Thank heavens for the LA Times Op-Ed page. Finally Avraham Burg's book on the urgency of ending the Holocaust mindset is getting coverage in the U.S press. I don't think there have been major reviews yet. But the LAT runs an op-ed by the prophetic Burg:
[In Israel] Every
threat or grievance of major or minor importance is dealt with
automatically by raising the biggest argument of them all -- the Shoah
-- and from that moment onward, every discussion is disrupted.
The constant presence of the Shoah is like a buzz in my ear. In Israel, children are always, it seems, preparing for their rite-of-passage "Auschwitz trip" to Poland. Not a day passes without a mention of the Holocaust in the only newspaper I read, Haaretz. The Shoah is like a hole in the ozone layer: unseen yet present, abstract yet powerful. It's more present in our lives than God.
It is the founding experience not just of our national consciousness but of more than that. Army generals discuss Israeli security doctrine as "Shoah-proof." Politicians use it as a central argument for their ethical manipulations.
The Shoah is so pervasive that a study conducted a few years ago in a Tel Aviv school for teachers found that more than 90% of those questioned view it as the most important experience of Jewish history. That means it is more important than the creation of the world, the exodus from Egypt, the delivering of the Torah on Mt. Sinai, the ruin of both Holy Temples, the exile, the birth of Zionism, the founding of the state or the 1967 Six-Day War.
Beautifully written. Beautifully argued.
Burg: "The Shoah is like a hole in the ozone layer: unseen yet present, abstract yet powerful. It's more present in our lives than God."
I read somewhere that the story of the Holocaust has become the contemporary diaspora Jewish religion, the new chorus to its ongoing existence. Sounds right. The Holocaust is (portrayed as) black and white, whereas the Bible is much more opaque and suggestive that Jews are often their own worst enemies. Can't have that.
This new, left-liberal narrative where no one is accountable for their own abhorrent behavior and everything is the fault of…The Christian Authority…is far more consistent with the contemporary Jewish ethic. And in Israel, they’ve simply switched out The Christian Authority for the Islamic one.
Hmm…even the supposedly "conservative" Israeli Rabbis are just the product of a bunch of left-liberal socialists. They were far more respectable when, back in the day, they subscribed to God’s law.
Exile and Return as the Structure of All Judaism
…the Judaic system as presented by the five books of Moses, [the Pentateuch], as well as by some of the prophetic books, did two things. First, it precipitated resentment, a sense of insecurity and unease, by selecting as events only a narrow sample of what had happened (exile). Second, it appeased the same resentment by its formula of how to resolve the tensions of events of dislocation and alienation (return). That is, Judaism in its initial model not only guaranteed its own persistence by creating resentment at how things were, but also provided a remedy for that anger …
Clearly, the paradigm that has imprinted itself on the history of this period did not emerge from, was not generated by, the events of the age. First came the system, its worldview and way of life — formed whole we know not where or by whom. Then came the selection by the system, of consequential events, and their patterning into systemic propositions. And finally, at a third stage (of indeterminate length) came the formation and composition of holy writings that would express the logic of the system and state those "events" that the system would select or invent for its own expression…
The Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption
The "Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption" focuses on Germany's destruction of most European Jews (1933-1945) and on the creation of the State of Israel (1948). It transforms these events from secular, this-worldly occurences to generative symbols of mythic proportions. This particular Judaism is communal, stressing public policy and practical action …
… Whereas the Judaism of the dual Torah proves compelling only on specific occasions (rites of passage such as puberty, marriage, and death), the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption enjoys a perpetual and nearly universal response. That is, for a great many Jews, this recent Judaism asks an urgent question and answers it with a self-evident and compelling response … Jews in North America respond to the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption by imagining that they are someone else, living somewhere else, at another time and in another circumstance. That somewhere else is Poland in 1944, or the earthly Jerusalem of the State of Israel. Evidently, people define their everyday reality in terms of "Holocaust" and "redemption". So for this Judaism, the Holocaust defines the question, the State of Israel the answer, to the Jewish condition …
Is the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption a religion? Of course it is, because it has the power to turn "being Jewish" into a mode of transcendent and mythic being. What that means is that things are not what they seem, and "we" are more than what "we" appear to be. Specifically, "we" were there in Auschwitz, which stands for all of the centers for the murder of Jews, and "we" share, too, in the everyday life in that faraway place in which we do not live but should, the State of Israel. So the Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption turns things into something other than what they seem, teaches lessons that change the everyday into the remarkable. The Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption tells me that the everyday — the here and now of home and family — ends not in a new Eden but in a cloud of poisonous gas, that salvation lives today, if I will it, but not here and not now. And it teaches me not to trouble to sanctify, but also not to trust, the present circumstance.
…A mark of importance of this other Judaism is that it has the capacity to draw more people into public activity than the synagogue and its Judaism. Most of the organized and collective life of the Jews as an ethnic group appeals to the myth and symbols of this Judaism of Holocaust and Redemption. That is why it is important.
from "Judaism" by Jacob Neusner
I think the "New Judaism" that Berg articulates occurs THROUGH the collective experience of reality, and not instead of it.
The holocaust occurred. It was part of our life, individual, Jewish, humanity's.
Its horrendous cathartic experience has value, including the result of "NEVER AGAIN". Its memory has value.
Berg's thesis is that it was a human experience, and not only a Jewish experience, that the value of the holocaust is more accurately "NEVER AGAIN, to anyone (and not by my hand – anyone's)"
So too the image/metaphor of the lynching and black slaves being whipped? The black liberation religion of Obama's old mentor?
Literally a black and white world view born and bred? Based in very real yet highly selective past history, applied to present situations
to override logical objections by appeals to the heart over the head
via at best partial analogies?
Holocaust Anti-Semitosis Spreads to the UK.
Gilad Atzmon and Zionist memory indirects to an article about a new Israeli film and addresses the topic of Zionist memory and forgetting.
In is not really a new subject. Renan pointed out that a nation is defined as much by what it forgets as by what it remembers.
The idea that every school will have teacher trained in Holocaust studies is so outrageous that it took my breath away.
This is an attempt to use Holocaust for long term political gain, elevating one racial group and its suffering above all other groups.
What about Gypsies, mentally ill, Poles, Communists, who died in the hands of Nazis?
What about Armenians and Rwanda?
Gaining entry to secondary schools is especially chilling, as it attempts to replicate the successful programs of Israel Lobby in America to win hearts and minds of impressionable teenagers to indemnify Israel against political criticism.
I think you are wrong Eva.
I think it is important that EVERY community know that the European wide holocaust against Jews occurred.
I think the Armenian and Rwandan holocaust should be remembered.
The European holocaust of Jews was joined by too many Europeans, beyond specific nazis, and if you sincerely want to avoid it repeating, remembering it is key.
Historical revision happens FAST.
The European holocaust of Jews was different than the holocaust of Armenians and Rwandans in the breadth of the complicity.
The complicity of silence about the Armenian and Rwandan genocides is the commonality.
But, the complicity of turning Jews in to the nazis, was a further step.
That is NOT the present, and that should be part of Jews' self-education as well.
But, Europeans SHOULD know what occurred in fact 60+ years ago.
And, that different individuals and different communities acted very differently, ranging from the most enthusiastically complicit, to heroically assisting Jews and others willingly risking their and even families' lives.
R.Witty: "The complicity of silence about the Armenian and Rwandan genocides is the commonality."
What about this silence?
The Holocaust must be taught, and must be taught in context.
The context of the Holocaust includes all the other major Holocausts — e.g., Aboriginal peoples in Australia, Central and South America; Native Americans in USA; Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia; and also minor [?] Holocausts (this is a point-of-view thing) occurring [today] in Africa, Balkans, etc. Slavery, too.
For if only the very, very largest Holocausts are taught, the student will be invited to suppose that all the other "crimes as usual" are OK. Or even to remain unaware of the other "crimes as usual." Students may suppose that the USA's torture and kidnapping is OK, that Pinochet's and other [sometimes south American] mass "disappearances" are OK.
And even "crimes as usual" should be protested and prosecuted. After all, we don't stop prosecuting traffic violations just because they are not murders, or murders just because they are not Holocausts.
If "The Holocaust" were absolutely unique (i.e., destruction of European Jews in 1933-1945), then there would be no POSSIBILITY of another Holocaust because 1933 will never come again, and because there aren't many Jews living in Europe, and Hitler is dead, etc. In this case, there would be no need to say "never again", because it would be redundant.
This is obvious except to those (whom Burg discusses) who wish "never again" to mean, narrowly, "never again to [the] Jews" and who wish the term "Holocaust" to refer only to the Jewish experience in 1933-1945 without references to the Roma (Gypsies), homosexuals, Slavs, mentally retarded, etc., whom Hitler also favored with his malign attentions — or to all the other genocides in history.
The context of the Holocaust must also include a discussion of the tragedy of the Palestinians which would never have happened without [1] the Holocaust of the Jews and [2] the (guilty) response to the same by the world which permitted Israel to be born and permitted to go uncorrected the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948-50 (with return of exiles prohibited by Israel even until this day) which constituted the beginning of the Palestinian "nakba" (catastrophe).
Israel's oppression of the Palestinians living under occupation for 41 years also needs to be studied in the context of the Holocaust at the minimum as a study of the psychology of "I am a victim and THEREFORE cannot be a victimizer — the suffering of the Palestinians is not my fault — if there is a fault it is someone else's fault — blame the victims." As Burg mentions several times in his book (The Holocaust is Over), battered children become battering parents. those who have suffered cruelty often practice cruelty later, as a result. No-one should be surprised.
I agree with pabelmont's point.
If "Never Again" mostly refers to the jews, everybody has learned nothing.
This brings up Phil's hobby horse, which is one based on attacking negative historical principles of human conduct, not just jewish and anti-jewish conduct, which is a subset of the whole.
The problem defined on Phil's blog, is one of proportion. It goes back to…the idea of the chosen people. Do Jews represent all humans, or not?
I think their history, as even they show it in the bible and talmud,
shows they do–it's not a pretty sight.
The bible shows how much the Hebrews made their own problems, and often made others pay for it; the talmud shows
the first division clear as pie of a soap opera.
Hitler loved Opera.
The means to expand compassion for others, is NOT to diminish the importance of the holocaust to Jews.
As I said earlier, the objective and experienced difference between the Turkish/Armenian holocaust and the European/Jewish one was that the Armenian holocaust was limited to the relationships of one community to another. There were neighbors that were indirectly complicit (in not allowing refugees), but still it was a conflict of only two communities.
The European holocaust of Jews, included nazis, Hungarians, Poles, Rumanians, even French. And, thankfully, many Hungarians, Poles, Rumanians, French, Dutch, Italians, etc. also heroically sheltered Jews (and others).
It was, and was experienced as a widespread and enacted hatred against a single people.
The suffering of the Palestines includes the neglect by other Arab states, including the prohibition of immigration, prohibition from granting full civil rights to long-term Palestinian refugees (in Lebanon).
How many Saudi ministers were on the Free-Gaza boats? It took individual progressives including Jews to make it happen.
And still, it is Israel's obligation to be a net help in the world, and to Palestinians.
That, so the quality of the relationships change from enemy to accepted and hopefully to friend.
Even if there never was a Holocaust, organized Jewry would have invented something like it — for example, it might have pointed to the intolerance Jews received at the hands of Christians throughout Europe and Russian over the centuries, and called it The Persecution. The Persecution would have then been cited as the rationale behind Israel and organized Judaism’s clannish and exclusive behavior the same way the Holocaust is. Substitute The Persecution for the Holocaust in all of Witty’s above passages, and he would have still constructed them in the same way.
Of course, it’s organized Judaism’s right to do what it has to do to ensure its own survival, but let’s not pretend that a)organized Judaism is some highly tolerant, liberal belief system, and b) “survival” is the reason it behaves in the often abhorrent ways it does. Its abhorrent behavior is more about ambition than survival. I think the reason organized Judaism comes under such ferocious attack is because of this hypocrisy. If it would just grow up and admit that it is highly ambitious and manipulative, it might have an easier time of it. But it can’t admit this because doing so would get in the way of its ambitions. (See Tony Judt’s article ‘The country that wouldn’t grow up.’)
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/711997.html
"But, Europeans SHOULD know what occurred in fact 60+ years ago."–Witty
And Americans, including the same children who are repeatedly told about "the Holocaust" and within their own land where public land
is devoted to memorials to same, and where their own parents are
annually taxed to support Israel in the name of Never Again, not to mention their teen-age children are groomed to fight for Israel and puppet governments, SHOULD know about the relation between
WW 1's settlement and its relation to WW2, and especially what occurred from Balfour declaration through today in the Middle East–and not merely by a video tape of Paul Newman playing his
part in Exodus. The existence of a viable USA depends on it.
RE: "But, the complicity of turning Jews in to the nazis, was a further step.
That is NOT the present, and that should be part of Jews' self-education as well."–Witty
And the complicity of turning Palestinians into fanatical sand n-ggrs
remains a fatal step. This IS the present, and part of what the USA has been paying for since 9/11. This should be part of Americans'
self-education as well'
RE: "How many Saudi ministers were on the Free-Gaza boats? It took individual progressives including Jews to make it happen."
True.
And how many American congress people were on the Free Gaza, (second) USS Liberty, and now the third boat breaking the Gaza
stranglehold by Israel? It takes individual progressive Americans like Phil to penetrate the enforced ignorance, so that hopefully it will happen.
Americans have to stop the cycle of abuse, enabling the abused
child to abuse children in return.
Maybe Obama is the corrective tough love Dad?
Obama is the love Dad, who will convince by reason rather than threaten.
Anon,
Don't get sucked into your own form of dysfunction on this issue.
At war for years and years, distorts even progressives' state of mind.
Was Phil on one of the boats?