“Books, even works of genius, are not incandescent orbs that exist independently in some kind of ether. For books to have enduring value, they must be read by people. For those readers to exist, they must be born and raised.”
Was a pleasure to review Ilana Kurshan’s fantastic new book for the Summer issue of Tradition, now available online.
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From the deluge of fascinating news from Israel’s remarkably successful “Rising Lion” operation against the Iranian regime, one interesting tidbit relates to children’s literature, of all things. According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot, IDF intelligence began to assemble a list of the leading scientists driving the Iranian nuclear weapon program in 2022, and their research efforts were given the secret code name “Narnia.” At 3:00 am on June 13, when the Israeli Air Force swiftly eliminated 10 of these scientists, along with striking the Natanz nuclear plant and other military targets, the operation was officially dubbed “Operation Narnia.”
In describing the operation, the Jerusalem Post writes that name “reflects the operation’s improbable nature, like something out of a fantasy tale rather than a real-world event.” Indeed, it was hard to believe that the same country that suffered such devastating losses on October 7 due to intelligence failures could execute such a meticulously planned and perfectly executed military offensive. Yet there are many fantasy tales, and the name Narnia is much more than a metonym for all that is improbable or unlikely to occur. Could it be that somewhere in Israeli intelligence circles there is a fantasy geek who specifically chose this code name to evoke a specific connection with the literary world of Narnia? Perhaps. In the meantime, Israeli schools and all other activities are cancelled and we are stuck at home. So I find myself reading Narnia with some of my kids, perhaps for the third time. In our bleary-eyed and underslept state thanks to 2:00 am trips to the safe room, these are the connections that seem to emerge:
1- Narnia is Israel and Calormen is Iran
While some readers of Narnia stop at the famous first book, The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the later books in Lewis’ series introduce us to other lands and cultures which surround Narnia and in doing so offer pointed parallels to the geopolitics of Lewis’ own time. One of these countries is a Middle-Eastern type of desert nation called Calormen, characterized by a hodgepodge of Persian and Arabian motifs: “The Calormenes have dark faces and long beards. They wear flowing robes and orange-coloured turbans, and they are a wise, wealthy, courteous, cruel and ancient people”. Calormenes have many admirable qualities, like a rich culture of storytelling to which Lewis’ narrator is obviously sympathetic, and splendid landscaping and food. Yet while it may outshine Narnia on the material front, it lacks basic freedoms which prevents the full flourishing of its people. Everyone in the society understands their place in a rigid hierarchical structure, and all are required to slavishly try to curry favor with their vainglorious leader the Tisroc. In the capital city Tashbaan, “there is only one traffic regulation, which is that everyone who is less important has to get out of the way for everyone who is more important; unless you want a cut from a whip or punch from the butt end of a spear.” When a poor boy raised in Calormen is mistakenly identified by the Narnians as a member of their party he is smitten with these joyful, bright-eyed people who seem to live without paranoia and insecurity. Yet he can’t help but lie about his identity, as the narrator explains: “he had, you see, no idea of how noble and free-born people behave.”
The individuals we meet in Calormen aren’t all that bad, but centuries reared in a culture where deception and obsequiousness, rather than hard work and talent, are needed to get ahead certainly takes its toll on the moral character of the society. Lewis contrasts this with Narnia, where freedom is cherished, and consequently people develop virtues like courage, honesty and kindness.
Now Narnia may be intended as a stand-in for Lewis’s own England, but in the spirit of William Blake’s “Till we have built Jerusalem / In England’s green & pleasant Land,” I believe there are some parallels with Israel too. While Israel is certainly influenced by its Middle-Eastern surroundings, it is an informal culture where people by and large have the freedom to speak their mind and determine their own destinies. Unlike nearly every other great military power in history, it never set its sight on building empire and controlling other nations. Like Narnia, it is content with merely perpetuating its own way of life within its own borders. Thus it remains a mystery why countries like Iran seek its destruction so vehemently and for so long. If it remains baffling to us, King Edmund of Narnia does offer a kind of answer. In trying to make sense of the curious urge in Calormen to wage war on Narnia, Edmund observes: “We are a little land. And little lands on the borders of a great empire were always hateful to the lords of the great empire. He longs to blot them out, gobble them up” (A Horse and His Boy, p. 68).
Israel right now is doing a lot to make Iran angry, but this anger predates airstrikes in Tehran by decades, and is rooted in the same lust for empire that C.S. Lewis observed during his own dark times. Our response must be the same as it is in the world of Narnia, to push back against Islamic expansionism through military defense, and also to cherish all of the qualities that make our culture unique and worth preserving.
2- Rising Lion
When Narnians go into battle, the symbol that is displayed on their flags and shields is a lion. The lion of course is a reference to Aslan, the spiritual icon of Narnia and a Christological metaphor. The reason Jesus is associated with a lion is rooted in the Bible of course, “the lion of Judah,” and in Judaism lions are associated with kingship and sovereignty. Thus it’s also not surprising that “rising lion” is the name and symbol of the current Israeli campaign. The name “Rising Lion,” which is a translation of “Am KiLavi Yakum,” derives from the Prophet Balaam’s blessings of the People of Israel in the book of Numbers: “Behold, a people that rises like a lioness and raises itself like a lion. It does not lie down until it eats its prey and drinks the blood of the slain.” (Num. 23:24) Some unhinged Israel haters have pointed to this verse as proof of Israeli thirst for atrocities. The verse is obviously meant to be symbolic, but the truth is, lions are fearsome creatures who devour their prey. And we have learned over the past twenty months that, in order to defeat evil and restore peace and order to the world, we must be stronger and fiercer than our enemies. This does not always look nice. But that does not mean that it is not a moral posture. Here too, the Narnian parallel can be illuminating. When Susan first learns about the great lion of Narnia she is understandably scared: “Is he—quite safe?” I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” Mr. Beaver responds: “Safe? . . . Who said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King I tell you” (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, p. 80.)
The current IDF campaign in Iran, and even more so, the extended war against Hamas in Gaza, contains visuals that are terrible and painful to behold. But as Lewis’s narrator reminds us, “People who have not been in Narnia sometimes think that a thing cannot be good and terrible at the same time.” What lions symbolize, in the Bible, in the world of fantasy and right now, is the way in which ferocity and justice must, in certain circumstances, work hand in hand. Critics of Israel’s campaign who are supposedly driven by religious pacifism may also take note another verse in Balaam’s litany of blessings directed at the Jewish people: ”He crouches and lies like a lion and like a lioness; who will dare rouse him? Those who bless you shall be blessed, and those who curse you shall be cursed” (Num, 24:9)
3-Pacifism is Not a Virtue
This brings me to a final point about some of the well-meaning critics, many of them Christian, of Israel’s courageous campaign against evil and America’s supporting role in that effort. While many fairy tales end with a vague “happily ever after,” Lewis takes care to remind us at the end of the Lion, the King and the Wardrobe how the four Pevensie children, now turned kings and queens, spend their days making good laws, keeping the peace, and waging honorable battles in defense of their beloved Narnia. The first progressive in the series is their annoying cousin Eustace Clarence Scrubb, who surfaces in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader when he accidentally gets sucked into a grand voyage with Edmund and Lucy through a painting. Eustace is just awful, a bully and a stick-in-the-mud who has no use for the grand adventures of the sort for which the Pevensie children live. Eustace’s coddled upbringing has given him few opportunities to appreciate the real dangers that exist in the world, although this thankfully changes when he is turned into a dragon. The privilege of distance from danger allows him the freedom to antagonize everyone around him and avoid retribution by declaring “I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in fighting.”
Lewis was, indeed, critical of those who could never distinguish between a just war and pointless bloodbath. He viewed this problem as similar to an inability to distinguish good from evil. As early as 1940, Lewis delivered a lecture to the pacifist society at Oxford University entitled “Why I am Not a Pacifist,” in which he articulates, from various angles, a justification for wars that need to be fought in order to protect higher values. This does not make the realities of war any less terrible. Yet only by recognizing human necessity can one begin to improve things.
Lewis says:
To avert or postpone one particular war by wise policy, or to render one particular campaign shorter by strength and skill or less terrible by mercy to the conquered and the civilians is more useful than all the proposals for universal peace that have ever been made; just as the dentist who can stop one toothache has deserved better of humanity than all the men who think they have some scheme for producing a perfectly healthy race.
To try to fight a better war, or a shorter or more precise war in which less civilians are killed, is a noble virtue. To avoid war altogether, in all circumstances, is simply a pipe dream that, as Lewis says in the same lecture, will result in “[handing] over the state which does tolerate Pacifists to its totalitarian neighbour who does not.”
Lewis’ analysis applies perfectly to Israel’s situation in its seven front war from Gaza to Iran. The war we fight now is intended to prevent future wars, to invite peace and prosperity to this beleaguered region as well as to other parts of the world. We are not waiting for a lion to save us from “beyond the sea.” We are an “am shel ariyot,” a nation of lions, fighting our hardest on behalf of our highest values. May the current conflict and this larger war come to a speedy, victorious and decisive conclusion.
While podcasts are not yet entirely in my comfort zone, I appreciated the invitation to talk to Lori Fein Ramirez about family life and some of challenges as well as opportunities that we’ve encountered. Lori’s hilarious summary below:
Sarah Rindner Blum, an author, literature professor, and mother to a “steps and stairs” family of seven children in twelve years, shares her insights on why having “one more kid” is worth the investment. Join us for deep reflections on how each child offers something unique and priceless, how different roles for mom and dad make it work, Israeli vs. American cultural attitudes toward children, why Shabbat is the center of her homemaking all week long, spontaneity versus planning, lots of candy, her semi-broken set of devices for her family, some favorite children’s books, making literature a part of your family lore, her trash-into-treasures child, a mouse named Bob, having a home life different than you had imagined, why there’s nothing like an American minivan, and why a Jewish mama only needs to cook once a week.
Feel free to give it a listen on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and make sure to follow Mommash: The Oy and Joy of Parenting for loads of wonderful parenting wisdom.
Traditional lines between the secular and religious populations are fading, particularly in the realms of music and art.
I’d like to belatedly share excerpts from an article that appeared a few months back in Mosaic Magazine. The growing popularity of religious singers among secular audiences here in Israel has been noted elsewhere. One hopes that this rising trend can serve to combat some of the tragic division we see in Israeli society right now.
“This past Sukkot, a crowd of about 500 children, parents, and grandparents gathered in the Recanati Theater in the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The audience was made up of affluent and mostly secular residents of north Tel Aviv and its suburbs—stylishly dressed, sipping lattes and organic juice sold at the trendy coffee shop nearby. To an outside observer, the scene would be almost indistinguishable from a family-oriented play or concert in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The content, however, was distinctly Israeli: a jukebox musical called Aluf ha-Olam (literally, “Champion of the World”), based on the songs of the religious Zionist singer Hanan Ben-Ari, written and performed by Israel’s most prestigious children’s dramatic company, the Orna Porat Theater. Tickets for Aluf ha-Olam are in high demand and sell out quickly, so I booked seats for me and my children several months in advance. One could sense from the anticipation in the theater that many others had done the same.
Hanan Ben-Ari is one of Israel’s best-known musical performers, albeit without the international break-through appeal of peers like the religious music sensation Ishai Ribo. His strength is in his songwriting; catchy tunes, drawn from eclectic influences, and coherent, powerful lyrics that comment on personal, often spiritual, struggles…
…Ben-Ari’s penchant for infusing lyrics about universal topics with the language of the synagogue and yeshiva tends to obscure the boundaries between sacred and secular idioms. His 1980s-inspired feel-good ballad “Dream like Joseph,” for instance, argues that every story in the Bible reflects some basic human experience: “everyone leaves his father’s home/ everyone nearly sacrifices his child/ deep within is a little Sodom/ that he wishes to erase already/ and angels will rescue him…”
…Thus the prospect of translating Hanan Ben-Ari’s music into an Israeli secular vernacular, as Aluf ha-Olam seeks to do, is daunting, and perplexing. It raises the question of whether Ben-Ari’s biblicism and Jewish allusions are charming embellishments or so central to his work that they cannot be disentangled from it. But merely to ask this question is to acknowledge that Israeli society’s shared cultural touchstones appear to be growing more and more Jewish, and traditional lines between the secular and religious populations are fading, particularly in the realms of music and art…”
For the full article see here.
A Response to Is Jewish Continuity Sexist? by Mijal Bitton (Sources: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, Spring 2021)
“In delineating the various people and parties who could conceivably be offended by a Jewish continuity agenda, Bitton leaves out the most important population of all: the future humans upon whom the entirety of civilization rests. It’s true that having children is physically and emotionally taxing, and undoubtedly the burdens are unequally distributed between genders, at least for discrete periods in a child’s life. Some of these challenges can certainly be remedied; others are on a certain level inherent. Eve is told “in pain you shall bear your children,” and Adam too, is destined to work hard for all the days of life. Yet any account of these difficulties needs to be contextualized with at least a passing mention of the vast potential that accompanies bringing forth new life into the world.”
Please see here for the full response, thank you to Sources and to Mijal Bitton for the opportunity to reflect.
“Shortly before the 1991 Gulf War, Rabbi Yaakov Smith, a father of six and an emissary of the Chabad Hasidic movement in the Old City of Jerusalem, hosted a Shabbat dinner. As the guests were leaving, one took Smith aside and said something that would reverberate with his host: “That was an amazing act you performed. Whatever is wrong, take care of yourself.” Fast forward thirty years and Yaakov has become Yiscah Smith, a transgender person who still lives and teaches in Jerusalem. Smith’s transformation is the subject of the documentary I Was Not Born a Mistake, created by the Israeli filmmakers Rachel Rusinek and Eyal Ben-Moshe. The film premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival this past Hanukkah and made its U.S. debut in January.:
Read the full review at First Things.
(from Rabbi Chaim Strauchler, Tradition Journal Online)
“In Culture and Anarchy (1869), Matthew Arnold argues for the role of reading “the best that has been thought and said” as an antidote to the anarchy of materialism, industrialism and individualistic self-interest.”
A case for why The Chronicles of Narnia is “The Best” for a new series at Tradition Journal Online.
“Ours is physically the healthiest and most affluent society that has ever existed, and, in some ways, raising children is also more convenient than it has ever been. Yet, children are increasingly perceived as a burden.”
Please see the full article in the Summer edition of Lubavitch International Magazine.
The Book of Books 