Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Introduction

The most infamous gas chamber began to function in the Auschwitz extermination camp in 1941 (Brugioni & Poirier 15). It resulted from a need to kill large numbers of people in a very limited amount of time. The gas chambers were built to process 12,000 prisoners a day (Brugioni & Poirier 20). The prisoners sent to the left were deceived into thinking they were going to be showered and disinfected (Brugioni & Poirier 20). Once they had undressed and were crowded into the chamber, Zyklon-B was introduced (Brugioni & Poirier 20). After all the prisoners had lost consciousness and died, their bodies were then brought to the crematorium and burned (Brugioni & Poirier 20). The remains of the original chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, once the camp was liberated, was rebuilt and turned into a museum that now houses various items collected from the prisoners, such as shoes, clothes, and even the cans that held the Zyklon-B granules. However, there is a group of people, Holocaust deniers, that dont believe this was the true purpose of the gas chambers.

What is Denial?

Typically there are two different kinds of deniers: Hard deniers and soft deniers (Miller 342). Hard deniers claim that the estimated five to six million murdered Jews were actually never killed and that the Holocaust, or at least the greater part of it is a hoax (Miller 342). Soft deniers acknowledge that some form of atrocity took place, but they refuse to believe that there was a plan to annihilate the Jews (Miller 342). Soft deniers try to attribute the high death rate among Jews and others to the nature of the war itself, citing factors such as disease and starvation, which themselves are sometimes attributed to atrocities inflicted by the Allies on Germany (Miller 342). Despite the level of denial, there tends to be a common belief among deniers that there are a lot of misconceptions that surround the gas chamber myth.

To offer insight into the thought process of a Holocaust denier, I will be presenting photographs that depict the role of the gas chambers in the Holocaust, along with the historians account of what is being shown in the photo. It is important to note that this account is parallel to the function and purpose of the Auschwitz gas chamber stated above. I will the show the deniers interpretation ripped right from The Rudolf Report.

Written by Germar Rudolf, pictured above, a German chemist and self-proclaimed chemical and technical expert on the gas chambers of Auschwitz, The Rudolf Report looks at the technicalities and mechanics surrounding the gas chambers and strives to disprove the eyewitness and historian accounts of their function generally accepted by the public. He is a frequent author in The Journal for Historical Review, a journal that dedicates its publication space to attempting to unveil supposedly incorrect interpretations in history such as the Holohoax. He is one of the founders of Holocaust revisionist theory. Revisionists look at history and based on evidence, new or otherwise, attempt to retell the story based on that evidence. Holocaust deniers ARE NOT revisionists; they attempt to reshape the story IN SPITE of evidence. They refer to themselves as revisionists and have established the journal in an effort to establish themselves within the academic society.

The deniers feel that the Nazis were extremely thorough. They had pictures from every checkpoint along the road of the Jewish peoples suffering. No photographs exist showing anything resembling such a group-gassing procedure (Kollerstrom). The claim is that there are a multitude of photos showing groups of people piling into gas chambers. There are vast amounts of photos showing piles of dead bodies on the other side of the gas chambers, but none show the recently suffocated bodies inside the gas chambers ready to be cremated (Kollerstrom).

Robert Faurisson, pictured above, is a French academic and was the first to publicize and emphasize the importance of the blue prints of the crematoria and morgues (Robert Faurisson). He was also one of the first people to question the function of the gas chambers (Robert Faurisson). As another denier, Faurisson, also challenges historians saying, Show me or draw me a Nazi gas chamber! Stop giving me words. Stop showing me a building, a door, a wall or, sometimes only hair and shoes. I need a full picture of one of those fantastic chemical slaughterhouses. I need a physical representation of the extraordinary weapon of an unprecedented crime. If you dare to say that what tourists are shown in some camps is, or was, such a gas chamber, come on and say it (Faurisson). The reason it is so easy for them to doubt the gas chambers function and existence is that there are no photographs or videos of them actually playing the role in the Holocaust that historians claim they did. This allows the deniers to pick apart the account of the gas chambers, with little evidence to contradict them.

Why Focus on the Gas Chambers?

It is my belief that the emphasis on the gas chamber debate stems from the general sense of disconcertion caused by the industrialization of death. The more the historians focus on the gas chambers as a means of proving that such large numbers of Jews died in such an atrocious way, the more the opposing side has to focus on it to attempt to disprove it. Adam Jones, in his textbook Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, says that his preferred definition of genocide is the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in whole or in part any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means (18). In parallel with Jones definition, many historians seem to emphasize the need for intent in genocide. Total acceptance of the role of the gas chambers is the full acknowledgement that there was, in fact, planned intent behind the deaths of those who were killed in the gas chambers. That means the total acceptance of the evil that mankind is enthusiastically capable of. Many become deniers because such enthusiasm for death is, for them, incomprehensible.

Charles Krafft is an artist from Seattle who has recently begun to put Nazi subtleties into his art (Studio 360 Charles Krafft Interview). Just recently he has come out about his belief that the Holocaust never happened. When interviewed by Studio 360 Krafft said that I just dont buy this thing about 2,000 people a day being gassed at Auschwitz (Studio 360 Charles Krafft Interview) (To listen to the full interview follow the link http://www.studio360.org/2013/mar/15/charles-krafft-responds/). The gas chambers are also one of the most damning pieces of evidence against the Nazis. They are objects that we can access even today. When Nazis began destroying evidence against them, the majority of the concentration camps remained. The debate against the gas chambers also allows deniers like Rudolf to develop a very technical, detailed, dry argument which would be difficult for the general public to counteract; some may even fall victim to it, such as Charles Krafft.

The Debate

Pictured above is Zyklon-B. This substance is hydrogen cyanide gas absorbed by clay type granules and the gas would be released after it is exposed to air (Pressac 15). Originally used as a pesticide, historians say Zyklon-B was the poison of choice for death in the gas chambers (Pressac 16). After the Jews were crowded into the gas chambers the gases would be released and cause a slow asphyxiation (Brugioni & Poirier 20).

Deniers claim that Zyklon-B was used at Auschwitz and other extermination camps, not as a means of killing Jews but as an insecticide (Rudolf 59). They claim that it was vital in attempting to maintain hygiene that mattresses be deloused (Rudolf 59). Not only were mattresses deloused but the supposed gas chambers were actually disinfestation rooms where the Jews would be exposed to non-lethal doses of the gas (Rudolf 59).

In order for the Zyklon-B to be effective, the gas chambers would have to be equipped with air tight doors and windows, according to historians. Without these the gas would seep into the other areas of the crematorium and dilute to a level that lacked lethality. The doors also swung open in an outward direction with a place for a peephole to track the progress of the killing.

Rudolf claims that the original delousing chamber doors were made with wood planks, not only were these not airtight but they would also absorb some of the hydrogen cyanide gas (Rudolf 103). These original doors allegedly swung inward, which would not be efficient when blockaded by dead bodies. He acknowledges that when the camps were discovered there were outward-swinging airtight doors (Rudolf 104). However, he said that these were added later when certain rooms in the crematoriums were changed from delousing centers to air raid shelters (Rudolf 104).

To determine how Zyklon-B was introduced into the gas chambers, historians, reliant on a very crucial eyewitness account from Michal Kula, have attempted to recreate a picture of the structures (Rudolf 130). Michal Kula was a former prisoner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp who constructed the wire mesh pillars while working in the metalworking shop (Rudolf Lectures 397). He described the device to the left, claiming it was made out of heavy wire mesh and was protruded through a hole in the ceiling adjacent to the concrete pillars that stabilized the structure (Rudolf Lectures 397). The pellets were poured into the top, removable part of this structure and the vapors diffused throughout the chamber below.

Rudolf viciously disputes this claim, even to go so far as to accuse the witness of lying, by saying that there is no shred of documentation describing the device except that which the historians themselves have created. His first issue with the mesh structures is that they would need to be anchored into the ceiling and floor with hoop irons (Rudolf 123). The installment of such devices would be done at the time of construction, and thus, there would be tiny holes where the anchors would be put into the ground and ceiling. He says no such traces exist (Rudolf 123). Secondly, Rudolf claims that wire mesh would not be panic-proof. Surely, he claims, Jews who are entirely aware of their fate would do everything in their power to escape. There would need to be a solid steel barrier to keep the victims from completely ripping out the mesh columns (Rudolf 132). A panic-proof, outer column made of massive steel, a middle wire mesh column (with no purpose at all but to hinder the HCN from spreading out), and a removable inner wire mesh column, another laborious, material as well as time consuming, and expensive task (Rudolf 132).

The actual introduction hole for the mesh pillars in the roof of the gas chambers is when the debate becomes even more complicated. Historians claim that the holes were patched up when the gas chamber was turned into an air raid shelter. Therefore the hole in the picture to the right is not an introduction hole, it is just a hole in the roof that has formed over time due to the deterioration of the structure.

Rudolf claims that historians suggest this picture is of an introduction hole, which, according to him is simply not true. He says that steel reinforcement rods would have to run wreath-like around the supposed hole (Rudolf 123). However, he claims, all pictures of the introduction holes, including this one, show the reinforcement rods being bent backward to look as though they are in a circle (Rudolf 122). Such holes with no plasterwork to polish off their rough edges, however, could neither have been sealed against escaping poison gas, nor against intruding soil and water, nor would it have been possible to safely install any panic-proof introduction devices in them. Using such crude holes would truly be an incredibly stupid piece of bungling (Rudolf 125).

Historians claim that once the Zyklon-B is introduced into the gas chambers via the introduction columns, the Hydrogen Cyanide will slowly dissipate into the chamber. Once it reaches a certain level of toxicity, there would be muscular convulsions due to muscle suffocation (Pressac 13). Hydrogen cyanide traps oxygen in the blood stream, which prevents it from entering the cells of the body. According to eyewitnesses, within 10 minutes the people inside the gas chambers will lose consciousness and have suffocated to death (Rudolf 215).

It is claimed in The Rudolf Report that the conditions described by the historians would have required a rapid release of Hydrogen Cyanide, a rate that is impossible with all of the present factors. According to Rudolf, the amount of time that testimonies claimed the prisoners were in the chambers for would not have been enough time for toxicity to reach a deadly level because of several conditions. One main factor is the humidity that would have been caused by the massive amount of bodies in the delousing chambers, the more bodies: the more heat and moisture that is given off (Rudolf 199z). This would have drastically slowed the release of the Hydrogen Cyanide so that it wouldnt have reached a toxic level by the time the Jews were released from the chamber. Another is the suggestion that most of these exterminations took place in the winter months. Zyklon-B only releases gas slowly at frost temperatures (Rudolf 204).

Sacred Memory

Since publishing the report, Rudolf has been accused, tried and convicted of being a German Historical Dissident (Rudolf interview by David Duke). His doctoral dissertation was then denied, he claims, because he used the knowledge gained to obtain his doctorate, namely chemistry and physics, to compose an analysis of Auschwitz which later got him charged of a crime (Rudolf interview by David Duke). He went into exile in Britain with his wife and two children while waiting to serve jail time (Rudolf interview by David Duke). He was then divorced and now resides in the United States. He was granted citizenship after marrying an American woman (Rudolf interview by David Duke) (The full interview can be accessed here ). In America, our rights are sacred. We treasure and fight for things we feel we are entitled to, such as freedom of speech and thought. Regrettably, these freedoms allow Rudolf, unlike in Germany, to continue to pick apart the account of the historians, and in turn, slaughter the memory of those who died as a result of them. Rudolf has continued to publish books, including one called Dissecting the Holocaust. He speaks, along with other deniers, at college campuses and other institutions across the country. He has since continued to publish articles, magazines and books about the supposed inaccuracies surrounding not only the gas chambers but the Holocaust in general. They continue to edit and publish scholar based articles that work to disprove the theory of the Holocaust. They have websites; there is even a page that can be liked on Facebook. All of this is done with no repercussions whatsoever. Is there a point where the revered sanctity of our rights must come second to the preservation of the sacred memory of millions slain?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Brugioni, Dino and Poirier, Robert. The Holocaust Revisited: A Retrospective Analysis of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Extermination Complex. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 1979. Web.

Faurisson, Robert. Jean-Claude Pressacs New Auschwitz Book: A Brief Response to a Widely-Acclaimed Rebuttal of Holocaust Revisionism. The Journal for Historical Review 14.1 (1994): 23. Web. 2 April 2013.

Kollerstrom, Nicholas. Jewish Holocaust or German Holocaust? Auschwitz Gas Chambers Myth. Exposing the Holocaust Hoax Archive. 9 September 2009. Web.

Krafft, Charles. Interview by Kurt Andersen. Studio 360. N.p, 13 March 2013. Web. 26 March 2013.

Miller, Scott. Denial of the Holocaust. Social Education 59.6 (1995): 342-345. ProQuest. 19 February 2013.

Robert Faurisson. Revisionists. N.p. n.d. Web. 2 April 2013.

Rudolf, Germar. Interview by David Duke. The David Duke Show. N.P. Web. 26 March 2013.

Rudolf, Germar .Michal Kula Lectures on the Holocaust. Web.

Rudolf, Germar. The Rudolf Report. Chicago: Theses & Dissertations Press, 2003. Print.

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Holocaust Denial: The Gas Chamber Debate | Imaging Genocide

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Ive been trying to imagine what Gina Peddy could have been thinking when, on 8 October, she informed a group of Southlake, Texas, elementary school teachers that, if their classroom libraries included books about the Holocaust, students should also be steered toward books with opposing views.

The executive director for curriculum and instruction for the Carroll Independent school district, Peddy later explained that she was simply helping her staff comply with Texas House Bill 3979. Signed into law on 1 September by Governor Greg Abbott, the ruling prohibits educators from discussing controversial historical, social or political issues. If these subjects do arise, HB 3979 mandates that teachers explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective.

Peddys speech was secretly recorded by one of the training session attendees. On the tape, one can hear the bewildered protests that greeted her directive. When a teacher demanded to know how one is supposed to oppose the Holocaust, Peddy replied: Believe me. Thats come up.

If only someone had recorded the conversations in which that subject came up. Did any of the participants observe that the only diverse perspective on the Holocaust is Holocaust denial: the odious contention that Hitler didnt arrange the murder of 6 million Jews and hundreds of thousands of Roma, homosexuals, Poles and political prisoners; that Auschwitz and Treblinka were fabrications designed to discredit the Nazis quest for racial purity? Did anyone suggest that, under the new guidelines, it would now be illegal to teach The Diary of Anne Frank without citing the loathsome broadsides that have questioned the diarys authenticity, among them Ditlieb Felderers 1979 Anne Franks Diary, A Hoax, which calls the iconic journal the first pedophile pornographic work to come out after World War II.

Traditionally, Holocaust denial has been fueled by the rawest and most egregious sort of antisemitism. Theres no way of knowing if that particular brand of bigotry was a factor in this case, but my hunch is that Peddy was talking about the Holocaust partly as a way of not talking about the other controversial topics that are the true focus of HB 3979: racism and LGBTQ+ rights.

One cant help wondering if the response would have been quite so widespread and intense if Peddy had suggested that books on race relations be countered by other books addressing the toll the very existence of systemic racism. In fact, Rickie Farah, a fourth-grade teacher in the Southlake district, was recently reprimanded by the school board trustees for making Tiffany Jewells This Book is Anti-Racist available to her students; her case attracted minimal attention beyond the local press.

The question of what specific books and topics can and cant be taught is only part of whats so disturbing about HB 3979 and Peddys advice to the teachers. Whats troubling is the idea that legislators, rather than educators, should determine and impose limitations on a school curriculum. The problem is the way in which Peddy and, presumably, others have interpreted the new law to mean that teachers and their pupils should ignore the evidence of history, that students shouldnt be encouraged to distinguish between what actually happened and what didnt, and that a range of hot-button subjects are not merely inappropriate but forbidden to mention in a classroom setting.

If teachers are obliged to tell their classes that there is another point of view about whether the Holocaust occurred, must American history lessons now also include books asserting that the United States was never a slave-holding nation or that racism ended with the Emancipation Proclamation? If the discussion surrounding a novel or story leads a class to conclude that LGBTQ+ people are entitled to basic human rights, must the class be asked to seriously consider the opposing view: that those rights should be denied to anyone who differs from the heterosexual norm?

Education is a dialectical process. Lively classroom debates are an essential learning tool, a way of teaching kids to weigh evidence, to process information, to consider options, to make informed decisions. But HB 3979 aims to prohibit teachers from discussing some of the most important and relevant matters that concern us all. It discourages students from trying to find answers to the questions that will help determine what kind of adults they grow up to be, what kind of country and world they will live in.

We are already seeing the consequences of an underfunded, unequal and deteriorating educational system. Students who dont learn about history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Children who are prohibited from discussing the most critical issues of the day will gravitate into progressively more atomized and irreconcilable factions, unable to participate in the free and open exchange of ideas on which our democracy depends. Kids who dont learn, early on, how to distinguish truth from fantasy will become adults who are prey to the self-serving and inaccurate claims of demagogic leaders. They will fall victim to every loony conspiracy theory that makes its way on to social media and make decisions that work against their own, and their societys, best interests.

Persuading students that lies about history, about social forces, about science, about the world around them are as valid as demonstrable truths will turn us into a nation of con artists and their hapless marks, a country of liars and of people who have never been taught how to tell when they are being lied to.

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Texas schools are being told to teach opposing views of the Holocaust. Why? - The Guardian

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Weve all heard the notion, There are two sides to every story.

It isnt true. There are many stories that do not have two sides.

Southlake, Texas is a community that lies next door to the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. It achieved notoriety last week about this very issue.

An administrator with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake was meeting with teachers to instruct them on how to stock their classroom libraries when the subject of recent statewide legislation, as well as the Holocaust, came up.

Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979, the admin could be heard saying on tape. And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust, that you have one that has an opposing, that has other perspectives.

The Texas State House Bill 3979, which went into effect last month, mandates that if public school teachers choose to discuss current events or widely debated or controversial public policy or social issues, they should present numerous points of view without giving deference to any one perspective.

Its one thing to talk with youth about issues about which people of good will express different rational ideas from different responsible perspectives. This, I think, is what the Texas bill was aiming at.

But note the qualifiers here: people of good will rational ideas responsible perspectives. Holocaust denial is another thing altogether. Such an opposing perspective fails all three of these qualifiers.

Any denial (or diminishment) of the fact that over six million Jews were slaughtered by the Third Reich (along with the killing of Gypsies, Jehovahs Witnesses, homosexuals, blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, Communists and Social Democrats, dissenting clergy, prisoners of war, Slavic peoples and many individuals from the artistic communities whose works Hitler condemned) is at least irrational, irresponsible, and likely of bad will.

We are caught in a Wild, Wild West moment where the Two sides to every story adage is hauled out to justify every alt narrative: like alternative science, or big lie, or Q theory, or any one of the myriad of fables cooked up in the fetid hothouse of extremist politics.

The strategy of these fabulists is simple and effective. They count on decent people, who want to be reasonable and courteous, to give equal weight to all sides (which is a terrible mistake: all sides are certainly not of equal weight). They attack any appearance of rationality and responsibility. And when the last qualifier goodwill finally falls, thats when the kraken of mob violence is unleashed.

That is the very moment when a malevolent crank is able to lead a bunch of brown-shirted Sturmabteilung, out of a failed beer hall putsch in 1923, to deform Germany from a democratic republic into an authoritarian fascist state.

There is no reason to believe that the same thing would never happen here.

When it comes to historic evils, there are no two sides. Denial of hard realities is never just another perspective. One may not like various realities like pandemics and elections but the facts remain, and cooking up conspiracy theories will only damage the warp and weave of the fabric of society.

Im happy to report that the Southlake school district has tried to put things to rights. Superintendent Lane Ledbetter apologized on Facebook (of all things):

As the Superintendent of Schools, I express my sincere apology regarding the online article and news story released today, his statement reads. Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust, he continued. As if that ever needed to be said.

In Germany today, there are not two sides of the Holocaust, nor of the entire Nazi legacy. The Nazi party is banned. Swastikas are verboten. Commemorations have been expunged and toppled. No one needs memorials to remember that horrible past.

Why? Because decent Germans dont want another beer hall putsch. They know, from ghastly experience, that a failed unpunished coup is only practice for a successful one later on.

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts. So said U.S. Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger in 1975.

It holds true today. There may be different opinions. But theres only one story.

Thadd White is Group Editor of the Bertie Ledger-Advance, Chowan Herald, Perquimans Weekly, The Enterprise & Eastern North Carolina Living. He can be reached via email at twhite@ncweeklies.com.

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There are not two sides to every story... - The Daily Advance

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

There are few historical taboos in Italian politics. Politicians can easily get away with saying Italian dictator Benito Mussolini did good things, tweeting the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, or even promoting a World War II bunker-turned-tourist attraction with guides cosplaying as Wehrmacht officers. But theres one thing that will still get a public figure in serious trouble: casting doubt on whether the so-called foibe killings of Italians by Yugoslav communist partisans at the end of World War II was ethnic cleansing and should be put on the same level as the Holocaust.

Tomaso Montanari, an art historian and rector of the University for Foreigners of Siena, found out the hard way. After publishing an opinion piece where he criticized how the right had weaponized the memory of such massacres, for a few weeks between August and September, Montanari became the most reviled figure in Italian media.

And it wasnt just the right-wingers. Sure, Montanari was attacked by Giorgia Meloni, leader of the post-fascist Brothers of Italy, but attacks also came from the centrist and liberal camps. A lawmaker from Italia Viva, the centrist party of former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, demanded the rector be fired in a country where such cancellation requests are quite rare. Italys most prominent newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, ran a front-page article accusing Montanari of infamy.

The foibe mass killings are a gruesome historical episode not widely known outside of Italy. Until recently, the event was barely discussed and hardly memorialized. But in the past few decades, the foibe has become somewhat of a civil religion for Italian institutions and a large chunk of the political class, elevating the massacre to almost the same level as the extermination of European Jews for part of the Italian public. In fact, the foibe killings are the only war crime that enjoys a national remembrance day, other than the Holocaust, and it is not uncommon for small cities to celebrate both remembrance days together, since they are only two weeks apart.

In other words, the foibe has gone from being an almost forgotten episode to something that is memorialized, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, as [Italys] own Holocaust.

The conservative candidate who lost Romes recent mayoral election, Enrico Michetti, went as far as complaining that the foibe massacres unfairly enjoy less interest than the extermination of European Jews. And on top of that, he did so using an explicitly antisemitic trope: Maybe its because [the foibe victims] did not own banks or belong to a lobby, he wrote last year. Ruth Dureghello, president of the Jewish Community of Rome, tweeted that Michettis words are dangerous and hide a disturbing prejudice.

But even without Michettis overt antisemitic clich, the comparison would still be both inappropriate and politically charged. The Holocaust represents such a source of moral capital and authority that to compare the foibe, or any other event, to it is to stake a powerful moral claim about persecution and victimhood, said Pamela Ballinger, a professor at the University of Michigan.

After all, the foibe and the Holocaust were crimes of two very different scales: One was the systematic extermination of an ethnic group throughout Europe that claimed the lives of 6 million Jews. The other was a very specific set of brutal attacks, far more limited in time and scale. Historians put the figure of Italians murdered by Yugoslav partisans between 3,000 and 5,000 people. Some of them were bureaucrats and officials belonging to Mussolinis regime, but many others were ordinary citizens the Yugoslav militias accused of regime complicity even if they played no role in it.

Its not surprising that the Italian right, which has long had an ambivalent relationship with fascism, has tried to weaponize the foibe since the 1990s. The rights argument was Mussolinis regime did bad things and was complicit with the Holocaust, but the other side was equally bad; they also committed genocidal crimes. Whats most surprising is such a narrative eventually became dominant and was embraced even by progressive leaders. Italian President Sergio Mattarella, a moderate Catholic, and former President Giorgio Napolitano, a former communist, both framed the foibe as ethnic cleansing.

The foibe-Holocaust equation is deeply troubling. Gadi Luzzatto Voghera, director of Italys Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center Foundation and a member of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, calls it a Holocaust distortion. Although he doesnt object to a memorial day for the massacres victims, Luzzatto Voghera said hes worried by how it has been used to draw comparisons with the genocide of European Jews. Thats a misrepresentation that ignores what the Holocaust was, he said.

Until recently, the foibe-Holocaust equation has remained a marginal debate. But now, the right is pushing it more explicitlywith two bills.

The first, a national bill sponsored by the Brothers of Italy and currently under discussion in Italys parliament, would criminalize foibe denial, just as Holocaust denial is outlawed in Italy. The second, a local law already approved in the northeastern region of Veneto, states that to receive local public funds, institutes doing historical research must acknowledge the foibe killings were, first, a genocide, and, second, had at least 12,000 victims.

But actual researchers would disagree on that characterization and the number of victims. More than a genocide, they say, it was a gruesome war crime with political motivations. The United Nations defines genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, but in this case, the victims of foibe were killed because they were perceived, rightly or wrongly, as associated with the fascist regime or because they opposed then-Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Titos expansionist goals.

Raoul Pupo, professor of contemporary history at the University of Trieste, said foibe cannot be characterized as ethnic cleansing but rather as mass political violence, since Yugoslav militias targeted ethnic Italians because they associated them with a nation that had oppressed Slavs for decades.

The term foibe technically refers to chasms in the ground that are common in the upper Adriatic Sea, the coastal area between northeastern Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. But because such caves have been used as mass graves, it refers to two separate mass killings of Italians perpetrated by Yugoslav partisans: in 1943 in Istria and in 1945 between Trieste and Gorizia.

Several formerly Austro-Hungarian territories with a mixed population of Slavs, Germans, and Italians were transferred to Italy after World War I. At that point, Italian authorities launched a ferocious campaign to forcefully Italianize 500,000 Croats and Slovenes. The situation worsened when Italy, then ruled by the fascist regime, invaded Yugoslavia in 1941. At that time massacres became the way to solve problems for all parties involved, Pupo said. The Italian army, he noted, tried to repress Yugoslav militias through mass collective punishments, burning villages, killing all the men, and deporting women and children to concentration camps.

The first foibe war crime in Istria, now Croatia, took place in the immediate aftermath of the fall of fascism. Croatian partisans in the area arrested and murdered anyone they believed to be connected with the fascist regime. Most of the victims were ethnic Italian landowners, small bourgeoisie, priests, or bureaucrats from Italy, said Italian-Slovenian historian Joze Pirjevec, author of the book Foibe: A History of Italy.

It was a horrible act, the historian said, but it must be viewed in the context of World War II, in which violence was the norm. Around 500 ethnic Italians were slaughtered in the 1943 Istria massacre just after German and Italian troops murdered thousands of Yugoslavs.

The other foibe massacre took place two years later between Trieste and Gorizia, Italy. It was bigger in scale and had an explicit vendetta carried under the direct control of the Yugoslav military police, the OZNA after the end of the war, Pirjevec said.

The area, which is still part of Italy today, was occupied for about a month by Titos army, which launched a campaign of violence again fascists, collaborators, and anyone perceived as an enemy of Tito, including anti-fascist partisans. The order was to purge not on the base of nationality but of fascism. They killed between 3,000 and 4,000 people in 1945, some of them shot on the spot and others deported to a prison camp and starved to death. Thousands of ethnic Italians left the upper Adriatic region that became part of Yugoslavia, fearing persecution.

After the war, both episodes disappeared almost immediately from collective memory. Relations between Italy and Yugoslavia were relatively good, at least after Tito broke with then-Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and Italian leaders had no interest in reopening an old wound.

But things changed in the 1990s.

When the Cold War came to an end, so did the postwar Italian political system that relied on an unwritten pact of keeping fascist nostalgia out of the mainstream. In the vacuum that followed, Silvio Berlusconi came to power as prime minister and chose among his allies the National Alliance, born from the ashes of the Italian Social Movement, a proudly neofascist party that used to be kept at the margins of politics but has now returned to the mainstream. (Todays Brothers of Italy is an offshoot of the National Alliance.)

Suddenly, the post-fascists were part of political debate and had access to the media. The politicians of the National Alliance started to obsessively talk about foibe on talk shows, said Federico Tenca Montini, a researcher at the University of Trieste and author of a book on foibe media representation.

The post-fascist right had obvious interests in drawing attention to war crimes by Yugoslav communist militias. It was a way of saying, yes, we have an embarrassing past, but so do the other guys. This rhetoric met little resistance from the Italian left, which was eager to distance itself from its communist roots after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After Berlusconi and his allies won elections for the second time in 2001, the foibe was made a central part of Italys collective memory. Streets and roundabouts were named after victims. In 2005, the public broadcast Rai issued a miniseries on the foibe. In 2018, two Italian regions, Veneto and Lazio, financed the production of the film Red Land Red Istria. The filma flop at the box office despite the presence of cinemas old glories, actors Geraldine Chaplin and Franco Nerofictionalized the true story of Norma Cossetto, a young Italian woman who was raped and killed in Istria in 1943. Right-wing politicians praised the movies and compared Cossetto to Anne Frank.

Once again, the comparison is misleading. All victims deserve respect, but the two stories are completely different, said Tenca Montini, noting Frank was a teenager murdered for her Jewish ethnicity as part of a mass effort to wipe out European Jews while Cossetto was an adult woman murdered because she was the daughter of a high-ranking fascist official and was perceived as associated with the Italian forces.

But thats not what many Italians would like to hear.

The foibes weaponization as a genocide of ethnic Italians has contributed to minimizing the Holocausts gravity and Italys complicity in it. Lest anyone forget, Italys Jews were constantly persecuted from 1938, when Mussolini issued the racial laws, until the end of World War II. And fascist authorities actively collaborated with German forces to deport thousands of Italian Jews to Nazi death camps.

Efforts to equate the foibe with the Holocaust conveniently transforms Italy from a perpetrator into a victim. Historical truth will be the primary casualty, and distorting it has become a propaganda tool to whitewash the countrys past and legitimize the current Italian right, which still claims some connection to the fascist regime without fully embracing it.

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Italy's Right Is Whitewashing the Country's Past - Foreign Policy

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Sarah sternly warns her husband, Abraham, about a seething rivalry engulfing his two sons. Ishmaels dangerous influence on Isaac is becoming toxic.

Though Abraham is reluctant to abandon his older son, he accedes to Sarahs wish and dispatches Ishmael to the desert.

Endorsing this decision, God assures Abraham that Isaac will serve as his successor: ki bYitzhak yikare lecha zara (Isaac will succeed you). When mentioning Isaac as the true heir, God attaches the letter bet to the beginning of his name bYitzhak.

More likely, the Midrash is highlighting the Jewish capacity not just to inhabit two worlds but to unify them.

Much of the modern world has become so trapped in a concrete reality that it has completely abdicated any sense of a future world. Living in the modern city, human imagination has become shackled to a cold and barren empirical landscape. Spirit has vanished and vision has receded. Our crippled imaginations often struggle to imagine an afterlife that cant be detected by the rational mind.

The other half of humanity is so enchanted by the promises of a different world that it secedes even partially from the affairs and challenges of this world. Religions that are pivoted upon the experience of nirvana literally being blown out or extinguished look to escape the challenges and commotion of this buzzy world. They desperately yearn for tomorrow at the expense of today.

Unlike these two extremes, Judaism attempts to fuse two spheres into one experience. The two worlds arent severed from each other; the next world isnt a reward as much as a result. We cultivate spiritual and religious identity in this world, despite facing formidable impediments to spiritual growth. As a result, when we depart this planet, we enter a world without spiritual inhibitions, primed to continue our spiritual journey without the hindrances of this world.

For a Jew, the next world doesnt promise endless pleasure or limitless financial abilities. Islamic descriptions of sensual pleasures in the next world are completely discrepant with a unified view of the two worlds. The very notion that endless physical pleasure will be rewarded to those who lived virtuous lives, sounds hypocritical and, essentially, separates the two worlds into unrelated realities. Judaism fuses, while Islam fractures, the two worlds.

Judaism rejects this fracture but instead merges the two into one band. As Maimonides asserts, the next world enables wise and just people to sit endlessly in the presence of God, luxuriant in the spiritual glow of God. We earn that privilege in the next life by constructing a spiritual interface between us and God during our first life. As the Scottish 18th-century writer Henry Drummond commented, To get to Heaven, we have to take it there with us.

A Jew straddles two realms, and for this reason we are selected and Ishmael is discarded. Not because we alone envision the next world, but because we alone are able to integrate the two experiences into one. Jewish identity is defined by the letter bet.

BEYOND THE fracturing caused by viewing the next life as a carousel of pleasure, Islamic fundamentalism further splinters the two worlds by endorsing religious terrorism. The doctrine of shahid-ism has, at least for fundamentalist Islam, produced a warped culture that celebrates death and depicts God as angry and vengeful.

Portraying God as delighting in the suffering and murder of innocents is a gross perversion of the image of a loving and compassionate God who is desirous of human welfare. Islamic fundamentalism is a theological crime and not just a moral one. It vandalizes the face of God in this world, and it distorts the notion of unity between the two worlds.

For a shahid (martyr), murdering innocents secures entry into the next world. It is repulsive to claim that crime in this world can punch your ticket of entry into the next world. This sickening belief assumes disparity and disunity between the two worlds. It is a scar upon religious faith. If our two worlds are united, it is inconceivable that a terrible crime in our realm should serve as an entry permit for the next world. This bankrupt idea presumes a structural disconnect between our two worlds and dismembers the belief that our two worlds are united.

Islamic fundamentalism is the antithesis of the letter bet and of the Jewish doctrine of the confederation of two worlds.

We are chosen to represent God in this world and to further assert the integration of the two realms that we inhabit.

The afterlife doesnt offer carnal pleasure but endless spiritual encounter an opportunity we get to preview in this realm.

Additionally, the notion that a crime in this realm can warrant entry into the next is morally abhorrent and severely partitions the two worlds we seek to unite.

The writer is a rabbi at Yeshivat Har Etzion, a hesder yeshiva. He has smicha and a BA in computer science from Yeshiva University as well as a masters degree in English literature from the City University of New York.

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Parashat Vayera: Judaism and the afterlife - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Manoela Carpenedo, a native of Southern Brazil, is an anthropologist and sociologist of religion. Her latest book Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus: Judaizing Evangelicals in Brazil (Oxford) analyzes the allure of Jewish history and observance for groups of Christians in South America, where around 8000 Christians across Brazil in a network of Pentecostal churches have adopted Orthodox Jewish customs. She spoke with Benjamin Ivry from the Netherlands, where she is a postdoctoral fellow, about why Yiddishkeit has become increasingly important for people in Latin America as well as in Asia, Africa and Oceania.

Courtesy of Oxford University Press

Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus: Manoela Carpenedos new book explores how religion is being reinvented in South America.

Youve studied communities of Brazilians who while still believing in Jesus, have adopted Jewish rituals such as building mikvot in backyards, eating kosher food, and having women wear tichels (headscarves). Yet they show no interest in converting to or being recognized by mainstream Judaism. Instead, they seek to spread the Judaizing truth to fellow Christians. So these groups do not care what Jews might think of them?

No, for theological reasons, they are still sticking to Jesus. They think they can contribute to Christianity by reforming the deformed types of Christianity found in Pentecostal worship through Judaism.

What would happen if these communities were encouraged by people in the established Jewish community to formally convert to Judaism?

The Jewish community has been contributing to this transformation of the Christian group. The kosher food, the mohel, all were provided at first by the Jewish community who undertook to help this group. Some members of the Jewish community like them because they learned Hebrew. [Judaizing Evangelicals] are very much attached to the Orthodox Jewish community and see themselves as part of the Jewish people because of this transformation, but also remain part of Christianity. They understand the Jewishness of Jesus, and try to be like Jesus the Jew. They read the Talmud and rabbinic literature. They read Rashi and Rambam.

These are working-class people who read Jewish history and liturgy, watch films on Jewish history, and visit Jewish museums.

They are very interested in Jewish culture in general and the notion of nurturing its intellectual background, because Pentecostal worship is usually seen as anti-intellectual, more charismatic. They are creating something very different, along the lines of this intellectual cultivation.

Since public dancing is done every Shabbat by these groups, learned from videos of Hassidic dance posted on Orthodox YouTube channels, how much of this phenomenon is a Brazilian national taste for festivities, and how much the result of online influencers promoting Jewish culture?

Yeah, I think this charismatic element is very important for them, and the music and dancing connects them to their Pentecostal past. At the same time, they learn the music and have songs from the internet, but are doing something very original in terms of colors and performances. They recombine elements of contemporary Brazilian culture with traditional Jewish ways of dancing. So its a mix. They say, We dont want to copy the Ashkenazi Jews, we are Sephardim. We like to wear colors. Some of the women wear sandals to go with the Brazilian climate.

In opting for stringent religious activity, why didnt they choose Christian alternatives like Jansenism was for French Catholicism?

This is the question I tried to answer in the book. Its fascinating. They could have decided to be Seventh Day Adventists or even a very strict Pentecostal church, but the idea of a Jewish collective memory, with a connection to the Marrano past, is very curious. My argument goes that on the one hand, they are reforming Pentecostalism through Judaism, and on the other, they have this ethnic identity that they want to combine and hold on to as a revival and reform.

The historian Tudor Parfitt has asserted that the number of people who believe they are descendants of Jews is almost equal to the number of Jews counted in official international censuses. This development is rapid and accelerating in Brazil and elsewhere. What is the rush? You refer to the end of days. Could this be an expression of a feeling that the apocalypse is near, as nature is destroyed in the Brazilian rainforests?

They have an urgent way of understanding the Bible and Judaism as something connected with the end of time. They are somehow resuscitating their Jewishness while bringing other Christians to it. They believe that in Brazil, everyone is somehow Jewish at a certain level. So whether people are 75 percent Jewish or 5 percent, everyone must embark with this and believe in the Torah.

For Passover seder, the Judaizing Evangelicals recite from the Haggadah, and follow traditional customs, but add mentions of the Last Supper in which Jesus, whom they call Yeshua, celebrated the Passover meal or the Seder of Yeshua. Yet Jesus here, you state, is not considered the Son of God, [but] is remembered according to his Jewishness in honoring and teaching them how to observe the PassoverThe communitys adherence to the Jewish laws is more important than emulating the life of Jesus. How can they be Christians if they dont see Jesus as the son of God?

My hunch is that they are in a process of facing radical transformation. I cant tell if I returned there now if they are still holding onto Jesus as a symbol or are just forgetting about Christianity. The leaders would insist that stopping to believe in Jesus would mean abandoning the community. I felt like I was seeing theology being made there through different evolving elements.

You cite the term allosemitism proposed and used by two Polish Jewish authors, the critic Artur Sandauer and the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, intended to replace antisemitism insofar as attitudes to Jews can be radically ambivalent. Do Judaizing evangelicals have any negative feelings about Jews, for example Brazilians born Jewish who show no interest in cultural traditions or observance?

They think such Jews are missing the opportunity to lead fulfilling Jewish lives. They themselves really wanted to be born in a Jewish family. That is their wish. Those who can afford it do genealogical investigations and blood tests to try to trace back to see if their family came from converted Jews in Portugal.

In your book, some military and theatrical terms are used in describing how Jewish tenets, liturgy, and even identities are being mobilized by Christians [in] a dramatic Jewish revival the Judaizing Evangelicals are creating dramatically new meanings and logics through their approximation of Judaism. Isnt Brazil intense enough a place to live in without martial and histrionic developments in religion?.

Politically, the people are quiet, but the individual process of transformation by adopting Judaism was very dramatic, full of moral torment. Tensions in these changes were very evident, with people going through a process of suddenly trying to live like Orthodox Jews. Im Brazilian so I know that cultural diversity is a given in our context, but this was so unique, and it really surprised me when I started this project. Judaism is helping them to create new forms of worship. Its a revival and reinvention of religion. Something is changing in the Christian world, and Judaism is contributing to it.

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In Brazil, 8,000 Christians have adopted Orthodox Jewish customs a scholar is trying to figure out why - Forward

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Rabbi Strauss addresses religious exemptions

As more American employers begin mandating COVID vaccinations for their employees, they are facing an increasing amount of vaccine refusers who base their resistance on religious objections. To be clear: All major religions approve of vaccinations. Some actively encourage them. Even denominations which normally rely on prayer for healing, such as Christian Scientists, dont oppose vaccine mandates.

Yet, religious exemptions have emerged as an easily exploited loophole in vaccination policy.

According to Congregation Beth Yeshurun Senior Rabbi Brian Strauss, there is nothing in Judaism that would justify a genuine religious objection to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.

Ive had people call me, wanting an excuse for a religion exception to the COVID vaccine and I told them, no, Rabbi Strauss told the JHV. In my eyes, there is no legitimate justification for allowing a religion exemption in Judaism.

The central organizations of the three major streams of Judaism in the U.S. all have released formal statements saying Jews are obliged to take preventative measures against COVID-19, including vaccinations.

The Orthodox Union (OU) and the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ), representing the Orthodox and Reform communities, called the vaccines a requirement due to the obligation for us to care for our own health and to protect others from harm and illness.

The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, representing the Conservative movement, ruled that Jewish law obligates Jews to vaccinate themselves and others in their care, with medical guidance, and with vaccines that have a proven and safe track record. However, the individual Conservative rabbi in each congregation is the authority for the interpretation and application of all matters of Halakha.

I know very few people in the Jewish community who are unvaccinated, Rabbi Strauss said.

The Torah teaches us, Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor (Lev. 19:16). This is understood to mean that we must safeguard the health of others.

The rabbis also say, Dont separate yourself from the community. I understand this to mean if you dont take the vaccine, youre allowing the virus to mutate and pass on to others including people who cant get the vaccine. The COVID vaccines have been proven to save lives. If theres something you can take to protect your life, do it! Meet G-d halfway. Take advantage of the miracle of the vaccine.

Vaccine exemption requests, based on a religious objection, rise out of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Section 12 of this federal law protects workers from employment discrimination, based on a number of factors, including religion.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the government enforcement agency, has specified that religious protections under the law apply whether the religious beliefs or practices in question are common or nontraditional, and regardless of whether they are recognized by any organized religion. The test under Title VIIs definition of religion is whether the beliefs are, in the individuals own scheme of things, religious.

The EEOC further states an individuals religious beliefs do not have to be recognized by an organized religion and can be beliefs that are new, uncommon or seem illogical or unreasonable to others. They cannot, however, be based only on social or political beliefs. That leaves it up to employers to distinguish political objections from religious ones. This task is made harder as vaccine-resistant workers are sharing tips online for requesting exemptions on religious grounds.

Others have turned religious exemptions into a business. For a financial donation, the pastor of a Tulsa church will admit you as an online member and put his signature on a religious exemption from vaccine mandates. The entrepreneurial pastor bragged to the Washington Post that some 30,000 people downloaded the religious exemption form he created.

In contrast, Rabbi Strauss has promoted COVID-19 vaccinations in sermons from the bimah. During a Shabbat service in April 2021, he spoke directly to those smart, educated people who refuse to get vaccinated. As a rabbi, he offered some wisdom from the Babylonian Talmud (Avodah Zarah 30b). Our sages teach us, he said, that if there is a barrel of potentially dangerous water and nine people drink from it and are fine, a 10th person should still not drink from it.

Even if you know nine people who have not been vaccinated and have not died from COVID, you, as the 10th person, should still get vaccinated because of the possible danger to your life.

You are not following the values of our religion by allowing yourself to live in such danger, said Rabbi Strauss, Yes, there are millions of people who will never get vaccinated and still not get COVID or not get very sick if they do. But, that still doesnt protect you. If there is something that you can do to protect your life, Judaism says, take advantage of it.

Tonight, the rabbi said in his sermon, let me be clear to those who are refusing to get vaccinated: You are not only putting yourself and your loved ones in danger. You are also putting all of us in danger. You have a responsibility to yourself and you have a responsibility to other people.

On Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Strauss returned to the topic of vaccinations. He urged his congregants to promote vaccines by using less judgement and more dialogue.

We have members who are good people, who are smart and who have their reasons for avoiding vaccination. I know. I have met with several of them, he said. I have learned from our conversations that judging you harshly for your fears wont convince you.

Instead, for all of us who are vaccinated, I think theres a better approach. Our ancient rabbis felt the same and gave us a way to do it.

2,000 years ago, in their great wisdom, the rabbis taught us the concept of judge all people favorably (Avot 1:6). Dont assume that those who have so far refused to get vaccinated are driven by nefarious motives. Give them the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, there will never be any type of positive resolution. The deep divisions will only worsen. There will be no end. I have seen it in my own life as a rabbi.

Rabbi Strauss takeaway: Listen to our unvaccinated loved ones, neighbors and co-workers with respect and good faith.

The only way we have chance to drown out the false conspiracies is to have respectful contact with the skeptical, he told the congregation.

Today, while still encouraging deep listening and respectful dialogue, Rabbi Strauss told the JHV he believes that ethically, one is making a selfish decision by not getting the vaccine.

You are jeopardizing your life and the life of others. Youre doing something against what our tradition stands for: that life is paramount. If you know people who are unvaccinated, talk to them and explain why they should get vaccinated.

As Jews we should be very concerned that misinformation about the vaccines can be so easily disseminated. Its scary when falsehoods about the vaccines can be so easily promoted.

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Rabbi: Get vaccinated, but listen to others with respect - Jewish Herald-Voice

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Judaism loves looking back: Every holiday centers around a significant historical event. Our prayers speak to generational wisdom and promise; memory is a visceral part of Judaism. So why, in this weeks Torah portion, Vayeira, is someone punished for looking back?

Idit, better known as Lots wife (we first see her named in Midrash Tanchuma), is among the few allowed to leave Sodom as it is destroyed by divine forces. Although she hears the instruction not to turn back, she cannot resist. As she gazes back at the burning city, Idit is turned to a pillar of salt.

Its impossible not to look back and wonder what might have been, so why was Idit punished?

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The rabbis of Midrash explain that Idit and Lot had been a house divided on the subject of whether they should welcome strangers into their home with hospitality. Idit was so displeased with her partner that she alerted the neighbors to the presence of strangers by asking them for salt, explaining that she had enough for her family but not the guests. Because of this action, the people of Sodom knew about the presence of visitors and attacked according to their selfish ways (Gen. Rabbah 51:5).

Idit looks back in anger, blaming others for her circumstances her husband for welcoming guests, her neighbors for their violence, even Abraham for setting the example of hospitality. Perhaps this blame is what causes her to become salty. When we focus on remembering only the negative actions of others that have led to the present circumstances, we can fail to see the ways we have missed the mark ourselves. A heart crowded with blame has no room for the introspection needed for self-improvement.

May Idits story remind us that, as we look back on our lives, seeing only others mistakes will just make us salty. Instead, may we take the opportunity to reflect on our own actions and contributions to circumstances with introspection and compassion. May the stories we carry with us inspire us to be our best selves.PJC

Rabbi Emily Meyer is an educator and the founder of Doodly Jew on Facebook. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association.

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The perils of looking back in anger | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle - thejewishchronicle.net

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Next week, thousands around the world will gather in person or online to mark the first anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Dr. Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020). His yahrzeit falls on 20 Heshvan, October 25-26.

The erudite and eloquent Rabbi Sacks was a walking sanctification of Gods name, in both the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds among kings, philosophers, theologians, politicians, congregants, and students alike. No one else in recent decades made Judaism more relevant on the world stage.

He also linked todays terrible upheavals addiction to debt and drugs, high depression and suicide rates, child abuse and loneliness, even the growing gap between the superrich and the poor to the breakdown of family cohesiveness, which for centuries has been associated with religious faith.

What the secularists forgot, wrote Sacks, is that Homo sapiens is a meaning-seeking animal. Technology, the market, and the liberal democratic state give us choices, but dont teach us how to choose. They provide neither identity nor the set of moral sensibilities that are inseparable from identity: loyalty, respect and reverence.

Sackss distaste for the so-called progressive or woke identity juggernaut of recent years, and the cancel culture bulldozer which it uses to violently crush other perspectives are on display in another book (published last week), and in one of his last major lectures.

The Power of Ideas: Words of Faith and Wisdom (London: Hodder & Stoughton, October 2021) brings together a compelling selection of Sackss radio broadcasts, newspaper columns, House of Lords speeches, and significant lectures delivered around the world. Here, Sacks brings his solid grounding in Jewish theology and philosophy to bear on the grand debates underway in modern economics, social policy, psychology, political science, science, art, architecture, and engineering. And he clobbers todays supposedly liberal social media mobs.

Also notable is a pre-slihot (penitential poems and prayers before the Tishrei holidays) address he delivered at the Hampstead Synagogue in London in September 2019, called An Unforgiving Age (available on YouTube and at rabbisacks.org), Sacks calls instantaneous twitter-shaming and the cancel culture that characterizes todays media and politics wicked behavior.

[We live in] a world of Facebook and Twitter and viral videos in which anyone can pass judgment on anyone without regard to the facts or truth or reflective moral judgment This is what happens when an entire culture loses faith in God. All that is left is an unconscious universe of impersonal forces that doesnt care if we exist or not.

Has anyone heard of the word justice? Can you condemn someone with no trial, no evidence, no judicial process, no reflective moral judgment, no vedarashta vechakarta veshaalta haytayv (you shall seek and interrogate and inquire thoroughly) as the Torah tells us to do? Can you condemn someone without examining the evidence well and seeing whether emet nachon hadavar (whether the facts are true), as demanded in Deuteronomy 13:15?!

(Alas, we have) none of that. Just simple condemnation! Ours is an unforgiving age.

And what happens in an unforgiving culture? The people who survive and thrive are the people without shame. They become the powerful people, because they are the only people who survive in a world without forgiveness.

THE PIERCING vision of renewed morality for the modern age proposed by Rabbi Sacks begins, not surprisingly, with sliha, forgiveness.

At the heart of our faith is a G-d who forgives. We believe that God gives us a chance to acknowledge our mistakes and where, if we are honest about the wrong we have done, if we stand before God with a broken heart, if we are willing to have the guts to say, aval asheimim anachnu (we really did get it wrong), if we are able to say, like King David, chatati, (I sinned) then God gives us a second chance.

So, Jews have a unique calling to make the case for an understanding of human nature that names good and evil yet recognizes the inherent ability of human beings to repent and grow.

The second building block in Sackss recipe for repair is the building of covenantal communities based on a we consciousness (where people share concerns for one another), rather than I awareness (individualism that atomizes society). He shows how tribalism can be balanced with universality; how spiritual and social cohesion can be synthesized with respect for liberty of conscience.

A third element is a sense of the sacred. What lifts us above instinct and protects us from our dysfunctional drives is respect for God. When human beings lose respect for God, they eventually lose respect for humanity.

A fourth element, especially for Jews, and especially for Jews in the Diaspora, is education. The best, indeed the only, defense of a religious people is not military or political but educational. And this does not mean learning only about the travails of Jewish history, like the Holocaust. Holocaust education in itself offers no meaning, no hope, no way of life. Rather, Judaism is culture of study and debate, absorption in texts, commentaries and counter-commentaries, devotion to literacy and life-long learning.

Sacks: If there is one leitmotif, one dominant theme linking the various eras of the people of Israel, it is the enthronement of Jewish education as the sovereign Jewish value. The history of the Jews has been a history of communities built around schools. [DMW: Day schools!] That is the secret of our collective immortality.

And thus, Rabbi Sacks offers a path forward. For Jews: A path grounded in love for, and fealty to, Gods authentic teachings and to Jewish law, alongside commitment to universal verities and modern intellectual advances. For gentiles: A path grounded in Biblical morality, while embracing the history of liberty. Atop it all: Courage to confront the nihilism that currently passes for enlightenment.

(Expansive readings on these themes can be found in two volumes of collected essays on the weekly Torah reading by Rabbi Sacks, published posthumously: Studies in Spirituality and Judaisms Life-Changing Ideas.)

I SENSE that were Rabbi Sacks still alive and active today, he would be leading interfaith efforts to create a renewed global code of social-political morality based on the above principles.

He would be driving toward a resurgence of religious faith, in a world where both liberal democracies and dictatorships have failed to sustain generosity of spirit and uphold essential restraints on passion and power.

I bet that he would be capitalizing on the breakthrough Abraham Accords to generate Muslim-Jewish religious dialogue in the Middle East, like the Christian-Jewish dialogue in the West that slowly has gathered steam since the Second Vatican Council.

Consider this clarion call for multi-faith synergies that Rabbi Sacks delivered to Pope Benedict XVI and his cardinals in 2010:

In the face of a deeply individualistic culture, we offer community. Against consumerism, we talk about the things that have value but not a price. Against cynicism we dare to admire and respect. In the face of fragmenting families, we believe in consecrating relationships.

We believe in marriage as a commitment, parenthood as a responsibility, and the poetry of everyday life when it is etched, in homes and schools, with the charisma of holiness and grace.

In his footsteps, Rabbi Sackss many admirers must recommit to the truths he taught and advance the moral society he sought.

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Realizing the legacy of Jonathan Sacks - opinion - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on October 22, 2021

Following the rise of footage depicting the oppressive tactics Israeli settlers use on Palestinians, the phrase Free Palestine started to dominate my social media timeline.

In the spring of 2021, the Israeli military dropped airstrikes which stole hundreds of lives, displaced thousands, and destroyed neighborhoods, businesses, farmland, and sacred Mosques such as Al-Aqsaduring the holy month of Ramadan. Free Palestine was all over social media platforms until the end of May when Israel announced a ceasefire, and Palestine seemed to fade in the minds of many Americans.

However, a ceasefire only means a temporary end to the dropping of airstrikes. An Israeli ceasefire does not mean an end to the home demolitions, checkpoints, village invasions, mass arrests, movement restrictions, theft of resources and severe violence that has been taking place in Palestine since 1948.

This ceasefire lasted for a short period of time, and when the Israeli military carried on bombing Palestine, many Americans remained silent.

I was raised in a Jewish household in which support of Zionism, a movement in support of the creation of the Holy Land of Israel, was assumed.

Like many American Jews, I was taught that Zionism is a positive force, which allowed for reparations after the Holocaust of 1941.

Only in recent years have I learned that Zionism is a white supremacist ideology, and is not meant to improve the quality of life for Jewish people, but rather enforce colonization. Zionism is not embedded in Jewish values, as Judaism never taught us to commit genocide.

Using the excuse of anti-semitism in conversations about Palestine is not valid, as many Palestinians also practice Judaism, and Judaism has never preached violence or racism. Israel uses accusations of anti-semitism to deflect rightful critique.

The longer Jewish people remain silent about this genocide, the longer we are complicit in colonialism. Our voices hold power, and we are obligated to use them and constantly unlearn the Zionist values we were taught in order to save human lives.

Not only are Jewish people complicit in this genocide, but those residing in the United States paying taxes are funding the Israeli military. The U.S. as a whole gives an estimated $3.8 billion to Israel every year. We should be angry that our tax money is funding mass murder.

For many years, Palestinians have encouraged U.S. citizens to join the BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions. This movement utilizes economic protest, displacing money from companies complicit in Israels colonial project.

When Palestine was a trend, many people were posting on social media, but many of those same people still refuse to change their spending habits. If we truly want to fight for Palestine, we need to understand the importance of joining the BDS movement.

There is also the option to donate and spread the word about organizations that directly provide mutual aid to Palestinians, such as thePalestine Childrens Relief Fund, Rebuilding Alliance, Palestinian Medical Relief Society and many others.

We can read books such as Justice for Some by Noura Erakat, These Chains Will Be Broken by Ramzy Baroud, This Side of Peace: A Personal Account by Hanan Ashwari, Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions by Omar Barghouti and more.

Whitman students can also join Students for Justice in Palestine (WSJP), which is a great way to take steps to educate ourselves and organize for Palestinian liberation. Although many Whitman students claimed support for Palestine and circulated information on social media, why isnt WSJP larger?

It is necessary that we continue discussions about Palestine and listen to Palestinian voices in order to stop the funding of this genocide.

Free Palestine is not a trend. We need to continue having discussions about Palestine and actively working towards Palestinian liberation. Palestinians are experiencing white supremacy and settler-colonialism in real-time, and we need to stop making excuses for our silence.

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We need to keep talking about Palestine - Whitman Pioneer

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