not native fruit

sephardic tolerance

i've been writing so much about my mother and her family and very little about my father.  well, until recently, i thought i knew all there was to know about my father's family.  but now there's been yet another major familial wake-up call.  my father's family were 'danish jews.'  I put scare-marks around those words, because technically they were lutherans, however, not really.

let me try to explain.  my father told me, when i was quite young, that 'my family are the ones they call the portugese.'  as for most americans, that meant nothing to me.  at age 8, i replied to him, 'you mean you like people from portugal?'  we just looked at each other for a few minutes, aware that we were not really communicating.  but can you imagine that i remember this moment?  i think partly because i'd never seen my dad so agitated.  we had been in a roomful of men who were shouting and laughing and carrying on, and my dad suddenly took me outside and said, 'karen, there's something i really want you to understand about me.  i know you're a little young, but i want you to know that my people are the ones they call the portugese.'

okay, fast forward 50 years, and i'm reading on-line at jewishgenweb that the Danish Jews were called 'the Portugese.' 

Various other memories surface: 'our family wore yellow stars even though we didn't 'have' to' during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.  My father pointing to a picture of the Rothschilds' mansion in Denmark, saying 'they are one of our best families in Denmark.'  My mother insisted on naming me Katherine, and when my Dad pronounced it 'katrin' she changed it to Karen, assuming that it is a Danish name so it would be more suitable, etc.  He told me 'Karen is not one of our names.  Anna and Lilian, names like that are ours.'  There was all of this 'ours' and 'theirs' - not in any kind of passionate way, just quietly, matter-of-fact. 

His account of 'going to (the Lutheran) church' was that 'we' only went for things like 'the naming ceremony about a week after the baby is born,' weddings, funerals and at around age 14, 'when the boy becomes a man, we have a ceremony and the boy is given the scripture.'  He told me, 'they call it confirmation, but really it's just coming of age.'  'The scripture' was the Psalms only.  After that ceremony, my father went to sea, and began the career that would last for the rest of his life. 

Well, well.  Some of my American Jewish friends are very excited about this story, others tell me that he wasn't in any way, shape or form a Jew.  He had chosen to be 'nothing' because he wasn't really a Christian either.  But he always made it clear to me that he wasn't 'against' the Christian faith.  And, when you think about it, after all, Jesus was a Jew, so perhaps that helped at least a little when Jewish family took up a modified form of being Christian.  This kind of 'adopted' Christianity has been going on among the Sephardim since the 1300's at least. 

Apparently, from what I can glean, King Christian IV invited Sephardic Jews from Germany and the Netherlands to come to Denmark to help him modernize the country, especially in the shift to a money-based economy.  I guess it was probably fish-based before that (lol). Anyway, all of that was okay.  They also allowed a smaller number of Ashkenazi Jews to enter, especially in the area of Copenhagen.  The Sephardic population was found scattered throughout the rural districts, such as Ribe Amt where my father's families are from.  Well, in the early 1800's, social pressure was placed on these Sephardic families to convert to Lutheranism in the interest of a more uniform society (sounds like the wishes of Castilian Spain, but without the blood-purity cant.)  Most Danish Jews converted at that time.  The rest moved to either Copenhagen, or to Aalborg where there was a synogogue in Jutland. 

Well!  I have finally come across an article that talks about the high level of tolerance exhibited by the Sephardic Jews, their willingness to blend with their surrounding cultures through intermarriage, adoption of religious tenets, etc, in contra-distinction to Ashkenazi Jews who favored separation and a more highly defined identity. Not only that, but I recognize my dear father in these few pages.  He taught me always to respect the religions of others, because whatever I might think of the religion, it was very very important to the people who believed in it.  That was one of the most important, personal, private, highly-charged things my father ever said to me on one of our wonderful walks together.

Anyway, here's the link to the article on The Special Character of Sephardi Tolerance.

'american indian' catholics

A lot of the native american and native american mixt people in my childhood neighborhood were Catholics, including my mother.  Her father, named Joseph, converted to Catholicism in order to marry my grandmother, and he took the name Xavier as his confirmation name.  My mother said to me, more than once, 'you know why, don't you?'  Well, no, I didn't know why, and she never illuminated me.  But I know why now - it was because St. Francis Xavier was the patron of the heathen.  I can't imagine thinking of my grandfather as 'the heathen.' My impression is that his parents were very spiritual people, but it was a different kind of spirituality.  More apophatic, if you are familiar with that technical spiritual term.  In fact, my grandfather, after becoming a Catholic, joined the Moorish Science Temple of America, because he was self-identified as 'a Moor' (a Moor Indian). 

I think I've mentioned before how much I love the books of Francis Jennings, a local Pottsville boy, who writes histories of the original people of America.  I'm sure he remembered very well the way many people lorded it over the Native Americans, gave out with victory whoops and acted as if they had just 'whupped' them last week.  In reality, a lot of what happened to the Native Americans was done by themselves, at the behest of the colonial powers.  Francis Jennings is really great about writing their history from a non-Victors' perspective, working against the prejudice, falsehoods and negative biases of most histories of the American Indian written by non-Indians.  (Jennings may have been part-Indian, as many people were in Pottsville and environs.  At any rate, he is their Champion, and both his scholarship and his writing style are top rate.)

In fact, read the following passages from Jennings' 'Ambiguous Iroquois Empire' if you want to see just how heartbreaking a role the colonial powers played in the decimation of the Iroquois, for example.  The British were trying to secure prime fur-trading land that lay between their colonies and territories occupied by the French.  In order to keep the French out of the intervening land, they called upon their Iroquois allies to fight the French and the Indian tribes allied with the French, on their behalf. 

"New York's Governor Sloughter exhorted (the Mohawks) 'You must keep the Enemy in perpetual alarm.'  The Mohawks 'took Notice of his saying "You must keep the Enemy in perpetual Alarm."'  In 1692 Oneida Chief Cheda took up the refrain.  'Brother Corlaer, you desire us to keep the Enemy in perpetual Alarm, that they may have no Rest, till they are in their Graves; Is it not to secure your own Frontiers?  Why then not one Word of your People that are to join us?...How comes it none of our Brethren, fastened in the same Chain with us, offer their helping Hand in this general War, in which our great King is engaged against the French?  Pray Corlaer, how come Maryland, Delaware River, and New-England to be disengaged from this War?...How can they and we be Subjects of the same great King (of England), and not be engaged in the same War?'  It was an uncomfortably logical question, often to be plaintively echoed in the correspondence of New York's governors with the Crown. (205)

"The Iroquois were desperate men, reeling in pain and shock from French blows and outraged by unfulfilled promises of campaigning by the English.  Iroquois strength suffered dramatically from casualties and abandonment.  Mohawk losses in 1693 had made their tribe cease to function effectively as a fighting force, and many Mohawks went off to Caughnawaga Mission in Canada. (205-206)

"The stark effects of French punishment show in the available estimates of Iroquois population.  By 1689 it had risen to the height of 2,570 warriors (implying 7,710-12,750 persons), apparently as the result of adoption of captives.  Eleven years later, however, the number of warriors declined traumatically, to 1,230 (implying only 3,690-6,150 persons).  An absolute reduction of more than 50 percent was shared by all the constituent nations though the Mohawk and Oneidas suffered most.  Gunther Michelson's compilation itemizes as follows: Mohawks, a drop from 270 warriors to 110; Oneidas, down from 180 to 70; Onondagas, 500 to 250; Cayugas, 320 to 200; Senecas, 1,300 to 600."  (206)

He titles his book 'The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire' just because the Iroquois had a fierce reputation as unconquerable warriors, which is just bogus and an excuse to bring all-out aggression against them.  In reality, they were allies of the British, brought in decimated tribes to membership in their alliance, and attempted to forge a trade-chain among tribes and colonies in their area.  What they ran up against was the imperial aspirations of the European powers who didn't want a trade-alliance.  They wanted outright ownership, no sharing Indian-style, and so they foiled the Iroquois' attempt to allow everyone relative sovereignty within their own field, and to create an alliance through a covenant chain linked by trade, not warfare.

Anyway, there is tons more interesting detail in Jennings' book, but to get back to the subject of American Indian Catholics: "Tensions often existed between French officials and French missionaries, but the effectiveness of the missions as instruments of state policy cannot be doubted.  In 1700 New York's Commissioners of Indian Affairs solicited allied Iroquois to obtain the return of their brethren (at the Catholic mission towns) in Canada.  Spokesman Sagronwadie replied, 'We are now come to trade, and not to speak of religion...I wish it had been begun sooner that you had ministers to instruct your Indians in the Christian faith, I doubt whether any of us ever had deserted our native country, but I must say I am solely beholden to the French of Canada for the light I have received...'" (208)

Now this is just one man, and perhaps for diplomacy's sake he felt he had to say these things complimentary to Catholicism, but I don't get that feeling.  It seems like many of the American Indians (sic) embraced Catholicism and perhaps other forms of Christianity quite readily.  They were sometimes called 'the praying Indians.'  We do know that British attempts to 'christianize' the native peoples of New England was a catastrophe.  Perhaps the ritual and otherworldly 'saints and angels' traditions of Catholicism appealed more to the highly ceremonial Native Americans.

In my own experience, I found my noticeably Roman-Catholic neighborhood to be not entirely culturally unified among the Irish-Catholic, Italian-Catholic and Native-American/mixt/German/Irish, etc Catholics.  But nevertheless, there was a definite cultural atmosphere and a certain homogeneity to the experience, which was probably largely contributed by the times.  I'm thinking of the early '60's, when we had our first Catholic president in office, JFK, and the Second Vatican Council was in full sway under the charistmatic Pope John the XXIII.  This was a good time to be a Catholic.

In terms of my own experience as a highly acculturated, highly assimilated mixt-Indian Catholic, I could tell something was different about our spirituality from, let's say, the Irish Catholics.  It was hard for me to differentiate what made for that difference between the mountain/Indian Catholic influence and the Moorish Temple spirituality that was also passed along to me from my mother. 

I do recall my mother bestowing upon me with much solemnity, intent and a very serious dictum  about reading it closely, a small booklet about the Mohawk saint Kateri Tekakwitha.  I thought the connection was that KT had survived smallpox as a child, which left her face scarred, and that I had had something the doctors initially thought was smallpox, which turned out to be a particularly virulent form of chicken-pox, and which also left my face scarred.  I received dermatological treatments to restore my skin, but it does 'mark' very easily, still.  But now I'm not so sure about my mother's motivation in making such a big deal about that little tract.  In any case, I still have the booklet on Kateri Tekakwitha.

moorish gardens

I've been thinking about my years as a Catholic, and realizing that the things I probably appreciated most about that tradition were three: one, all the beautiful places for contemplation that I experienced as a Catholic.  Beautiful gardens, alcoves, chapels, fountains, grottoes.  The odd thing is that these were probably traditionally derived from Islamic spirituality.  In the Middle Ages, Christianity was deeply impressed and influenced by Moorish culture and spirituality.  The Moors were much admired and imitated and studied by the medieval christians, and a great deal of their culture was absorbed.

I think we could all be more aware of the fact that religions are not and have never been hermetically sealed vessels.  There has always been a lot of sharing and blending among religious traditions within a cultural context.  Divisions and factions have been fomented for political reasons by individuals and groups of people who stood to gain, and warfare has been carried out for generations afterward by people who stood to gain very little.  It's really a trick of the mind that leads us to think there are 'different religions.'  I've just been reading a book about early Scotland that remarks on a portrait of a Scottish Bishop who is 'flanked by a crescent moon and a six-pointed start.  Our interpretation is that all three faiths - Christian, Jewish, Muslim - were tolerated and practiced in the diocese of St. Andrew's.'  So this phenomenon was hardly unique to medieval Spain, and according to travelers I have met, still exists in Eastern Europe.

When I studied theology in the nineteen-eighties, one of the main points they wanted to bring home to us is that Christianity emerged from a large pan-Mediterranean gnostic culture, in which many different 'religions' flourished, all sharing a basic gnostic orientation.  The history, development and interrelationship of the 'Big Three' - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - is very interesting, not from the political and land-grab perspective, but in terms of human spiritual evolution.

The second thing I appreciated about my time in Catholicism are some of the wonderful people I met who had such an optimistic, positive orientation.  Obviously, not everyone shared this, but I'm focusing on those who really brightened my day, and brightened the world for me, for that matter.  It is possible to find a very positive orientation in Catholicism, but it can sometimes verge on the 'pollyanna' side, and I guess I found at some point that it was not adequate for me.  This may also be because it was not really thriving as a living spiritual tradition in my locale.  Or if it was, I didn't have access to it.

Lastly, I appreciated the ritual aspects of the worship at the time I was involved there.  I no longer feel moved by that particular ritual and have found another I find more nourishing to my soul and spirit at the present time.  But I realize that in the Western world, there is rather a dearth of that kind of ceremonial ritual which is so richly patterned deep within the human soul, so what little we still have has to be acknowledged and appreciated.

faith and reason ii, the role of baghdad

When I first began reading "The Ornament of the World" I was all caught up in the idea that Reason had been able to wriggle in to Christianity and secularize it because of the early Christian-Greek contact of the first centuries of the Christian era, so imagine my surprise to discover that the actual secularization impulse originated in the Christian-Aristotelian contact of the thirteenth century, and further, that that contact came by way of the earlier contact between Islamic thinkers and Aristotle, and their translations of the Greek philosophers into Arabic, a movement centered in Baghdad.

Do you remember that post I wrote about 'the place of reason?'   You probably don't.  I was all excited about the wonder of Reason, science, and the reconciliation of revelation-based faith with them, all of which I credited to Christianity.  Well, today I read passages that have changed my world.

Here are some of the relevant paragraphs and paraphrases: Frederick II set up an institution of learning and translation in Sicily (circa 1220's-1230's).  "The tradition of translations from Arabic was a vital...

religious garb

I attended a wonderful talk last week by Professor Ibrahim Farajaje at Starr King School of the Ministry, member of the GTU in Berkeley.  His topic was how Muslims, Christians, Jews and Hindus have lived side by side for centuries, for the most part in peace.  Indeed, for the far better part of time in peace, learning from one another, sharing culture and tradition.  The most well-known example of that in the West is al-Andalus in Spain, a culture that influenced European medieval and renaissance culture immeasurably in so many ways.

In his travels in India, Farajaje observed the same thing in India, as have I, especially in Kerala where Muslims, Christians and Hindus live and work together with wonderful color and style.  Yes, there has been sectarian violence among these groups in India, but as far as I can see, no nation has been immune to that, even our own - mark our Civil War, and more recently our fight for unions and the civil-rights struggles of the twentieth century.  We fight our own too.

Anyway, I loved the talk, I loved the Arabic chanting of verses from the Koran, and the beautifully spiritual take on Islam that Farajaje espouses - something very far away from the politicized extremism we identify with the 'Islalmicist radicals.'  My own area of interest in all this is the intersection or influence of Spanish/Moorish Islam with certain spiritual movements in Europe that offered alternatives to conventional, institutional forms of Christian religiosity.  It's hinted at here and there, but I haven't been able to find anything that specifically addresses the subject.  Please direct me, if you have a lead.

nature and culture

I was perusing the obits, which I rarely do, and came across one for professor Doug Adams of the Pacific School of Religion at GTU.  His interest was the blending of theology and the arts.  One of his former students wrote: "'I probably would have been still stuck in a darkroom someplace doing documentary photography were it not for Doug Adams (who) taught (me) that a passion for the arts did not exclude (me) from a religious life.'  For his master's degree thesis, (the student) took a series of landscape photographs to examine the question that if the earth is God's body, how do different cultures treat God?  One of the pictures was of a strip mine."

We know which culture that was.

I've been reading about the Moorish culture, which was very much dedicated to horticulture: gardens and orchards, fountains and canals, and which brought agriculture to Spain in the eighth century C.E. So it would seem that older forms of Islamic culture had a loving, relational attitude towards nature, would 'cultivate' and 'care for' and 'husband' nature.

Orchards are important to many peoples.  It is said that abandoned Susquehanna Indian camps could always be identified by the old wild apple orchards in their vicinities in Pennsylvania, by the early explorers and settlers.  Also, my Danish relatives prized their gardens with fruit trees, where they would eat all their meals during the summer months.

I've visited India, where it would seem that the older versions of Hinduism still worship nature.  Rivers and trees, and sometimes even stones are seen as sacred at the least, and as embodiments of God at most.  Cows, too, are viewed as sacred, as are a wide variety of plants, including Bilwa and Tulsi.  They are adorned by flower garlands, daubed with sandal paste, and honored.

My whimsy tells me that the older forms of European Christianity 'sanctified' nature - as if she needed it - by dedicating the old sacred wells and fountains to various Christian saints. Kind of sweet, including nature in its otherworldly vision of salvation.   Fact tells us, however, that it also cut down the old sacred trees, which must have been very large and ancient.  Of course, by now they would have probably died of natural causes anyway, but it does seem sad to think of them being cut down because of raw ideology.

I think this photographer had a very good idea.  To judge a culture's view of God, by observing how it interacts with Nature.  Food for thought. 

the veil

My friend Judi gave me this Spanish comb, called a peineta, which had been a gift from one of her relatives who traveled to Spain in the nineteen-sixties.  I was very touched that she would give this to me, simply because she knew that my great-grandmother's combs had been discarded by my mother many years ago, and yet have come to represent something very personally meaningful to me.

I did a little research on the web, and found out that the Spanish lace mantilla, worn on the head with this kind of comb, is actually a vestige from the historical period when most of Spain was Muslim.  The exact amounts of Arab-dominated territory varied over time, but let's say roughly from 750 til 1350 AD.  I never thought of the Spanish ladies with their combs and castanets as being 'veiled.' 

Here's an interesting link if you want to explore the topic more: Mantilla History

Throughout the Islamic world there is a great deal of variety in the interpretation of 'veiling' for women.  Some cultures cover the face and whole body, others only the hair  Some use the head-scarf that wraps closely around the head, other use a short-free-falling veil or even a triangular piece of cloth similar to what I often wore as a kid.  Can't remember what we called it, a kerchief maybe. 

Anyway, what I'm realizing is, that there isn't really all that much difference between this particular Islamic custom and the customs (or rules) of Western culture for women.  When I was growing up fifty years ago - come on, that's not a long time ago - we Catholic females absolutely HAD to wear a head-covering to go into church.  Absolutely no woman or girl would step inside a church with a bare head - even to the point where we would rather wear a KLEENEX bobby-pinned to our hair.  Can you imagine that today?  It looked ridiculous then too.  It was a HUGE big-deal for the Chruch to lift the ban on bare female heads in church. Probably the Pope himself had to change the rule.  And actually, wearing a 'mantilla' was very popular in my girlhood era, and they were very pretty, and seemed exotic to us.

reading on faith and reason

I'm reading Sam Harris' "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason."  So far, I haven't come across anything I didn't already know, but that's because I've been over this territory quite a bit myself.  I'm not an atheist, as he apparently claims to be, but I'm not a subscriber to any particular religion anymore either.  I've worked my way through a couple of 'em, based largely on reason and study but also on 'getting real' about my own experience.

I had help.  Francis Baur, the late Franciscan friar who taught theology's basics to all incoming students, insisted on applying historical critical method and any evidential sources from the sciences to the subject of our interest, namely, God, the Bible, church tradition and Jesus, not necessarily in that order.  This was done to off-set the natural religious bias against science that is very common in religious literature and communities, and which is seen perhaps most clearly and publically today in the debate between creationists and evolutionists. 

As soon as we got in the classroom, he demonstrated right away just how much faith we all place in science, in everything from driving our cars and flying in airplanes, to seeking modern medical care, enjoying media technology, and believing in the solar system.  Some of the priestly hopefuls quickly transferred to other schools.  My theory is that somehow their sense of identity and well-being was tied up in ignoring this split within themselves,  and identifying their 'beliefs' one-sidedly with the religious pole of their thinking.  Harris writes eloquently on the wedding of ignorance and knowledge in religious moderates.  I think Francis Baur would agree, because he was tough, he had 'tough-love' for christianty. For myself, I evolved an understanding of the bible as a combination of mythology and legend.  I love both of these, so I'm okay with that.  In my view, myth and legend are primarily telling us something spiritual about ourselves, and their historic interest is secondary to that.   

I've also been reading Edward F. Edinger's 'The Psyche in Antiquity' in two parts.  The first part deals with the greek philosophers as our 'cultural ancestors', and gets into each one's most representative concepts as parts of our earliest mapping of consciousness in the West.  His writing is terse and to the point, illuminating, and altogether quite wonderful. The fact that he can deal with all this material in two exceedingly slim volumes astonishes me. The second volume deals with 'Gnosticism and Early Christianity.' 

Anyway, reading Edinger and Harris in tandem have supported a train of my own thought that's been developing over the last year or so, about the importance of having some kind of 'measure' to apply to one's religious beliefs, ideas, principles, etc, that arises outside the religious dogma itself.  In the case of Christianity and the West, that would be Reason, which we acquired thanks to our late medieval rediscovery of the Greek philosophers. And the fact that Greek thinking is embedded in the New Testament, thanks to the letters of Paul.

Here are the relevant passages from Edinger that enlighten for me the origins of Christianity and the role of Greek philosophy in it right from the start:

beyond belief

it's great to have a place to playfully write about whatever is up for me.  i appreciate this weblog to the nth degree. 

here's what's on my mind today: religion in the usa, for the most part, is a safe haven for people in need - people grieving losses of one kind or another, people trying to start over in life, people who need people - and for many others it's a sign of belonging to a socio-economic group: episcopalians, catholics, mormons spring to mind. Or in a particular community, it would matter which branch of christianity one affiliated onself with; it would reflect one's ethnicity perhaps, or one's clan-membership.   It's also at least secondarily a place to express or explore faith, mystery, the 'more' dimension of life.  In other places, like the middle east, it seems to have a whole lot to do with one's clan and subsequent political affiliations.

as long as people have clans and troubles, we're going to have religion. 

our spiritual beacon from India, Amma, says that from the spiritual perspective religion is a ladder that takes us to the top of a wall around a delightful garden, and when we get to the top of the wall we can just kick the ladder away.  But will those still climbing the ladder let us 'kick it away'?  That is the question.

Why is this issue coming up for me right now?  Probably because I made the trek to the Gnostic Sanctuary yesterday, a place where spirituality is fostered while beliefs are questioned.

lughnasa

August 4th was the Feast of the Descending Sun, an old Celtic festival called Lughnasa.  This marks the turning of the corner from Summer to Autumn, and i usually notice it as a shift in the quantity and quality of the light.

This year, even without being aware of the date, I noticed a distinct feeling of Autumn in the air around my house that day.  it was a bright, clear and jovial feeling, edged just ever so slightly in bittersweet.

last week we had warm weather and i could spend more time outside at night just absorbing the dazzling brilliance of the high summer night.  Night is falling earlier, it's true, but the darkness of the high summer night is ardent in color and vibrant in reflected light of moon and stars.  the world shimmers in solar energy cloaked in the darkness of the night.  this convergence of opposites makes us feel that all is possible, and dreams may come true.

perhaps this is what our dear friend shakespeare had in mind when he wrote a play called 'a midsummer's night dream.'

For a modern treatment of this festival, see the film (on video or DVD)  'Dancing at Lughnasa,' starring Meryl Streep.