Letter from 38,000 Feet

by

David A. Harris

Executive Director, American Jewish Committee

August 1, 2001

            In Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde penned the memorable words that my wife likes to quote: “In this world there are only two tragedies.  One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” 

True enough perhaps, but not in the case of a much-anticipated sabbatical year just ended.

            We’re actually on our way home now, one year to the day after leaving New York.  I’ve been on Swissair 100 many times, but this trip is special, filled with a seemingly endless stream of feelings, images, and thoughts prompted by a remarkable experience abroad with my family. 

            The idea for the year began in 1998, although in a way it started long before. 

            When I was about to enter the seventh grade, my father was asked by CBS, his employer, whether he’d move to Munich to help implement a cooperative agreement with a German network.  It wasn’t an easy decision.  My father hadn’t been back to Germany since 1933, the year he left for the “safety” of Vienna after Hitler became chancellor. 

CBS suggested he give it a try for a few weeks before deciding whether the family would follow.  He reluctantly agreed.  Forty years later, I can still vividly remember the day the call came from my father telling my mother and me to start packing.

We traveled on the majestic SS America.  It was a thrilling adventure for an eleven-year-old. Most memorable of all was waking up on the sixth morning, looking through the porthole, and seeing a magical sight.  We were in the harbor of Cobh, Ireland, anchored a few hundred yards offshore, surrounded by verdant hills dotted with picturesque houses.

It was my very first glimpse of Europe and I was smitten.  In the ensuing months, I became completely enamored by the landscape and the rhythm and quality of daily life in the various countries we visited. 

I loved the quaint street trams and sometimes rode them back and forth all day.  I stood outside the bakeries, soaking in the tantalizing aroma of fresh breads while eyeing the meticulously arranged pastries.  I was fascinated by the idea that a few hours in the car could take us across borders to new lands with different languages, architecture, and cuisines.  And I was struck by the ever-present sense of history, recent and remote, even if I was far too young to grasp its full meaning.

After we returned to New York, I knew that I wanted to go back to Europe when I grew older.  Some wishes do come true.  In my twenties, I spent more than five years there, studying and working.  And as parents, my wife and I took our three sons abroad several times, which only whetted my appetite to give them something more substantial, the same kind of living and school experience I had had as a child.

The chance came when my tenth anniversary as AJC’s executive director approached.  It more or less coincided with a certain midlife birthday that puts an unmistakable end to any lingering—and self-deceptive—claims of youth, making the prospect all the more timely. 

I broached the idea of a sabbatical year with Bruce Ramer, AJC’s president.  Despite the disruption my absence might cause, to his everlasting credit and, after consulting with his fellow officers, he gave me the green light.  Shula Bahat was ready to step in as acting executive director, which meant I could leave safe in the knowledge that the organization would be well managed.

Our family fantasized about where to go.  In theory, everything was possible—in Europe and, for that matter, beyond.  My initial instinct was to find a country unreachable by e-mail.  I could only identify three.

The first was Syria.  Enough said.   

The second was North Korea.  No e-mail, but then no food or anything else either.

The third was Afghanistan.  Maybe we should reconsider Syria. 

In truth, we first thought about Israel.  Much as I love the country, though, I visualized myself working from morning till night and unable to hide long enough in such a small and intimate place to catch my breath, much less enjoy a respite.  Remember the joke about Cohen, the Soviet spy, sent to Israel?

Then came England.  I fantasized about returning to Oxford, buying a bicycle, attending occasional seminars, prowling through the libraries, and, in an act of defiance against that milestone birthday, maybe even picking up rowing again.  This time, though, my wife put the kibosh on the idea, arguing that our children should be exposed to another language while abroad.  Surely, Oxford English counted as a foreign, if not totally exotic, language for our children, I argued, but she wasn’t persuaded.

Then came Italy, and it took us the better part of a nanosecond to agree.  After all, who doesn’t like the country?  If such people exist, I have yet to meet them.  Italy it was, then.  As luck would have it, I was offered a visiting professorship in Bologna that would allow me to indulge a work addiction I feared I couldn’t entirely shake, yet give us the time we craved for travel and other pursuits.

But then life took an unexpected turn, and Bologna became Geneva.  Still, we couldn’t complain.  No, Switzerland may not be Italy, and Geneva has never been confused with Bologna, but, for the record, there are street trams in Geneva (there are none in Bologna), the French influence makes the boulangeries and patisseries here worth a visit, and if the key to choice of residence is “location, location, location,” then it doesn’t get much better than Geneva’s placement in the heart of Europe.

What most struck me about this year is how much Europe has changed since I first set eyes on it four decades ago, though it has lost none of its allure and charm, far from it.

True, some things aren’t very different. 

For many Italian drivers, a red light is still an opinion, not an order.  In some French homes and hotels, we were faced with those infamous bathtubs that double as showers, with no curtains and a handheld shower just 18 inches off the ground.  In England, there remain otherwise nice houses with separate hot and cold-water faucets that can make washing perilous business.  In Germany, the beer starts flowing in some cafés before I’ve had my first glass of orange juice.  And in Spain, there continues what is, for me, this totally inexplicable fascination with the bull, whether it’s in the streets of Pamplona or the arenas of Seville.

Moreover, many Europeans still have a complex attitude toward America and Americans involving some combination of admiration, envy, and disdain.  Intrinsic to this mindset is the notion that America as a nation is capable of brilliant achievements—from medical discoveries to computer advances to moon shots—but that individual Americans are often intellectually challenged.

Thus, in Switzerland I heard the following story:  What do you call someone who speaks three languages?  Trilingual.  What about someone who speaks two languages?  Bilingual.  And what about a person who only speaks one language?  An American.

In the Netherlands it was a variation on the same general theme:  An American is standing at a street corner waiting for the light to turn green.  He hears a distinct clicking sound and turns to a Dutchman standing next to him and asks what this means.  “That’s to alert blind people that the light has changed,” the Dutchman proudly explained.  “That’s strange,” replied the stunned American.  “In the United States we don’t let blind people drive.”

So, too, in England:  An American is flying to London.  As the plane descends toward Heathrow, he looks out the window and sees an impressive building.  “What’s that?” he asked the Englishman in the adjoining seat.   “That’s Windsor Castle, the home of the royal family,” he responded.  “But why would anyone want to build a home so close to an airport?” inquired the puzzled American.

Incidentally, this genre of joke extends to Israel.  An American visits a flourishing kibbutz in the middle of the Negev Desert.  “Gee, the kibbutz founders were lucky to find an area so green and fertile to build on,” the American commented to his host.

On a more serious note, as I mentioned, there have been truly profound changes in Europe.

            Most obviously, this continent is no longer bifurcated by the “iron curtain” that Winston Churchill first referred to in his historic 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. 

As a child of the Cold War, I can still picture going to school one morning in the fall of 1962 convinced we’d all be dead before the day was out because the Soviet-American face-off over Cuba would trigger a nuclear war. Later, I experienced Communist tyranny firsthand.

Even a decade after the dramatic collapse of the Soviet empire, I’m still awestruck by the extraordinary events that have brought to an end Europe’s physical and political division.  I’m especially mindful of the singular American role—not always appreciated or even remembered these days—in bringing about this previously unimaginable outcome, another reminder of America’s immense contribution to Europe’s postwar freedom, security, and development.

I pinch myself each time I walk through Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate or pass what was once Checkpoint Charlie.  I still marvel seeing the cars in Vienna with Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian license plates—mind you, cars that actually work, unlike the old Soviet and East German models—touring the city sights or heading for points further west.  I frequently catch myself staring at the departure monitors in Ben Gurion Airport and smiling as I count the many daily flights to Central and East European cities that had previously had few links with the West, much less with Israel. And I still do a double take when I see the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian flags.

As the walls between east and west have come tumbling down, the last barriers among the member states of the European Union have all but disappeared.  Once a traveler is inside the EU, customs formalities range from limited to non-existent, which has only one downside—it’s next to impossible to request a souvenir stamp for a passport. 

The visionaries of European integration, particularly Monnet, Schuman, De Gaspari, and Adenauer, began in the 1950s by linking six countries—France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands—around the issues of coal and steel. 

But, in point of fact, they were embarking on a much more ambitious effort.  They were planting the seeds for the most far-reaching peace project in modern history.  It was Monnet, columnist Flora Lewis reminds us, who believed that “the only way the lessons of history stay learned is when they are embodied in institutions.”

These great men understood the desperate need to overcome the legacy of decades, if not centuries, of devastating wars that had torn Europe apart and wreaked such unparalleled havoc.  Moreover, they grasped the essential point that France and Germany had to be at the center of any new regional mechanisms.

Today, even with the difficulties that plague the European Union—the Irish vote against enlargement, the Danish rejection of the common currency, Franco- German differences over a future governing structure, and polls showing that many Europeans feel detached from Brussels—it remains an extraordinary success story.  (A Eurobarometer survey released in July revealed that only 54 percent of Europeans have any trust in the European Commission, which is the EU executive body, the International Herald Tribune reported.)

The EU now counts 15 member countries, with 13 others, including Turkey, seeking entry.  A vast zone of democracy and prosperity has been established.  The once poorer countries—Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain—have developed rapidly.  Aspiring member states on the fast track—Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia—understand full well the norms and values, not to mention the reams of rules and regulations, they must embrace if they are to be admitted. 

Add NATO to the mix.  The enlargement in 1999 to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland was another important step not only in unifying Europe but also in solidifying its democratic structure.  Those New York Times editorial writers who railed against enlargement in one essay after another were proved wrong. 

In 2002, NATO is expected to invite additional countries to join.  Without wishing to minimize the problems associated with expansion, the benefits of such growth far outweigh the potential risks.  Yes, as Henry Kissinger has written, there’s always a danger that this security alliance will turn into “multilateral mush,” but that need not be.  Importantly, countries seeking entry have been taking historic steps to enhance their chances.  That helps explain, for example, the Hungarian-Romanian accord.  Both countries knew that, as one price of admission, they needed to solve their long-standing differences, and they did.

In the same spirit, the Serbian prime minister recently acknowledged that the decision to hand over Milosevic to the Hague tribunal was prompted both by the need for Western aid and the recognition that this step was necessary to link his land closer to Europe and the West.

With all the remarkable strides achieved in Europe, much remains to be done.   

For one thing, there are still unresolved conflicts.   Progress toward a peaceful settlement of the long-simmering dispute in Northern Ireland has suffered a recent blow.   Terrorism by Basque separatists continues to plague Spain.  The division of Cyprus since 1974 has been a sticking point in Greek-Turkish relations.  And, not least, multiple challenges bedevil the Balkans. 

For another, as I’ve written on previous occasions, the demographic issues facing Europe pose profound social, political, economic, and cultural challenges.  While EU countries like Germany debate new immigration policies (the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung recently reported that, given current population trends, “by 2030, it is estimated that Germany will have just as many pensioners as it has workers”), illegal migrants keep trying to enter in search of new lives. 

Every day in the press, there are articles about intercepted migrants who were found clinging to train undercarriages, crammed in unseaworthy vessels, posing as tourists, or hidden in sealed trucks.

The majority of current and potential migrants, both legal and clandestine, are neither European nor Christian.  Instead, they come from Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Europe will need to come to terms with the prospect of continuing, perhaps accelerating, ethnic and religious changes.

To understand just how difficult this can be, it’s worth seeing a wonderful movie called Pane e Cioccolato (“Bread and Chocolate”), starring Nino Manfredi.  Released in 1973, it tells of the difficulties faced by a poor immigrant working as a waiter in Switzerland and he was an Italian!  More recently, a British film entitled East Is East recounted the societal and family hurdles faced by a Pakistani migrant, his British wife, and their seven children in an English working-class town.

As we know, rapid social change can create a political backlash (and, as we witnessed recently in northwest England, violent clashes). 

This helps explain the rise of Jörg Haider and the Freedom Party in Austria.  In the last national elections, campaigning on blatantly xenophobic themes, the party garnered 27 percent of the vote and, troublingly, is now the junior member in the governing coalition.  Fortunately, Umberto Bossi and his extremist Northern League Party in Italy didn’t do nearly as well in the recent Italian elections, yet still managed to enter the governing coalition, landing Bossi a cabinet seat.

Another striking change in Europe is the widespread use of English.  When I first lived in Italy in 1975, I used a dry cleaner across the street from my apartment.  Not only did the owner not speak a word of English, but each time I brought him clothes—and I’m not making this up—he would mark my name as “x” because, as an Italian, he couldn’t fathom the notion that a surname might begin with the letter “h,” much less end with a consonant.  He simply assumed, I suppose, that I was pulling his leg. 

That dry cleaner was very much in the spirit of Primo Levi’s memorable character, Cesare, in Levi’s second book, La Tregua (“The Truce”), who firmly believed that the Russians and Germans he met immediately after the war “pretended not to understand Italian” because of “malice or extreme and scandalous ignorance…”

I can’t say if that dry cleaner speaks English today, but just about everyone else in Europe seems to. 

I was sitting in a Geneva park when an adorable girl, maybe five years old, smiled at me and said a few words in French.  I thought to myself: here’s a rare chance to speak French.  However, the moment I began to reply she interrupted me and said in perfect English, “Oh, I can see it’s easier for you to speak English, unless you want to speak Chinese, which I can also speak!”

I could go on, but the flight is almost at an end.  Suffice it to say, then, that this has been a terrific year. 

True, in some ways it was much more than we bargained for.  As I’ve written in previous letters, the troubling events in the Middle East and their ripple effects consumed us day in and day out, dominated my work at UN Watch, affected the lives of our children at school, brought us still closer to Europe’s Jews, made us even more aware of the diplomatic and political challenges faced by friends of Israel in Europe, and powerfully reminded us yet again of the unique position of the United States and the American Jewish community—and within it, the American Jewish Committee—in defending Jewish interests.

But I wouldn’t have traded this year for anything, not least because of its significant and, I hope, enduring, impact on our kids.

In French, there’s a wonderful expression—l’esprit de l’escalier, which literally means “the spirit of the staircase.”  It refers to that moment, after leaving a meeting and heading downstairs, when an afterthought hits us, something we wish we had said or done during the meeting. 

As our plane approaches JFK, that afterthought still hasn’t come regarding the year just ended. Instead, there’s only gratitude for the extraordinary opportunity my family and I were given, indelible memories, and a sense of anticipation about the year ahead—once we get past the unpacking, that is.

This is the tenth and final letter from a sabbatical year spent abroad.  For copies of the previous letters, please contact Alina Viera at the American Jewish Committee via e-mail at vieraa@ajc.org or phone at (212) 751-4000, ext. 203.