Category: Identiity

The tip of the iceberg – reflections on the German ban on circumcision

19/7/2012

Jews and Muslims around the world have been inevitably exercised by the Cologne court decision to outlaw male circumcision.

The old saws are being trotted out about a cultural assault, anti-semitism and islamophobia. And yet, if we detach ourselves from the noise, sentiment and, quite frankly, illogicality of the procedure, it is easy to see how the court came to its conclusion.
Babies – and young children – are incapable of informed consent. This is a central tenet of law throughout the world. The tolerance of the infliction of pain and irreversible body change is accepted only in relation to the treatment of male children. We have, thankfully, more or less universally turned against female circumcision.

Angela Merkel, inevitably sensitive to the furious response from world Jewry, states that there is a right to perform this rite. But on what basis? There is no logical foundation for this thought, even if the realpolitik is persuasive. It is clear that circumcision is an assault. The fact that its moving force is religious conviction and identity does not actually alter that. Perhaps one sign of the inherent weakness of the ‘pro’ position (similar to the ‘humane slaughter’ justification of kashruth and halal ritual killing of animals) is the health argument. Instances of cervical cancer and HIV/Aids are lower in areas of mass circumcision than elsewhere. But this argument is likely to be increasingly undermined by increased screening and immunological breakthroughs like the HPV vaccine.

For me, the Jewish argument in favour of circumcision is wreathed in sentiment and out-dated notions of identity. If Grosse Fugue is about anything, it’s about the redefinition of identity in the light of what befell my people. No amount of religious indifference or even conversion provided immunity from murder. Increased observance since the Holocaust is merely a strand of denial, pretending that it never happened so that all that went before can continue unchallenged.

Will the ban be overturned. Merkel has promised legislation. But that doesn’t alter the fact that the judgement was humane and legally correct. And it doesn’t destroy the argument that no amount of hanging on to arcane superstitions can obviate debate about what the Holocaust actually means today.

Hopefully, a new sense of identity will soon begin to take shape, one that acknowledges the universality of the slaughter and the moral obligations which flow from that. When that happens, we Jews can perhaps focus on our shared heritage of justice, freedom of thought, the search for knowledge and the quest for personal liberty.

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The reasons for writing

5/6/2012

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As the feedback begins to roll in, a recurring question is the motivation for writing Grosse Fugue. This has made me think about setting down what drove me.

First, there was the need to organise a constellation of ideas and thoughts that revolved around the Holocaust, identity and the moral imperatives of belonging to an oppressed and decimated people.

One day, our five-year-old son came home to say that it was Jewish New Year and they had all wished the Jewish children a happy new year. After a queasy period of parental guilt, we decided to do something about it. To belong to a Jewish community means to belong to a synagogue. But that proposition was insupportable for atheists. And yet we are undeniably Jewish. This was particularly true when the victimology of the Holocaust is studied. The killing was prescribed by clear laws; my family – and all its antecedents on both sides – would have ‘qualified’. Indeed, the most orthodox and the most assimilated were equal under the gas. This needed a lot of thinking through and working out.

Then there was the desire to share a love of classical music generally and, specifically, some of the ostensibly less accessible elements of the repertoire, notably string quartet music and, in particular, late Beethoven.

To a lot of people, Beethoven and Bach are the two greatest composers (whatever ‘greatest’ actually means). But some of their most extraordinary works are perceived as unapproachable. Bach’s Solo Violin Partita #2 is a work of power and intimacy, a tour de force of technique but, most importantly an inexhaustible source of consolation and pleasure. But it's a different sound-world and mood, so the three settings in which it is performed are designed to show it in different lights.

Beethoven’s five late string quartets were called by one critic ‘the crowning glory of his achievement’. And yet, for many, they are more or less unknown. His symphonies and concertos are famous and recognisable but these great works, his last outpourings, are inexpressibly inspirational, moving and brave. The novel launches something of an innovation in arguing that they are, in fact, one work, rather like the five acts of a play But what will make a hopefully irresistible impression is the depiction of a recital of the middle of the five quartets. It tries to capture the drama of a performance of the third of the five, culminating in the Grosse Fugue (or, most accurately, ‘Große Fuge’).

The only way to achieve wide distribution of such things is via the novel. To write these concepts into a compelling narrative would enable them to fly to the greatest number of hearts and minds. Hence a plot to accommodate ideas and to carry readers along through what might in other media be forbidding but which, in a novel, becomes accessible, understandable and seductive.

Perhaps three Russian quotes will help encapsulate my ambitions:

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN: There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY: Art is not a mirror to reflect the world, but a hammer with which to shape it.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN, again: True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and sceptics.

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Reflections on the launch

17/5/2012

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It's been a couple of weeks since the soft, local launch of the book at Waterstones Hampstead.

The intervening fortnight has been a little surreal. Those attending have been uniformly complimentary. The event was really well organised and my speech seemed to go down ok, There's an extract on YouTube and here's the text. The glow has been longer-lasting than I ever could have imagined.

Now the hard work begins. Grosse Fugue was never going to be a supersonic best-seller. It will rely on word-of-mouth and good reviews. A debut novelist and a little-known publisher make getting reviews a real challenge. My belief in the book resides as much in its ability to haunt readers and make them want to talk about it as it does in the way it's written and narrative strength.

I hope that as many people as possible evangelise it to their friends and family and, with luck, post reviews on Amazon. Here are the ones already up.

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The imminence of 'Grosse Fugue'

19/4/2012

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So this is the week that 'Grosse Fugue' finally emerges as the butterfly I so want it to be.

My hopes? Obviously that it sells shed loads. But, more than that, I want its ideas to take wing. And I want people unfamiliar with the music which pulses through its pages to go on their own voyage of discovery, to sail the highways and byways of the great composers and find, as I have done, inexhaustible pleasure, comfort, inspiration and joy.

I hope that readers will come to this site and share their views, be they hostile or supportive, indignant or provocative.

Above all, I hope that this is the start of a long and stimulating journey.

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The tip of the iceberg – reflections on the German ban on circumcision

The reasons for writing

Reflections on the launch

The imminence of 'Grosse Fugue'

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