Holocaust Education

A recent posting on Kosher Eucharist as well as a rereading of (what I consider to be) the very important essay by Chaim Soleveichik, "Rupture and Reconstruction: The Transformation of Contemporary Orthodoxy," which was originally published in Tradition, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Summer 1994) have got me thinking about something that was a pet peeve of mine in high school, Holocaust education. Simply put, the Holocaust is not treated properly in Jewish institutions. In my various experiences with after-school Hebrew school, Jewish day schools and synagogue education programs of all denominations, the holocaust is mistreated in the same ways, which detract horribly from serious education. First of all, it is mythologized horribly. It is held up as an event which is so terrible any discussion of it cannot capture it's horror. Now this is probably true. But any decent historian will tell you that you can't capture the exact essence, the real truth, of any event. Horrible, wonderful, it doesn't matter. Ever event is filtered through the evidence we have about it. The inability to really grasp what happened during the Holocaust doesn't separate it from other events, it makes it similar to them. The mythologizing manifests itself in other ways as well, primarily an inability to look at people who lived though (or were killed in) the Holocaust in any kind of objective light. The second flaw is that, partially because of our inability to discuss it in a historical light (at least in educational settings at Jewish institutions), Holocaust programs are mind numbingly boring. We list names; we count numbers; we hear survivors' accounts (which in my experience tend to blend into each other). The accounts are the only things which even approach being interesting, and they often are, but because they are never contextualized in the program, they lose a lot of their effectiveness. Now, because of these two problems, Holocaust education programs/curricula almost always end up resorting to cheap manipulations of the audience's emotions. I'm not a monster, it's impossible for me not to be affected by the pile of children's shoes at Yad V'Shem -- but so what? I feel bad, and then....? Nothing comes of this tactic, and in the end it has nothing to do with real education.
I have no real answer to the problems, but I would like to explore a few of the reasons for them. I'm going to start out with something that Chaim Soleveichik says in the essay I mentioned before (and which anybody who wants to have a solid understanding of the state of contemporary Orthodoxy should read),

"The sudden, passionate insistence that the suffering of one's people was sui generis and incomparable with that of any other nation in the long and lamentable catalog of human cruelty betokens, among other things, an urgent need for distinctiveness which must be met, but cannot be satisfied from within, from any inner resources. Finding one's inimitability in the unique horrors that others have committed against oneself, may seem a strange form of distinction, but not if there remains a powerful urge to feel different at a time when one has become indistinguishable from the rest."

He is talking about the phenomenon in a different context, but it is relevant to my point in the following way: The North American Jewish community's founding myth is based, at least in part, on the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Now, the Holocaust may or may not be unique in the catalogue of horrors that humanity has perpetrated, but it is something that should be discussed. We already have an answer to that question and it makes it impossible to look at the question seriously. In Israel the situation is even worse, because the uniqueness of the Holocaust is one of the justifications for the existence of the state. There is a vested interest in the mythologizing of the Holocaust. The are other reasons as well, a refusal to admit that the Nazi evil was rooted in reality, as opposed to some other-worldly evil (thus the comparisons to Amalek, ancient mythological enemy of the Israelite nation, invoked to explain evil when no other explanation suffices), a fear that recognizing the reality of the Holocaust would force us to act in certain ways that we may not like, some others which I'm sure I'm missing.
Now, the materials exist to teach the Holocaust well. Plenty of talented historians in North America, Europe and Israel have done lots of good work, and as time goes on we will only learn more. Speilberg's interview project is a wonderful thing. But until the Jewish community is willing to reject the myth of the Holocaust and exchange it for a serious look at what happened, these resources are wasted on us.

Surprising search terms

Interestingly, this blog is the first hit when you search Yahoo for Shomer Negia.

Friends and communication

Heidi over at Letters of Marque (whom I have a not so secret crush on) has some thoughts on "the lovely short hand of people who need few words to convey a lot of information." She is specifically discussing the point in a romantic relationship where a decent comfort level is reached, and both parties understand each other. But this level of communication isn't the exclusive property of couples. There is something very much to be said in favor of communicating a complicated thought in a few words, a significant look and a gesture. There's level of comfort, that you don't have to justify yourself, or explain. The other person just gets it. I have a few friends like this, and I'm lucky to have them.

Does this surprise you?

Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose. You are a
mystery novel dealing with theology, especially
with catholic vs liberal issues. You search
wisdom and knowledge endlessly, feeling that
learning is essential in life.


Which literature classic are you?
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Worth reading

I don't have enough time to say more now, but anybody who is interested in the direction the world is headed in now needs to read Robert Kagan's analysis of the US/European realationship. I'm not sure it's right, but Kagan's position is very similar to the way I've been thinking about the subject and he's much smarter and more knowledgeable than I'll ever be, so it makes me feel a little bit more comfortable with my opinion. Read it and let me know what you think.


(Hat tip to Pejman Yousefzadah)

Is it a coincidence that the word embarrassment contains the syllables bare ass?

In my last two posts there were a whole host of misspellings. I fixed them. In general it is my policy not to change a post without notifying my readers, otherwise I feel like big brother. So consider yourself notified.

Jewish Ethnicity

The concept of a Jewish Ethnicity is a strange one. The idea that my blonde blue eyed friend has any ethnic/racial connection to her dark Yemenite boyfriend is, frankly, preposterous. The bloodlines became so diluted so far back and the cultures so different, that in both racial and cultural terms he is probably closer to his Arab neighbors than to her. However, in Jewish circles, both secular and religious, the concept of a Jewish ethnicity is pervasive. Part of this comes from the nationalist movement in Zionism, but the concept of a secular Jewish identity exisited before the advent of Zionism, though I'm not sure how long before. Today, in a class on the Wars of Religion in Early Modern Europe, I heard a point which I think may help elucidate the origin of this idea. I want to stress that this is just an idle thought, I haven't researched it. I think it may make sense though. My professor said that, during the early modern period in Europe, religion was a form of community identification, rather than of personal faith. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 set up the principle of cuius regio eius religio which, loosely translated, means "whoever is king, the religon is his." Basically, what this means is that if your king is Protestant, then so are you and likewise if he's Catholic. Your religion becomes a political statement at this point. People who were not happy with the king decided to be part of an opposing religion (see, for example, the rebellion of the Netherlands against Spain.) Now, obviously this is an oversimplification, but the essense is there. What does this have to do with Jewish ethnic identity? Well, Jews had no political affiliations. A Jew in Poland was never a Pollack, he was always a Jew. If he converted to Catholicism, maybe his children could be Polish. However, the fact that religion became so bound to nationality (which eventually lead to the invention of nationalism)creates the possibilty for a Jew who is still nationally a Jew, even though he is secular. Now, I'm not suggesting that such a person existed at the end of the 16th century, but I am suggesting that it is this mode of thinking which leads to the eventual conception of an ethnic Jew. Maybe this is obvious to most people, but I'd never thought of it before. If somebody knows sources that I could use to either back myself up, or find out where I'm wrong, let me know.

Blogroll additions

Over the past few weeks I've added some new links to my blogroll, so I thought I'd let you all know a little bit about them. Cliopatria is a group blog hosted at History News Network. It's members are all professional historians who write on current events and the academy. Naomi Chana blogs at Baraita. She teaches Jewish History at a small town university, and writes mostly about Jewish concerns from a liberal perspective. Danny Loss, at No Loss for Words blogs about two subjects which readers of this blog will know are dear to my heart, history and baseball. (And if you're starting to detect a theme here, well, what do you want from me? I am who I am.) Finally, my friend Rebecca is blogging now at The Key to Rebecca. There are very few people whom I like and respect as much as I do Rebecca,so I recommend that you read what she has to say. All of these blogs are very worth your time. Check them out.

I don't usually write about politics....

but something's been bugging the hell out of me, and I just need to get it off my chest. Right after the election, alot of news outlets were claiming that George Bush won the election because a bunch of stupid, gay hatin', Jesus lovin' rednecks decided to stop scratching themselves and get up and vote. Very quickly, any number of people actually started looking at the polling numbers, and you know what they found out? That it's just not true. Eugene Volokh started off by mentioning that the poll question that started the whole thing was faulty to begin with. The definitive article on the subject, so far as I can tell, was published in Slate, hardly a conservative magazine, by Paul Freedman, hardly a conservative writer. The main-stream media caught on as well. EJ Dionne, a columnist for the Washington Post, who wrote this tirade immediately following the election, has since written this. This post by Pejman Yousefzadah also has links to alot of information. My point? Just that I'm sick of hearing ignorant people go off about things that they know nothing about. You don't like the results of the election? Fine, but if you don't understand why you lost, you'll never win the next one.

Something you don't see everyday

I found this exchange to be absolutely facinating. Before I discuss it, a confession. I did not read the original post that prompted this correspondence. I came across the follow-up thanks to The Professor, Grandaddy of all bloggers. I think it is interesting for a number of reasons, but the one I want to address here the incredible civility of John Hockenberry. Here is a man who made a mistake, a fairly public one, and did his best to rectify it. Compare his behavior to that of Dan Rather during the recent flap at CBS and you'll see a huge difference. This is the kind of man that I can admire, despite our clear differences of opinion.

Cannonization and Contradiction

Here's something that I'm curious about, though I don't see anyway to answer the question. There are a large number of contradictions (or apparent contradictions, if you prefer) in the Bible. Different sets of laws for the same holiday, different accounts of the same story, differing genealogies of the same family, etc. Now, we notice these contradictions. The scholars of the enlightenment noticed them. The medievals were aware of them. The Rabbis were aware of them. Pre-rabbinic sectarians were aware of them. Hellenistic writers noticed them. The authors of the Psudeopigrapha, some of which dates back nearly to the Babylonian exile, tried to deal with Biblical contradictions. So, was there ever a time when people weren't concerned with the contradictions in the Bible? And if there wasn't, why did so many people spare the time and effort to deal with them, instead of rejecting the Bible entirely? Now, from a religious perspective the answer is obvious. And that's all good and well, but it's also boring. Does anybody have a good historical answer to this question? At the bottom, what I'm asking is "How did a set of books so riddled with contradictions get to be cannonized?" We don't really know enough about the cannonization process to say for sure, but is anybody willing to entertain a guess?