Darren Littlejohn, Author of The 12-Step Buddhist

May 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! It’s Friday again today, and this is Dr. Kent. I’m excited to have three authors on the show and one musician, as always. Some great books on the show today. I’m going to speak later on in the show to Steve Knopper. He’s the author of Appetite for Self Destruction, that’s a great book about the crash of the record industry these days. Later on in the show, At Face Value, by Terry Healey, an incredible memoir. At the end of this show is a group called Likeness to Lily, and Susan Oetgen from that group. We’re going to listen some of the music and chat with her. Without further ado, at the beginning of this show I’ve got a fellow on named Darren Littlejohn, and he’s written a book called The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addition. Welcome to the show, Darren.

Darren Littlejohn: Hi. Thanks very much for having me, pleasure to be here today.

Dr. Kent: So give us all a nutshell of this book.

Darren Littlejohn: This book is about deepening recovery for anyone who is either involved in a 12-step program, or wouldn’t be involved in a 12-step program because they’re afraid of the Judeo-Christian religiosity. It’s for anybody who knows an addict, anybody who treats addicts, anybody who’s suffering from any kind of attachment related (inaudible), and it’s applicable to what Buddha said, “All beings who suffer.” So we’ve combined the 12-steps, which are about attachment gone wild, and Buddhist terminology attachment is one of the root causes of our suffering, but in the addict it’s way out of control. So we try to get sober and get free of our attachment in the extreme form with the 12-steps. This really illuminates the Buddhist path because this is, after all, what the Buddha taught. This is hard to see if you’re, it’s easier to see, I should say, if you’re an addict already. So the two paths have a way of really complimenting each other and illuminating the nooks and crannies where it might otherwise be a little difficult to see.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about, to the non 12-step person, and to the non-Buddhist, give us some introductions into those two different worlds.

Darren Littlejohn: For the non-addict, everybody, of course we go from the Buddhist perspective. So everybody, according to the Buddhist teachings, suffers from not getting what we want and thinking that whatever it is that’s going to make us happy is really what we call I Buddhism the inherent cause of happiness. So in other words, one of my teachers always uses the reference of chocolate cake. And if chocolate cake were the cause of happiness, I would simply back up a truckload to my front porch, have an unlimited supply of chocolate cake, and obviously we know that that’s ridiculous. After your second piece you’re sick. So chocolate causes a temporary happiness. But then if we have too much of it, it becomes the cause of suffering. So for the non-addict, even if you’re not a food addict, we can look at these examples in our own life. Anything that we think is going to make us happy: more money, better job, better house, (inaudible), things along those lines. We start to examine this and see that, hey wait a minute, what I thought was going to make me happy is not really the source of true happiness, any way you look at it. And for the non-Buddhist, those terms are what work best, just looking at the three types of common known Buddhism, which are attachment, aversion, which is, when we don’t get what we’re attached to, we simply turn that around into something we don’t want and have an aversion towards entering. In 12-step terms we get a big resentment over it. So you don’t have to be a Buddhist to really understand attachment, and the fact that what we think we want is not in the long run every enough to make us permanently happy. As a matter of fact, most people don’t even believe that total, absolute happiness is possible. Most people don’t believe that ending suffering is possible. So all beings suffer according to Buddha. That’s the first simple truth. Life is suffering, it’s not a negative, it’s an observation. What it means is basically what I’ve just described. What we think makes us happy in the long run really doesn’t, so there’s something more, maybe something on a spiritual plane. That’s basically what the chapter’s about.

Dr. Kent: And describe for us also, many of us know the 12-step program. I have many family members who have gone through it, but it is deeply Christian most of the time. Talk about what inspired you to, clearly it’s coming from something personal in you. But what inspired you to do the 12-Step Buddhist? It makes a lot of sense, and I know that, for example, Native Americans use some of the 12-step processes with their own religion. Where did you get this idea?

Darren Littlejohn: I started in the 12-steps in 1984, and I had a sobriety period of ten years. During that period I moved through the various (inaudible), and metaphysical Christianity, the science of mind, all of these types of positive thinking, and could really very much have Judeo-Christian Creator God monarcheistic based philosophies, which were really well suited to 12-step recovery. Then I got into mediation pretty seriously, after a few years in recovery. I found myself in a spot, after a few years of sitting, staring at a blank wall, I was practicing Zen Buddhism, I found myself in a spot where what I saw really wasn’t improving. What I was looking at, as I followed that path and noticed my body, labeled my thoughts, after years and years of that with therapy and 12-step recovery, and education and psychology and so forth. I found myself in a really dark, depressed place, and I didn’t want to look anymore, it wasn’t looking too good. I couldn’t really get past that block. The concept of praying to something that was going to fix me, or putting responsibility for my life outside of myself. Even though I was willing to surrender and willing to follow the steps and principles, I never really felt that that task really amounted to much, I terms of un-enduring happiness. So after all this week, after ten years of sobriety, all kinds of zen mediataion therapy and everything else, I found myself in a place that was dark enough for me, that I made the choice to go back and try the various substances of my addiction again. So when I came back, because that doesn’t work, because the disease is incurable, the disease doesn’t go away with abstinence It actually continues and sort of deepens. So when I came back in 1997 I had to re-examine everything that I’d ever thought about before, and I got very much a good vibe again in 12-step recovery and zen Buddhism, and psychotherapy, but it wasn’t I found the teachings in Tibetan Buddhim. Which really explained a lot, and it went into a lot of detail of various types of methods and visualizations and practices that went hand in hand with the 12-steps. So that inspired me to continue my spiritual path and to really stay involved in both the 12-steps and in Buddhism. But I found that the problem I had is that in the 12-step program most people settle for just as much spirituality as is necessary to get sober through the day. Most people aren’t capable of a real, super deep seekers are looking with a real spiritual (inaudible). Some are, maybe not to a degree, but the people who are super into it are few and far between. And those are the people who really stand out and become sort of legendary in the 12-step treatment community. In the Buddhist community I found that I was sort of an addict… when an addict speaks, particularly from the disclosure that we use in 12-step rooms, we basically tell anybody anything, we air those feelings, whether or not its appropriate, until you learn better. But we really learn how to kind of be raw and truthful, and after many years of that, it’s pretty hard to tone down. So, finding myself being in the Buddhist groups, sharing, or having relationships or communications with teachers and so forth, it’s really kind of awkward. Then I thought it was a bit odd that I would be so honest. “Wow, that’s such a wise thing.” I’d say, “Oh, that’s not wise, I heard it in a meeting.” So I really had to learn instead of doing one or the other, instead of graduating from the 12-steps and finding a better, spiritual path, which leads to more disease and relapse, at least it did in my case, and in the case of many others. Instead of choosing this or that, I had to learn how to do both and find the similarities. What we talk about in 12-step meetings is (inaudible) the difference is. I found so many profound similarities between the 12-steps and Buddhism that I started blogging about it and eventually got a lot of feedback, people really enjoyed the writing. I decided to put those thoughts together, and came up with a lot of methods for the book after I started working on it. I found that there is actually a lot more than I even, I really think I just scratched the surface in the book, to be honest with you. Even though there’s a ton of chapters, and most people are finding it to be pretty dense work to get through it. I feel like there’s actually a lot more to be said on the topic.

Dr. Ken: Well, it’s so fascinating. Let’s talk about the issue of Buddhism. It’s a very accepting religion. I had a fellow on the show about a year ago who wrote one of the Dummies guides on Buddhism, and he sort of explained a lot of it. It’s a fascinating and very accepting religion, whereas Christianity isn’t necessarily all that much. Talk to that a bit.

Darren Littlejohn: I have kind of a saying I made up here, don’t throw the Buddha out with the bathwater. You can look into the deep teachings of Jesus through the Sermon on the Mount, for example, and you can see, for example, teachings on karma if you just take the principle of we reap what we sow. If you really take that principle and you look at karma and you look at Buddhism you can see that we’re talking about the same thing. However, people hear what they want to hear, people take the message and turn it into whatever they want. So I don’t discount the teachings of Christ on any level. As a matter of fact, many Buddhists feel that Jesus was a Bodisapha, or a very highly developed practitioner, maybe a Buddha, the completely awakened one. So there’s really no discounting of the teachings, but the way people behave is a little bit flighty there. There’s some room for improvement in a lot of it. And even Jesus said, “Don’t cast your pearls before swine,” and what I think he meant by that was if people aren’t really ready for the truth, try to give them what they can handle. Give them the teachings that they can deal with. You can even see there’s some Buddhism in the very beginning of what was recorded orally, and later written down, from what Buddha taught, was one type of system. That later evolved into other types of systems, which were much more advanced, much faster paths, and not everybody’s ready for that kind of thing. Some of us, for example, I would say, we just need to keep our mouths shut and not cause any harm to anybody else, and that’s enough of a spiritual practice. For others of us, we can get involved with other types of practice, which actually start to utilize some of the energy that we have, and to work with the breath and visualizations and so forth, and actually instead of repressing anger completely and shutting it off, you really start to kind of use the energy to try to assimilate that, and integrate that into our daily life. So Buddhism to me is really more of a mind science, and a massive system of methods, which are available to help transform the sufferer into one who is completely awakened and free from all suffering, just like the Buddha. Within that framework, there are fundamentalists in Buddhism. There are fundamentalists in Christianity. So I think that if you really use the teachings of Jesus, you’re not so far off from the teachings of Buddha. I wouldn’t say that they’re completely the same, and there are philosophers out there who talk about the similarities and differences, but who are the people that you want to associate with, and how are they living their lives? That becomes a different conversation. This is the same in the 12-step community, for example, we have a saying, stick with the winners. So when a newcomer walks in there, just coming off the street and detoxing from crack or oxycotin, or something really bad, and we tell them here’s what you do, find those people who have what you want in recovery, and go ahead and stick with them. And that really works to a high degree for many people. However, depending on the group that you’re involved in, and that location in the country that you’re at, and the individual who happens to be the one that who touches you or that you connect with, you might get involved with some really sick people. There are sick people in the 12-step community, that’s why we’re all there. We say, it’s a good thing we’re not all sick on the same day, luckily. But again, within the 12-step community you will also find fundamentalists who are really kind of fascist and militant about their value system. I’ll give you an example of that. In the AA literature it says we realize, we know, and we have been told, when it comes to prayer and meditation and things like that, the world’s diverse and full, go find them. We’re going to talk about matters medical, (inaudible) and religious. I went to a meeting not too long ago, on Thanksgiving, and there was a guy slamming his hand on the table saying, “This is the only book I read, and the only book I’ll ever need.” And I was just wondering if you read the part in that book that said go read other books. So we don’t want to throw the Buddha out with the bathwater, we don’t want to throw the teachings of Jesus or Buddha or the 12-steps out, because some people, out of their own fear, stick to a rigid viewpoint, to the point where they feel that they’ve got to impose those belief systems on others. The 12-steps is supposed to be free and open for us to have a higher power of our own conception, but many, many people feel that it’s very Judeo-Christian oriented, and that if you don’t come along with the group thing, that you’re not welcome, and they don’t feel comfortable. And that’s what I like about the audience that I’m trying to address with my book, The 12-Step Buddhist.

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been a fascinating discussion. I could keep talking with you all day, but I have to get to my next guest. I’d love to have you on again and talk more about this. It’s so deep. The book is called The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addiction. There’s a lot more specifics that I wanted to get into and we didn’t have time for, but there’s some real plans in this thing, and it’s a useful book for a lot of people. Where can we find out more online?

Darren Littlejohn: At the12stepbuddhist.com. I’ve got podcasts, daily tips, some blogs, all kinds of resources and other information on there. And you can order a signed copy of the book right from the website.

Dr. Kent: Well thank you so much for chatting with us.

Darren Littlejohn: Thanks for having me, I’d love to talk to you again sometime.

Dr. Kent: The 12-Step Buddhist: Enhance Recovery from Any Addiction, by Darren Littlejohn. It’s got a foreword by Robert Thurman. Go out and pick that up, it’s a gorgeous book, and some pretty amazing content for all of us. Most of us know someone going through the recovery process, pick up a copy of this book and go to the12stepbuddhist.com also, or Google Darren Littlejohn. My next guest on the show is going to be a very exciting one again. This is a good show today, and Steve Knopper is the author of Appetite for Self Destruction, and we’re going to talk about the record industry and how it’s having trouble here in the digital age. So come on back to that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Medicine, Motivation, History, Health, TRANSCRIPTS, Spirituality, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, Religion, PODCAST

Sharon Waxman | Loot & Hollywood

April 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Sharon Waxman | Author of LOOT [22:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sharon is an incredible author, researcher, and gossip columnist! What a pleasure to chat with her about her diverse skills and interests, and most importantly about the amazing book LOOT! This is one of my favorite titles of the year, and I truly enjoyed chatting with Sharon. More about her from her website:

Sharon Waxman is an author and award-winning journalist, currently working on a book about stolen antiquities. “Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World,” will be published by Times Books in November 2008.

Who ought to own the trophies of history, Western museums, or the countries that were plundered over 200 years? “Loot” takes readers on a journey to the countries where ancient civilizations began and to the great museums where their treasures now reside in a quest to understand the tug-of-war between East and West.

Waxman was a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times until January 2008. Before joining the Times, she was a correspondent for the Washington Post based in Los Angeles, from 1995 until 2003.

As a long-time observer of the entertainment industry, Waxman’s is an influential and independent voice. She has covered studio sales and corporate mergers, the Oscars, the film festivals and the unusual personalities that make up Hollywood. She has taken readers deep inside the filmmaking and deal-making process, getting to know the key players and artists who make the movies. She is the author of the best-selling book, “Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors And How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System” (HarperCollins, 2005), about the emergence of a new generation of writers and directors in the 1990s, making landmark films in a corporate-run Hollywood.

Waxman began covering Hollywood for The Washington Post’s Style section in 1995, becoming the paper’s first correspondent to cover the industry from Los Angeles. She began her career as a foreign correspondent, and was sent on reporting stints to the Middle East during her years at the Post.

Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, Waxman attended Barnard College, where she studied English literature, then earned a Masters of Philosophy degree in Modern Middle East Studies from St. Antony’s College at Oxford University.

Having learned both Hebrew and Arabic during her studies, Waxman got her first real journalism job with the Reuters news agency in Jerusalem, covering the first Palestinian intifada in 1988 and 1989. At the end of 1989 she moved to Paris. While there, she covered the economic unification of Europe and the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed. For six years she covered the culture, politics and economy of France and other parts of Western Europe as a freelance and contract writer, with frequent forays into Eastern Europe and North Africa. She wrote for a variety of U.S. newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Los Angeles Times and numerous other outlets, eventually landing a contract with The Washington Post. The Post then offered her a full-time position in a place she never expected to land: Los Angeles.

During her years in Hollywood, Waxman has become a frequent commentator on matters of movie and media culture. In 2000, she won the prestigious feature writing award for Arts & Entertainment writing from the University of Missouri. While at the Post, she returned to the Middle East on several occasions to write a series about Islamic culture, to cover the war in Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Waxman lives with her family in southern California.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Travel, Art, Religion, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Hollywood, PODCAST

Dr. Allan Hamilton | Spirituality & Medicine

March 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Interview with Dr. Allan Hamilton | The Scalpel & The Soul [14:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I enjoyed speaking with Dr. Allan Hamilton immensely, about spirituality and medicine — two topics not often mixed in polite company!

Frank Romano | Author of Storm Over Morocco

March 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! It’s a beautiful day out here in New York, there’s still snow on the ground and I’ve got four guests on the show today, three authors and one musician. At the end of the show it’s my honor to have musician Sara Lee Guthrie on the show with me, the daughter of Arlo Guthrie and the granddaughter of Woody Guthrie. Before that, I’ve got three authors and my third author will be the author of The President’s Henchmen; Joseph Flynn. I’ll be speaking to the author of No Urn for the Ashes – Alison Sawyer, a beautiful story and right now I’m speaking to my first guest, his name is Frank Romano, the author of Storm Over Morocco. He’s written an incredible book that is placed in an area we’re thinking about all the time these days. There’s been some serious unrest in the middle east and when hasn’t there been, honestly. So welcome to the show Frank Romano.

Frank Romano: Hi Dr. Kent, glad to be here.

Dr. Kent: Tell me a little bit about Storm Over Morocco.

Frank Romano: I was studying in 1977 at the Sorbonne in Paris trying to find myself and studying philosophy and had sort of a vision that if I traveled to the middle east maybe on the way I would find myself, find out what my spirituality was and maybe help in the peace process. So I just took a train and went down to northern Africa. Started out from morocco and was going to head out across Africa and then Dr. Kent, I decided that I would learn about Islam before I got there because that’s one of my goals. So I was invited, I met this group that invited me to learn about Islam in their mosque and learn Arabic as well and after a week of doing that, I was no longer free to go. They had me imprisoned and it turned out to be an extremist group there on the outskirts of Sri Lanka.

Dr. Kent: I’ve always wanted to go to morocco. I don’t know if you know but I’ve actually been in the Middle East for awhile, I lived in Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Frank Romano: Oh really? Great, so you know about the area, good.

Dr. Kent: Oh yes and I try not to read the news about each day’s bloodshed and this and that. But now talk about I wanted to go to morocco on vacation but now you ended up in I guess the cradle of the Middle East in the holy land. Talk about the conflict there as well.

Frank Romano: Yeah Dr. Kent I just got back as a matter of fact and my goal is to bring together different religions, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, but in particular the three main religions that believe in one God. I organize interfaith teach marches and I just got back yesterday from a ten day visit to Bethlehem. Of course I visited Jerusalem one day but I’m focusing on involving the Palestinians since it’s hard for them to get through the checkpoints and stuff in Jerusalem to participate in a myriad of groups that are doing things for peace, serious groups in Israel except they can’t get in there. I go to Palestine and I’m trying to just contribute in my own little way to bring people together and start thinking about working together.

Dr. Kent: What’s your take on the whole situation right now?

Frank Romano: Well for one thing people have a tendency of putting Gaza in the same basket as the west bank and we’ve got two different places. In other words we are organizing now to go into Gaza and do the same thing for sure. Do the peace march and of course bring in medicine and so forth because it’s difficult right now. My take is this, I really feel, as opposed to a lot of people, a lot of Palestinians, have no hope, they don’t think they’re ever going to settle the crisis, there’s always going to be conflict, and they’ll never have their auto determination with respect to a country having their own country.

So my take is this, there is a chance for peace and a lot of people are talking about ways of doing it and helping people financially but the bottom line is we got to get over there and start working with these people and I wrote Storm Over Morocco version and I added a last chapter of a meeting I had with extremist militant Muslims in the Jeanine Refugee Camp, which is suicide bombing derived and the suicide bombing that took place in Jerusalem came from there, and from Hebron to talk with extremists first and even those folks really want to work with Israel, I mean sincerely and if we can get beyond the hate and knee jerk stereotypes that one person of one religion has of other people.

For instance an extremist Muslim might think that a Jew because he’s a Jew is an agent of the devil because they don’t understand what Judaism is about. So my goal Dr. Kent is not a political goal, bring people together to work together for peace but take religion out of the conflict. That’s my take.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely. The work I did quite a while ago, I’ll tell you in a nutshell. I work for an organization called Seeds of Peace for a few years.

Frank Romano: I’ve heard of them, yes!

Dr. Kent: Then I created a curriculum called Sound Peace and I actually was in a very similar way hoping to bring kids together in a musical way and talk about the conflict and then all of the fighting started. It was a very hopeful time when I went over there, it was the year 2000. I was there when all the fighting broke out again in the autumn of 2000.

Frank Romano: That was the second [inaudible] that you were there?

Dr. Kent: Since then it hasn’t stopped and now with this incursion into Gaza that was just breathtakingly awful in terms of the toll on human life. Is there hope over there?

Frank Romano: You know Dr. Kent there is hope and I spoke with a Shake in Jerusalem, a Sufi Shake whose daughter just got married five months before the conflict broke out and now she’s stuck in Gaza and can’t get out. A lot of people are pointing the finger at Israel, others are pointing the finger at Hamas, I believe that when they can both sit down with the help of the US and realize mistakes because both sides have committed errors. People are now pointing fingers in particular at Israel and yeah they had to react against the missiles being shot into their land. But the Hamas I think on their end of it were provoking this attack as well.

So I do see there’s a lot of serious minded people, lots of effort to work with both sides, haven’t given up, even though yes it has intensified. I think with the new administration it seems to be open on both sides of the fence through the delicate negotiations and bringing in these groups there’s a lot of angiose over there, which is the types of group you were. Seeds of Peace work with people that are members of it and the music thing you did probably would include Jews and Palestinians together to play music. These groups are starting to crop up again.

In spite of the conflict, the bottom line is the very difficult part is people will not go into the west bank and its difficult to get in and out of Gaza but that should evolve. I think people should go into the west bank and see that the Palestinians are not just frothing at the mouth bloody terrorists. Most Palestinians want peace and work with them as well as the Jews. I’ll tell you I’ve met Jewish soldiers on the checkpoints and they’ve got a bad rap. They’re always a minority that commits atrocities in every army and every altercation but those young Jewish soldiers want peace as much as anybody does and I spoke with them and they would rather not be at the checkpoints. If somehow Israel can feel that their borders are secure. Some people say it’s a two state solution; I’m not sure, but you know what? There is a lot of positive vibe happening but I’m going over there three to four times a year trying to coordinate all these groups working on both sides of the fence. I think peace can happen with just good old fashioned hard work and working with people. I really believe that.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a fascinating topic. There’s so much depth to it and at the same time it’s been about nine years since I’ve been over there but not much changes at the same time. It’s perpetually the same situations over and over. The first thing that they say when you show up is what are you? And you have to identify yourself; are you a Muslim, a Christian, a Jew and once you identify yourself the amazing thing about the Palestinians or the Israelis is I was able to identify and fit with both, like you say you do. They’re great people.

Frank Romano: I’m going to add another chapter to Storm Over Morocco 3 about just that. Three days ago I met an angio in Bethlehem and there are many Jews working there. they’ve been warned to not even go to the west bank but they’re not being held hostage or being held and they’re working not just blindly on the side of the Palestinians, they’re working for peace and I really feel hopeful but with concerted efforts and hopefully the news will come down. Often the news is filtered from Israel and the US and they pull the fear string so that it will mobilize people to focus on the aggression coming from Palestine as opposed to the true problem.

The state of Israel is in danger here. Why do I feel that? Well first of all they had to fight. The mandate in 48 wasn’t just giving a part of land to form a state of Israel, they had to fight for it but now as human beings, as Jews are, just like Palestinians, they’ve gone overboard in the settlements and religion is very much a part of it. The settlements in the west bank are mainly inhabited by Jews who feel it’s their duty and obligation to be in the west bank. But the religious interpretation of the Torah, which I think is a misinterpretation, so there’s all kinds of religious elements here that working with people, getting beyond whether you’re a Jew or Muslim you hit the nail right on the head; that’s the solution.

Now Jews have conflicted with each other as Agnostic Jews and Cathartic Jews and many Jews now have moved beyond that. Why not now Jews and Palestinians? The Jews just say I’m Jewish, not I’m a cathartic Jew, I’m not an agnostic Jew in Jerusalem and there was tension between the two types of Jews and they’ve gotten over that. I think we can do the same thing with respect to Palestinians. Instead of having a two state solution we could say we are human beings living in the holy land inst4ead of polarizing into different religious and political groups. That’s what causes tension.

So my work is bringing people together to love each other but dig in there and bond together by doing stuff together. Palestinians, Jews and Christians in that particular area, and its going to happen, we’re going to have peace. It may not be in our lifetime, but we’re planting the seeds now and I feel positive it’s going to happen, I really do.

Dr. Kent: It’s been a real honor chatting with you and I’d like to talk with you another time, we’ve run out of time today but we had such a nice chat we’ll have to hook up again down the road.

Frank Romano: You bet! Anytime Dr. Kent.

Dr. Kent: Storm Over Morocco: Finding God in the Midst of Fanatics, by Frank Romano. I can’t wait till the next time.

Frank Romano: Thank you very much doctor.

Dr. Kent: I’ll be back with our next guest on the show who is Alison sawyer who wrote a book called No Urn for the Ashes. Come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under TRANSCRIPTS, History, Travel, Spirituality, Religion, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Politics, PODCAST

Interview with Marc Aronson | Sound Authors Radio

February 3, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors! One of the key issues going on today right in the middle of the inauguration season is this awful, awful war in Gaza. It’s a place that I care about deeply; I’ve spent some time in the Middle East and done quite a bit of work there and it’s personally gripping for me and for anyone who has any sort of connection to that area. My next guest on the show Marc Aronson has written a book called Unsettled, it’s got a gorgeous cover which shows a picture of Jerusalem inverted with the blue sky on top and the dirt on the bottom. It’s a gorgeous book called Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel. Welcome to the show Marc Aronson.

Marc Aronson: Thanks for having me.

Dr. Kent: Let’s start off with the hard questions. What’s your take on what’s happening right now in Gaza?

Marc Aronson: My take is this. On the one hand, you cannot deny that Hamas is a provocation to Israel. Their purpose, their reason for existence as opposed to Fatas they say we do not accept the existence of Israel and we will fight to destroy it and they have acted on that, sending rockets, using the six month cease fire as a way to rearm and build up their military capacity. Once the cease fire ended they showed that they intended to use it. So I do not question Israel’s right as any state has a right to defend itself against a force that both rhetorically and actually seeks its destruction.

However, I think it is a very reasonable question and a question that I don’t know how to answer and many of the experts that I’ve read say the same thing as to whether strategically the military action of diminishing Hamas’ ability to shoot rockets, destroying as many tunnels as possible, weakening their place in Gaza, whether that goal, which it looks like Israel has largely achieved made Israel more secure by weakening Hamas or less secure by further enflaming forces such as such as those in the west bank that were calming down and becoming more willing to work out some kind of agreement.

Whether the radical fighting forces in other parts of the Middle East was worth the gain of diminishing Hamas’ military capacity. So my feeling about is from a human rights point of view it’s tragic to watch. from a political right point of view I don’t think you can question that Israel had a right to act but whether the actions they’ve taken will prove in the long run to have been the most or the best for enhancing their own national security is something on which I think the jury is well out and there can be a lot of question about.

Dr. Kent: In a book like Unsettled, which was actually written for young adults its interesting because mainstream books, novels, everything are usually written on a sixth to tenth grade reading level, which is similar to what you’re writing also. What makes a good young adult book?

Marc Aronson: That’s a great question. I think what makes a good young adult book is that you speak directly because teenagers are defining themselves as saying I’m not a kid anymore. I don’t need things sugarcoated, I know the world has darker sides, I know my own self has impulses I’m trying to deal with and so whether its fiction or nonfiction kids respond well to books that take them seriously and the term of phrase that’s most often used by teenagers is that feels real. And now we know teenagers also love fantasy, et cetera, there’s a whole discussion we could go into about that but as a standard term of phrase if you think of one, the classic young adult novel which of course wasn’t written for young adults, its Catcher in the Rye.

Its all about telling the truth, being real and so I think in nonfiction as I tried to do in unsettled is you can say look, Israel is a subject I personally, me, Marc Aronson thinks these things so I’m not going to write here as ask Mr. Science, a completely distant author with no stake in this. I have a stake in it, but having a stake in it, I also have conflicts about it. There are things about Israel that I find deeply disturbing. So I don’t need to, I’m saying to you teenager, I expect your intelligence enough to think with me as I go through these conflicts and these issues and I can tell you both when I’ve met with teenagers in schools and when they’ve written to me afterwards, they’ve been grateful to me for that.

They’ve been grateful, that right now in Gaza they’re being bombarded with messages, Israel is genocidal, its horrible, they should be put up on war crimes, Israel is great, its attacked, its vulnerable, and I’ll stand with it. Well that’s completely binary. Its saying you teenager must line up with one side or another and I don’t believe that. You teenager can think and I’m trying to help you have an opportunity to think.

Dr. Kent: And you’ve written a book many books in the past and one of your last books was called Race: A History beyond Black and White. Again, a very difficult topic for children. A book about Robert Kennedy, all of these are very, their not what I grew up reading. When I was eight, nine years old I was reading way above my level. I ended up either read children books or adult books, so I ended up reading books for adults.

Marc Aronson: And I think that’s what’s changed. Its changed in fiction in that there’s whether you like fantasy or whether you like chicklet or whatever it is that you like reading about; relationships or whatever, there’s a lot of young adult literature in fiction and some other writers are trying to do is do the same for nonfiction. To give you exactly the reader you were. Because I was the same thing. I went from reading kids books to reading The Rise and the Fall the Third Reich. There was nothing in between or if you were interested in philosophy you read Bertram Russell and that was great and it was wonderful, but I was stretching to try and understand that.

But there should be something in the middle, there should be something that takes you as seriously as an adult because your mind is developing that way but recognizes that you don’t necessarily have the background that an adult reader has. So that’s what we try to do in nonfiction. It was interesting, I read in your background that you have a classical music background so my eight year old son is taking piano lessons so last night I showed him a YouTube clip of Vladimir Horowitz playing a Chopin Ballad and I laughed as my son was saying that’s not possible. He said he’s not doing that, he said there must be something mechanical in the piano and I’m thinking no, I want him to know that it is possible.

Dr. Kent: Right and I remember when I was a child I remember thinking that also when I saw a musician, yep. Kids do have really complicated thoughts at younger ages now I think. They’re being exposed to the media, they’re being exposed to all these things, we have to really educate them about it.

Marc Aronson: I should tell you all week I’ve been interviewing on different posts online about my thoughts on Israel, Gaza, et cetera, and the response there are fascinating because you definitely see I think sort of three kinds of voices emerging right now about Israel. On the one hand there’s the voice of attack. Israel is demonic and terrible and horrible. You see exactly the reverse of that. Israel must defend itself; the rest of the world hates us. And then the beginning of what I hope I stood for in my book, which is to say I love Israel but that doesn’t mean that I like many Israelis cant question it.

I think the analogy to me that I said on the Jerusalem post online is that in the 60s in America, there were people who said that martin Luther King was unpatriotic, that he was communistic because he was questioning the rules in America. J. Edgar Hoover said that, but that was wrong. He wasn’t diminishing America, he was asking America to live up to its own ideals and I’ve tried to write a book for teenagers who I hope I encourage them in the book, go to Israel, see what they’ve built. It is a beautiful, beautiful country in every sense of the world. Physically beautiful, emotionally beautiful; beautiful in its depth and richness but bring when you go to Israel who you are.

You who’ve grown up in a multi ethnic and multi cultural society and discuss that perspective with Israelis and that third view, which I’ve really tried to bring to this book and which I do trust that teenagers are fully capable of entertaining. They may not agree with me; that’s fine but they can consider it.

Dr. Kent: It’s such a fascinating place to talk about. I studied the conflict when I was in university and visited Jerusalem and then I lived there for a year. I’m attached to people through an organization called Seeds of Peace but.

Marc Aronson: Oh I know Seeds of Peace very well.

Dr. Kent: Right so I know thousands of these kids from working with them and the one thing that I always saw was that the more they explore the more they read the more they expanded their horizons, the less they would hate other people and I think that really was something. Whatever this thing in Gaza is right now, it’s so frustrating because it might be stirring up a lot of hate, that’s what I’m worried about.

Marc Aronson: Right, and that’s the question I would ask. Now I think it’s a lot to ask of Israel to have said okay they wont do a cease fire, okay their shooting more rockets, but we’re going to let that go because we want to build a stronger link with moderate Arab. I think that is asking a tremendous amount of Israel to have done that but I think it’s possible to argue that that would have enhanced Israel’s security. I should mention to you and your listeners an organization that I think they should all get to know and you should get to know.

It’s called Sikkuy and while Seeds of Peace works to bring together young people from seemingly opposed backgrounds, Arabs and Jews or Hindus and Muslims or in Ireland the northern Irish and the Catholics, what Sikkuy does, it’s an Israeli organization run entirely by Israelis that works for the rights of Arab citizens within Israel. I think one thing I didn’t know until I wrote this book, perhaps you did, is that 20 percent of the citizenship of Israel, leaving aside the west bank, just regular Israel, are Arabs. What Sikkuy argues and really I was very moved by their and inspired by them is that for Israel to be strong, its Arab citizens must be full citizens.

Now they are legally, there’s no legal segregation or second class citizenship, but culturally many Israeli Jews do not accept that they live in a bicultural country. Sikkuy is arguing for that sensibility and to me they are some of the most heroic and most inspiring of the Israelis that I’ve met and to give you and your listeners a little bit of optimism amidst this misery in Gaza. ### is one of the most Arab villages in Israel, its sort of the center of the Arab sensibility within Israel so a very, very right wing Israeli Jewish organization decided to march to ###, which was sort of like when the Neo-Nazis wanted to march into Skokie because they knew there were so many holocaust survivors there.

The idea of this march was to provoke the Arabs so they would react and there would be TV images and the Arabs would look bad. Well 600 Israelis, most of them Jews came rushing to ### to show they didn’t want this to happen, they didn’t want this kind of provocation. The march was called off and that was on December 13. So just at this moment we’re headlines around the world are about this horrible death, destruction, misery and anger within Israel itself. We’ve seen this expression of humanity and understanding and depth, which I think is just so praiseworthy and that we should know about it. Again, the organization is Sikkuy, they have a website and they really speak for what I find as the best in Israel.

Dr. Kent: Israel is so interesting politically comparing them to the United States it’s so complicated and with immigrants from Russia, from the Arab world, the internal issues are so complex. I do know quite a bit about the Arab Israelis just from knowing people who are, and one of my closest students lets say, one of my Seeds of Peace charges was killed in 2000 and he’s an Arab-Israeli. His name was Asel Aslef.

Marc Aronson: Yeah, I knew about this. I did know. At one point I had approached them about doing a kids book about Seeds of Peace so I knew that story.

Dr. Kent: So this book is called Unsettled, the Problem of Loving Israel. Let’s get into that title. Unsettled is fascinating because obviously the real sticking point in a lot of these discussions is in settlement and ### from the right comes in and says we’re dismantling the Gaza settlement. What’s your take on the issue?

Marc Aronson: My take is that Israel has to get out of the west bank. Here’s the simple fact, if Israel stays in the west bank it is governing over a hostile population that doesn’t want it there and who lives there and that means Israel would be an occupier for ever, which is not only militarily dangerous and humanly dangerous to the Israelis, many Israelis talk about it and I talk about it in the book how it actually damages the soul of the nation. It forces the nation to become harder in a way that is a variance from the best that is Israel.

So my feeling is Israel has to get out, that the Palestinians need to have a state, very likely a couple of the settlements are too large and too established so there will be some accommodation for them and some compensation to the Palestinians for the loss of land there. The analogy I make is that if you can recall from American history, when we fought the Mexican war, which basically gave us the southwest and Texas and California et cetera, it inspired all kinds of hopes in America of manifest destiny. White Protestants are destined to control the continent, whatever, et cetera. But it also directly led to the civil war and inspired revulsion against that exact sensibility from people like Lincoln and Henry David Thoreau.

The west bank is the same in Israel. It inspired this idea this is a biblical land of Judah and Samaria, greater Israel, et cetera and it inspired deep revulsion from other Israelis and I think Israel would be severely, just Israel, forget about the rights of the Palestinians, Israel for its own safety and security and future has to give up the west bank. If you think about it, in the modern world, it’s not a few more miles that makes a country safe, in the age of rockets and perhaps nuclear rockets and missiles. Its peace. So my feeling is Israel must get out of the west bank and again with perhaps some accommodation for situations that is unfortunately developed so far that it’s the game isn’t worth the camel.

There’s a surveyor in the New York Times two months ago; 40 percent of the Jewish settlers in the west bank said they would take a buy out. It’s too hard; it’s too rough, so okay. So 60 percent are there ideologically but 40 percent just leave when you pay them. I feel like I think it is historically understandable why Israel conquered the territory during the 67 war, it makes sense, but they have to get out. Because the other alternative is if you make a greater Israel you deny the population. If you make a greater Israel in which Palestinians don’t have a regular vote, then you really have created an apartheid state.

Dr. Kent: When I was there I remember I had a professor, his name was Paul Lipps and in Jerusalem and his theory was that they should build a wall. I remember arguing with that theory. I had both Palestinian and Israeli teachers and I thought if you build a wall people are going to try and climb the wall or get through the wall. You can’t wall people in, it doesn’t work, we’ve proven that.

Marc Aronson: I think the physical wall that Israel has built from the strictly steel eyed security point of view has enhanced security. The question is whether again is a walled in sensibility, which I also think has grown it ultimately makes your country safer or less safe and again you were there, you know. It’s not fun to be in a country that is surrounded by people who really don’t like you. I think that is one must understand the sense of vulnerability. That’s true. But the thing that the Israelis pride themselves on which is this supple intelligence with which they deal with challenges.

Sometimes the supplely thing to do is challenge is to be more flexible. I didn’t know you had spent that time in Jerusalem. In the book I make use of the memoir written by the Palestinian philosopher ### and it’s a wonderful memoir. He went to Oxford and Harvard; he’s a philosopher who was a Jeffersonian. He’s someone I think any American whose gone to college recognize the professorial type, but he also was one of the leaders of the first ###. His memoir is just a very rich and fascinating read. One part of it was I was in Jerusalem in 68 and so was he, and his description to me it was this wondrous moment. You could go to the western wall and have this devastating. It was very mind opening for me to walk the same streets I had walked which is through his book.

Dr. Kent: That was a fascinating thing for me was to have I went through a program with Wesleyan University at the time and it doesn’t exist any more. We had professors from Palestine and professors from Israel and on the same day they’d teach us the same history lesson and one would talk about the day of independence and the other would be talking about the Nachba, the tragedy, the catastrophe.

Marc Aronson: It was interesting for me because I had to think through 48 in writing this book and here again you have the problem of kids getting binary history. The old way 48 was told, it was basically taken from Mexico. It was basically lucky heroic Jews, vicious demonic Nazi supporting Arabs who run off and plan to come back and destroy the Jews. That existed, the leader of the Arabs was a Nazi supporter, there were all of that was true. It was also true that emotionally many of the Jews fighting envisioned a state in which there would be no Arabs. And that resulted in massacres on the Jewish side.

The Jews inflicted on Arabs as well. Now it is Jewish scholars who exposed this and you have to admire that. There’s no similar investigation by Palestinian scholars but the story of 48 is the story like any war, which is a mixed story. I guess I feel like again, American kids, we’ve gotten used to seeing the dark strands in our history. It’s not unusual now to talk about efforts that were made to exterminate Indians or how Jeffrey Amherst used small pox blankets and slavery. All of that is in our curriculum so why if we’re used to a more three dimensional portrait of our own past, why not have a more three dimensional portrait of Israel’s past?

Dr. Kent: Absolutely.

Marc Aronson: Isn’t that respecting kids? So let me tell you the outcome of this. Kirkus Review Service called my book the book of the year, great, great, great. The Jewish library association condemned it. So here we are at the crosshairs of this, again this binary vision of how you talk about Israel.

Dr. Kent: It’s a fascinating topic; I could talk about it all day.

Marc Aronson: Well I know you must have other things to do but I would love to talk again sometime, I’d be fascinated to hear about your history and maybe we’ll get a chance to do this again.

Dr. Kent: Absolutely and Marc Aronson has not only written this book Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel, he’s also written Race: A history beyond black and white, he’s written a book about Robert Kennedy, The World Made New and many other books. If I had children I’d buy them all, so thank you so much for being on the show.

Marc Aronson: Come to my website marcaronson.com and see them all! Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent: Thank you. The book is called Unsettled: The Problem of Loving Israel by Marc Aronson, visit his website at marcaronson.com. My next guest on the show is a musician, and she has a couple amazing songs that we’re going to play. Her name is Mae Moore, she is from Canada and she stands apart with her soulful songs. Come on back for that.

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