Culture Briefs

Triumph over evil

“Col. Jacob Goldstein has been a chaplain in the U.S. Army for 28 years. In September 2003, he was deployed to the Kuwait-Iraqi border, to conduct Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services for Jewish soldiers and serve as a spiritual counselor to military personnel in Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. …

“On his arrival into Baghdad … a non-Jewish chaplain escorted Col. Goldstein to the palace that housed Saddam’s throne. In an almost surreal image, there was Chaplain Goldstein, a Chassidic rabbi, atop the seat of the power of evil; an image that signals the ultimate triumph of good over evil. …

“For Simchat Torah, Col. Goldstein gathered the Jewish soldiers together. … ’We’re going to pass the Torahs from one soldier to another so that each and every one of you has a chance to dance with one of them,’ he told them. ’With our words, we will declare: “There is only one God, and there is none other than Him.” Think, as you say these words … in the palace of one of the most cruel and evil people in the world today, that here we are declaring victory over him, through the Torahs.’ And then he led more than 30 Jewish soldiers in dancing the Hakafot, in the ballroom of the palace of Saddam Hussein.”

—Leah Sherman in “The Desert Kingdom” in the spring issue of “Inside Out,” a publication of Chabad Lubavitch of Northern Virginia

Maternal myth

“Perhaps the greatest myth that the women’s movement has perpetuated is the idea that because a mother’s work requires her to give so much of herself, it is inevitable that she will lose her identity. ’Mothers should work outside the home. Otherwise, they cannot preserve their identities,’ writes Joan K. Peters. … Women like Peters have been so successful in preaching this theory that women who are not yet mothers presume they will suffer this fate and plan on returning to the workforce after they have children. …

“In our attempt to seek identities separate from men and children, women have sacrificed full-time motherhood altogether. Consequently, children have suffered — and so have women, as many have now come to regret the choices they made. …

“[T]he reality is that once a woman becomes a mother, her identity does become inextricably linked to her children’s. Women simply change when they have children; they are not the same people they once were.”

—Suzanne Venker, from her new book, “Seven Myths of Working Mothers”

Media culture

“Education has failed to adjust to the massive transformation in Western culture since the rise of electronic media. … Decade by decade since the 1960s, popular culture, with its stunning commercial success, has gained strength until it now no longer is the brash alternative to organized religion or an effete literary establishment: It is the culture for American students, who outside urban centers have little exposure to the fine arts. …

“Interest in and patience with long, complex books and poems have alarmingly diminished not only among college students but college faculty in the U.S. … As a classroom teacher for over 30 years, I have become increasingly concerned about evidence of, if not cultural decline, then cultural dissipation since the 1960s. …

“Television is reality for them: nothing exists unless it can be filmed or until it is rehashed onscreen by talking heads.”

—Camille Paglia, writing on “The Magic of Images,” from the winter issue of Arion