Pumbedita

A Piranesi Panopticon Prison 

I actually had studied a bit about the great Jewish Academy in Pumbedita, which flourished in the Middle East from about 250 A.D. until 1100A.D.
After the fall of Jerusalem and the dispersion of Jews throughout the world in 70 A.D., the centers in what used to be Babylon, Sura and Pumbedita, were the centers of scholarship and were the incubators of the Babylonian Talmud. Pumbedita was founded by Judah ben Ezekiel (יהודה בן יחזקאל) who was also known as Rav Yehuda.

I have been doing some research on the war. It happens that - wonder of wonders - Pumbedita is none other than Falluja, or Fallujah, if you prefer. ( The final "h" in Arabic words is usually just an orthographic device to portray the Arabic " t'a marbuta " and is not really an "h" at all, it disappears in the plural of words, becoming a "t" or t'a.)
All this time, and I do not recall hearing once about that connection. I suppose it is not very interesting to most people.

Having said this, I hear that Pope Benedict XVI has reversed the excommunication of four episcopal members of the Society of St. Pius X, one of whom, Bishop Williamson, is a Holocaust denier. Jewish history is full of wonders and signs, and it is full of horrors and terrors, and it is full of the crockery of everyday life.
The Holocaust was a horror and a wonder. However, the Holocaust does not define in any discernible way the meaning of Jewishness. The Holocaust comes not before Moses, not before Mt. Sinai, although there are those who would like you to believe so.
There are those that would wish that an entire new era and time of Judaism begins with the Holocaust, and the Holocaust is the mark of the new age of a new Jewishness. I do not so believe. I vividly recall my shock at discovering that Holocaust denial was a crime in certain countries. I vividly recall my disbelief at hearing that a man was actually in jail in Austria for this crime of belief, this crime of knowledge, this outrageous crime against what all good people know.
How fitting that the tools of the Spanish Inquisition be used against unbelief: throw them into dungeons just as the Medieval Jews were thrown ! At that moment, my entire life underwent a great change of perspective. I began to put aside more of the blinders with which I had been afflicted by those in power.

(And speaking of blinders, I have no sympathy for the Society of Pius X. Nor Pius IX, for that matter. Prison Guards of the mind.)
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