menachim shalom

MENACHIM SHALOM

This Is A Fictional Account Of A Man Who Feels The Conditions Of The Holocaust Of WWII Are Being Recreated.  His Obsession Leads Him To Act In A Dramatic Way.  Inasmuch as this is one of my high horses, please accept my apologies for the drama.

By Izzy Ess De La Grande Finesse

Menachim Shalom met a man named Achmed bin Hussein, in Achmed’s moderately sized convenience store which specialized in Cubans and all sorts of flavoured small cigars, as well as Lebanese good foods and cooking stuff. He was a friendly guy, quite typical of Lebanese good business men whose ancestors, the Phoenicians, had opened up the Mediterranean Sea with trading and with transportation.  When Menachim introduced himself, bin Hussein looked surprised and asked him why the Jews are still just stealing land from Palestinians.  Menachim smiled and said, jokingly, “Because the Jews were there originally way before the Palestinians!”  Achmed smiled and enjoyed the conversation about Jews and Arabs, eh?  It did turn out that Achmed was not anti-Semitic and, in fact, had planned to start a business with some Jewish students he had met in Cleveland where he went to University, which did not work out.  When Achmed claimed that his Jewish friends did ask him to bow out because of pressures from some other Jewish businessmen because, “he did not fit in,” he also conceded that it was the Jewish businessmen in Niagara who encouraged him to set up business there and created a big “Ecumenical Committee” which sought to protect him when there might have been reprisals from the Jews and other ethnic groups in Niagara when the Arabs invaded USA on 9/11, eh?  He said he was particularly impressed with the support of the rabbi of the only remaining Synagogue in Niagara where there were now, in fact, more than seven Arab Mosques.

Menachim much enjoyed the conversations and began what looked like a good friendship with Achmed.  Menachim owned a clothing store, specialized in bigger folks and uniforms, just down the street from Achmed’s store.  He enjoyed the business from the remaining Jews in Niagara, the Christians, plus the growing population of Arabs who had established businesses, homes, schools and Mosques in the area.  Menachim gambled on slots and tables; his own contribution to Niagara Casinos earned him up to four free tickets for the shows.  He offered two to Achmed and they were supposed to “double date,” when Achmed’s father did fall ill in old Beirut.  Achmed travelled to Lebanon to help his father and had to cancel his date with Menachim and his girlfriend because of this.  Menachim and Achmed were both divorced and dating and often did discuss the problems with dating at an “advanced” age.

Bin Hussein left with a replacement in charge of the day-to-day business of his store.  This was a young Iraqi man who was vehemently anti-Semitic and in his arguments did state that all Jews were evil and just grabbing Arab land with the protection of the Jewish leaders in America, and the Jewish diamond merchants in Antwerp, eh?  Menachim tested his resolve by asking him about the prophets.  The young Iraqi, Hussein Mohammed, glowed about Mohammed.  After all, the spirit of Mohammed lived inside of him.  Menachim went for broke and asked if Mohammed respected Jesus.  The young Iraqi did not see the significance of the question and said, “Oh yes, Mohammed felt that Jesus was an important prophet.”  So, Menachim made his point, quite quietly: “Jesus was Jewish, my young man.”  The Iraqi man practically exploded with a fact he could not comprehend.  “JESUS WAS JEWISH?!” he shouted with disbelief.  “Yes, my son, Jesus was Jewish.  His name was Jesus Christ and hence the Jews that followed Jesus were called Christians, but it is a well-known fact that Jesus and his disciples, Mary, Joseph and all the Roman Slaves, in Palestine were Jewish.  Did your Iraqi teachers never tell you?”  The young man looked stunned.  Menachim left thinking he would not be welcomed in this store until his friend Achmed did return from Lebanon.

Menachim had a very real problem with the President of the Synagogue, Benny Abraham.  Most Saturdays, Benny and Menachim were the only attendants and that meant that there could be no official service since the tradition was that at least ten Jews must be present to have one.  The Hebrew world was “minion.”  Without a minion, the attendants would have an informal discussion of the section of the Pentateuch that would have been scheduled for the ceremony for that Sabbath.  Menachim loved the informal discussions of the stories of the Patriarchs and other Hebrew principals of the first five books of Moses, the substance of the Torah.  Menachim found enough details to conclude that he and his Jewish kith and kin drew their cultural habits from the folks that acted just like his aunts and uncles.  He grew to feel a real kinship with folks like Jacob, Isaac and David, really or allegorically, behaving just as he was taught as a child.  In his mind it helped him sort out “automatic” thinking and behaviour of himself and all his kith and kin, as if he was “programmed,” genetically, just like them.  It had a satisfying stabilization, in a way that he had never felt before.  He left these Sabbath mornings feeling good about himself.

His “bad” feelings about the behaviour of Benny stemmed from his reaction to swastikas drawn on the Synagogue by unknown folks who were obviously anti-Semitic and felt that destruction or desecration of Jewish property was acceptable behaviour.  Menachim had read a lot about the events of WWII and was disturbed by the passivity of taunted and abused Jewish citizens in Germany which allowed them to be rounded up and herded into slavery and the death of millions of the German Jews who had been assimilated into German society to the point where they didn’t understand why they were being robbed and rounded up for slavery and genocide.  Because Benny refused to report the desecration to the police, Menachim felt he was being passive and thus enabling bolder acts by Neo-Fascist groups.  Menachim read about the rise of Neo-Fascism around the world and how it was being downplayed without objections from the Jews and media.  Menachim had this sinking feeling that a passive response was exactly the response that could lead to another wave of genocide.

Benny didn’t see it that way.  He felt objections would just bring further abuse and desecration.  He chose to remain passive, it seemed to Menachim.  Menachim was convinced that it was this passivity that encouraged more aggressive behaviour by anti-Semitic groups.  He had come to know Benny as a very intelligent and insightful man, but this was beyond his comprehension.  He said to himself that another Holocaust was on its way.  He even thought that Benny might have thought the same but was willing to take the chance since his synagogue was virtually on the brink of bankruptcy anyway, so why not let it happen and allowed the destruction of the Synagogue so that selling was not so urgent.  Destruction might be a better solution to his financial dilemma, eh?  It was a possibility that was beyond Menachim’s ability to fathom things.

Menachim started having nightmares.  He dreamt of “Krystalnacht,” the night that Jewish stores had their windows smashed and their goods ransacked and their owners turned out on the street for abuse and taunting and even death.  This was a night of bonfires and burning of piles of books and Torahs, Bibles and personal papers.  He awoke screaming and choking, gasping and with angina pectoris due to narrowing of his coronary arteries.  He felt devastatingly helpless and hopeless and destined to die in a gas chamber or with a Luger’s bullet to the head.  He visualized his Jewish kith and kin herded into boxcars and starved to death or worked to death without food and water.  He felt responsible for everyone’s tragedies because of his own passivity and inability to fight back effectively.

Menachim started focussing on the young Iraqi as the leader of the groups which were desecrating his own Synagogue, in Niagara.  Some of his nightmares were very specific about abuse by this young Iraqi and his growing group of Neo-Fascists emboldened by the lack of fighting on the part of the Jews who owned property and went to Synagogues.  These dreams involved the young Mohammed shouting in his face, “Mesopotamia is the seat of Civilization!  Jews are parasites and crooks!  Get out of the Middle East!  Go back to your own countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and America!  Stop stealing Arab lands!  We will push you into the Sea!  We will round you up and enslave you and kill you!  Allah intended the Middle East for Arabs!  Jewish money is ill-begotten!  The Jews in NYC and in Antwerp control the world!  We will destroy you!  We will smash the Jewish businesses!  We will burn the Synagogues to the ground!  We will wipe you off the face of the Earth!”  Menachim’s panic was getting worse.  Benny was no help; Benny’s passivity was a big part of the problem!  Menachim’s angina was more frequent.  He was taking way too many nitroglycerin tablets under his tongue.  He was having problems catching his breath.  He was feeling more hopeless and more helpless.  He was getting seriously depressed.

Menachim Shalom could find no solace in the Synagogue.  He argued with Benny who seemed to want to say, “This too shall pass!”  Menachim shouted at him desperately, “This will not go away!  This will get worse!  Fight back Benny!  Lead the Jews!  Teach them how to fight!”  Benny would counter with, “Calm down Menachim!  Go see your doctor!  Get more medicine!  Are you having a nervous breakdown like you had before?”  Menachim used to feel better after the Sabbath.  Now he was feeling worse!  Much worse!

Saturday morning, Menachim entered Achmed’s Convenience Grocery Store.  He drew his loaded Smith and Wesson and shot the young Iraqi right between the eyes and in his heart and in his testicles.  He fired into an already dead Mohammed and saved the last bullet for himself.  He held the gun to his temple and shouted, “Death to all Fascists!” and pulled the trigger killing himself, instantly.  Achmed and three stunned customers could not help either Menachim or Mohammed.  Achmed called 911, but he knew that it was much too late.  The Police discovered a full confession in Menachim’s breast pocket.  The coroner discovered that Menachim’s coronary arteries were almost completely obstructed with atherosclerotic plaques and old blood clots.  The local and national and international headlines read. “JEWISH FANATIC KILLS YOUNG IRAQI!”

Both Benny and Achmed were interviewed as people that knew Menachim.  Both of them shook their heads and said he was unstable and distraught and looked like he was headed for a nervous breakdown, like the ones he’d had in the past.  They said they will sorely miss a good friend who desperately needed psychiatric help.  They both stated unequivocally that there were no Neo-Fascists in the community which was actively Ecumenical with both Benny and Achmed as active participants in a committee which sought to bring local peace to a community of Jews, Christians and Muslims.  They both spoke glowingly of each other and their active efforts to have a peaceful community of mixed religious groups.

The Jewish kith and kin of Menachim’s said about the same as Benny and Achmed about Menachim’s mental problems.  Most, if not all of them, had relatives who had died in the Holocaust of WWII.  None of them felt that the rising memberships in Neo-Fascist organizations was of concern.  They said that another Holocaust was an impossibility.

Menachim was buried in the Jewish tradition in a Jewish Cemetery beside his brother who had died of a massive coronary event.  His gravestone was one of the ones that were desecrated with spray-painted red and black swastikas during the year after he had committed suicide and homicide.

The last Synagogue in Niagara was sold to a congregation of Greek Orthodoxy.  It still has the large Star of David on its front door under the Greek letters declaring it to be a sacred place of worship for Greeks who were Orthodox, along with a large Greek Orthodox Cross above the Star of David.  The dwindling population of Jews of Niagara went across the Niagara River to the large Synagogues of Buffalo, or to the large Synagogues of Hamilton and Toronto, Ontario, Canada, if they desired to attend regular Sabbath Services.

THE END

© Izzy Sommers, MD

Welland, Canada

November 7, 2013

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