My Amazon Review of Jane Gerber's "The Jews of Spain: The Sephardic Experience"

The Spanish Legacy

CUNY Jewish history professor Jane Gerber has written a marvelous history of the Jewish experience in Spain from Roman times through the Inquisition and the diaspora that followed. I read this book just prior and during my recent trip to Spain. Because the focus my trip was largely on Spain’s Sephardic legacy her book brought a great deal of context to my travels through Toledo, Cordoba, Granada and Seville. One obvious legacy is the ubiquitous presence of Iberian ham as proof that Spain was no longer Jewish or Moslem.

Gerber begins with a discussion of Columbus who wasn’t Jewish, but likely had many Jewish contacts. After all the leading cartographers of his era were Jewish. Further because the Mediterranean under Moslem rule was one giant free trade area it was ideal for Jewish merchants to ply their trade throughout the region. Those trading contacts would become crucial after the expulsion of 1492.

Although I once thought that the Jewish golden age in Spain ran from 711-1492, it really ended in 1086 when the very strict Islamic Almoravid dynasty replaced the more relaxed Umayyad dynasty. The great Maimonides leaves Spain for Egypt around this time. There is a statue of him in Cordoba.  It was under the Umayyad’s that the Jews of Spain thrived. With the Christian reconquest underway Jews sought refuge with some of the Christian kings and some actually thrived. In particular the Abravanel family were the reigning court Jews of the era. What I learned from the book is that 1492 was a culmination of Jewish hatred that had long antecedents. Specifically there were mass pogroms stirred up by local priests throughout Spain in 1391 where Jew were massacred, most notably in Seville.

After the exile Gerber follows the Jews as they remain in Spain as Converso’s move on to Istanbul, Salonika and Sarajevo with a few moving to Safed. It was in Safed that exile Joseph Caro wrote his guide to Jewish practice, “The Shulchan Aroch.”Later they move to Holland and then on to the New World. The Sephardim initially thrive in the eastern Mediterranean, but then gradually decline as the Ottoman Empire falls into its long term decay.  She then follows their expulsion from the region after the establishment of the State of Israel to Israel proper where they now represent about half of the Jewish population.

What Gerber’s book lacks is a discussion of the Converso Jews who settled in the American southwest and Mexico.  The Inquisition followed them to the New World. Today there are Catholic families in New Mexico who practice such Jewish traditions as lighting candles on Friday night, avoiding pork and sitting Shiva for the dead. A few of those families have actually returned to Judaism.

To sum up, Gerber has written a very informative book about the Sephardic experience that few Americans in general and Ashkenazi Jews in particular have very little understanding.

For the full Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R233CYL4H9J2AT/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Robert Shiller's "Narrative Economics: How Stories Go Viral & Drive Major Economic Events"

Telling Stories

My UCLA colleague Ed Leamer always reminds me that human beings are story telling animals. Here Yale economics professor and Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller has written a whole book on the subject as to how convincing narratives, whether true or false, can influence economic behavior. Some of the narratives he discusses are:

·        Housing prices can only go up.

·        Technological advancement leads to unemployment.

·        “New Era” booms in the stock market.

·        Gold is the only true store of value.

·        It is socially unacceptable for wealthy people to be extravagant in hard times.

When these ideas go viral they obviously can effect economic behavior. In order to track how viral an idea can be Shiller uses the science of epidemiology to track its rise and fall counting its appearances in publications or in the case of today how it trends over the internet.

Although Shiller doesn’t really give us a formal analytical framework as to how we can integrate a narrative into making predictions about economic behavior, he certainly makes the case that economists have to take into consideration prevailing narratives when trying to understand the macro economy where both booms and slumps can get exaggerated by the presence of mass psychology. This concept is far from new, but Shiller expresses it in a different way.

The full amazon URL appears at: https://www.amazon.com/review/R4XHVF8GCEJOX/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Quick Question for Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren continues to refuse to say how much more middle class families would have to pay for her Medicare for All plan. She only says that the all-in costs won’t increase for those families compared to today’s insurance costs. However neither her primary opponents nor members of the press have yet to ask her to define the income levels for whom she perceives to be middle class. My guess is that it is lower than what most people think. Which means all-in costs will go up for those families above her definition of middle class.

Therefore her primary opponents and the press should press her on this point. Just do it!

My Amazon Review of Dennis Ross' and David Makovsky's "Be Strong and of Good Courage: How Israel's Most Important Leaders Shaped its Destiny"

A Plea for Israeli Pragmatism

Dennis Ross a seasoned American diplomat who spent the bulk of his career dealing with middle-eastern issues and David Makovsky a distinguished fellow at The Washington Institute have written an important book about the fundamental dilemma facing Israel. To them, both committed Zionists, Israel faces a choice: will it be a Jewish-democratic state without most of the occupied territories or will it be a larger democratic- binational state with all of the problems that entails? To them Israel can’t hold on to the bulk of the Palestinian population and remain a Jewish-democratic state.

The authors make a call for pragmatism on the part of the current Israeli leadership by invoking the memories of four prior prime ministers. They being David Ben Gurion who accepted the 1947 U.N. partition plan, Menachem Begin who returned the Sinai to Egypt in exchange for peace, Yitzhak Rabin who accepted the PLO as a negotiating partner and Ariel Sharon who told the settlers to give up their dreams in Gaza. All of these men were security conscious and it was their belief that pragmatism should dominate over ideology in exchange for what they believed to be a more secure Israel.

Now don’t get me wrong, Ross and Makovsky are not wild eyed peace at any price advocates. They are hard-headed realists who currently believe that very little can be accomplished over the near term in negotiating with the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless when the time does come for negotiations they offer a series concrete proposals of what Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the U.S. can do to create an environment for an ultimate deal. These are too lengthy to go into here, but at its core the Israeli Right, which I am sort of a supporter, has to accept that the current situation is not stable in the long run if Israel is to be true to its Zionist and democratic character.

My main criticism of the book is that there are no maps. This is especially relevant to understand the geographic reality of the proposals they are making. Ross and Makovsky have made an important contribution to the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue making their book very relevant for today.

I received this book as a gift.

For the full amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R2OBLHMQQWHY8L/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

Only the Beginning in the Trump/Ukraine Scandal

Triggered by a whistle-blower complaint, all hell has broken loose over the past two weeks as President Trump's extortion of Ukraine President Zelensky was revealed. Trust me this is only the beginning. My guess is that in the coming weeks we will hear from two very senior officials. The first one being the bane of liberals, fired national security adviser and uber-hawk John Bolton. Recall that Bolton has already been publicly critical of Trump's North Korea policy. My guess is that his lawyers are already in discussion with House Intelligence Committee staffers.

The second figure will be Fiona Hill, who recently resigned from the National Security Council staff. There she ran the "Russia Desk" and earlier wrote a biography on Vladimir Putin entitled "Operative in the Kremlin" that was previously reviewed on these pages. (https://shulmaven.blogspot.com/2019/07/my-amazon-review-of-fiona-hill-and.html) Bolton and Hill were in up to their eyeballs in Trump's dealings with both Russia and Ukraine. As they used to say in mob movies, they will sing arias before the congressional committees.

Their testimony will be important because if the House votes to impeach as it is likely to do, the Senate does not have to hold a trial. All it will take is 50 votes plus Vice President Mike Pence to acquit at the outset. Bolton, Hill and others will be necessary to make an air tight case that will force at least four Republican senators to vote with the Democrats to prevents an early acquittal.