Brexit Blues

I’m weary beyond words at the ongoing disaster that is Brexit. Yes, I'm an American citizen who cannot vote in the UK. Fundamentally, I’m an outsider to the culture I now share. But I’ve come to regard London as my home. In this city-state of exiles, I’m one of many who both lose and find themselves in its vast sea of diversity. I have a stake in what happens.

Brexit is a disaster. For me, an older urban intellectual, the impact will be less dire than for those whose livelihood depends on freedom of trade, goods and services. I worry not about my job but about such things as traveling freely to other European countries. This is not said smugly; I know how lucky I am not to be struggling with the economics of a non-European UK.

Basically, it's the stupidity and provincialism of Brexit that outrage me. The UK will be isolated in a world increasingly disordered. It will cut itself off from an EU entity that gives it protection against an increasingly predatory USA and a rising China. The exclusion of potential immigrants will drain London's energy, and no doubt impact the labour force in towns outside London.

In truth, I don't know how it will impact places outside London. I'm less concerned than a good lefty liberal should be. It's the city I care about. I'm a rootless cosmopolitan, and what I value are ideas, diversity, edgy thinking, mixing up of cultures and people, the creative goo arising from confusion. I don't want London to lose its messy soul.

As an American, I can tell you most Americans like Britain for its cool accent and its historical pageantry. Period. When US citizens glance up from their isolation and look out at the world, Britian is not the first place that comes to mind--or even the fifth. It's a delusion to think Britain can see the US as a reliable trading partner--or a reliable anything else. And this will be true even if a non-sociopath replaces the current President.

As the Brexit tumoil rumbles on, I want to scream 'stop, stop before it's too late.' There's some hope the worst of it can be derailed. It was, after all, only fifty two percent who voted Leave against forty eight for Remain. In the US, you can't even change a postal route with that kind of feeble majority. But who knows what madness lurks in the heart of the UK's politicians and how potent the forces for little England are?

-Rose Levinson

Lament for My Mother, Florence

‘When I was a child, I spake as a child. …. My mother was angry when  I came home from secondary school with a grade D in maths class. Raging with frustration and fear, she railed, ‘You’ll never go to university. You’ll be just a secretary. What will you do with your life?” Good question. I had no idea what I’d do with my life. All I knew was wanting a life unlike hers, constricted as it was by not enough money and too many tasks. Along with working as a bookkeeper and rearing me and my sister., she tended her sick parents and kept my labourer-father from totally giving in to recurring despair.   It was a dismal time, that long-ago childhood. Would those long-ago turbulent memories would leave me. But childhood memories  don’t go away. My internalized mother doesn’t depart. Sometimes it’s as though I never left our drab living room with its large black and white television set, red bound copies of  Encyclopedia Brittanica and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, the green plush sofa with scratched wooden armrests, lamps that never fully lightened the yellow-beige interior. Hot Florida days when I had to water the lawn, trudging in the humidity in my schoolgirl shorts and badly cut hair. 5 o’clock meals of frozen peas and overcooked beef. The sight of medical paraphenalia in my grandmother’s back bedroom. What did I learn from my mother? That  I was smart though not pretty; my curiosity was a trial and my uneven temperament was cause for dismissal—but that something better was out there and I had to look for it. My mother gave me life but she couldn’t give me succor. My mother gave me goals but she had no balm for sadness. My mother wanted love but  knew I wouldn’t give it. My mother bade me go. I released her hand and left home. What can I give her now? Of course, I’m asking what to give myself as forgiveness for the hateful indifference I felt towards her. There’s a notion that the child can redeem the parent, his or her life making up deficiencies that came before. I don’t know that I’ve redeemed my mother’s life. When I knew her, whatever dreams she had were squashed by circumstance. But though she had so little, she asked for even less. As if to atone for her shortcomings as a parent, she was oddly self-sufficient and sought little from me or my sister. It came across as selfishness and disinterest in us. It still feels that way. She was never one to praise or delight in her daughters’ triumphs or soothe them in their pains.  As I reflect now, trying to understand what a child could not, perhaps her withholding was a way of protecting herself and us. Perhaps her mind whispered ‘don’t ask anything of Rose or her sister Maxine, nor of anyone else. Get on with it. Do it alone.’ What’s the point I want to make? Primarily it’s to acknowledge what I think is a truism: we never completely leave our mothers ,no matter how educated nor accomplished we are. If childhood is remembered positively, those memories are filled with pleasant longing, a desire to re-visit the past, . If childhood was fraught, we seek to obliterate it or at least  loosen its hold on how we see ourselves. The desire to soften the harshness of a bad childhood, to run from it, can smudge the adult as she struggles to grow up. Whether we wish to return to childhood figments or rub them out, our mothers remain until they vanish with our final leavetaking. Perhaps that’s why I want to atone for not loving my mother, whose name was Florence. I fear not being loved by those who may, at least for a little while, remember me.

Rose Levinson, Autumn 2018

Identity and its Discontents

The recent furore over anti-semitism in political circles in the UK pushes me back again into that circle of identity: Jew. When asked why he called himself a Jew, though he didn't adhere to any practices or beliefs, the open-hearted thinker Isiah Berlin responded 'because they won't let me forget.' 'They' is anyone who singles out the Jew as Other, projecting onto that screen ugly traits deserving of annihilation. It's wearying, and I wish not to engage. But present tensions compel me to once again examine the knots of my own Jewishness , striving to make peace with its contradictions.

On one hand, the tentacles of Jewishness form immense bonds of warmth and clarity. When my mother died, Jewish mourning rituals--covering household mirrors, sitting on a low stool, tearing a piece of clothing--were immensely comforting as was the support of the community. On the other, the communal grip can strangle, squeezing out those not deemed acceptable to the tribe. When I chose a non-Jewish mate, my then rabbi refused to take part in our ceremony.

Perhaps Jewish particularity and insistence on maintaining non-adulterated ties at any cost comes from the small number of Jews in the world. Hard as it is to believe, Jews are only 0.15% of the world population and about 0.5% in the UK[i]. Current demographics indicate that right-wing religious Jews will soon be the majority UK Jewish culture. For a secular Jew like me, this shift towards a rigorous, 19th century Judaism as touchstone of legitimacy is troubling, pushing me further into seeing myself primarily as a rootless London cosmopolite, grateful to live in this city-state's diverse cacophony.

Israel has only made things worse regarding the vexed issue of Jewish identity. Irony of ironies, the existence of the so-called Jewish state both feeds anti-semites and starves those of good will who see Israel as a nation-state accountable to norms governing any country. Israel and many of its supporters want it both ways: Jewish and a nation; a democracy yet one permitting its priestly class, the rabbinate, to decide matters of public policy; an occupier of other's lands and a defender of the rights of a beleaguered people --so long as those people are Jews.

Rage against Israeli policies is one of the hardest challenges for a Jew like me who wishes to loosen long outworn ties whilst not adding to the chorus of Jew hatred. The line between opposing Zionist policies (using Zionist as a descriptor of those who define Israel as the legitimate homeland of only the Jews) and being anti-semitic is a thin one.[ii] Boundaries keep getting crossed. Anger at Israel often gets conflated with dirty words used to insult and threaten Jews. Jews who are critical of Israel are often accused of being self-hating. Jewish self-righteousness rears its head, insisting that the age-old slaughter of Jews can only be avoided if Israel is implacably unyielding and if Jews everywhere give Israel unquestioned support.

It's a mess, and the noisy and ugly non-conversation is exhausting. I struggle to be clear. I want institutional anti-semitism rooted out. I want Israel held responsible for its inhumane and immoral human rights violations. I want my fellow Jews to insist that Israel is a nation-state and not allow it to move further into a theocracy answerable to a god but unaccountable to international law. I want Israel to take its chances as an open culture, federated with neighbours Jordan and Palestine. I want to shut out the voices in my head that tell me I'm betraying the Jews by thinking this way.

As the ancient Hebrew priests invoked, 'ken yehi ratzon': Let it be so.

[i] www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-population-of-the-world

[ii] See the London Review of Books, Vol. 40 No.01-4, January 2018; page 18: The 'New Anti-Semitism' by Neve Gordon, an excellent discussion disentangling the threads of so-called anti-semitism from criticism of Israeli policies.

-Rose Levinson