Return of the White Whale

By Dan Seckelmann

The author employs a narrative scheme as does the Matrix, the novel Moby Dick. The story cruises through the present and the historic plight of the Jews and intermittingly brings Melville's Sea-saga with the mad Capt. Ahab, his first mate, Starbuck, and others in the crew: the narrator, Ishmael, his friend, the harpooner, former head-hunter, Queequeg, and Ahab's guru-confidant, Fedallah, the Parsee mystic who tells Ahab a prophetic riddle that could match the three witches conundrum in Shakespeare's Macbeth. It features twenty mini-bios of Righteous Jews, their contribution to mankind in past and present along with histories of famous Jewish dynasties.

There are instances of the author's personal experiences such as excerpts from journals kept when he toured Israel in 1979 led by Prof. Menahem Mansoor with a group of University of Wisconsin Alumni. Also, he tells of how childhood traumas were compounded from media influences and, in time, cites chilling anti-Semitic expressions while in the US Navy.

He, a Christian, lauds his paternal grandfather, though he had died a generation before the author's birth. He had been a Nothern Civil War veteran, the Fire Chief of Bethlehim, PA and a Jewish Imigrant from Bavaria.

It is not enunciated, but Capt. Ahab, his ship, the Pequod, his world, could represent the static mind-set of insane, unconsumated revenge, launching harpoons at this perceived enemy. But on encountering Moby Dick, he is thwarted, scattered, then annihilated.

World-wide, Jews are a tiny lot and getting smaller. For Jews, extinction won't come from disturbing a sea-giant entirely, but from abandoning tradition in favor of "Reform", PC & ACLU, Absorbtion and Lethargy. On top of all that, in the wings are massive emerging eastern populations with energy and innate abilities that equal or surpass Jews.

You shall be left few in numbers, whereas you were as the stars in heaven in multitude (Deut. 28: 62).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Apr 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781490772318

Dan Seckelmann

The author is a ninety-two-year-old WWII veteran, a navy corpsman who served with the US Marines at two aircraft carriers in the Pacific Theater. A father of five, grandfather of seven, and great-grandfather of five. He is happily married for sixty-eight years with his wife.

Book preview

Dan Secklemann

RETURN OF THE WHITE WHALE

This book is dedicated to Ruth and Richard Yardumian

©

Copyright 2016 Dan Seckelmann.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN

: 978-1-4907-7230-1 (sc)

ISBN

: 978-1-4907-7231-8 (e)

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CONTENTS

Introduction

1   Call Me Ishmael

2   Coming Aboard

3   Where Are We?

4   Join The Navy & The Opinion Makers

5   Gams, Whales, Seaman's Chapel

6   Charlton Heston Speech

7   Righteous Jews Bios Begin with Julius Rosenwald

8   Michael Eisner

9   The Mouse Betrayed (Review)

10   Dr. Laura

11   To Israel

12   Hyman Rickover

13   The Ship Jeroboam

14   Pip

15   The Endangered Species

16   The Geek Show

17   All In The Family

18   A Close To Home Story

19   Jews In The Performing Arts

20   Judy Resnick

21   Yehude Menuhim

22   Gertrude B. Elion

23   Slavery

24   Irving Berlin

25   Beverly Sills

26   Milton Friedman

27   Dr. Herbert L. Needleman

28   Emma Lazarus

29   Up Burtons And Break Out

30   The Blacksmith Perth

31   Rosalyn (Sussman) Yalow

32   Michael Medved

33   Ahab And Fedallah -The Parsee

34   Albert Einstein

35   Rita Levi-Montalcini

36   Ben Stein

37   Edward Teller

38   Lina Stern

39   The Life Buoy

40   Lise Meitner

41   The Quadrant

42   Rosalind E. Franklin

43   The Renowned Jewish Families Some With Media Connections

The Bronfmans

Famous Jewish Families in Media continued

The Selznicks

The Paleys

The Warners

The Annenebergs

44   Independents & And Scripps-Howard

45   Johnny Appleseed & Post-Mortem.

Renowned Jewish Families continued

(Some Media Connectons)

46   The Guggenheims

47   The Ochs And Salzbergers

48   Joseph Pulitzer

49   The Strauses

50   The Reichmanns

51   The Seligmans

52   Brief Briefs

Arisons (Ted)

Baruch (Bernard)

Bloomingdales (Family)

Blocks (Family)

Crown, Henry

Gimbels (Family)

Haases

Blausteins

Cohns

Cohns (different family)

53   The Lehmans

54   The Tisches Media Connections

55   The Pritzkers

56   Lauder And More

Levitts

Mankiewiczes

Morgenthaus

Ziffs

Selman Waksman

Jonas Salk

John Von Neuman (1903-1957)

Back to The Pequod

57   Capt. Gardiner And The Rachel

58   Boy Scouts Of America= Sad Stories

59   The Ship Delight And Burial At Sea

60   The Aclu -- American Civil Liberties Union

61   Lincoln's Declaration Of Thanksgiving As A National Holiday, 1863

62   The First Day

63   Neil Postmam

64   The Second Day

65   The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of

Zion & Vietnam

66   The Third Day

67   Jews, Christians, Muslims And Others

Artists:

Whale on cover: Andra King

Inside Portraits: Julio Espiritis

INTRODUCTION

MELVILLE'S NOVEL, MOBY DICK is an allegorical tale riding beside a true episodic human story of a people's history and their presence today; their monumental accomplishments, their power and their madness.

Moby Dick acts as a matrix, a stand-alone story for the reader to savor parabolic significances. I have given the full story minus many of the author' rhetorical flights. Where Melville's words shouldn't be eliminated nor matched, I quote him. Any student required to review Moby Dick will find it here, concise and easy reading. Further, there are mini-bios herein that can be studied, a small way toward our comprehending the debt we owe to a long maligned people.

Early on, I blend some personal family history into the narrative. It is relevant. On my paternal side my forbearers belonged to the continuing Diaspora. I mention my father and mother's backgrounds for balance. There are references to my personal experiences, where they relate to the topic.

Moby Dick and my account trade places frequently and mostly without a literary bridge. In a sense you will be reading two stories at the same time; and yet, both may reach the same conclusion.

CHAPTER ONE

CALL ME ISHMAEL

CALL ME ISHMAEL...SO BEGINS Herman Melville's novel, Moby-Dick, a whaling saga steeped in irony and allegory. It is also a primer on life aboard a whaler; an adventure, but it also describes the lot of the crew: of hard work, cramped conditions, sweat, noises and odors that was all part of life on those sailing vessels.

A young man, Ishmael takes the reader on board as he acts as the narrator. It is a compelling yarn, even when he details the rendering oil extraction processes and boiling blubber, and other times when when he waxes about the parts of the ship, the crew, whales and harpoons.

The name Ishmael is from the Bible, the Old Testament. It is the name of a child born to the maid-servant, Hagar, and Abraham. Abraham's wife, (Sarai) Sarah, later has them expelled into the desert. Yet he survives to become the founder of great nations.

Call me Joseph Daniel, I have two biblical names and I'm a survivor of sorts, I'm 81 years old and married 57 years, father of 5 splendid offsprings, 7 grandchildren, and one great grand child. I served in the Navy in the Pacific during WWII. My father's father, Siegmund Charles Seckelmann, was a Jew who married a Christian woman from a family named Bowditch. My grandfather came to this country as a child from Bavaria with his mother and father sometime in 1840's. When he was 19 and the Civil War had begun, he enlisted in the Fifth N.Y. Volunteers. He was wounded, recovered and remained in the war and went through many battles. When it was learned that he was also a musician he was assigned to the regimental band. He was an enlisted man. After the war he married and settled in Bethlehem Pa. where he was active in the civic and cultural life of the community. He became an officer in the Pennsylvania Militia, was an organizer of a Choral Society that featured the works of J.S. Bach and Felix Mendlesohn. Around this time he became the Fire Chief of Bethlehem. He was father to six children. My father was the youngest.

My father received schooling in Bethlehem in part through the Moravian Church. His father, Civil War Veteran and fire chief, died in 1900. My father, then just 14 years old, went to work for Bethlehem Steel, was apprenticed to an electrician. By the time he was 17 he decided to join the Navy. His mother had to give her permission. In time he was assigned to the USS Rhode Island, one of the ships of The Great White Fleet of Teddy Roosevelt. In his diary he tells of the time Roosevelt came aboard, gave a speech, dined with the men, even took a turn in the Black-Gang shoveling coal. Earlier my father had entered the Navy Medical Corps. Here he became a dedicated student. Later the Navy sent him to Yale. During the first World War he achieved war time rank of Lt. Commander. He was a pioneer in the use and interpretation of X-rays and clinical testing in military medicine. He had married my mother just as she graduated from the Nursing School of a Philadelphia hospital.

My mother, Annie Wharton, was the second child of James Wharton born in the United States. The Baldwin Locomotive Works in Philadelphia brought skilled railroad artisans from England. It was said that he could build a complete locomotive from the ground up. One brother, George, became an Episcopal Minister, and in retirement in Phoenix, Arizona when I visited him in the 1960's he was Chaplin for the States Assembly.

I feel I have a literary kinship with Melville's narrator, the 19th century, and, for that matter, with biblical names. Ishmael, Joseph and Daniel, all in The Old Testament, had been abused, only to be raised to great stature. The humble Ishmael of Melville's book and I just survive to tell a story.

The book begins in New Bedford with Ishmael meeting and befriending a harpooner, an aboriginal named Quequeg, who was trying to sell a shrunken head. They go to Nantucket where they both sign on a whaling ship, The Pequod... As they make their way in Nantucket they are confronted by a man who appears as an apparition with bedraggled clothes, pocked skin and glaring eyes he asks,... Have you shipped on? He then utters a cryptic, fretful warning of doom to follow the captain...Capt. Ahab and the ship, The Pequod. Then the stranger says his name is, Elijah!

The biblical Elijah and his successor as prophets of The Almighty confound evil King Ahab. Ahab was the King of Israel but had turned to idol worship of Baal and as such... Now Ahab son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord, more than all who were before him...(Kings 1-17/30)

Capt. Ahab is shown as an able mariner and capable, though odd and puzzling. He has a pathological fixation on the destruction of an oversized white whale...Moby Dick. In an earlier encounter with that leviathan it cost him the loss of a leg and the morbid altering of his psyche. To his crew he is an enigmatic force, pacing the quarterdeck with an uneven cadence produced by the peg leg fashioned from the bone of a whale, thumping against the deck planking.

He ruminates his deep hurt and hate.

Capt. Ahab in Melville's 19th century nautical story depicts the consequences of a festering victim complex. In our time we see this, but now the pain and suffering occurred to some ancestors, and the descendants never cease screaming that they are owed continuous redress, and the more society acquiesces, the more demanding they become. Yet, there are some causes this day for real pain from discrimination and other evils.

When my great grandfather Charles Jacob Seckelmann came to this country from Bavaria he was a classical painter, an artist whose works graced both Churches and Temples. When commissions were scarce, to support his family he'd paint signs for merchants and municipalities. He was fluent in five European languages.

He and his contemporaries and those that followed enriched our country. If their leaving the Old World left a void, it was rarely noticed, nor were their talents appreciated. Of course the Old World was poorer for it.

During the 19th century and through the early part of the 20th century there was a great migration of Europeans to America. Many of the immigrants have made lasting contributions to our culture and well being. Of those, the Jews have and still are having the greatest impact. Most has been for good, but not all. Also there are some intriguing statistics we should note about them and the rest of the U S population:

(Fig. Extrapolated from 2000 census)

Est. Population U S =282.5 million

Jews

2% Approx. 5,500,000

Afro. Am

12.4% Approx. 35,500,000

Hispanic

13% Approx. 37,200,000

Asian

4% Approx. 11,000,000 (including Asian, Native