Jewcer Roi Ben-Yehuda wrote up his recent trip to Barcelona for Haaretz. If youEuropean Antisemitism: Straight up, no chaser want to see antisemitism done right --- or if you want to restore your confidence in the importance of Zionism --- go to Europe and then wait around a while:

If the presence of swastikas were not enough, Barcelona also has the dubious honor of being home to Europe's most infamous neo-Nazi bookstore, brazenly titled "Europa Bookstore: Persecuted Books - The Truth Will Set You Free."...

The books in the store were a literary mix covering revisionism, fascism, Israel-bashing, Hitler-praising, anti-immigration and homophobia. To this was added DVDs and CDs of Hitler's "greatest hits."

In my best Spanglish, I told a young woman who asked if I needed help that I would like to take some pictures and talk to her. She hesitated and then declined, but told me that I could "come back tomorrow and speak to the leader."...

[A]s I walked around I had a "for the six million!" moment. One of those moments that lead Jews to do something about injustice. So I took out my camera and started taking pictures...

"Give me your camera," she had raised her voice. "I want to see the pictures. I want to eliminate the pictures!"

"Leader"; "eliminate." The great thing about European fascists and racists is that they traditionally haven't put up much of a pretense of not being fascists and racists. Sadly, though, the new crop of the European far-right seems to be taking trans-Atlantic PR cues. Even the most deranged neo-Nazis on these shores feel compelled to wrap their hatred up in some public interest cause --- like saving the wombs of white women from the Pornocaust. So it's comforting, in its way, to learn that there's a little corner of Catalonia where the good stuff, the real unadulterated neo-Nazism is served straight up, no chaser.

Wish you were here: Produce on sale in TeruelHola from Teruel, Spain (please don't call it "te-roo-ell" like an Ugly American, okay? Roll that "r"!), where I'm living, off and on, this spring. My beloved got a Fulbright, and I'm along for the ride, my understanding being that when you have the chance to live in a random mountain town in the middle of Spain, you do so. Just 'cause.

It's a cool town. Around Valentine's Day, when I got here, they were having their annual, massive festival de Los Amantes, which is about a medieval Romeo & Juliet (Isabel and Diego) who basically love each other a lot and both wind up dead as a result. There's a story, but it's convoluted. Romantic!

Hundreds of people were hanging out in full costume and roasting shit over open flames and selling tinctures. There was even a "Jewish quarter" with actors playing the three Jewish families who apparently lived here before they met their various heinous fifteenth-century ends. We hesitated before exclaiming "Somos Judios!" and were met with blank stares.

Anyway, it's far away from home. There are none of the global chains that have invaded many an international metropolis. It's quiet and chill. No one speaks English. There's a café in town that serves little cups of the thickest, crazy-good spicy hot chocolate, which you consume with a little spoon.

A fine romance: Isabel and DiegoBut it's also kind of far away from home and no familiar chain stores and no one speaks English and really quiet and ever so slightly depressing (I mean, if one were prone to depression in the first place, which I wouldn't know anything whatsoever about; I've got serotonin to spare). Ah, life: the bad in the good and the good in the bad. I know you've got to roll with travel, and that the discomforts and compromises required can yield enormous rewards. But it invariably takes me a little longer than I'd like to get into the swing of that.

And the food. The food has been a problem. I'm a hard-core vegetarian. (Skip the next few lines if you hate airtight conviction.) I think eating animals is completely amoral. It requires an inexcusably willful ignorance. It's totally irresponsible in light of our current environmental quandary, and it's just plain disgusting in general. (It also, for you self-identified Torah freaks, goes absolutely against the spirit of the laws of Kashrut. Like, one thousand million percent.)

And since the diet here consists almost exclusively of animal products (giant bloody rumps of dead pig hanging in every third store window, along with ubiquitous sausage, which in combination make me think fondly back on my first eye-opening read of The Sexual Politics of Meat) eating has been a challenge. I kid you not, they sell Pringles con Jamon in the supermarket. It's made me reflect on the many ways our food choices mark and distinguish and separate us. And how eating restrictions can be a powerful statement of personal ethics and priorities. And how adherence to personal ethics can be a pain in the ass. And also, how much I miss Perelandra in Brooklyn Heights.

Spanish boots of Spanish pleather: It's tough being veggie in SpainThankfully, after a few days of extremely crankily (sorry, babe) subsisting on bread and cheese and potatoes in some kind of orange mayo-sauce (they're not huge on greens, either), my beloved found me not only a little produce market, but an honest-to-goodness health food store to boot! (Now that, Los Amantes, is love... and no one wound up dead). I wandered the aisles caressing the tofu and green tea and seitan and olive oil soap in a trance. Life's been much improved ever since.

It's really hard to appreciate badass 15th century Mudejar architecture when you're hating on an entire country's eating paradigms, you know?

Related: From Krakow, With Love

Great stuff from Santiago, Chile, where one of the crowned heads of Europe has finally spoken up for an increasingly bored silent majority by publicly telling Hugo Chavez to go and fuck himself. 

Spain's King Juan Carlos told Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez to "shut up" as the Ibero-American summit drew to a close in Santiago, Chile.

The outburst came after Mr Chavez called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist". Mr Chavez then interrupted Spanish PM Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's calls for him to be more diplomatic, prompting the king's outburst. [...]

Mr Chavez called Mr Aznar, a close ally of US President George W Bush, a fascist, adding "fascists are not human. A snake is more human."

Mr Zapatero said: "[Former Prime Minister] Aznar was democratically elected by the Spanish people and was a legitimate representative of the Spanish people."

Mr Chavez repeatedly tried to interrupt, despite his microphone being turned off. The king leaned forward and said: "Why don't you shut up?"

Not only that, but JC's choice of phrase - "¿Por qué no te callas?" - was the sort of thing you might say to a particularly obnoxious teenager.

To the King's eternal credit, it silenced Chavez - but, predictably, the respite was brief. By yesterday, he was accusing Juan Carlos of complicity in the abortive 2002 coup, and launching the fightback: "I think it's imprudent for a king to shout at a president to shut up", he was quoted as saying. "Mr King, we are not going to shut up."

Maybe not. But if it takes an unelected monarch to speak truth to power, then so be it.

Gazpacho: Properly orange and frothed.When I went to Spain in July, I ate gazpacho every day. In hot climes, there's nothing more refreshing for lunch. In Spain they don't serve the chunky salsa-style we typically see here. They blend it until it reaches a creamy orange color. Sometimes it's served as a drink in a big glass goblet. Sometimes it's thicker and richly flavored, meant as a dip for tortilla espanola. Sometimes it's thin and light, served as a drink in a big glass goblet. It's so easy to make the authentic varieties and you really don't have to follow a recipe. You pretty much just toss a bunch of veggies in a blender with some olive oil and stale bread crumbs. I love the thick kind, so here's how I do it:

First you'll need a chunk of stale bread. I like ciabatta. How much? Well that depends on you. If you want a thick gazpacho to dip your tortilla in use more, if you want it soupier use less or none at all. Blend it until you have a fine crumb. Put the bread crumbs in a fine mesh strainer and rinse under a faucet. After a good shower, mush them into the strainer, squeezing the excess water out like a sponge. Return the mush to the blender.

You can get creative with your veggies. I add half a yellow onion, about 3 medium vine-ripened tomatoes cut into chunks, a half a bell pepper (preferably red, but any color should do), and garlic to taste. You could add a cucumber if you had that lying around, which would make a thinner soup.

Season to taste with salt and fresh ground black pepper, perhaps a dash of cumin. Add a tablespoon or two of red wine vinegar and then drizzle in a few tablespoons of olive oil. Blend until smooth. Your gazpacho should taste light, a little frothy even. It should be orange, not red. If yours is red, you didn't add enough olive oil. So drizzle some more in and blend until it turns orange. When you've got your seasonings right, pop it in the fridge. Serve very cold.

If you're so inclined garnish with tuna, hard boiled egg, and/or ham (that's how they do it in Spain--it works surprisingly well), or a drizzle of olive oil.

On the plus side, the matador had just got done fucking Madonna. 

(Special thanks to Eddy Portnoy and his linx-like eye for sly tribal retribution.) 

The good will of "New Europe" is no more, thanks to the bumbling of President Bush, says Anne Applebaum:

Putin's Cold War rhetoric is beginning to worry people all across the continent; he must be counting it a huge success. Yet it seems no one in the Pentagon ever imagined that anyone might object to the project, or that the locals might want some extra reassurance, or that a bit of judicious diplomacy might have smoothed the way in advance. According to some, the State Department didn't even know the missile shield was going ahead until the Pentagon had already made the decision. Sound familiar?

The only quibble I have with Applebaum's argument is that it doesn't take into account how amenable Old Europe has once more become to American interests. France and Germany now have heads of state with a professed tendency toward Washington, made ever starker by the possible vacancy in the role of world partner that will attend the resignation of Tony Blair in Britain.

Though there's every reason to suspect that David Cameron or Gordon Brown would be more reliable Atlanticists than they let on to their constituencies: Sarkozy and Merkel get away with snuggling up to Washington because their countries both opposed the one U.S. foreign policy decision credited with blackening our reputation: the war in Iraq.

Of course, that the administration has chosen now to press for the installation of the missile shield is telling in another way. It suggests that Bush has learned little since 2000, when an anti-nuclear defense system was a point in his virgin presidential campaign. (Instead of a "freedom doctrine" or nation-building, zapping rockets from outer space was on chief security concern of the GOP candidate.)

So the rationale that such a shield is designed to protect the United States from Iran and North Korea--regimes which have not yet got missiles that can reach the United States and certainly didn't have them in 2000--is transparently false. However, Applebaum is quite right to stress that Kremlin knows that the shield is not designed to antagonize Russia, which still ranks at the largest owner of nuclear warheads on the planet.  Recall that the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld had signaled China as the most exigent  military threat to the U.S. in the 21st century. China is the likelier target for such a hapless deterrent. 

Of course, it scarcely helps that Moscow and Beijing are bosom buddies on everything from human rights abuses to kleptocratic third world oil deals to squashing any attempt to bring justice to the criminal state murders of democratic reformists like Rafiq Hariri.

Welcome to the New World Order. Same as the old, really. 

You may have thought that after September 11, terrorism wouldn’t have such a “human face” in Europe anymore. The Irish had good reasons to abate their attacks (Americans are notably involved in the support to the IRA, and this may have not been so palatable anymore after having been the victims of large-scale terrorism on their own soil). Corsican terrorism remains as an item of local French folklore little appreciated outside of the hexagon. One should not forget, however, that all those organizations are tied together in what has been described as an “Internationale terrorist.”

You might have thought, too, that after the March 11 attacks in Madrid, ETA (initially accused of the massacre) would have had good reasons to remain quieter. This was not the case, of course, as ETA killed two people in a bomb blast at Madrid’s airport in December ’06. In the true fashion of the terrorist rhetoric so lucidly analyzed by media critic Daniel Dayan, who coined the term "hermeneutic terrorism," ETA then maintained that the “permanent cease-fire” it had declared in March of 06 was “still in vigor.”

We have just received word, however, that ETA declared an end to its cease-fire. Is this just a publicity stunt in a final attempt to deny its redundancy? El País says that recent reports from the security agencies warned that ETA was actively preparing new attacks. According to the editorialist, ETA’s distinguishing characteristic is “its pretension to legitimacy.” This is indeed a hallmark of all forms of terrorism. But we must be careful not to fall into the trap described by Dayan: “hermeneutic terrorism,” by leaving blank the “justification” tab, lets the victims fill it themselves in utter confusion, ending with the self-accusations typical of a certain intellectual trend. Chickens coming home to roost, anyone?

Now, ETA is not properly speaking practicing this “hermeneutic terrorism" since the liberation of the Basque country has always been its declared goal.  But in the European context, where the legitimacy of terrorism overseas has often been vindicated by public opinion, there are larger reasons to worry about renewed ETA terrorism continuing its bloody trend. Given the group's more localized political grievances, might justifications for Basque violence also translate into a more dangerous, if only latent, sympathy for al-Qaeda?

In a climate where the “war on terror” is increasingly frowned upon by the Western public, it may well be that Europeans will tolerate some form of terrorism at home by blaming an external agent, and request that anti-terrorist measures, which could be too reminiscent of the distant wars they see on television, be remitted. What is needed now more than ever is a stronger alliance between people sharing the same basic values, such as a respect for human rights.

The last Marranos: No, really!Not too long ago I met my first converso.  This guy was not just descended from conversos on one side of his family... he had recently discovered that BOTH parents came from converso families.  How crazy is that?  What are the chances?

I mean, these families had 500 years to lose all remnants of their Judaism, but didn't.  Their candlesticks and challah (or whatever) had survived FIVE centuries of assimilation, intermarriage, political pressure (which is more than a lot of us can say).  I met this gentleman at a synagogue where he was undergoing the formal conversion process, learning the background of his families.

I came home from the visit very touched by his story, but when I went online to learn more about conversos, I discovered there's very little.  But if you look up the alternate term, Marranos, you find a little more, despite the fact that it translates into "Pigs."  Which is upsetting, that word we use most often is also the most offensive.  But in case you want to know more...

The Marranos and their descendants may be divided into four categories.

The first of these were those that legitimately converted to Christianity, whether for expedience or faith, we will never know, but who since their conversion considered themselves Christian, and raised their families as such. These were called "New Christians" or "Conversos."

The second category is composed of those who, most likely devoid of any real affection for Judaism and indifferent to every form of religion, embraced the opportunity of exchanging their oppressed condition as Jews for the careers opened to them by acceptance of Christianity. They simulated the Christian faith when it was to their advantage, and often mocked Jews and Judaism.

A number of Spanish poets belong to this category, such as Pero Ferrus, Juan de Valladolid, Rodrigo Cota, and Juan de España of Toledo, called also "El Viejo" (the old one), who was considered a sound Talmudist, and who, like the monk Diego de Valencia, himself a baptized Jew, introduced in his pasquinades Hebrew and Talmudic words to mock the Jews. There were also many who, for the sake of displaying their new zeal, persecuted their former coreligionists, writing books against them, and denouncing to the authorities those who wished to return to the faith of their fathers, as happened frequently at Valencia, Barcelona, and many other cities (Isaac b. Sheshet, Responsa, No. 11).

The third category consists of those who held to the Jewish faith in which they had been reared. These were known as "Judíos Escondidos" - hidden Jews. They preserved the traditions of their fathers; and, in spite of the high positions which some held, they secretly attended synagogue, and fought and suffered for their religion. Many of the wealthiest Marranos of Aragon belonged to this category, including the Zaportas of Monzón, who were related by marriage to the royal house of Aragon; the Sanchez; the sons of Alazar Yusuf of Saragossa, who intermarried with the Cavalleria and the Santangel; the very wealthy Espes; the Paternoy, who came from the vicinity of Verdun to settle in Aragon; the Clemente; the sons of Moses Chamoro; the Villanova of Calatayud; the Coscon; and others.

Disclaimer:  the numbers here are pretty different from other numbers I found online, and Wiki is Wiki, so you might want to check other resouces if you're interested.  Maybe even hit the library. Or see this flick, about the last Marranos, which sounds fascinating!