Kaifeng Jews

The Kaifeng Jews are members of a small Jewish community that has existed in Kaifeng, in central China, for many hundreds of years - the earliest records of a Jewish community in Kaifeng are from the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127). The ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews most likely came from Central Asia. Over the centuries, they intermarried with the local population but preserved their religion.

Here is a report on German TV about a group of cute young Kaifeng Jews who are immigrating to Israel. Unlike the contemporary rabbinical Judaism, where the transmission of Judaism is matrilinear (if you have a mother who is a Jew, you are a proper Jew), the Kaifeng Jews base their Jewishness on patrilinear descent. So, to receive Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, Kaifeng Jews must undergo conversion, a long and complicated process.
"But the true challenge", the narrator says, "is to assert themselves in Israeli society." Just like Ethiopian Jews, Kaifeng Jews might find themselves considered second rate citizens by many other Israelis, simply due to their skin colour.

Ran Danker, hotness from Israel

*Sorry if this text is totally incoherent, but not only is it 4 AM, but my brain is also for the most part incapacitated by the dazzling handsomeness of Ran Danker, 26 years old.*

Eyes Wide Open is a film about the Ultra-Orthodox family father Aaron (Zohar Strauss), who hires the homeless Yeshiva student Ezri (Ran Danker) to work as an apprentice in his butcher's shop. Their friendship develops into an emotional and sexual relationship, but they are being closely watched by their community, and the religious authorities, their fellow believers and the "purity police" will absolutely not tolerate anything of the like.

Ezri, who "scribbles a bit" in his free time, offers to draw Aaron's portrait.

Ezri convinces him to go outside the city for once, to take a ritual bath together in an ice cold pool.

The situation is obviously extremely complicated for Aaron, who has a family and a business to take care of. But as an atheist it's easy to start asking myself why Ezri can't just leave the Ultra-Orthodox community in the Old City and go to secular, tolerant Tel Aviv or something. But for one thing, he is very young; he was only just kicked out of his Yeshiva. And most important of all, this is his community and his religion just as much as everyone else's. He believes in God just as much as everyone else.

About 90 percent of the film was shot in Jaffa, and 10 percent in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem, where the story is set, in quick "hit-and-run" shots without official permission, due to the controversial nature of the film. The end result is still very realistic and recognizable as Mea Shearim.

This is a very subtle film that neither glorifies nor demonizes anybody, told in simple and beautiful images in limestone and pale green.

* * *

... And, of course, Ran Danker (actor, pop singer, model) is so hot that I was in exhilarated spasms every second he was on the screen.

Here are some bonus photos of him ...

He was hairier than this in Eyes Wide Open, so either he went through a second puberty in between, or he probably shaves or crops his chest hair. ;_;

Our mum would tell him to wear his pants properly.

Victory Day in Berlin

Berlin, May 2nd 1945:



The poet and war correspondent Yevgeny Dolmatovsky (in this context it could be relevant to note that he was of Jewish background), photographed by Yevgeny Khaldei in front of the burning Reichstag, carrying the severed head of a Hitler statue.

65 years later. Berlin, May 9th 2010:

Soviet Army WWII veterans gather at the War memorial in Tiergarten, near the Reichstag.



Then this chirayliq dude carrying a Soviet flag shows up:

And then I spotted this guy who looks a lot like Ainur. I wonder if he's Tatar, too?

See more of my photos from today.

(Colour photos by Tinet.)

Uzbekistan in the 1930's

The professional photographer Max Penson documented life and ideals in Soviet Turkistan (today's Uzbekistan) that was going through enormous social and economic upheavals in the early 20th century. Penson was born to a poor Jewish family in Belarus, 1893, and escaped pogroms and persecution to Central Asia during the First World War. He worked as an art teacher in Kokand, but his life changed when he managed to obtain a camera in the early 1920's. Between 1920 and 1940 he produced 30,000 photographs of innumerable subjects including education, industrialization, military training, farming, leisure and portraiture. At the Paris World Exhibition in 1937, Penson was awarded the Grand Prix for his portrait of "The Uzbek Madonna", a young woman nursing her child. Sergei Eisenstein praised him for his dedication to his chosen homeland: "There cannot be many masters left who choose a specific terrain for their work, dedicate themselves completely to and make it an intergrated part of their personal destiny." (quoted in Enter)



Penson worked for Central Asia's largest newspaper, Pravda Vostoka, in Tashkent, until Stalin's purges of Jews in the late 1940's pushed him out of his position and into a decade of depression. Penson died in 1959, but his work lives on as a priceless document of a dynamic but also tragic chapter in Central Asian history. All these photographs were selected from the official Max Penson website. I sincerely recommend a visit to the website for much more information and photographs. There is also an interesting topical selection at the Nailya Alexander Gallery.



Students in class.



The sculptor Khaidarov at work on a Lenin bust.

Although I have selected images chiefly of Chirayliq interest, I hope that something of the wide range of Penson's techniques is conveyed to the casual reader. He created images for propagandistic purposes, but he was conscious of the importance of the human element - you may call it imperfection or an element of chance.



A cotton farmer resting.



Russians and Uzbeks celebrating a holiday - with a dombura, or is it a dutar?

While the propagandistic elements may come off as blatant - a bust of Lenin, a militant pose, a brand-new tractor - the human element is much more subtle, yet crucial: a wrinkled eyebrow, a shy smile that does not quite reach the mouth, a bemused gaze, a gesture of tenderness. Penson told his photographer son's editor: “My son is using a flash in his photos very often. Tell him to use his heart instead...” (Quote: Enter)



Portrait of an Uzbek man.



A soldier with field radio equipment.



An Uzbek boy with puppies.



Max Penson himself.

Do NOT miss the gallery section at the official Max Penson site. This is just a tiny selection! It's a must for anyone who is interested in Soviet and Central Asian history, and the art of photography.

Rest in Peace, Marek Edelman

Marek Edelman, hero of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, passed away on October 2, 2009. He continued to resist the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and stayed in Poland after the war. He continued to fight for freedom in the Solidarność movement into old age.

More handsome ghetto fighters here - bright-eyed, some serious, some smiling, so young and so brave. Most of them did not survive the war. They deserve to be remembered also here on Chirayliq, as an integral part of the history of Europe and Eurasia.

(Via: The Passing of a Noble Man)

Langston Hughes in Central Asia

Thanks to the blog Moscow Through Brown Eyes, I was inspired to dig up some nice photos of American poet Langston Hughes' travels in early 1930's Soviet Central Asia. The Yale University Library has an online exhibition of Hughes' life (1902-1967) for starters.

In 1932, Hughes boarded the S/S Europa with a group of African-American actors and writers on their way to the Soviet Union. Their purpose was to make a film about the plight of black people in the United States, but after long and fruitless meetings with the Soviet producers, the whole project was scrapped.

Hughes took the chance to travel around Soviet-controlled Central Asia, areas that usually were not accessible to Westerners but that interested him for personal and political reasons. Hughes wanted to find a positive example of a "coloured South" to contrast with the Jim Crow south of the US. He met African-American engineers involved in the modernization of the Soviet cotton industry. He also met the Hungarian intellectual Arthur Koestler, who at the time was a member of the Communist party, but had already begun to develop his critical eye for the system. Hughes was a Communist sympathizer, although no party member - for him the dream of racial equality was so important that he preferred to look away from the harsh realities of famine and oppression. His self-critical period would come later, after WW2.

That said... maybe he was just dazzled by all the chirayliq guys he met on his travels?

From Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library's Langston Hughes collection. Described as "Group photograph of unidentified men and women in Russia, possibly Uzbekistan". See the larger original here.

Young writers of Central Asia, Hughes in the middle. On the backside of the photo there are descriptions in Cyrillic, which the library hasn't bothered to decipher.

Hughes' surprise traveling companion, Arthur Koestler. View the whole image here, plus chicken. Apparently Koestler heard someone play jazz records (this article claims it was Sophie Tucker singing "My Yiddishe Mamme") at a guesthouse in Ashqabat and knocked at the door; imagine his astonishment to find the poet whose works he had admired already in Europe.

Karim Ahmadii is perhaps the name of this man who dedicated his portrait to Hughes in 1933.

This is what Hughes wished to see - a coloured man and a white man shaking hands. His superficial view of Soviet race relations is problematic but understandable from today's perspective. The photo is titled "Yusuf Nichanov".

Back in the United States, Hughes wrote an article on traditional Uzbek dance for Travel Magazine.

He especially admired the "teacup dance", which he simply called "raks" (from raqs, dance), and was intrigued by the batcha - danging boys dressed and made up like women. (More on traditional Uzbek dance here.)

And in case you thought Hughes only had an eye for the guy, here's Tamara Khanum, dancing teacher, first woman to perform without the veil in Uzbekistan. The fate of her colleague Nurkhon shows what a brave act this was.

Langston Hughes wrote about his travels in A Negro Looks at Soviet Central Asia, a short book reprinted as recently as 2006 in Bishkek. There is an interesting discussion about Hughes and the re-publication at the Registan blog.

Howard Zinn

I'm a bit fed up now with my so-called historian career. But what better way to cheer myself up, than checking out history's cutest historians?

Meet Howard Zinn. He is American, but I found a way to weasel him into Chirayliq: His mother emigrated from Irkutsk.

Here, he isn't a professor yet, but a bombardier in the US Air Force in Europe during the Second World War.



This is one of the reasons he has devoted his life to non-violence and pacifist activism, as well as the post-war Civil Rights movement. (In Private Ryan saves war from 1999 and Dissent at the war memorial from 2004, he tells about his experiences.)

I must confess that I have tried to read Zinn's magnum opus A People's History of the United States, but I'm too bleeding-hearted to get past the introduction. Anything he says, I buy it. (Bad historian, Ainur!) You can read it online or check the publisher's site. You should definitely check the People's History website if you're interested in U.S. history - and I think we all ought to be. (There's also a comic version of The People's History, with this touching scene from WW2 Holland.)

Israeli soldiers are such great propaganda material

Photo by Gallo/Getty images, via Al Jazeera.

Young Israeli men (and women) tend to be very photogenique. I suspect the Israeli propaganda machinery is well aware of this, since the media right now is flooded with photos of handsome Israeli soldiers ... (Of course, all of them taken while the soldiers are hanging out and posing next to their Merkavas outside the Gaza Strip, since Israeli officials do not allow journalists to enter and with their own eyes witness the carnage and destruction the formidable Israeli military machine is wreaking upon the people in Gaza, who have, what? Rudimentary home made rockets that have killed three people so far?)

The individual Israeli soldiers are of course very much pawns in a game, caught up in the demands of political ambitions and extremist groups, as well as a macho culture where army service is an integral part of your life.


Photo from Getty Images, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier watches an Air Force bombing attack against the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, on January 9th.


Photo by AFP/Getty Images, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier prepares a tank on January 14th, before rolling on towards the Gaza Strip.


Photo by Anja Niedringhaus/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli Army soldier recites morning prayers on January 13th.


Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli infantry soldier.


Photo by Sebastian Scheiner/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier sleeps on top of a tank, January 11th.


Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images, via the Boston Globe. An Israeli soldier prays as troops take position on the Israeli-Gaza Strip border on December 30th.


Photo from Reuters, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier just outside the northern Gaza Strip, January 12th.


Photo by Alex Majoli/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier at a deployment area on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Jan. 15th.

But it doesn't have to be like this! Here, girls from the Shministim, an organization of Israeli conscientious objectors, are working to convince cute soldiers that they would be even more of real men if they refused to carry arms:





You too can help! To find out more, visit the websites of the Shministim and New Profile, an Israeli feminist anti-militarism group which provides support to the Shministim and other conscientious objectors:
december18th.org
newprofile.org



Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill/AP, via Daylife. An Israeli soldier, injured in operations in the Gaza Strip, is wheeled into Soroka Hospital in the southern Israeli town of Beersheba, January 10th.
He is one of the 77 Israeli soldiers who have been wounded in the last 21 days. Maybe he, and many others of them, will one day wonder what his injuries were for.


Meanwhile, a Palestinian man cries in face of the death of his family, outside Gaza City's al-Shifa hospital on January 5th. Photo by AFP/Getty Images, via Daylife.

The inevitable comparison, since December 27th:
Israelis: 13 dead and 159 wounded (source)
Palestinians: more than 1,100 dead and 5,200 wounded (source)

It seems chillingly obvious that the Israeli government is using their "last chance" at living out their genocidal tendencies before US president-elect Obama's inauguration on Tuesday. Because, who knows, after that maybe games like this can't be played anymore?
I wish.