Three Meanings of Millennium

AJR ormation Volume LV No. 1 January 2000 ±3 (to non-members) Don't miss... Some refleaions on the word on everybody's lips Land of promise Ronald Channing p5 Glimpses of Austria jussy Brainin pl3 Three meanings of millennium Both pen and iven that the word millennium is currently resemble the First more than the Second. (To read sword bandied about randomly it may not be amiss ers who jib at taking such a long-term view we say to try and tease out the different meanings he death, G that the history of the Jews is arguably longer than that attach to the term. within the anybody else's). same week, The first is obviously the spiritual Judeo-Christian And as we look at the Jewish situation a thousand T connotation. In this reading, millennium signifies years ago we find that all the worst horrors - the of Joseph Heller and Alexander the thousand year period of Messianic rule which is Crusades, the expulsions, the yellow badge, the Baron was a to precede the Last Judgement and the world to blood libel, the Inquisition, etc. were yet to come. truly symbolic come. One would have to be an inspissated pessimist to coincidence. Both The second is 'chronological': a metric subdivision fear that, with neady half the world's Jews currently men were of of time, as the next order of magnitude following in their own state and the rest largely resident in the humble immigrant on from year, decade and century. enlightened West, the upcoming millennium will in origin and served The third is (narrowly) historical. Hitler dubbed any way resemble the one we have just survived D in the war about his state the tausendjdhrige Reich. By ^hich they this he not only meant that the Nazi subsequently wrote empire would last till all eternity but outstanding novels. that it was also the fulfilment of the The East Ender spiritual aspirations of the German Baron's From the people. In Hitler's monstrous perversion City, From the of 'salvation theology' Jews were devils Plough (1948) incarnate and their extermination was ^as sometimes the victory of Good over Evil. hailed as a WW2 The evil that men do, wrote Shake counterpart to All speare, lives after them. Many of today's Quiet on the Germans, vociferously represented by "Western Front - the writer Martin Walser, want a ^hile Brooklyn- Schlusstrich (final line) drawn under born Hellers their country's guilt. Catcb-22 (\96l) actually entered But guilt has to be expiated - and that the language. has not been done in the true meaning Both books of the term. Many of the companies, disproved the which employed' slave labour, deny le lingering Nazi gal culpability with the mendacious plea jibe that Jews had that they acted under Nazi duress. They r»o first hand squeezed an estimated £40 billion profit Old comrades on parade experience of out of their wartime slaves, but half a Warfare. They century later it was left to the Schroder Proudly parading past the Cenotaph in London's Whitehall ^ko demonstrated government (i.e. the reluctant German to a military band, with medals gleaming and banners held the wealth of taxpayer) to cleanse the Bundesrepublik high, were 2,000 members of the Association of Jewish talent generated of a stain that continued to overshadow Ex-Servicemen and Women at their annual remembrance Within immigrant its postwar achievements. But, standing reunion. Also taking part were veterans from France, Israel Communities even on the cusp of a new epoch, it ill be and the USA. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and the force's before university hoves us merely to look back at the Jewish chaplain the Rev. Malcolm Wiseman conducted a education became grisly past. There is reasonable ground memorial service for comrades who lost their lives in Widely accessible D to hope that the Third Millennium will defence of civilised values and the Jewish people. (See p4)0 AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 2000 language books outside of the Nether Profile lands. Anna wrote numerous articles and sev eral books on Dutch bibliographical and Anna Harvey historical subjects, often concentrating on nna Harvey was born in Leipzig Anglo-Dutch interaction, such as: Publish in 1916 as Anneliese Simoni. and be free, Catalogue of Books from the A She was educated at the Rudolf- Low Country' 1601-1602 and Printing as Hildebrand-Oberschule from 1935 but Resistance. as soon as studying became impossible Officially retired in 1981, Anna has not she went to Italy, where she read at stopped working; she still travels to Lon the Universities of Turin and Genoa. don once a week from her home in Due to Mussolini's adoption of Hitler's Dorset - where she lives with husband. anti-Semitic policies, Anna had to flee William - to continue her research at the to Britain in 1938, where she was able British Library and she regularly reviews to continue her studies and reunite books and translates articles. with her parents. Anna gained a first In 1999 her colleagues - at home and class honours degree in Latin and abroad - honoured her with a volume ot Italian in 1941 at Glasgow University essays dedicated to her, published by the and remained there as a post-graduate British Library and entitled. Across the to read Greek. ^:/^ Narrow Seas. By 1943, due to the relaxing of the In the last 18 months Anna has re enemy alien policy, Anna was able to ceived the Order of the Nederlandse join the WAAF. She first served as a Leeuw (Dutch Lion) from Queen Beatrix Flight Mechanic with Training Com \ for her services to Dutch scholarship and mand and then as a language teacher at Anna Hanvy for improving Anglo-Dutch relations; last various RAF stations. She was demobi April the city of Genoa awarded her the lised in May 1946. absorbed into the British Library). Soon Mayor's Medal at a ceremony commemo In 1949, after a brief unsatisfactory after Anna was put in charge of the rating the persecution of Jews in Italy period as a teacher, Anna applied for Dutch language section, she was able to under Mussolini; and in 2000 she is ex one of the Reconstruction positions at raise its profile - partly through her re pected to receive an honorary doctorate the British Library where she began her search into books printed illegally during from Genoa University in recognition 01 career as an Assistant Keeper in the De Nazi occupation - building for the British the injustice she suffered during the partment of Printed Books (later to be Library the largest collection of Dutch war D with horns, i.e. devilish characteristics. the Jew who had hidden it underground Clerical errors In the thirteenth century the Spaniard in Jerusalem is threatened with death W t is a wellknown fact that the year Jacobus de Veragine wrote the Golden drowning on the orders of St Helena, Zero, the designated starting point of Legend. Also known as 7??^ Legend of the mother of Emperor Constantine. I the Christian millennia, should really True Cross, it purported to provide a A Jewish malefactor again appears ii^ have occurred four years earlier. As a prequel as well as a sequel to the story the (personal) writings of the mid-twent'' repository of knowledge the Christian of Jesus' life. Due to its publication' prior eth century Pope Pius XII who, ^^ Church clearly did not have very to the invention of printing Veragine's Cardinal Pacelli, had been Papal Nuncio auspicious beginnings. work did not have a very wide circula in Munich during the 1919 Bavarian So In the fourth century Saint Jerome com tion - but it was disseminated via the viet Republic. In the aftermath of th*^ mitted another egregious error with the medium of painting (most notably Piero Great War Rome felt acutely threatened most far-reaching consequences. While de la Francesca's frescoes in the church by atheistic Bolshevism and in Pacelli s translating the Bible from Hebrew and at Arezzo). paranoid imaginings Jews becam^ Greek into Latin, the Church father - Already the first "frame" of the fresco conflated with Bolsheviks. He described always depicted as deeply studious on cycle is overtly antisemitic. In it two stern the Munich Soviet leader Max Levien 'i^ medieval paintings - made a slip that Jewish Elders bar Jesus' grandfather an "unkempt frenetic Jew' (see Decembef reverberated down the ages. He mistrans Joachim from entering the synagogue. issue p4). lated the rays emanating from Moses' They do so because they consider In fact Levien was a non-Jew who, li'"'^ forehead on Sinai as horns, or cornatu. Joachim accursed of God on the grounds many Baltic Germans - such as the Na^J This clearly influenced Michelangelo that his twenty-year old marriage has not ideologist Alfred Rosenberg, or the 19^0* when he sculpted his famous and awe been blessed with issue. screen actor Albert Lieven - bore a Je^' some statue of Moses at the church of St The antisemitic motif recurs in the final ish-sounding surname. Peter in Chains - but what mattered more sequence of the cycle. Here the location To err, as they say, is human - but ' was that the broad public ever after asso of the True Cross - i.e. the instrument of can have deeply inhuman consequences- ciated the founder of he Mosaic faith the crucifixion - is only discovered when n Richard Grunberge' AJR INFORMATION JANUARY 2000 The art or the life biopic screen plays. (a) Maya Angelou (teenage hooker, vaude PARTNER oon after Ted Hughes' death it was ville dancer, author, academic, orator at announced that Elaine Feinstein had presidential inauguration) in long established English Solicitors Sembarked on his biography.

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