Thoughts from Berlin

Jewish Museum

Berlin´s Jewish Museum does a great job of documenting historical anti-Semitism. The exhibits helped me understand that when Hitler came to power, he wasnt introducing new ideas ínto his society. He was simply re-invigorating them and concentrating them.

Does Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust need to add this historical context?

Upon Arrival

My first thoughts on German ground went towards the classic German Stigma. German Stigma, defined: the persistent questioning, from a Holocaust perspective, of every interaction or thought of Germans, Germany or aspects of both. E.G.: looking at a very old man and thinking, ´What did he do during the war?´ Or, as I walked down a boulevard, ´Did Hitler ride through this street?´

Where does that get me? Is it commemorating the victims? Is it asking mature questions in pursuit of historical insight? Or is it seeking to continue to explore victimization?  Is to NOT fall prey to the German Stigma to ignore history? Is it time to move beyond the German Stigma?

One answer that came to me in baggage claim: at some level it suggests that Germans and Germany were different. But were they, really? The French could not give up their Jews fast enough. The Dutch caved, tulips under jack boots. Was the historic anti-Semitism in Germany any shorter or less dangerous than that in Ukraine (think of the pogroms).

There is something dangerous and comforting -- yes, comforting -- in clinging to the German Stigma. It is dangerous because it masks the evils at the heart of the Holocaust that knew no border, no culture, no language. And it is comforting, because it gives us a place to hide: the idea that some people are different. Are they?

Different Conversations with Different Audiences - AHO – Day 3

At the Association of Holocaust Organizations Conference, Detroit, MI

The two sessions today seemed to have little direct connection, but at a certain level they were completely connected.

Dr. Wulf Kansteiner, a SUNY Binghampton professor specializing in how the Holocaust is depicted particularly in the German media, started the day. He walked us through several examples, going back to the 1950s, of how German TV presented the Holocaust. Several features persisted for decades. Most significant was the lack of attention; over 30 or more years there were only a handful of programs engaging the Holocaust. Perpetrators were never named or depicted, even when the program was about the specific crimes of a specific perpetrator.  Even the most mature depictions focused on the personal and emotional traumas of all involved. This last characteristic created the sense that all of German was victim to Hitler, regardless of whether one was a Jewish inmate or member of the SS.

Two colleagues, Dallas Holocaust Museum CEO Alice Murray and St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center Director Jean Cavender, followed. Sarah Weiss, Director of the Cincinnati Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education , lead them through a series of questions about the future of Holocaust centers and museums. The critical discussion came when Ms. Weiss asked for a description of the factors critical to survival into the future besides money. The participants described ways their institutions were expanding programs, rotating exhibits, reaching out to new constituencies, and finding collaborations, among other strategies.

The conversation about the future reminded me Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust must learn to engage the multiple cultural. ethnic, and religious groups within the mosaic of communities comprising Los Angeles.

And this is where I saw the connection between the two seminars. They provide two examples of two different conversations. In Dr. Kansteiner’s seminar it became clear we needed to continue to examine how the Holocaust was presented. This examination couldn’t include only Germany; one of the themes of the conference included discussions of how American culture presents, depicts and refers to the Holocaust. The conversation should be extended to include media throughout the world.

This conversation goes on largely amongst ourselves. By ‘ourselves,’ I mean all of us professionally engaged in teaching about, studying, and memorializing the Holocaust.

Then there is the conversation to be had with LAMH’s visitors and,– because we must be a museum for ALL of Los Angeles – our potential visitors.

The first conversation goes on in the academy. It’s conducted in journals, anthologies, new scholarship, and conferences. It includes polysyllabic words such as ‘interlocutor’ and ‘contextualization.’ It has tremendous potential to influence how its participants understand their world.

The second conversation isn’t really a conversation in any traditional sense. It’s more of an action-and-reaction communication. And it goes like this. Museums such as LAMH act. We mount exhibits and hold programs and we publicize them. We send our message out into the world. The only way we know it’s been received and that it has any meaning for those we’re talking to is when they react with their feet. They show up at our exhibits, at our programs.

The first conversation, in the academy, will undoubtedly sustain itself. But when we talk about the future of institutions such as LAMH, I don’t want to settle for just sustaining itself. I want to find a way to break the conversation wide open.

David Koker - Voice from the Abyss - AHO Day 2

At the Association of Holocaust Organizations Conference, Detroit, MI

What was it exactly that so impressed me -- no, blew my doors off -- about Professor Robert Jan van Pelt's presentation of his research and book about the concentration camp diary of David Koker? Here are the top 11 reasons:


1. The simple fact of a camp diary, kept on scraps of paper and scribbled with whatever stubs of pencil David Koker, a young Dutch Jew, could find;


2. The details David included about camp life, not just daily but sometimes minute-to-minute, continuing even as David's responsibilities in the camp, Frits Phillips, expanded to include influencing the names to be included on the lists of those to be deported to Auschwitz;


3. David's reaction -- as recorded in the diary -- when he faces what Auschwitz really means;


4. The struggle to maintain moral clarity in the depths of the abyss;


5. The significant literary skills of this young man, still in his early twenties, who had already edited a Zionist publication, written poetry, and had his own essays published, thus increasing the meaning of his diary;


6. The emergence of a love triangle between David, an 18-year old woman in the camp, and his girlfriend in hiding in Amsterdam;


7. The fact that David's strategy to preserve the diary actually succeeded;


8. The fact that Professor van Pelt's work includes multiple layers: a thorough biography of David Koker, a new translation of the diary (which was first published in Dutch), over 700 footnotes in the diary entries clarifying the events described, and brief biographical sketches of each of the individuals mentioned in the diary;


9. Professor van Pelt's painstaking and thorough research; 


10. Professor van Pelt's humble, careful but transfixing presentation at the conference, allowing the power of the material to speak for itself; and,


11. Professor van Pelt's use of editorial cartoons from the era (at least in his conference presentation) to provide background for the political and historical changes that ultimately brought David into the abyss.


I was pleased to know at the end of the session I was not the only participant who used the WiFi in the conference hall to buy the book even before the presentation was over. 


Read Tablet Magazine's review.

Lost in the Spiral of Intolerance - AHO Day 1

At the Association of Holocaust Organizations Conference
Holocaust Memorial Center, Detroit, MI

The opening presentation from Alvin Rosenfeld, author of The End of the Holocaust and the Beginning of a New Anti-Semitism, focused largely on the tremendous anti-Israel propaganda in the Arab world that also expresses itself as virulent anti-Judaism. In the vernacular these views can be recognized as the 'we'll destroy Israel and push all the Jews into the sea' variety.

Dr. Rosenfeld has his share of critics who voiced their concern that this wasn't particularly new. His main source of evidence for his analysis was a survey of books or articles published over the last few decades, the historical anti-Zionism of political leaders such as Nasser and Sadat, and the possibility Iran will one day launch a nuclear strike creating a second Holocaust. (The facts that Nasser and Sadat are long gone from the stage, or that Sadat made a historic and bold peace with Israel, received no ken.)

While I agreed there was little that was engaging in his analysis, Dr. Rosenfeld did shift my thinking a little bit. I told him I didn't find it shocking that countries and people that had always been the enemy of the Jews and Israel going back at least to the 6 day war and even the War of Independence are still our enemies. But what I would like to know is whether in a future paper he would be talking about the extent of anti-Semitism in Western Europe today. That information would be new.

In his response he told me about a study that analyzed the attitudes towards Jews harbored by Muslims living in three European cities, including London. The results showed a strong degree of disturbingly negative attitudes.

I didn't find this response wholly satisfying; the study Dr. Rosenfeld cited only shifted his focus from Muslims in Muslim countries to Muslims in European countries. He said nothing about the attitudes of the much larger numbers of non-Muslims in Europe. But here is where the shift in perspective occurred. European anti-Semitism is going to be increased through Muslim immigrants moving there and bringing with them the attitudes of their home countries. I sympathize with Muslims who been victimized by intolerant as minorities in Europe. But how do I separate out my support of these victims when I know they are intolerant themselves? This spiral of intolerance makes my head spin.

"The Three Stooges" -- To Laugh or Not To Laugh?

First, a confession.

When I was on the crew team in college, I spent a significant amount of time doing stair workouts in a building officially named Altschul Hall. If you've ever done stair workouts, you know there are few training techniques more punishing. So when members of the team referred to Altschul as "Auschwitz," I laughed.

So now, whether you have lost all respect for me for trivializing the Holocaust or see the humor as well, you probably won't be surprised that I was not offended by the name of Larry David's character in the newly released Three Stooges movie: Sister Mary-Mengele.

There are strong reasons why some may argue I should have been offended.

Dr. Mengele's role as the angel of death, choosing which victims at Auschwitz head left or right -- which to the gas chambers, and which to forced labor -- may be a patently humorless sub

ject. Worse, Mengele's evil doesn't stop there. He of course also conducted sadistic medical experiments on twins. Holding a Ph.D. in physical anthropology from the University of Munich and a medical degree from Frankfurt University, where his mentor was an expert in twin studies, Mengele turned the Hypocratic oath inside out. "Do no harm" became "harm as much as he can imagine." If Dante Alegari wrote The Inferno today he'd have to invent an entirely new circle of hell for Mengele.

I can see why some would say Mengele's circle of hell is beyond the reach of comedy. To make light of Mengele is to risk separating us from understanding the true nature of his evil. Even more damaging, it could give the impression we are callous to the profound, indescribable suffering of his victims.

I can also sympathize with those who say that incorporating Mengele into a joke is part of a troubling trend overexposing the Holocaust. Data points in this trend range from the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" to the charges made on the floor of the House of Representatives that the national health care law is a Nazi plan. Over-use of references to the Holocaust, whether intended to entertain or to malign, bleaches the Holocaust of its true significance.

But to make the Holocaust sacrosanct is to circumscribe it in a way that will also lead to a fundamental disconnect from its meaning in our lives. If we can only engage it in hushed or stentorian tones of solemnity, we limit our access to it. Placing it on a pedestal reduces our ability to be affected by it in ways that could truly change our lives. Humor knocks a subject off its pedestal. Yes, at times this reduction can go too far and we must be suspicious of it. But it can also increase interaction, and curiosity, and openness, all of which lead to that teachable moment where we find true understanding and the empathy at its heart.

From this perspective, I'm tremendously excited by the possibility that some people in the audience for The Three Stooges might be provoked to ask, "'Sister Mary-Mengele'? What does that mean?" Such questioning worked for me; this Jewish boy learned a lot more about Catholicism by taking apart Tom Lehrer's song, The Vatican Rag, than I ever would have learned without it. Tom Lehrer's parody of sacraments such as confession or transubstantiation didn't diminish them to me. It prodded me to understand them. Parody relies on the tension between the joke's exaggeration and the reality behind it. I couldn't truly 'get' The Vatican Rag until I understood the sacred truths at its heart.

There's another, very important reason I can't rebuke The Three Stooges Movie. The horrors of the Holocaust can own and control us. These horrors can continue to victimize us. Ask anyone who's had a Holocaust nightmare as a result of reading or watching a movie about the Holocaust. To knock a subject off its pedestal is to own it or to control it, to some degree rob it of its dominating power. Ultimately, through humor, the Holocaust can stop victimizing us. And when we are no long punished by it, we can return to it and glean new understandings, in ways that we never could have before.

And that's no joke.

Poor Kanye West - People Think He's Hitler?

Here is the quote I provided the Daily Mail in response to Kanye West comparing himself to Hitler. (See the preivous post for the original TMZ post.)

Kanye West's remarks at a recent concert in England, in which he claimed being so misunderstood people look at him as if he were Hitler, only suggests how little he understands. He certainly misunderstands the supreme unattractiveness of his "poor me" self-pitying martyrdom act. He misunderstands the vast gulf between his actions, no matter how wrong they may be or how wrong people they are, and those of the single biggest mass murderer in history. And he misunderstands the great responsibility he holds in his hands together with his microphone.

Kanye West Compares Himself to Hitler at England Concert

This just in from TMZ: Call him Air Fuhrer ... because this weekend, Kanye West compared himself to both Michael Jordan and Adolf Hitler during a performance in England.

West was performing at the Big Chill music festival Saturday night ... when he went on one of his signature rants ... this time focusing on the hardships of being so painfully misunderstood.

"I walk through the hotel and I walk down the street, and people look at me like I'm f**king insane ... like I'm Hitler."

He continued, "One day the light will shine through and one day people will understand everything I ever did."

Moments later, Kanye suggested that he needed to be the MJ of music, "Michael Jordan changed so much in basketball, he took his power to make a difference. It's so much f**king going on in music right now and somebody has to make a f**king difference."

Michael Jordan and Hitler folks ... Michael Jordan. And Hitler.

Check it out.

"Midnight and Paris" - To What Era Would I Return?

The Woody Allen film currently playing in theaters, "Midnight in Paris," might not seem to have any connection to the Holocaust.

Allen produced a somewhat nourishing, very tasty love poem to Paris that feels often like the result of combining "Manhattan" and "Annie Hall" and translating the union into French. Its sustenance comes from its central theme, that happiness only can be found in the present, whatever limitations that present may have.

In the climactic scene, Gil and Adriana realize they have very different ideas of where in time they would really like to live. By going to the 1920s, Gil realizes his nostalgia is only denial. Adriana, less evolved, finds the thrill of the 1890s Belle Epoque magnetic.

At one point Gil lists off all the things the 1920s never knew. I silently added 'the Holocaust' to the list. The time I would like to return to, just for a moment, is a time when no one had ever heard of -- and thus could not conceive of -- the Holocaust.

It would be critical to retain my self-awareness as a post-Auschwitz human being. Otherwise the time travel would be useless. But what would it be like to experience that Adam and Eve-like innocence?

German Court Convicts Demjanjuk

The best thing about the Demjanjuk conviction (read the L.A. Times Article) is that the case works from the bottom up. The low level functionary - Demjanjuk was only a guard at Sobibor -- is brought to justice.

The worst thing is that for every Himmler or Eichman, there were many multiple Demjanjuks. Thus this conviction is too little, too late. There should have been hundreds, if not thousands, of such trials running continuously for the last 65 years.

Demjanjuk's defense has been mistaken identity. It should have been selective prosecution.

Demjanuk also claims he himself was a victim of the war. I don't doubt that. Just recently, Father Desbois, who has made a career out of detailing the mass murders of Jews throughout the Ukraine, met with the staff at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. In his discussion with us, he talked about the unctuous moral relativism that existed under the Nazi occupation. It is this relativism that allowed neighbors to not only betray neighbors, but to kill them. (And it is our deeper understanding of this relativism that has kept some of us up at night lately.)

Yet not all citizens rose to the level of direct perpetrator within the atmosphere of moral pollution and victimization imposed first by the Soviets, then by the Nazis. Demjanjuk, however, as was shown in Germany, elected to join the SS. He was not tried and convicted for his suffering during the Soviet-imposed famine that effectuated mass murder amongst the Ukrainians, or for his participation in the Soviet Army or for the inhumanities he experienced as a Soviet POW. He was tried and convicted for what he did after those experiences.

The L.A. Times article discusses the critical role the Trawnicki identity card played in convicting Demjanjuk. The year I lived in Jerusalem, I worked on the Demjanjuk trial conducted there. I became familiar with some of the testimony establishing the veracity of that document. I am therefore not troubled by the FBI's questioning of that document, an internal FBI discussion that has recently been revealed. Law enforcement's job is to question evidence and evaluate its potential effectiveness in a courtroom.

The questioning by itself does not suggest the document is fake. The German court's admission of the document, and the document's ability to withstand challenges to its authenticity so that it could help support a conviction, is what matters.

I am also not concerned that Israeli jurisprudence ultimately overthrew Demjanjuk's death sentence conviction. In fact, I am thrilled by it. Just as I am thrilled by Germany's commitment to trying Demjanjuk for different crimes. It shows the rule of law survives and flourishes. And the rule of law is one of the most important protections we have against the moral pollution that lead to the Holocaust.

The Perils of "Holocaust Hegemony...and its Perils"

There is little I like about "Holocaust Hegemony...and its Perils", Sam Schulman’s article in the January 3/January 10, 2011 issue of The Weekly Standard.

The very least thing I don’t like about the article is that it used a photograph from the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust without permission and, when it first did so, did not credit the photographer.

I don’t like that Mr. Schulman writes his own rules of argument by failing to define explicitly what he considers to be “Holocaust hegemony.” He derives this term from the title of a University of Toronto school of education Master’s Thesis, which is the prick that spurs Schulman’s extensive discontent. Mr. Schulman’s failure to define Holocaust hegemony leaves the reader struggling, throughout the essay, to understand his true target. The convenience of a slippery definition of terms is it affords Mr. Schulman the leeway to be prosecutor, judge and jury of whatever indictment he cares to bring.

Mr. Schulman makes broad assertions and presents them as facts, a rhetorical technique I never like. What is his basis for stating that anti-Semites and anti-Zionists are well-informed about the Holocaust, that they authentically regret its murders of Jews, and that they “openly regret that those European Jews who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Palestine were not murdered as well?” Did he take a poll? And if the last assertion is true, its repugnancy deserves direct condemnation, not a passing feint.

And I don’t like him challenging the understanding that the Holocaust is, to use his term, “nonpareil.” Historical facts make it very clear the mass murder of European Jews was unlike any other genocide before or since. These facts include but are by no means limited to: Hitler’s publication of a manifesto expressing his murderous contempt of Jews; his public targeting of Jews in a systematic campaign occurring over many years; and, the systematic evolution of killing technology.

But what I really don’t like about Mr. Schulman’s article is the aggregate effect of these offenses. He relies on shifting rules of engagement, unproven assertions, and an incorrect statement of facts to blame Holocaust education for genocide and virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Do we blame fire departments for the continuing existence of fires and for arson?

Mr. Schulman includes amongst the evils empowered by Holocaust education “Communists and fellow travelers.” Communism, as a force exported against democracy, ceased to be a threat no later than the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not earlier; ‘fellow travelers’ is a McCarthy-era phrase, rendered meaningless by its maniacal over-use and best left in the last century. And he concludes his piece with a rant charging the left in general, with “apologizing for terrorism.” This slippery slope, sky-is-falling diatribe is simply ridiculous.

I do like Mr. Schulman’s statement that “Holocaust education…will never pry…people from their defects of character and judgment.” Education cannot enter a closed mind. Those harboring the closed-minded defects of character and judgment that include Jew- and Israel-hatred, as well as racism, intolerance, and a lack of any compassion for the “other,” will never participate in Holocaust education. They will not read any of the great books that Mr. Schulman admits have been written about the Holocaust. Nor will they darken the doorstep of any “beautiful museums that have been built.” But we book writers and beautiful museum builders are there for those whose minds are already open to the idea that we might make the 21^st century a little better than the 20^th. And we stand ready to shine at least a candle of light into whatever crack might miraculously split in the minds of the others. To do otherwise would be merely to curse the darkness.

Read our NY Times Review!

• Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles Makes Hard Choices - Review ...

  Holocaust museums like the new one in Los Angeles struggle to keep the history alive even as it grows distant.

It Can Happen Here

When I was a child and I thought about the Holocaust, I was struck most by the suffocation of living in a world gone crazy. I could transport myself to that feeling of living in a nightmare, in which events I couldn't believe were happening were, in fact, happening every day. For brief moments I could imagine living in a world that chased me, and I had no where to run.

Until recently, I took great solace in believing the all-consuming, upside-down world of Nazi Germany could not happen in the United States. I saw all around me ours was a nation of reason, in which people throughout the country embraced the sanity of First Amendment rights. I recognized different people might differ about the borders of these rights. Yet even our ability to confront these disagreements demonstrated the mutual embrace of the rights themselves.

Certain events in American history challenged my view. Slavery in general and the Founding Fathers' hypocrisy in perpetuating it presented one such challenge. Lynchings presented another; here, as with the Holocaust, I empathized with the victims in the photographs I saw, imagining that among the horrible feelings they experienced as they were murdered included that drowning powerlessness of being caught, animal-like, in an upside down world. But the civil rights movement provided an antidote to lynching; an understanding that the Continental Congress could not have taken on England and slavery at the same time eased other concerns.

The unrelenting attacks on American Muslims engendered by the forthcoming lower Manhattan Islamic center, however, suggest that America may be built more on xenophobic sand than on First Amendment bedrock. A series of New York Times articles document only some of the reasons if I were Muslim I would awaken each day with a sense of dread.

One may think the Battery's Islamic Center is not a Holocaust issue. But it is. We as Jews have been very successful at pushing the borders of prejudice and intolerance away from us in America. But our success is only as strong as America's ability to provide religious freedom to all its citizens. "When they came for the trade unionists," Pastor Martin Niemoller told us, "I did not complain because I was not a trade unionist." If we are not concerned about the treatment of others, especially those less powerful or numerous, we can not be sure there will be anyone who will concern themselves with our fate when we find ourselves powerless or outnumbered. The chain of freedom girding us is only as strong as its weakest link.

As long as we do not speak out against the anti-Muslim voices, as long as we do not stand with those victimized in their mosques, as long as we entertain the slightest belief that mainstream Islam as practiced by our fellow Americans has anything in common with terrorism, we have to admit one devastating truth. The Holocaust can happen here. Its seeds are sprouting all around us.

Staying Fresh

Jim Schram, the principal in our contracting company, Winter-Schram Associates, found himself staring at a man in a picture in the camp room of the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. “He looks so much like my great grandfather,” Jim told me. It was one of those rare conversations we’ve had when the press of construction details didn’t squeeze out any other conversation topics.

The graphics displays had only recently been fitted into their glass frames, and it was the first time any of us involved in the project had a chance to appreciate their impact.

Jim’s ancestor had not, in fact, been touched by the Holocaust. “You must be accustomed to this because you see it every day,” Jim said to me, “But it’s really powerful to me.”

In fact, I was having my own experience, regardless of my every day contact with the images. I had been studying the face of a boy, just a bit younger than my own son, in a blow-up of a picture whose original was preserved in the Auschwitz Album. These photographs had been taken over two days in 1944. Nazi photographers captured a Hungarian transport as it arrived and as its human contents lined up and sorted for work or death.

For a fleeting instant the boy appeared in 3-D and seemed to bob his head. I saw him as he was at the moment the Nazi shutter snapped.

I told Jim what I had just seen, and then: “When it does become routine, that’s when it will be time to quit.”

As for the boy in the picture, we can’t measure the tragedy of his murder. Not only was he denied life; the Nazis deprived him a grave and even a name that could be remembered. But they gave him a photograph. For me and the hundreds of thousands who will see his picture, if we really see his picture, he’ll remind us we can’t quit working for a world of actors, not bystanders. A world of caring, not apathy. A world where humans can maintain their humanity.

Visiting Ft. Huachuca with Albert Rosa

This evening I was asked to say a prayer over dinner at the table of Fort Huachuca's commanding officer, Major General John Custer and his wife, Audrey. I learned later my place at the table had only very recently been occupied by Senator John McCain. Imagine my relief that something had guided me to open my prayer with gratitude to the Major General and his wife, the other officers and guests at the table, and most of all my friend and the true guest of honor, Holocaust survivor Albert Rosa and his daughter, Regina.

Fort Huachuca, an electronics intelligence base only 8 miles north of the Mexican border, once served as the home to the Buffalo Soldiers, including the 10th Calvary, and had been the base from which General John J. Pershing set off to capture Pancho Villa during the Mexican war. Today, the base's leaders recognize their soldiers come into the Army with virtually no cross-cultural experience, no sense of other worlds or other cultures outside of their own. Each month they host an event focusing on other cultures and differing world experiences. Tomorrow, Albert Rosa, Regina, and I will help lead a Day of Remembrance ceremony devoted to the Holocaust.

Other participants tomorrow will include Mr. Lou Broitman, Fort Huachuca's Jewish lay leader.

I am, at best, hand maiden to our visit and the event tomorrow. Lieutenant Colonel Francesca "Ox" Ziemba contacted me and asked if I could provide a speaker, and my first thought was Albert, who has already spoken to military groups in Southern California and Canada. That Regina could join him made it possible for Albert to travel. That I could be a third wheel is truly a gift, for which I am and will remain grateful.

Ultimate Revenge

Here is my letter to the editor of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles in response to the article, Ultimate Revenge, about Inglorious Basterds.

You can also read what I wrote about it previously on this blog.

Dear Editor,

While Danielle Berrin’s article covered many perspectives on Inglorious Basterds, she did not discuss what I believe to be the fundamental problem with the revenge fantasy film. As I blogged at www.educationandcommemoration.blogspot.com, though the acts depicted in the film may be profoundly fulfilling, they reduce Jews to the level of the Nazis. And they contradict one of Judaism’s most basic principles.

Look, I’d like to think given the weapons and the opportunity I would ravage my way up the hierarchy of Nazis until I got to Hitler himself. And when I got to him, I’d make him suffer 6 million deaths. There’s this great skin-peeling torture I read about from Manchuria that seems to have been invented for him alone. And I get that Inglorious Basterds is just a movie, something that can exist as a mental detour from what we really believe.

But taking that detour slows me on my journey to where I really want to be. Judaism doesn’t teach me that being a yid is to indulge my id-ish impulses. It challenges me to overcome them. Judaism tells me I can only draw closer to God by directing my attention away from my impulses and fantasies, and towards right action. That’s part of what it means to be a member of a nation of priests.

We should of course fight threats today as forcefully as possible and with force when necessary. Judaism didn’t survive the Holocaust to be debased or stripped of its core beliefs. L’havdil, living after the Holocaust obligates me to strive towards Judaism’s highest values, simply because that, for me, is -- ultimately -- the sweetest revenge.

Can the Grinch Steal Auschwitz?

I know I'm not the only Jewish American who grew up on a steady diet of TV Christmas specials around this time of year: "A Charlie Brown Christmas;" "Frosty the Snowman;" and, of course, "How the Grinch Stole Christmas." Watching felt like a kind of TV tourism, conducted behind the mezzuzah on our door. Sometimes, when the calendars overlapped, the compartive religion trekking happened while my family's Hanukkah candles still burned.
I couldn't help think about the Grinch when I read the statement from my colleague, Yad VaShem Chairman Avner Shalev, that the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign was "an attack on the memory of the Holocaust."
Certainly, the brazen theft of perhaps the central image of the Holocaust suggests profound disrespect for the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp to which this sign is the gateway-- and for what it stands for today.
But if the theft represented some kind of attempt to erase the memory represented at the camp, it could have no more significance than the Grinch's efforts to steal Christmas. As I saw in the animated special, year in and year out, you can take away the superficial trappings, the physical emblems of something held sacred. But you can't steal the idea or the meaning of something that is truly sacred.
One of the strongest sources for the significance of the idea over the physical is Jewish history itself. Ancient Judaism expressed a sacred relationship between God and man manifested through a physical temple. That temple, known as Solomon's temple, and whose retaining wall in Jerusalem remains revered to this day, was built, destroyed, built again, and destroyed again. Instead of disappearing after the second destruction, Judaism developed new ways to express its theology.
Bumbling thieves could steal the Auschwitz sign, but no human force can suppress the significance of everything literal and figurative behind the sign. As God says of Abel's murder in Genesis, "your brother's blood screams out to me from the ground." No physical icon -- or its removal -- will ever silence the blood of the 1.5 million Auschwitz-Birkenau victims, the suffering of those imprisoned at the camp for slave labor, or the violence of families torn apart in the selections at the gas chambers.
What the theft really tells us is that not only is it not possible for Poland to protect the historic site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp, it is not fair for it to be expected to do so alone. Just as citizens of many nations involved in the Holocaust were sent to die at Auschwitz, what Auschwitz-Birkenau represents today belongs to every nation involved in the Holocaust. Maintaining and securing the 500+ acre site and all it contains requires significant resources. Poland has, for years, been asking for assistance; it is ironic that on the very day the theft was announced an agreement was signed in Berlin to provide $90 million for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Foundation. But this agreement will need to be renewed at some point, and more funds will inevitably need to be secured.
In the feel-good conclusion of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" everyone forms a circle and sings in unity. So too must the people and nations of the world join together to protect the sacred significance of Auschwitz-Birkenau. If we do that, no Grinch or band of common thugs will ever harm us.

This Just In: LAMH As Covered in "The Forward"

Click below to read the article in today's "The Forward" discussing the funding future for Holocaust museums.
Local Holocaust Museums Grow Amid Worries About Future

Apologies for Bad Rendition of Doonesbury Strip

Here is a panel-by-panel description of the Sept. 27, 2009 Doonesbury strip referenced in the blog entry, "How Far We've Come."

Hitler salutes under the narration, "The Nazis..."

Kristallnacht-style book burning under the narration, "...created a brutal, repressive society..."

Soldiers battle under the narration, "...left half the world in flames..."

Train tracks lead to Auschwitz/Birkenau under the narration, "...and methodically murdered millions."

A cemetery of graves marked by crosses and a few stars under the narration, "They were the most evil force in history."

Showing the White House, the narration reads, "Understandably, the current parallels are frightening." Dialogue bubbles read, "The bill is stalled, sir." "That does it -- I'm giving a speech!"

How Far We've Come

As we approach the Senate's historic vote on healthcare legislation we must remember where we came from to get here. The journey expected to achieve a major milestone this week travelled over the mis-information of death panels, town halls of fear, and the accusation of Nazi-style tactics.

Each of these proved, once again, that figures don't lie, but liars can figure. Meaning, anyone who wants to throw mud at something needs merely to fill a bucket with whatever swill he can grab.

Gary Trudeau eviscerated last summer's insanity best with the strip first published Sunday, September 27, 2009 and re-published here. First, he capsulized Nazism's effect on the world in 5 eloquently detailed panels. Among the many minor gems in this strip, no matter how many times I re-read it, I never fail to find particularly affecting the Jewish star on one of the graves in the cemetery panel. With that single detail, Trudeau reminds us that a democracy -- unlike a dictatorship -- can unite all its varied people in the service of a single noble goal.

I could end the blog right here -- that this week the thrust of democracy will overcome internal differences to increase our citizens' access to health care, just as it did in our efforts to win World War II.

But I can't leave aside that too often one finds the Holocaust used as a metaphor to damn a current event.

On the one hand, this propensity stands as a sign of our success at keeping the worst event in human history at the forefront of people's minds. They wouldn't be making Holocaust comparisons if they'd forgotten about it.

But on the other hand, it suggests we haven't succeeded at making it clear exactly what made the Holocaust the worst event in human history.

Every inappropriate Holocaust equivalency one discovers should not be only a cause for scorn. It should also be a spur to action, a reminder that we need to make the case more carefully and more often that the mass murder of multiple millions occurs not from a single blow. The Holocaust must be understood as a tragedy of accumulation, an infinitely nuanced event, a perfect storm of an exponential number of perfect storms.

One can not communicate this complicated understanding simply, in few words, while standing on one foot. It requires a consistent campaign, to which many must dedicate themselves over a vast period of time.

Kind of like what it takes to pass a healthcare bill. And, of course, to win a war.

I like the sixth and final panel so much. It reminds us of an endearing quality characterizing President Obama's election and campaign and early presidency. He demonstrated himself able to confront difficult issues with a really good speech. In this way he resolved nuanced conflicts of race dogging his election hopes, and re-framed America's relationship with the Muslim world. Yet the panel also pokes fun playfully at his idealism, charming in its naivete, that a good talking to is enough to solve all problems. Though he will inevitably fail at times, you can't help admiring a guy willing to get out there and try.

N.B. It is beyond the scope of this post to discuss the Cairo speech's incorrect implication that the Jewish people's claim to a homeland in Israel does not stretch back thousands of years. Suffice it to say that in a recent speech to the congregants of B'Nai David-Judea, the Los Angeles Consul General of Israel, Yaacov Dayan, provided the words President Obama should have used to describe Israel's existence since 1948. The Consul General referred to the year of Israel's independence the date of the "re-establishment" of the State of Israel.

Does God Help Baseball Fans?

Few of the fans at yesterday's Yankees-Angels play off game would challenge the piety of the prayerful Cubs fan at the left. Innumerable TV images of New Yorkers clasping their hands, chanting softly, and shuckling in prayer suggest this. A Johnny Damon gapper bore ultimate salvation, but Yankees fans continued their appeals for divine intervention until the final out.

Yankees fans, of course, have no monopoly on prayer for their sports teams. Angels fans probably prayed just as hard -- as do, every summer, those lovers of the hapless of Cubs, or supporters of any other team or sport. But the intensity or frequency of supplication begs the question: does God really influence one player's ability to throw a ball, another's likelihood of hitting it, and a third's facility to catch it?

What one really asks, when one thinks about prayer in something like sports, is: what role does prayer have in any aspect of human activity?

This question is only a few intellectual jumps from thinking about God's role in the Holocaust. In a word, if God could conceivably impact the path of a baseball, couldn't he -- or, more to the point -- shouldn't he -- have ended the Holocaust sooner, or even prevented it in the first place? I know of no more troubling theological question.

This weekend I read a Talmudic story suggesting a provacative answer. The story describes a moment when the prophet Elijah appears to Rabbi Yose. At least one Jewish sage says Rabbi Yose prayed fervently for the wisdom to answer the question of why God allowed the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

God had directed the Israelites to build the Temple as a conduit for the holiest relationship between God and man. Yet, God allowed the razing of that same Temple, the ending of that special bond, and the scattering of the Jews throughout the world.

In the story, just after Rabbi Yose finishes praying amongst Jerusalem's ruins, Elijah gives him his answer.

"What did you hear when you were praying in the ruin?" Elijah asks.

"I heard a heavenly voice cooing like a dove and saying, 'Woe to the sons because of whose sins I destroyed my house and burned my Temple and dispersed my people.'" Rabbi Yose says.

Elijah responds emphatically, telling Rabbi Yose he didn't hear the half of it. "By your life and the life of your head," Elijah admonishes, "God doesn't say this only at this moment. He says it three times a day, and when people enter the synagogues and the houses of study and when they respond in prayer, 'May God's great name be blessed.' What is more, the blessed one shakes his head and says, 'How lucky is the king who is praised this way in his house! As for me, what is there for the father who has exiled his sons and for the sons who have been exiled from their father's table?'"

God aches for the destroyed Temple and the spiritual intimacy it created, just as His people do. Yet, in spite of the pain, God could not stop the destruction. Nor could he simply snap his fingers and have the Temple rebuilt.

The Rabbi Yose story provides a window to how God might feel about the Holocaust. Not only did he watch the suffering of innocents. He saw the sadism of the perpetrators. He heard the silence of the bystanders. The Holocaust could stand as exhibit A in a case against God's existence: if God exists, how could He let such things happen?

Perhaps the Holocaust happened because God established a world where human action can lead to things that are excruciatingly painful for both man and God. Perhaps God too mourns the millions of innocent Holocaust victims. Perhaps that is how He allowed the Holocaust to occur: with incomprehensible divine suffering. God had to suffer not only the evils of the Holocaust. He had to watch it happen with the knowledge that humanity alone caused it, just as humanity alone could end it. One reason the Holocaust happened is not because we live in a Godless world. It happened because we live in a man-full world, a world where man has the ultimate power to choose good or evil.

What role does prayer play in our lives? In a word, quite a big one, I believe. Prayer leads me to insights I find literally life changing, and that lead me to be a more effective human being for myself and my fellows. Through prayer I can also express the gratitude I feel for the relatively charmed life I lead.

Does prayer for a sick person help her heal? I believe it does, though I lean against it doing so the way antibiotics kill bacteria, or the way surgery removes a tumor. I am much more comfortable with the idea it does its magic in some way beyond human understanding. I'm enough of a non-rationalist to accept levels of reality beyond those we can understand. I'm not enough of one to buy that our thoughts directly influence the material world.

So no, all those prayerful people in the Bronx did not guide Mariano Rivera's delivery of that final strike. But I wouldn't be surprised if God has a little extra measure of heavenly mercy set aside for those Cubs fans. They deserve it.