A Convergence
of Convergences:
A Contest.
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For more information
about this contest,
click here.
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Contest Winner No. 26.
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Jewish Bunk Beds.
By Monica S. Bland
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When Israel and Hezbollah were bombing each other this summer, a striking picture of Israeli children in a bomb shelter was published by the AP that called to mind a famous photo of women in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Israel was to be the embodiment of "Never Again," a safe homeland for the Jewish people. Yet the scene has been conjured up once again.
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Weschler Responds.
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Quite a striking juxtaposition, I agree, though I think I might have a slightly different take from Ms. Bland's on how the images play themselves out, one which, as I think about it, might be seen as a continuation of my earlier thoughts on the Beirut/Warsaw convergence.
Because, yes, absolutely, contemporary Israelis generate bunk architecture in their bomb shelters uncannily reminiscent of the bunk shelves to which they (or their parents or grandparents) were themselves subjected, as Jewish victims, back in the Nazi concentration camps—albeit for virtually opposite reasons: in the earlier instance, they were being warehoused for servitude and death; in the latter, they are warehousing themselves for protection and life. And what are we to make of that repetition?
Is it that there are only so many ways to efficiently warehouse human individuals in a cramped space, and the Nazis and the Israelis both independently hit upon the same one from this relatively limited array of possibilities? Could be.
But I agree, I think there is something more going on, though in this instance the repetition compulsion feels a bit more like that evinced in that profoundly unsettling (and controversial) Liliana Cavani/Charlotte Rampling film The Night Porter (1974), the way in which victims fall back into the forms of their earlier victimhood, and the odd reassurance they find there.
Stills from The Night Porter
Granted, of course, much more is going on in both the film and in the situation limned by the recent photo of the Israeli bomb shelter. But, as Ms. Bland's gloss suggests, one of the comforts afforded by the repetition in this instance is the chance to imagine oneself to be as purely blameless and self-evidently innocent in the present as were one's forebears back in those horrific camps in the past.
The trouble is that, in the current instance, the Palestinians in their bomb shelters in Gaza and the Lebanese in their bomb shelters in the south of their country have every bit as much call to think of themselves as history's wretched victims as do the Israelis. Such that, yes, of course, never again, never again, we have to keep insisting Never Again. But that cry cuts all sorts of ways. And the question remains why people have so much trouble seeing that.
One hesitates to point this sort of thing out, especially given the current climate. Indeed, we postponed this posting by several weeks so as to steer well clear of that looming crackpot extravaganza, the so-called Tehran Holocaust Deniers Conference of a few weeks back. It may be worth noting that, as originally conceived, that conference had
been called to address two questions: first, whether the Holocaust ever even occurred as commonly described, but then, second, even if it did, why the Palestinians have been forced to bear the overwhelming brunt of its legacy. In the event, the conveners never did seem to get past the first of their topics—a sick, depraved, deeply anti-Semitic assertion, to be sure, even when phrased, faux-innocently, as a mere question. The thing is, the second query is nowhere near as simple to dismiss, though by being yoked in this fashion it gets smeared with the depravity of the first. But what would it be like to ask that second
question fresh? Could one even try to in the current climate without being accused of anti-Semitism, or, at the very least, of being a self-hating Jew?
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OTHER WINNERS.
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1. Evolving, Evolved by Charlie Hopper
2. Primal Forces, Basic Colors by Andy Hunter
3. The End of the Beginning by Holly Dunsworth
Intermezzo by Lawrence Weschler
4. This Is Not an Ad by Jimmy Chen
5. Catskills Vagina by Dan Clem
6. The Antipodes by Chris Zic
7. Self-Made Constriction by Sam Gaskin
8. We Are the Son by Danny Erker
9. Painfully Unaware by Dan Park
10. Gutshot by Jason Torchinsky
Weschler's Second Interlude
11. Love and War by Kim Wood
12. Inside and Out There by Lena Webb
13. The March by Emily Marvosh
14. Feminine Divine Triptych by Margit Christenson
15. Time's Deliberate Convergence by Steve Denyszyn
16. A Rousseau/Hirshfield Convergence by Adam Webb
Beirut/Warsaw by Lawrence Weschler
17. Clothesline Raising Over Carlisle, Indiana by Charlie Hopper
Carnival of Convergences
Weschler's Fourth Interlude
Aftersquib to the Foregoing
18. Pelvises All the Way Down by John Peter Rickgauer
19. Ovary Night? by Maya Muñoz
20. Christ in Space by Jonathan Shipley
A Pair of Convergences Off of Tina Barney
Another Carnival of Convergences
21. Moral Confusion: Iraq, Munich, and Vietnam by Donald Rumsfeld
22. Seeing the Tree for the Forest by Walter Murch
An Addendum to the Foregoing, and a Visitor Challenge
23, 24, and 25. Far Out by Michael Benson, Brian Christian, and Walter Murch
26. Jewish Bunk Beds by Monica S. Bland
Those Damn Swedish Trees, Take 3: Convergence of the Blogs
27. Degenerate Boogie-Woogie by Lisa Lee
Carnival of Convergences No. 3
28. Sand and Moon by Alison Cornyn
Actaeon: An Ovidian Impromptu by Lawrence Weschler
29 and 30. Hoods and Veils by Vero Testa and Lauren Redniss
The Onion/Bickle Convergence by Lawrence Weschler
31. The Lone Figure Against the Armored Swarm by Michele Siegel
32. Muscle and Flow by Benjamin R. Cohen
An Addendum to the Foregoing: Cities, Brains, Orchestras by Lawrence Weschler
Saint and Princess by Lawrence Weschler
Beauty Queen and Baghdad Hummer by Lawrence Weschler
Carnival of Convergences No. 4
Laughing, Clapping, Constantly Forgetting: A Trill of Readerly Associations by Lawrence Weschler
33. Lithographica by R.A. Villanueva
34. Papal Fire (Papa Lux) by Nick Feia
Addendum to "Laughing, Clapping ..." and, More Specifically, to the Stalinist-Applause Anecdote by Lawrence Weschler
35. Disseminations: Internet, Dandelions, Flight Paths by Sarah Daegling
36. Black and White and in Color by Walter Murch
Carnival of Convergences No. 5
Lee Friedlander's Visionary Trees: An Addendum to the Last Chapters of Everything That Rises by Lawrence Weschler
37. Shipwrecked Desperation by Charles Mudede via Matt Haber
38. Life Forms by Ariel Winter
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