Alex Gordon

OpEd: Honoring Ukraine’s Mass Murderer Simon Petliura is an Obscenity

“The delegation was met by soldiers and officers, […] with what is called a hostility: ‘Half the city (Kiev), all the Jews must be slaughtered. […] All three million Jews must be kicked out of Ukraine.’ Shocked by such sentiments of the Ukrainian troops, the delegation appealed to Petliura to prevent pogroms and bloodbaths in Kiev. Petliura replied that ‘he could not guarantee anything; the soldiers’ sentiments are known to him, but he sees here a thirst for revenge, and not antisemitism… [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

A Serious Essay about European Jewish Humor

Self-criticism is inherent in a tolerant society that respects the human being as such and reflects on its mistakes and imperfections. Self-criticism is alien to an authoritarian society. Nations that are satisfied with themselves and look to other nations for faults and blame for their failures are stagnant. Jews are dissatisfied, hence they develop. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Israel, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Trivia, Humor & Satire

OpEd: Zelensky Keeps a Distance from His Jewishness and from Israel

The silencing of his Jewishness has characterized his entire tenure as president. Mentioning his Jewishness became taboo. Benjamin Disraeli, a baptized Jew, was Prime Minister of Great Britain and openly discussed Jewish issues and wrote novels with Jewish characters. Léon Blum was Prime Minister of France and spoke freely about his Jewishness. Bruno Kraisky was Chancellor of Austria and made no secret of his Jewishness. Walter Rathenau was Foreign Minister of Germany and spoke proudly of his Jewish ancestry. None of them were ashamed of their Jewishness as Zelensky was. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Israel, Jewish History, Opinion, Staff and Bylined Contributors, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Jewish Biography: Boris Pasternak Avoided, Denied, His Jewishness

Pasternak’s feelings about Jews and Jewry in the first 22 years of his life are ̶ negative: humiliation, oppression, pogroms. A different vision of the Jewish problem was revealed to him in Marburg. Pasternak encountered Jewish thinking for the first time in his life: Cohen’s teachings were based on the ethics of Judaism. Plagued by Jewish complexes in Russia, he was apparently shocked by the position of the Jewish thinker and rejected Cohen’s offer to continue his philosophical studies. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Holocaust, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

OpEd: The ‘Music’ of Socialism

Why didn’t I become a socialist? Soviet socialism destroyed my family and I could not love it. But it turned out that I disliked socialism for the same reason I did not become a musician: my aunt’s piano also left Kiev.  Instead of using my absolute musical ear for music, I had to use it to listen to the atonal music of wailing, to the unmelodic moans and gloomy chords of the lamentations of the Soviet Jews. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, International, Israel, Jewish History, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, Opinion, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Erich Kurt Mühsam, Murdered Bohemian Poet

In 1908, Mühsam moved to Munich. Augustin Sawhi, a Spanish anarchist, recalls: “Within a few years, he became well known in the artistic world of Munich for his carefree, witty lifestyle. […] Mühsam was considered the leader of Munich’s bohemians.” [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Lion Feuchtwanger, the Cosmopolite

His books probe which type of Jew serves the nation more faithfully – the court Jew Joseph Süss Oppenheimer from  Jew Süss; Yehuda ibn Ezra, the favorite of King Alfonso VIII from The Spanish Ballad; the assimilated and estranged historian and writer, the collaborationist Joseph Flavius in The Jewish War trilogy; Jephthah, the leader and fighter for the national interest in Jephthah and His Daughter; or the revolutionary leader Thomas Wendt (Ernst Toller) in The Year One Thousand Nine Hundred and Eighteen? [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Jewish Biography: Arthur Kösztler and the 13th Jewish Tribe

There is no missionary in Judaism, which sharply limits the mobilization potential of this religion. Therefore, in the Khazar Khaganate, in which only a part of the elite accepted Judaism, there could not be an intensive violent spread of religion, similar to what took place in Christianity and Islam. Therefore, the Jews were so few among the Khazars that they could not by themselves be a source of intensive spread of the Jewish religion. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Israel, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

One Hundred Years of ‘Jewish Physics’

Lenard and Stark were a member of a group of 30 physicists who put forward the concept of “German physics.” They rejected the new quantum physics and the theory of relativity as dogmatic theories irrelevant to reality. They argued that the correct approach to explaining physical phenomena should be based on classical physics, which was being crowded out by the “false” theory of relativity and quantum mechanics invented by the Jews. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Jewish History, Science, Medicine, & Education, Staff and Bylined Contributors, USA

Jewish Biography: Wilhelm Reich and the Sexual Revolution

Reich’s calls for a return to the sexual practices of primitive societies repulsed many. Marcuse criticizes Reich in Eros and Civilization, although he is also a neo-Marxist and a supporter of the sexual revolution: “Sexual liberation per se becomes for Reich a panacea for individual and social ills. […] A shameless primitivism begins to prevail, foreshadowing Reich’s wild and fantastic predilections in the years to come.” Criticizing Reich for “primitivism” became a common view of his theory and practice. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Staff and Bylined Contributors

‘Instead of an Epitaph’: A Yom HaShoah Reflection

The Nazis were defeated in World War II, but Nazism lives on and continues to make up smears about the Jews, including the popular claim that they did not fight in World War II. The blood libel “Jews didn’t fight” coexisted with the official false statement: “It was not Jews who were killed during the occupation, but Soviet citizens.” The places of mass extermination listed “Soviet citizens” as having been murdered. The Holocaust was hushed up in the USSR: Jews in these places were executed not because they were Soviet citizens, but because they were Jews. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, International, Israel, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors

Jewish Biography: Ilya Ehrenburg, One Handshake Away

In 1940, Ehrenburg came to the USSR from occupied Paris. He returned to the country, where the repression of 1937 proved to him the cruelty of the authorities. The writer received frightening news from Izvestia in 1939: although he continued to be on the newspaper’s staff, his reports and articles would not be published. The USSR was changing its attitude toward Jews because of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. [Alex Gordon]

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Alex Gordon, Antisemitism, Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International, Jewish History, Staff and Bylined Contributors