Yiddish Civilisation

Yiddish Civilisation by Paul Kriwaczek

This book was sent to me as a gift by a good friend, so I should not complain too much about it. Nevertheless, I regret to say that is, at best, a flawed piece. It is also dangerously alluring, if judged by favourable reviews on the site. True, the cover is nice, maps are useful, the author has an obviously engaging personality and interesting personal trajectory. He seeks to evoke colour and texture of medieval ghettos and XVIIth century shtletls. He travelled a great deal to the Yiddishland and read many books (about which later).  So what’s the problem? It starts with the book’s subtitle” The rise and fall of a Forgotten Nation.” The notion of rise and fall is at least debatable, but “forgotten”? By whom, certainly not by either Israel or the diaspora? And, from my personal experience, there is a strong and growing interest in Jewish heritage in the core Yiddishland countries, particularly Poland and Czech Republic (On the Resurrection of European Jewry see “A Chosen Few” by Mark Kurlansky). In the US, Yiddish culture has had a lasting and wide ranging influence not only on the movies and pop music but on the literature (do the names of Bellow, Roth and Malamud ring a bell?) and theatre. In addition to Isaack Bashewis Singer, who only wrote in Yiddish, Nobel prizes were awarded to Elie Wesel and Imre Kertesz. It is true that fewer and fewer people speak Yiddish but the interest in broader Jewish culture and tradition remains strong.
Kriwaczek dates the fall of Yiddish civilisation to the loss of powers of self-government by Jewish communities, following the abolition of the Council of the Four Lands by the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom in 1764 and the dismembering of the kingdom over the next thirty years. It may be true that Jewish political influence has been weakened by these events. However, we are talking here about the civilisation. And the fact is both Yiddish and Jewish civilisations have not only not declined but actually prospered during the XIXth century.  Kriwaczek could not entirely ignore that and he does discuss great Yiddish writers I. Peretz and Sholom Aleichem but his misguided thesis leads him to ignore other major Yiddish intellectuals of the XIXth and XXth century. A particularly glaring omission is that of Martin Buber, the foremost Jewish philosopher of the last 150 years. For Kriwaczek, Jewish philosophy apparently ends with Moses Mendelsohn, presented as a gravedigger of Yiddish tradition.
One the explanation of these and other omissions (the role of cantor in Yiddish culture for instance) lies in a strange approach to research by Mr. Kriwaczek. So convinced was he that Yiddish civilisation had been forgotten that he completely overlooked such crucial sources as YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (founded in Wilno in 1925) and the works of Professor Antony Polonsky from Brandeiss or Howard Sachar from Columbia University. I find it mind-boggling that the author quotes frequently Norman Davies, the specialist of Polish history, and not once Polonsky, the foremost authority on Polish Jews.
In a nutshell, you can skim this book in a physical bookstore but if you want to learn about Yiddish civilisation and its heritage try other sources mentioned above.

The Quiet American and the Hollywood Twist*

This film is an impressive work of craftsmanship: fluent and though-provoking story, beautiful photography and excellent acting. Michael Caine in particular is breathtaking as world-weary journalist, Tom Fowler, in love with a lovely young Vietnamese, Phoung. It is a measure of his performance that a preference of Phoung for him rather for a much younger American, played by Brendan Fraser, appears entirely credible.

And yet the film leaves me with a sense of a malaise. This is not so much because for all his charm and professionalism, Fowler is a deeply flawed persona, who ends by up mortally betraying somebody whom he claims to be his friend. This ambiguity is at the heart of the Greene's book and the very seductiveness of Michael Caine makes it more salient. No, my problem is with the Hollywood twist: introduction, at the end of the movie, of a seemingly innocuous sequence, which is not only anachronistic in relation to the book but also gratuitously moralizing and oversimplifying. As if they did not believe in the force of Caine's perfomance, the film producers make Fowler not only stay forever in Vietnam but also file dispatches (shown with end credits)that record various steps of US involvement, ending with Tet offensive. In this way, producers apparently hoped to kill two birds with one stone: first, to show the extent of Fowler's redemption; second, to draw a parallel with Iraq. They only succeeded in demonstrating the persistence of old Hollywood tricks (who really had a final cut on this movie?) and the strength of more recent liberal prejudices (Iraq will be like Vietnam, get it?).

* The Quiet American, directed by Philippe Noyce (2003)

I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe*

No, Tom Wolfe…you are not… Charlotte Simmons. You might have been Sherman McCoy (in Bonfire of Vanities) or Charlie Crockeer (in A Man in Full) and you were definitely Chuck Yeager (in Right Stuff) but this book is a stretch too far. This is not only a question of age and gender difference. The main problem is a contagious lack of conviction. The book reads and feels contrived. Sure, there are some nice set pieces (or shall we say “morceaux de bravoure”) that we came to expect from your books: the lunch at the Sizzling Skillets between the parents of Charlotte and that of her snooty roommate, Beverly; two basketball games, particularly one at U of Connecticut. And three (out of four) main characters, Charlotte, Adam and Jo Jo are quite sympathetic and reasonably multidimensional. They breeze and they evolve as the story unfolds. On the other hand, many other set pieces fall quite flat (the Gay Day demonstration in particular, when compared to earlier Wolfe work). And outside the three protagonists, the supporting cast is straight out of Hollywood (flat and gaudy). Somehow, Tom Wolfe appears to have lost his amazing “laser eye” ability to focus a significant detail, which illuminates not the only a particular personality but a whole era. This time, he actually gets its wrong: Nobody over the age of 15 and certainly nobody in any elite college (1400 SAT minimum) would ever consider Britney Spears as a model of anything. He, who lives by the right detail, perishes by the wrong one.

Sadly, for those us who admire Tom Wolfe’s writings ( a recent example of which his wonderful story about Robert Noyce in hooking up), this is a derivative work - just another “coming out of age” story: an overcooked and overdressed mixture of Allan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind), Charlotte Isebyt-Thompson (Dumbing Down of America) and of that true college life classic, The Animal House.

* Vintage 2005 (paperback)

State of Fear by Michael Crichton*

The only thing worse than the 'politicized' science that Crichton rallies against in an appendix to his book is a dumbed down science. But this is precisely what we get here. Dr. Crichton got concerned about the way that the controversy about global warming has been evolving. It is certainly a legitimate concern and Crichton is perfectly entitled and as well-qualified as anybody else to hold strong views on the topic. After all, global warming is not quantum physics about which Niels Bohr famously said, “those who say they understand it, have not read it.”

I am sure that if Dr Crichton has written a full-strength essay about global warming, he would have be widely read and his views would generate as much debate as books of Bjorn Lomborg such as "The Skeptical Environmentalist." On the other hand, as he deplores it, the treatment meted out to Lomborg, particularly by the scientific establishment, was appalling.
Perhaps because he was afraid of a similar fate or simply lacked confidence in the persuasiveness of his arguments if presented directly, Dr Crichton decided to cloak his message into a thick cloth of fiction. Or maybe he wanted to write an allegory or a morality play. Maybe. What he id produce was a mediocre thriller. Afraid of “bad science”, he produced a lousy literature. Inane and utterly predictable plot populated cardboard characters – super-smart scientist cum secret agent assisted a silent Asian sidekick; naive young, good looking and idealistic lawyer; eccentric but shrewd and loveable elderly millionaire; a good-looking tough girl with checkered past, who just happens to be the niece of the super-scientist. Interactions between these characters have all the subtlety and psychological depth of Saturday morning mangas cartoons. Clichés are piled thick and high as old rags in a second hand store: the bad guy is skinny and intense, with a scrawny neck; his hired assassin is a mysterious Asian beauty; the pompous and duplicitous Hollywood star is eaten by cannibals, and so on. This grotesque merry-go-round goes on for over 500 pages. However, in case we get suspicious about this haphazard accumulation of events and coincidences, Michael Crichton reassures us: the main text may be nonsense but, as he proudly proclaims in the introductory notice, footnotes are real. Then, in case we missed the point, he takes off the mask of a fiction writer and delivers an explicit author’s message: a series of unexceptionable platitudes and truisms about the need for careful consideration of scientific findings. Concerned that the reader may still not get it, he then includes the famous appendix about the dangers of politicized science. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the appendix is contaminated by the same spirit of oversimplification and smugness as the rest of the book. To complain that science is politicized is like to deplore there is too much heat in Sahara or too much rain in Brussels. These are unpleasant events but they are unavoidable facts of life. The science is politicized because it is controversial and essential. And more controversial and essential its content, more it is subject to political discussion, oversight and interference. Politicisation of science is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a feature of scientific evolution since the Greeks. Does one need to recall Socrates, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Lavoisier and other scientists who suffered for their ideas? The misuses of Galton theories are not an isolated incident. The case of Einstein and modern physics, without which there would be no nuclear bomb is not only better known but also more complex, as it was Einstein himself who pleaded directly with Roosevelt to launch the nuclear weapon program.

To pretend that all scientific discussions are driven purely by altruistic motives and rigorous logic is naïve (as anybody who read “The Double Helix” or more recently “The Genome war” will understand). To believe for a moment that politicians, policymakers and media will stay away from the ongoing debates about global warming or genetic engineering is wishful thinking. The challenge is not to separate politics from science but to structure their interactions in a way that reflect the increasing import of science and the diffusion of knowledge among the “great unwashed.”

* Harper Collins, 2004

The Jewish Century by Yuri Slezkine*

What a rich, multilayered, multifaceted book! Joyous to the point of almost Hassidic exuberance and yet deadly serious even tragic in its description of the Russian Jews' odyssey. It combines the best attributes of Russian lyricism, Jewish incisiveness and American optimism. Its construction is musical: built around a simple dichotomy of Apollo and Mercury (which apparently sounds better than Hermes), which is then modified and interpreted in a series of virtuoso variations. Apollo may occupy the front stage but it is Mercury who, in the background, makes the world go around. Jews are the quintessential Mercurians and as such for many centuries were politically and socially marginalised. But as the modern era inverses the traditional hierarchy and puts Mercury on the top, Jews assume greater prominence. Their spiritual and cultural values of commerce, meritocracy and intellectual contentiousness became dominant even triumphant. Yet, at the same time, Jews themselves move away from the Mercurian model and create an almost perfect Apollion warrior state, Israel. This is not the only paradox highlighted by Slezkine. Thus, he points out that Jews, the proverbially cosmopolitan tribe, have been the ultimate beneficiaries of the global rise of nationalism. Viewed by others and by themselves as victims of history, they emerge today as victors.

The notion of Jewish Century, as presented in the book, can be interpreted in at least two ways. In Chapter 1 and in many press interviews given by Slezkine, it is defined as the global triumph of Jewish values. But in Chapter 4, which accounts for more than a half the book, the notion becomes more ambiguous and refers to the peregrinations of Russian Jews. It is their fate, their errors and their intellectual and emotional evolution that shaped this past century. The first interpretation is more provocative and therefore more newsworthy. But, for me personally, it is the second one that is more pertinent. Although the history of Russian Jews is in many details distinct from that of Jews from other countries of Central Europe, such as Poland, Ukraine or Baltic countries, they were part of the same tradition and shared common values and outlook. As their Russian brethren, they were torn among conflicting loyalties and polarizing attractions of what Slezkine call “three Promised Lands”: Communism, Zionism and US capitalism. They played leading roles in Marxist movements, whether violent or merely intellectual, across the region. Following the traumas of the Second World War and its Cold War aftermath, some of them became the builders of the modern state of Israel, while the others (but also sometimes the same) morphed into fervent believers of the American dream. In many cases, including that of my father and my own, the evolution happened within a single lifespan. And it was actually quite brutal: many of us brought in a Marxist tradition reject it now utterly and consider communism as absolute evil, comparable to the genocidal nazism. It is this fascination – rejection dialectic, as much as the Holocaust, that, for me at least, defines the Jewish Century. It is only after exorcising the Communist ghosts that Jews really joined the vanguard of modernity. Slezkine does address the question why Russian (and by implicit extension Central European) Jews were so fascinated by Marxism and Communism. But, somehow, maybe because of my expectations, his answers felt too glib, skipping too quickly about traumas and contradictions that both fascination and its rejection have engendered among Jews and among their neighbors. I can only hope that Slezkine is addressing these in greater depth in his current work. I am looking forward to read it.

* Princeton University Press, 2004

The Genome War by James Shreeve*

This is an excellent book, scientific journalism at its best, didactic in its presentation of the scientific background, relentless in the pursuit of a telling detail and human touch. The story is more than just topical as it deals with issues which will continue to dominate the global scientific policy agenda in the years to come. It is this combination of substantive relevance and human interest that makes “The Genome War” a compelling page turner.

Human interest centers mostly upon Craig Venter. He is the hero, in both senses of the word, the main character in the story and a mythical character engaged into an epic struggle for his ideals. He comes across as a complex personality, full of drive and stunning intuitions but also vain and limelight hogging. Ultimately, Craig Venter appears as a truly tragic, quasi-Shakespearian, figure. He set out to bridge the gap between the two domains, of science and business, to be a business-savvy scientist and a scientifically-minded businessman. Yet despite great substantive achievements, in business and in science, he was marginalised (to put it gently) by both communities. Scientific establishment closed ranks and, at least according to the book, is not ready to put Venter on the Nobel Prize shortlist. As for Venter corporate sponsor, Perkins-Elmer, its CEO, Tony White, did not relent until, in 2002, he obtained Venter’s resignation from Celera.
Of course, Craig Venter is far from having said his last word. He's got plenty of money and is now engaged into exciting new ventures, in particular an effort to create artificial life. Still, his experience to date suggests that, despite increasing interaction between science and business, particularly in the vast domain of biotechnologies, it is risky to cross certain lines.

Beyond the personal interest in Venter story, there are three big messages I take out from the book.

The first one is that benefits of competition in a supposedly non-market area of basic scientific research are very substantial. In a sense, this book extends and expands on Watson's “Double Helix,” which was one of the first to highlight the intensity of rivalry among top scientists. “Genome War” shows beyond any doubt that the intense, and for some, ferocious competition between two approaches not only substantially accelerated the genome mapping but also produced better overall results. What had been seen before as a zero sum game was in fact a positive sum (win-win) game. It will be interesting to observe whether the scientific policy establishment will assimilate the virtues of competition in the design of new large-scale research efforts.

The second message is the overriding importance of information technology in this effort. The other hero of the book (besides Venter) is Gene Myers, programming genius, who demonstrates the validity of whole-genome shotgun approach. As far I am concerned, genome mapping is all about computer algorithms and powerful data processors.

The third message is that while genome mapping is a major scientific achievement, its economic impact has been limited so far. Business interest in the project was justified by the datamining potential, which would be unleashed by the mapping. So far this has not happened. The key players (Celera, HGS and Incyte) have practically abandoned a business model based on exploitation of the information riches of the genome in favor of more traditional revenue-generating approaches of drug development or service provision. This may not be a permanent situation but it does demonstrate once again that extracting economic value from information remains a major challenge.

* Ballantine Books Paperback edition, 2005 (originally published in 2004)

The (mis)behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson*

One of the many paradoxes of financial markets is the coexistence of knowledge and ignorance. Few economic activities are as intensely scrutinized, studied and data-rich as financial markets. A large corpus of academic theories has been established and is widely used by both market practitioners and market regulators. The leading theoreticians obtained the supreme consecration of Nobel Prize in Economics. And yet, at the same time, strong disagreements about the underlying rationale, dynamics and the fundamental nature of markets not only persist but are actually growing in intensity. The book of Mandelbrot and Hudson is one of the several publications, which criticises the prevailing Modern Finance theory.[1] This book, however, deserves special interest. It goes well beyond a compelling and well-documented criticism of key assumptions of the theory. It offers an alternative conceptual framework: a fractal approach to market dynamics. The principal author of the book, Benoit Mandelbrot, is well placed to do so. He invented the fractal geometry, which allows us to understand the evolution of complex and rough shapes. Not many people read Mandelbrot’s publications or even heard of him but most of us are familiar with fractal shapes such as the one shown on the cover of the book. These are not the creations of imaginative artists but the results of computer simulations using mathematical formulas and concepts established by Mandelbrot and his disciples. Fractals are applied across a wide variety of subjects and areas - computer animation, internet network management, encryption, weather forecasting, astronomy, geology, human physiology – to model phenomena previously deemed impossible to model and solve problems considered formerly unsolvable. Mandelbrot posits the applicability of fractals to finance. As it happens, financial markets were one of the very first areas he studied in his quest for a theory of complex forms. As he vividly recounts in the book, his quest started in 1961 when a Harvard professor suggested that he studies a long-term evolution of cotton prices traded on New York Cotton Exchange. This evolution could not be apprehended by standard probability theory. Mandelbrot established a mathematical framework, which allowed him to model the apparently incomprehensible variation of cotton prices. He found that this framework can be applied to a broad variety of financial phenomena. His findings were widely discussed but, as they run counter to the prevailing views, were set aside. In the meantime, Mandelbrot moved to work on other applications, where his approach found a more receptive audience. Modern Finance Theory continued its irresistible progress, its attraction to users, due to its ease of application, outweighing its conceptual oversimplifications. But the increasing frequency and severity of financial crises as well as the persistent volatility of financial prices forced the re-appraisal of Modern Finance Theory. In particular, its basic assumption of normal distribution of market prices could no longer be taken for granted. This assumption implies that market variations are fundamentally mild and in the long-run revert to the average. Yet, as Mandelbrot convincingly demonstrates, markets are turbulent and vary wildly. Market prices tend to follow a power distribution, within which the notion of average is of little relevance. The most important practical consequence of this conceptual difference is that the prevailing approach severely underestimates the risk in financial systems. An analogy offered by Mandelbrot is that of dam design. A dam designed to prevent the average flood, as estimated by a normal distribution, will be highly unsafe. On the other hand, one cannot build an infinitely tall dam. Using power distribution and other tools of fractal geometry, it is possible to calculate a cost-effective height of a dam, which would prevent extreme floods. Yet, financial markets have been designed for average rather than for extreme volatility, for mild rather than for wild variations. Mandelbrot does not offer ready-made solutions or answers to the questions he raised. Nevertheless, he offers several pointers and ideas for further research. In 1973, a Princeton university professor, Burton Malkiel, published a book called “A Random Walk Down Wall Street.” This book was a learned manifesto for Modern Finance Theory, its main point being that one cannot beat the market consistently. It was published several years before the reform of New York Exchange and the creation of NASDAQ, long before the advent of passive investment strategies and the triumph of derivatives. It was a trend setter. Will Mandelbrot & Hudson book mark a comparable trend toward fractal view of markets? Its timing is right, as many research efforts are under way to find alternatives to Modern Finance theory. The key test of its success and lasting impact will not be whether its readers will get rich but whether it will inspire a wave of new instruments, markets and investment approaches. [1] Other books of interest include “Fooled by randomness”, by Nassim Taleb and “A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market,” by John A. Paulos

*UK edition: Profile Books, 2004