I’d wish you a Happy 2009 but I’d be at least four years too late!

According to the most charitable calculation, next year will be A.D. 2013. The mistake dates back to the early sixth century. Until then, even the Church was using the pagan calendar. That chronology was based on the legendary founding of Rome; as a cross-reference, it also cited the reign of the prevailing tyrant. For example, if you check the Vatican archives, the notarized date for the Nicene Creed would read “in the 1,078th year of Rome and in the 19th year of Constantine.” Western Civilization obviously needed a shorter and less pagan date.

In the 1278th year of Rome (alias A.D. 525), the church finally converted its calendar. The new chronology, based upon the birth of Jesus, was calculated by a mathematical monk named Dionysius Exiguus. Dionysius is not the most trustworthy name for a mathematician or a monk. In fairness, however, the poor guy was doing division with Roman numerals. It is amazing that his chronology was wrong by only four years. The Church apparently caught the error, because Dionysius was not made a saint. Yet, it never corrected that mistake. The Church seems to be quite ecumenical about arithmetic.

Ironically, the Reformation never brought up the mistake, either. You would have thought that Martin Luther would have rubbed it in. The boisterous German described one Pope as a syphilitic dung beetle, so he hardly would be shy about an accounting discrepancy. Yet, on this subject, Luther was discreet. Jean Calvin and John Knox were also surprisingly silent. You would expect them to wish you a Dour but mathematically precise New Year.

So, apparently all of Christendom is going along on the cover-up. Then so will I. (I don’t want to incite another 1900 years of persecution.) 2009 it is–and have a Happy One.

HAROLD PINTER DIES

“The Eulogy”

cast: Harold Pinter, ghost and guest of honor
Lady Antonia Fraser, his widow
Ian Holm, actor
Vivien Merchant, first wife

Harold: Should I say something?

Lady Antonia: I really don’t think that it is expected of the dead.

Harold: That’s why I want to. But what should I say?

Antonia: Coherence would be a nice change of pace. Of course, the public would love all the eternal gossip. God’s appearance…or Satan’s. There is an equal audience for either.

Ian Holm: Is he really dead..or is this just another of his inexplicable pauses?

Antonia: Both. And I shouldn’t complain. Those pauses saved you from having to memorize dialogue.

Ian: But I had to look as if I knew something.

Antonia: So did Harold.

Ian: Nobel Prize. Not bad for a cockney.

Vivien Merchant: Always could pronounce his H’s, though.

Antonia: His type always could.

Harold: My type?

Antonia: You know.

Ian: He knows.

Harold: But I love cricket.

Vivien: Social climber.

Antonia: That would explain me.

Vivien: That would explain you.

Harold: Should I say something to this audience?

Antonia: A profound silence should suffice.

In the second century BCJ (before Cousin Jesus), Syria extended far beyond the borders of the country that we know and love. It also included Turkey, Jordan, Iraq, Israel and Lebanon. (Lebanon still may be part of Syria.) This very large kingdom was a fragment of Alexander’s Empire that had been divided among his generals. Seleucus grabbed it, and his ancestors continued to rule it two centuries later.

Seleucus was Greek as was the ruling caste; and these Hellenes made themselves comfortable by recreating the Greek culture in their kingdom. The same was true of the other grasping Greek and Macedonian generals. Egypt, under the Ptolemies, was Hellenized. There were Hellenized satraps in Afghanistan and India. (Even the statues of Buddha started to look remarkably like Apollo.)

A descendant of Seleucus, Antiochus the Third attempted to expand his empire into Greece. However, Rome had the same idea at the same time. Guess who won? The Romans pushed him out of Greece and then defeated him in Asia Minor (190 B.C)

His son Antiochus the Fourth inherited a smaller empire; however, he tried to make it more cohesive by imposing uniform Hellenization. But one province, with a very idiosyncratic theology, did not really appreciate the glories and gifts of Greek civilization.

“You know, a statue of Zeus would add an elegance to this synagogue. As long as your God is invisible, we will gladly lend you one of ours. And Zeus won’t mind sacrificing pork to Him.”

Who could resist all the enticements of Western civilization? Art, theater, medicine, bathing! Had we been a little more receptive, “Pygmalion” could have been a musical 2000 years sooner.
My ancestors must have been real ingrates. In fact, those Semitic fundamentalists were so unappreciative of imposed western values, that they rose in rebellion. (Do you think that history repeats itself?)

The Greeks were then obliging enough to lose the war. This was at a time when the Jews hardly ever won–obviously long before there were Nobel prizes in Economics or Emmy Awards for comedy writers.

In any case, but for Jennifer Aniston’s ancestors, we wouldn’t have Hanukkah as a psychological shield against the veritable avalanche of Christmas. Of course, we probably would have come up with another celebration: Hillel’s bris or one of Solomon’s wedding anniversaries.

Yuyeniel

The modern bar mitzvah requires much more planning than the D-Day Invasion. At least our troops did not require place cards for the beachheads in Normandy. Roosevelt, Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery were spared the daunting challenge of picking a theme for the event–a presumably fabulous motif that would flaunt our resources, humiliate the Germans and make Stalin jealous. In those more prosaic times, winning the war was ostentatious enough.

The bar mitzvah once was a rite of passage–when a thirteen year old really was expected to be an adult–but now it is a competitive form of self-deification. Who can put on the best show? Would you like a Hawaiian motif for the banquet? What about a Las Vegas theme? (Bugsy Siegel would be gratified.) There are party organizers who make a specialty of designing and choreographing these extravaganzas.

However, I have noticed that none of the bar mitzvahs have literary themes. That seems an ironic omission for the People of the Book. Perhaps I could go into this business. I do have ideas…

Of course, gentile authors might be inappropriate. A Faulkner bar mitzvah? (He is much more suitable for a 90 proof baptism.) But the number of Jewish writers still presents us with ample choices. To avoid all stress on the teenager, we could have a J.D. Salinger theme. The bar mitzvah boy won’t show up at the services but leave a manuscript of his speech.

Would you like a Harold Pinter theme? A Pinteresque service would have four characters on the stage, doing disjointed readings, while interrupting and disputing each other. The audience doesn’t know which, if any of the children, is being bar mitzvahed.

For a truly memorable service, you could have a Proustian bar mitzvah. It would last 40 hours but the bisexuality and the French pastry should keep the congregation interested. Furthermore, a Proustian bar mitzvah is an impressive credential on any college admission.

How about the Tom Stoppard bar mitzvah? The theme will be a dazzling synthesis of Shakespeare, Byron, Houseman, Joyce and Lenin. True, Judaism will never be mentioned, but in a Reform service it rarely is.

And for a truly traditional experience, there is the Sholem Aleichem theme. Your surviving guests will always talk about the pogrom.

Studying history has given me a high standard for scandal. So I am not impressed by a governor attempting to auction off a seat in the U.S. Senate. No, to merit my interest Rod Blagojevich should have offered to sell the entire state. China might want Illinois just for the soybeans. While I would appreciate Blagojevich’s brazenness, I still could not credit him with originality. That same stunt was pulled by King Theodahad in 535 when he offered Italy for sale.

When faced with invasion by a rich enemy, Theodahad’s offer seemed a practical compromise. Even the Italians shouldn’t have minded. At least, the new owner would have a more pronounceable name: Justinian. Besides, Theodahad was not exactly an heroic inspiration–or even a paisan. He was an Ostrogoth, although with a veneer of Roman culture. (Theodahad fancied himself a classical scholar, which by Ostrogoth standards meant he could read.) His uncle Theodoric, leading a barbarian horde, had conquered Italy some 40 years earlier.

Theodoric (454-526) had proved to be an excellent ruler. In fact, he was last competent leader that Italy has had in the last 15 centuries. Unfortunately, his abilty was not hereditary but his monarchy was. Theodoric left the throne and Italy to an idiot grandson who managed to drink himself to death. With his preoccupying vice, the royal sot forgot to have heirs. His mother, Amalasuntha, was Theodoric’s daughter and assumed that she was next-in-line to the throne; she had been the regent during her son’s youth–although that clearly was not a glorious success. However, the Ostrogothic nobility did not like the idea of being ruled by a woman. To placate this barbarian misogyny, in 534 Amalasuntha agreed to share the throne with her cousin Theodahad.

That arrangement lasted only a few months. Although Theodahad had never shown any previous interest in politics, once he was on the throne he wanted the power all to himself. At least Amalasuntha did not seem to mind her ouster. In fact, she was planning a luxurious retirement in Constantinople. As regent and queen, she had been in correspondence with the Emperor Justinian and they had developed a friendship. There were suspicions that Justinian was smitten with the Ostrogothic queen, who was said to be a beautiful, voluptuous blonde. The Empress Theodora–who was a petite brunette–felt the need for her own foreign policy.

The ambassador from Constantinople presented Theohadad with a Byzantine puzzle. Justinian demanded the protection of Amalasuntha, but Theodora wanted a distinctly different form of care for her perceived rival. The Emperor and the Empress clearly had imcompatible aims, and Theohadad was in a hopeless position. Whatever he did, he would have an enemy and a war. The Byzantine ambassador confided this advice to Theohadad. Justinian would be the more congenial enemy; at least, he might forgive. Soon after, Amalasuntha died her in bath–strange accident.

Theohadad planned for the inevitable war by negotiating the surrender. Once the Byzantines landed in Italy, he would cede the kingdom in return for a yearly income of 1200 pounds of gold. (That would be the equivalent of 15 million dollars.) Of course, Theohadad did not mention his plans to the Ostrogoth army. So the commanders were surprised that the King did not respond when the Byzantines conquered Sicily in 535 and then invaded Southern Italy the next year. As the Byzantines moved north, the Ostrogoth generals simply decided to mobile the army without Theohadad’s permission. And if they could ignore him, they might as well oust him. A cousin-in-law replaced him. The Ostrogoth nobles never knew of Theohadad’s treason (the Byzantines could keep a secret); they just despised him as an incompetent and a coward.

You already know the mortality rate among deposed Ostrogoth rulers. In Theohadad’s case, no one pretended it was an accident. The Byzantines would eventually conquer Italy but it took 19 years. The long war would destroy the Ostrogoths, exhaust the Byzantines and ravage Italy. Perhaps a simple if unethical sale would have been preferable…and a bargain.

On this day in 1791, Antonio Salieri was framed for murder. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart couldn’t possibly have died of natural causes at the age of 35. Even by the standards of 18th century medicine, if you survived childhood’s 50 percent mortality rate, you likely would live to 43. Yes, doctors could bleed you to death; the medical profession seemed unaware that a shock-induced coma might be unhealthy–however restful it looked. And if the blood-letting doctor had previously used that lancet on an infected boil, who knows what other surprises were entering the patient’s circulatory system?

Through the science of second-guessing, historians now think that Mozart actually died of rheumatic fever. But that is too prosaic an autopsy. The public demands a conspiracy! Someone had to kill Mozart. Salieri became the popular scapegoat; there were rumors of his deathbed confession to murdering Mozart. For some reason, the gossip especially appealed to Russians; at least, it passed Tsarist censors–although they would have preferred a story incriminating liberals and Freemasons. In 1831, six years after Salieri’s death, Alexander Pushkin wrote “Mozart and Salieri” to dramatize the alleged rivalry between the two composers. (Pushkin was shot six years after that, but the killer was Mrs. Pushkin’s lover and not Salieri’s ghost.) However unfounded and unfair, the Salieri rumors still incite and inspire artists. In 1897, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the opera “Mozart and Salieri;” but it was nothing to drive Tchaikovsky to murder. (Actually, Tchaikovsky was already dead–and there are rumors about that, too.) Of course, we are familiar with Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus”; if his play does not exonerate Salieri, at least it presents an unbearable Mozart we’d all like to strangle.

But Salieri really is an implausible villain. The man was a respectable composer and a highly esteemed teacher; if he really possessed a homicidal envy, he would bumped off one of his students–a youngster named Beethoven. Yes, Salieri was Italian but that is not always criminal. Salieri was from Northern Italy; they don’t kneecap in Milan. Any crime there is strictly white-collar and no one has ever accused Salieri of embezzling Mozart.

But if you want a versatile culprit, you should consider Mozart’s favorite librettist: Lorenzo Da Ponte. They collaborated on “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Don Giovanni” and “Cosi Fan Tutti”. (Without Da Ponte’s Italian libretto, “Don Giovanni” would have been “Ritterherren Johan.” How seductive is that?) So why blame Da Ponte? Even if he had no motive for killing Mozart, Da Ponte possessed an all-encompassing guilt that could fit into any conspiracy theory. In his remarkable, scandalous life (1749-1838), Da Ponte was a Jew, a defrocked Catholic priest, and an Ivy League professor. There’s something to offend everyone.

However, I personally suspect that Mozart was done in by his final opera. Try explaining the plot of “The Magic Flute”. You will either have a cerebral hemorrhage or get diabetes.

In the good old days, one of the few pleasures of being in an airport was being accosted by Hare Krishnas. If I had the spare time–and the airlines always guaranteed that I did–I would ever so innocently ask my would-be missionary about the practice of “suttee.”

Western literature has its macabre romance of a widow dying of a broken heart. In India, suttee ensured it. The widow was expected to hurl herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre. Although this practice is now being espoused by University of Chicago economists as a way to “reform” social security, the British were appalled by it. Using Imperialism in a rare instance of benevolence, the British outlawed suttee on this day in 1829.

Even today there are still reports of suttee in India, but it is no longer officially sanctioned or included in tourist itineraries.

p.s. Of course, widowers were never expected to throw themselves on a funeral pyre. They were free to remarry a future piece of kindling.

p.p.s. The Taj Mahal was built by a Moslem.

A thousand years ago, the children of Scandinavia looked up to the sky awaiting the arrival of a jolly, boisterous spirit and his animal drawn cart. If the children had been good, they would be rewarded with weapons and attack plans for the British Isles. Thor and his goat cart would eventually be replaced by a migrant deity willing to work longer hours, deal with diseases and the other drudgery that no self-respecting Aesir would touch.

Yet, Swedes still celebrate the Christmas season with little straw goats, a symbol of their former theology. Perhaps in Scandinavian Nativity scenes the Virgin Mother is wearing a breast plate and a horned helmet.

In 1700, Peter the Great, along with the kings of Denmark and Saxony, expected to take candy from a baby. But the baby almost killed them. The candy was actually Sweden and the baby was its teenage king. Today’s Sweden is the kind of country that would make a perfect suburb: placid but sophisticated. (Many of us fondly remember that Swedish films had nudity when Hollywood still apparently believed in storks.) But three centuries ago, Sweden was the bully of the Baltic. With the best army and navy in the North, the overachieving Swedes had won control of Norway, Finland, the Baltic States, and most of the area that would have been Poland’s and Germany’s coasts.

However, Sweden’s resentful neighbors saw their chance for vengeance and territory when a fifteen year-old ascended the throne in Stockholm in 1697. His youth was not the only perceived handicap of Charles XII; the young man was very strange. Some thought him “backward”; we might diagnose him as autistic. He never mastered the charm or the etiquette of the Court; he had no interest in the pleasures and vices that were his royal privilege. All Charles ever wanted to do was to play soldier; but, as it turned out, he was very good at it.

When, in February 1700, Russia, Denmark and Saxony declared war on Sweden and its callow king, the allies must have based their strategy on an accountant’s assessment. Their amassed armies far outnumbered Sweden’s forces; the Swedes would inevitably be overwhelmed. However, Charles did not wait for the inevitable. He attacked. Denmark’s proximity was its misfortune; by the summer of 1700 an overrun, devastated Denmark was suing for peace and ceding more territory to Sweden. In fact, Denmark was lucky that Charles acceded to a peace treaty. He didn’t like treaties because they required him to stop fighting. At least, Charles found solace in that he still had a war with Russia and Saxony.

A Russian army threatened to wrest Estonia and Latvia from Sweden. Peter the Great commanded an impressive number–40,000 men–but the invasion had accomplished little more than trespassing. Cannons and muskets require aiming, but no one had provided the Russian horde with adequate training. Furthermore, many of the Russian soldiers did not even have muskets; they were armed with clubs, axes and halberds, weapons only fairly effective in the 15th century. (But Peter’s officers had the latest fashions in uniforms.) Charles felt that 10,000 of his highly trained soldiers could handle the Russian horde, and he proved it this day–November 30– at the battle of Narva in 1700.

With half of his force dead or captured and the rest scattered, his country at the mercy of an unscathed Swedish army, Peter was prepared for any demand and every humiliation; but he still was amazed by Charles. The Swedish king simply marched away to begin an invasion of Saxony. This was not an act of mercy or generosity but contempt. Charles thought so little of Russia that he snubbed it; he wanted his enemies to have some fight in them. So Russia could recuperate before Charles would demolish it again.

Peter certainly had underestimated the young Swedish king; but now Charles underestimated the Tsar. Having seen–and barely surviving–a highly trained army, Peter proved an apt student. Over the next few years, while Charles was rampaging through central Europe, Peter rebuilt the Russian army along the model of its Swedish nemesis. If Ikea had a military catalog, Peter would have bought out the store. By 1703, the Russian army was ready for a rematch, and this time it successfully invaded the Baltic States. On newly acquired territory along the gulf of Finland, the Tsar ordered the construction of a fortress-with room for expansion–named St. Petersburg.

Yet Charles ignored the reviving Russian menace. He was preoccupied with a relatively unimportant but endless campaign in Saxony and Poland. Did it really matter who would be the next figurehead king of a powerless Poland? Inexplicably, it did to Charles. By 1708, however, he finally turned his attention to Russia; and this time he was going to oust Peter. To do so, Charles would lead his army into the heartland of Russia, through the Ukraine and on to Moscow. At least, that was the plan. His over-extended, precarious supply lines might have seemed an obstacle, but Charles expected to be feted, supplied, and reinforced by the Ukrainians and Cossacks. They were known to hate the Russians, so wouldn’t they regard Charles as their liberator? If so, their gratitude did not extend to fighting along side the Swedes.

Of course, Charles stayed on the attack. What did it matter if the Russian army at Poltava was three times the size of his force? Vell–as they might say in Swedish, eight years of training did make a substantial difference in the Tsar’s army. Most of Charles’ army was either killed or captured. Now, if Charles wouldn’t end a war when he was winning, imagine how he felt when he was losing. Riding south, he avoided capture and managed to get to the Ottoman Empire. There, the celebrity refugee convinced the Turks to declare war on Russia.

Peter welcomed this additional war as a chance to advance Russia’s southern frontiers to the Black Sea. He was so eager that he repeated the same mistakes that Charles had made at Poltava. Now, it was a Russian army deep in enemy territory, with its supplies cut off, and badly outnumbered. There was one difference, however, in Peter’s disastrous loss at Pruth in 1711. He, along with his entire army, was captured. The Turks were in a position to exact any terms that they wanted; and their ally Charles was insisting on the restoration on everything he had lost. However, after two years of Charles, the Turks realized that they did not like him, either. All they asked of the captured Tsar was that he return any territory that the Russians had previously won from the Turks…and that Charles must be allowed safe passage through Russia back to Sweden. Yes, the Turks were that eager to get rid of him. In fact, they placed him under house arrest until he got the message.

When back in Sweden, Charles simply scrounged whatever he could to continue the war. He was oblivious to the fact that the war was irretrievably lost, and that his strickened country had neither the manpower nor the resources left to accommodate his bloody hobby. Of course, Charles would not be content until he was killed in battle; in 1718, in a pointless siege of a Norwegian town, someone finally obliged him. The marksman is unknown; it might even have been an exhausted Swede.

History has had a number of great yet self-destructive generals. Charles XII is unique among them in that he is so colorless. Perhaps that is the consequence of being Swedish. He also could have been an idiot savant whose savoir happened to be war. History remembers him as “The Lion of the North.” He may have had the courage of a lion but he had the common sense of a lemming.

November 24th

What was Charles Darwin writing? It had been five years since he had mesmerized Victorian Society with his latest revelation on the life of barnacles: “A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidæ and Verrucidæ of Great Britain.” Yes, it was a hard act to follow, the public was insatiable and Darwin himself was daunted by the prospect. But, after four treatises on barnacles, the critics were starting to dismiss Darwin as a one-subclass-of-crustaceans hack. That hurt.

He did have some notes from a sea voyage that he had taken 20 years earlier, and he had long pondered his observations of the wildlife of the Galapagos. That was it! Darwin would write a cookbook of finch recipes. The Galapagos natives had dozens of ways to prepare the bird, and the cuisine varied from island to island. In fact, he was amazed by the number and disparity of recipes; how and why did they originate? Darwin concluded that there was a scientific explanation for the evolution of all cuisines: an evolutionary process called “nutritional selection.” And so Darwin presented his theory in “On The Origin of Spices.”

(By no coincidence, the daguerrotypes of the prepared dishes would showcase the tableware of a certain British manufacturer. But that flagrant product placement was the least that the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood could do for his trust fund.)

Unfortunately, the publisher rejected Darwin’s manuscript explaining “The English public has never been interested in food, but we do love an animal story. Perhaps if you rewrote your work with an emphasis on the finches–and without eating the more likable ones–I am sure that you can do for those plucky little fellows what you have done for barnacles.”

So adapting his work to the publisher’s whims, (How else can a writer survive?) Charles Darwin wrote “Origin Twist: The Evolutionary Adventures of Phineas Finch.”

All right, it did not quite happen that way…although the gentle Mr. Darwin might have found it a more congenial approach to introduce evolution to Victorian society. Darwin had no delusions as to the public reaction to “On The Origin of Species”: the outrage, the personal attacks and the less than flattering caricatures in Punch. At least, the Church of England could not burn him at the stake. In fact, the dread of the ensuing controversy had deterred Darwin for many years from publishing his research on evolution. He probably hoped to avoid it altogether, keeping evolution a secret among the scientific community.

Yes, Darwin did not discover evolution; he merely divulged it. By the 19th century, science had becoming increasingly skeptical of the Bible’s explanation for Creation. If nothing else, the growing variety of fossils was raising doubts and questions. Geologists discovered fish skeletons in rock layers on mountains. Genesis did not explain that. Biologists were finding ample evident of extinct species. Had Adam killed them all or had the animals drown in Noah’s Flood? But science preferred to regard the accumulating data as anecdotes on a ribald topic that would only shock the public.

If evolution was science’s dirty secret, then Charles Darwin was–to put it a Sixties’ context–the kid with the best collection of Playboys. With his studies on geology, British barnacles and the wildlife of the Galapagos, he was the acknowledged expert on “you-know-what.” Among his scientist friends, he was even sharing his theory of an underlying principle of (not to to said aloud) evolution. Of course, he knew and dreaded the the reaction if his theory ever began public. Natural selection was tantamount to denying God’s precise blueprint of Creation. Darwin was an affable man of fragile health, so he lacked both the temperament and the strength for controversy. To avoid the uproar, he was quite content to keep his theory a secret among friends. It remained so for more than ten years until 1856, when Darwin found himself forced to choose between infamy and obscurity.

That year, Darwin learned that a young British naturalist in Borneo had arrived at a theory of evolution based on a natural selection of the fittest member of a species. This unexpected rival, Alfred Russell Wallace, could not have known of Darwin’s long-standing but secret theory; the two men did not frequent the social drawing rooms. However, using the same empirical perspective, Wallace simply had arrived at the same conclusion as Darwin. Furthermore, being young and unestablished, Wallace was not the least reticent about being the center of controversy. He contacted the British scientific societies about his proposed paper on evolution, and that news reached Darwin.

Even then, Darwin was loathe to react and risk any uproar. He first wanted to see what Wallace actually had to say. Ironically, within a year, he knew. Wallace had written to him with an outline of his ideas. In his communications with the scientific community, Wallace had been told of Darwin’s expertise in evolution. So, looking for guidance, the chicken wrote to the fox. In fairness to Darwin, he never discouraged or disparaged Wallace; he analyzed his rival’s work with a remarkable and laudable objectivity. Wallace actually appreciated Darwin’s help and continued the correspondence, never realizing that he had goaded Darwin into writing his own work on the subject.

Evolution was no longer going to be a secret. Darwin had long hoped to avoid the controversy, but he would be damned if Wallace’s research would take precedence over his. Resigned to the infamy, Charles Darwin finally published his findings, “On The Origin of Species”, on November 24, 1859.

As for Wallace’s barely remembered role in history, “survival of the fittest” apparently applies to scientists, too.