Today is Yom HaShoah, literally the Day of the Catastrophe. One of the meanings of Holocaust is a burnt offering – as such, many Jews prefer the word Shoah, as we are not someone’s burnt offering.
This is a day of remembrance, and it occurs on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.
The question I often ask myself is how to best honour the memory of the 6 million Jews murdered, some of them my family, some of them the families of friends and colleagues here.
This year, I have been reflecting on the words of journalist and novelist Dara Horn (People Love Dead Jews, One Little Goat, Eternal Life, etc.). She says that Holocaust Education has been a failure. Her words are controversial – and I agree with her on two counts:
-
The focus on Holocaust education has foreclosed education on pattern recognition – being able to see Jew Hate in all of its many forms.
-
The focus on Holocaust education has also left a gap for many people in terms of just who we are as Jews, who are we as a People.
The problem with poor pattern recognition is something I have addressed before and have offered resources to help people think beyond antisemitism as Nazism. Most folks are pretty good at recognizing Nazi antisemitism. But people often stop there, and sadly also stereotype Germans as Nazis. There tends to be a very poor understanding of the very long history of Jew Hate that stretches back to the ancient African Empire of Egypt and shape shifts to suit the times and whatever people see as evil – we are the eternal scapegoat. Recognizing this basic concept can improve our pattern recognition when Jew Hatred emerges in a new form – today it is quite prevalent on the Left, where evil is seen in the form of White Supremacy, Colonialism, Genocide, Infanticide, etc. – and Jews are made the container for these evils in people’s minds, in protests, and in acts of violence against Jews.
If we are to move beyond the limits of Holocaust education, we must educate ourselves more broadly and historically. Most Jews know that the three main violent forms of Jew Hate are forced conversions, expulsions, and murder – and these have appeared long before Nazi Germany, in Europe and in Muslim nations. When Shakespeare wrote Merchant of Venice (a vile antisemitic work), there were no longer Jews in England. As for Venice – this was the site of the first Jewish “ghetto,” where the word originated – Jews were forced to live in a walled area separated from other Italians. Russia forced Jews en masse into the Pale of Settlement. Jews in Muslim nations were made second class citizens and forced to pay additional taxes – and in the 20th century, expelled in massive numbers.
There are many examples of mass forced conversions over time, perhaps most famous is the Spanish Inquisition, where conversion did not necessarily mean we were safe. The murderous pogroms over time are also too many for me to list, whether in Europe or Muslim nations. Pogroms in Lithuania resulted in waves of Jews fleeing for other countries – my mom’s family largely ended up in the US in the 1800s, my dad’s family in Uruguay in the 1920s (which is why I speak Spanish and grew up hearing a beautiful mix of Spanish and Yiddish, or Spaniddish). The most recent pogrom, and the most horrific post-Shoah pogrom, is of course, the Hamas led pogrom of October 7, 2023 – Hamas’ Charter calls for the global annihilation of Jews (the kind of genocide Hitler had in mind as a final solution to the “Jewish Problem.” I understand some do not feel safe in our discussions here – as a Jew, I do not feel safe anywhere, and I prefer not to be silent about that even if it may cause some discomfort.
Dara Horn also writes about how two of our holidays hold the two main patterns of genocidal intent towards Jews (Purim and Hannukah). In Purim we remember the ancient Persian empire and the plan to kill all Jews there (this is what we have seen over time in pogroms and in the Shoah). Hannukah is a revolt in ancient Israel against the ancient Greek Empire occupying us. The Greeks required assimilation – as long as we abandoned who we are as a people, we were told we would be safe. This bargain has never turned out well for us – in the end, we are killed anyway, while we are busy being acceptable Jews. We saw this more recently in the Soviet Union, which promoted the idea that if Jews would abandon Zionism (our desire to return to our indigenous homeland and to identify as an indigenous and as a people yearning for self-determination in our indigenous homeland), then we would be safe. Those of us who abandoned Zionism were killed anyway. The Soviets were successful in promoting the idea that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, especially among the labour left movements here in the West and also expressed in Muslim nations. Putin, like many before him, have gone as far as to describe Jews as Nazis (Holocaust inversion), a particularly vile form of antisemitism also expressed these days by extreme Islam. This has also supported Holocaust denial, which is massively popular among Muslim extremists and Muslim extremist governments. Even American and Canadian and French cultures, and on and on, make room for us if we just won’t be so Jewy – if we will abandon who we are culturally, then we can even be accepted as allies (but with the cost of losing who we are and allying ourselves with some people who want us dead). I was born in America, in Missouri – this is what the melting pot offers if we accept the bargain.
And here, as I reflect on Yom HaShoah, having written so much, I can see how easily we fall into the second failure of Holocaust education: focusing so much on Jew Hate over the millennia that there is precious little attention paid to who Jews are as a people. Many mistake us for simply a religious group (yet so many of us are secular). Many mistake us for White (yet so many of us, the majority of us, would never be seen that way, including the Mizrahi, Sephardim and Beit Israel) – we do not fit colour definitions well. While I have White privilege here and now, I see myself as White passing, and I know I can lose that privilege in an instant – White supremacists laugh at the idea that I am White. These mistakes miss the point – we are a People, a people with a common origin story, an ancient indigenous people in diaspora and returned, a people with ancient writings that hold our values and way of seeing the world, a people with common celebrations and a shared history that we identify with. In Hebrew, the word we use is two letters: Am (we are a people) – and we say Am Yisrael Chai, the People of Israel Live. Who we are as a people reflects so much cultural richness, so much to learn about and share with others who are curious. As much as I could offer references on understanding the Shoah, I could offer many more on understanding Jewish thought, and values and culture. I could list novelists, and artists (I have a soft spot for Chagall, whose paintings recall the lost world of the Shtetl and the horrors of the pogroms and the Shoah – Picasso found him to be too Jewy and I find him wonderfully so), and scientists (Einstein’s thinking is consistent with the central Jewish prayer that all is one, even matter and energy and that there must some day be a unified field theory), and sages (so many sages and after them so many great thinkers, like Maimonides), and on and on.
If I were to recommend one book to stretch beyond the confines of Holocaust education, it would be Dara Horn’s People Love Dead Jews. In it she also discusses how different Jewish literature is from Christian literature – we do not look for a saviour or grace or an epiphany in our stories. Interestingly, while she talks about the failure of Holocaust education, she recommends Chava Rosenfarb’s Tree of Life Trilogy – this chronicles the lives of people living in the Lodz ghetto. I have not had the capacity to try reading it yet since I read at bedtime.
I am not able to focus in on one book that celebrates Jewish peoplehood and culture – the list would be endless, and there are far more places to look outside of the written word. For example, I love Klezmer, Jewish soul music. I love Chagall. I love reading scripture and the Sages and other great thinkers.
This is where I am at on Yom HaShoah in 2025, with the hope that observing this day, commemorating 6 million Jews who were killed in an attempt to erase us as a people, that we all may also attempt to learn more about Jew Hatred beyond Nazism and that we may all learn more about what it means to be a Jew without defining us or limiting us by focussing solely on understanding Jew Hate. Am Yisrael Chai.
