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Go Home Merry Christmas from Abu Dhabi, $11 Million Dollars Worth

THE SPINE DECEMBER 22, 2010

Merry Christmas from Abu Dhabi, $11 Million Dollars Worth

BY MARTIN PERETZ

We've been reading over the past year that Abu Dhabi and the other emirates are having financial difficulties. But troubles at the bank are always relative. These are not the worries of Spain or Greece and not even the worries of this emirate's poorer cousins, which are far less than that of the now nearly bankrupt European states.  

Maybe Shiekh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the present ruler of the emirate, was trying to make a statement that his duchy had no money troubles at all when he decorated the Christmas tree in the lobby of the Emirates Palace Hotel with fully $11 million of what the Associated Press called "premium bling, including gold, rubies, diamonds and other precious stones." Questions arose "about whether the opulent tree was innocent good cheer or unfortunate bad taste."

I am back at the Tel Aviv K-12 school -Bialik-Rogozin- which has given me a job teaching English to tenth graders. I stepped into the library yesterday and heard a teacher reading A Christmas Carol alternately in Hebrew and English to eight youngsters. In Hebrew, because that is the real-life language of the children, even those whose parents are foreign workers. In English, for them to get the cadence and lilt of the original.

A few hours later I wandered into a hallway-cum-assembly place. There, in the center, stood a different Christmas tree, that is, a Christmas tree differently adorned and more than a bit shorter. It was lush green, alright. But the hangings were made by the pupils in those curiously original styles in which youngsters dabble and experiment. So Merry Christmas from Tel Aviv, Israel.

I haven't decided at which church I will usher in the night when Jesus was born.     

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This statement by Martin Peretz "I haven't decided at which church I will usher in the night when Jesus was born. " reminded me of the joke I heard in the Canadian movie: "The outside chance of Maximilian Glick": Cohen gets a telegram from his son, his only son: "Father, I went to Israel, I was so overwhelmed with the holy spirit that I decided to become a Christian" Distraught, Cohen goes for a walk and meets Greenberg, who wants to know why Cohen is so upset. Cohen tells him of the dire news and Greenberg responds: "Funny that you should say this to me. My eldest and only son, Shmuel, he also went to Israel, and was so overwhelmed by the holy spirit that he too became a Christian". The two men decide to go ask for the rabbi's advice. The rabbi listens to them solemnly and then says: "Funny that you should say this to me. My son went to Israel, he too was overwhelmed by the holy spirit and he too became a Christian!" The three men commiserate with each other and then do the only thing they can do; they pray to God, and tell Him about their trouble. As they pray, God's booming voice reverberates over them: "Funny that you should say this to me..."

- noga1

December 22, 2010 at 9:28pm

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An old joke, Noga, but still funny. Have you seen this article? "ELIYAHU BACHUR (1469 – 1549) IN ISNY" by: Dan Yardeni http://www.jidaily.com/qmn

- jdyer

December 23, 2010 at 12:23am

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Merry Christmas to all Christians and Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year to everybody.

- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD

December 23, 2010 at 7:49am

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Marty: Still waiting for you to produce an iota of substantiation for your oft-repeated contention that "a dark face begets a dark day" is an old Arab maxim. I will remind you of your failure to do so frequently in 2011, to the probable annoyance of your commentaters. Why not give them a present and either cough up your source or admit you don't have one. Merry Christmas!

- Lymon1

December 23, 2010 at 11:27am

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Curious by Lymon's challenge to Marty, I googled a bit a combination of Arab+black and found this question on a Muslim website: http://www.ahl-ul-bayt.org/en.php/page,6798A7942.html?PHPSESSID=9926c8c28665d62f7331af82340f151b "Question: I came across verse 107 of surah Ale-emran in which Allah says: "While those whose faces are whitened will live for ever in God's mercy", and it seemed very racial to me. Is the Quran saying that white people are better than others? I also listened to a sheikh preaching Islam and he read a hadith about the people that go to heaven; he said that all who enter heaven will live the best life in it, meaning that if they are old they will turn young, if poor they will become wealthy, if handicap or sick they will be healed and cured, and finally if they are black they will become white! His last statement seemed very racial because it meant that being white is of more value in Islam. Please explain what is meant by these statements. General Answer: The verse mentioned above does not say that white people are better than other races, actually it has nothing to do with the above mentioned issue, the words used in the verse may seem to relate to races but they have a meaning other than being black and white. In Arabic people who reach salvation and prosperity are called "white faced people" and those who do not are called "dark/black faced people", these sorts of expressions and other similar ones such as “a dark heart” or “the night was pitch black” that have nothing to do with races are not only found in Arabic, but in other languages as well. In respect to the hadith cited above, aside from the fact that some parts of it aren't in conformity with Islamic teachings, and its chain of narrators isn't a decent one, making its authenticity disputable, we must pay attention to the fact that although youth, health and beauty aren’t of Islam does not deny that white skin is more beautiful and attractive, but it denies the notion that being white is a spiritual advantage and value; therefore it makes complete sense for black people to turn white when entering heaven. Add to above that this hadith is not considered authentic." I find that mullah's answer persuasive indeed that there is no embedded racism against black people in Islam's scriptures. While doubting the authenticity of the hadith, he still manages to explain away that little contradiction about how good Islamic black people are rewarded by white faces upon their entrance to paradise.

- noga1

December 23, 2010 at 12:21pm

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There's a new blog that talks about much the same issues discussed on The Spine. I figured it makes sense to spread the word: www.StreetSmartPolitics.com - An analysis of US foreign policy and the Middle East.

- dbrats

December 23, 2010 at 12:35pm

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I wish everyone who participates in the ritual of gift giving have and easy shopping time and a very Merry Gifting day. May the New Year bring us interesting discussions on intractable issues and creative topics.

- jdyer

December 24, 2010 at 11:21am

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Merry Christmas Marty. I'm glad you posted about that vulgar and offensive tree. Talk about missing the point. Quite the contrast with your school. Good for you, for doing that teaching.

- IggyPop

December 24, 2010 at 12:09pm

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I, too, wish Marty and everyone else a Merry Christmas. If someone takes offense, well.... Merry Christmas anyway.

- jacko

December 24, 2010 at 1:30pm

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Yes, Merry Yule day to one and all: http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/54112/a-very-special-message/

- jdyer

December 24, 2010 at 1:53pm

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Thanks, Jacko, I do not celebrate Christmas but I did note December 23 Festivus for the rest'f'us. We substitute gift giving with another kind of exchange: the traditional "Airing of Grievances", we conclude with the "Feats of Strength", and we eat pizza. Happy Festivus!

- noga1

December 24, 2010 at 4:33pm

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Has anyone seen this? http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/merry-christmas-from-jerusalem/68536/ "Merry Christmas From Jerusalem" Dec 25 2010, 3:48 PM ET "Last night, Christmas Eve (erev Christmas, as it is known in West Jerusalem), we spent Shabbat dinner with friends at the Inbal Hotel, which makes gefilte fish the old-fashioned way (by Arab cooks) and then we we headed to the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in the Christian Quarter of the Old City for a beautiful and slightly bizarre Christmas service. Beautiful because the church is itself beautiful (soaring and simple, with clean lines, very much unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is dark and dank and mysterious) and because the service opens with a gorgeous candle-lighting ceremony and is lifted-up by a choir singing "Silent Night" in German) and bizarre -- in a good way, bizarre -- because many of the visitors to the church last night were Israeli Jews, there to experience multicultural Jerualem, and the Germans who run the church made them feel thoroughly welcome (without proselytzing, of course), so welcome, in fact, that the minister read from Luke in Hebrew. Who woulda thunk it? James Snyder, the director of the stunningly re-imagined and reinvigorated Israel Museum (which I will write about later) brought us to the service, and whispered to me -- when I took note of all the various incongruities -- that "the dirty little secret of Jerusalem is that it is a fully-functioning intercommunal city." I think this is true. Yes, there are terrifically difficult issues (not least of which is the seizing of several Arab homes by Jewish settlers eager to make their presence felt in Arab neighborhoods), but this city is so much more complicated than news accounts would suggest. Earlier yesterday, I took one of the junior (and under-the-weather) Goldblogs to a local medical clinic for a strep test. The clinic, called Terem, is well-known in Jerusalem in part because it was started by a physician named David Applebaum, who was killed in the September 9, 2003 terrorist bombing of a cafe in the Germany Colony neighborhood, along with his daughter Naava, who was scheduled to get married the next day. The physician who saw my son at Terem, like many of the clinic's physicians, is an Arab from East Jerualem. In Terem, and at Hadassah Hospital, and the other hospitals in town, Jews treat Arabs, Arabs treat Jews, and no one thinks twice about it. No one who lives here, I mean. For visitors (even one, like myself, who once lived in Jerusalem), these sorts of commonplace facts of life -- Germans praying in Hebrew, Arab physicians treating Jews in a clinic founded by a terror victim, and on, and on -- can be astonishing. Merry Christmas."

- jdyer

December 25, 2010 at 10:45pm

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