8 | The Jewish Press | October 1, 2021
Voices The Jewish Press (Founded in 1920) Margie Gutnik President Annette van de Kamp-Wright Editor Richard Busse Creative Director Susan Bernard Advertising Executive Lori Kooper-Schwarz Assistant Editor Gabby Blair Staff Writer Mary Bachteler Accounting Jewish Press Board Margie Gutnik, President; Abigail Kutler, Ex-Officio; Danni Christensen; David Finkelstein; Bracha Goldsweig ; Mary Sue Grossman; Les Kay; Natasha Kraft; Chuck Lucoff; Joseph Pinson; Andy Shefsky and Amy Tipp. The mission of the Jewish Federation of Omaha is to build and sustain a strong and vibrant Omaha Jewish Community and to support Jews in Israel and around the world. Agencies of the Federation are: Community Relations Committee, Jewish Community Center, Center for Jewish Life, Jewish Social Services, and the Jewish Press. Guidelines and highlights of the Jewish Press, including front page stories and announcements, can be found online at: wwwjewishomaha.org; click on ‘Jewish Press.’ Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole. The Jewish Press reserves the right to edit signed letters and articles for space and content. The Jewish Press is not responsible for the Kashrut of any product or establishment. Editorial The Jewish Press is an agency of the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Deadline for copy, ads and photos is: Thursday, 9 a.m., eight days prior to publication. E-mail editorial material and photos to: avandekamp@jewishomaha.org; send ads (in TIF or PDF format) to: rbusse@jewishomaha.org. Letters to the Editor Guidelines The Jewish Press welcomes Letters to the Editor. They may be sent via regular mail to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154; via fax: 1.402.334.5422 or via e-mail to the Editor at: avandekamp@jewishomaha. org. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must be single-spaced typed, not hand-written. Published letters should be confined to opinions and comments on articles or events. News items should not be submitted and printed as a “Letter to the Editor.” The Editor may edit letters for content and space restrictions. Letters may be published without giving an opposing view. Information shall be verified before printing. All letters must be signed by the writer. The Jewish Press will not publish letters that appear to be part of an organized campaign, nor letters copied from the Internet. No letters should be published from candidates running for office, but others may write on their behalf. Letters of thanks should be confined to commending an institution for a program, project or event, rather than personally thanking paid staff, unless the writer chooses to turn the “Letter to the Editor” into a paid personal ad or a news article about the event, project or program which the professional staff supervised. For information, contact Annette van de KampWright, Jewish Press Editor, 402.334.6450. Postal The Jewish Press (USPS 275620) is published weekly (except for the first week of January and July) on Friday for $40 per calendar year U.S.; $80 foreign, by the Jewish Federation of Omaha. Phone: 402.334.6448; FAX: 402.334.5422. Periodical postage paid at Omaha, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Jewish Press, 333 So. 132 St., Omaha, NE 68154-2198 or email to: jpress@jewishomaha.org.
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Editorials express the view of the writer and are not necessarily representative of the views of the Jewish Press Board of Directors, the Jewish Federation of Omaha Board of Directors, or the Omaha Jewish community as a whole.
Why we care ANNETTE VAN DE KAMP-WRIGHT Jewish Press Editor Here’s a story that hit the news last week: “A translator for a Nazi death squad died at home in Ontario at the age of 97, ending a decades-long effort to deport him from Canada for his role in the murders of tens of thousands of Jews. Helmut Oberlander, who was born in Ukraine in 1924, had long said that he was forced on pain of death at age 17 to become an interpreter for Einsatzkommando 10a, a Nazi unit. The death squad killed nearly 100,000 people, most of them Jews. Oberlander had not been accused of directly taking part in killing anyone. “In 1954, he emigrated to Canada and hid his activities during the war, eventually raising a family. His Nazi past appears to have been discovered as early as the 1960s. In the mid-1990s, the government began the process of revoking his citizenship, which succeeded after repeated appeals. He was in the midst of deportation hearings when he died on Wednesday.” (JTA.com) Trying to figure out why I find stories like these so troubling is not easy. Part of it is the photo that accompanied the news brief: it shows a young man with piercing blue eyes (I assume, it’s a black-and-white so maybe they’re green, whatever) staring into the camera. The young Helmut Oberlander looked like he came straight from central casting. Exactly who you imagine when you’re little and you first learn Nazis exist. Part of it is the news stories in Canadian papers
that show pictures of him “outside his condo in Florida.” Wait, what? A Nazi who makes a good life in Canada and then retires to a condo in Florida, it’s almost cartoonish. I can’t even.
A photo of Helmut Oberlander when he was a translator for a Nazi death squad. Screenshot
There is, of course, plenty to be frustrated about when old enemies ‘get away with it’ and don’t ever really pay for their crimes. At the same time, how would they? Even if they are caught, even if they go to prison at the ripe old age of, say, 88, does it really make a difference? Perhaps that’s why I’m troubled. Nothing that happens to these people will ever even begin to make anything right. So we do we care? They are almost all gone anyway. I know; that sounds harsh, but let’s face it: there aren’t that many actual Nazis
left—just as we are watching our number of Holocaust survivors dwindle with the passage of time, so to do the perpetrators disappear because nobody can live forever. Again, why do we care? Here’s why. The Holocaust, to the majority of people alive today, is history. Very few of us are left who experienced this first-hand; because of that, there is a real danger it will become just a story in a book. Something to make movies about, something to write about and discuss, sure, something to learn from, even. But a story nonetheless. With each passing decade, it becomes less real, more abstract. And when that happens, we lose the sense of urgency, the understanding that as human beings, we have the capacity to let things go horribly wrong. I think it is that enormity, that calamity, those sheer numbers of dead and that unbelievable cruelty we continue to wrestle with—and when that becomes more fictitious in our collective minds, we absolutely run the risk of letting it happen again. Remembering the Holocaust and all its accompanying atrocities is important because of that sense of urgency. It should not become less ‘hereand-now’ simply because time has passed. It should remain as prominent in our collective consciousness as if it happened yesterday. And if putting an old Nazi on trial and in jail helps us remember that, then good. If said Nazi dies a peaceful death before there can be any reckoning, it’s a shame. Not because we are vengeful, but because the crimes he committed, the atrocities he watched and did nothing to stop, are real. They are not to be treated as stories in a history book.
Shmita is Judaism’s sabbatical year. It can be a model for tackling climate change and inequality. SEN. MEGHAN KALLMAN AND RABBI LEX ROFEBERG JTA We are in an era of multiple interlocking crises. From record-breaking heat waves to wildfires to water shortages, from rising authoritarianism to a pandemic rampaging across the world, it is clear that, to survive, human beings will need to make urgent, major changes to how we live. Bold policy proposals already exist to address these problems, both nationally and in different states. Additionally, we — one of us a politician, the other a rabbi, and both progressives — want to suggest another possibility, gleaned from Jewish tradition: the ancient idea of shmita, the sabbatical year, which can guide our work in this urgent moment when everything we do matters. Both of us are millennials, and therefore have come of age under the worst inequality since the Gilded Age — exacerbated and symbolized by a student and healthcare debt crisis. The disastrous effects of climate crisis, extinctions, displacement and environmental degradation are threatening to turn life into a nightmare for most on the planet. These problems can be traced to a global obsession with unending growth. Our only chance to avoid that is to drastically reenvision our society and its priorities. Both of us are also, in particular, Jewish millennials. We have, in different ways and at different points in our lives, felt called to participate in Jewish communities of learning, prayer and communal gathering. Despite our involvement in those spaces however, neither one of us learned of shmita’s existence until adulthood. It is time for our Jewish spaces, around the world, to re-prioritize this sacred ritual, and apply its wisdom in concrete ways to our own times. The word “shmita” is observed every seven years. The shmita year began several days ago, on Rosh Hashanah. “Sabbatical” tends to refer to respite from work, typically in a university context. But the shmita year is slightly different. It is a collective sabbatical, a radical recalibration of society as a whole, in order to align it with principles of justice and eq-
uity for human beings and for the lands we inhabit. Shmita offers a framework for how we might enshrine seemingly individual choices as social values. The shmita year has two major components. The first is that it serves as a rest for land: Just as humans get to observe a sabbath once every seven days, the land that we inhabit gets a sabbath, too. In biblical times, it meant that the land should lay fallow for a
An oil derrick near farm fields in Oklahoma. Credit: Sarah Nichols/Flickr Commons
year, and the gleanings left for the needy and even animals. Through shmita, our relationship to land can shift from one of control and domination to one of appreciation and interdependence. Clearly, such lessons are applicable to this moment as well. Shmita’s other major component is that debts are forgiven. This is done to address financial inequities that grow over time, and to enable everyone to have the opportunity to thrive. Debt forgiveness every seven years disrupts wealth-hoarding and provides relief to those struggling to meet their basic needs. Shmita approaches justice expansively. These ideas can be, and should be, used in practice — not just in our ancient texts, and not just aspirationally. For instance: we could forgive debts, and change the systems that cause such terrible indebtedness. Two-thirds of contemporary U.S. bankruptcies are over medical issues and medical debt; we must make healthcare free and universal to solve this problem over the long term. Collectively, U.S. college students owe nearly $1.6 trillion in student loan debt; President Biden could and should forgive up to $50,000 per borrower in federal student debt through executive action. Over the medium term,
we must make public colleges and universities free, to avoid re-creating the same problem — something that our home state of Rhode Island is already on its way to doing. This year, its General Assembly permanently enacted RI Promise, the free tuition program at the Community College of Rhode Island. The idea of shmita can also guide us in acting to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change. Shmita proposes that for a year, humans must avoid treating land simply as a means to our ends; we must not think in terms of limitless expansion, but rather in terms of sustainability and rest. Leaving the land fallow rejects the notion that our planet, and its resources, exist only to serve us. Our state’s Act on Climate bill sets legally binding targets for emissions reductions; now we must act urgently to meet them. Measures like mandating net-zero emissions in energy generation, a critical move that passed only the Senate this session, are crucial first steps. We need to rebuild our food systems, and expand public transit and clean energy production. Neighborhoods are building community gardens while offering training for formerly incarcerated people, rethinking financial systems and experimenting with basic income. Communities and legislatures are mobilizing around these issues, but we need more action, faster, and at every level. The choices we make now will determine the survival of millions within the next few decades. We must seek out every strategy available to us as we take on the challenges that threaten the inhabitants of our country, other countries and our planet. That includes strategies anchored in ancient wisdom, like the shmita year. We need to act collectively, for everyone’s health. Because a society that takes care of itself and its most vulnerable is one that is, quite simply, the only moral option. State. Sen. Kallman represents District 15 in the Rhode Island State Senate. Rabbi Lex Rofeberg is the Senior Jewish Educator for Judaism Unbound. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
