Τι θέλετε να δείτε; /What would you like to see?

I wish to make some changes in this blog and before I pull them through, I’d like to know what do you guys/gals like. The options are:

1. History: Posts on the history of Greek Jewry – I won’t really diminish them because I often write stuff together with my research but I’d like to find out if people favour it as much as I do.
2. News: (self explanatory)
3. Activism: this shall be addressed in the near future
4. Contemporary Jewish Life: A jewish perspective on everyday stuff, from tatoos, to gay rights, to jewish ethics…
5. Jewish Culture: books, music, language, recipes
6. Middle East: it ain’t gonna happen but just curious
7. Leave it as is
8. Don’t know/Don’t like you

I’m open to all suggestions by the way and if you’re reading this through rss or email, don’t be bored and vote ! :-)

The poll / Η ψηφοφορία:

Θέλω να κάνω μερικές αλλαγές στο ιστολόγιο και πριν προχωρήσω θα ήθελα να μάθω τι σας αρέσει. Οι επιλογές είναι:

1. Ιστορία: Αναρτήσεις για την ιστορία του Ελληνικού Εβραϊσμού – δε σκοπεύω να τις μειώσω, βέβαια, γιατί συχνά γράφψ μαζί με την έρευνα μου αλλά θα ήθελα να δω αν σας αρέσουν όσο εμένα.
2. Νέα
3. Ακτιβισμός: με αυτό θα ασχοληθούμε στο μέλλον
4. Σύγχρονη Εβραϊκή Ζωή: μια εβραϊκή ματιά σε διάφορα θέματα της καθημερινότητας, από τατουάζ ως τα δικαιώματα των ομοφυλοφίλων, εβραϊκή ηθική…
5. Εβραϊκός Πολιτισμός: βιβλία, μουσική, συνταγές
6. Μέση Ανατολή: δεν πρόκειται να μπω σε αυτό το μονοπάτι αλλά είμαι περίεργος
7. Άσε το όπως είναι.
8. Δεν ξέρω/ Δε σε συμπαθώ

Είμαι ανοικτός σε όλες τις προτάσεις και αν διαβάζετε αυτό το κείμενο μέσω rss ή email, μην βαρίέστε και ψηφίστε ! :-)

Quien en cielo escupe, a la cara le cae

Ελληνικά

“Μην κρίνετε για να μην κριθείτε. Διότι με την κρίση που κρίνετε θα κριθείτε και εσείς και με το ίδιο μέτρο που μετράτε θα μετρηθείτε και εσείς. Γιατί βλέπεις το αχυράκι στο μάτι του αδελφού σου και δεν αισθάνεσαι το δοκάρι στο δικό σου μάτι; Και πώς θα πεις στον αδελφό σου άφησέ με να βγάλω το αχυράκι από το μάτι σου, όσο υπάρχει ακόμη το δοκάρι στο δικό σου μάτι; Υποκριτή, βγάλε πρώτα το δοκάρι από το μάτι σου και τότε θα δεις καθαρά ώστε να βγάλεις το αχυράκι από το μάτι του αδελφού σου.”

Οπως κάθε θρησκευτικό κείμενο, το παρόν απόσπασμα μπορεί να χρησιμοποιηθεί με πολλούς τρόπους και συνήθως ενάντια σε αυτόν που το επικαλείται.  Συνέβησαν πολλά αυτούς τους μήνες στην χώρα μου αλλά και σε εμένα – για το μόνο που μπορώ να είμαι σίγουρος είναι οτι quien en cielo escupe, a la cara le cae. Επιστρέφουμε στην κανονική ροή του προγράμματος με μερικές αλλαγές.

English

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in you own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

As any self-respecting religious text, this excerpt can be used in many ways and usually against the one who invokes it. Many things have happened these past months in my country and me – for the only thing I can be sure is that quien en cielo escupe, a la cara le cae. We return to the regular posting, albeit with some changes.

Tanned…

Hey – I’m back from Zionist Island where I killed christian kids to explant organs and programmed how to move Tel-Aviv to Crete, natural since Jews fought Greece in WW1, (brand new conspiracy theories which will be presented in due time in our “The Jews did it!” category). In any case I’m ready for a year which hopefully shall address the problems this blog faced for it’s first year and a half. Before anything else I repeat: iast month I reached the conclusion all bloggers reach after bitter experience and shall allow no trolls here, except in Troll’s Nest. I also intend to post more regularly (the Draft section was full and growing old there doesn’t do the posts any good) and radically re-organize this blog trying to make information more accessible.

Also expect to see some posts in greek, already I’ve written two or three which shall appear a couple of posts away – depending on their welcome I may try and publish more stuff in greek since I see that Google Translate is used extensively. Also I plan to keep alive the memory of the Old Jewish Cemetery of Thessaloniki and try to build something on Panos Zervas’ letter to the Mayor of Thessaloniki. Also more photos from my travels in Greece and it’s Jewish monuments – no reason to keep whining about Jewish History if I don’t show what’s still left. And of course the re-introduction of the Books&Media category.

Again I would like to repeat that I am open to suggestions on what subjects you feel I should touch more or less, the form of this blog, the language that I use etc – please feel free to contact me through the contact form here or emailing me or simply comment below. I know it all seems like I’m making my opening speech for a campaign but I must admit that I have high hopes and many plans – let’s see if you’ll like them too. :)

ps.The photo’s comes from here and of course, yes – I’m Darth Vader. Luke is going to be the object of our next post – those who guess correctly who he is shall receive 1 (one) litle boy to enrich their Xmas cake, (βασιλόπιτα).

Going on vacations…

Real greeks don’t blog on August – if they blog they are not greeks, simple as that. Therefore with your permission I’ll will be off for a week or two (or three if they paycheck from the Mossad is real good), to enjoy my greek summer!

I’ll bid you goodbye with a video that I stole from Diagoras, (via toomanytribles&demetrios).

Καλές διακοπές!

New policy on trolling in this blog

No trolls!

My latest post here was a proposition: naming a station of the new subway of Thessaloniki as “Old Jewish Cemetery” or “Εβραικά Μνήματα”. Both Athinaios in Αθηναίου Βορβορυγμοί and Panos in Η Καλύβα Ψηλά στο Βουνό also wrote about it and there was an interesting discussion in the latter. An interesting discussion began here too but soon it degenerated. Why? Because many small-minded bigots and jew-haters plummeted here and began trolling on – what a surprise! – the Israel-Palestine-Arab countries conflict. The academic level of their arguments was centered around jews/israelis (terms used inter-exchangeably) being behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11 etc etc. On the other hand at Καλύβα none of this happened and the discussion was a fruitful one; all of this made me wandering what went wrong here and what is the position I should keep, especially given the recent talk in the greek blogsphere on self regulation.

First things first. A blog is not a forum; it is not an independent, neutral platform on which people meet and talk. Above all it is a private soap box, a stand, where the blog author/s say their story. Commenting allows interacting and often leads to discussions which are more meaningful than the post itself. But a mistake people make is that they think they have a moral or legal right to say whatever they want and get away with it. First the legal right is limited: by posting or commenting in an Automattic blog (the company behind WordPress.com) we all agree to the Terms of Service (TOS). Among them is the prohibition of posting or commenting that can be found inciting religious and ethnic hatred, plus avoid libel. This latter one is especially important for me, since all the recent legal prosecutions of greek bloggers were based on this accusation.

The moral right is bit trickier.

Beresheet 2.0

A year ago Abravanel was born; to mark the occasion I thought of re-publishing my very first post. I’m also posting the stats of my most popular articles, (click to enlarge), which seem to favorite the how to insult a greek and how I learned what malakas means. Something not totally unexpected since I rank no1 in Google to the query “what malakas means” and find myself just in the 2nd page of the results for “malakas”. Not the accomplishments I wished for but alas… :-P

At least I find myself in page 12 when asking for “greek jews” though Plevris does a lot better than I do, again alas…

Anyway I’m not going to be overly sentimental about it but I’d like to say that this had been so far a great trip and believe me I’m just beginning to warm up! Thanks to everyone who has taken a minute to read any of the things I published, comment or send me an email. Know that I’m always open to suggestions – ξανά ευχαριστώ και καλή συνέχεια σε όλους μας!

Υγ. Σκεφτομαι να έχω περισσότερα ποστ στα ελληνικά, τι πιστεύετε;

PS. I’m thinking of having more posts in greek, what do you think about it?

Remembering

Remember… That is the imperative that one finds in the writings of people who took part in the Holocaust/Shoah as witnesses and involuntary victims. Remember…is what is repeated each year when the ceremonies for the Shoah take place or when the monster of hate rises to threaten jews and non-jews alike.

Still the imperative “remember” assumes different meanings for the different people who utter it. This is fairly obvious in the different ways society deals with the Day of Remembrance. Right-wing politics flock to show that despite their friends, their sayings and their stands they still are not “jew haters”. Left wing politics fail to even show up, since the jews are the new “fascists” to compete against. The Institutions simply see it as a burden to bring forward in the less obvious way possible, lest be accused in succumbing to the jews. The Media simply broadcast the same old archives from foreign documentaries and deal with it the same way they deal with the tsunami, a bad thing but that happened far-far away to “others”. The rest of the Society doesn’t know or care and frankly, seen how Politics, Institutions and Media deal with the Day, they have their fair share of excuses.

On the other hand I grew up in a house where no one ever had to tell me to remember. For me the Holocaust was strange tales about a place far-far away the grownups in my house were involved in. The only tangible aspect of these stories were the blue numbers tattooed on their arms. I used to be so stupefied by these numbers for they transformed a tale into a reality which I could touch, scrutinize and fantasize upon. I was just a kid but it was fairly obvious that something had indeed happened and these numbers told of a story which I could only get glimpses and half truths from its comprehensibly reluctant narrators. Still to them it was not the historical event that later became the Holocaust; to them it was simply “τα στρατόπεδα”/“the camps” were they had gone but even if they wanted they could never truly shed from them since the mark of the camps was not only in their minds but on their physical shelves. This number, hard as they might have tried should they have wanted, could not be erased and hard as I might have tried should have I wanted could not be forgotten.

At that time I didn’t have the faintest idea how different the war had been upon them. I remember that I used to harass them regularly to have them tell me stories which were adapted to suit a 5 year old and which invariably fascinated him. From these stories I can only remember parts that I, as a small pampered kid, could understand remotely: having to rise with shouts – getting beaten – being hungry. Hell, I remember that hearing “Raus” and “Schnell” seemed extraordinarily funny and I repeated them same way today a kid will parrot a phrase from the telly.

As I grew up my perception of the Holocaust changed and its memory was perpetuated through the Absence than through the Presence. It was no longer necessary to see the numbers on the arms or hear stories to remember; it was enough to see what was missing. There were no stories that passed from generation to generation, no relatives to visit, any family relics or photos. When I was little this absence didn’t weigh on me since I didn’t actually realize it and the immediate present was just enough. As I grew up, the natural urge we all have to discover our past and make bonds with it also kept growing only to find itself bump against an invisible wall which defined Before and After. One could, through research, get to know more about what had happened 500 years ago to his family than know more about the generation immediately prior to the Holocaust. The Absence was what defined the Holocaust and the generations past it; people focalizing on this specific moment trying to secure little threads of memories which could be extricated from the WW2 maelstrom. In my family a single photo whose members but one were dead by 1943, reconstituted from the pieces it was torn, is the sole remainder of all the generations that passed before; it struggles to rise up to the immense role of filling the Absence but it isn’t the only one that defines the past – the tangible absence of all the others is a monolith to whom this humble photo has to confront with.

Remembering for me is not only a token of respect to those who were murdered, gassed and burned. It is a vital need to fill up the void, a deep drive to give meaning to all those who lived before me and found their entire lives clinging upon a meager photo before fading in the oblivion. And if the Holocaust physically erased thousands of persons it managed to go even past the Holocaust generation and burn itself unto the generations that were to come by eliminating their Past and through the Absence it created make it a part of their life in a painfully contemporary way.

So I must admit I lied when I said I keep the memory vivid in me; I’ve never had to remember because the cataclysm the Holocaust had been, never actually left me.

 

PS. Yad Vashem has a page for the schools approved by the Greek Ministry of Education and Religion – visit it.

Problem with spam control

Akismet, which controls spam, seems to be having some trouble. I may see the number of spam stopped increasing but I don’t see anything appearing on the Akismet mod queue to review if it’s really spam or not. If you did comment and you don’t see you comment appearing please email me – thanks and sorry. :(

Still here…

For various technical reasons I have been unable to post regularly. Unfortunately the reasons that have forced me to desist from coming here often persist but there is a foreseeable solution to them;just not in the immediate future…so just don’t loose hope on me yet cause I’m here to stay!

I’d also like to apologize that any anwers to emails I get take so long but I’m afraid that this is the only way possible for the moment. :(

Εις το επανιδειν.

How I learned what malakas means

I’m grateful to DeviousDiva for publishing another small story of mine even though some words were a bit not nice. ;)

Again thanks and if you want to read it visit -> http://deviousdiva.com/2007/03/27/guest-blogger-3

UPDATE,13th of April. Posting also here the complete article:

Malakas (Greek: nom. μαλάκας, voc. and acc. μαλάκα, μαλακισμένε, fem. μαλάκω, μαλακισμένη) is a slang word, whose literal translation is wanker but the register of the term varies widely between its America/British English usage and its Greek usage. A more appropriate rendering covers a much broader spectrum of applications, including both English equivalents of asshole or jerk or dick or son of a bitch, and the contrasting friend or pal or dude, depending on the context.

I grew up in a rather poor part of my city which still maintained the populist image of the neighborhood/γειτονιά typical of the Greek cities in the past decades. It was a time where parents were a bit less anxious and maybe a bit more naïve and let their kids roam about freely and play in the open spaces that still existed, (the Greek term is not translatable but certainly will invoke memories for the Greek readers: αλάνες).

Each day my best friend N. would come by my house and yell my name for me to come down.

Beresheet…

 

I needed a first post to kick off this blog and here it is. To be reading this you probably came here knowing what you were going to see, so instead of telling you of what you’ll be seeing in the future I was thinking of telling you why this was born.

Well the reason is simply because the void that the Shoah created still exists out there over the dead but in a peculiar way also over the living. From the searching I’ve done with the exception of the institutional sites of the greek-jewish communities, which are almost always outdated, there are almost no sites or blogs concerning the Jewish life and history in Greece and the ones that do exist usually cover the past and not the present.

This void has given birth to a strange phenomenon: though Greece has never experienced a virulent antisemitism to the extent of some European nations, today is hailed as one of the most antisemitic countries in Europe. But, still, this climate doesn’t get translated into violent acts other than an occasional vandals on jewish monuments or the delirium of some far-Right but also, to my personal dismay, of far-Left public figures. On the other hand there is a complete void in the society about it’s jewish community and a strange defensive attitude though we’re talking only about 3000-5000 people in an 11.000.000 country, less than 0.045%. People are always ready to complain about how we’re always talking about jews And the Shoah And the world jewish lobby And And And… Still in all of my life I’ve never seen more than two times in the greek telly shows on the greek jews and a handful more about the Shoah which in 95% of the cases is foreign productions. Till 3-4 years ago there wasn’t a memorial day about the Shoah and the Shoah is not taught in schools. And when the jews of today are trying to restore some of the monuments left, like the synagogue in Chania, they receive threats by the local government and church with threats of physical violence! All this among the Middle East mayhem which makes the traditionally filo-palestinian public opinion rave literally with anger which gets reversed to all of the jews collectively being responsible for the often violent acts of Israel. I’m afraid to think what would happen if we didn’t rule Greece!

In any case this produces fear, fear to talk, fear to complain, fear to appear un-hellenic the same way in the ‘50s in the McCarthic USA one feared getting labeled as “un-american”. To top this we have a strange alliance between the Left and the Right where everyone attacks the greek jews and no one is saying anything to defend them; the conservatives because jews are known to conspire to become world leaders while the liberals see them as the long arm of the US! And in a country where every group has the sacrosanct right to block any street, the concerns of the local jewish community are treated as impertinent whines from people who want to disgrace the country.

This place is gonna hold some stuff I’m going to write over some episodes. It’s not going to be necessarily over current events and will not be “informing” you of anything, there are better places for that. It’s simply going to take specific events, often from the web, and comment on the imperceptible line that divides the greek society and we constantly trip every time we try to get over it.

Enjoy the show till it lasts!

 

 

image: The book of Genesis written on an egg – seemed an nice picture to begin with.