A recent op-ed in The Beacon, an online magazine created by students of New York City's Yeshiva University, is causing quite a stir in the Jewish community. Entitled "Why It's Time for Jews to Get Over the Holocaust," the article argues that Jews and Judaism would be better off if the memory of the Holocaust was demoted in the religion's collective narrative. Author Binyamin Weinreich writes: "To be sure, the Holocaust is crucially important. But why does it need to be singled out as if it's more special than other historical events, like it's qualitatively different from other historical events, like it's more than a mere historical event?"
Weinreich also contends that Holocaust-denial should not be considered a crime ("Do we arrest flat-earthers? Ancient Astronaut enthusiasts? Believers in ghosts? Why should denial of a historical event be considered a crime, something detrimental to society?"), and that the real lesson of the Holocaust "isn't about Jews and Germans and 1935. It's about the powerful and the weak, the superior and the Other." The article is more juvenile than vile, informed by cheap college-grade postmodernism and poorly argued -- a "shandah" if ever there was one.
And I'm gladWeinreich wrote it.
Not that I agree with him, quite the opposite. But he's not the only one of who feels that way -- there are lots of them out there, and the number is steadily growing. Jews need to have a serious discussion about what the meaning of the Holocaust will be once the survivor generation dies out -- better to get it out in the open sooner rather later.
For younger Jews (let's say, 25 and under) the significance of the Holocaust does not compute the way it did for previous generations. Nearly 70 years of frantic, dogged documentation has produced a Holocaust study body of work that is, quite literally, exhaustive. And yet, the sheer amount of information available has had a curious numbing effect on the children of the children of survivors. They have absorbed in great detail the information -- the whens, wheres, hows and whys -- of the Holocaust, often straight from the mouths of survivors, but exhibit little emotional reaction to, or connection with, it.
There's no need to speculate why this is the case, the answer is obvious: Jews are today in a place of comfort that the religion has not enjoyed since the end of the Davidic dynasty. Anti-Semitism is at an all-time low and its purveyors have been pushed beyond the most extreme margins of society. Young Jews face no social or professional barriers. And while Israel faces a threat from Iran, this generation of Jews has come to understand that the Jewish state always has and always will face some sort of Arab-infused existential threat and simply learned to live with it.
The incontrovertible rejoinder to Weinreich and others like him is that when Jews become complacent, when they get too comfortable -- when they forget their inherent otherness, to borrow a phrase -- bad things happen. This was precisely the narrative in the years before the Second World War and at other historical times when Jews were persecuted and killed. Carrying the backbreaking emotional weight of the Holocaust and six million dead, coreligionists is a defence mechanism -- a constant Shoa consciousness prevents the next Holocaust from happening.
All of this is true, but the argument will fall on deaf ears. It's been so long since the Holocaust happened. The world is different now. Jews are accepted, their enemies are derided. And if most of these young Jews aren't naive enough to think the Holocaust couldn't happen again, they are optimistic it won't.
The Holocaust will not fade away quickly. There will be some young Jews who see the movement away from Holocaust centricity as a call to action to keep the narrative going -- in most cases, as a duty to their parents and grand- and great-grandparents. And they may well find ways to further Holocaust education in new formats more suited to the Internet and social media. But with each passing generation, their ranks will be further depleted, until, at some point, the Holocaust will become what Weinriech envisions, just another historical episode.
If Jews are lucky enough to never experience another genocidal nightmare, they may well look back upon Weinreich as some sort of visionary, the one person who saw that the stultifying ordeal of persecution was truly and finally over. Frankly, I hope he's right -- we all know how the alternative storyline ends.
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tried to see..for some reason (that I still don't quite understand)...if there was some law breaking..even religious law breaking that was being dealt with through Hitler...by God...
the way he had done with Moses..
It was a stretch to 'go in there' and try to find some reasoning (not some correct reasoning...just some answer as to WHY someone would get a group of people to go along with murder) in such heinous acts..but the demented mind...the mind that is too high...too ungrounded...and maybe too drugged...may do strange things with information that those of us would...on earth..deal with using the commandments...for REAL people...as opposed to demons and devils in our spirituality.
Nothing I have studied about that time..has given me a concrete answer...as to WHY the people were killed...no attempt was made to explain it at all... no explanation that had to do with that time and that place...and those people...in any case.
Did you know that the three main semitic religions are Judaism, Christianity and Islam...?
makes you wonder what 'religion' Hitler was practicing.
in time
forcing another group away from their land
and their historical base of knowledge and connections
and then playing with them
to see how they might be able to kill
them
and how much these people could withstand before they died...
is wrong...purely and simply.
Now almost 70 years later, I am still some what subdued with a sadness as well as an anger about humanity, and the choices it can make. Not being Jewish, but Ukrainian, I too have relatives starved to death during the Holodomor era in 1931-33 where Stalin starved about 10 million Ukrainians to death. This event also turns my head, and leaves an unresolved anger in my belly. My concern today about the Holocaust, is that it's memory must not die, simply because humanity needs a memory good or bad. The Holocaust is no more or less important as is the Holodomor, or the people that invested their time and effort to make them happen. No one denies Hitler and no one denies Stalin, and they to, like all of us, have a history. Good article, thanks
That nation was, however, made necessary by over 1,000 years of persecution, restriction, and murder aimed at Jews.......of which the Holocaust was only the climax.
Zionism is only good sense.
Here is where we diverge, and I understand your loyalty to Israel which I will add is a legitimate, flourishing state.
There is no western democracy that mandates a state religion. There are already other democracies in the region--and more countries trying for it.
Homeland zionism--that Israel is a Jewish homeland, makes sense. Israel is thriving and flourishing as it should.
Revisionist Zionism is racism.It implies that there are "chosen" people and that they have more rights than non-chosen ones.
The mutual fear and mistrust between Israelis and Palestinians is awful. But what is worse is that Israel is controlling every aspect of life for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Bombing residential neighbourhoods in Gaza. Israel has overwhelming military power and is using it to occupy and imprison. There is not one Palestinian whose life is not affected. There is not one child in Gaza without PTSD symptoms.
This is not healthy for Israel either. Israelis know this, but their fear is real and their leaders play upon it.
THe brave ones speak out, in Ha'Aretz, for example. Ordinary people want to live in peace, as they all should.
"""when they forget their inherent otherness"" -----does not seem to mesh with """jews are accepted"""
Sadly, that does not seem to be happening anywhere. Imagine being part of a group of people who is being blamed for 911, all of the unrest in the Middle East, having death wished upon you by loud and obnoxious radicals all just because you are Jewish.
It is a shame that human beings are so disgraceful.
Mr. Weinreich is absolutely correct in saying Holocaust denial should not be illegal. On general principles I have a problem with the concept of thought-crime, and limitations on free speech.
As well, the Holocaust is not "about Jews and Germans and 1935". That was merely the climax of 1,000 years of the severe persecution of Jews throughout Europe, and the complete focus on 1933-45 and Germany serves to hide the rest of that long history........the history that makes Zionism only good sense.
Otherwise, I agree with Mr. Goldstein.
Not so fast. Antisemitism is all the rage amongst scholars these days. Yes, many claim that it's anti-Zionism they espouse, and for some that is undoubtedly true. But when you listen carefully to what is said and the double standards used for Israel and the Arab nations, there is little doubt that antisemitism is a motivator for many "anti-Zionists".
As an example, I've read many articles decrying Israel's blockade of the Gaza strip. What is almost never mentioned in these articles is why the blockade exits, which is to halt rocket bombardment of Israel from Gaza. That this is bombardment is seldom mentioned -- even to try to dismiss it as an insufficient reason for the blockade -- reveals the true motivations of the authors.
Anti-Zionism exists, and for most people of this view it is not steeped in anti-Semitism. This is not much more than a convenient excuse to de-legitimize criticism of Israel automatically.
These attacks are well documented, and there is no question of their existence. The fact that you would deny them suggests that you have been caught up in the anti-Israeli hysteria so prevalent these days.
Hey, they'd stop launching rockets if they weren't penned up in a ghetto for the last 60 years. It was their land after all, and nobody bothered asking them if they wanted to give it away for a Jewish State.
Why is that so hard to see for most? The question you asked is never preceded by this fact. Why is that? It's not giving a complete picture of the issue.
It should be painfully obvious to anyone that's spent 5 minutes looking at the problem. But you phrase it like the Palestinians just want to kill Israelis for fun and leisure.
Level the playing field, admit to the problem at hand, and then you might see progress.
But if you're gonna sit around asking loaded question, you're just part of the problem, not the solution.
Before that, the land belonged to the Turks, as part of the Ottoman Empire, for 600 years.....
They are not fighting for freedom of the Palestinian people and nor do they care about statehood in the way that we see it. They care about evicting the Jews from the Middle East. Why is that so hard to see? Do you like to see the abuse they level at their own people? How about the lack of freedom for women in Gaza or is that all just because of Israel?
I would like to see a free Palestine - free of all of the control put upon them by Hamas and other like minded organizations. I would like to see them free of the rhetoric as well that has come out of people who really do not want to admit to the history and intolerance that has been part of the Arab nations for centuries.
To understand where we've come from is to understand where we're going. This means not only remembering the past, but thinking intelligently about it. The Holocaust resulted in some of the most compelling ethical philosophy, from Arendt, Sartre, Levinas, Ricoeur, et al. In a sense, the Holocaust prompted us to begin the search for our humanity from the beginning.
The lasting impact of the Holocaust is still being felt in Europe and around the world; the decimation of an entire cultural lanscape in Germany and Russia, the creation of a Jewish state whose existence is still being questioned and whose government is still young, and diaspora populations around the world whose own cultural identity is still being shaped. We need to remember in order to put our present into context. To loose that context means we loose ouselves, and we loose the ability to think rationally, and more importantly to think ethically.