The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 31

y.yiy ynynyiii. i y.i 1 1 minium yi ,11 yi i lymy 11 nynfinry inf rniyiif 1 1 THE GAZETTE, MONTREAL, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2005 A3I 5 i Linguistic world divided into haves and have-nots without it. In addition to describing our relationship to things (J have suspenders), it expresses our relationship to people: I have a spouse, you have a brother, she has friends. It also describes our relationship to ourselves: I have a body, you have a soul, he has a cold. Other common words presuppose having things: lost a parent, you gained your health, he bst his life.

We even seem to own time. My summer was great, how was yours? Yet many languages easily do very well without "have" or its cousins. They include Arabic, Hungarian, Russian, Japanese, Tibetan, Hebrew and innumerable African, Amazonian and aboriginal languages. Where we would say, "I have a child, Hebrew speakers would say, "There is to me a child." In an Andean language, Quecha, the wording would be, "The child for whom I am responsible." The Navaho would say, "The child born of me." An Amazonian would say, "The child who is." The child takes on a life of his or her own. The speaker doesn't refer to the child in a subordinate manner.

Objects and people aren't on some kind of linguistic leash. It's curious how everyday language can subtly shape our thoughts. Everyone knows how a culture's theology, formed thousands of years ago, can advance ideas and values so potent that they will influence even members of that culture who reject the theology I know, for example, a fierce atheist who believes good things happen to people who do good things (in his case, defending human rights). He, thus, unknowingly embraces a variant of the concept the Bible's Book of Deuteronomy launched in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Language, Trocme-Fabre suggests, can influence us similarly It reflects implicit beliefs about the world and our place in it and shapes the assumptions of new generations.

A language can imply a power relationship where another language would see none. That Western languages have put a possessive colouring on everyday relationships with people and things raises questions: What are the origins of the mentality that these particular languages reflect? Is it coincidence that the broad Western culture in which these languages evolved is the same culture that has sought to dominate the world economically and politically? That has subordinated the risk of climate-change to GDP? That fosters so possessive I've never dared to write about the hyper-commercialization of Christmas. It's a tired topic, and it would have been hard to say anything you hadn't already heard 100 times. But a recent book offers a new slant on the matter even though it never mentions Christmas. The book, Le langage du vivant, by French linguist Helene Trocme-Fabre, is all about the verb "to have." The subject sounds terribly dull and esoteric, but the author makes it fascinating.

It turns out that most of the 6,000 or more languages around the world lack the word "have." The expression is primarily Western not only do French and English use it, but also, among others, German, Italian and Spanish. In the ancient world, Sumerian, Assyrian and Latin also used it. Trocme-Fabre's observations keep coming to mind because a mindset that people now even demand patents on new life forms? And, finally, is it an accident that this same culture has trans-formed Christmas from a reli- gious celebration into an un-abashed festival of having? Note that Christmas honours an event that took place in a culture with- out "have." But, hey, don't let me cloud your holidays with all this lin- guistic stuff. Please, have a merry Christmas. Oops, did I really say that? Don't have a Christmas.

Enjoy Christmas. (Le langage du vivant is published in La Rochelle, France, by Editions E-tre et Connaitre.) Henry Aubin is The Gazette's regional-affairs columnist. haubin thegazette.canwest.com An act of kindness remembered Prison memories colour the life and career of first woman elected to lead an African nation HENRY AUBIN ON WORDS "It's curious how everyday language can subtly shape our thoughts." the Christmas season with its stress on gifts and consumption has become such an orgy of acquisition. "To have" is full of possessive overtones have a coat, he has money, you have a car. We rely so much on the verb it's hard to imagine what we'd do month, beating former soccer player George Weah.

But Weah echoing the very behaviour and mistakes of the old-guard leadership he has criticized is still refusing to accept the results. He claims the November elections were fraudulent, and has fired up the jobless young men who make up his base to take to Monrovia's already torn-up streets to protest. Last week, he told his disgruntled followers "revolution is a noble cause." "It is our right to seek justice, and we will use all means to obtain that," he said. His supporters subsequently clashed with police and UN peacekeepers with their usual chanting of "No Weah, No Peace." This is all the same rhetoric used by Charles Taylor, Robert Mugabe, and all of Africa's various strongmen, militants and warlords who, if there were any real justice, would be run off the continent. This is the rhetoric that stirred up Liberia's never-.

ending civil wars, that helped incite the bloodbath in neighbouring Sierra Leone, that led to so many pointless deaths in Ivory Coast. The result of this useless carnage is clearly visible on the streets of Monrovia, where empty buildings, damaged beyond recognition by artillery shelling, shelter squatters with nowhere else to live. The country has not had electricity since 1991. There is no running water. There are JOHN KALBFLEISCH children newly out of hiding or freed from concentration camps.

A Canadian soldier named Phillip Madras wrote a letter to his parents in Montreal describing how Hanukkah was celebrat ed that year in Tilburg, in southern Holland. The synagogue had been utterly ransacked by the German occupiers, yet even in its ruin it was where Jews -Canadian, British and Polish soldiers, as well as some civilians -could once again come to pray The parallel with the story of the Maccabees was obvious. "We have come back today to this house of God, sacked and plundered by the tyrannical enemy, the enemy we routed," Rabbi Cass said. "We have returned to light the Hanukkah candles." 11 1 HELENE COOPER NEW YORK TIMES In Liberia, stories about near-death run-ins with the deranged gun-toting maniacs who have run the country into the ground for the last quarter-century are a dime a dozen. Even the president-elect has one.

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf 's story goes like this: In 1985, Johnson-Sirleaf, then 47 and a leader of a political party that opposed the strongman Samuel Doe, was arrested during a roundup of Doe's political opponents after an attempted coup. About six soldiers came at night to her house, hauled her to the army barracks in Schieffelin, outside Monrovia, and threw her into a cell with 15 mea Just past midnight, the soldiers returned to the cell with a rope, which they used to tie together the hands of all the prisoners, except one When they ran out of rope they relieved Johnson-Sirleaf of her shoelaces, and used them to tie the last man to the group. As she stood, shaking, in a corner, the soldiers led the 15 prisoners outside The rat-a-tat of the machine guns sounded, as the men were executed. Twenty years later, the one prisoner in that cell who was not executed that night is about to become president, the first woman ever elected president of an African country Johnson-Sirleaf won 59.4 per cent of the vote in the runoff election held last Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf will be sworn in as president of Liberia on Jan. few schools, no factories, nothing to provide any kind of hope to the youths who spend both their days and nights on the streets.

Can a 67-year-old grandmother fix all this? Johnson-Sirleaf argues she can, in part because she is a 67-year-old grandmother. Forget about her Harvard education or her experience as a World Bank economist, or the fact she is the darling of the Western donor groups that Liberia desperately needs. That will all help, but it's gravy What really will distinguish her is she will bring to this psychologically and socially broken place the simple, clear and rational thinking of a straightforward African woman. Take, for example, her views on rape. In Liberia, as in so many other places in Africa, there has been no real law on the books that stipulates punishment for rape.

So the sexual predators, who see rape as their only means to exert power over vulnerable women, are not prosecuted. A few months ago, Johnson-Sirleaf and a handful of female lawyers in Liberia asked the legislature to prescribe sentences for rapists. "Do you know the farthest the legislature would go is seven years?" Johnson-Sirleaf said, disgustedly Still, in West Africa, where girls of 9 are often the prey of men in their 50s, seven years is something. Johnson-Sirleaf's SECOND After the service, Madras continued in his letter, everyone was invited to a private home: "There a party had been prepared for small children who were unable to come to the synagogue. In the house were 10 children and a few adults.

The table had been set especially for the children, each of whom received packages of chocolate and candies prepared by Rabbi Cass and 'the We blessed and lit the Hanukkah candles for the children who, needless to say, were delighted." At the party was a nurse, a Christian, who during the occupation had hidden seven Jewish children between the ages of 2 and 7. "One of the children is now a boy of 4," Madras told his parents. "No one knows where he comes from and what his name is. In the meantime they call him Joseph. All seven children rescued by the nurse were at the Hanukkah party, and together with them we celebrated the holiday of freedom." Estelle Ruth Aspler of Montreal was a nursing sister with the Canadian brought Hanukkah to war-torn CHRIS HONDROS GETTY IMAGES 16.

posed to be inaugurated on Jan. 16, says she plans to dig deep into her past, to that night 20 years ago, to try to keep that thread intact. On that night, after the 15 men were killed, one of those soldiers entered her cell and tried to rape. her. He was stopped by another soldier, who told her, "I will sleep on the floor here in your cell tonight so no one hurts you." Africa's first female president is ready to repay the favour, writ large.

Europe heart so weak that he was unable to walk." A sergeant from Toronto quickly remedied that, carry-. ing the boy piggyback into the party In 1946, Cass returned to Canada, where he remained interested in the welfare of young people Settling in Montreal, he was named executive director of the Hillel Foundation, serving students at McGill and Sir George Williams universities until 1967. He was also involved with the Boy Scouts. One day, Estelle Aspler recalls, the scouts presented him with a large sand timer. "But how can I use it?" he asked with seeming innocence "To time your sermons," came the cheeky reply On Sept.

8, 1975, Cass was driving between Montreal and Toronto. Also in the car were his wife, Annabel, their 26-year-old son Ely and his wife's aunt, Lottie Weiss. A mile west of the Ontario-Quebec border, there was a collision with a large truck. All four in the car were killed instantly lisnaskeaallstream.net with a warning to all: "I've got grand-daughters that age," she recalls saying. "Those who engage in rape better know that from now on, we're going to prosecute." Prosecution for men who rape 9-year-old girls should be pretty basic, but not so in places where endless war has broken down social constraints, and a population becomes so demoralized that the thread of humanity is stretched to the breaking point.

Johnson-Sirleaf, who is sup required minyan of 10 men could not attend and so make the service official, he simply offered a special prayer. Several days later, on March 18 near the Rhineland town of Cleve, he had more than enough worshippers. Several hundred soldiers formed a large as he slowly backed his mobile synagogue into their midst. It was, as a typescript from the archives of the Canadian Jewish Congress notes, the last service that some would ever attend the war in Europe still had nearly two months to run. Cass was eventually reassigned to England, and there he continued to work especially hard on behalf of refugee children.

There were 95 at one party, cakes were available and movies were shown. Yet for many of the children, it was a struggle. One 12-year-old, the typescript continues, "had manned a gun in Poland with the partisans (and) just couldn't acclimatize himself to three meals a day and a warm bed. Another child who had been brutally tortured was left with a first test of this came a few weeks ago, when reports surfaced that a Nigerian soldier who was part of the international peacekeeping mission in Liberia was suspected of raping a 9-year-old girl. An enraged Johnson-Sirleaf was quickly on the phone to the head of the peacekeeping operation.

"Don't let him leave Liberia," she ordered. "If he leaves Liberia and goes back to Nigeria, they'll free him." Then she went on the radio DRAFT Canadian army in Antwerp. The British army rations she received contained hard candies she didn't care for, so she saved them in a jar. When she heard that Cass had arrived to put on a Hanukkah party she gave the jar to him. She bumped into him a few days later.

"When next you have candy to give to youngsters who haven't had any for years," he "Cass got about in a kind of synagogue on wheels, a truck complete with torahs, prayer books and other essentials." said with mock severity, "you do it I was mobbed." Cass got about in a kind of synagogue on wheels, a truck complete with torahs, prayer books and other essentials. In March 1945, he was the first Canadian to conduct a Jewish service in Germany but as the "At the consulates and information offices here in Montreal, they smile a little sadly when you ask them what Christmas will be like at home this year. It has been a long time, they say, since the little people of Europe have had a really merry Christmas, but they try hard each year and the children atleastforget-fora little while. Gazette, Monday, Dec. 25, 1944 Who could be surprised that in newly liberated parts of Europe the season was celebrated a little tentatively? Yet for Jewish children, it was something of a miracle that the season could be celebrated at all.

So few, after all, had survived the horrors of the previous few years. Captain Samuel Cass was a warm-hearted, 37-year-old chaplain with the Canadian army in Belgium and Holland, but the services he held were not for Jewish soldiers alone. Civilians were invited to attend as well. And, best of all rabbis like Cass did what they could to organize parties, however modest, for.