freedom

Gene Weltfish, lecturer of Anthropology at Columbia University for seventeen years, was dismissed in 1953, under the pretext of new university budgetary rules for non-tenured professors. Although Columbia has received limited attention as a university which fired teachers for political reasons during the McCarthy era, Weltfish serves as a case study of hushed academic censorship, cloaked in the guise of budgetary and productivity rules. Her dismissal raises questions of the meaning of academic freedom during the McCarthy era, specifically at Columbia, which purported to protect freedom in academic pursuits.

While university presidents claimed to reinterpret academic censorship during the post World War II years to enhance the protection of professors, those very presidents used the phrase academic freedom to justify the dismissal of teachers for their extra-mural expression. The Gene Weltfish case demonstrates that the term academic freedom lacked a coherent definition during the Cold War era because so many people used it differently to promote disparate political messages. Rampant concern about communist infiltration of the classrooms and the political proclivities of faculties at American universities disposed many people to reinterpret the meaning of academic freedom. While all university presidents publicly promoted the slogan of academic freedom, many felt no cognitive dissonance when they publicly dismissed their professors for communist activities.

Columbia’s Grayson Kirk is one of the few known university presidents to openly deny dismissing faculty for communist reasons, while privately discussing with trustees means of firing that would not garner public attention. When the university trustees and president thought that government prosecutors had sufficient information to prosecute Weltfish as a communist, they then dismissed her quietly.

Ellen Schrecker’s groundbreaking No Ivory Tower was the first book to broach the complicity of mid-twentieth century university presidents and trustees in the dismissal of teachers. Written in 1986, the work contends that university boards often deliberately suppressed academic freedom. Before Schrecker’s book, many historians believed the rhetoric of university officials that they were defending themselves against McCarthyism and trying to protect their faculties. As more university archives opened, later studies expanded on her thesis, uncovering more cases that expose the role of universities in quashing free expression.

Gene Weltfish and Columbia University

Gene Weltfish began lecturing in the Anthropology Department at Columbia in 1935. Her life during her time as a lecturer was marked by both academic writings and radical activities outside the university. She co-authored Races of Mankind, which argued that variations among races are cultural and not biological. Although the pamphlet was intended to support the Second World War effort, the Military Affairs Committee censored it for fear of communist connections, a move that only increased its popularity. Weltfish, an outspoken feminist and an active board member of many known communist organizations (although she consistently denied being a communist), continued her activities in an increasingly anti-communist national climate during World War II and its aftermath. Although the chair of the Anthropology department repeatedly advocated her promotion to a tenured position, the university consistently denied the request, citing an insufficient record of publications.

Professor Weltfish’s real troubles began in June of 1952 when discussing the recent Vienna meeting of the International Conference in Defense of Children. Controversially, Weltfish asserted that bacteriological warfare “should never become an instrument of this nation’s policy” and that germ warfare was unethical. Many newspapers and audience members quoted her statement as an accusation against the United States government for engaging in such actions, and political leaders labeled her as a subversive communist. By October, the Senate Internal Security Sub-committee had “summoned” her to ask about her communist affiliations. She refused to testify and pleaded the Fifth Amendment. One month later, the president and board of trustees of Columbia conveniently created new university rules that “limited the number of annual appointments which may be granted” to non-tenured professors. The rules also stated that these professors could not teach for more than five years unless the President made an exception in a specific case. No exception was made for Gene Weltfish, however, and she was forced to leave soon afterwards. Following her departure, the Senate Permanent Investigating Committee called her in one more time. She again refused to answer any questions.

Academic Freedom and Suppression

Ironically, Columbia prided itself on being one of the few universities that did not publicly investigate and fire teachers for political affiliations. Schrecker cites Columbia as “perhaps the most extreme example of the extent to which an academic administration was willing to go to disguise the fact that it was dismissing a teacher for political reasons.” Initially, the Columbia presidential office had manifested contempt for suppression during World War II. But that began to change in the 1940’s as an increasing number of alumni sent Columbia letters with complaints. Many criticized the institution for keeping Weltfish and other alleged communists, counter-intuitively arguing that their presence restricted academic freedom.

Columbia Vice President Pegrem responded in 1949 to one critic by saying that “No university that professes that its members have the freedom of ordinary citizens could discharge a teacher for belonging to or being active in some organization that has been put on the ‘subversive’ list made up by an official.” This statement, in its reference to “officials,” signifies authority figures outside of the university, and therefore exercising no power over the university. Propounding freethinking, Columbia University publicly advocated for academic freedom that would not be affected by any outside figure. Indeed, Columbia had some known ex-communists on its staff. Following Weltfish’s germ warfare speech, however, the university’s language concerning academic freedom of teachers changed dramatically.

Shortly after Weltfish spoke about germ warfare, and was summoned before the Senate Committee, the public relations director and assistant to the president, Robert Harron, asserted that “communists cannot subscribe to the principles of democratic freedom, they are to be enjoined from the pursuit of free intellectual inquiry.” This jarring change in language from academic freedom for all people to the elimination of this privilege for communists indicates the university’s anxiety about investigations of faculty by the government. Columbia changed its definition of academic freedom by treating it as a contract, and rendering communists incapable of subscribing to those principles.

The university’s position on academic freedom continued to devolve as HUAC, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, gained more power. As the main congressional committees prepared to investigate universities in the spring of 1953, Columbia’s President Kirk joined with presidents from other elite universities in adopting a new ruling about the Fifth Amendment. The ruling emphasized “invocation of the Fifth Amendment places upon a professor a heavy burden of proof of his fitness to hold a teaching position.” The presidents avowed that professors have the obligation to use their free-speech rights by testifying, and their failure to do so would lead to a reevaluation of their positions. Paradoxically, President Kirk demanded that faculty exercise their ability to speak, inherent in their freedom of expression, while at the same time condemning them for any speech relating to communism. He said, invocation of the Fifth Amendment” by a faculty member “lays upon his university an obligation to reexamine his qualifications for membership in its society.” His argument shifted the concept of academic freedom from protecting professors to protecting the university.

This shift was important because, as letters from politicians about the Weltfish case indicate, many political segments of society defined academic freedom through the lens of their view of a university. A Massachusetts representative wrote, “college systems should have on their faculties only genuine Americans – those who do not sponsor or talk out of the side of their mouth for some alien philosophy.” Some politicians therefore wanted to limit the types of professors allowed to teach based on their ideology. Some newspapers also discussed the positive aspect of Weltfish’s dismissal. A writer for The New York World-Telegram and Sun wrote in response, “Few decent people, we think, will quibble over the mechanics used to get this woman out of the university.” Thus, a connection to communism precluded Weltfish from receiving any protection from academic freedom which was transformed into a vehicle of censorship.

The Gene Weltfish case highlights the distinction between internal and external censorship, between leaders of the university and political figures or the public. Internal censorship was “in part to ward off complaints from outside the University.” Censorship of academic freedom was therefore designed not merely to oust communists, but to protect the university from external interference. Internal censorship thus led to a devious type of censorship.

President Kirk wrote in a “personal and confidential” memorandum that “No evidence [exists] that Dr. Weltfish has used her position as a teacher of Anthropology for purposes of Communist indoctrination. … Her colleagues … insist that she is a good scholar and a capable teacher.” Still, because of her alleged accusation of the U.S. government, he was determined to find a way to discharge her without galvanizing more public protest. Kirk concluded that his “own proposal is that [we] rid ourselves of Dr. Weltfish….” He rejected the idea of public dismissal because it “might be charged with an arbitrary act taken for political reasons.” Yet this is exactly what Kirk was doing. Kirk went so far as to bar the tenure committee from discussing the issues because it would take the position that the “University should not be concerned with the outside activities….” Her “elimination from the faculty could not therefore be the subject of as violent an internal storm as we would be compelled to weather ….”

Therefore, the president and trustees created new university policies solely to suppress certain professors. Suppression of academic freedom also resulted in deception, not just of Weltfish but of the university community and the public. Kirk’s consistent public response to her dismissal was that she was one of many teachers who were not retained. The New York Times commented that the university “denied that her political activities had anything to do with its decision.”

Protests and Failed Protests

The reaction to the dismissal of Dr. Weltfish incurred the anger of many students and professors. They, too, rallied behind the cry of academic freedom, but one that entailed protection of the professor. A closer scrutiny of their actions, though, rather than just the content of some letters, indicates that many remained silent for fear of dismissal and persecution. Censorship of a professor therefore led to the chilling of free speech of many other university members.

The university archives preserved several letters from angry students and faculty, who invoked academic freedom to defend Weltfish. Anthony Leeds, Assistant Head of the Department of Anthropology, wrote to President Kirk that he “heard with bitter shock of the dismissal, or failure to reappoint, Dr. Gene Weltfish. …” Leeds’s letter indicates that he had requested her promotion many times, and that as a professor Weltfish displayed excellent skills. Furthermore, his assertion that she “encouraged free and active discussions” and never discussed any political opinions illustrates the professor’s view of academic freedom as protecting the professor. The Dean of the Journalism school “deplored the violation of ‘freedom of the individual, independent expression of opinion on controversial subjects.’”

Students also protested Weltfish’s dismissal. The Student Committee for Academic Freedom passed a resolution expressing its “disapproval of refusal to reply to the questions submitted by [the] organization concerning Weltfish’s dismissal” and of President Kirk silence on the original questions about Weltfish’s dismissal. Furthermore, the students signed a protest against her dismissal. The chairman of Students for Democratic Action also accused the University of not properly separating the “political and academic question,” in light of academic freedom. Columbia Spectator published an article quoting many professors outraged by the dismissal. A Professor Giddings commented that the dismissal was “the most serious defeat American education has suffered in years. The student protests, while unsuccessful, illustrate that while the university succeeded in firing Weltfish, it failed in its goal of concealing the actual reason for her dismissal.

While these letters paint a picture of protest against academic censorship, it is uncertain whether they represent the majority or even a significant portion of the student and faculty. As Schrecker notes, the letter from the anthropology students contained one hundred forty signatures, yet there were seven hundred people in the department. To make matters worse, some of those protestors may have been cowed into silence out of fear of retaliation. Columbia University archives contain one letter from a student who signed the protest document asking President Kirk to remove his signature. The student promised he was not a communist and expressed concern that his signature would make it “possible to infer much about me… 

I am neither a Communist … I do not wish to overthrow our government and I would give no support to anyone who does.”Kirk’s response was chilling: “You were considerate to write as you did.”

Epilogue  

Weltfish struggled to obtain another teaching position until 1961, when she became a professor at Farleigh Dickinson. Books on the social history of Columbia often mention Weltfish in passing, and emphasize the pressure imposed on President Kirk by the trustees. The university webpage about previous presidents comments that his presidency was marked by conflict because of his actions in 1968, when he ultimately was forced to retire, but does not discuss the Weltfish case. Without doubt, Kirk, like many other presidents, was burdened by impending threats from HUAC. Kirk also decided to retain other faculty members despite their previous communist activities. However, because there was not a threat of a public hearing for these other professors, Kirk turned his attention exclusively to Weltfish. Kirk’s decision to conceal his reasons for dismissing Weltfish compounds the perversion of the term academic freedom at Columbia during the McCarthy era. The power and meaning of academic freedom remained in the hands of the president and trustees. Ironically, those charged with safeguarding academic freedom rarely entered the classrooms themselves.

Sixty years later the political climate on campus is radically different. Although there are always disparate reactions to presidential fireside chats, their very existence indicates willingness for greater transparency. The quick resolution to the flyering problem demonstrates a strong commitment on behalf of the administration to take seriously questions of freedom of expression. Still, this case emphasizes the importance of shunning complacency, and reflecting upon the evolution of the university in the recent past.

\\

GILANA KELLER is a senior in Barnard College. She can be reached at grk2106@barnard.edu. A footnoted version of this article is available by request at editors@columbiacurrent.org. Photo by Matthew Sherman.

By Maddie Wolberg

\\

Days after November 1, 2011, Fidel Castro sent a letter offering his condolences to the Partido Comunista de Argentina (Communist Party of Argentina), mourning the death of its once-leader, Fanny Edelman. When the PC published its monthly newsletter on November 11, the issue included remarks of lament from sources as diverse as the Argentinean Secretariat of Human Rights and the African People’s Solidarity Committee. The entirety of the eight-page circular was devoted to Edelman’s work as the Communist Party’s Director-General and President, and as an ardent activist for Communist and Socialist values, including her service among the founders of the Unión de Mujeres Argentinas (Union of Argentinean Women). Reading the newsletter, one instantly realizes that Edelman was a woman of importance not only among Partido Comunista officials and affiliates, but even to republican government officials and within political spheres with international reach. But what allowed Edelman, a Jew born of Eastern European immigrants, to become such a key figure in Argentinean political history?

Edelman’s fame is largely attributable to her work as a founder and leader of the Union de Mujeres Argentinas (the “UMA”), a Communist Party-backed women’s organization devoted to assisting the anti-Nazi war effort and fighting against national totalitarianism. In particular, the UMA struggled against the abuse of power by conservative Argentinean military dictatorships since its inception. The era from which it emerged was marked by rampant corruption and appalling curtailments of civil rights, including the still-unresolved disappearances of nearly 13,000 political dissidents. Edelman, who was born in Córdoba, Argentina, in 1911 as Fanny Jacovkis, was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants who arrived in South America after fleeing persecution in their home country. Like many incoming Jews from Eastern Europe, they had been abused at the hateful hand of authoritarian tsarist regimes. Along with thousands of other Eastern European Jews, the Jacovkis family found refuge from persecution and poverty in the New World. Argentina in the early 20th century was a nation whose citizens took pride in their immigrant origins, and purported to be a hospitable environment for newcomers, largely due to its growing industrialization and an increasing need for lower- and middle-class workers. Edelman’s father began working at a telegraph company soon after he arrived. Edelman herself noted in an interview that her parents were “not political” but were nonetheless “free thinkers, anarchists,” qualities with which they would endow their daughter, too.

The Jacovkis family moved when Edelman’s father lost his job, eventually settling in the nation’s hyperactive capital, Buenos Aires. Edelman would later attribute her political awareness and activism to her exposure to new ideas and ways of life in the diverse city. First as a worker in a textile factory and later as a musician and music teacher, she interacted with people who comprised the Argentinean political left: radically progressive thinkers including Communists, Socialists, and anarchists, among whose ranks were counted handfuls of other lower-class workers, artists, and political activists. She later came to marry one of these—Bernard Edelman, a member of the Argentine Socialist Party—and, as said Edelman in the same interview, “it was under his influence that I began to become a militant.” As Edelman worked and lived in Buenos Aires, she could hardly help but be affected by the growing political turmoil that came to a head by 1930, when forces led by fascist General José Felix Uriburu staged a coup that displaced democratically-elected (though admittedly not labor-friendly) President Hipolito Yrigoyn. Uriburu’s leadership ushered in a new era of crackdowns on even peaceful political dissidents and especially on Communist and Socialist sympathizers. Because of the risk of torture or death at the hands of Uriburu’s military police, Fanny and Bernard Edelman fled Argentina in 1937 for Spain, where they worked for the Republican defense during the Spanish Civil War. It was here that they became further enmeshed in the culture of anti-fascist political activism. By the time the Edelmans returned a year later, they were known across the Argentinean political landscape for their work to combat brutal authoritarianism.

Edelman would continue to fight for women’s rights, especially in the face of the many Latin American dictatorships that would rise to power during the latter half of the 20th century. Throughout her later life, Fanny Edelman would work in a variety of roles as a leader on the front of Argentinean activism. She completed terms as the head of the International Women’s Democratic Federation; as a UN representative on Argentina’s behalf, where she would drive the creation of International Women’s Day; as the head of the 1978 UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva on the military dictatorship of Argentina in the 1970s; as Secretary-General of the Union de Mujeres Argentinas; and as the President of the Communist Party of Argentina until her death in 2011.

Edelman’s powerful influence, and that of other socially and politically active Jewish Argentinean women like her, was, frankly, unpredictable: during the last century, Latin America was often known for its machismo culture (characterized by a heightened sensitivity to traditional norms and barriers regarding gender) and male-dominated society. What’s more, Jews have always been a minority in the largely Catholic nation. Despite their growing presence in the early 20th century, even today they make up a meager half-percent of the entire Argentinean population. Furthermore, the early- and mid-20th century were certainly not characterized by women’s political influence and involvement. Argentinean women did not receive suffrage until 1947, after pioneers such as Edelman and her colleagues in the UMA and its predecessors succeeded in asserting themselves in favor of a new role for women in democracy.

What accounts for these apparent discrepancies? In other words, what factors contributed to the successful exertion of Communist and Socialist ideals by previously marginalized, lower-class female Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe? Clearly, this was not the predictable demographic for political power in Buenos Aires in the early parts of the 20th century. The rising popularity of Communist and Socialist politics among Jewish women can be attributed to two significant factors: the growing ranks of Jewish women entering the modern industrial workforce; and the alienation of these women by the fascist general Juan Perón, whose conservative regime bound Jewish women to the progressive values that ultimately guided the formation of the UMA.

Though the Communist ethics of antitheism invite curiosity as to their compatibility with the values of the religious Jewish population, scholarship has shown that many Eastern European Jews—those who formed the majority of Jewish immigrants in Argentina—had once tended to align themselves with Bolshevik revolutionary forces as a counter to the severe religious repression and political violence to which they had been subjected under the tsars and other authoritarian regimes prior to their immigration. Even before their arrival in Argentina, then, these Jews had come to terms with their deep sense of anger and antipathy towards tsarist government and its many events of persecution by cultivating fervor for politically disestablishmentarian or otherwise revolutionary causes. In the face of a homogeneous and nationalistic society in Argentina, it seems that Jews would have aligned themselves with the Communist and Socialist movements to protect their lives, making their religious discrepancies a secondary priority in order to better fight against labor discrimination and social stigmatization. The PC, recognizing growing distaste for Perón among its constituents, positioned itself and, later, the UMA as a counter to established conservatism; as Edelman stated, the growth of women’s political movements was a powerful factor for the PC, since it encompassed an entire segment of society whose potential for power and influence had theretofore been ignored. Many Jewish women were only too happy to play this role—especially Edelman herself—because the support of the PC afforded domestic as well as international backing from Communist regimes and parties in Argentina and abroad against the abuses they abided.

The Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe initially arrived in central Argentina, where Jewish expansionist organizations such as the Jewish Colonization Organization provided them with plots of farmland. Steadily, however, Jews began to trickle into Buenos Aires as urbanization and industrial expansion created new, more lucrative jobs. By 1936, the 120,177 Jews living in Argentina’s capital constituted living more than 5 percent of the city’s population—compared to just 289 Jews in 1887. Jewish women, more particularly, also began to participate in the economy as part of a burgeoning female workforce. At the time, women were a source of high-demand, low-skill labor whose resources could be bought at low wages by industrial producers in the capital city, especially in occupations such as sewing, laundering, cigarette making, and other jobs often associated with sweatshop conditions and domestic acumen. Indeed, commensurate with the spike in female employment was the tendency for these women to face unsavory work environments and arguably exploitative conditions. By the close of World War II, nearly one-third of all women earned wages in the workforce, while half of women ages eighteen to twenty-nine worked paying jobs.

As Jewish women became engaged in industrial labor, they also became introduced to public life and the struggles of the working class as they began to carve out an increasing presence in the political sphere. After experiencing low wages, long working hours, and unfair treatment, female Jewish laborers joined unions and became activists for labor rights. For example, the textile industry, in particular, employed many women who became subsequently involved (and in dominant roles, no less) in groups such as the Unión Obrera Textíl (Textile Workers Union) and the Federación Obrera del Vestido (Labor Federation of Clothing), which themselves sympathized with Communist and Socialist ideologies. In time, these women would find a collective gendered voice in the UMA, which advocated more broadly for the rights of the female working class.

The increasingly active role of Jewish women in Communist and Socialist groups was intersected by the rise of a new Argentinean political regime under Juan Perón, which emphasized politically and socially conservative ideals and was seen as oppositional to Communist and Socialist dissidents. Perón’s election and the ideals that he espoused were the catalyst for the formal organization of Argentinean Jewish women for several reasons. In 1946, Perón rose to power as the President of Argentina, supported by labor parties. However, as time went on, his government became increasingly conservative and began to fear the radical tendencies of Communists, Socialists, and other liberal groups. Perón had supported the Axis Powers during World War II, expressing his approval of their militant jingoism and their harsh tactics to suppress movements demanding social change. Opponents of “naziperonismo,” as Perón’s enemies scathingly dubbed his methods of statecraft, criticized the use of imprisonment and violence against activists, in addition to repression of free speech and media.

More concerning for women, however, was increasing subordination of women who worked in “pink collar” jobs such as education. Concern for the subordination of women was key to the Communist and Socialist movements. Lower- and middle-class Jewish women—those who made up the bulwark of female Communist and Socialist movements in Buenos Aires—had much to lose in such a regime. Their political rights were at risk, as the government carried out misogynistic practices. Despite her involvement the very public formation of the Women’s Peronist Party, advertised to give a voice to working-class women, Juan’s wife, Eva Perón, constantly reinforced with rhetorical insistence the gender paradigm of women who served their husbands and their families in the home. In her September 1947 speech marking the passage of the women’s suffrage law, Eva emphasized the importance of women as matriarchs of the family and masters of the home, effectively recommending that women be chained once more to the gendered spheres from which suffrage had purported to liberate them. Perón himself preserved laws that deprived women of legal control over their children and even the rights to their own last names, and which forced women to adopt the addresses of their husbands and to relocate with them wherever they went.

These concerns of Jewish women were compounded by the greatest worry of all: surging state-promoted anti-Semitism in Argentina. Perón and his government, in an attempt to subvert the liberal opposition, promoted negativity toward Jews by linking them in derogatory ways to the powerful positions that some held within labor organizations and other anti-fascist movements. More generally, though, Perón’s government encouraged strong nationalistic feelings and a demographic homogeneity that posed a danger to the stability of religious and ethnic minorities within the Catholic nation. The immigrant Jews—not unfamiliar with the woes of persecution, having just a generation before escaped the pogroms in their native lands—grew fearful. The precariousness of their position was not aided by Perón’s strong opposition to Communism, Socialism, and other forms of populist radicalism, all of which were directly associated (and negatively so, to be sure) with Jewishness. One piece of fascist propaganda at the time claimed that “Communism is an arm of Judaism…[and] since Judaism came before Communism, and the latter was created, executed, and directed by Jews, it is logical to conclude that Communism is a weapon of Judaism devised in order to advance its plan for world domination by means of destroying Christianity.” Even more alarmingly, Perón openly expressed his open admiration for the Nazi regime, along with its various leaders and fascist allies across Europe, and had even sheltered notorious war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Argentina after the war. Fearing the consequences of “naziperonismo,” many Jewish women were urged even further toward opposition groups, motivated by Communism and Socialism, which emphasized inclusive states based upon ideals of egalitarianism and anti-nationalism.

In this sense, however, the Jews had less to fear than they thought—Perón began to treat the Jewish community as a potential voting bloc, encouraging the growth of Jewish-run Peronist parties and their involvement in the national political scene. After the foundation of the Women’s Peronist Party, 29 women were elected to senatorial and deputy positions in the 1951 elections. Despite these numbers and the admittedly increased role of women in the political sphere, however, Peronism’s great failure was its lack of female leadership that could boast responsibilities at all comparable to those discharged by men. The majority of women who were elected to Peron’s government subscribed to the prevailing ideology of women’s subservience to men. Their work to win voting rights for women was channeled through Eva Perón’s Women’s Peronist Party, which itself assented to its own secondary place among government initiatives. While the Peronist system was embraced by a number of lower-class women, Perón’s promises failed to placate the ambitious liberals of the female working-class. In fact, most of the Socialist and Communist members of the Argentinean movement for universal suffrage (Edelman among them, along with famed suffragist Alicia Moreau de Justo) initially refused Perón’s offer to grant women the vote, believing that his and Eva’s avowed support for feminism was a sham, disguising greater plans for mistreatment and inequality. These women, far-sighted and skeptical, would not settle for less than extended rights on their own terms, which they knew could only be won by marching under their own institutional banner. So they organized.

The Unión de Mujeres Argentinas arose as a response to growing fears of Perón’s regime. It was established in 1947 by a group of Argentinean women who comprised their country’s political left at the time, and was backed by the Partido Comunista as a means of mobilizing the uninvolved female Argentine population. Though it was socially and economically diverse, the UMA counted among its members many Jewish Communists and Communist sympathizers including Edelman, who later became the group’s Secretary-General. Edelman herself advocated seriously for the creation of the UMA, insisting that women were necessary to spur a national Socialist movement. Considering the previous tradition of female detachment from politics, the existing conditions of the working-class Jewish female populace of Buenos Aires seem to have had the greatest effect on encouraging those women to participate in the Socialist and Communist movements. The UMA set a precedent for Argentinean women’s political organizations; it was the country’s largest political group ever founded and run by women, and one of the few populated by a disproportionate number of Jews—a rarity in its moment in Argentinean history and a marker of the growing political activism among Jewish women. The UMA’s work was widespread and varied in its scope, though it primarily focused on promoting women’s rights, such as fair working conditions and wage equality for female laborers. The UMA hoped to raise the profile of women workers, who then made up nearly half of the working “proletariat” in Argentina and were largely concentrated in the textile, agricultural, and domestic services industries. Members of the UMA most notably supported the movement toward universal suffrage; comprised a major force of the Argentinean arm of the anti-fascist movement, for which Edelman herself had first fought in Spain; and agitated in favor of issues regarding women’s equality, particularly in work and education. Gaining victories in these areas, the UMA’s mark on the present is broad and unmistakable. It is no surprise that Edelman’s death was one felt, although only subtly, around the world.

History would smile as the spirit and growth that thrived in Buenos Aires during the 1930s and 40s proved fertile for Jewish women in their ascent to positions of influence in Communist, Socialist, and other leftist groups. The rise of Jewish women as political officers in Argentina in the decades since speaks to the incredible effects of the economic, political, and social atmosphere on entrenched ideology. The Jewish women of Buenos Aires, most of whom were the offspring of Eastern European immigrants or were immigrants themselves, impressively managed to affect political change on a system that had formerly regarded their lowly origins with contempt. Interestingly, the political landscape not only of Argentina, but of much of South America as well, has been largely transformed to accommodate the gender parity for which these early liberals travailed. In Argentina, populist Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the first elected female president in the country’s history, while her colleague Michele Bachelet was the first female president of Chile from 2006 to 2010. In their wake, South America and Central America have become models of female participation in executive office, with the highest concentration of female heads of state in any region on earth. The groundwork for such a system was laid by the efforts of Fanny Edelman and her liberal cohorts, who cleared a space for progressive politics and for activist women to reclaim their autonomy from under the persistent shadow of oppression.

By Divya Subramanian

\\

Telegraph Avenue
Michael Chabon
Harper/HarperCollins Publishers

\\

Tempeh looms large in Telegraph Avenue, the latest American epic from Michael Chabon, mostly as cultural shorthand for a certain type of white, sandal-wearing, beard-sporting Berkeley resident. In mapping the cultural terrain of Berkeley circa 2004, Chabon draws an incisive portrait of lives lived amid the detritus of the 70s. Here cult martial arts movies and vintage records exert a strange and otherworldly pull on the denizens of Telegraph Avenue, the line where Berkeley blurs into Oakland. Tempeh jokes aside, the first fifty pages of Telegraph Avenue contain references to Marcus Aurelius, Wolverine, and acid jazz organist Charles Kynard. If this is the vocabulary of the American dream, it’s a different one than we’re used to hearing about.

Since The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, his 1988 debut written as an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, Chabon has staked out Americana as his favored literary territory. His work enacts homage to the classic objects of American boyhood. In Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, he reanimated the American comic book, with its roots in Brooklyn and (unexpectedly) the amateur magic societies of interwar Prague. In Telegraph Avenue, he does much the same for the American record shop, its seams sagging and its contents outdated, soon to be consigned to the cultural past.

What is at stake in Telegraph Avenue is autochthonous black culture, manifested not only in music but in film and cars and local legend. As in Kavalier and Clay, Chabon is concerned with the preservation of idiosyncratic American cultural artifacts, rooting a central male friendship in the sale of what are essentially collector’s items, items with value and significance that transcends the quotidian. In writing about forgotten Americana, Chabon appears to be reconstructing American pasts through the prism of alterity, turning from Jewish Brooklyn in the 1940s, the setting of Kavalier and Clay, to black Oakland as it faces a new wave of cultural incursion.

Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe—Archy is black and Nat is white—are best friends and co-owners of the failing Brokeland Records, specializing in vintage jazz, funk, and soul. The shop’s inevitable demise is hastened by the arrival, across the street, of corporate America in the form of Dogpile Thang, a media superstore owned by Gibson Goode, the fifth-richest black man in America. As Archy and Nat wrestle with the consequences of Dogpile’s move into the neighborhood, they are forced to reevaluate their friendship. Their bond is the only thing they know that testifies to the notion that “real and ordinary friendship between black people and white people was possible, at least here, in the minor kingdom of Brokeland, California.”

While Archy and Nat vacillate over the fate of Brokeland Records, each preferring to bury himself in music, their wives have their own cultural battles to fight. Gwen and Aviva are midwives and partners at Berkeley Birth Partners, struggling to assert the right of home birth practitioners to be recognized as trained professionals by Berkeley hospitals. Almost lost in the shuffle are Julie, Nat’s sweet, dorky fifteen-year-old son, and Titus, a friend Julie brings home one day who bears a striking resemblance to Archy’s estranged father, washed-up martial arts star Luther Stallings. A major subplot links Luther to the impending Dogpile Thang store, via a local councilman and an old Batman costume.

Telegraph Avenue is anchored by the parallel friendships between Archy and Nat on one hand and Gwen and Aviva on the other. Unlike their wives, Archy and Nat never develop into distinctive characters; they remain puzzlingly featureless, blanks at the novel’s heart. The novel spills over, however, with small-time gangsters and enigmatic kung-fu masters and Ethiopian restaurant-owners: a whole range of lives lived on the cultural outskirts of Berkeley. Depicting a multiethnic community in flux, Chabon weighs the whispered promise of post-racial America against a new wave of gentrification. This time the entrepreneurs are black, not white. As Archy muses to himself, will that make a difference?

Despite the weight of the novel’s themes, Chabon’s elastic prose is as loose-limbed as ever, navigating narrative twists and turns with ease. His flair for beautiful excess suits the verdant California landscape he describes. Oakland is streaked with fog that leaves “only a softness, as tender as a memory from childhood, to blur the sunlight that warmed the sprawl of rosemary and purple salvia along the fragrant sidewalk and fell in shifting shafts through the branches of the monkey-puzzle tree.” Telegraph Avenue floats along on this sort of descriptive hum as well as on snappier rhythms; Chabon is at his most peerlessly literary with his dialogue, the rare example of “colloquial” speech that actually sounds colloquial. When Nat asks Julie what the boy has been up to, the following ensues:

Julius said, “Filing my teeth.”

“Uh-huh. Not smoking dope.”

“Just crack. And a little opium. Just, like, this much.” He pinched an imaginary pellet between his fingterips. “Fuck, Dad.”

“Because you know it would be alright if you did.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Not all right, but I mean, if you were getting high, I would want you to tell me about it, right?”

“Right.”

“Not feel like you have to hide it or anything.”

“I get it.”

“Because that’s when you start to drift into stupid.”

Julie said that he planned to continue his lifelong policy of avoiding stupid at every possible opportunity.

Julie, a sort of lovesick Adrian Mole, is a classic Chabon teenager: Jewish, hesitantly gay, creative in yet-to-be-discovered ways. Assuming that Julie has outgrown active parenting, at the novel’s close Nat is “shocked by the influx of his son into his arms. The bony shoulders, the soft lank hair against his cheek. Shocked by the tears that wetted the front of his shirt.” Chabon is similarly gentle towards his characters, slowly teasing out their vulnerabilities. They are all sinew and spirit, scrabbling to make it, whatever making it turns out to mean.

Yet for all Telegraph Avenue’s heart, Chabon’s attempt at mapping an intensely local community feels hollow, hobbled by self-deprecatory asides about the overwhelming desire of white Berkeley-ites to imagine themselves in tune with the beating heart of black culture. The novel’s self-consciousness seems to stem from Chabon’s own fatal uncertainty about the validity of his authorial stance. A Berkeley resident himself, Chabon falls into the same category as many of the individuals he satirizes, a fact that he is unable to move beyond. He seems to want to have his (gluten-free) cake and eat it, too.

In its structure, Telegraph Avenue bears more than a passing resemblance to Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, a novel that tackles similar themes of unlikely male friendship, cultural diversity, and fragmented identity. But whereas Smith’s vision of multicultural London is firmly tied to the neighborhood of Willesden, Chabon’s “Brokeland” seems adrift from the bulk of Telegraph Avenue. He is right to be wary about endorsing “multiculturalism,” a word that often obscures more than it reveals. But his exploration of its lived realities often feels like an afterthought: a box to tick on the checklist of the great American novel. For Telegraph Avenue has, and in fact probably deserves to have, delusions of grandeur. After all, none other than Barack Obama makes an appearance in its pages, the state senator from Illinois taking in a performance by Nat and Archy’s band. It fails, however, to live up to these ambitions.

Telegraph Avenue is at its best when it gets down to details, never out of step with the nuances of everyday interactions. Its characters are wryly aware of their prejudices. Aviva has long learned to measure “the temperature of her own racism, of her biases and stereotypes about young black males.” Nat wishes that a gathering of white activists at Brokeland Records had a dash more color in it than S.S. Mirchandani, a Punjabi taxi driver with absurdly elegant English. Too often, though, Chabon’s depiction of “messy” multiculturalism descends into parody. When leveled on a grand scale it feels derivative instead of fresh, a grab-bag of tropes and kitschy accents and characters with African grey parrots permanently perched on their shoulders. Chabon duly poses questions about the viability of the community he describes, but these feel dated, if not perfunctory.

Ultimately, Chabon comes down on the side of optimism. Things aren’t perfect, and people don’t always get along. But his characters still hope for a better, fairer day. While this is a modest conclusion for a novel that runs more than four hundred pages, it feels right within the context of Telegraph Avenue, a work that is itself flawed but has ample reserves of humor and imagination. It is tempting to describe Telegraph Avenue as a great read, although it aspires to be much more. Chabon’s narrative vision, however, remains as finely textured as ever, reaching out to encompass both those swept along by the current of change and those stubbornly clinging on in its wake, the ones in the shadows.