Poppy or not?
Nov. 11th, 2012 09:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livSeveral of my friends are against marking Remembrance Day on principle; some are even directly opposing commemorations. I definitely respect that; I can easily see how the day can be twisted for drumming up empty "patriotic" sentiment, along with xenophobia and weird social conservatism. And though I'm not a strict pacifist, I'm also not particularly in favour of wars or militarism.
The anniversary is looking increasingly hollow these recent years, with the rise of things like "designer" poppies and politicians vying with eachother to be jingoistically patriotic, not to mention this nonsense of planning a circus to mark the centenary of the beginning of WW1, which isn't any date worth celebrating. I don't like the trend towards bringing out poppies earlier and earlier in the year; the first week in November is appropriate, no sooner. And I don't have time for competing over bigger and gaudier poppies, and certainly not for shaming celebrities or acquaintances who don't happen to be wearing the appropriate badge. I don't like the way that poppy and flag themed window displays are starting to mingle with the Halloween theme; Armistice Day isn't an excuse to sell Brit-kitsch tat left over from the Jubilee, Royal Wedding and Olympics.
In spite of all these reasons to be grumpy, I put my pound in the British Legion box and I wore my poppy for the week leading up to today. And I led a short Remembrance service at shul on Friday. I did it mainly because my community expect it; our late and much-mourned president, himself a WW2 veteran, always joined the parade at the Cenotaph each year, and saw the closest shabbat as an important date in the synagogue's calendar. We ran out of WW1 veterans long ago, and even our WW2 veterans are dwindling every year. Still, in spite of all the jingoistic stuff floating around, I think there's a value in joining as a community to remember our war dead. I think it does need to be separate from remembering the dead in general, partly because war casualties often don't have a defined anniversary and their graves are overseas if they exist at all. And partly because people remembering lost comrades need a collective act of commemoration, not just an individual, personal one.
I have to adapt the liturgy from the Reform prayerbook; I imagine there must be some Anglo-Orthodox liturgy somewhere, but the edition of Singer's we use regarded Remembrance Sunday as a secular thing, not worth mentioning in a Jewish context. But anyway, I spoke for a few minutes about what the day is for, and read a poem, and then an adapted version of the memorial prayer
Anyway, at least as many of my friends as are boycotting the event have been posting memorials to social networks, and not in a militaristic or ersatz patriotic way, just remembering. I'm part of that, for all my reservations about the event, and the place of remembering wars in our national identity, hey, about the idea of wearing a badge to show you've given to charity.
For future years, and as a way of continuing to remember together if you're so inclined, what war poetry can people point to? For the purposes of services, I am steering a fine line between excessively patriotic stuff and excessively cynical. I avoid many of the neo-Romantic poems from early in the war which are mainly about how great England is, at least in part because there are as many non-English community members as English, and also because I am trying to mark the day in a non-jingoistic way. Equally I don't read the really vicious poems, not Dulce et decorum est or any of the biting Kipling verses, because that's not appropriate for what is meant to be a respectful religious ritual. Last year I picked something of Sassoon's, one of his less cynical pieces, on the grounds that he came from a partly Jewish heritage. This year Owen's Parable of the Old Man and the Young on the grounds that has a strong OT resonance, but honestly that's possibly more anti-war than is really appropriate. But there's a lot to be said for slightly less well-known stuff, poems that aren't English curriculum perennials (and that's probably a whole discussion in its own right, why is it that WW1 poetry is such a feature of school poetry teaching?) because people pay more attention if they don't already know the poem by heart!
The anniversary is looking increasingly hollow these recent years, with the rise of things like "designer" poppies and politicians vying with eachother to be jingoistically patriotic, not to mention this nonsense of planning a circus to mark the centenary of the beginning of WW1, which isn't any date worth celebrating. I don't like the trend towards bringing out poppies earlier and earlier in the year; the first week in November is appropriate, no sooner. And I don't have time for competing over bigger and gaudier poppies, and certainly not for shaming celebrities or acquaintances who don't happen to be wearing the appropriate badge. I don't like the way that poppy and flag themed window displays are starting to mingle with the Halloween theme; Armistice Day isn't an excuse to sell Brit-kitsch tat left over from the Jubilee, Royal Wedding and Olympics.
In spite of all these reasons to be grumpy, I put my pound in the British Legion box and I wore my poppy for the week leading up to today. And I led a short Remembrance service at shul on Friday. I did it mainly because my community expect it; our late and much-mourned president, himself a WW2 veteran, always joined the parade at the Cenotaph each year, and saw the closest shabbat as an important date in the synagogue's calendar. We ran out of WW1 veterans long ago, and even our WW2 veterans are dwindling every year. Still, in spite of all the jingoistic stuff floating around, I think there's a value in joining as a community to remember our war dead. I think it does need to be separate from remembering the dead in general, partly because war casualties often don't have a defined anniversary and their graves are overseas if they exist at all. And partly because people remembering lost comrades need a collective act of commemoration, not just an individual, personal one.
I have to adapt the liturgy from the Reform prayerbook; I imagine there must be some Anglo-Orthodox liturgy somewhere, but the edition of Singer's we use regarded Remembrance Sunday as a secular thing, not worth mentioning in a Jewish context. But anyway, I spoke for a few minutes about what the day is for, and read a poem, and then an adapted version of the memorial prayer
God, full of compassion. In fact I asked one of our remaining ex-servicemen to read the last; he said he was really touched to be included, since his uncle had died in the Great War before he was born. It didn't seem to occur to him that his personal involvement in WW2 was relevant.
Anyway, at least as many of my friends as are boycotting the event have been posting memorials to social networks, and not in a militaristic or ersatz patriotic way, just remembering. I'm part of that, for all my reservations about the event, and the place of remembering wars in our national identity, hey, about the idea of wearing a badge to show you've given to charity.
For future years, and as a way of continuing to remember together if you're so inclined, what war poetry can people point to? For the purposes of services, I am steering a fine line between excessively patriotic stuff and excessively cynical. I avoid many of the neo-Romantic poems from early in the war which are mainly about how great England is, at least in part because there are as many non-English community members as English, and also because I am trying to mark the day in a non-jingoistic way. Equally I don't read the really vicious poems, not Dulce et decorum est or any of the biting Kipling verses, because that's not appropriate for what is meant to be a respectful religious ritual. Last year I picked something of Sassoon's, one of his less cynical pieces, on the grounds that he came from a partly Jewish heritage. This year Owen's Parable of the Old Man and the Young on the grounds that has a strong OT resonance, but honestly that's possibly more anti-war than is really appropriate. But there's a lot to be said for slightly less well-known stuff, poems that aren't English curriculum perennials (and that's probably a whole discussion in its own right, why is it that WW1 poetry is such a feature of school poetry teaching?) because people pay more attention if they don't already know the poem by heart!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-11 11:02 pm (UTC)Thanks for a thoughtful piece.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:01 pm (UTC)Poppy or not?
Date: 2012-11-11 11:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-11 11:40 pm (UTC)Plus, as the number of veterans dwindles, the money is going less to them and more to soldiers that didn't fight in wars I believed in at all. In a way it is similar to people that go berserk if an athlete is not singing the British national anthem when there are so many reasons not to. Someone could be pro independence for their respective nations for example or anti-monarchy or an atheist or of another religion that doesn't want to reference a single god. Personally? I'm a pro-independence Scot that thinks the British monarchy gets given far too much money and doesn't believe in God. It would be a farce for me to sing God Save the Queen. I can explain that sort of thing to people but it is far harder to explain why I don't wear a poppy.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:24 pm (UTC)I don't mind giving money to support veterans and families of veterans, regardless of whether I agree with the motivations behind the wars. People always have some degree of choice whether to fight, but realistically often not that much, and I don't mind giving a little money to the British Legion, I think they're a reasonable charity. Not my favourite in the world, but it's not their fault that we sent soldiers into Iraq for completely false and colonialist reasons.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 12:02 am (UTC)I've stopped wearing a poppy. I'll start wearing one again when Nov 11 becomes about remembrance again rather than a jingofest. In Toronto high schools it's become a major opportunity for the forces to recruit kids from the poorest and most disadvantaged neighbourhoods so they can send them to Afghanistan to get killed protecting the opium poppy trade. I realised that irony was dead when I saw a photo of Cameron wearing a poppy while flogging arms to some particularly obnoxious Arab dictatorship.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 05:27 am (UTC)(when I worked in downtown SF a long time ago, there were WWI vets still selling poppies in the first week in November, but since I can no longer get a poppy from one of them, I no longer wear one. like you, I may start doing it again ... some time later.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:28 pm (UTC)Cameron's attitude has done a great deal to turn me off the whole Remembrance Day thing. I agree with you that it's absolutely tasteless for him to wear a poppy while discussing arms deals and making stupid noises about patriotism. And your story about using the day as an excuse for recruiting more cannon fodder is just depressing.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-18 08:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 12:06 am (UTC)The remembrance isn't just the honoring of the patriotism of the men, it is also the remembrance of the loss and the pain of war itself.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 03:37 am (UTC)(We also have, uh, Veterans Shabbat. Lots of creaky WWII veterans; not a few aging Vietnam vets; I believe we have a "prayer for members of the armed forces abroad" or something similar that a Conservative rabbi wrote and which we put as an insert in the regular Shabbat bulletin.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:36 am (UTC)I was going to say, is it less jingoistic if you're praying for soldiers on both sides, but I guess that's controversial in other ways if people are more likely to know victims of "other"-side atrocities than of "our"-side atrocities :(
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 04:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 06:43 am (UTC)I think it's very sad that people who know what rememberance day is all about are choosing not to remember in unity with everyone else because there are a small minority of others who seem to (I haven't seen any evidence) have changed the meaning.
In fact, your post(s) are the first time I've heard anything of this - and I note that someone in the comment stream calls rememberance day a "celebration", which perhaps hits home a little that people are forgetting.
I agree that it's a shame that the money is increasingly going to support the bereaved relatives and the injured soldiers from the recent wars which I totally didn't support, but on balance, I prefer that than that there is no nationwide collection at all.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:47 pm (UTC)The only thing that makes me hesitate is that some of my friends do perceive poppy-wearing as being about things that are offensive to them. Colonialism, English superiority, anti-immigrant feeling, mindless deference to authority, etc. I don't at all think that's what Armistice day is for, but I can see how it's susceptible to being twisted in those sorts of directions.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 04:49 pm (UTC)And as to celebrating the end of WWI, for most Germans, the more important date would be the date the people declared that this was now a republic and the emperor could go away. The armistice was signed two days after that, but just doesn't hold the same importance to people.
That date is an impossible date to have any celebrations on though, so it's just quiet.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:12 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 11:08 am (UTC)But in the areas where carnival is serious business, the official starting date is the 11.11. 11:11. and will be celebrated by introducing the Dreigestirn in Cologne and people just generally turning up in costume in the city centre.
At least as far as I know. Serious carnival people are scary and I've tried avoiding them as much as possible.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 01:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 02:05 pm (UTC)With the 11th being a Sunday this year, every single carnival ... guild (and it's still carnival-area enough that every little town will have one of those. Messel, Rödermark, Urberach, even Erzhausen have their own) in that area seems to have decided to start their campaign on the 16th or 17th anyway. For large and scary on the 11th, the closest would have been Frankfurt or Mainz.
(And now I'll stop providing creepily detailed local knowledge. I grew up in that area, is my only excuse)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:11 am (UTC)the no dancing in bars reminds me of Poland, where you can't dance during Advent or Lent (at least you couldn't when I lived there; one of the Poles in my German class tells me it's got more lax now!)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 07:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-13 10:27 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 06:09 pm (UTC)I connect the day with Wilfred Owen's poetry: Strange Meeting, Anthem for Doomed Youth and Dulce et Decorum Est.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:02 pm (UTC)White because I support active peace making and the aims and ideals of the movement.
I don't think I could do a civic celebration, but I focus worship on peace and making peace in the self and the local community.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 08:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-12 11:16 pm (UTC)In addition to the poetry archive, the site also hosts the parallel Great War Archive. It was compiled by running roadshows where people were invited to bring along items related to the First World War to be photographed or scanned. I did a small amount of cataloguing for them a few years back, and came across some amazing stuff - letters, photographs, diaries, soldiers' notebooks. The project also spawned a European version: http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en Not sure whether it's very useful from a service point of view, but there's lots of interesting stuff there!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-18 08:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-14 07:05 am (UTC)Celebrating, no. Commemorating, yes. There's lots of people still living who had relatives they should have known but didn't because 1914 happened.
I have to adapt the liturgy from the Reform prayerbook; I imagine there must be some Anglo-Orthodox liturgy somewhere, but the edition of Singer's we use regarded Remembrance Sunday as a secular thing, not worth mentioning in a Jewish context.
In my background growing up what was commemorated was not Remembrance Sunday but AJEX Shabbos, which was the Shabbos before. You might be able to get some liturgical material from AJEX (the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and women).
I asked one of our remaining ex-servicemen to read the last; he said he was really touched to be included, since his uncle had died in the Great War before he was born. It didn't seem to occur to him that his personal involvement in WW2 was relevant.
It's funny that that attitude is still around. I always thought it was just me thinking Remembrance Day was just about supporting WW1 vets; evidently, from this and other comments, lots of other people think/thought so too.
This year Owen's Parable of the Old Man and the Young on the grounds that has a strong OT resonance, but honestly that's possibly more anti-war than is really appropriate. But there's a lot to be said for slightly less well-known stuff, poems that aren't English curriculum perennials (and that's probably a whole discussion in its own right, why is it that WW1 poetry is such a feature of school poetry teaching?) because people pay more attention if they don't already know the poem by heart!
Lots more people will be like me, vaguely remembering the poem but no more. My rabbi quoted the last two lines; I had to go away to the Internet after to remind myself of the rest—and after he'd referred to the Owen poem, in the context of stories from his grandfather, who had been a rabbi serving as a chaplain (on the German side), but without yet having named or quoted from it, I heard someone muttering "Dulce Et Decorum Est", evidently having identified the wrong poem due to not knowing, or not remembering, this one.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-18 08:51 pm (UTC)Oh, of course, I'm not saying that it's wrong to continue remembering WW1. But I really think the "big" anniversary should be of 1918, not 1914, in the sense that it's Armistice Day, not war day or soldiers' day. And given how Cameron and cronies have been behaving around the day this year, I don't trust them to organize respectful commemorations, Cameron seems to be obsessed with trying to drum up artificial patriotic spirit.
This year it appears to be the weekend after, for whatever reason. My parents have gone to the Cenotaph today to represent the Board of Deputies at the ceremonies. But yes, I wouldn't do a special shul service on the Sunday, it will be on the nearest Friday night when we happen to be in shul anyway, because the Sunday part of Remembrance Sunday is a specifically Christian thing (and because we don't do weekday services). It's a good suggestion to look for liturgical resources from AJEX, though.
Well, I can definitely see that, but at the same time, if that were the case the day would be obsolete now that all the WW1 vets have died of old age, and even their children are well into retirement!
Well, Britten set it in his War Requiem, so anyone who knows twentieth century classical music will be familiar with it. And in fact several people in the community were reciting it along with me sotto voce, and came up to me afterwards to say that they'd studied it at school. If your rabbi used it that makes me feel more confident that it's appropriate for a traditional service.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-17 09:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-11-18 08:53 pm (UTC)