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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review March 4, 2008 / 27 Adar I 5768

A descent into Twilight Zone

By Wesley Pruden


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | A little night music can soothe the savage beast, at least sometimes. This, alas, can give a well-meaning musician the idea that his tuba is mightier than his enemy's sword.


The New York Philharmonic performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Pyongyang, the other night, and the musical director imagines that he has disarmed Kim Jong-il, the Dear Leader, and turned his swords into plowshares with a mighty blast of Wagner's "Lohengrin" and the dreamy strains of Dvorak's "New World Symphony."


Lorin Maazel, the musical director, boasted that his orchestra had thawed a cold war once before, with a concert in the old Soviet Union in 1959. After that it was inevitable that the Berlin Wall would come tumbling down.


"The Soviets didn't realize that it was a two-edged sword," he said of that concert. "Because by [allowing our concert] they allowed the country to interact with their own people and to have an influence. It was so long-lasting that eventually the people in power found themselves out of power." He was careful not to promise too much. "There are no parallels in history. There are similarities."


Mr. Maazel imagines that his Pyongyang concert was available to ordinary people, but the 2,500 men and women who filled every seat of the East Pyongyang Grand Theater were carefully chosen. The deputy nuclear negotiator sat next to William J. Perry, the former U.S. secretary of defense. The Dear Leader was not there; many of his men were. But there was nobody to pack the peanut gallery even if there had been such a gallery (and nobody has seen a peanut in Pyongyang in years).


A lot of people imagine it was they who brought down the Berlin Wall, and Mr. Maazel and his distinguished musicians are entitled to be pleased with their good works, but only so far as those works go. It's important to understand why cultural institutions are invited to a grim satrapy like North Korea. It has nothing to do with seeking peace.


"Domestic propaganda thus makes very clear that nothing is to be expected from ongoing negotiations with the Americans," B.R. Myers, a researcher in North Korean affairs at Dongseo University in South Korea, writes in the Wall Street Journal's Asian edition. The constant refrain from America that there is no military solution to the nuclear standoff, he writes, is "attributed not to a desire for peace but to cowardice. The timing [of the orchestra's visit] is fortuitous, since the months from February to April mark the high point of the North's personality ritual."


Every year the regime publishes a series of paperback novels, entitled "Immortal Leadership," celebrating the fantastical triumphs of the Dear Leader. "The story will be simple. Kim tests nuke, Washington protests, Kim hangs tough, Washington sends musicians to entertain him. Isn't that a fairly accurate version of events?"


Any visit to North Korea is a trip deep into the Twilight Zone. Several years ago, four editors and a photographer at The Washington Times were invited to spend 11 days in Pyongyang. We interviewed every senior official except little Kim's daddy, Kim il-Sung, "the Great Leader" and chief architect of the misery in North Korea. He was at the end of his mean and merciless life.


We were entertained on our last night with dancers and musicians, good wine, and course after course of delicacies few Koreans ever see. The evening grew late, and finally our host, a senior government official, stood up to offer the ritual toast to the United States. His toast was a rant and a rage, delivered through a shower of passion and spittle, insult following abuse and affront, warning that "as the jackal cannot become a lamb, the Yankee jackals cannot change their rapacious nature." At last I stood up to return the honor, lifted my glass and compressed a toast into the only eight words our hosts needed to hear: "G-d bless the president of the United States."

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JWR contributor Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.

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