Shofar Sivan/Tammuz 5771
Jewish Family Congregation www.jewishfamilycongregation.org
July 2011
From the Rabbi’s Desk As you may know, a small group of JFC people have been gathering to watch some New DVDs about the Holocaust. So far, we have seen the footage about the creation and evolution of Auschwitz, from a facility for political prisoners into an extermination camp primarily for Jews. The DVDs feature actual film taken by the Nazis themselves, and some re-enactments of meetings and other occasions ,the dialogue taken directly from diaries and other records kept by the Nazis. They also include interviews with Jewish survivors and some men who served in the Nazi army; these latter seem unrepentant about their part in the Holocaust, which is stunning, all these years later. At the same time, I recently read The Invisible Bridge, a novel by Julie Orringer, set in Hungary before and during the Holocaust. This book vividly exposes the way the war and the Holocaust upended people’s lives, and it also shows without flinching the horrors of starvation, disease and torment that the Nazis imposed on their victims. But it is also and foremost a love story, a story of determination and devotion; if you have not read it, I highly recommend this book. Some months ago, I began an enormous volume called Lethal Obsession, a history of anti-Semitism from antiquity to today, written by Robert Wistrich, who is the living authority on this subject. The history is fascinating, but the portrait he paints of contemporary anti-Semitism is quite frightening. There is clearly a resurgence of acceptability of anti-Semitism all over the world, these days. You just have to follow the news to hear about academic boycotts of Israeli scholars, to hear about the outrage expressed From the Rabbi’s Desk Service Schedule July’s Oneg Hosts President’s Message Confirmands’ Speeches Answer that “Voice”! Kids Ask the Rabbi Donations to JFC JFCAdults Early Childhood Center
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when Israel recently defended its borders against Palestinian and other Arab demonstrators, to hear the subtle innuendo in the comments about certain Jewish public figures when they self-destruct. The antiIsrael rhetoric often seems to be a mask for antiSemitism, which may not yet be ok in all venues. It’s out there, all right. But we who live in northern Westchester can grow complacent and comfortable, because all of these things seem to be emerging at some remove from us. Then there is an incident involving high school students and the painting of swastikas on the home of a Jewish family in our community. Now, I don’t know all the details involved in this occurrence, and I have no interest in dredging it up again. What interests me in this is the swastika symbol used as a means of communication. While it is true that the swastika is an ancient symbol, it is also true that the Nazis took it for their own, and invested it with ideas and implications that override any other significance it may have had. When we see a swastika, we immediately connect it to the Nazis, to the Nazi policy of genocide, to the death of six million Jews. And Jews are not the only ones who react to the swastika that way. So when some teenagers raised in our area, educated in our schools, choose to deface someone’s property with swastikas, it should give us pause. The swastika is a symbol of hatred, of rage, of power. There is nothing benign about it. I cannot think of any other symbol that conjures up so much pain, humiliation, or terror. So I wonder why that was the symbol the alleged
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