Notes on the NEJAR interview with Peter Schumann

As noted earlier, Greg Cook interviewed both Peter Schumann and myself regarding Bread and Puppet's recent show at the Boston Center for the Arts and the controversies surrounding his recent work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In his email interview of me, excerpts of which appear both on this site and on the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, Cook asked me to respond to some of Schumann's statements.

There were also a series of questions that Cook posed during a face to face conversation on February 1st, which while not transcribed, were thought-provoking and I will attempt to explore these issues as I comment on some of Schumann's other statements. Boldface italics represent Cook's questions; plain italics represent Schumann's responses. The first quotes come from part two of the NEJAR interview:

Well, it’s something that we can’t talk about because it’s so electric. It’s very difficult to even begin a discussion. It seems like you’re consciously going there because of that.

Yeah, I think it’s unfairly so. I think it’s awful that the Western community does not interfere with what Israel’s doing as an occupation force. The Western community does not do anything about it. They don’t even speak up against it. They don’t do anything. They basically serve as the Israeli propaganda for the events there. They give us what the embedded reporters give us from Iraq, which is the picture of the perpetrators.

I'm not certain as to which "Western community" Schumann refers. Given such incidents as the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2002 reports of a "Jenin Massacre" in which hundreds of non-combatants were allegedly slaughtered, was later dispelled as propaganda, it would seem that the largest news agency in the world has for some time been serving as anti-Israeli propaganda. In addition, we can look at the failed attempt to sponsor a boycott of Israel by the National Union of Journalists (a union that serves journalists in both the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.) Neither conform to the picture Schumann presents. Indeed, if we examine the media of most other Western nations, it is quite probable that we will see quite the opposite of a pro-Israeli bias (I haven't done such a study, and clearly, neither has Schumann-- however the Anti-Defamation League has done a study of European attitudes.) Indeed, this claim that "The Western community [...] serve[s] as [...] Israeli propaganda" seems very similar to the old canard of Jewish or Zionist control of the media.

[Your critics]seem to say your work doesn’t represent that the Israelis are doing this to fight terrorism from the Palestinians. And so that by not representing the Israelis’ problems you’re being unfair.

I don’t know. It’s like when you go to any war naturally the guerillas who rise up against occupation forces are to be blamed for atrocities they commit, but that’s not on the same page with the atrocity of the occupation. Take an extreme case like the Nazis in Poland. Naturally what the Polish and the Russian guerillas probably did against the Nazi soldiers was probably pretty horrible, dismembering them or burning them or putting them into cement walls, or whatever they could to, probably, to punish them. Is that on the same page as the very fact of the invasion?

Leaving aside that Schumann is again comparing Israelis with Germans (which he claims not to be doing) he is conflating the distinction between guerilla warfare and terrorism. Guerilla warfare is generally understood to be the tactics used by small mobile armed groups against larger, less mobile military organizations. Terrorism, on the other hand, is violence against civilians in order to pursue ideological or political objectives, often by irregular forces. While both are acts of violence, it is terrorism, not guerrilla warfare, that the Israeli government considers an obstacle to peace with an entity representing Palestine.

However, this conflation of guerilla warfare with terrorism, is just one conflation among many-- such as the likening of the West Bank Wall with the Warsaw Ghetto Wall, that is, the likening of a non-lethal anti-terrorist strategy with a tool of genocide, that first inspired my parting company with Bread and Puppet, criticism from Rabbi Joshua Chasan, criticism by arts writer, Ric Kasini Kadour, and ultimately a breakdown in civility at last year's ArtHop in Burlington, Vermont.

The other disturbing element of this answer is the repeated word "probably" in the phrase, "what the Polish and the Russian guerillas probably did against the Nazi soldiers was probably pretty horrible, dismembering them or burning them or putting them into cement walls." [My emphasis.] No doubt such behavior would be against the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war, but rather than state such atrocities did occur, or that there were contemporary reports of such actions, he stated that such acts of sadism probably happened.

There is no ethical excuse for any of this violent dealings and revenging and so on. There isn’t. Ethically this is wrong. But a state always takes exemptions from these ethics. So as the U.S. does. And so does Israel. It’s a fascist democracy just like the U.S. is. And these fascist democracies that are not real democracies, but fake democracies, they do as they wish. They build their ethics with the help of ethics professors as they go. They just have to find the right ethics professors, and they do all the time. They pay enough and so they find another ethics professor. That’s the sad story.

This is an interesting quote because it forces us to ask several questions of Schumann: If there is no ethical excuse for revenge, then why the opposition to the West Bank Wall, which barring a working peace settlement, is the only non-lethal means of short circuiting any perceived cycle of revenge currently on the table? What are the criteria by which the U.S. and Israel are fascist, not real democracies? If that is the case, are the forces against which Israel is defending itself democratic and anti-fascist? What is the model for "real democracy?" How is this fable of "searching for the right ethics professor" different than Schumann's own pronouncements on truth and ethics?

The sad thing is that "Fascism" has become little more than an epithet and that is precisely how Schumann uses the word-- instead of as an analytical tool to describe ideologies or systems of governance. (Umberto Eco has an excellent essay that attempts to restore some meaning to the term.) However, this an on-going problem with Schumann's rhetoric, as evidenced in this quote from the first part of the interview on NEJAR:

[...]as the show shows [...] Guantanamo is the logical result of the prevailing consumerism and capitalism in its shape as it is right now. It’s not illogical, it’s not an aberration, it’s a totally logical result of that. So I’m saying the School of the Americas or Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo are not ‘rotten apples,’ as Bush called them, but are directly philosophically correct, pin-pointable climaxes of the system.

While I would certainly agree with Schumann that the torture and rendition programs are not aberrations to an otherwise functioning system, as they have been, time and time again, demonstrated to be the direct result of government policy, it is absurd to say that the institutions of torture, "secret" prisons, and detention without due process are products of either capitalism or consumerism. Feudal, communist, fascist and tribal societies have all tortured and held prisoners without due process. The phenomenon is unchecked power over human bodies, and as shown by philosophers from Friedrich Nietzsche to Michel Foucault, there is neither a singular rationale nor a singular meaning. Societies always include elements of the societies that precede them. If capitalism uses torture as a tool, it is because it follows and interacts with societies that have used torture as a tool.

The Wall has Two Sides in Burlington

I was naîve to assume the story of the controversy surrounding the exhibition of Peter Schumann's "Independence Paintings" had come to an end, as I just ran across some more references to it.

I'm not sure how this escaped my notice for over a month but my letter to the editor was published in Seven Days, in it I comment on journalist Ken Picard's article, "Over the Wall" (some of my comments appeared in an earlier blog entry.) In the interim, Picard and I had a civil email exchange where we discussed our differing views on how stories of this complexity should be ideally covered. Ultimately, I think our biggest differences owed to his being concerned with his being a working journalist who has to worry about deadlines and space constraints, while I am a blogger and an artist who doesn't think of such things as often.

Other responses to the story can be read here. That said, I do think his follow-up story, "The Wall has Two Sides" is a very well done story that juxtaposes the reactions of two Vermonters, one of Jewish, and one of Palestinian Arab descent to the exhibition.

KEY ISSUES IGNORED

While Ken Picard’s story, “Over the Wall,” was the most comprehensive story to appear in the Burlington press regarding the controversy surrounding Peter Schumann’s “Independence Paintings” at this year’s Art Hop, it failed to address the key issues of the debate.

The three most vocal critics of the piece and its exhibition — Rabbi Joshua Chasan, Ric Kasini Kadour and I — have never stated any opposition to art representing the Palestinian plight, nor have we advocated censorship. Our position was that the work, by appropriating imagery of the Holocaust in a manner that we found intellectually dishonest, amounted to soft-core Holocaust denial (in terms of minimalizing or trivializing the genocide) and thus, anti-Semitism.

Mr. Kadour’s essay asked that the work be presented in a context where that would be clear. Rabbi Chasan’s letters to Art Hop’s organizers were to ask them to consider the ethical implications of the exhibit, and his letter to his fellow clergy was to ask them to speak their consciences (Rabbi Chasan’s letters have been published on my blog). My own writings explained in explicit detail why the work should be regarded as anti-Semitic. I do not charge anti-Semitism on a whim.

At no point did any of us advocate censorship. We have only attempted to follow bad speech with good speech. While it is sad that would-be censors, unable to articulate their own criticism, attempt to co-opt a cause that does not call for censorship, it is worse when those who court controversy misrepresent all of their critics as censors. I encourage members of the community to work with Art Hop organizers to evaluate what went wrong so that trust can be re-established.

That said, the issue of Holocaust denial is barely addressed in the article, and opinions that have little basis in fact are given equal footing with those that are well researched and well thought out.

Furthermore, Bob Greene and Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel (VTJP) can deny that they advocate anti-Semitism or Holocaust denial all they wish, but, as Chasan, Kadour and I have all pointed out, a simple visit to their website contradicts such denials. Picard could have and should have visited the website and reported on what he saw there, as I did. A libel is only a libel if it has no basis in fact. Labeling me a “motherfucker,” as Greene has done, does not change that.

That Schumann and VTJP have chosen to confuse issues by injecting false analogies with the Holocaust into any discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict shows that they lack the moral seriousness to discuss the facts of the conflict, the causes, their history, and any possible solutions in an honest and thoughtful manner. They simply have no regard for historical truth.

The reports of the September 8 presentation make an unambiguous case that civil discussion has broken down, and, while there are guilty parties of varying political affiliations, the fault originates with those who inject divisiveness and dishonesty when there should be truthful reasoned dialogue. Ugly statements breed ugly statements.

Ian Thal
SOMERVILLE, MA

Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont: The End?

Frequent readers of this blog will have noticed the attention I have been giving to a controversy in Burlington, Vermont regarding the exhibition of Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories, mural sized collage of painting and text by Bread and Puppet Theater founder, Peter Schumann. My involvement with the story began with my writing an account of my own break with Bread and Puppet over the exhibition of just that particular work.

The story, at least in Burlington, seems to have drawn itself to a close though there are a few developments that I feel the need to comment upon.

Sally Pollak, in an article in the Burlington Free Press provided both an account of how the piece had come to be exhibited and of the fallout in Burlington. The exhibition was brokered by Marc Estrin (whose defense of the exhibition as "appropriate" I responded to here) working with Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel, a group that hosts anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material on their website.

I have, like both Chasan and Kadour already noted the anti-Israeli and Holocaust denial material on the VTJP website, to which Bob Greene, a spokesperson for representatives VTJP has stated to Ken Picard in Seven Days:

“We’ve been called a thinly disguised hate group and anti-Semites, despite the fact that a quarter of our regularly attending members are Jewish, including one who escaped Hitler, [....] These are dangerous, ugly libels. If we were a group that had money or made money, we’d sue these motherfuckers.”

Greene and VTJP can deny that they advocate antisemitism or Holocaust denial all they wish, but as Chasan, Kadour, and I have all pointed out, a simple visit to their website contradicts such denials. A libel is only a libel if it has no basis in fact. Labeling me a "motherfucker," as Greene has done, does not change that.

While the September 19 Seven Days piece by Ken Picard, framed the story as one between political art and censorship (despite the fact that many of the most vocal critics of the exhibit, Rabbi Joshua Chasan, Ric Kasini Kadour, and I never called for censorship) Pollak's piece was far more nuanced, identifying the problem as the fact that a group with no connection to the arts community, sponsoring an exhibition for political purposes, to quote Yoram Samets in the Pollak article:

"It is our understanding that the Art Hop is an open community opportunity for artists to display their work and for the community to get involved, [...] In this case, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel hijacked the venue for their political agenda. What we have here for the first time is the Art Hop being used by a political organization to further their point of view."

However, despite this, rather than discuss ways to prevent Art Hop from being hijacked in the future by a political organization, State Senator Hinda Miller, as reported Picard, has assembled a coalition to "go after" Art Hop's funding (the Pollak piece describes it as a petition "to overhaul policies and procedures at the annual arts celebration.") The artists, including those highly critical of Schumann's work have reason for concern: art festivals, like the larger Open Studios weekends we have in the Boston metropolitan area thrive on free expression-- and indeed, a review process unless highly streamlined, is cost prohibitive due to need for staffing. The fear that any potentially controversial artwork could be dropped from Art Hop is a real one that must be addressed. At the same time, statements by Carlos Hasse, Executive Director of the South End Arts and Business Association, which sponsors Art Hop are clear that there is a willingness to reevaluate its processes and listen to community concerns. The question is: can this be done without endangering artistic freedom in Burlington, Vermont?

If we value freedom of speech, we must oppose censorship, but rather than grit our teeth when ideas with which we disagree are given voice, we should instead explain why those ideas are wrong and why ours are better. This is the practice, not of censorship, but of following bad speech with good, and this is what I have attempted to do in my own critique of Schumann's work and of his apologists.

That said, my critique of press coverage of this event is over the most central issue: what is the truth-value of the art in question? Journalism, which by nature, reports on current events, is often at a failure to account for historical context. Both Picard and Pollak do a good job of identifying the participants in the controversy and what they have to say about one another's positions, but not about the truthfulness of the claims. After all, is not the value of political art the ability to tell truth to power?

Schumann and VTJP have chosen to confuse issues by injecting false analogies with the Holocaust into any discussion of the
Arab-Israeli conflict shows that they lack the moral seriousness to discuss the facts of the conflict, the causes, their history, and any possible solutions in an honest and thoughtful manner-- they simply have no regard for historical truth. The reports of the September 8th presentation make an unambiguous case that civil discussion has broken down, and while there are guilty parties of varying political affiliations, the fault originates with those who inject divisiveness and dishonesty when there should be truthful, reasoned, dialogue. Ugly statements breed ugly statements.

Schumann chose to juxtapose the Warsaw Ghetto with the West Bank Wall in a single piece of art (note that this was not a decision made by the Palestinian artists with whom he worked in Beit Sahour) and it seems to be understood by both his supporters and his critics (nearly everyone except for him) as a statement of near equivalence. The system of ghettos Germany established in the General Government of Poland killed five- to six-hundred-thousand Jews through engineered concentration, overcrowding and famine over a period of two years. A statement of equivalence is either to falsely charge Israel with genocide in the West Bank (where is the evidence?) or to claim that the Warsaw Ghetto was merely a place of high unemployment and humiliating checkpoints (as Schumann described the West Bank in his February presentation at the Boston Center for the Arts.) The Warsaw Ghetto killed over one-hundred thousand, the West Bank Wall, despite some of its worst effects, has prevented terrorist attacks on Israel, eliminated the need for IDF reprisals-- it has saved lives, both Israeli and Palestinian and permitted rebuilding in Palestinian communities-- but neither Schumann nor VTJP are concerned about that.

In the meantime I should note that Pollak did not repeat Picard's erroneous report that Schumann's family were refugees from the Nazis. I have mentioned this issue with Picard via email, and as Picard did not state he was in error when I brought it to his attention, I have to assume that this was an instance of Schumann misrepresenting himself in order to deflect criticism.

Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont, Part 3

I have been following the dispute over the exhibition of Peter Schumann's Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont, from my desk in Somerville, Massachusetts, so I am often forced to wait for and digest reports as they come in.

For those of you who have just joined me, the reason I am following a dispute over a collage being exhibited so far away from me is that for a number of years, I had performed with Bread and Puppet Theater, of which Schumann is founder and artistic director, in their Boston-area shows. It was when this painting was exhibited in conjunction with a Bread and Puppet show at the Boston Center for the Arts that I determined that I could not in good conscience continue with the troupe. I wrote about that event here.

For the past few days I have been digesting reports of the events on Saturday, September 8. That morning Peter Schumann gave a presentation regarding Independence Paintings which was inspired by his experience working with a group of Palestinian performers during a visit he made to the West Bank last year. WCAX reporter Andy Potter wrote an account entitled "Art Exhibit Draws Fire" describing "a flare-up of emotion."

The cause of this "flare-up" was the structure of the work, which, assuming that it was the same piece I saw at the Boston Center for the Arts, comprises of paintings of pained figures, clearly portrayed as Jews juxtaposed with text describing Israeli Defense Force counter-terrorist operations in the West Bank as described by the Palestinian performers. Schumann, in his talk on February 12th, 2007 described these Jewish figures as inmates of the Warsaw Ghetto. During the question and answer segment of the February presentation, he was called to explain why he felt it necessary to make a juxtaposition between the Warsaw Ghetto, an instrument of the Holocaust, and the West Bank, noting that juxtaposition implied an equivalence between the death by engineered starvation, and overcrowding, of one-fifth of Poland's Jewish population and the high unemployment rates on the West Bank. Schumann denied he was making any such comparison, but offered no other explanation as to why the West Bank and the Warsaw Ghetto appeared in the same piece other than the fact that he had chosen to read John Hersey's 1950 book, The Wall on the trip. Vocal critics saw this as a false accusation of genocide against Israel. Vocal defenders of Schumann at the same event, when they were not trying to shout down the critics, saw it as a true accusation.

I have already noted that there is no evidence supporting such comparisons and like a number of other critics, I viewed the work as "soft-core" Holocaust denial and thus, anti-Semitic propaganda.

Based on the reports I have received concerning the event on September 8th, a similar emotional dynamic appears to have been at work, however a key difference is that some in Burlington had read reports of the event in Boston, while the Boston audience had known only that the work was inspired by Schumann's work with Palestinian artists.

As noted before, WCAX reported a "flare-up." A personal email sent to me on September 8th at 11:55pm by Marc Awodey (who was not in attendance) related events as described by people he met that day: "a well orchestrated cadre of about 40 [...] protesters [...] waving [I]sraeli flags, yelling, plugging their ears when [S]chumann tried to speak." Note that Ken Picard's article dated September 12th in Seven Days estimated that the number of disruptive protesters amounted to "about a dozen of the 100 or so people in attendance." One of Awodey's sources reported that at least one of the protesters loudly made racist statements regarding Palestinians.

An email sent by Rabbi Joshua Chasan to local Christian clergy on September 9th (and published here at his request) gave this account:

Unfortunately, some of those hurt [by comparisons between the West Bank Wall and the Warsaw Ghetto] were as rude and hostile as supporters of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel at the Saturday morning talk by Peter and the fellow he invited, Joe Koval. This issue pushes a lot of buttons.

Awodey forwarded me a piece by Marc Estrin, author with Richard T. Simon of Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater entitled "Concerning the Hubbub at the Schumann Exhibit, and Why the Sponsorship and Speaker were Appropriate" which described the following:

[A] contingent [...] leafleting the audience, posting flyers [...] and generally trying to disrupt Kovel’s talk with aggressive muttering, badgering, shouting and flag-waving throughout, and starting a political campaign to get individuals and businesses to withdraw sponsorship from the Art Hop.

Without a transcript of what was said, it is hard to determine whether the "badgering" of Kovel's talk was disruptive heckling and how much was simply a reasonable inquiry from someone who questioned either Koval's or Schumann's positions. There is little doubt from the given reports that some element of the dissent voiced at the presentation was intended to disrupt and silence, however, it is also likely that at least part of the group of dissenters were there to engage in a civil manner.

Clearly, there has been a break down in civil debate in Burlington around the exhibition of Independence Paintings but before I offer an interpretation of what this break down represents and examine its causes, I would like to attend to the rest of Estrin's essay for the light it sheds:

[P]olitical art is political by definition, that is, it addresses the polis about urgent issues affecting the life of people, and Israel/Palestine is an urgent issue. The back room of 696 [Pine Street] is devoted for the month to a show of political art. That it should be accompanied by related speakers, films and community discussion – and even controversy -- sharing its universe of discourse is a legitimate dimension to such work.

Art and artists certainly do have a role in the political life of a democracy, just as journalism and journalists, and history and historians. The most outspoken critics of the exhibition of Independence Paintings: Joshua Chasan, Ric Kasini Kadour, and myself do not deny the value of art in political sphere, and this is a point missed by Marc Estrin when the only critique he permits Schumann's critics is "This is politics [...] It doesn’t belong here."

The point is also missed by Ken Picard when he wrote "political art [...] creates controversy only when it’s done right."

The point on which Chasan, Kadour, and I all agree is that Independence Paintings is not done right, and sadly, very little of the reportage in the Burlington press has either described the content of the work.

What Estrin and Picard miss in discussing political art is the relationship between art and truth. I do not write of "truth" as a transcendent absolute found in speculative metaphysics, or the articles of faith of a given theological tradition, or even the truth understood the ideology of a given state or political movement. I make far more modest claims for truth: an interpretation of events or phenomena supported by a preponderance of evidence.

History is never just whatever somebody declares to have happened in the past, journalism is never just what somebody declares to have happened recently or currently happening. Were either so, we would have no means of distinguishing between history, pseudo history and myth; we would have no means of distinguishing between good journalism, sloppy journalism, and propaganda. Historians assemble a great many pieces of evidence to determine what happened in the past, and its significance. Journalists must rely on multiple sources to assemble a description of what is happening. What does this have to do with political art? Do we not expect artists to take liberties, to use hyperbole, satire, allegory, analogy, and symbolism?

A society becomes dysfunctional when journalists no longer make the attempt to be truthful, when history texts no longer have any relationship to the evidence that the past has left for us. Art is not held to the same rules of evidence of journalism or history, nor should it. However, political art ceases to have a value to the polis when it is no longer truthful, when it lies. At that point the aesthetic life of a society becomes sick and dysfunctional. If we do not acknowledge that art can lie, then we lose the ability to distinguish between the post World War I work of Otto Dix and the propaganda posters approved by the regime that banned so much of his work.

As mentioned before, Schumann juxtaposed images of the Holocaust with a narrative of Palestinian views of the West Bank Wall and IDF counter-terrorist activities in the same piece. The message was taken by both Schumann critic and Schumann defender alike that either a.) Israel is committing genocide in the construction of the West Bank Wall, just as Germany committed genocide in the construction, administration, and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, or b.) that the Warsaw Ghetto was only as bad as the high unemployment rates and humiliation of going through an IDF security checkpoint. The evidence supports neither claim. The first interpretation is a false charge of genocide against the people and government of Israel and is antisemitism and "soft-core" Holocaust denial. The latter interpretation is very close to "hard-core" Holocaust denial and is unquestionably anti-Semitic. The act of juxtaposition has made a lie.

If we go back to Picard's aphorism "political art [...] creates controversy only when it’s done right" we see that this line of thought does not apply here. Good political art (such as that of Otto Dix) does create controversy, insight, or gives voice to thoughts that the audience simply has not found the means to articulate. But the controversy here has nothing to do with the quality of the art. The intensity of this controversy over how to interpret this piece, whether the piece should be exhibited or in what context it should be exhibited is a product of two factors: the degree to which Independence Paintings is untruthful and the degree to which the artist is a celebrity.

To further underline the untruthfulness of the work, let us examine Schumann's own statements:

Andy Potter reports that on September 8th,

Schumann explicitly disavowed any connection between his work and the Holocaust. "It wasn't the case, and if you think of it logically it simply doesn't hold up,"

Except that Schumann uses imagery that he admitted on February 12 in Boston was derived from his view of the events of the Warsaw Ghetto. Why would an artist knowingly create and exhibit something that does not logically hold up to the most basic scrutiny?

Schumann also stated at the September 8 talk that "I asked [the Palestinian artists] for the sake of creating this piece to tell me recent and local stories and then wrote these down." The methodology is sound but when compared with this statement from the September 4 article by Jack Thurston, "Schumann says his work is not anti-Semitic, it merely reflects a viewpoint many Palestinians really hold" several questions pose themselves. Can the work be free of antisemitism solely because it reflects viewpoints of "many Palestinians"? Why are the images of Independence Paintings not of life on the West Bank? Did the Palestinian artists suggest the use of the Warsaw Ghetto imagery?

The answer to the last question, appears to be "no." During the February 12 talk, Schumann was explicit that the inspiration to use images of the Holocaust came not from the Palestinians he met, but from the book he brought along with him on his trip, John Hersey's The Wall. The decision to juxtapose the West Bank with Warsaw was Schumann's and may have had little to do with anything said by the Palestinians he met. Indeed, if we consider that he stated that he had brought the book with him, the decision to juxtapose the two walls may have been made before he ever arrived in Palestine.

The break down of civil discourse in the wake of Independence Paintings is precisely because civil discourse must be rooted in truthfulness, and the work entered the political realm without ever having been truthful.

This is particularly disappointing when I consider Schumann's other works, some of which I have performed in, such as Oratorio of the Possibilitarians or World on Fire, which contained rich imagery, wit, sophisticated staging, and most importantly, truth.

Rabbi Joshua Chasan on Peter Schumann's "Independence Paintings"

Recent readers of my blog will note that I have been paying close attention to the events revolving around the exhibition in Burlington, Vermont of Independence Paintings, a collage of painting and text by Bread and Puppet Theater founder and artistic director, Peter Schumann. It was the content of this painting that caused me, someone who for a number of years had performed in Bread and Puppet's Boston area shows, to terminate my relationship with the group when it showed at the Boston Center for the Arts in February of this year. Rabbi Joshua Chasan, of the Ohavi Zedek Synagogue in Burlington, as reported earlier, has been a public critic of the exhibition. Due to the on going nature of the dispute, and his lack of familiarity with blogging, Rabbi Chasan asked me to share the letters he has written to the community as the situation has been developing.

I have made minor editorial glosses for purposes of aiding readability on the web, mostly in terms of providing links to relevant web pages and clarifying the identify of the speakers. I have made one note in bracketed italics that references a report by Ric Kasani Kadour.

Ian Thal



Three Emails from a Rabbi in Vermont to Christian Colleagues Including an Email Exchange Between the Executive Director of the South End Art and Business Association and the Rabbi

By Rabbi Joshua Chasan

On Saturday morning, September 8, 2007, the South End Art & Business Association of Burlington, Vermont featured a presentation of a mural by Peter Schumann, founder of the Bread and Puppet Theater. The mural was created after a nine day visit by the artist to Palestine, a journey from Vermont on which he took along John Hersey's The Wall, a novel about the Warsaw Ghetto. The exhibit and talk by both the artist and his guest, Joseph Koval, author of Overcoming Zion, was sponsored by a local organization that broke away from the tri-partite sister-city program of Bethlehem, Arad, and Burlington, in order to be able to advocate exclusively on behalf of Palestinians. The program on that Saturday morning was attended by Vermonters with a variety of viewpoints, and it was not a civil exchange.


Email from Rabbi to Christian Colleagues, August 31st, 2007:

Shalom Chavayrim,

Chavayrim--remember President Clinton saying "shalom chavair" it at Yitzhak Rabin's funeral--chavayrim (the plural) has the sense of being members of each other's shared spiritual vision. I write to you about a deep concern amongst members of our Jewish community about an exhibit of paintings with accompanying talk by Peter Schumann.

A review of these paintings appeared in the Boston Phoenix (see link below).

Whatever your opinion of the fence/wall (it disrupts Palestinian lives; it saves Israeli lives; both), I would urge you to go see the paintings and listen to the talk by Peter Schumann, whose work many of us have respected for decades. I plan to look at the paintings and will go to hear Peter if he is talking at any time other than Shabbat morning when I plan to be in synagogue. I believe the talk will be on Saturday, September 8. You can contact the Art Hop for more information. I will place at the end of this email some links you may want to look at.

I urge you to experience the exhibit and consider why many of us Jews (not all by any means, but certainly many of us, including me and board member of Vermont Interfaith Action, Jeff Potash) are deeply troubled by what Deborah E. Lipstadt has called "'soft-core denial" of the Holocaust "which, rather than deny the Holocaust, equate[s] Israel's policies with those of the Third Reich, labeling Israelis as Nazis." (Lipstadt, History on Trial, p. 25)

I and many others in the Jewish community are ardent civil libertarians. Ideas artistically expressed need to be challenged in the public square. So I write to ask you to consider the possible consequences of this exhibit being seen by people of all ages. Perhaps you will feel moved to speak out about what this exhibit evidences of our community's acceptance of ideas which are essentially anti-Semitic.

I readily accept that not every criticism of the polices of the State of Israel is anti-Semitism. But attempts to de-legitimate the existence of a Jewish State within living memory of the Holocaust send shivers down the spine of many of us Jews who know that, for all the problems that we have with specific Israeli policies, we know in the sinews of our souls that we still live in the lifeboat that the State of Israel provided for the Jewish people in 1948. Clearly, with pronouncements such as those of the President of Iran and the anti-Semitism in the textbooks and media of many Arab countries, the waters about us still are not safe.

I ask for your support at this time.

With hope for just peace,

Joshua


P.S. I suggest also going to the following web sites:

Vermonters for a Just Peace (VTJP)'s affiliation with Al-Awda:
http://www.vtjp.org/aboutus/aboutus.htm

Frank Levine's Letter to the Boston Phoenix about Schumann's Exhibit
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid34743.aspx
(scroll down to "Imitating life?")

The original Boston Phoenix article:
http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid33080.aspx

I don't know if it is still up after complaints [weeks later it was], but the following cartoon comparing the Israelis' building the
fence/wall and an iconic image of Auschwitz was on the web site of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Israel/Palestine earlier this week: http://www.vtjp.org/cartoons/AbdullahDourkawi.htm, with the caption, "This political cartoon by Moroccan artist Abdullah Dourkawi won first prize in the Holocaust cartoon contest at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Arts," sponsored by the State of Iran.


Email from Rabbi to Christian Colleagues, September 7, 2007:

You may recall my email of August 31st (see below) Here is correspondence from and to the director of the South End Art and
Business Association. Some have called for SEABA to pull the one offending painting and to cancel the connected talk and film. I have been careful not to. My position I think speaks for itself below. We in the Jewish community are hopeful that our Christian sisters and brothers will see this for what it is-a hijacking of the Art Hop by Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel who are one-sided in their support for Palestinians and hatred for Israel. See the cartoon below at the end of my first email. It is still on their web site as of five minutes ago. As you know, I am not afraid to criticize Israeli policies and have been side by side with Palestinians during a home destruction by the Israelis and protecting olive farmers near Nablus.

This is not about Israeli policies. This is about hatred for Israel the State which bleeds directly into hatred for Israel the people. The standard of public discourse in Burlington is being lowered. Please speak out publicly and to your members. This kind of hatred spreads easily.



Carlos Haase, Executive Director of the South End Art & Business Association to rabbi and representative of the Israel Center of Vermont with permission of the Executive Director, September 5, 2007:

I want to start off by thanking you for the very constructive phone conversations we've been able to have. Although the conversations have taken place at two different times in this process, both conversations have been very productive.

Below my signature, I am sharing with you our organization's immediate response to the controversy surrounding the Art Hop. I am also attaching it as a PDF.

From our conversations I conclude we have a lot of points in common. That in turn, provides us with the strength and common ground to pursue dialogue, discussion and understanding of this situation.

On that note, on behalf of SEABA, I want to be the first to let you know that we look forward to public response (your opinions of course, included), in order to assess how we can create a dialogue and safe space for discussion to take place in the near future, in whatever shape or that could be. For that, I look forward to directly working with you.

We have a great community here in Burlington. I wholeheartedly hope this whole experience and the dialogue to come from it will only strengthen us as a community.

Respectfully yours,

Carlos Haase,
Executive Director
South End Art & Business Association

SEABA'S POLICY ON ARTISTIC FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION:
The South End Arts and Business Association (SEABA), and by extension, the South End Art Hop, are strongly committed to Artistic Freedom of Expression. We don't pass judgment on any artwork, that is, we neither condone nor condemn any work. We encourage everyone to see the artwork on display and come to their own conclusions about the material. If any questions arise, we also encourage viewers to ask questions of the artist(s) who created the work. The Art Hop is a unique opportunity for creators and viewers to come together and create further dialogue, which furthers understanding. We at SEABA hope that you share our desires for intellectual inquiry and Artistic Freedom of Expression. We hope to see you at the Hop!

Rabbi to Executive Director of Arts and Business Association, September 5, 2007:

Carlos,

I tried to reach you by phone as you suggested.

I have to say that the statement that SEABA issued leaves me bewildered. In our previous conversation, I had assumed that the leadership of SEABA understood the dimensions of the mistake made in allowing Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel to use your organization for blatant political purposes. I had thought that you would be grappling with this problem. Instead, I heard you now using what happened to SEABA to define a policy of moral neutrality about expressions of hatred. If it were African-Americans or homosexuals who were victims of such abuse, I do not think you would be issuing statements of neutrality. I hear no soul-searching at SEABA about the risk created by allowing an expression of hatred. And recently I learned that the showing of Occupation 101 is also on your program. Carlos, it appears to me that SEABA has opened the door of mainstream Burlington culture to the expression of hatred. I fear for my community.

B'shalom,

Rabbi Joshua Chasan

[Editor's note: Ric Kasini Kadour has noted that Art Hop organizers, while unwilling to withdraw any work due to content, had agreed to present Independence Paintings in a context that addressed the anti-Semitic nature of the work, but later "reneged" on this agreement.]


Email from Rabbi to Christian Colleagues, September 9, 2007:

Shalom again. You must be wondering how I have time to write these emails when Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are approaching. The answer is that you are part of my soul searching at this time of year. I value your opinions, treasure our years of working together and, I suppose, I am triumphalist enough (God forbid!) to hope you join me in the soul searching of the first ten days of the Jewish year, beginning this Wednesday evening.

I realize I am missing some names, and have neglected to send these emails to all of our colleagues. I missed Gary Kowalski. I'm sorry. If you see a name missing, please pass this along. A deep hurt remains for many of us in the Jewish community and others about this expression of hatred.

Unfortunately, some of those hurt were as rude and hostile as supporters of Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel at the Saturday morning talk by Peter and the fellow he invited, Joe Koval. This issue pushes a lot of buttons.

I write now to ask those of you who attended the Saturday morning program and/or saw the mural about the Warsaw Ghetto/Palestine, to send me your thoughts. Not everyone sees hatred, animus, in this work. Perhaps you didn't. Or you did. Either way, I want to create a conversation about this issue. Many of us in the Jewish community, with perspectives on Israel/Palestine which range across the spectrum, feel a little less safe in this community than we did before we got word of what we continue to believe was a hijacking of the Art Hop by Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel which has associated itself on its web site with the State of Iran's Holocaust Cartoon Contest.

I hope together we can up the ante for a movement for peace which recognizes the threats to democracy from both within and without the United States; and sees the struggle of Israelis and Palestinians in the context of international relations over the past two hundred years. The world is in chaos now and we must examine carefully rhetoric about a just peace to see if its practitioners really want peace, or they are driving a hard bargain for one side or the other.

As clergy, we know that God knows no sides; God is beyond sides. Yet we also know that the level of violence in our world today--State-sponsored violence and violence sponsored by the ideologues of triumphalism, whether it be religious or national--the level of violence in our world today must be an affront to our conscience that calls us into action.

I ask you to join in conversations, public and private, that begin with honest, calm talk about issues of justice and peace in the Middle East. Once again, just as with Vietnam (at least in my opinion), the peace movement as constituted, has some but limited effect. Just as on other social issues--for example, abortion--our moral influence is limited by our differences of opinion, so too this can become a problem about differing takes about Israel and Palestine.

For the sake of helping to create an effective movement to end the violence, as well as for the sake of those of us Jews who feel threatened by a weakening of moral resolve in the world to protect the independent sovereignty of the State of Israel, can we talk to each other about these issues? Will those of you who resonate to our vulnerability as Jews speak out the public about this issue?

Independence Paintings in Burlington, Vermont, Part 2

As reported previously, some controversy arose when it was announced that the Burlington Art Hop would include an exhibition of Peter Schumann's Independence Paintings, the work that contributed to my decision to part ways with Bread and Puppet Theater.

I learned more when Marc Awodey, a poet, painter, art critic, and conspiracy theory-debunker based in Burlington, posted a lengthy comment to the initial entry regarding how the controversy was developing within Burlington's art community.

Awodey pointed me towards an article by Ric Kasini Kadour entitled "Art Hop Exhibition Takes on Palestinian/Israeli Conflict: Wades into Anti-Semitism & Holocaust Denial" in Art Map Burlington. Kadour's article was written before Independence Paintings was shown the general public in Vermont and relied greatly on reportage from the Boston showing such as Frank Levine's letter in The Boston Phoenix and this blog. Kadour and I are in basic agreement that the act of equating the West Bank wall with the Warsaw Ghetto constituted what Deborah Lipstadt calls "soft-core Holocaust denial", an attempt to trivialize or minimize the Holocaust, often with the aim of hurting or maligning the Jewish community. He and I are also in agreement as to Schumann's deserved stature as an artist.

Kadour, however provides far greater background as to how Independence Paintings has come to be shown at Art Hop, why it is being shown, and who is responsible for the exhibition than one would get from the article by Jack Thurston (which being the transcript of a television broadcast, simply cannot go into as much detail.) The exhibition of Independence Paintings is not sponsored by an arts organization, but by an activist organization, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel.

Though the webmaster does point out a disclaimer "The views expressed in the material posted on this site are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the webmaster or Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel" it leaves one to question just what are VTJP's views, given the inclusion of anti-Semitic and Holocaust denial material, notably Abdullah Dourkawi's winning entry in International Holocaust Cartoon Competition sponsored by the Iranian newspaper, Hamshahri, which appears to be comparing the West Bank wall to the death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and repeating the canard that Israel intends to destroy the Al-Asqa Mosque. As I always ask this brand of soft-core Holocaust deniers: if Israel is repeating the crimes of the Nazis as you claim, where are the death camps? In all those years I have yet to get an answer.

Also revealing is at the very top of the VTJP website's homepage is the very first link one sees is "What if Israel invaded Vermont?" which leaving aside the absurdity of the scenario, does tell us something of VTJP's agenda. The accompanying text has too many historical omissions, and inaccuracies for me to get into here, but to address the analogy: If Israel were to invade Vermont, from where would they invade? Western Massachusetts? Upstate New York? New Hampshire? Quebec? No: The map portrays Israel's hypothetical invasion of Vermont to be from within Vermont itself. Can one invade a land where one is already present? The paradox reveals the very clear message: that a "just peace" means "no Israel"; Jews have no right to live anywhere in that land. The justification? The British Mandate's borders as the Ottaman Empire gave up the territory to Britain after WW I. This is all very disconcerting to those of us who are concerned with understanding the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict and who believe that a just peace involves two democratic states with a secure border.

[Still, imagine the topsy-turvy alternate reality VTJP proposes where in 1948 Israeli-Vermont would have had to have fought off invasions from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, Quebec, with additional support from Pennsylvania and New Brunswick, with the Grand Mufti of Montpelier declaring "we will drive the Jews into Upstate New York's wine country!"]

In a personal email from Awodey sent late in the evening of September 7th, after returning from the anxiously anticipated exhibition of Independence Paintings, he described the work to me as "just ragged cardboard lining the walls of a badly lit garage. [T]he scrawled text was virtually unreadable. [I]t seems to have gotten tattered and damaged in [its] travels - and just looked shabby." The work I had seen had been recently painted one and displayed in the beautifully lit Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama in Boston in February. I suspect that VTJP, like many political organizations I have observed, having a natural disdain for the arts, can never be bothered to present artwork in an appropriate setting when they do work with artists. Tattered and damaged, it loses much of its propaganda power and Awodey expressed doubts that there would be further press coverage of controversy with the work displayed under such conditions, but again, as something of a living legend, Schumann can get more attention exhibiting something shabby than most artists can garner exhibiting their best works. Either way, Schumann is making, and VTJP is sponsoring, a message of Holocaust denial.

Is this the end of this story?