May is Jewish American Heritage month

Marina Berkovich, JHSSWF President

Historical relevance and context play a major role in times of peace and a much more significant one in times of crises. As we are coping with increased antisemitism at home in the U.S. and an escalation of terrorism in Israel, I search for explanations to seemingly disjointed events taking place in parts of the world that are far away from one another because I believe that everything is contextually connected. The universe and our Jewish teachings send us periodic verifications of this.

It is imperative to not rush to judgment — or so we hear every time there is a report of shootings. Yet, we all rush to whatever the judgment our own moral framework serves up. We lost the ability to not judge. We possess different degrees of curiosity, knowledge, information and ability to store, process and extract it. Our logical interpolation yields different results because each of us have different logic that, coupled with our emotional ranges, brings us to different conclusions or predictions of the outcomes. How can you judge anyone or anything without the full and proper context?

After time passes, we dust off and hope to preserve intact, the look and feel of any era that was as recent as WWII or the Civil War. How possible is it to encompass everything about the historical context of the individual sharing their journey? A person places his interpretation of events he witnessed, participated in or is hearing about through the prism of his own mind’s limitations.

The level of our education varies and so do our specialized interests. Many historically important facts scoot by unnoticed in the general chaos of an escalating information overload. We are literally bombarded by facts, figures, stats, names, titles and such. Everything becomes a little bit less critical in this historical whirlwind. Somewhere in our universe, the next Jules Verne is penning “Around the World in One Hour” and Elon Musk already gladly purchased the first 10,000 books to make it a 2022 bestseller.

The relevance of Southwest Florida Jewish History to this cacophonic bombardment is not for us to decide. That will be decided by the future generations of people who will carry forward our mission or allow it to disintegrate with newer and more immediately rewarding layers of facts and excitement under our very noses or, maybe, over our dead bodies.

Recent world events will impact every Jew everywhere in ways we are not yet able to ascertain. In the early 1950s, Stalin exterminated USSR Jews and labeled them “rootless cosmopolites” whilst not acknowledging the factual genocide of Jews, now known as Shaoh, the Holocaust.

Shameless revisionists are always busy, writing the truth out of history. Like what just happened to notable, prolific Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa, whose most recent film “Babi Yar. Context” presents the inconvenient to Ukraine truth about Kiev’s most famous massacre. He was expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy, like in Stalin’s cosmopolites purges, for his artistic collaborations with Russians.

A huge majority of American Jews hail from Ukraine. We will be presenting “History of Jews in Ukraine” in May and June. Check our website for times and to register.

Help JHSSWF fulfill its mission

Join The Jewish Historical Society of SWFL. Family membership is $54; individual membership is $36; student membership is $18; and corporate sponsorship is $300.

Join us online by entering the appropriate amount or mailing check to The Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida, 8805 Tamiami Trail North, Suite #255, Naples FL 34108.

We can be reached at 833-547-7935 (833-JHS-SWFL), www.jhsswf.org or office@jhsswf.org. The Virtual Museum of SWFL Jewish History is located online at http://jewishhistorysouthwestflorida.org/.

The Jewish Historical Society of Southwest Florida is a section 501(C)(3) charitable organization. Contributions are deductible to the fullest extent allowed by law.