The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Understanding NA Jews via Richler

 

I read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler when I was attending a prep school in NJ. I do not know his work particularly well, and I have tended to view Richler as a sort of Canadian Philip Roth. This particular book may provide some insights into the thinking and behavior of NA Zionists -- especially the leaders and intelligentsia.

 

The May 1981 Bantam Paperback Edition contains an introduction from A. R. Bevan of Dalhousie University. He writes:

It is difficult to feel very much sympathy for Duddy until perhaps the end of the novel; he is just too aware of the enormity of his own actions to pass for an innocent, and he causes the destruction of too many people to be seen only as a victim of his unfortunate environment. From one point of view we are presented to Duddy as a poor little neglected underprivileged boy from the slums and therefore one who cannot be blamed for trying to improve his lot even by slippery tactics. But the Duddy that we usually see is the one described as "a cretinous little money-grubber," as "a little Jew-boy on the make," as "as busy, conniving little Yid," and as a "scheming little bastard." It is true that his Uncle Benjy, who is one of the "lousy intelligent people!" (to use Duddy's description of him) realizes just before his own death that there might be something else about his nephew: "Your're two people... The scheming little bastard I saw so easily and the fine intelligent boy underneath that your grandfather, bless him, saw." He goes to tell Duddy that "a boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others." Richler obviously presents Uncle Benjy as one of the spokesmen for the minority view, a sort of chorus figure commenting on the central character and indirectly on society at large. We are prepared by the author to accept Uncle Benjy's reading of Duddy's character and we see Duddy as he saw him, and at the end of the novel we see that all the other potential people present in the boy have been murdered by the scheming little bastard. He has become another Boy Wonder!

 

The original Boy Wonder, Jerry Dingleman, is an important character in the novel. As Max [Duddy's father] describes the exploits of the Boy Wonder in words and tone suited to an epic hero, Dingleman the racketeer becomes to Duddy the living symbol of success. He has money, power and girls, and he made it all himself: "And from what? Streetcar transfers at three cents apiece. Streetcar transfers, that's all. I mean can you beat that?" Not even Duddy can, but he tries hard. When we actually meet the Boy Wonder as presented directly by Richler and not through the gullible eyes of Max, we immediately recognize him as an unscrupulous, predatory, and successful crook. His physical appearance, changed greatly for the worse by his "personal troubles" (polio), is to the reader clearly indicative of his moral corruption, another personal trouble that has had at least as much effect upon the impression he makes upon others. It takes poor Duddy a long, long time to recognize his hero for what he really is, a "two-bit, dope-smuggling cripple."

Over the last 60 years the NA American Jewish community has similarly been murdering all but the most particularist, rapacious, murderous, and unsympathetic paths for its social-political development or growth, and neither the NA Jewish Zionist oligarchy nor intelligentsia has even a shred of the awareness that Duddy Kravitz evinced.

 

While I usually mistrust Wikipedia entries, Richler's page is quite interesting, and it contains the following noteworthy information about Duddy Kravitz as well as about an unfortunate experience Richler had with the Canadian Zionist intelligentsia:

The 1974 movie version [of Duddy Kravitz] was directed by Richler's friend Ted Kotcheff and starred Richard Dreyfuss in his first leading role. Richler and Lionel Chetwynd co-wrote the screenplay.

 

....

 

In The Atlantic Monthly, around the time of the first election of the Parti Québécois (PQ) in 1976, Richler linked the PQ to Nazism, by asserting that the theme song of the 1976 PQ campaign "À partir d'aujourd'hui, demain nous appartient" was a Nazi song, "Tomorrow belongs to me..." the chilling Hitler Youth song from Cabaret.^[8] Neither the remainder of the text, nor the music, are related. Furthermore, the Cabaret song, never sung in Nazi Germany, was written in the 1960s by John Kander, a Jewish American lyricist and composer, not German fascists. "À partir d'aujourd'hui" was written by well-known songwriter Stéphane Venne when he was asked to compose a song for an advertisement of the Caisses populaires Desjardins credit union. In Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!, Richler acknowledges the error, blaming himself for having "cribbed" the information from an article by Irwin Cotler and Ruth Wisse for the Jewish American magazine Commentary.^[9] Co-writer of the Commentary article Cotler eventually issued a written apology to Lévesque. Richler also apologized for the incident and called it an "embarrassing gaffe".^[10]

I have written about Wisse previously at Honoring Wisse, Insulting Walt and Wisse Kokht Kugl mit Khazershmaltz! I have met Cotler at BC. He is an extremist Zionist and definitely deserves a blog entry if only to reply to The Double Nakba. I have mentioned Cotler in Economics of Intangibles, Zatzman, ul-Islam.

 

 

 

 

 

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Exodus versus the Whitey Tape

No Problem with Stereotyping Arabs

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

 

In Lucius Battle, Robert Kaplan, Arabists I mentioned that "Barak Obama recently sought a "Zionist hekhsher" from Atlantic Monthly staff writer Jeffrey Goldberg.

 

In his blog entry, Goldberg wrote:

And, speaking in a kind of code Jews readily understand, Obama also made sure to mention that he was fond of the writer Leon Uris, the author of Exodus.

Later in the piece Barak Obama adds:

BO: I always joke that my intellectual formation was through Jewish scholars and writers, even though I didn't know it at the time. Whether it was theologians or Philip Roth who helped shape my sensibility, or some of the more popular writers like Leon Uris. So when I became more politically conscious, my starting point when I think about the Middle East is this enormous emotional attachment and sympathy for Israel, mindful of its history, mindful of the hardship and pain and suffering that the Jewish people have undergone, but also mindful of the incredible opportunity that is presented when people finally return to a land and are able to try to excavate their best traditions and their best selves. And obviously it's something that has great resonance with the African-American experience.

One of the things that is frustrating about the recent conversations on Israel is the loss of what I think is the natural affinity between the African-American community and the Jewish community, one that was deeply understood by Jewish and black leaders in the early civil-rights movement but has been estranged for a whole host of reasons that you and I don't need to elaborate.

While many American Jews opposed discrimination against African Americans on ethical grounds, the majority either held racist attitudes toward blacks or backed equal civil rights out of political or social opportunism. (See Obama and the Freedom Riders.)

In Eastern Europe, ethnic Ashkenazim were at least as bigoted as everyone else, and the popularity among Jews of Uris' Zionist trilogy consisting of Exodus and the sequel volumes The Haj and Mitla Pass shows that Jews have no objection to racism per se because these books contain practically every Jewish Zionist negative anti-Arab and anti-Muslim stereotype as well as a lot of generically anti-Christian or specifically anti-Polish, anti-Ukrainian and anti-Russian prejudice.

Here are just a few of the multitude of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslims passages that Uris included in his texts.

Exodus, p. 228: Without water the Arab world disintegrated into filth; unspeakable disease, illiteracy, and poverty were universal. There was little song or laughter or joy in Arab life. It was a constant struggle to survive.

In this atmosphere cunning, treachery, murder, feuds, and jealousies became a way of life. The cruel realities that had gone into forming the Arab character puzzled others.

Cruelty from brother to brother was common. In parts of the Arab world thousands of slaves were kept, and punishment for a thief was amputation of a hand, for a prostitute amputation of ears and nose. There was little compassion from Arab to Arab. The fellaheen lived in abysmal filth and the Bedouin whose survival was a day-to-day miracle turned to the one means of alleviating their misery. They became Moslem fanatics as elements of the Jews had become fanatics in their hour of distress.

Exodus, p. 229: He was confounded by the fantastic reasoning that condoned every crime short of murder. He thought the position of women intolerable; they were held in absolute bondage, never seen, never heard, never consulted. Women often sought quick and vicious revenge by dagger or poison. Greed and lust, hatred and cunning, shrewdness and violence, friendliness and warmth were all part of that fantastic brew that made the Arab character such an enormous mystery to an outsider.

Exodus, p. 253: There was another reason why he wanted to be Mufti. The Palestinian fellaheen were ninety-nine percent illiterate. The only means of mass communication was the pulpit. The tendency of the fellaheen to become hysterical at the slightest provocation might become a political weapon.

Exodus, p. 334: Nazareth was much as Jesus must have found it in His youth.

Ari parked in the center of town. He brushed of a group of Arab urchins, but one child persisted.

"Guide?"

"No."

"Souvenirs? I got wood from the cross, cloth from the robe."

"Get lost."

"Dirty Pictures?"

Ari tried to pass the boy but he clung on and grabbed Ari by the pants leg. "Maybe you like my sister? She is a virgin."

Ari flipped the boy a coin. "Guard the car with your life."

Nazareth stank. The streets were littered with dung and blind beggars made wretched noises and barefoot, ragged, filthy children were underfoot. Flies were everywhere. Kitty held Ari's arm tightly as they wound through the bazaar and to a place alleged to be Mary's kitchen and Joseph's carpenter shop.

Kitty was baffled as they drove from Nazareth: it was a dreadful place.

"At least the Arabs are friendly," Ari said. They are Christians.

"They are Christians who need a bath."

Exodus, p. 435: "All Druse villages are built very high places. We are small minority and need high places to defend against Moslem attacks," Mussa said; "we will be in Daliyat in few minutes."

Kitty pulled herself together quickly as they approached the outskirts and slowed in the narrow streets.

Daliyat el Karmil seemed to sit on the roof of the world.

It was sparkling white and clean in comparison to the filth and decay of most Arab villages. Most of the men wore mustaches and many wore western clothing. Their headdresses were somewhat different from those of other Arabs, but the most dramatic difference was the carriage of dignity and outward pride and the look which suggested that they could be fierce fighters.

The women were exceedingly handsome and the children were bright-eyed and sturdy. The women wore dresses in wild colors with white cloths over their heads.

Because Uris is such a poor writer, I doubt that Obama ever read the trilogy, but if he really likes this stuff, a fondness for such racist material should be a much more critical issue than the possibility that Michelle Obama might have used the term whitey -- except that the Jewish-dominated media and far too many Jewish journalists refuse to address or to criticize bigotries that characterize a large number of Jews.

 

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