Seneca and Szánto Gyuri

Although we didn't see each other much and I knew little about him, we were firm friends, like young people who meet and immediately establish a rapport. In some ways we were a lot alike, in other ways we were very different. Gyuri, George, arrived in New Zealand after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He had ambitions to become a judge. That was in Hungary. Then history intervened. Justice in communist Hungary was somewhat elusive. To become a judge an ethical young man would have had to compromise his principles. But this is probably not why he left. He probably left because he saw this as his one opportunity to leave and try his luck in a far distant Western country. I suppose he ended up in New Zealand because the lottery that offered refugee destination in Vienna to the many thousands of people who fled Hungary suggested it. New Zealand was ready to accept young men with no qualifications apart from their willingness to work. So here was George, a young Hungarian Jewish intellectual I could talk with about literature, politics, life in general, and we played chess. Although I had lived in New Zealand for some eight years, and thought of myself as reasonably assimilated, I found in Gyuri a kindred spirit. I would have been teaching at the time and trying to complete my university degree. Gyuri found work in Tourist Hotels in various parts of the country. He had a lot of personal charm, and presented quite a dashing slight figure. Perhaps he also considered doing a part time course at university, but I am not sure about that. What he really wanted to do is to go sailing. He bought a boat, moored it in Evans Bay and lived on that. Once he took me and a girl whose name I can't now recall, on a cruise around the harbour. Gyuri, George, was popular with girls. It was memorable, because we were becalmed just outside Oriental bay, and the boat stopped completely still. We didn't have a functioning motor. After waiting for a while for some breeze, Gyuri got into the dinghy and rowed us, towed us to our destination. This is one of my vivid memories of him. Gyuri and I tried to find out place within the local Jewish community, but were not made welcome. We were too different, had too little in common at the time with other young Jewish men and women in the Jewish circles. Once we got all dressed up to go to a function and were turned away. Perhaps we didn't know that we should have booked in advance, or had to be members in some organisation we didn't even know existed. Anyway, the incident left a bad impression. Neither of us cared much about religion, but being Jewish meant a lot to us. Gyuri moved away from Wellington, still sailing and moored his boat, I think, in Auckland. New vistas, new opportunities. Then tragedy struck. Gyuri was hit on his head by the boom of his sail. He didn't appear to suffer significant injury, but he lost his hearing. He went completely deaf. The doctors could not establish what caused his deafness, there appeared to be no obvious cause. Gyuri hoped that the Mayo Clinic in America, with its state of the art facilities, might be able to help. Gyuri and I kept exchanging letters, he despairing, writing of his despair in a facetious light hearted manner, I trying to keep his spirit up, hoping that help will be just around the corner, or medical science will find a miracle cure. But the miracle never happened. Gyuri and I often talked about Seneca. This is about the only conversation I still remember. Seneca was perhaps one of the Latin authors I was studying at the time. Gyuri was captivated by Seneca's stoic philosophy. Gyuri only wanted to live on his own terms. This did not include living with total deafness. Then he got into the bath one day, and like Seneca, he cut his artery and killed himself. In his will he left instructions for his executors to send me a chess set to remember him by. I received, quite unexpectedly a beautiful marble and alabaster chess set with chess board. I still have it, though one of the pieces is slightly broken. From time to time I think of Gyuri, a lovely young man, trying to fit into the New Zealand world, an independent spirit, but out of place in the homogeneous New Zealand world of the 1950s.  

The unpredictability of history

Antwerp had a population of about 100,000 in 1550. Fifty years later this number halved. By the turn of the seventeenth century Antwerp's population was reduced to about 50,000 and it took generations to recover. First Catholics killed Calvinists, then Calvinists hit back, killed Catholics and ruined the beautiful churches and destroyed the works of art. The power of the Catholics and Spanish rule was restored, there was an uneasy truce, but people stopped killing each other. This may be a very simplified account of history, but it helps us understand what is going on in the Middle East now, and gives us some hope. In a sense history doesn't repeat itself, but there are some obvious parallels between the current war between Shia and Sunni Muslims and the wars of religion in seventeenth and seventeenth century Europe. Europe was in turmoil after Calvin and Luther questioned and undermined the established order and the hegemony of the Catholic Church. The Middle East was in turmoil after the disintegration of colonial empires. The former colonial subject people sought answers at first in socialism and sided with the Bolshevik empire, then when Bolshevism failed looked for the solution of their problems in fundamental Islam. Either way, they thought that the Jews were at the heart of their problems. Ultimately conflict riven Europe settled down to a period of comparative peace and spectacular social, cultural and economic progress. It can only be hoped that the fires that fuel the current conflict in the Middle East will burn out and self interest, common sense, and a tolerant understanding of others will prevail.

Joel Polack and the nature of historical writing

There is a painting of a man in a gabardine coat and hat, slightly hunchbacked, talking to a couple of Maoris on the beach, with potatoes and a dog in the foreground. Unfortunately, though I have a detail of the picture, I can't track the full picture down. I found it a couple of days ago, now I lost it. Such is the nature of Google searches.

Looking at this picture, I would want to know about the men, the European so obviously out of context, the Maoris, and what was going in among them. They seem to be bargaining. I know the goods Polack obtained from his brother, the auctioneer, publican and general wheeler dealer in Sydney. He wrote a very specific request spelling out the amount his brother should be prepared to pay for the goods, and complained about some goods that proved to be too expensive. The transaction would have taken place before 1837, but some time after 1831 when Polack first visited New Zealand. This picture encapsulates the rapid changes in New Zealand society and the interaction of Pakeha and Maori. The brutal Musket Wars would have been in living memory, but in this scene there is not a musket to be seen. It is a picture of peaceful trade, in a setting that, as Polack imagined, would be a wonderful place for European settlement.

I keep coming back to Polack, completing a project about him is in my bucket list. With this in mind, I read Vincent O'Malley's The Meeting Place, and more recently, some of his Beyond the Imperial Frontier. I wrote to him and expressed surprise that he didn't dwell more on Polack's account of the encounters between Maori and Europeans. He mentioned Polack in passing. In his reply, and I am grateful that he bothered to reply, Vincent O'Malley said that there are 'different approaches that can be taken to the past', one is biographical, another is encyclopedic. O'Malley takes a thematic approach. The problem with that approach is that it cherry picks incidents from a broad period, perhaps 1769, when Cook first arrived, to 1840, when some form of Imperial government was established, but somehow it does not capture the rapid changes that took place, not only within generations, but even virtually from year to year. I maintain that history is about people, who change and survive in ever altering circumstances. I am currently reading Simon Schama's Rembrandt's Eye, in which he tackles the history of the seventeenth century through the lives and paintings of Rubens and Rembrandt. The era comes alive though their daily concerns. I love Schama's story telling. I am also enamoured with David Reynolds, who writes about the shaping of the twentieth century through the eyes of some of the key protagonists, Chamberlain and Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, Carter, Sadat and Begin, Nixon, Kissinger and Brezhnev, Regan and Gorbatchev. This may be the “'great men' view of the past', now out of favour with professional historians, but it makes riveting reading.

Netanyahu, Hams and the Holocaust

Benjamin Netanyahu alleged that EU, by removing Hamas from a list of terrorist organisations 'learned nothing from the Holocaust'. I wish, I hope, he hadn't said that. Israeli politicians should not use the Holocaust as a propaganda tool. The conditions and circumstances in Europe now, despite the increased prevalence of anti-Semitism, is nothing like it was in the Europe of the 1930s, when the seeds of the Holocaust were sowed, and certainly nothing like it was in the period between 1941 and 1945, in the middle of a very brutal war. when the mass murders took place. Hamas is a corrupt, ruthless, autocratic regime, but describing it as a terrorist organisation cast doubts on the meaning of the term 'terrorist'. Whether there is some benefit in having Hamas on the list of bad guys, or a downside to removing them from that list I don't know. But using the memory of the Holocaust to influence such a political decision is harmful, and outright dishonest. The memory of the Holocaust has a profound impact on the narrative that shaped Israel, and underlies the 'Jews will never again be helpless, defenceless victims' policies pursued by governments of whatever shades on the political spectrum since well before the establishment of the state. But trotting out the Holocaust as justification for whatever politically expedient argument some politician wants to hammer home is simply shameful.

Changing beliefs

Every Thursday I start the day with listening to a shiur, a talk, by my son, Rabbi David Sedley, which he gives as an interactive course on Web Yeshiva http://www.webyeshiva.org/class.php?cid=1174 to an audience all over the world . I am very privileged. This week he talked about the Shabbatean heresy, and disputes among rabbis, disputes that divided the Jewish world. He talked about beliefs in amulets, and the Zohar as a source of answers to Jewish beliefs. Although the period that he covered today was the second half of the eighteenth century, he acknowledged that such divisions persist to the present day. For me, an adherent to a rational world view, it is hard to comprehend that there are still people who believe in the efficacies of amulets and rabbinical blessings, but the reality is that such people exist, and they fervently believe in such magic. Which made me think that beliefs and belief systems change not only over centuries, long periods of time, but also over generations. I certainly don't think of myself as a religious man, even if some others who see me in the synagogue from time to time think of me as such. I recite, read my prayers without believing that by praying for health, for prosperity, for peace, my prayers would be answered by a benevolent God. I am grateful for the good life that was granted to me, and I don't bother to consider whether this was a favour to me by a divine being. It is not a benevolent and just God that I believe in but in my strand of Zionism, the belief of the existence of Am Yisrael, the People of Israel. I faced persecution for belonging to the People of Israel, I take pride in the unique qualities and achievements of Jewish people. My belief is rooted in this. But this kind of belief changed in every generation. My religious children believe in a different set of tenets, just as my father and father-in-law had beliefs different from mine. My father, who was a non-believer, fasted every year on the anniversary of the time when he stumble as he was shot at, and was left for dead, and miraculously survived as his column of prisoners was marched across the mountain pass from the main concentration camp of Mauthausen to the sub-camp of Günzkirchen. My father-in-law, an outright atheist, asked 'who would say kaddish for me' when his only son died. Why fast? Why does saying kaddish matter to you if you don't believe in God? Each has his own set of beliefs. If faith in amulets and rabbinical blessings gives comfort so be it, as long as this faith does not preclude tolerance of others who do not share it.

Perceptions of the Sydney gunman

Man Harron Monis, a.k.a. Mohammad Hassan Manthegi and Sheik Haron, was not a terrorist, not an affiliate of ISIS or Al Quaeda or any other organisation intent on fighting a war with Australia. He was a deluded Iranian immigrant whose mental state was crying out for help, a help he never received. He was a recidivist criminal, charged with being an accessory to the murder of his former wife, charged with repeated sexual assaults, yet he was given bail, set free, allowed to wander around with his head filled with delusions of self importance and hatred. He was neither a spiritual leader, nor a Muslim cleric, even if he dressed like one. He was a loony who should have been in a loony bin, but justice systems, Australian or New Zealand, can't handle the demented. The perception was that he was a terrorist, although he was a generation older than typical terrorists. It was easier to assume that Sydney faced a terrorist attack that government propaganda implanted in the minds of people. Offices, schools went into lock-down. Jewish schools in particular, were terrified of a possible attack. It was easier to imagine that Australia, or for that matter, the whole of the Western world was threatened by a comparatively small group of Middle Eastern fighters, who gained rapid military success because the states charged with protecting their citizens were so corrupt that people sided with the bloodthirsty insurgents rather than with the troops of their own government. It was more conceivable that a shadowy group of Islamic fundamentalists would attack people in a café in central Sydney than that a seriously demented person, out on bail, would get hold of weapons and explosives, walk into the café and hold staff and customers there hostage for 18 hours, while heavily armed police surrounded the premises and apart from talking ineffectually with the mad hostage taker, did nothing to terminate the siege. In the meantime, people tasked with providing security, including the security team at the Wellington Jewish Community Centre, had a field day basking in their importance.

A simple woman of worth, Malvin Brandler

No airs and graces for Malvin. She never pretended to be anything but what and who she was, Miklos's wife, companion, partner, and helpmate, Robert's doting mother, and loyal friend of many of the Hungarian Jewish immigrants, but in particular, my mother's Zsuzsa's. Together the two of them left the Jewish building in Bezerédi Street, reported to the brick works, marched to Lichtenwörth, the Jewish women's labour camp near Wiener Neustadt. They survived together, looked out for each other, shared their blankets, and returned to Budapest, to Bezerédi Street together. In Hungary Miklos and Malvin moved in different circles from that of my parents. They lived outside Budapest, in Pesterzsébet, Miklos had his cap making workshop, they were bikies, zoomed around the country on a motorbike with a side-cart, while my parents lived in the ninth district of Budapest, focused on leaving the country and moving to New Zealand. Malvin and my mother Zsuzsa kept in touch from time to time, and when Malvin and Miklos fled from Hungary after the 1956 uprising, they decided to come to New Zealand. They were down to earth people, with their feet firmly rooted on the ground. They worked hard and frugally and built up a modestly successful cap manufacturing business. They managed to scrape together the money to buy a modest but comfortable home. Unlike many of the other Hungarian immigrants, they were active in the Jewish community, joined B'Nai Brith, Malvin joined the Council of Jewish Women, They were pillars of the Jewish community, but they were also rocks of the circle of Hungarian immigrants, who could share their worries, anxieties, dreams and frustrations with them. They could always count on Malvin's no nonsense down-to-earth advice, often expressed in  language, colourful colloquial, bordering on the crude but friendly. Gilding the lilly was not for Malvin. Their lives and dreams were shattered when their son Robert was killed in a car accident. Miklos was so traumatized that he could never mention Robert or the tragedy. Not being able to share this with her husband was very hard on Malvin. Robert was her future, her only relative. None of her family survived. When Miklos died after a few years, was he killed by grief I don't know, Malvin had no one left. But she faced life with great courage. She never complained, never gave in to despondency, she was always there for her friends, always a tower of strength. She and my mother phoned each other every morning to make sure that they were both still alive. They shouted at each other called, each other names, shared each other's lives as only very close friends can. She was part of our family, an additional grandparent for our children. When Malvin died, peacefully, in her sleep while watching Gone with the Wind on television, with her supper tray in front of her, my mother somehow lost her will to live. A little while later my mother died. The two friends shared some of their hardest days, their joys and griefs. When Malvin passed away it was time for my mother to go. It is Malvin's yah-zeit this week. I am the only one left to say kaddish for her.