THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
DECEMBER 16, 1966
&
A TALE OF THE DARK AGES
By Vladimir Jobotinsky, in Midstream, a Zionist publication of the Theodor Herzl Foundation
This, happened in the year 13>8. Strictly spedking, thc% Middle Ages were over, although what is officially called the Renaissance had not yet begun in \Yestern Muropc. The attitude of eontentn'ient was gone; the Baron whose father had been jn. Constantinople or F.gypt, among those Levantine spendthrift princes \\lio were the Only real smart set of the contemporary world, brought back and passed on to their children that very venom, the absence of which had been the blessing of the proceeding jK'riod.
Dante conceives the biblical serpent as the incarnation of one vice, envy. Once again in history the insinuating'reptile drove Adam from Paradise. Once again Adam began to strive, which'is a profession unplcasing in the eyes of God. The barons began to strive for golden goblets, their ladies for jewels, silks and brocades, the tradespeople for larger profits, and the usurer,, that great torch bearer of all economic progress, for such interest as would make it worth while to circulate his; money-bags over the risky roads from Milan to Aix-la-Chape)lc and Vieinia.
All this increased the burdens of the peasant, with the result thai the farm-yard, foundation of society, also began to heave with striving. Iif 1>5S it led to the outburst of the Jacquerie, and the detail with which I am concerned at the present .moment is the fact that Comte Albert dc la Romandc happened to be living in his castle of Col du Loup when the whole of Auvcigne flared ablaze with rebellion.
The chronicler a'diiiits that there was no other lord in'the"province so bestially hated by his vassals. From his young days he had ever been a monster of artistic, scintillating cruelty. He lacked even the excuse of a hot temper. His speech was always poised, and, especially in dealing with his women serfs, he affected a haughty courtesy which, perhaps to a greater extent than his extortions and hangings, contributed to filling silly liQads
(Continued from Last Week)
with silly ideas. lie anticipated Louis Qnator/e' in taking off his hat to a scullery wench's curtsy. To the men he \\as curt, but never insolent.
At the same time, poachers on his estate were usually eliminated by a method of pouring molten lead down their throats or into their veins; to punish the hamlet of Chardonnierc for failure to produce a certain sum, ten of the first born sons of the villagers, chosen by lot, had been hanged in one night; there was never a week without a great flogging at the castle of Col du Loup when Comtc Albert was living there, and the. \\hips had been especially bought from a Tunisian pirate and made of the hide of a semi-legendary pachyderm.
But so efficient had been the invasion of the Zeitgeist on'the minds of the Auvergnat peasantry that it \\asr not his cruelty they resented most. Their main grievance was that Comtc Albert, last adept of a tradition practically abandoned at the time, still claimed and enacted strict adherence to a divine privilege known to the student as jits [niinne. noctis. .
The habit had fallen into disuse in that part of-the world Ipng before Comtc Albert was born. Of course, no one had any objection to the free and short way of noblemen with the wives and daughters of their tenancy. But that was .private and unofficial procedure, quite different from commanding a young bride, with Tier wedding wreath still on her hair, to be marched off at sunset to the castle, without cither wooing or Violence, just as a 'cool matter of ^'ax-collecting. The ladies of the castles had long disapproved of the practice, which is in itself a further symptom'of "the! caricer already poisoning the organism of that once so blissfully acquiescent community; and the ladies won.
Court and neighbors looked askance at those die-hards, few enough indeed, who still insisted on performing the obsolete rites, originally perhaps no more than a literal interpretation of the idea of feudal
J. W. B. Study Shows Jewish Teenagers
Join Jewish Groups On Their Own, Not
Because Of Parental Pressure
Jewish teenagers affiliate with Jewish organizations out of their own interest and on their own initiative rather than because of parental pressure, according to a study of the 236 Jewish high school age boys and girls in Savannah Georgia, completed by the National Jewish Welfare Board for the Savannah Jewish Council.
Those who reported weakening association with Jewish communal organizations attributed this less to alienation from Jewish life or to acculturation and more to their search for a different type of program and.to the fact that they find existing programs irrelevant to their style of life and behavior-ial values.
The study disclosed that the teenagers have developed their oun pattern of use for leisure time, which includes primary participation in several Jewish groups but also some participation in school groups and individual recreational activities. The study's findings indicate that an increase in the number of Jewish organizations and groups offering the same kind of program uould not attract the non-affiliated Jewish teenager. It wouXl onlv increase the circulation of the habitual joiners. On the other h.ind. a decrease in the number of programs offered bv Jewish organizations, the study established, v.ou'd not gi\c the teenager more "free time but would be reflected in increased participation in school-sponsored and non-Jewish acti\ities.
The study found tlut 00 - of the txns hjci been B^r Mitzvah and 50'v of the bo^ and 30'- of the girls attended <^nj^nguc services frcqucnflv. But little c\idcncc was-'forthcoming thjt boys who had been Bar Mitzvjh were either more or less inclined to participate
in Jewish communal activities. A definite relationship was established between the lack of synagogue participation by teenagers and the weakening of their involvement in Jewish communal activities.
The findings were based on 188 responses, or 80�r of the Jewish teenage population, to a 50-item questionnaire, replies to a-matching questionnaire by 210 parents, questionnaires filled in by 10�^ of the advisers of Jewish youth groups, individual interviews, and group meetings.
' ' &
The study was guided and
directed by Arthur Brodkin, director of the Jewish Welfare Board's community planning sen ices, and Nathan Loshak, regional consultant of JWB's Southern Region. Ir-win Giffcn, executive director of the Savannah Jewish Council, served as local study director. Dr. Paul Dcutschbcrger, professor of social work and research of the University of Georgia School of sultant. Chairman of the study Social Work, was the study con-committee was Mrs. Basil Lukin. Co-sponsoring the study with the Jewish Council were the Jewish Educational Alliance, Agudath Achim Congregation, B.B. Jacob Congregation, Mickvc Israel Congregation. Bureau of Jewish Education, and Bnai Brith.
Two thirds of the teenagers who filled out questionnaires indicated thjt their parents felt they had sufficient Jewish education. On the other hand, SP; of the youngsters and 100 ;- of thos<: whom the teenagers saw as setting the best exam-pic and tho-iC whom parents identified as setting the best example felt the need for further informal Jewish education and knowledge of Jewish tradition.
lord as father of his vassals. But Comte Albert was not a man at whom anybody would dare to look askance, for he was a mighty swordsman and, instead of killing his opponents, amused himself by cutting off their cars or noses; and as he was a widower, that early form of feminism to which I have just referred had no actual access to the chateau.
Fortunately for his Auvergne tenancy, for the, last fifteen years they had been blessed with a crop of particularly plain young females; but there were among the older generation many women, now withered, of whom the whisper went round that their bridal night had been spent at the Castle. And then, but five years before the Jacquerie, Comtc Albert had excelled himself by an exploit which created quite a stir of indignation through the ranks of provincial nobility; it had even provoked <a violent sermon by an interfering Abbe" at Clennont Fcrrand. It was known as the Maric-Jeannc-Marie scandal.
In that year, in the village of Pre-la-GuCpe, three passably good-looking girls were to be married on the same Sunday, Had~it happened some ten years before, Comte Albert would not have flinched from the arduous responsibility imposed upon the manor by this triple coincidence; but he was nearing his fiftieth year, although still slender, agile and youthful in appearance. Consequently, he ordered the three weddings to take place on three successive Sundays.
The memory of t^e outrage was still fresh, and three boys were growing in Pre-la-Gue'pe of whom their official fathers questioned the precise derivation. Marie la Rous-se, Jeanne the miller's wife, and Marie la Camuse were good wives who went bravely through all the toil of a peasant woman's existence and bore their husband's blows as cheerfully as any other three spouses in the province; but they were under a cloud, humiliated outcasts, never daring to raise their voices in lively argument with a neighbor for fear that she might mention la chose. Their husbands, when merry at the tavern, hardly spoke of anything but la chose, and looked murder when they sat together on a revel night, too drunk or too prudent or too brimful of revenge for words.
And now the province was a-flame with massacre of nobility, and Comte Albert de la Rorhande was trapped. He could not withstand a long siege, for the peasants were led-"by men who knew something of warfare, and his water supply had been cut off. There could be no question of outward help reaching him in time. True, there was the long disused underground passage leading from the Chateau to the river.
In days gone by, when the romantic fashion of poisoning or stabbing one's enemies at feasts in one's castle still reigned supreme, such subterranean corridors had been in great demand as the best method of destroying evidence, and their exact location therefore considered a secret of state, known only to the master himself arid to his chief henchman.
But the fourteenth centurv was
.too modern for such antique ways. . For two generations, at least, village urchins had been the only frequenters of this tunnel, a most suitable construction for the staging of robber games; though they never ventured to explore very far, because in their early babyhood their mothers must have told them that the inner depths of the gallery were the abode of Hellcquin, a popular devil of that period.
One of the first thoughts that occurred to the besiegers was to block the passage and, in addition, to place reliable sentries on this side of the obstruction in case a sally should be attempted. From his window Comte Albert saw the yelling peasants carrying boulders into the cave, and was thus made to rcali/.c that even this old-fashioned channel of escape was no longer available. He would have been still more convincingly persuaded, had he been able to see who were the sentries.
For the last few weeks Marie, Jeanne, and Marie were no longer under a cloud. Now they were the heroines of the moment. Their disgrace had become a halo, their three names a political program, a sort of magnetic triad not unlike the liberte, coalite, frattrnitf of a later generation. The outrage perpetrated on their persons was like a symbol of all feudal iniquity, the avenging of their honor a slogan covering all the accumulated grievances of the Auvergne peasantry. No one was louder or more efficient in fanning the white heat of hatred than these three dishevelled furies, whose comely faces wore already the debasing m.arks of premature old age, the appanage of every true housewife.
At first it! had been their husbands who dragged their own family dishonor into the market place to make of it a banner; soon, however, the three women themselves took over the traditionally feminine idle of Deborah. They were seen everywhere, they shouted themselves hoarse until they were drunk'with the morbid self-torturing joy of waving their own shame before the raging multitude. By a joint effort of imagination they worked out an elaborate program of revenge, and the crowd was called upon to cross themselves and swear that it would be carried out with methodical precision.
Comte Albert was to be taken alive at any cost. He was to be stripped naked, first to be subjected to a manipulation intended as a protest against the Droit du Seigneur, was then to be initiated into the full meaning of the hippopotamus hide, and at last sent to rejoin a score of executed poach-
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I wholly disapprove of what you say and will defend to th� death your right to say it. � Voltaire to Helvetius.
DECEMBER 16, 1966
Publication Offlc*
VOL XLTX No. 11
Gardenr�)�,
WARNING AGAINST NAZI REVIVAL IN GERMANY
Canadian Jewish Congress in a statement viewed with the gravest concern the recent electoral gains in Germany of the neo-Nazi political organization, the so-called National Democratic Party:
This electoral success should immediately produce a reflex action on the part of any of those who remember how from very small beginnings a movement grew which was one of the most bestial in the history of the world. 12,000,000 civilians and innumerable combatants died in the destruction of the infamous Nazi Third Reich which produced misery and grief such as never has been before known.
ers with a ladleful of molten lead in his belly. And when the call wen� forth for sentn^Ro watch the subterranean passage, for sentries who would know neither sleep nor fatigue, Marie, Jeanne and Marie came forward' and were enthusiastically entrusted with'the-function. A week passed, and considerable progress could be registered. The castle garrison. were starved and thirsty. Jeanne the miller's wife, on a night when it was not her turn to watch the cave, had managed to get into communication with some of the Gomte's henchmen and offered them impunity for the delivery' of their master, alive and tied like a pig. She told (Continued on Page Seven)
Germany has a duty, not. only' to itself but to the rest of mankind, not to generate the same frightful regime. 200,000 electors, espousing Nazi philosophy, a large number of whom are concentrated in one of the German Laender, Hesse, should serve as a warning signal to German intellectuals, statemen, and.teachers to re-read their history of the last fifty years in order to check this movement before it becomes a juggernaut and is beyond control.
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