After months of political crisis that have already damaged Israel’s economy, military, and social fabric, the front line of what many view as the struggle for Israeli democracy has now reached the Supreme Court.  

Anticipation of the showdown was in the air in Tel Aviv this past Saturday night, when, in the 36th straight week of anti-government protests, Israeli rock icon Shalom Hanoch regaled the estimated 120,000 demonstrators with his 1985 hit protest anthem.

“The Messiah isn’t coming,” he bellowed as the crowd sang along. “The Messiah isn’t calling, either.”

There would be no heavenly intervention, Mr. Hanoch was intimating, to deliver Israel from the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its monthslong efforts to radically overhaul the country’s judicial system, weaken the independence of the courts, and arrogate to itself potentially unchecked power.

He and the entire crowd knew this week would be fateful: The Supreme Court convened Tuesday to hear petitions against a bill – rammed through parliament in late July after compromise talks were abandoned – that removes the court’s ability to exercise judicial oversight over government decisions deemed “extremely unreasonable.”

Would the court itself intervene?

For the first time ever, the entire panel of 15 justices sat in judgment as lawyers for both sides sparred over the law – dubbed the “Reasonableness Bill” – in a marathon 13-hour session.

And, for the first time ever, legal analysts predict, the justices may in fact strike down a quasi-constitutional Basic Law, of which the Reasonableness Bill is an amendment. (Israel famously has no constitution, with the 13 Basic Laws drafted so far intended as a proto-constitution.)

In another first, an Israeli government is threatening to not abide by a court ruling if it goes against it – setting up what analysts fear could be an unprecedented constitutional crisis between the branches of government.

Debbie Hill/Reuters

The president of the Supreme Court of Israel, Esther Hayut, and the rest of the 15 justices assemble to hear petitions against the "Reasonableness Bill," in the high court in Jerusalem, Sept. 12, 2023.

“This is one of the most important cases in Israeli history,” says Amir Fuchs, a senior researcher at the nonpartisan Israel Democracy Institute. It will dictate not only the future of the Netanyahu government’s entire judicial overhaul agenda but also, both sides contend, the fate of Israel’s democratic system.

Red lines and “anarchy”

The government’s position on the matter was made clear in recent days, in both its written response to the Supreme Court and statements by senior officials: The court has no standing to challenge a Basic Law passed by a majority in parliament.

“If the Court can cancel Basic Laws, it will make itself the sovereign instead of the people,” Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud party said in a statement issued while the hearing was still ongoing Tuesday evening. “This extreme step will undermine the foundations of democracy. This is a red line that must not be crossed.”

Government lawyers had, in a similar vein, warned of “anarchy” if the judges strike down the law, with Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana from the Likud stating that parliament “will not meekly accept its trampling” and suggesting that “the court recognize the limitations of your power.” Prime Minister Netanyahu re-posted Mr. Ohana’s speech in its entirety on his social media accounts.

At the hearing Tuesday, justices seemed less than impressed with the government’s position. Undermining the government case, Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara – the country’s highest legal official – actively sided with the petitioners against the bill, sending her own representative to urge the court to strike it down.

“Never in history has the attorney general said a law is illegal and the court didn’t agree. This gives a very strong back wind to the petitioners,” says Professor Barak Medina, a law professor at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, citing a handful of previous cases.

Instead, the government had to enlist a private lawyer, Ilan Bombach, to lead its defense.

Mr. Bombach made the day’s biggest headlines when he intimated that Israel’s Declaration of Independence, a text revered for decades as upholding the country’s Jewish and democratic foundations – especially minority rights – held no constitutional weight and was simply drafted haphazardly by “37 people ... who weren’t elected and aren’t representative of Israeli society at that time.”

Ohad Zwigenberg/Reuters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, Sept. 10, 2023. On his right is Justice Minister Yariv Levin, architect of the government's judicial overhaul program.

Petitioners against the bill included a slew of civil society groups as well as the attorney general’s office, buttressed from the outside by opposition politicians and an estimated 2 million Israelis in total who have taken to the streets at least once in recent months to protest against the government.

“The Court is Supreme,” a massive banner unveiled at the Saturday Tel Aviv demonstration declared. The petitioners have all said they will respect and abide by any decision the court makes – while at the same time imploring the judges to nullify the law.

Untested arguments

According to legal experts, such a highly contentious ruling would likely rest on two main arguments, both of which are relatively untested.

The first would be that the Reasonableness Bill is an “unconstitutional constitutional amendment” that contradicts the core values and essence of Israel as both a Jewish and democratic state.

“You can’t simply establish a new state” via parliamentary legislation, argues Dr. Fuchs of the Israel Democracy Institute. “The legislative process for a Basic Law is the same as for a regular law” – a simple parliamentary majority is all that is required – “so the fact that they pass a law and slap a ‘Basic Law’ title on it” shouldn’t make it beyond review.

Removing the Supreme Court’s ability to use the criteria of “extreme unreasonableness” to review government decisions could, the petitioners argued at the hearing, undermine the separation of powers and rule of law that form the bedrock of Israel’s democratic system.

“There are no other checks and balances in Israel,” says Dr. Fuchs.

The second argument the justices may put forward to strike down the bill may rest on the motivations behind its passage, an issue legal experts call “the abuse of the constitutive and legislative power” of parliament, wherein it misused its power to enact Basic Laws for its own individual and political needs.

Under this scenario, legal experts argue, the fact that Mr. Netanyahu himself is currently on trial for corruption could be a key plank proving conflict of interest and the personalized motives behind the law’s passage.

Legal scholars and even former justices are loath to predict how the current Supreme Court will come down on this case, although what is certain is that a decision will not be immediate. Most analysts expect one by October, after the Jewish High Holidays and just as Chief Justice Esther Hayut and another liberal-leaning justice are set to retire after reaching the mandatory age of 70. But both judges can still issue their decisions by January, before the court may shift more conservative.

Ilan Rosenberg/Reuters

Protesters display a large banner in Hebrew reading “The Court is Supreme,” with "Supreme" in the largest type, as they demonstrate against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-right government's judicial overhaul, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 9, 2023.

During the hearing, the expanded panel of justices grilled both sides, although the main points of conflict came with relation to the government’s position.

“Democracy doesn’t die in a few big hits. Democracy dies in a series of small steps,” said Isaac Amit, currently slated to become the next chief justice. (The government is also seeking to change the appointment process as part of its overall judicial overhaul agenda.)

“Who represents democracy?”

Legal experts say there’s a chance the Supreme Court opts for a middle path whereby it decides the law can stand but chooses to interpret it in a narrower sense, removing its all-encompassing scope.  

Will this satisfy the current government and remove the threat of a constitutional crisis? Analysts are skeptical, and several security chiefs have already intimated in public and private remarks that they will remain loyal to the rule of law and Israeli democracy, and not to the diktats of government ministers.

“All the government needs to do in order to avoid a constitutional crisis is to adhere to the court ruling,” says Dr. Fuchs. “To threaten is much easier than to ignore the court ruling ... and the security chiefs won’t allow the government to simply ignore the ruling.”

What happens next in the battle over Israel’s fundamental character is in the hands of the judges, and subsequently, the government.

“We have a conflict, a battle between two branches of government in Israel. Who represents the people? Who represents democracy? Who has the upper hand? We have never been [here] before. And everyone is going to have to decide who they listen to,” says Professor Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at Hebrew University.

“Any government in Israel – I don’t care if they’re right or left – that brings the country to such a position is a government that is not only incapable of fulfilling its role but [also] a government that sees that what is good for the country is not in its best interest,” Professor Hazan says.

“We should never [have gotten] to this point.”

Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters

Russian President Vladimir Putin (second from left) and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visit the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia, Sept. 13, 2023. Mr. Putin's choice to meet at the cosmodrome, near the Chinese border, suggests Moscow might be intending to share space technology "within the rules," as Mr. Putin said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Wednesday at a space center in far eastern Russia saying, “One old friend is better than two new ones.”

That may be more than just a pithy proverb.

Both the Russian and North Korean delegations at the Vostochny Cosmodrome, near the Chinese border, included officials responsible for munitions, suggesting an urgent Russian interest in gaining access to North Korea’s reputedly huge stockpiles of Soviet-standard weaponry to feed its ordnance-intensive war effort in Ukraine.

But analysts suggest that something more than a single transaction is underway. Both Mr. Putin and Mr. Kim made frequent, if selective, public allusions to the strong Soviet-era relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang, and the North Korean leader offered effusive endorsement of Russia’s current struggle against “hegemony,” saying, “We will always stand together [with Russia] against imperialism.”

Russia, analysts say, has given up on any hopes of reconciliation with the West and as an alternative is rebuilding a semblance of the old “Soviet bloc,” country by country, on a bilateral basis, not as an alliance like the Warsaw Pact but something more like a coalition of diverse states that are disaffected with U.S. hegemony.

“Nobody is interested in forming a bloc these days,” says Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser. “This is about countering the so-called rules-based international order, which has undermined its own rules by sanctioning many countries, like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and lots of others. Some of those rules might be reasonable, but then they [the West] go and violate their own rules when it suits them. Russia is a country that’s too big to be sanctioned, and it can bring together those countries in a common cause.”

Mikhail Metzel/Sputnik/Kremlin/Reuters

In his public remarks with Mr. Kim, Mr. Putin referenced technical cooperation, specifically in the realm of rocket, space, and satellite technology. For Mr. Kim, the prestige of possessing such capabilities possibly outweighs any concern for feeding his population.

Restoring relations

The Soviet Union played a key role in creating North Korea after World War II, installing Mr. Kim’s grandfather, former communist guerilla Kim Il Sung, as leader of the new Pyongyang regime. When North Korea invaded the U.S.-backed South Korea in 1950, both the USSR and China helped Pyongyang fight a U.S.-led international force to a standstill. This resulted in a 1953 armistice that has frozen the conflict in place for more than seven decades. But North Korea was never an outright Soviet satellite, always walking a careful line between its two great power sponsors, Moscow and Beijing.

Following the USSR’s collapse, Moscow’s aid and support were withdrawn as Russia sought to integrate economically, and even politically, with the West. Pyongyang’s quest for nuclear weapons and ballistic missile technology was condemned by Moscow, which appears to genuinely oppose the idea of a nuclear-armed North Korea: Both Russia and China still enforce United Nations Security Council sanctions against its programs.

After Mr. Putin came to power, relations with Pyongyang improved. But it was only following the fiasco of Donald Trump’s attempts to reach out to North Korea amid worsening U.S.-Russia relations in 2019 that Mr. Kim had a full-scale meeting with Mr. Putin in the Pacific Russian city of Vladivostok and began the full rapprochement that appears to be continuing today.

There have been no top-level contacts until now because “North Korea has been shut down due to COVID for three years,” says Alexander Vorontsov, a Korea expert at the official Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow. “So we are just restoring a process that began earlier.”

Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs columnist for the Moscow daily news outlet Kommersant, says that “military cooperation is probably the cornerstone of this relationship. But beyond that, there’s a lot of political symbolism. Russia is trying to restore its relations with many countries that were in the former Soviet orbit, utilizing the nostalgia of that past connection and also their present isolation and need for a friend, on a case-by-case basis. This meeting signals that North Korea is on board with Russia.”

The war in Ukraine has clearly added urgency to Russia’s outreach. However, it’s not just about obtaining Pyongyang’s immediate political support and potential deals for military supplies and labor, analysts suggest. It’s also a bit of high-level geopolitics. Russia previously had good economic and political relations with South Korea, but those have evaporated since the war began, and, at the United States’ behest, Seoul even started supplying ammunition to Ukraine. So both Moscow and Pyongyang are signaling that they have alternatives, which they are actively developing.

Lee Jin-man/AP

A TV screen at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea, shows a report of North Korea's ballistic missiles, Sept. 13, 2023. North Korea fired two ballistic missiles toward the sea Wednesday, as leader Kim Jong Un rolled through Russia on an armored train toward a meeting with President Vladimir Putin. The text reads, "North Korea, fired two ballistic missiles ahead of a meeting between North Korea and Russia."

Friendly, but with limits

Russia’s hunger for North Korea’s ample stocks of military materiel has dominated the conversation, but what Russia may give Pyongyang in return remains an open question. North Korea, an impoverished hermit state under decades of sanctions, probably needs just about everything. Russia can offer food, energy, and a range of other goods.

But in his public remarks with Mr. Kim, Mr. Putin referenced technical cooperation, specifically in the realm of rocket, space, and satellite technology. For Mr. Kim, the prestige of possessing such capabilities possibly outweighs any concern for feeding his population. Russian experts say that Mr. Putin’s willingness to help in these areas probably doesn’t include anything to do with nuclear weapons, though it might affect North Korea’s ballistic missile program.

“I think Russia will be pretty cautious not to get involved into areas that might be seen as very sensitive, not just to Japan and South Korea, but also to China, which really doesn’t want to see North Korea acquire too many sophisticated capabilities,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a Moscow-based foreign policy journal. “Russia will try to cooperate in ways that cannot be formally seen as violations of international [sanctions] regimes.”

One more item Russia may be quietly negotiating about with North Korea is labor. Russia has announced plans to rebuild the parts of Ukraine that it has captured. But they are tentative and deeply controversial, including claims to be already reconstructing the ruined city of Mariupol, which was occupied early in the war. Any large-scale building program would require a lot of skilled construction workers, something North Korea has in ample supply. It’s a subject that’s been widely discussed in the Russian media for over a year.

“It’s not clear what stage this conversation has reached, but North Korean manpower would be an effective tool should a reconstruction plan for those territories ever go into full swing,” says Mr. Strokan. “At this point, it’s just talk, but down the road, it’s a real possibility.”

Bryan Dozier/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks about challenges facing higher education, including high cost, at a Monitor Breakfast, Sept. 13, 2023, in Washington.

America’s education landscape can feel like a battlefield with wars being waged over reading, cultural issues, school funding, and college admission processes. 

But at a breakfast with reporters hosted by The Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona emphasized the need for a level playing field as students from all walks of life move from early childhood programs through college or apprenticeship training. Calling out the latter, he says the nation has a “broken higher education system.”

Runaway costs, he says, have saddled too many people with student loan debt or prevented them from stepping foot into a college or university altogether. 

The Supreme Court, however, struck down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan in June, which would have forgiven up to $20,000 in debt for those who make less than $125,000 a year. The administration, in turn, debuted the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, which adjusts loan payments based on income and family size and offers forgiveness after certain timespans.

“We’re banking on the fact that if we open doors to higher education, not only are our families going to be better, but our country is going to be better,” Dr. Cardona says.

The nation’s top education official also took aim at what he describes as “targeted attacks” against LGBTQ+ students and students of color through curriculum changes, book bans, and other efforts to stymie diverse points of view in the classroom. Dr. Cardona says that his department’s Office for Civil Rights will be investigating claims related to alleged hostile learning environments or civil rights violations.

Though he acknowledges the federal government’s role in school-based instructional decisions is limited, Dr. Cardona says he won’t be silent as an educator or a father.

“You’re more likely to find the protagonist of a book being a puppy than a Latino in this country,” he says. “What message does that send to my kids?”

As a new academic year gets underway – with stubborn pandemic-era challenges and an election year around the corner – here’s more of what Dr. Cardona had to say during the Monitor Breakfast. Excerpts have been lightly edited for clarity.

College enrollment hasn’t recovered since the pandemic. At the same time, members of Generation Z have shown less interest in pursuing higher education. How is your department tackling those dual challenges?

We have to evolve our thinking to make sure that our students have pathways. And when you graduate with a credential from a high school or from a two-year college, where you don’t have $100,000 in debt, it doesn’t mean you’re done. It means you can go into the workforce, make $75,000, make $80,000, continue [and] get an advanced degree. 

Oftentimes, it’s the company that’s paying for your higher education now, and then [you] make a really good salary on something that you love.

We have to make it more accessible, more affordable, and we have to show the return on investment in a four-year degree. And I’m challenging higher-ed, four-year institutions to get to the table, too, to show that value.

With critically low literacy skills among students, there’s a shift underway toward the phonics-based “science of reading” approach. Will the federal government back those reforms through funding choices?

We certainly want to support states and districts that are using evidence-based practices, and that’s a requirement, but we fall short of requiring a specific curricular program.

If the program is an evidence-based program that has evidence to show that it works, it would be something that we would consider supporting. And that’s where I want to be careful not to single out any one particular program over another. They have to be evidence-based. What’s the evidence that it works? Programs that have phonics, phonemic awareness, oral fluency – those are evidence-based.

Does the newly unveiled SAVE program encourage people to take out loans that are unaffordable and, eventually, will become the burden of taxpayers?

We are opening doors to higher education to people that would otherwise feel like it’s not available to them. It’s making higher education more accessible to more people and also informing them – better than we have in the past – of what fields are needed and which institutions provide you a better return on investment.

We’re going to have students making better decisions about which programs they want to go into. No one goes into it saying, “I’m going into this program because in 20 years, I’m going to have my debt relieved.” They go into it because they want to make good money.

Spending deadlines are approaching for the avalanche of federal funds given to schools during the pandemic. Are any additional federal investments on the horizon?

The federal government pays about 9% of education budgets. So we need to see an increase in the other 91% to maintain some of the strategies that we know work. I always tell governors, I tell state leaders, I tell local leaders – with education, just match the urgency of the president. 

How do states and local governments come up with that money?

I think we have to recognize that [it’s] pay now or pay later. You either invest in education, or you deal with the symptoms of underinvestment. As a country, we’ve normalized the symptoms of underinvestment.

To me, it’s really communicating the message that we are in this together and that it is a shared investment in our future.

Sixty years ago, just before midnight on Feb. 29, 1960, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit the coastal Moroccan town of Agadir. As many as 15,000 people were killed – a third of the city’s population. French and American military airplanes were quick to bring relief aid to the newly independent country.

Today, in the aftermath of what could prove to be Morocco’s most deadly earthquake since then – 2,800 people have been killed and thousands are unaccounted for – Paris and Washington have again offered to help. But this time, they have been rebuffed.

Moroccan nongovernmental organizations have teamed up with European aid organizations in search-and-rescue efforts, and Moroccan military helicopters have begun dropping aid packages into remote villages in the Atlas Mountains – the epicenter of the quake. But the government thus far has allowed only four countries – Spain, Britain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – to provide official aid.

As residents in isolated mountain areas struggle to get help, with some saying they feel abandoned, Morocco clearly needs assistance. So why is it being so discerning in asking for it?

“Morocco says it’s very hard to coordinate aid, and I’m sure it is very daunting. ... But everything is political in this region, and I think Morocco will prioritize aid from solid, reliable partners,” says Zine Ghebouli, a visiting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“They’re trying to filter partnerships, score diplomatic points in the future,” he adds. “Innocent people are dying as the authorities figure out their political maneuvering.”

Mosa'ab Elshamy/AP

Rescuers attempt to recover the body of a woman who was killed by the earthquake, in the town of Imi N'tala, Morocco, Sept. 12, 2023.

Up to Morocco to choose

Moroccan authorities have explained their choice as a logistical one, in order to avoid chaos at Marrakech airport and on severely damaged roads. On Tuesday, in a video message to the Moroccan public, French President Emmanuel Macron said that while “we have the possibility to provide direct humanitarian aid,” it was up to Rabat to organize international support.

“We are at the disposal of their sovereign decision,” he said.

But many observers point to geopolitical explanations for the brushoff. One key issue is the status of the Western Sahara, a territory that Morocco annexed in 1979 in breach of international law and where the United Nations has been trying for 30 years to hold a referendum among its inhabitants to choose between independence and integration into Morocco.

“The Sahara issue is the lens through which Morocco looks at the world,” King Mohammed VI declared in a speech last year.

Offers of quake aid from Morocco’s archrival and eastern neighbor, Algeria, which supports the Polisario independence movement in the Western Sahara, have also been ignored.

Spain, the United States, and Israel have recognized Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, while France has refused to do so. In 2020, the UAE became the first Arab country to open a consulate there.

“It’s obvious that the question of the Western Sahara is the most pertinent explanation. ... Morocco is sending a message,” says Khadija Mohsen-Finan, a Paris-based political scientist and specialist on the Maghreb region. “It’s a way to get the U.S. to be even more clear on its position and for France to take steps towards the U.S. and Spain on the issue.”

The United Kingdom, meanwhile, has recently sent signals of support for Rabat’s stance, and Morocco may favor London precisely because Britain is not a member of the European Union, some observers suggest.

Nacho Doce/Reuters

Children receive food, in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake, in Adassil, Morocco, Sept. 11, 2023.

The European Parliament tightened restrictions on entry to its building earlier this year for Qatari and Moroccan diplomats who had been accused of offering bribes to members of the parliament. The parliament also condemned Morocco for the first time in 25 years for human rights violations involving media freedom.

“Morocco was very angry ... about both of those issues,” says Pierre Vermeren, a historian of the Maghreb at Université de Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. “The U.K. is not part of the EU anymore, but they can offer that same proximity in terms of aid,” he points out. Morocco’s choices “are clearly meant to send a political signal.”

Prejudice and pride

Although Algeria, Morocco’s closest geographical neighbor, would seem an obvious channel for assistance to Morocco, the two countries have long been at loggerheads, and not only because of Algeria’s support for the Polisario Front. In 2021, the neighbors severed diplomatic ties after Algeria accused Morocco of using Israeli Pegasus software to spy on its officials.

Morocco has also been unhappy with French and Algerian moves towards mutual rapprochement, and with a 2021 decision by Paris to slash the number of visas available to Moroccans. Morocco has not had an ambassador in Paris since March, and a visit by Mr. Macron to meet Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has been repeatedly postponed.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

“Morocco has a very pragmatic, realistic approach” to diplomacy, says Mr. Ghebouli of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Morocco has objectives, and they’ll go as far as they need to go to reach those objectives. The end justifies the means.”

National pride is certainly part of the equation, he says. Algiers rebuffed Morocco’s attempts to help with Algeria’s deadly forest fires over the past three years, and Morocco’s accepting aid might be seen as acknowledging defeat. Opening up more channels for foreign aid would also expose fault lines in Morocco’s governance.

“Moroccan officials might also be a little ashamed,” says Dr. Vermeren of Université de Paris 1. “They like to offer a good image of the country, its beautiful beaches and hotels. But here you’d be exposing abject poverty in certain regions, terrible management of resources, and so on.”

Ultimately, says Dr. Vermeren, Morocco cannot reasonably manage hundreds of requests from foreign governments and aid organizations and must decide itself on the best way of reaching the unknown number of Moroccans still missing in remote, mountainous regions.

In the meantime, NGOs from around the world are stepping in – with or without an official green light. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies has launched an emergency call for $100 million to support victims of the earthquake. And in the region, voices are being raised about the importance of international support.

“There is an urgency, there is a moral duty that our country cannot shirk: to clearly show its solidarity with Morocco and send humanitarian aid as soon as possible,” wrote Algerian-born author and journalist Sid Ahmed Semiane on X (formerly Twitter). “No political conflict should silence our humanity.”

I make no bones about it. I love to spell. The seed was planted early on.

I recall once, when I was about 8, walking with my mother down a busy city street crowded with Christmas shoppers. She remarked, “What chaos.” And then she stopped and looked down at me. “Do you know how to spell ‘chaos’?” I gave it my best and began with, “k-a-y ...” But Mom came to the rescue and spelled the word out. “It’s a tough one,” she admitted. “But now you know something you didn’t know before.”

My father was part of the conspiracy to burnish my spelling chops. Once, while replacing a fuse in the basement as I looked on (I think I was 10), he referred to the electricity meter. “Spell ‘gauge,’” he prompted. Again, I struggled with the word until Dad took mercy on me. A couple of days later, out of the blue, he again asked me to spell the word, and I’m happy to say I nailed it. 

Ever since, I have loved to spell. Whenever I hear an unfamiliar word, even before I know what it means, I find myself mentally spelling it out. Thus it was with the recently acquired “anfractuosity,” a word I read in a news magazine about a migrant trying to overcome bureaucratic obstacles. (“Anfractuosity” refers to the twists and turns in a system.) I admit that I got so tied up in its spelling that I lost the thread of the story.

The thing about spelling is that orthography seems to have become de-emphasized over the years. When I was in elementary school, many moons ago, spelling was promoted with the same vigor one might employ in driving a team of horses. Spelling tests, spelling bees, spelling round robins. Of course, having been conditioned to spell well early on, I rose to all of these challenges and luxuriated in them. My reputation as a good speller grew to the point where, in fourth grade, I was asked to try out for a regional spelling bee. I drilled relentlessly with another student, reviewing list after list of challenging words. In the end I washed out, because I misspelled “syzygy.” (Oh, the shame!) 

I have since recovered. Nonetheless, being an aficionado of spelling is a lonely vigil in an age when it doesn’t seem to be that important to most folks. Even at the university where I teach, the English department has a newly established policy of not correcting students’ spelling. The philosophy, I presume, is that it will stifle the students’ creativity. There also seems to be an undercurrent of belief that English spelling is just too hard.

I don’t know about the stifling part, but asserting that English spelling is difficult strikes me as a red herring. There are languages infinitely more complicated than English, and their speakers nevertheless learn to spell their vocabularies. I smile when I consider a word I learned in my college German class, referring to a chemical reaction: Reaktionsgeschwindigkeitsbestimmenderteil.

And then there’s the Polish word for violin, imparted to me by my grandmother: skrzypce.

How on earth did I learn to spell these words or even remember them? The answer: practice, impelled by a sense that, at some level, it mattered.

But I don’t need academic rationales to enjoy the practice of good spelling. I don’t value it because I feel I’m saving civilization, and I don’t pretend to be a model for others. The truth is that it gives me pleasure. P-l-e-a-s-u-r-e.  

And I have never forgotten how to spell “syzygy.”

Reuters

Members of the Libyan Red Crescent push a truck through the mud in a flooded area near the town of Ajdabiya, Sept. 11.

Sudden tragedies like the catastrophic flooding in Libya this week uniquely reveal humanity’s ability to turn just as suddenly from apparently intractable conflict to unity and compassion.

For more than a decade, Libya has been riven by split government, warring factions, Islamist extremists, and foreign countries competing for resources and patronage. Now many of those same parties are joining in response to a disaster that has claimed at least 6,000 lives and displaced an estimated 20,000 others.

Assistance is pouring into the affected areas from towns across Libya as quickly as people can arrive. Airlifts of supplies and personnel are coming from countries and relief agencies across the Middle East. The United States and European Union have pledged additional support.

“We haven’t seen this type of unity for many years here in the country,” Al Jazeera’s Malik Traina reported. “We’re seeing also now volunteers and people giving whatever they can – water, food, medicine, whatever supplies they can.”

The rapid influx of relief aid and rescue support from friend and foe may prove salutary beyond meeting the immediate humanitarian needs. It illustrates a capacity for shared concerns at a time when Libya’s two rival and at-times warring governments are exploring proposals for stitching their country back together under a transitional unity government.

Abdul Hamid al-Dbeibeh, the leader of Libya’s internationally recognized government based in Tripoli in the west, declared on Tuesday that the country’s divisions “will not prevent us from helping you, and we will not fail to perform our duties toward you.” His government has earmarked millions of dollars in recovery funds and has begun airlifting emergency resources to the east, where the Mediterranean city of Derna and dozens of smaller flood-affected coastal towns fall under Libya’s rival administration.

His goodwill drew a healing reply. “We are one country,” said Abdulhadi Lhweej, foreign minister of the eastern government. “We welcome them.”

The disaster underscores the cost of Libya’s divided governance. When the weekend storm dropped as much as 9 1/2 inches of rain in under 24 hours, it exposed the country’s lack of emergency preparedness and the state of its neglected infrastructure. Two dams south of Derna failed. More than 20% of the city washed away in the wall of water. Residents report having had little or no warning. 

Now the unity and compassion flowing into Derna from across Libya opens a new opportunity for national renewal. “Given that Libya has been divided into two rival administrations in the east and west” for almost a decade, wrote Sansom Milton, a professor at Qatar’s Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, in Middle East Eye today, “this unity in the face of disaster could later be capitalised ... to foster reconciliation.” That requires “work towards restoring public trust.”