July 2015 - Page 3 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

B is for The Disputation of Barcelona

“The Jews were forced to listen to the sermons preached by the Dominican friars. “

Here’s something I’ve only known about for a few weeks.

“The Disputation of Barcelona (July 20–24, 1263) was a formal ordered medieval debate between representatives of Christianity and Judaism regarding whether or not Jesus was the Messiah.” Apparently, these disputations, over matters of faith, and other important topics, took place from time to time.

“Martin Luther opened the Protestant Reformation by demanding a disputation upon his 95 theses, 31 October 1517. Although presented as a call to an ordinary scholastic dispute, the oral debate never occurred.”

The Barcelona disputation “was held at the royal palace of King James I of Aragon in the presence of the King, his court, and many prominent ecclesiastical dignitaries and knights, between Dominican Friar Pablo Christiani, a convert from Judaism to Christianity, and Rabbi Nahmanides (Ramban), a leading medieval Jewish scholar, philosopher, physician, kabbalist, and biblical commentator.

“During the Middle Ages, there were numerous ordered disputations between Christians and Jews. They were not free and authentic debates (like modern ones), but were mere attempts by Christians to force conversion on the Jews. They were connected with burnings of the Talmud at the stake and violence against Jews. The Disputation of Barcelona was unique, in that it was the only occasion on which the Jewish representative was allowed to speak freely.”

So it sounded like a respite from the general persecution of the Jews on religious grounds, and the rigging of the system. However, the aftermath, according to the Jewish Virtual Library:

The [Barcelona] disputation… prompted the Dominican Raymond Martini to devise a better method of providing christological interpretations to the aggadah. In 1280 Martini concluded his book Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651), and henceforward it was used indiscriminately by every Christian controversialist wishing to invalidate Judaism.

The king cooperated with missionary activities throughout the realm and the Jews were forced to listen to the sermons preached by the Dominican friars. An order was issued by the latter between August 26 and 29 directing the Jews to erase from their copies of the Talmud any passages vilifying Jesus and Mary. Failure to do so was punishable by a fine, and books which had not been censored as required would be burned…

This was, functionally, a less bloody event of the centuries-long Inquisition, “one of the great blights on the history of Christianity.”

And what, you may reasonably ask, piqued my interest in this arcane topic? It was the death of the actor Christopher Lee at the age of 93 in early June 2015. A Facebook friend posted a reference to The Disputation, a 1986 TV movie starring Lee as King James of Aragon.

Better still, you can watch the hour-long drama here or here.

ABC Wednesday – Round 17

Flinching from the “new” Atticus Finch

I found myself watching the movie To Kill a Mockingbird in the context of the release of the new book by Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman.

The family went to the Madison Theatre in Albany last Wednesday night to see the classic movie To Kill a Mockingbird. I had never watched it before at a cinema, only on TV. The Wife had viewed only bits of it, and The Daughter had not seen it at all. It is a fine film, of course, and I need not review it here.

The great music of Elmer Bernstein made The Daughter nervous, especially around the storyline of Boo Radley. And she was confused by the scene in the woods near the end as to what really happened, given the subsequent dialogue.

While I appreciate the timeliness of the showing, I should note that the experience was lessened somewhat by a large amount of sound “bleed” from the adjoining theater. In fact, it got SO loud that I could almost not hear the film I was watching. What the heck was playing over there, anyway? It turned out to be the earthquake disaster film, San Andreas.

I found myself watching Mockingbird in the context of the release of the new book by Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman. This novel has been mired in controversy. First, the argument was that the author was “increasingly blind and deaf,” and that the book’s release was somehow contrary to her real wishes.

More importantly, the new tome redefines Atticus Finch, the practically saintly protagonist of Mockingbird, so well played by Gregory Peck in the movie, and is so popular that children have been increasingly named after him. Watchmen suggests that Atticus, was, in his later years, a racist on the wrong side of history.

Some folks, like my buddy Chuck Miller, have chosen to ignore Watchman, considering it not part of the canon. I used to read comic books, so I recognize that writers are often mucking up beloved characters in ways we do not recognize. We often pick and choose what we will choose to accept. (Hey, kind of like the Bible!)

As someone who participated in a marathon of To Kill a Mockingbird reading a few years back, I’m excited to read Go Set a Watchman, even if it’s less compelling than its predecessor. Because, as NPR put it: Harper Lee’s ‘Watchman’ Is A Mess That Makes Us Reconsider A Masterpiece.

The screenplay for the movie To Kill a Mockingbird was written by the late Horton Foote. His third cousin, the late writer Shelby Foote, was an apologist for the Confederate flag. I have a feeling that the “new” Atticus is more complicated than we want to accept.

Joseph E. Persico, 1930-2014

As a speechwriter for the former New York State Governor and US Vice-President, Joseph Persico had unusual access to Nelson Rockefeller.

I went to see the author Joseph E. Persico on Saturday afternoon, May 21, 2005, at the Albany Public Library. Persico had been writing for over a quarter-century at that point.

His then-current book was Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax. He stated that more people died on that last half-day of the Great War, for no particular strategic purpose, than died on D-Day (June 6, 1944) in World War II.

Persico talked about the process of researching and writing his books, which I found instructive in writing this blog.

While working on My Enemy, My Brother: Men and Days of Gettysburg (1996), he sought to pin down who fired the first shot in this pivotal Civil War battle. He believed he’d finally found the answer. He brought this to a gentleman at the Gettysburg Memorial who had provided invaluable assistance. The gentleman replied, “That’s one version.”

Persico interviewed Charles Collingsworth, one of “Murrow’s Boys” for Edward R. Murrow: An American Original (1988). At one point Collingsworth asked him to shut off the tape recorder, which Persico did. Collingsworth then told of Murrow’s affair with Winston Churchill’s daughter-in-law, Pamela Churchill (later Pamela Harriman), which almost wrecked Murrow’s marriage. Persico decided that Collingsworth wanted him to have the story, but didn’t want people to know that the information came from the now late newsman. Persico used the information in the book.

As a speechwriter for the former New York State Governor and US Vice-President, Persico had unusual access to Nelson Rockefeller. The author was waiting for Rocky to finish a lengthy meeting with black housing leaders. Finally, the exhausted official collapsed into a chair, looking haggard, and exclaimed, “Amos ‘n’ Andy got it right.” (For those of you too young to understand the reference, Amos ‘n’ Andy was a controversial radio and television program in the 1940s and 1950s.) Persico wrote this comment down at the time. He put it in the first draft of his book The Imperial Rockefeller: A Biography of Nelson A. Rockefeller, then took it out, then put it back in, ultimately leaving it out. He decided that the then-governor lashed out in frustration that was out of character, and would provide a distorted view of the man.

In that same book, he had to deal with how Rocky died. He was with a 22-year old assistant that Persico knew. Not to mention it would have made it “look like the book was authorized by the Rockefeller Foundation.” He told the tale succinctly, never mentioning the woman’s name (nor did he mention Megan Marshack by name in his talk.)

Persico co-authored Colin Powell’s autobiography, My American Journey. He believes his most important jobs were to keep in what was interesting to a broad audience and to delete what was not. In Powell’s case, the general wanted to put in a few sentences about his two tours of Vietnam. Persico found this not practical, given its import in American life. Conversely, Powell was a policy wonk, very proud of a report he had made. Persico argued that the audience would not be as interested in this story as he was, and the story was excised.

I enjoyed the talk, though I was troubled briefly that he thought I was there ONLY because I was on the Friends board. I do wish that more folks were present. It WAS a lovely Saturday afternoon outside, though, and that is tough competition in a spring that has been unseasonably cool and wet.

Joseph Persico died on August 30, 2014. He would have been 85 today.

This was an edited version of my post of May 27, 2005.

Music Throwback Saturday: Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick

Even without reading the lyrics, one can “see” the word endings

This post is entirely the fault of Arthur@AmeriNZ. He wrote a piece called A reason to be cheerful, about the bipartisan effort in the New Zealand Parliament to work for LGBTI rights. He knew FULL WELL that the title would make me think of the song Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 by Ian Dury and The Blockheads [LISTEN].

That put in my mind another Ian Dury and the Blockheads song, Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick. It was a big hit in much of the world: #1 in the UK, #2 in Australia, #3 in Ireland and New Zealand, and top 20 in Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden.

Apparently, it didn’t chart in the United States, but I heard it, and “Cheerful,” often on my favorite radio station in the late 1970s and early 1980s, WQBK-FM, Q104.

My good college friend Lynn HATED the song, I suspect, because the song title or lyrics were suggestive. But rock and roll has always been about sex, and I always preferred the euphemistic (“Roll with Me, Henry”) to the direct.

Moreover, I loved the song on several other levels. It’s danceable as all get out, thanks in no small part to a bass line played by Norman Watt-Roy.

The rhyme of the lyrics fascinated me. There is a device in poetry that commends a rhyme that isn’t spelled similarly; don’t recall what it’s called, but even without reading the lyrics, one can “see” the word endings, and I loved the pairing of: “rhythm stick” with “ich liebe dich” or “fantastique” or “Ist es nicht”; “Borneo” with “of Bordeaux”; “From Bombay to Santa Fe.”

From Song Facts:

It is well known that the Ian Dury song… was inspired by his disability; Dury was born in Harrow in May 1942… and contracted polio when he was seven years old. Although…Dury was not confined to a wheelchair, his body was still deformed by the disease, and he used a walking stick for the rest of his life. According to biographer Richard Balls, the line “It’s nice to be a lunatic” was probably inspired by a caustic remark from a lecturer in his days at Walthamstow Art College.

Dury gave the completed lyrics to his songwriting partner Chas (Chaz) Jankel in the autumn of 1978; the song has…an innovative saxophone solo by Davey Payne – who actually played two saxophones at once!

Released on the Stiff label November 23, 1978 and backed by “There Ain’t Half Been Some Clever Bastards”, it went on to sell a million copies…

Dury died of metastatic colorectal cancer on 27 March 2000, aged 57.

Listen to Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick HERE or HERE.

Your Republican Presidential debate participants (subject to change)

Jeb went from 17% to 15.4%. The Donald from 10.8% to 14.2%.

Here is the 2016 Republican Primary Debate Schedule. The first one will be on August 6, 2015, at 9 p.m. EDT in Cleveland, OH, airing on Fox News Channel.

The rules of participation: “the Top 10 candidates in an average of 5 national polls will be included.”

I looked at the graphic above from the Washington Post on July 16, and the percentages were these: Jeb Bush: 17; Donald Trump: 10.8; Scott Walker: 9.3; Marco Rubio: 7.8; Ben Carson: 7.6; Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee tied at 6.5; Ted Cruz: 5.1; Rick Perry and Chris Christie tied at 2.9.

I looked again on July 17, and the numbers changed radically: Jeb Bush: 15.4; Donald Trump: 14.2; Scott Walker: 8.9; Ben Carson: 7.6; Rand Paul: 6.5; Marco Rubio: 6.4; Mike Huckabee: 5.7; Ted Cruz: 5.1; Chris Christie: 2.7; and Rick Santorum, who had been an also-ran at 2.2. Rick Perry slipped off the podium at 2.1, along with John Kasich: 1.5; Bobby Jindal: 1.4; Carly Fiorina: 1.3; Lindsay Graham: 0.7; George Pataki: 0.5.

I don’t know what the cutoff date for selecting the candidates, but Christie, Perry, and Santorum seem to be battling for the last two slots.

(Hat tip to Arthur@AmeriNZ.)