Seeking Symmetry, Catskill Mountains, NY, June 2023.

A young oak and its neighbors display their greenest greens following a rainy summer morning, not far from the Ashokan Reservoir.

Archie Shepp, The Jazz Center, New York, 1985.

Saxophonist Archie Shepp remains a powerful, original voice in American music. As a musician, author, poet and teacher he has helped to build a new foundation for contemporary, uncompromised Black American culture – a culture which has evolved over the last 50 years to thrive well beyond the lens of the dominant white American culture, and also without a need for often-misguided white promoters.

That’s not to say that Archie Shepp creates music that is insular or closed to cultures outside his own. Quite the opposite is true, in fact.

ARCHIE’S MUSIC WILL will raise a few of your hairs, challenge a few of your conventions, and give a few of your angrier thoughts some free sparring time. It will also show you what swing is all about, as well as the true roots of the Blues.

I consider myself very fortunate to have heard Archie’s timeless music so deeply, to have been able to experience and capture his performances, to have met and spoken with him for a time, and even to have served with him on the board of Music Inn Studios, a non-profit calling of our mutual Philadelphia-born friend, J.R. Mitchell.

I’m not going to try to tell you anything more about Archie, except perhaps to let you know that today is his birthday.

Here are just a few links to start hearing and learning about Archie Shepp from his ground-breaking, counter-culture work in the late ‘60s to his National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master recognition in 2016: Archie’s mind-blowing take on Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady (1968); the beseeching Hipnosis (1975); his classic composition Steam live from the Montreaux Festival (1976); Archie in his seminal duo arrangement with pianist Horace Parlan on the spiritual Trouble in Mind (1986); his wonderful funky big band arrangement of another wailing classic 'Mama Too Tight’ (2012); and finally Archie’s NEA Jazz Master 2016 Biography.

May Archie Shepp’s revolutionary artistic statement, his exhuberance and music live forever!

Ugly Beauty,* Carmel Foothills, Israel, March 2011.

Not everything in this world is meant to be beautiful. But some things are beautiful just because, ‘ya dig?

* With love to Thelonious Monk: Ugly Beauty

Demonstration, Haifa, Israel, March 2023.

The End Game

SEVERAL TIMES NOW, I’ve started to post about the unprecedented national crisis in Israel and the increasing liklihood of a showdown between the sitting government and the judicial branch, which would result in a paralyzed and prone country.

Each time I felt I had written something that could bring some value, the situation here changed, rendering my words valueless.

Along with this, the sheer volume of writings, opinions, predictions, warnings, etc., is so dizzying that I could post a dozen links to as many effective pieces written by other citizens as concerned as I, and also far more qualified to provide a worthy analysis.

So, let me just cut to what I see as the End Game.

THE END GAME FOR the governing coalition creates a State which eliminates the independence of its judicial system, to benefit the will of governing politicians. Of course, they want to do this for a specific reason; simply stated, they want to pass laws which cannot be challenged by the Israeli Supreme Court.

The unwarranted speed, deafness and vicious forcefulness that the governing coalition has used to advance their legislation is damning and depressing evidence that an unprecedented blow to Israel’s democratic system is indeed their End Game.

If Israel had a constitution, a bill of rights, or some other formal basis for protecting our system of government and our citizens from such concerted corruption and abuse, today’s national scenario would not be as frightening. But that is not the case. And this End Game empowers the governing coalition to usurp the traditional guardian role of the Supreme Court and to pass brutal, blatantly political laws which change the very nature of the system. For example, a law to revoke the rights of non-Jewish citizens to vote in national elections. Or a law to delay future elections until the desired outcome will be certain.

Grim imaginings? Unfortunately not. There already have been attempts by some extreme religious members of the current coalition to implement their power, for example, a proposed law to arrest women who arrive at Jerusalem’s Western Wall inappropriately dressed. The statements just this month by the Minister of Finance Betzalel Smotrich about his desire for the Israeli military to “burn down” the West Bank Arab town of Hawara could, sadly, find legal support by some convenient new law that promotes the extreme Right’s anti-Palestinian agenda.

Their End Game does not stop with just dismantling the judicial system. Another likely target for change will be mandatory military service for Israeli citizens – long a source of ideological discomfort by the orthodox religious community. The list goes on: the State’s recognition of civil marriage, the acceptance of Reform Jews as full Israeli citizens, the right for workers to strike or even to demonstrate, the right to perform abortions, the adoption of children by same-sex couples – these and many other present-day norms could be overturned with ease under the governing coalition’s proposed changes.

“After these laws pass, there will be nothing that limits the power of the government.” – Yuval Harari

In a recent television news interview, world-renowned Israeli historian and author Yuval Harari also talked about the End Game. He urged, that instead of examining and arguing over the minute details of the coalition’s proposed judicial legislation package, “People should focus their attention on one question only: ‘What will limit the power of the government?’ ”

“Until today,” Harari added, “in Israel we’ve used a jumbled-up combination of basic laws, together with the legal power of the Supreme Court to tell the government ‘No.’ After these laws pass, there will be nothing that limits the power of the government.”

“It’s not important what is going on in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s mind right now. Who knows what will pass through his mind next year, or what will pass through the mind of whoever follows him? We need to be able to thwart the government’s ability to destroy our freedoms. What the coalition is trying to do is create a political atomic bomb that may not be used right away, but can still be used in another year, or two years.”

It’s little wonder that hundreds of thousands of Israel’s active and highly vocal citizens have been organizing and demonstrating using every legal means – including the streets – for 3 months now.

BUT THERE IS A SECOND End Game to consider – that of the opposition (current members of Israel’s parliamentary minority).

Well, actually, the opposition doesn’t have an End Game, nor any real plan to help prevent the State of Israel from sliding into an autocracy (or perhaps a theocracy) fashioned by the extreme religious Right. As they have in the past, the opposition is relying on existing laws and political norms to serve them. That is the nature of democratically-inclined societies. But these very laws and norms are now the targets of the Right’s attack.

Opposition leaders have decried the ruling coalition’s End Game, laid every parliamentary roadblock they can, supported the unparalleled public protests we are seeing, and called determinedly for a halt to the shamelessly one-sided legislative process to enable a broader, more thoughtful national dialog over the proposed judicial reforms.

Yet they have not created an alternative End Game. Their request to return to a respectful discussion – whatever that means in Israel – is not an End Game.

On this day, as the democratic fabric of Israel woven over 75 years unravels before our eyes, we can plainly see the flaw that lurks behind the legal crisis now consuming our country. It is the failure of our nation to have produced an organized, broadly-based, formal set of democratic laws and civil rights – a Constitution.

As Yuval Harari concluded in his interview, “In the new situation that has been created we will need stronger defenses for Israeli democracy. The current basic laws and the Supreme Court will not be enough. We need to find other methods…I hope that this shock will bring us forward to a better situation, that it will move us toward a stronger democracy.”

A national Constitution must be today’s End Game for Israel.

Without it, Israel’s institutions and its citizens will continue to be tossed about by self-serving, short-sighted, corrupt and incompetent governments, politically frail Supreme Court rulings, and egotistical, power-focused politicians.

And with tonight’s protests enflamed more than ever in the face of another ill-motivated action by the country’s Prime Minister, it’s honestly difficult for me to see how Israel will succeed in reaching such an important redefining moment.

Photo by Etty Ya'akov. Young people demonstrating in Haifa, Israel on March 18th, 2023, carrying signs that together spell D E M O C R A C Y in Hebrew.