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February 13, 2012
Binyamin Rose: Back to the Bunker: How a life-risking act by a Christian family during the Holocaust saved a family and built a thriving community a world away
Menachem Wecker: Business Schools Teach Real Estate Despite Troubled Housing Market
February 10, 2012
Lisa M. Krieger: Man with defibrillator demands access to his own heart's information
David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
February 9, 2012
Laura McMullen: 10 Least Expensive Public Schools for Out-of-State Students
Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
February 8, 2012
Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
February 7, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Caught off-guard? President's Super Bowl interview with Matt Lauer gives those who need a reason not to vote for him, a darn good one
Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
February 6, 2012
Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
Caroline B. Glick: Obama: Of course I intend to prevent a nuclear holocaust . . . in a few months
Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
August 7, 2008
/ 6 Menachem-Av 5768
The return of a prophet
By
Paul Greenberg
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
This is an abridged version of a column that originally appeared in 1994, when the Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday at 89, returned to Russia from his long exile.
It's like reading that Tolstoy is touring Soviet Russia to see the Moscow subway and the Gulag. It's like having Dickens arrive in 20th-century England to catch the Beatles.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn has come back to the Big Gulag he left in 1974 (Leonid Brezhnev, secretary-general and chief warden) to find it wide open, flying the old czarist flag and hurling off in all directions. It's as if Ivan Denisovitch, the hero of his classic book about the Gulag, had grown old, free and a stranger in a not quite strange land.
That this climactic return should be seen by so many as anti-climactic as just another writer going home after his glory days only adds to the extraordinary ordinariness of a story that could be called "The Return of S." By Gogol, probably.
Neither the Russians nor the world may know quite what to think of Solzhenitsyn, or even want to. He has always been a man out of his time, plodding along the most unexpected paths, remaining obscure when one had expected him to take center stage, only to emerge into the news long after interest in him had waned.
It's a toss-up whether Solzhenitsyn has more grievously offended East or West. The political and cultural elites of both don't know quite how to classify him, even if they pretend to. The reservations routinely attached to their praise rings much louder than the praise. "He was a courageous man, but ..." But he's a fascist, an imperialist, a crank, an anti-Semite, an ingrate, an eccentric, a loner, a hater, a nationalist ... pick your own snap judgment.
What he is, is his own man. Which is why he got in trouble over there and disappointed over here. He is a great resource, but one that can be tapped only on its own terms. He will always disappoint those who think they can use him to reflect their own, conventional wisdom.
Solzhenitsyn's politics are simple: He hates revolution, having seen its results. He despises ideology and the other savageries of modernity. He loves tradition, stability and time in which to make things, like books and peace.
Because he loves Russia does not mean he hates others. And he can chastise his countrymen as only a lover can. He would have Russia cleanse its air, water and conscience; tend its own garden and rediscover its soul. A familiar messianic vision. Only this time it comes from a prophet unarmedexcept with words. Being Solzhenitsyn's words, they were enough to threaten a vast tyranny.
Twenty years before it dawned on many others that freedom cannot have much meaning in a cultural and spiritual vacuum, Solzhenitsyn was being irritatingly candid about the society that had given him refuge its empty materialism, its mundane obscenity, its substitution of cheap sentimentality for abiding faith, and its worship instead of "imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity and dozens of other defects."
Solzhenitsyn took especial aim at American society's loss of "civic culture," especially among its "ruling and intellectual elites." And he said these things at Harvard. In short, he wasn't the sort of guest who can be counted on to ignore the peeling paint and cracks in the walls.
It was Solzhenitsyn who wrote in "First Circle" that every real writer is "a second government." Whereupon the usual solemn idiots speculated about his platform, his appointees, his polls, as if he had been referring to the kind of transient power that politicians exert, rather than the transforming power of real words, of a Thoreau or Orwell or, yes, a Solzhenitsyn. Not even the Gulag was ever the same after "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch." Words change things.
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JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
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